Horace Part 2

Or seeks the thrush, poor starveling, to ensnare, In filmy net with bait delusive stored, Entraps the travelled crane, and timorous hare, Rare dainties these to glad his frugal board.

Who amid joys like these would not forget The pangs which love to all its victims bears, The fever of the brain, the ceaseless fret, And all the heart's lamentings and despairs?

But if a chaste and blooming wife, beside, The cheerful home with sweet young blossoms fills, Like some stout Sabine, or the sunburnt bride Of the lithe peasant of the Apulian hills,

Who piles the hearth with logs well dried and old Against the coming of her wearied lord, And, when at eve the cattle seek the fold, Drains their full udders of the milky h.o.a.rd;

And bringing forth from her well-tended store A jar of wine, the vintage of the year, Spreads an unpurchased feast,--oh then, not more Could choicest Lucrine oysters give me cheer,

Or the rich turbot, or the dainty char, If ever to our bays the winter's blast Should drive them in its fury from afar; Nor were to me a welcomer repast

The Afric hen or the Ionic snipe, Than olives newly gathered from the tree, That hangs abroad its cl.u.s.ters rich and ripe, Or sorrel, that doth love the pleasant lea,

Or mallows wholesome for the body's need, Or lamb foredoomed upon some festal day In offering to the guardian G.o.ds to bleed, Or kidling which the wolf hath marked for prey.

What joy, amidst such feasts, to see the sheep, Full of the pasture, hurrying homewards come; To see the wearied oxen, as they creep, Dragging the upturned ploughshare slowly home!

Or, ranged around the bright and blazing hearth, To see the hinds, a house's surest wealth, Beguile the evening with their simple mirth, And all the cheerfulness of rosy health!

Thus spake the miser Alphius; and, bent Upon a country life, called in amain The money he at usury had lent;-- But ere the month was out, 'twas lent again.

In this charming sketch of the peasant's life it is easy to see that Horace is drawing from nature, like Burns in his more elaborate picture of the "Cottar's Sat.u.r.day Night." Horace had obviously watched closely the ways of the peasantry round his Apulian home, as he did at a later date those of the Sabine country, and to this we owe many of the most delightful pa.s.sages in his works. He omits no opportunity of contrasting their purity of morals, and the austere self-denial of their life, with the luxurious habits and reckless vice of the city life of Rome. Thus, in one of the finest of his Odes (Book III. 6), after painting with a few masterly strokes what the matrons and the fast young ladies of the imperial city had become, it was not from such as these, he continues, that the n.o.ble youth sprang "who dyed the seas with Carthaginian gore, overthrew Pyrrhus and great Antiochus and direful Hannibal," concluding in words which contrast by their suggestive terseness at the same time that they suggest comparison with the elaborated fulness of the epode just quoted:--

"But they, of rustic warriors wight The manly offspring, learned to smite The soil with Sabine spade, And f.a.ggots they had cut, to bear Home from the forest, whensoe'er An austere mother bade;

"What time the sun began to change The shadows through the mountain range, And took the yoke away From the o'erwearied oxen, and His parting car proclaimed at hand The kindliest hour of day."

Another of Horace's juvenile poems, unique in subject and in treatment (Epode 5), gives evidence of a picturesque power of the highest kind, stimulating the imagination, and swaying it with the feelings of pity and terror in a way to make us regret that he wrote no others in a similar vein. We find ourselves at midnight in the gardens of the sorceress Canidia, whither a boy of good family--his rank being clearly indicated by the reference to his purple _toga_ and _bulla_--has been carried off from his home. His terrified exclamations, with which the poem opens, as Canidia and her three a.s.sistants surround him, glaring on him, with looks significant of their deadly purpose, through lurid flames fed with the usual ghastly ingredients of a witch's fire, carry us at once into the horrors of the scene. While one of the hags sprinkles her h.e.l.l-drops through the adjoining house, another is casting up earth from a pit, in which the boy is presently imbedded to the chin, and killed by a frightful process of slow torture, in order that a love philtre of irresistible power may be concocted from his liver and spleen. The time, the place, the actors are brought before us with singular dramatic power. Canidia's burst of wonder and rage that the spells she deemed all-powerful have been counteracted by some sorceress of skill superior to her own, gives great reality to the scene; and the curses of the dying boy, launched with tragic vigour, and closing with a touch of beautiful pathos, bring it to an effective close.

The speculations as to who and what Canidia was, in which scholars have run riot, are conspicuous for absurdity, even among the wild and ridiculous conjectures as to the personages named by Horace in which the commentators have indulged. That some well-known person was the original of Canidia is extremely probable, for professors of witchcraft abounded at the time, combining very frequently, like their modern successors, the arts of Medea with the attributes of Dame Quickly. What more natural than for a young poet to work up an effective picture out of the abundant suggestions which the current stories of such creatures and their doings presented to his hand? The popular belief in their power, the picturesque conditions under which their spells were wrought, the wild pa.s.sions in which lay the secret of their hold upon the credulity of their victims, offered to the Roman poet, just as they did to our own Elizabethan dramatists, a combination of materials most favourable for poetic treatment. But that Horace had, as many of his critics contend, a feeling of personal vanity, the pique of a discarded lover, to avenge, is an a.s.sumption wholly without warrant. He was the last man, at any time or under any circ.u.mstances, to have had any relations of a personal nature with a woman of Canidia's cla.s.s. However inclined he may have been to use her and her practices for poetic purposes, he manifestly not only saw through the absurdity of her pretensions, but laughed at her miserable impotence, and meant that others should do the same. It seems to be impossible to read the 8th of his First Book of his Satires, and not come to this conclusion. That satire consists of the monologue of a garden G.o.d, set up in the garden which Maecenas had begun to lay out on the Esquiline Hill. This spot had until recently been the burial-ground of the Roman poor, a quarter noisome by day, and the haunt of thieves and beasts of prey by night. On this obscene spot, littered with skulls and dead men's bones, Canidia and her accomplice Sagana are again introduced, digging a pit with their nails, into which they pour the blood of a coal-black ewe, which they had previously torn limb-meal,

"So to evoke the shade and soul Of dead men, and from these to wring Responses to their questioning."

They have with them two effigies, one of wax and the other of wool--the latter the larger of the two, and overbearing the other, which cowers before it,

"Like one that stands Beseeching in the hangman's hands.

On Hecate one, Tisiphone The other calls; and you might see Serpents and h.e.l.l-hounds thread the dark, Whilst, these vile orgies not to mark, The moon, all b.l.o.o.d.y red of hue, Behind the ma.s.sive tombs withdrew."

The hags pursue their incantations; higher and higher flames their ghastly fire, and the grizzled wolves and spotted snakes slink in terror to their holes, as the shrieks and muttered spells of the beldams make the moon-forsaken night more hideous. But after piling up his horrors with the most elaborate skill, as if in the view of some terrible climax, the poet makes them collapse into utter farce. Disgusted by their intrusion on his privacy, the Priapus adopts a simple but exceedingly vulgar expedient to alarm these appalling hags. In an instant they fall into the most abject terror, suspend their incantations, and, tucking up their skirts, make off for the more comfortable quarters of the city as fast as their trembling limbs can carry them--Canidia, the great enchantress, dropping her false teeth, and her attendant Sagana parting company with her wig, by the way:--

"While you With laughter long and loud might view Their herbs, and charmed adders wound In mystic coils, bestrew the ground."

And yet grave scholars gravely ask us to believe that Canidia was an old mistress of the poet's! These poems evidently made a success, and Horace returned to the theme in his 17th Epode. Here he writes as though he had been put under a spell by Canidia, in revenge for his former calumnies about her.

"My youth has fled, my rosy hue Turned to a wan and livid blue; Blanched by thy mixtures is my hair; No respite have I from despair.

The days and nights, they wax and wane, Yet bring me no release from pain; Nor can I ease, howe'er I gasp, The spasm, which holds me in its grasp."

Here we have all the well-known symptoms of a man under a malign magical influence. In this extremity Horace affects to recant all the mischief he has formerly spoken of the enchantress. Let her name what penance he will, he is ready to perform it. If a hundred steers will appease her wrath, they are hers; or if she prefers to be sung of as the chaste and good, and to range above the spheres as a golden star, his lyre is at her service. Her parentage is as unexceptionable as her life is pure, but while ostentatiously disclaiming his libels, the poet takes care to insinuate them anew, by apostrophising her in conclusion, thus:--

"Thou who dost ne'er in haglike wont Among the tombs of paupers hunt For ashes newly laid in ground, Love-charms and philtres to compound, Thy heart is gentle, pure thy hands."

Of course, Canidia is not mollified by such a recantation as this. The man who,

"Branding her name with ill renown, Made her the talk of all the town,"

is not so lightly to be forgiven.

"You'd have a speedy doom? But no, It shall be lingering, sharp, and slow."

The pangs of Tantalus, of Prometheus, or of Sisyphus are but the types of what his shall be. Let him try to hang, drown, stab himself--his efforts will be vain:--

"Then comes my hour of triumph, then I'll goad you till you writhe again; Then shall you curse the evil hour You made a mockery of my power."

She then triumphantly rea.s.serts the powers to which she lays claim.

What! I, she exclaims, who can waste life as the waxen image of my victim melts before my magic fire [Footnote: Thus Hecate in Middleton's "Witch" a.s.sures to the d.u.c.h.ess of Glo'ster "a sudden and subtle death"

to her victim:--]--I, who can bring down the moon from her sphere, evoke the dead from their ashes, and turn the affections by my philtres,--

"Shall I my potent art bemoan As impotent 'gainst thee alone?"

Surely all this is as purely the work of imagination as Middleton's "Witch," or the Hags in "Macbeth," or in Goethe's 'Faust.' Horace used Canidia as a byword for all that was hateful in the creatures of her craft, filthy as they were in their lives and odious in their persons.

His literary and other friends were as familiar with her name in this sense as we are with those of Squeers and Micawber, as types of a cla.s.s; and the joke was well understood when, many years after, in the 8th of his Second Book of Satires, he said that Nasidienus's dinner-party broke up without their eating a morsel of the dishes after a certain point,--"As if a pestilential blast from Canidia's throat, more venomous than that of African vipers, had swept across them."

"His picture made in wax, and gently molten By a blue fire, kindled with dead men's eyes, Will waste him by degrees."--

An old delusion. We find it in Theocritus, where a girl, forsaken by her lover, resorts to the same desperate restorative (Idylls ii. 28)--

"As this image of wax I melt here by aidance demonic, Myndian Delphis shall so melt with love's pa.s.sion anon."

Again Ovid (Heroides vi. 91) makes Hypsipyle say of Medea:

"The absent she binds with her spells, and figures of wax she devises, And in their agonised spleen fine-pointed needles she thrusts."

CHAPTER III.

INTRODUCTION TO MAECENAS.--THE JOURNEY TO BRUNDUSIUM.

Horace had not been long in Rome, after his return from Greece, before he had made himself a name. With what he got from the booksellers, or possibly by the help of friends, he had purchased a patent place in the Quaestor's department, a sort of clerkship of the Treasury, which he continued to hold for many years, if not indeed to the close of his life. The duties were light, but they demanded, and at all events had, his occasional attention, even after he was otherwise provided for.

Being his own--bought by his own money--it may have gratified his love of independence to feel that, if the worst came to the worst, he had his official salary to fall back upon. Among his friends, men of letters are at this time, as might have been expected, found to be most conspicuous.

Virgil, who had recently been despoiled, like, himself, of his paternal property, took occasion to bring his name before Maecenas, the confidential adviser and minister of Octavius, in whom he had himself found a helpful friend. This was followed up by the commendation of Varius, already celebrated as a writer of Epic poetry, and whose tragedy of "Thyestes," if we are to trust Quintilian, was not unworthy to rank with the best tragedies of Greece. Maecenas may not at first have been too well disposed towards a follower of the republican party, who had not been sparing of his satire against many of the supporters and favourites of Octavius. He sent for Horace, however (B.C. 39), and any prejudice on this score, if prejudice there was, was ultimately got over. Maecenas took time to form his estimate of the man, and it was not till nine months after their first interview that he sent for Horace again. When he did so, however, it was to ask him to consider himself for the future among the number of his friends. This part of Horace's story is told with admirable brevity and good feeling in the Satire from which we have already quoted, addressed to Maecenas (B. I. Sat. 6) a few years afterwards.

"Lucky I will not call myself, as though Thy friendship I to mere good fortune owe.

No chance it was secured me thy regards, But Virgil first, that best of men and bards, And then kind Varius mentioned what I was.

Before you brought, with many a faltering pause, Dropping some few brief words (for bashfulness Robbed me of utterance) I did not profess That I was sprung of lineage old and great, Or used to canter round my own estate On Satureian barb, but what and who I was as plainly told. As usual, you Brief answer make me. I retire, and then, Some nine months after, summoning me again, You bid me 'mongst your friends a.s.sume a place: And proud I feel that thus I won your grace, Not by an ancestry long known to fame, But by my life, and heart devoid of blame."

The name of Maecenas is from this time inseparably a.s.sociated with that of Horace. From what little is authentically known of him, this much may be gathered: He was a man of great general accomplishment, well versed in the literature both of Greece and Rome, devoted to literature and the society of men of letters, a lover of the fine arts and of natural history, a connoisseur of gems and precious stones, fond of living in a grand style, and of surrounding himself with people who amused him, without being always very particular as to who or what they were. For the indulgence of all these tastes, his great wealth was more than sufficient. He reclaimed the Esquiline hill from being the public nuisance we have already described, laid it out in gardens, and in the midst of these built himself a sumptuous palace, where the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore now stands, from which he commanded a superb view of the country looking towards Tivoli. To this palace, salubrious from its s.p.a.cious size and the elevation of its site, Augustus, when ill, had himself carried from his own modest mansion; and from its lofty belvedere tower Nero is said to have enjoyed the spectacle of Rome in flames beneath him. Voluptuary and dilettante as Maecenas was, he was nevertheless, like most men of a sombre and melancholy temperament, capable of great exertions; and he veiled under a cold exterior and reserved manners a habit of acute observation, a kind heart, and, in matters of public concern, a resolute will. This latent energy of character, supported as it was by a subtle knowledge of mankind and a statesmanlike breadth of view, contributed in no small degree to the ultimate triumph of Octavius Caesar over his rivals, and to the successful establishment of the empire in his hands. When the news of Julius Caesar's a.s.sa.s.sination reached the young Octavius, then only nineteen, in Apollonia, it has been said that Maecenas was in attendance upon him as his governor or tutor. Be this so or not, as soon as Octavius appears in the political arena as his uncle's avenger, Maecenas is found by his side. In several most important negotiations he acted as his representative. Thus (B.C. 40), the year before Horace was introduced to him, he, along with Cocceius Nerva, negotiated with Antony the peace of Brundusium, which resulted in Antony's ill-starred marriage with Caesar's sister Octavia. Two years later he was again a.s.sociated with Cocceius in a similar task, on which occasion Horace and Virgil accompanied him to Brundusium. He appears to have commanded in various expeditions, both naval and military, but it was at Rome and in Council that his services were chiefly sought; and he acted as one of the chief advisers of Augustus down to about five years before his death, when, either from ill health or some other unknown cause, he abandoned political life. More than once he was charged by Augustus with the administration of the civil affairs of Italy during his own absence, intrusted with his seal, and empowered to open all his letters addressed to the Senate, and, if necessary, to alter their contents, so as to adapt them to the condition of affairs at home. His aim, like that of Vipsanius Agrippa, who was in himself the Nelson and Wellington of the age, seems to have been to build up a united and flourishing empire in the person of Augustus. Whether from temperament or policy, or both, he set his face against the system of cruelty and extermination which disgraced the triumvirate. When Octavius was one day condemning man after man to death, Maecenas, after a vain attempt to reach him on the tribunal, where he sat surrounded by a dense crowd, wrote upon his tablets, _Surge tandem, Carnifex_!--"Butcher, break off!" and flung them across the crowd into the lap of Caesar, who felt the rebuke, and immediately quitted the judgment-seat. His policy was that of conciliation; and while bent on the establishment of a monarchy, from what we must fairly a.s.sume to have been a patriotic conviction that this form of government could alone meet the exigencies of the time, he endeavoured to combine this with a due regard to individual liberty, and a free expression of individual opinion.