embracing! O the rejoicing! Nothing, so long as I am in my senses, would I match with the joy a friend may bring. 45 The little house close to the Campanian bridge put a roof above our heads, and the state-purveyors," as in duty bound, furnished fuel and salt. Next, at Capua, our mules lay aside their saddle-bags at an early hour. Maecenas goes off to ball-playing, Virgil and I to sleep, for such play is hard on the sore-eyed and the dyspeptic. Another stage, and we are taken in at the well-stocked villa of Cocceius, lying above the inns of Caudium. 51 Now, O Muse, recount in brief the contest of Sarmentus the jester and Messius Cicirrus, and the lineage of the two who engaged in the fray. Messius was of famous stock, an Oscan; the mistress of Sarmentus is still living: from such ancestry sprung, they entered the lists. And first Sarmentus: You, I say, are like a wild horse." We laugh, and Messius himself," I grant you," and tosses his head. "Oh!' says Sarmentus, "if only the horn had not been cut out of your forehead, what would you do, when you can threaten, thus dehorned?" Now an unsightly scar had disfigured the left side of his bristly brow. With many a joke on his Campanian disease and on his face, he begged him to dance the Cyclops shepherd-dance: he would need neither mask nor • The scholiast on Juvenal, Sat. v. 3, tells us that a certain Sarmentus had been a slave, who on the proscription and death of his master Favonius had been bought by Maecenas and set free. If the Sarmentus of this scene is the same man, the domina is the widow of Favonius. The scholiast in Cruquius explains this of warts, which left scars when removed. multa Cicirrus ad haec: donasset iamne catenam 65 1 domini C. Leath paene macros arsit dum turdos versat in igni ; thorsh 3 delapso CK, II. 2 recte D, II. 4 terret CE. 75 80 90 a Altino is to-day the local Apulian term for the hot scirocco, which Horace calls the " Atabulus." The name is not recorded, at least correctly, but Horace has in mind a passage in Lucilius, viz. : tragic buskin. Much had Cicirrus to say to this. t. Had he yet, he inquired, made a votive offering of his chain to the Lares? Clerk though he was, yet his mistress's claim was not less strong. At the last he asked why he had ever run away, since a pound of meal was enough for one so lean and so puny. Right merrily did we prolong that supper. 71 Thence we travel straight to Beneventum, where our bustling host was nearly burned out while turning lean thrushes over the fire. For as Vulcan slipped out through the old kitchen the vagrant flame hastened to lick the roof. Then you might have seen the hungry guests and frightened slaves snatching up the dinner, and all trying to quench the blaze. 77 From this point Apulia begins to show to my eyes her familiar hills, which the Altino scorches, and over which we had never crawled had not a villa near Trivicum taken us in, but not without smoke that brought tears, as green wood, leaves and all, was burning in the stove. Here I, utter fool that I am, await a faithless girl right up to midnight. Then, after all, sleep carries me off still thinking upon love, and evil dreams assail me. 86 From here we are whirled in carriages four and twenty miles, to spend the night in a little town I cannot name in verse, though 'tis quite easy to define it by tokens. Here water, nature's cheapest product, is sold, but the bread is far the best to be had, so that the knowing traveller is wont to shoulder servorum est festus dies hic quem plane hexametro versu non dicere possis (vi. 228, ed. Marx), "This is the slaves' festal day, which one cannot freely name in hexameter verse.' 99 nam Canusi lapidosus (aquae non ditior urna), qui locus a forti Diomede est conditus olim.1 flentibus hinc Varius discedit maestus amicis. S/P Inde Rubos fessi pervenimus, utpote longum carpentes iter et factum corruptius imbri. postera tempestas melior, via peior ad usque Bari moenia piscosi. dein Gnatia lymphis iratis exstructa dedit risusque iocosque, dum flamma sine tura liquescere limine sacro persuadere cupit. credat3 Iudaeus Apella, non ego namque deos didici securum agere aevum, nec, si quid miri faciat natura, deos id tristis ex alto caeli demittere tecto. Brundisium longae finis chartaeque viaeque est. 100 1 1 Line 92 was deleted by Bentley. 2 dehinc, II. 4 dimittere DE. 95 "This implies that Gnatia had no springs. Pliny (N.H. ii. 111) mentions the miracle of wood, placed on a sacred stone, taking fire spontaneously. The stone would seem to have been at the entrance of a temple. The Jews, who were very numerous in Rome under a load for stages beyond; for at Canusium, a place 7 founded long ago by brave Diomede, it is gritty, and as to water, the town is no better off by a jugful. Here Varius leaves us, to the grief of his weeping friends. 94 Thence we come to Rubi, very weary after covering a long stage much marred by the rain. Next day's weather was better, but the road worse, right up to the walls of Barium, a fishing town. Then Gnatia, built under the wrath of the waternymphs, brought us laughter and mirth in its effort to convince us that frankincense melts without fire at the temple's threshold. Apella, the Jew," may believe it, not I; for I "have learned that the gods lead a care-free life," and if Nature works any marvel, the gods do not send it down from their heavenly home aloft when in surly mood! Brundisium is the end of a long story and of a long journey. Augustus, were regarded by the Romans as peculiarly superstitious. Horace is quoting from Lucretius, De rerum nat. v. 82. Horace uses tristis of the gods as Virgil speaks of Charon as tristis, Aen. vi. 315. |