They have
taught lessons in school which have been remembered in the world.
taught lessons in school which have been remembered in the world.
Oxford Book of Latin Verse
It seemed a pity that
Didactic Poetry--in some ways the most characteristic product of the
Roman genius--should, in such a Collection as this, be wholly
unrepresented. It seemed a pity: and it seemed also on the whole
unnecessary. It seemed unnecessary, for the reason that many of the
great passages of Lucretius, Vergil, and Manilius hang so loosely to
their contexts that the poets themselves seem to invite the gentle
violence of the excerptor. These passages are 'golden branches' set in
an alien stock--_non sua seminat arbos_. The hand that would pluck them
must be at once courageous and circumspect. But they attend the fated
despoiler:
Ergo alte uestiga oculis et rite repertum
carpe manu, namque ipse uolens facilisque sequetur
si te fata uocant.
Even outside Didactic Poetry I have allowed myself an occasional
disloyalty to my own rule against excerpts. I have, for example,
detached one or two lyrics from the Tragedies of Seneca. And, again,
from the long and sometimes tedious _Itinerarium_ of Rutilius I have
detached the splendid apostrophe to Rome which stands in the forefront
of that poem. These are pieces without which no anthology of Latin
poetry would be anything but grotesquely incomplete. And after all we
should be the masters and not the slaves of our own rules.
Satire finds no place in this book. Horace is represented only by his
lyrics. Juvenal and Persius are not represented at all. The _Satires_
and _Epistles_ of Horace are books of deep and wide influence.
They have
taught lessons in school which have been remembered in the world. They
have made an appeal to natures which teaching more profound and
spiritual leaves untouched. By their large temper and by their complete
freedom from cant they have achieved a place in the regard of men from
which they are not likely to be dislodged by any changes of literary
fashion or any fury of the enemies of humane studies. I am content to
leave them in this secure position, and not to intrude them into a
Collection where Horace himself would have known them to be out of
place. Indeed, he has himself said upon this subject all that needs to
be said. [1] Persius similarly, in the Prologue to his _Satires_,
excludes himself from the company of the great poets. Nor can I believe
that Juvenal has any place among them. In the rhetoric of rancour he is
a distinguished practitioner. But he wants two qualities essential to
great poetry--truth and humanity. I say this because there are critics
who speak of Juvenal as though he were Isaiah.
My Selection begins with fragments of the Saliar hymns, and ends with
the invocation of Phocas to 'Clio, reverend wardress of Antiquity. ' If I
am challenged to justify these _termini_, I will say of the first of
them that I could not begin earlier, and that it is commonly better to
take the beginnings offered to us than to make beginnings for ourselves.
The lower _terminus_ is not so simple a matter. I set myself here two
rules. First, I resolved to include no verse which, tried by what we
call 'classical' standards, was metrically faulty. Secondly, I judged it
wiser to exclude any poetry definitely Christian in character--a rule
which, as will be seen, does not necessarily exclude all the work of
Christian poets.
Didactic Poetry--in some ways the most characteristic product of the
Roman genius--should, in such a Collection as this, be wholly
unrepresented. It seemed a pity: and it seemed also on the whole
unnecessary. It seemed unnecessary, for the reason that many of the
great passages of Lucretius, Vergil, and Manilius hang so loosely to
their contexts that the poets themselves seem to invite the gentle
violence of the excerptor. These passages are 'golden branches' set in
an alien stock--_non sua seminat arbos_. The hand that would pluck them
must be at once courageous and circumspect. But they attend the fated
despoiler:
Ergo alte uestiga oculis et rite repertum
carpe manu, namque ipse uolens facilisque sequetur
si te fata uocant.
Even outside Didactic Poetry I have allowed myself an occasional
disloyalty to my own rule against excerpts. I have, for example,
detached one or two lyrics from the Tragedies of Seneca. And, again,
from the long and sometimes tedious _Itinerarium_ of Rutilius I have
detached the splendid apostrophe to Rome which stands in the forefront
of that poem. These are pieces without which no anthology of Latin
poetry would be anything but grotesquely incomplete. And after all we
should be the masters and not the slaves of our own rules.
Satire finds no place in this book. Horace is represented only by his
lyrics. Juvenal and Persius are not represented at all. The _Satires_
and _Epistles_ of Horace are books of deep and wide influence.
They have
taught lessons in school which have been remembered in the world. They
have made an appeal to natures which teaching more profound and
spiritual leaves untouched. By their large temper and by their complete
freedom from cant they have achieved a place in the regard of men from
which they are not likely to be dislodged by any changes of literary
fashion or any fury of the enemies of humane studies. I am content to
leave them in this secure position, and not to intrude them into a
Collection where Horace himself would have known them to be out of
place. Indeed, he has himself said upon this subject all that needs to
be said. [1] Persius similarly, in the Prologue to his _Satires_,
excludes himself from the company of the great poets. Nor can I believe
that Juvenal has any place among them. In the rhetoric of rancour he is
a distinguished practitioner. But he wants two qualities essential to
great poetry--truth and humanity. I say this because there are critics
who speak of Juvenal as though he were Isaiah.
My Selection begins with fragments of the Saliar hymns, and ends with
the invocation of Phocas to 'Clio, reverend wardress of Antiquity. ' If I
am challenged to justify these _termini_, I will say of the first of
them that I could not begin earlier, and that it is commonly better to
take the beginnings offered to us than to make beginnings for ourselves.
The lower _terminus_ is not so simple a matter. I set myself here two
rules. First, I resolved to include no verse which, tried by what we
call 'classical' standards, was metrically faulty. Secondly, I judged it
wiser to exclude any poetry definitely Christian in character--a rule
which, as will be seen, does not necessarily exclude all the work of
Christian poets.
