Horace Part 3

At the time of Horace's introduction to him, Maecenas was probably at his best, in the full vigour of his intellect, and alive with the generous emotions which must have animated a man bent as he was on securing tranquillity for the state, and healing the strife of factions, which were threatening it with ruin. His chief relaxation from the fatigues of public life was, to all appearance, found in the society of men of letters, and, judging by what Horace says (Satires, I. 9), the _vie intime_ of his social circle must have been charming. To be admitted within it was a privilege eagerly coveted, and with good reason, for not only was this in itself a stamp of distinction, but his parties were well known as the pleasantest in Rome:--

"No house more free from all that's base, In none cabals more out of place.

It hurts me not, if others be More rich, or better read than me; Each has his place."

Like many of his contemporaries, who were eminent in political life, Maecenas devoted himself to active literary work--for he wrote much, and on a variety of topics. His taste in literature was, however, better than his execution. His style was diffuse, affected, and obscure; but Seneca, who tells us this, and gives some examples which justify the criticism, tells us at the same time that his genius was ma.s.sive and masculine (_grande et virile_), and that he would have been eminent for eloquence, if fortune had not spoiled him. However vicious his own style may have been, the man who encouraged three such writers as Virgil, Propertius, and Horace, not to mention others of great repute, whose works have perished, was clearly a sound judge of a good style in others.

As years went on, and the cares of public life grew less onerous, habits of self-indulgence appear to have grown upon Maecenas. It will probably be well, however, to accept with some reserve what has been said against him on this head. Then, as now, men of rank and power were the victims of calumnious gossips and slanderous pamphleteers. His health became precarious. Incessant sleeplessness spoke of an overtasked brain and shattered nerves. Life was full of pain; still he clung to it with a craven-like tenacity. So, at least, Seneca a.s.serts, quoting in support of his statement some very bad verses by Maecenas, which may be thus translated:--

"Lame in feet, and lame in fingers, Crooked in back, with every tooth Rattling in my head, yet, 'sooth, I'm content, so life but lingers.

Gnaw my withers, rack my bones, Life, mere life, for all atones."

In one view these lines may certainly be construed to import the same sentiment as the speech of the miserable Claudio in "Measure for Measure,"--

"The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death."

But, on the other hand, they may quite as fairly be regarded as merely giving expression to the tenet of the Epicurean philosophy, that however much we may suffer from physical pain or inconvenience, it is still possible to be happy. "We know what we are; we know not what we may be!"

Not the least misfortune of Maecenas was his marriage to a woman whom he could neither live with nor without--separating from and returning to her so often, that, according to Seneca, he was a thousand times married, yet never had but one wife. Friends he had many, loyal and devoted friends, on whose society and sympathy he leant more and more as the years wore on. He rarely stirred from Rome, loving its smoke, its thronged and noisy streets, its whirl of human pa.s.sions, as Johnson loved Fleet Street, or "the sweet shady side of Pall Mall," better than all the verdure of Tivoli, or the soft airs and exquisite scenery of Baiae. He liked to read of these things, however; and may have found as keen a pleasure in the scenery of the 'Georgics,' or in Horace's little landscape-pictures, as most men could have extracted from the scenes which they describe.

Such was the man, ushered into whose presence, Horace, the reckless lampooner and satirist, found himself embarra.s.sed, and at a loss for words. Horace was not of the MacSycophant cla.s.s, who cannot "keep their back straight in the presence of a great man;" nor do we think he had much of the nervous apprehensiveness of the poetic temperament. Why, then, should he have felt thus abashed? Partly, it may have been, from natural diffidence at encountering a man to gain whose goodwill was a matter of no small importance, but whose goodwill, he also knew by report, was not easily won; and partly, to find himself face to face with one so conspicuously identified with the cause against which he had fought, and the men whom he had hitherto had every reason to detest.

Once admitted by Maecenas to the inner circle of his friends, Horace made his way there rapidly. Thus we find him, a few months afterwards, in the spring of B.C. 37, going to Brundusium with Maecenas, who had been despatched thither on a mission of great public importance (Satires, I. 6). The first term of the triumvirate of Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus had expired at the close of the previous year. No fresh arrangement had been made, and Antony, alarmed at the growing power of Octavius in Italy, had appeared off Brundusium with a fleet of 300 sail and a strong body of troops. The Brundusians--on a hint, probably, from Octavius--forbade his landing, and he had to go on to Tarentum, where terms were ultimately arranged for a renewal of the triumvirate. The moment was a critical one, for an open rupture between Octavius and Antony was imminent, which might well have proved disastrous to the former, had Antony joined his fleet to that of the younger Pompey, which, without his aid, had already proved more than a match for the naval force of Octavius.

To judge by Horace's narrative, all the friends who accompanied Maecenas on this occasion, except his coadjutor, Cocceius Nerva, who had three years before been engaged with him on a similar mission to Brundusium, were men whose thoughts were given more to literature than to politics.

Horace starts from Rome with Heliodorus, a celebrated rhetorician, and they make their way very leisurely to Anxur (Terracina), where they are overtaken by Maecenas.

"'Twas fixed that we should meet with dear Maecenas and Cocceius here, Who were upon a mission bound, Of consequence the most profound; For who so skilled the feuds to close Of those, once friends, who now were foes?"

This is the only allusion throughout the poem, to the object of the journey. The previous day, Horace had been baulked of his dinner, the water being so bad, and his stomach so delicate, that he chose to fast rather than run the risk of making himself ill with it. And now at Terracina he found his eyes, which were weak, so troublesome, that he had to dose them well with a black wash. These are the first indications we get of habitual delicacy of health, which, if not due altogether to the fatigues and exposure of his campaign with Brutus, had probably been increased by them.

"Meanwhile beloved Maecenas came, Cocceius too, and brought with them Fonteius Capito, a man Endowed with every grace that can A perfect gentleman attend, And Antony's especial friend."

They push on next day to Formiae, and are amused at Fundi (Fondi) on the way by the consequential airs of the prefect of the place. It would seem as if the peac.o.c.k nature must break out the moment a man becomes a prefect or a mayor.

"There having rested for the night, With inexpressible delight We hail the dawn,--for we that day At Sinuessa, on our way With Plotius, [1] Virgil, Varius too, Have an appointed rendezvous; Souls all, than whom the earth ne'er saw More n.o.ble, more exempt from flaw, Nor are there any on its round To whom I am more firmly bound.

Oh! what embracings, and what mirth!

Nothing, no, nothing, on this earth, Whilst I have reason, shall I e'er With a true genial friend compare!"

[1] Plotius Tucca, himself a poet, and a.s.sociated by Virgil with Varius in editing the Aeneid after the poet's death.

Next day they reach Capua, where, so soon as their mules are unpacked, away

"Maecenas hies, at ball to play; To sleep myself and Virgil go, For tennis-practice is, we know, Injurious, quite beyond all question, Both to weak eyes and weak digestion."

With these and suchlike details Horace carries us pleasantly on with his party to Brundusium. They were manifestly in no hurry, for they took fourteen days, according to Gibbon's careful estimate, to travel 378 Roman miles. That they might have got over the ground much faster, if necessary, is certain from what is known of other journeys. Caesar posted 100 miles a-day. Tiberius travelled 200 miles in twenty-four hours, when he was hastening to close the eyes of his brother Drusus; and Statius (Sylv. 14, Carm. 3) talks of a man leaving Rome in the morning, and being at Baiae or Puteoli, 127 miles off, before night.

"Have but the will, be sure you'll find the way.

What shall stop him, who starts at break of day From sleeping Rome, and on the Lucrine sails Before the suns.h.i.+ne into twilight pales?"

Just as, according to Sydney Smith, in his famous allusion to the triumphs of railway travelling, "the early Scotchman scratches himself in the morning mists of the North, and has his porridge in Piccadilly before the setting sun."

Horace treats the expedition to Brundusium entirely as if it had been a pleasant tour. Gibbon thinks he may have done so purposely, to convince those who were jealous of his intimacy with the great statesman, "that his thoughts and occupations on the event were far from being of a serious or political nature." But it was a rule with Horace, in all his writings, never to indicate, by the slightest word, that he knew any of the political secrets which, as the intimate friend of Maecenas, he could scarcely have failed to know. He hated babbling of all kinds.

A man who reported the private talk of friends, even on comparatively indifferent topics,--

"The churl, who out of doors will spread What 'mongst familiar friends is said,"--

(Epistle I. v. 24), was his especial aversion; and he has more than once said, only not in such formal phrase, what Milton puts into the mouth of his "Samson Agonistes,"

"To have revealed Secrets of men, the secrets of a friend, How heinous had the fact been! how deserving Contempt, and scorn of all, to be excluded All friends.h.i.+p, and avoided as a blab, The mark of fool set on his front!"

Moreover, reticence, the indispensable quality, not of statesmen merely, but of their intimates, was not so rare a virtue in these days as in our own; and as none would have expected Horace, in a poem of this kind, to make any political confidences, he can scarcely be supposed to have written it with any view to throwing the gossips of Rome off the scent.

The excursion had been a pleasant one, and he thought its incidents worth noting. Hence the poem. Happily for us, who get from it most interesting glimpses of some of the familiar aspects of Roman life and manners, of which we should otherwise have known nothing. Here, for example, is a sketch of how people fared in travelling by ca.n.a.l in those days, near Rome. Overcrowding, we see, is not an evil peculiar to our own days.

"Now 'gan the night with gentle hand To fold in shadows all the land, And stars along the sky to scatter, When there arose a hideous clatter, Slaves slanging bargemen, bargemen slaves; 'Ho, haul up here! how now, ye knaves, Inside three hundred people stuff?

Already there are quite enough!'

Collected were the fares at last, The mule that drew our barge made fast, But not till a good hour was gone.

Sleep was not to be thought upon, The cursed gnats were so provoking, The bull-frogs set up such a croaking.

A bargeman, too, a drunken lout, And pa.s.senger, sang turn about, In tones remarkable for strength, Their absent sweethearts, till at length The pa.s.senger began to doze, When up the stalwart bargeman rose, His fastenings from the stone unwound, And left the mule to graze around; Then down upon his back he lay, And snored in a terrific way."

Neither is the following allusion to the Jews and their creed without its value, especially when followed, as it is, by Horace's avowal, almost in the words of Lucretius (B. VI. 56), of what was then his own. Later in life he came to a very different conclusion. When the travellers reach Egnatia, their ridicule is excited by being shown or told, it is not very clear which, of incense kindled in the temple there miraculously without the application of fire.

"This may your circ.u.mcised Jew Believe, but never I. For true I hold it that the Deities Enjoy themselves in careless ease;[1]

Nor think, when Nature, spurning Law, Does something which inspires our awe, 'Tis sent by the offended G.o.ds Direct from their august abodes."

[1] So Tennyson, in his "Lotus-Eaters:"--

"Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotus-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like G.o.ds together, careless of mankind."

See the whole of the pa.s.sage.

Had Horace known anything of natural science, he might not have gone so far to seek for the explanation of the seeming miracle.

Gibbon speaks contemptuously of many of the incidents recorded in this poem, asking, "How could a man of taste reflect on them the day after?"

But the poem has much more than a merely literary interest; thanks to such pa.s.sages as these, and to the charming tribute by Horace to his friends previously cited.

Nothing can better ill.u.s.trate the footing of easy friends.h.i.+p on which he soon came to stand with Maecenas than the following poem, which must have been written before the year B.C. 32; for in that year Terentia became the mistress of the great palace on the Esquiline, and the allusion in the last verse is much too familiar to have been intended for her. Horace, whose delicacy of stomach was probably notorious, had apparently been the victim of a practical joke--a species of rough fun to which the Romans of the upper cla.s.ses appear to have been particularly p.r.o.ne. It is difficult otherwise to understand how he could have stumbled at Maecenas's table on a dish so overdosed with garlic as that which provoked this humorous protest. From what we know of the abominations of an ordinary Roman banquet, the vegetable stew in this instance must have reached a climax of unusual atrocity.

"If his old father's throat any impious sinner Has cut with unnatural hand to the bone, Give him garlic, more noxious than hemlock, at dinner.

Ye G.o.ds! the strong stomachs that reapers must own!

"With what poison is this that my vitals are heated?

By viper's blood--certes, it cannot be less-- Stewed into the potherbs; can I have been cheated?

Or Canidia, did she cook the villainous mess?

"When Medea was struck by the handsome sea-rover, Who in beauty outshone all his Argonaut band, This mixture she took to lard Jason all over, And so tamed the fire-breathing bulls to his hand.

"With this her fell presents she dyed and infected, On his innocent leman avenging the slight Of her terrible beauty, forsaken, neglected, And then on her car, dragon-wafted, took flight.

"Never star on Apulia, the thirsty and arid, Exhaled a more baleful or pestilent dew, And the gift, which invincible Hercules carried, Burned not to his bones more remorselessly through.