Page images
PDF
EPUB

Father of Rome, behold! thy rustic wears A fencer's garb, and on his oil'd neck bears

VER. 107. Rusticus ille tuus sumit trechedipna, Quirine,

Et ceromatico fert niceteria collo.] In this apostrophe to Romulus, the poet observes, that while the Greeks, &c. were worming themselves into all places of power and profit, the Romans, once so renowned for their rough and manly virtues, were wholly taken up with the idle amusements of the Circus.

Of this perversion of the "Latian shepherd," he marks his contempt by crowding his description with Greek words; of which the first, trechedipna, has occasioned the commentators some trouble. Holyday (from Lubin) translates it, the “haunt-dole gown,” à ʊpexw xai deπvov: but the Romans "haunted the dole" in the toga; the use of which was no novelty, and therefore not worth appealing to Romulus about. Madan quotes Dryden, to shew that it was an "effeminate, gawdy kind of garment;" and Mr. Owen, to my great surprise, adopts his very words! It seems to me, that the poet meant to express but one action; and that is determined by the context. Trechedipna, therefore, (unless that name be given to the endromidas, or shaggy cloak, see Sat. vi.) must mean the succinct vest, which the Romans probably adopted from the Greek wrestlers, &c. Ceroma was a mixture of oil, clay, and bees-wax, with which they smeared their neck and breasts, and, as it should seem, profusely; for Seneca, speaking to his friend Lucilius of a journey he had taken, says, the roads were so bad, that he rather swam than walked, and before he came to his inn, was covered with ceroma, like a prize-fighter. Madan still harping upon his "gawdiness," will have ceroma not to mean ceroma, but a curious and costly unguent for the hair! For this he again quotes Dryden, who neither thought, nor cared about the matter, and whose authority in this case can therefore determine nothing. Niceteria, Lubin says, were vestes peregrina; but he was misled by the scholium, where, by a mistake of the transcriber, niceteria is put for trechedipna: indeed, he afterwards corrects himself. Niceteria are the prizes which the victors ostentatiously wore round their necks.

The change of character is singular :-the Greeks, so fond of the Gymnasium at home, forsook it entirely here, and turned all their attention to the arts of thriving; while the Romans neglected the latter to apply to the former; and then broke out into childish complaints at being supplanted by the superior address of the foreigners.

A paltry prize, well-pleas'd; while every land,
Sicyon, and Amydos, and Alaband,

Tralles, and Samos, and a thousand more,
Thrive on his indolence, and daily pour

Their starving myriads forth: hither they come,
And batten on the genial soil of Rome;

The minions, then the lords, of every princely dome.

A flattering, cringing, treacherous, artful race,)
Of fluent tongue, and never-blushing face;
A Protean tribe, one knows not what to call
That shifts to every form, and shines in all;
Grammarian, painter, augur, rhetorician,
Geometer, cook, conjurer, and physician,
All arts his own the hungry Greekling counts,
And bid him mount the skies, the skies he mounts-
You smile-was't a barbarian, then, that flew ?
No 'twas a Greek, 'twas an ATHENIAN, too!
Bear with their state who will :-but I disdain

All converse with the proud, the upstart train,—
Wretches, who, stow'd in some dank lighter's womb,
With rotten figs, were lately borne to Rome,
Yet now above me sit, before me sign,

Their friendship and their faith preferr'd to mine!
And is the privilege of freedom lost!

And is it nothing, nothing then, to boast

That from the first, the breath of life I drew
In Roman air, on Roman olives grew !—
But, no-the Greek applauds, with winning grace,
His patron's folly, and his Gorgon face;
Admires his voice, that grates upon the ear
Like the shrill scream of wanton chanticleer;
And equals his crane neck, and narrow chest,
To Hercules, when, straining to his breast
The giant-son of earth, his every vein
Swells with the toil, the more than mortal pain.
We too can flatter: true: but they alone
Gain credit, they who make all parts their own.
See! they step forth, and figure to the life,
The naked nymph, the mistress, and the wife,
So just, so true, you view the woman there,
And fancy all, beneath the girdle, bare.

No longer now, the favourites of the stage
Boast their exclusive power to charm the age;
The happy art with them a nation shares,
Greece is a Theatre, where all are players,
For lo! their patron smiles,—they burst with mirth ;
He weeps,-they droop, the saddest souls on earth;

VER. 154. For lo! their patron smiles,-&c.] The character of the flatterer is touched with great force in these lines; which are, however exceeded, at least in humour by the following:

He calls for fire,-they court the mantle's heat;
'Tis warm, he cries,-and they dissolve in sweat.
Ill-match'd! ill-match'd! they get, and keep, the start,
Who, taught from youth to play a borrow'd part,
Can, with a glance, the rising passion trace,
And mould their own to suit their patron's face;
At deeds of shame their hands admiring raise,
And mad debauchery's worst excesses praise.
Besides, no mound their raging lust restrains;
All ties it breaks, all sanctity profanes
The wife, and virgin-daughter are undone,
The bridegroom, and the yet-untainted son:
If none of these their patron's roof supplies,
The hoary grandam falls a sacrifice.-
They notice every word, haunt every ear,
His secrets learn, and fix him theirs from fear.
You think, perhaps, the wiser Greeks disclaim
These horrors-turn, since Greeks are now my theme,
Turn to their schools :-yon gray professor see,
Smear'd with the sanguine stains of perfidy!

Hamlet. Your bonnet to its right use: 'tis for the head.

Osrick. I thank your lordship, 'tis very hot.

Hamlet. No, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is northerly.

Osrick. It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.

Hamlet. But yet, methinks, it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.

Osrick. Exceedingly, my lord, it is very sultry as it were, I can't tell how.

That tutor, most accurst his pupil sold!

That Stoic sacrificed his friend to gold !—

A Greek! a true-born Greek! spawn'd on that coast
Where the Gorgonian hack a pinion lost.

VER. 174. · yon gray professor see, &c.] This was P. Egnatius, who came forward against Bareas Soranus, accused of a conspiracy against Nero. The appearance of this man, says Tacitus, (who gives a full account of the transaction,) excited general indignation. He had been first the client of Soranus, and afterwards his preceptor; and was bribed by the emissaries of the Emperor, to give evidence against his pupil and patron! He was a STOIC, who, under the appearance of austere and simple manners, concealed a crafty and perfidious, an avaricious and profligate mind. Money laid him open to view; and mankind learned from his example, that it was not sufficient to guard against characters of notorious baseness, since perfidy and deceit might be found under the mask of philosophy and virtue.

The honest Aruspex triumphs in the idea of his being a Grecian, and even marks out the place of his birth, by a contemptuous allusion to an adventure of Pegasus, (who is said to have stumbled, and dropt a feather from his fetlock at Tarsus, a town in Cilicia) whom he degrades into a hack. Caballi appellatione afficit, as Casaubon observes, non quod illi quem in cœlis vetustas collocavit, vellet iri detractum; sed quia Græcos male oderat. He did, indeed, hate the Greeks; but he thought, and I believe with justice, that they had ruined the rigid virtues of his countrymen.

The professor is distinguished by the use of the abolla: a large kind of wrapper, mightily affected by the "budge-doctors of the Stoic fur." These I suppose, had it, for humility's sake, of the cheapest and coarsest materials, to serve them, as occasion required, either for a gown or a rug, nudi tegmen grabati; but it was sometimes seen of the costliest stuff, and the most glowing colours: it was then the proud distinction of the rich and great. Crispinus, as I have already observed, (p. 10,) had a purple abolla stolen from him while he was bathing, which Martial tells the thief will be an unprofitable robbery to him, since none but a person of eminence could venture to wear it. And Caligula, moved by envy, destroyed young Juba, (percussit) because, at a public exhibi

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »