Part 11 (1/2)
A girl of such admirable qualities must surely come of a good stock, and is well worth any man's love. Did not Achilles succ.u.mb to Briseis, Ajax to Tecmessa, Agamemnon himself to Ca.s.sandra? Moreover,
”For aught that you know, the fair Phyllis may be The shoot of some highly respectable stem; Nay, she counts, never doubt it, some kings in her tree, And laments the lost acres once lorded by them.
Never think that a creature so exquisite grew In the haunts where but vice and dishonour are known, Nor deem that a girl so unselfish, so true, Had a mother 'twould shame thee to take for thine own.”
Here we have the true Horace; and after all these fascinating but doubtful Lydes, Neaeras, and Pyrrhas, it is pleasant to come across a young beauty like this Phyllis, _sic fidelem, sic lucro aversam_. She, at least, is a fresh and fragrant violet among the languorous hothouse splendours of the Horatian garden.
Domestic love, which plays so large a part in modern poetry, is a theme rarely touched on in Roman verse. Hence we know but little of the Romans in their homes--for such a topic used to be thought beneath the dignity of history--and especially little of the women, who presided over what have been called ”the tender and temperate honours of the hearth.”
The ladies who flourish in the poetry and also in the history of those times, however conspicuous for beauty or attraction, are not generally of the kind that make home happy. Such matrons as we chiefly read of there would in the present day he apt to figure in the divorce court.
Nor is the explanation of this difficult. The prevalence of marriage for mere wealth or connection, and the facility of divorce, which made the marriage-tie almost a farce among the upper cla.s.ses, had resulted, as it could not fail to do, in a great debas.e.m.e.nt of morals. A lady did not lose caste either by being divorced, or by seeking divorce, from husband after husband. And as wives in the higher ranks often held the purse-strings, they made themselves pretty frequently more dreaded than beloved by their lords, through being tyrannical, if not unchaste, or both. So at least Horace plainly indicates (Odes, III. 24), when contrasting the vices of Rome with the simpler virtues of some of the nations that were under its sway. In those happier lands, he says, ”_Nec dotata regit virum conjux, nec nitido fidit adultero_”--
”No dowried dame her spouse O'erbears, nor trusts the sleek seducer's vows.”
But it would be as wrong to infer from this that the taint was universal, as it would be to gauge our own social morality by the erratic matrons and fast young ladies with whom satirical essayists delight to point their periods. The human heart is stronger than the corruptions of luxury, even among the luxurious and the rich; and the life of struggle and privation which is the life of the ma.s.s of every nation would have been intolerable but for the security and peace of well-ordered and happy households. Sweet honest love, cemented by years of sympathy and mutual endurance, was then, as ever, the salt of human life. Many a monumental inscription, steeped in the tenderest pathos, a.s.sures us of the fact. What, for example, must have been the home of the man who wrote on his wife's tomb, ”She never caused me a pang but when she died!” And Catullus, mere man of pleasure as he was, must have had strongly in his heart the thought of what a tender and pure-souled woman had been in his friend's home, when he wrote his exquisite lines to Calvus on the death of Quinctilia:--
”Calvus, if those now silent in the tomb Can feel the touch of pleasure in our tears For those we loved, that perished in their bloom, And the departed friends of former years-- Oh, then, full surely thy Quinctilia's woe For the untimely fate, that bids thee part, Will fade before the bliss she feels to know How very dear she is unto thy heart!”
Horace, the bachelor, revered the marriage-tie, and did his best, by his verses, to forward the policy of Augustus in his effort to arrest the decay of morals by enforcing the duty of marriage, which the well-to-do Romans of that day were inclined to s.h.i.+rk whenever they could. Nay, the charm of constancy and conjugal sympathy inspired a few of his very finest lines (Odes, I. l3)--”_Felices ter et amplius, quos irrupta tenet copula_,” &c.,--the feeling of which is better preserved in Moore's well-known paraphrase than is possible in mere translation:--
”There's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told, When two that are linked in one heavenly tie, With heart never changing, and brow never cold, Love on through all ills, and love on till they die!
One hour of a pa.s.sion so sacred is worth Whole ages of heartless and wandering bliss; And oh! if there be an Elysium on earth, It is this, it is this!”
To leave the _placens uxor_--”the winsome wife”--behind, is one of the saddest regrets, Horace tells his friend Posthumus (Odes, II. 14), which death can baring. Still Horace only sang the praises of marriage, contenting himself with painting the Eden within which, for reasons unknown to us, he never sought to enter. He was well up in life, probably, before these sager views dawned upon him. Was it then too late to reduce his precepts to practice, or was he unable to overcome his dread of the _dotata conjux_, and thought his comfort would be safer in the hands of some less exacting fair, such as the Phyllis to whom the following Ode, one of his latest (IV. 11), is addressed?--
”I have laid in a cask of Albanian wine, Which nine mellow summers have ripened and more; In my garden, dear Phyllis, thy brows to entwine, Grows the brightest of parsley in plentiful store.
There is ivy to gleam on thy dark glossy hair; My plate, newly burnished, enlivens my rooms; And the altar, athirst for its victim, is there, Enwreathed with chaste vervain and choicest of blooms.
”Every hand in the household is busily toiling, And hither and thither boys bustle and girls; Whilst, up from the hearth-fires careering and coiling, The smoke round the rafter-beams languidly curls.
Let the joys of the revel be parted between us!
'Tis the Ides of young April, the day which divides The month, dearest Phyllis, of ocean-sprung Venus, A day to me dearer than any besides.
”And well may I prize it, and hail its returning-- My own natal-day not more hallowed nor dear; For Maecenas, my friend, dates from this happy morning The life which has swelled to a l.u.s.trous career.
You sigh for young Telephus: better forget him!
His rank is not yours, and the gaudier charms Of a girl that's both wealthy and wanton benet him, And hold him the fondest of slaves in her arms.
”Remember fond Phaethon's fiery sequel, And heavenward-aspiring Bellerophon's fate; And pine not for one who would ne'er be your equal, But level your hopes to a lowlier mate.
So, come, my own Phyllis, my heart's latest treasure-- For ne'er for another this bosom shall long-- And I'll teach, while your loved voice re-echoes the measure, How to charm away care with the magic of song.”
This is very pretty and picturesque; and Maecenas was sure to be charmed with it as a birthday Ode, for such it certainly was, whether there was any real Phyllis in the case or not. Most probably there was not,--the allusion to Telephus, the lady-killer, is so very like many other allusions of the same kind in other Odes, which are plainly mere exercises of fancy, and the protestation that the lady is the very, very last of his loves, so precisely what all middle-aged gentlemen think it right to say, whose ”_jeunesse_,” like the poet's, has teen notoriously ”_orageuse_.”
It was probably not within the circle of his city friends that Horace saw the women for whom he entertained the deepest respect, but by the hearth-fire in the farmhouse, ”the homely house, that harbours quiet rest,” with which he was no less familiar, where people lived in a simple and natural way, and where, if anywhere, good wives and mothers were certain to be found. It was manifestly by some woman of this cla.s.s that the following poem (Odes, III. 23) was inspired:--
”If thou, at each new moon, thine upturned palms, My rustic Phidyle, to heaven shalt lift, The Lares soothe with steam of fragrant balms, A sow, and fruits new-plucked, thy simple gift,
”Nor venomed blast shall nip thy fertile vine, Nor mildew blight thy harvest in the ear; Nor shall thy flocks, sweet nurslings, peak and pine, When apple-bearing Autumn chills the year.