Horace | Page 8

Till even the crier shirked his toil, Some thousand acres ploughs of soil Falernian, and with his nags Wears out the Appian highway's flags; Nay, on the foremost seats, despite Of Otho, sits and apes the knight. What boots it to despatch a fleet So large, so heavy, so complete, Against a gang of rascal knaves, Thieves, corsairs, buccaneers, and slaves, If villain of such vulgar breed Is in the foremost rank to lead?'"
[1] The Sacred Way, leading to the Capitol, a favourite lounge.
[2] When a slave was being scourged, under the orders of the Triumviri Capitales, a public crier stood by, and proclaimed the nature of his crime.
Modern critics may differ as to whom this bitter infective was aimed at, but there could have been no doubt on that subject in Rome at the time. And if, as there is every reason to conclude, it was levelled at Sextus Menas, the lines, when first shown about among Horace's friends, must have told with great effect, and they were likely to be remembered long after the infamous career of this double-dyed traitor had come to a close. Menas was a freedman of Pompey the Great, and a trusted officer of his son Sextus. [Footnote: Shakespeare has introduced him in "Antony and Cleopatra," along with Menecrates and Varrius, as "friends to Sextus Pompeius."] He had recently (B.C. 38) carried over with him to Augustus a portion of Pompey's fleet which was under his command, and betrayed into his hands the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. For this act of treachery he was loaded with wealth and honours; and when Augustus, next year, fitted out a naval expedition against Sextus Pompeius, Menas received a command. It was probably lucky for Horace that this swaggering upstart, who was not likely to be scrupulous as to his means of revenge, went over the very next year to his former master, whom he again abandoned within a year to sell himself once more to Augustus. That astute politician put it out of his power to play further tricks with the fleet, by giving him a command in Pannonia, where he was killed, B.C. 36, at the siege of Siscia, the modern Sissek.
Though Horace was probably best known in Rome in these early days as a writer of lampoons and satirical poems, in which the bitterness of his models Archilochus and Lucilius was aimed at, not very successfully-- for bitterness and personal rancour were not natural to the man--he showed in other compositions signs of the true poetic spirit, which afterwards found expression in the consummate grace and finish of his Odes. To this class belongs the following poem (Epode 16), which, from internal evidence, appears to have been written B.C. 40, when the state of Italy, convulsed by civil war, was well calculated to fill him with despair. Horace had frequent occasion between this period and the battle of Actium, when the defeat and death of Antony closed the long struggle for supremacy between him and Octavius, to appeal to his countrymen against the waste of the best blood of Italy in civil fray, which might have been better spent in subduing a foreign foe, and spreading the lustre of the Roman arms. But if we are to suppose this poem written when the tidings of the bloody incidents of the Perusian campaign had arrived in Rome,--the reduction of the town of Perusia by famine, and the massacre of from two to three hundred prisoners, almost all of equestrian or senatorial rank,--we can well understand the feeling under which the poem is written.
TO THE ROMAN PEOPLE.
Another age in civil wars will soon be spent and worn, And by her native strength our Rome be wrecked and overborne, That Rome, the Marsians could not crush, who border on our lands, Nor the shock of threatening Porsena with his Etruscan bands, Nor Capua's strength that rivalled ours, nor Spartacus the stern, Nor the faithless Allobrogian, who still for change doth yearn. Ay, what Gennania's blue-eyed youth quelled not with ruthless sword, Nor Hannibal by our great sires detested and abhorred, We shall destroy with impious hands imbrued in brother's gore, And wild beasts of the wood shall range our native land once more. A foreign foe, alas! shall tread The City's ashes down, And his horse's ringing hoofs shall smite her places of renown, And the bones of great Quirinus, now religiously enshrined, Shall be flung by sacrilegious hands to the sunshine and the wind. And if ye all from ills so dire ask how yourselves to free, Or such at least as would not hold your lives unworthily, No better counsel can I urge, than that which erst inspired The stout Phocaeans when from their doomed city they retired, Their fields, their household gods, their shrines