We all and all our works are due to death.
Whether Neptunus, brought into the land,
Defends our navies from the north-wind’s scathe—
A kingly work—or marshy stretch of sand,
Long sterile, fit indeed for oars, yet now
Feeds neighbour towns and feels the heavy plough—
Or river, to a better channel led,
Has changed its course, which oft the crops o‘erspread—
All mortal works will perish. Much less, sure,
Can dignity and grace of speech endure.
Revive will many words now fallen away,
And fall away will many prized today,
If such the will of custom, which alone
Decides the laws and rules that speech must own.
Homerus showed the measure for the verse
Meet for the deeds of kings and chiefs, and wars.
Unequal verses in conjunction placed
The feelings of lament at first expressed,
And, later, wishes gratified embraced;
But who the humble elegy put out
The first of all, that critics still dispute,
And still the issue does the judge engage.
Archilochus the poet, armed with rage,
Invented his iambics; then this foot
Adopted both the sock and stately boot
As suited dialogue well to express
And silence clamour of the populace,
And born to fit the action of the stage.
And gods and sons of gods, and such as wage
Victorious battle in the boxing ring,
The horses that run foremost in the race,
The cares of lads and maids alike to sing,
The wines that free the bosom with their fire—
All these the Muse committed to the lyre.
If, then, I am not able to discern
These different distinctions and to learn
The different colouring of works, nor know it,
Why am I greeted with the name of Poet?
Why, with false modesty, do I prefer
Still to be ignorant, to learn not care?
A comic subject tragic verses spurns;
And so the banquet of Thyestes scorns
Narration in the speech of common folk—
Speech very much as suits the humble sock.
Let each particular type in every case
Keep, as it ought to keep, its proper place.
True, Comedy at times her voice upraises,
And angry Chremes rails in swelling phrases;
And oft the tragic poet grieves in prose.
Peleus and Telephus—to name but those—
Exiled and poor, cast off grandiloquence
And words of half a yard of elegance,
If one or other of them is intent
To touch the looker-on with his complaint.
But poems should be more than fine and gay:
They should be tender too, and they should sway
The hearer’s soul whatever way they may.
As human faces smile on such as smile,
So weep they too with such as weep the while:
Wouldst have me weep, then first yourself must grieve:
‘Tis only then your troubles I’ll believe,
Peleus or Telephus; if the role you have
Is given you wrongly, I’ll go sleep or laugh.
Sad words become a melancholy face;
An angry face should threatening words address;
Sportive expressions need a playful cheer;
And serious matters call for looks severe.
For Nature forms us from the first within
To Fortune’s every mood to show akin:
She drives to rage, she tickles to delight,
She presses us to earth in woeful plight,
And tortures us; and then, the soul thus wrung,
Its feelings she interprets by the tongue.
If words the speaker’s station fail to suit,
The Roman knights and commons laugh and hoot;
And wide indeed the difference it will make
Whether a rich man or a hero speak,
An agèd man or man of youthful force,
A noble matron or a fussy nurse,
A merchant wont both near and far to roam
Or tiller of a thriving farm at home,
A Colchian or an Assyrian,
A man of Argos or a native Theban.
Follow tradition, or, if you invent,
See that your characters be congruent.
Put you renowned Achilles on the stage,
As indefatigable let him rage,
Wrathful, inexorable, vehement;
Let him deny that laws for him were framed,
Let him appeal to arms when aught is claimed.
Medea shall be pictured fierce and ruthless,
Ino all pitiful, Ixion truthless,
A wanderer Io, and Orestes spent.
If something new you to the stage deliver,
And venture a new character to draw,
Then see that to the very last it show
Such as it was at first, consistent ever.
‘Tis hard to handle things to all bards free
So they consistent, individual, be.
More wise the Iliad to reduce to acts
Than introduce unknown, untreated, facts.
Public material will to private pass
Provided that you deal not with the mass
Of wretched trivial stuff, hold it absurd
All faithfully to render word by word,
Nor imitation land you in a strait
Whence shame or plan of work forbids retreat.
Do not commence your verses to outpour
As did the wretched Cyclic bard of yore:
“I’ll sing of Priam and the glorious war.”
What will this vaunter worth his vaunt produce?
The mountains labour: lo! a peddling mouse!
How much more rightly starts his poem he
That handles nothing injudiciously:
“Sing me, 0 Muse, the man, when Troy was ta’en,
That saw the ways and towns of many men.”
Not smoke from lightning flash, but light from smoke,
His purpose ‘tis at all times to evoke,
So thence he draw his pictures marvellous—
Scylla, Cyclops, Antiphates, Charybdis—
Nor dates he the return of Diomedes
From Meleager’s death, nor the Trojan war
From those twin eggs that Leda erstwhile bare.
Always he hastens to the issue; brings
The hearer quickly to the heart of things,
As if the whole were known; and leaves apart
What he despairs to blazon by his art;
And so presents his fictions to the view,
So deftly intermingles feigned and true,
That ne’er the middle with the opening wars
Nor e‘er the ending with the middle jars.
List you what I want, what the public sense:
If you would find a friendly audience,
Such as will wait the curtain, keep their seats
Until the player their applause entreats,
Each age’s manners must be kept in mind,
And congruous characters must be assigned
To varying dispositions, varying years.
The boy just fit to echo what he hears,
Who prints with steady foot the yielding clay,
Delights with fellows like himself to play,
Gets angry, then gets pleased, capriciously,
And changes humour as the hours go by.
The beardless youth, at length from guidance freed,
Rejoices in his dogs and in his steed
And in the sunny Campus’ verdant mead,
As pliable as wax to bend to vice,
Intolerant of admiration wise,
Slow to provide him things of use at all,
Free with his money as a prodigal,
Presumptuous, amorous, and in hasty fashion
Abandoning the objects of his passion.
Our interests changed with age, our manly mind
Seeks wealth and troops of friends for us to find,
Strives eagerly some office to secure,
And cautiously avoids in faults to fall
It presently will labour to recall.
An old man is besieged with troubles, sure,
Either because he seeks to get him gains
And, having got them, wretched man, abstains
From using them, obsessed the while with fear,
Or else because the business he transacts
He always does in cold and timid acts,
Is dilatory, slow to entertain
High hopes, inert, athirst long life to gain,
Morose, and querulous, much given to praise
The good old times that were his boyhood’s days,
And castigate and censure younger men.
Advancing years bring with them in their train
Advantages a many: so, too, aye
Declining years a many take away.
That old men’s parts may not be given a youth
Nor young men’s parts assigned a boy, in sooth
We always must regard with prudence sage
Whate‘er belongs to and befits each age.
An action is or shown upon the stage
Or, if performed elsewhere, related there.
The things that make their entrance by the ear
Less vividly the mind’s regard engage
Than such as strike upon the faithful eyes
And the spectator for himself descries.
But still you must not bring upon the stage
Things only fit to act behind the flies;
And you must from the public camouflage
A many that a witness’ wordy spate
May soon before the audience relate.
Let not Medea in the people’s sight
Murder her sons; nor openly be dight
By execrable Atreus’ banquet grim
Of human entrails and of human limb;
Nor metamorphose Procne to a bird,
Nor Cadmus change into a snake abhorred.
Whate‘er you show me in such fashion dressed
I don’t believe, I heartily detest.
A play that would be called for, and, though seen,
Would yet be put upon the boards again
In five acts, neither less nor more, express;
Nor ever let a god come in, unless
A knot that’s worthy of a god occur.
Let no fourth character put in his oar.
The chorus? Let it bear an actor’s part
And all the duties of such part assert.
Between the acts it shall not sing a note
That fails to help and fit in with the plot.
Let it show favour always to the good,
And friendly counsel to all such impart;
Let it control the passionate of mood,
And give the folk that fear to sin its heart;
Praise short and simple meals; and show
The salutary rule of justice, law,
And peace with gates thrown frankly open wide;
What secrets are entrusted to it hide;
And supplicate the gods and them implore
That Fortune to the hapless hope restore,
And prideful men abandon to their pride.
The flute, not, as ‘tis now, bewhipt with brass
And emulous the trumpet to surpass,
But unadorned, charged with less swelling note,
Furnished with stops but few, good service wrought,
Accompanying and supporting still
The chorus, with a tone that served to fill
The seats not yet too crowded, where were blent
An audience, sure, not difficult at all
To number—for as yet it was but small—
Attentive, well-behaved, and reverent.
But, when a folk victorious begun
Their territories to extend, and run
Around their towns a wall of wider sweep,
And when on festal days with drinking deep
Even in the day-time they’d propitiate
Their Genius, nor incur reproof or hate,
The numbers and the measures flowed more free.
For what should be a country bumpkin’s taste,
A man unlettered, just from toil released,
When mixed with city men in company—
A yokel mixed with gentlemen confest?
So the musician to the ancient art
Did quicker movement, richer tone, impart,
And trailed behind him, strutting up and down,
Along the stage, his freely flowing gown.
And so were added to the grave-toned lyre
New notes, and speech of bold and rapid fire
Produced a diction hardly known before;
And, too, the sentiments, shrewd, practical,
Yea, and prophetic of events in store,
Struck just the note of Delphi’s oracle.
The bard that battled for a paltry goat
Soon naked satyrs of the woodland brought,
And tried to show a rough jocosity
Without a sacrifice of dignity;
For the spectator, fresh from sacred rite,
Well primed with wine, in humour reckless quite,
Had to be kept from leaving by some wile
Attractive, pleasing, and of novel style.
Expedient, though, ‘twill be so to commend
The fun and banter that the satyrs lend,
And so to turn the earnest into jest,
That neither god nor hero lately dressed
In purple and in gold, conspicuous each,
Descend to taverns low with vulgar speech;
Nor, while he contact with the ground would spare,
Grasp at the misty clouds and empty air.
Now Tragedy, while scorning trivial chatter,
Will, like a matron on a festal day
To dance commanded, in a shamefast way
Mix even with the saucy satyrs’ patter.
Not I, ye Pisos, should I come to write
Satyric dramas, e‘er will stoop to choose
Plain literal terms and words alone to use;
Nor shall I strive to deviate, left or right,
So far from tragic style as not to make
A clear distinction whether Davus speak—
And Pythias bold, who Simo gulled, and won
A talent—or Silenus guardian
And of his foster-child divine companion.
Of known material so my play I’ll frame
That whosoe’er may hope to do the same
Shall, if he ventures on it, in the end
Much labour and much sweat in vain expend.
So great the power that in arrangement lies
And in connexion of the words; so fair
The grace that common words may come to wear.
The Fauns brought from the forests, I surmise,
Should never in too mincing verses sport
As if they had been born in city court
Or almost in the Forum reared, nor blurt
Unclean remarks and ignominious jests;
For all men are offended at such pests—
All men with steed, with father, with estate—
Nor with content receive and decorate
With laurel crown the wretched quips that please
The purchasers of parchèd nuts and peas.
Two syllables, a short and then a long,
Form an iambus. ‘Tis a rapid foot;
And so the name of trimeter bade put
To lines iambic, since, six beats among,
Each foot was an iambus, first to last.
Not long ago, that it not quite so fast
And with more weight might fall upon the ear,
It generously admitted to the sphere
Of its paternal rights steadfast spondees,
On terms, as friends might do, that never these
Should oust it from the fourth and second place.
But the iambus rarely shows its face
In Accius’s far-famed trimeters,
And casts the charge on Ennius’s verse,
Dumped on the stage o’erloaded with spondees,
Of lack of care and overhastiness,
Or of disgraceful ignorance of his art.
It is not every one can play the part
Of certain judge of inharmonious lines,
And so opinion with opinion joins
An undeserved indulgence to allow
To Roman poets. But am I to bow
To such opinion, and go far astray
And write my lines in this licentious way?
Or am I to assume that every cit
Will see whatever faults I may commit,
And rest secure too cautious to outpace
The furthest limits of the hope of grace?
Nay; then indeed, though censure I should shun,
Yet shall I not a claim to praise have won.
O ye, my Pisos, eager well to write,
Turn o‘er the Grecian models day and night.
Your ancestors, ’tis true, they thought it fit
To praise both Plautus’ numbers and his wit;
Too tolerantly—nay, but foolishly—
Admiring each of them, if you and I
Can but distinguish boorish drolleries
From witty repartee, and recognize
The cadence true by fingers and by ear.