Part 12 (1/2)

These lines may be no more than an academic exercise on a commonplace theme, but there can be no doubt of their artistic success. We find the same simplicity in Columella, but not the same art. Compare them with the work of Petronius' contemporary, Calpurnius Siculus, and there is all the difference between true poetry and mere poetising. More pa.s.sionate and more convincing is the elegiac poem celebrating the poet's return to the scene of former happiness:

o litus vita mihi dulcius, o mare! felix, cui licet ad terras ire subinde tuas!

o formosa dies! hoc quondam rure solebam naidas alterna[335] sollicitare manu.

hic fontis lacus est, illic sinus egerit algas: haec statio est tacitis fida cupidinibus.

pervixi; neque enim fortuna malignior umquam eripiet n.o.bis, quod prior aura dedit.[336]

O sh.o.r.e, O sea, that I love more than life! Happy is he that may straightway visit the lands ye border. O fairest day! 'Twas here that once I was wont to swim and vex the sea-nymphs with my hands' alternate strokes. Here is a stream's deep pool, there the bay casts up its seaweed: here is a spot that can faithfully guard the secret of one's love.

I have lived my life to the full; nor can grudging fortune ever rob me of that which her favouring breeze once gave me.

But Petronius can attain to equal success in other veins. Now we have a fragment in the epic style containing a simile at once original and beautiful:

haec ait et tremulo deduxit vertice canos consecuitque genas; oculis nec defuit imber, sed qualis rapitur per vallis improbus amnis, c.u.m gelidae periere nives et languidus auster non pat.i.tur glaciem resoluta vivere terra, gurgite sic pleno facies manavit et alto insonuit gemitu turbato murmure pectus.[337]

He spake, and rent the white hair on his trembling head and tore his cheeks, and his eyes streamed with a flood of tears. As when a resistless river sweeps down the valley when the chill snows have melted and the languid south wind thaws the earth and suffers not the ice to remain, even so his face streamed with a torrent of weeping and his breast groaned loud with a confused murmur of sorrow.

Elsewhere we find him writing in satirical vein of the origin of religion,[338] on the decay of virtue,[339] on the hards.h.i.+p of the married state[340]:

'uxor legis onus, debet quasi census amari.'

nec censum vellem semper amare meum.

'One should love one's wife as one loves one's fortune.'

Nay, I desire not always to love even my fortune.

But it is in a love-poem that he reaches his highest achievement:

lecto compositus vix prima silentia noctis carpebam et somno lumina victa dabam: c.u.m me saevus Amor prensat sursumque capillis excitat et lacerum pervigilare iubet.

'tu famulus meus,' inquit, 'ames c.u.m mille puellas, solus, io, solus, dure, iacere potes?'

exsilio et pedibus nudis tunicaque soluta omne iter incipio, nullum iter expedio.

nunc propero, nunc ire piget, rursumque redire paenitet et pudor est stare via media.

ecce tacent voces hominum strepitusque viarum et volucrum cantus turbaque fida canum: solus ego ex cunctis paveo somnumque torumque et sequor imperium, magne Cupido, tuum.[341]

I lay on my bed and began to enjoy the silence of the night scarce yet begun, and was yielding my wearied eyes to sleep, when fierce Love laid hold of me, and, seizing me by the hair, aroused me, tore me, and bade me wake. 'Canst thou, my servant,' he cried, 'the lover of a thousand girls, lie thus alone, alone, hard-hearted?' I leapt from my couch, and barefoot, with dishevelled robe, started on my errand, yet never accomplished it. Now I hurry forward, now am loth to go; now repent me that I have returned, and feel shame to stand thus aimless in mid-street. So the voices of men, the murmur of the streets, the song of birds, and the trusty watchdogs all are silent; and I alone dread the slumbers of my couch and follow thy behest, great G.o.d of love.

If this is not great poetry, it is at least one of the most perfect specimens of conventional erotic verse in all ancient literature. If we except a very few of the best poems of Propertius, Latin Elegiacs have nothing to show that combines such perfection of form with such exquisite sensuous charm. It breathes the fragrance of the Greek anthology.

The general impression left by the poetical work of Petronius is curiously unlike that left by any Latin poet. Sometimes dull, he is never eccentric; without the originality of the greatest artists, he has all the artist's sensibility for form. He writes not as one inspired, but as one steeped in the best literature. Many were greater stylists, but few were endowed with such an exquisite sense of style. As a poet he is a _dilettante_, and his claim to greatness lies in the brilliant and audacious humour of his 'picaresque novel'. But his verse at its best has a charm and fragrance of its own that is almost unique in Latin, and reveals a combination of grace and facility, to find a parallel for which among writers of the post-Augustan age we must turn to the pages of Martial.

CHAPTER VI

MINOR POETRY, 14-70 A.D.

I

DIDACTIC POETRY

Only two didactic poems of this period have survived, the poem of Columella on gardening, and the anonymous work on Mount Etna, setting forth a theory of volcanic action.