Satire I lines 1-18:
Must I be a listener forever? Never reply,
Tortured so often by throaty Cordus’s Theseus?
Must I let this fellow recite his Roman comedies,
Unpunished, and that one his elegies? Unpunished,
Consuming my whole day on some endless Telephus,
Or unfinished Orestes, the cover full and the margins?
A man knows his own house less well than I know
The grove of Mars or that cave of Vulcan’s right by
The Aeolian cliffs; what the winds do, which shade
Aeacus torments, where he’s from, he with the golden
Stolen fleece, how big that ash tree Monychus hurled –
Fronto’s plane-trees, cracked marble, and columns
Fractured by non-stop readings, ring with this stuff.
Expect the same, then, from this best and worst of poets.
I too have snatched my hand out of reach of the cane,
I too have given old Sulla ‘good advice’: get lost, enjoy
A good rest. It’s false mercy, when you trip over poets
Everywhere, to spare the paper they’re all ready to waste.
Satire III lines 6-9:
After all, is there anywhere that’s so wretched and lonely
You wouldn’t rather be there than in constant danger of fire,
Of collapsing buildings, and all of the thousand perils
Of barbarous Rome, with poets reciting all during August!
Satire VII lines 36-47:
Let me tell you the ruses your patron, the one you fawn on, adopts, to avoid
Aiding you: spurning the shrine of Apollo and the Muses.
He writes verse himself, and yields to Homer alone, due to
His thousand-year glory, but if you, fired by the sweetness
Of fame, give a recitation, he’ll lend you a down-at-heel room.
He’ll order a far-off iron-barred hall placed at your service,
The doors of which echo the squealing of sows. He’ll place
His freedmen in seats at the end of the rows, and knows how
To scatter his friends about, those with high-pitched voices.
But none of the nobles will give you the price of their seats,
Or the price of the raised platforms held up by rented beams,
Or those chairs in the front row, due to be given back later.
Satire VII lines 82-86:
When Statius made Rome happy, and fixed on a date,
Everyone rushed to hear his fine voice, and the lines
Of his dear Thebaid: the crowd’s hearts were captured
By the sweetness he affected, listening there, in ecstasy.
Must I be a listener forever? Never reply,
Tortured so often by throaty Cordus’s Theseus?
Must I let this fellow recite his Roman comedies,
Unpunished, and that one his elegies? Unpunished,
Consuming my whole day on some endless Telephus,
Or unfinished Orestes, the cover full and the margins?
A man knows his own house less well than I know
The grove of Mars or that cave of Vulcan’s right by
The Aeolian cliffs; what the winds do, which shade
Aeacus torments, where he’s from, he with the golden
Stolen fleece, how big that ash tree Monychus hurled –
Fronto’s plane-trees, cracked marble, and columns
Fractured by non-stop readings, ring with this stuff.
Expect the same, then, from this best and worst of poets.
I too have snatched my hand out of reach of the cane,
I too have given old Sulla ‘good advice’: get lost, enjoy
A good rest. It’s false mercy, when you trip over poets
Everywhere, to spare the paper they’re all ready to waste.
Satire III lines 6-9:
After all, is there anywhere that’s so wretched and lonely
You wouldn’t rather be there than in constant danger of fire,
Of collapsing buildings, and all of the thousand perils
Of barbarous Rome, with poets reciting all during August!
Satire VII lines 36-47:
Let me tell you the ruses your patron, the one you fawn on, adopts, to avoid
Aiding you: spurning the shrine of Apollo and the Muses.
He writes verse himself, and yields to Homer alone, due to
His thousand-year glory, but if you, fired by the sweetness
Of fame, give a recitation, he’ll lend you a down-at-heel room.
He’ll order a far-off iron-barred hall placed at your service,
The doors of which echo the squealing of sows. He’ll place
His freedmen in seats at the end of the rows, and knows how
To scatter his friends about, those with high-pitched voices.
But none of the nobles will give you the price of their seats,
Or the price of the raised platforms held up by rented beams,
Or those chairs in the front row, due to be given back later.
Satire VII lines 82-86:
When Statius made Rome happy, and fixed on a date,
Everyone rushed to hear his fine voice, and the lines
Of his dear Thebaid: the crowd’s hearts were captured
By the sweetness he affected, listening there, in ecstasy.
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