Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

Little; a man you show, Naso, a woman in one.

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Pompey the first time consul, as yet Maecilia counted

Two paramours; reappears Pompey a consul again,

Two still, Cinna, remain; but grown, each unit an even

Thousand. Truly the stock's fruitful: adultery breeds.

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Rightly a lordly demesne makes Firman Mentula count for

Wealthy! the rich fine things, then the variety there!

Game in plenty to choose, fish, field, and meadow with hunting;

Only the waste exceeds strangely the quantity still.

Wealthy? perhaps I grant it; if all, wealth asks for, is absent.

Praise the demesne? no doubt; only be needy the man.

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Acres thirty in all, good grass, own Mentula master;

Forty to plough; bare seas, arid or empty, the rest.

Poorly methinks might Croesus a man so sumptuous equal,

Counted in one rich park owner of all he can ask.

Grass or plough, big woods, much mountain, mighty morasses;

On to the farthest North, on to the boundary main.

Vastness is all that is here; yet Mentula reaches a vaster—

Man? not so; 'tis a vast mountainous ominous He.

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Oft with a studious heart, which hunted closely, requiring

Skill great Battiades' poesies haply to send,

Laying thus thy rage in rest, lest everlasting

Darts should reach me, to wound still an assailable head:

Barren now I see that labour of any requital,

Gellius; here all prayers fall to the ground, nor avail.

No; but a robe I carry, the barbs, thy folly, to muffle;

Mine strike sure; thy deep injury they shall atone.

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Here I give to be thine a fair grove, an holy, Priapus,

Where thy Lampsacus holds thee in chamber seemly, Priapus;

God, in every city, thou, most ador'd on a sea-shore

Hellespontian, eminent most of oystery sea-shores.

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Rapidly the spirit in an agony fled away.

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Where yon lucent mast-top, a cup of silver, arises.

VIII. 2.

Lost is the lost, thou know'st it, and the past is past.

I am indebted for this expression to a translation of this poem by Dr. J.A. Symonds, the whole of which I should have quoted here, had it not been unfortunately mislaid.

XIV. 20.

Plague-prodigy.

Proves a plague-prodigy to God and man.

Browning, Ring and Book , v. 664.

XVII. 26.

Rondel.

The round plate of iron which, according to Rich, Companion to the Latin Dictionary, p. 609, formed the lower part of the sock worn by horses, mules, &c., when on a journey, and, unlike our horse-shoes, was removable at the end of it.

XXII. 11.

Looby

a clown.

Let me now the vices trace,

From his father's scoundrel race.

What could give the looby such airs?

Were they masons? were they butchers?

Tickell, Theristes or the Lordling , 23-26.

XXIII.

For a spirited, though coarse, version of this poem, see Cotton's Poems, p. 608, ed. 1689.

6 Lathy.

On a lathy horse, all legs and length.

Browning, Flight of the Duchess , v. 21.

XXIX. 8.

The connexion between Adonis and the dove is specially referred to by Diogenianus ( Praef. p. 180 in Leutsch and Schneidewin's Paroemiographi Graeci ). It formed part of the legends of Cyprus, and was alluded to by the lyric poet Timocreon ( Bergk. Poetae Lyrici Graeci , p. 1203). Compare Browning:—

Pompilia was no pigeon, Venus' Pet.

Ring and Book , v. 701.

XXXV. 7.

So he'll quickly devour the way,

move quickly over the road. So Shakespeare:

Starting so

He seem'd in running to devour the way,

Staying no longer question.

2nd Part of Henry IV. , Act i. sc. 1.

XXXVII. 10.

With scorpion I, with emblem all your haunt will scrawl.

A member of the Saraceni family at Vicenza, finding that a beautiful widow did not favour him, scribbled filthy pictures over the door. The affair was brought before the Council of Ten at Venice.

Trollope's Paul the Pope , p. 158.

XLIII. 3.

Mouth scarce tenible,

easily running over.

XLV. 7.

A sulky lion.

Properly "green-eyed." The epithet would seem to be not merely picturesque; the glaring of the eyes would be more marked in proportion as the beast was in a fiercer and more excitable state.

LI. 5-12.

I watch thy grace; and in its place

My heart a charmed slumber keeps,

While I muse upon thy face;

And a languid fire creeps

Thro' my veins to all my frame,

Dissolvingly and slowly: soon

From thy rose-red lips my name

Floweth; and then, as in a swoon,

With dinning sound my ears are rife,

My tremulous tongue faltereth,

I lose my colour, I lose my breath,

I drink the cup of a costly death,

Brimmed with delicious draughts of warmest life.

Tennyson, Eleänore .

LIV. 6.

Yet thou flee'st not above my keen iambics .

This line is quoted as Catullus's by Porphyrion on Hor. c. 1. 16, 24. His words, Catullus cum maledicta minaretur , compared with the last lines of this poem, Irascere iterum meis iambis Inmerentibus, unice imperator , seem to justify my view that they belong here. See my large edition, p. 217, fragm. I. The following line, So may destiny, &c. , is a supplement of my own: it forms a natural introduction to the Si non uellem of v. 10.

LV.

This is the only instance where Catullus has introduced a spondee into the second foot of the phalaecian, which then becomes decasyllabic. The alternation of this decasyllabic rhythm with the ordinary hendecasyllable is studiously artistic; I have retained it throughout. In the series of dactylic lines 17-22, Catullus no doubt intended to convey the idea of rapidity, as, in the spondaic line immediately following, of labour.

4 You on Circus, in all the bills but you, Sir.

There seems to be no authority for the meaning ordinarily assigned to libellis , "book-shops." I prefer to explain the word placards, either announcing the sale of Camerius's effects, which would imply that he was in debt, or describing him as a lost article.

LXI.

In the rhythm of this poem, I have been obliged to deviate in two points from Catullus. (1) In him the first foot of each line is nearly always a trochee, only rarely a spondee: the monotonous effect of a positional trochee in English, to say nothing of the difficulty, induced me to substitute a spondee more frequently. (2) I have been rather less scrupulous in allowing the last foot of the glyconic lines to be a dactyl (-uu), in place of the more correct cretic (-u-).

108. The words in italics are a supplement of my own.

LXII. 39-61.

Look in a garden croft, when a flower privily growing, &c.

Opinion. Look how a flower that close in closes grows, Hid from rude cattle, bruised with no ploughs, Which th' air doth stroke, sun strengthen, showers shoot higher, It many youths and many maids desire; The same, when cropt by cruel hand 'tis wither'd, No youths at all, no maidens have desired; So a virgin while untouch'd she doth remain Is dear to hers; but when with body's stain Her chaster flower is lost, she leaves to appear Or sweet to young men or to maidens dear.