what's just from unjust or what should create
aversion to a thing we should pursue.
Nor should logic make us think it's true
that all offenses are identical—
from picking someone's baby vegetable180
to stealing sacred items in the night.
Let's use a scale imposing what is right,
so that we don't inflict the cruelest lashing
on someone who deserves a milder thrashing.
And if you cane a person who has earned185
a fiercer whipping, I am unconcerned
since you will tell me theft that's surreptitious
is just the same as robbery that's vicious,
and that your scythe would level small and great
offenses (if we'd let you legislate).190
If somebody is wise and well-to-do,
a shoemaker who makes the finest shoe,
and he alone is suave and king, then why
demand what's owned already?
The reply?
“You're missing what the father of our school,195
Chrysippus, had intended as the rule!
If someone wise has never made a pair
of shoes or sandals he himself could wear,
that man is still a cobbler.”
“How's that so?”
“It is just like Hermogenes; although200
he's silent, he retains his great cachet
as singer and musician, the same way
that wily Alfenus, once he discarded
his tools and shut his shop, was still regarded
as a cobbler in the truest sense205
that one who's wise displays more competence
than others in their fields of expertise,
and in this sense is king.”
“The urchins seize
your beard, and if your ‘sceptre’ won't repel
the mob, it crowds and bumps you as you yell210
and bluster back at them. O most sublime
of mighty kings, I will not take much time!
While you, as king, go bathing for small change
without a fawning aide except the strange
Crispinus, my good friends will not be stern215
when folly makes me fail; for them in turn
I'll gladly brush off any travesty
and thrive uncrowned more than ‘Your Majesty.’”
Such poets as Cratinus, Eupolis,
and Aristophanes—and numerous
other proponents of Old Comedy—
were of this habit: if, deservedly,
somebody should be called out as a louse5
or thief, a killer, or a cheating spouse,
they would not feel restrained as they applied
their brand. Lucilius wholly relied
on them; he'd copy them but rearrange
their feet and rhythms as the only change.10
He was keen-witted and a keen-nosed guy,
though crude when giving poetry a try.
This was his flaw: convinced it was a feat,
he'd stand upon one foot as he'd complete
two hundred lines of verse in just one hour.15
During this slog, you'd wish you had the power
of correcting what he was reciting.
He was a gasbag, lazy in his writing
(writing competently, anyway);
as for his mounds of verse, I am blasé.20
Look! Here's Crispinus sneaking up to tease
me with a “deal”:
“Go grab your tablets, please,
and I will grab mine. Let's arrange a place,
a time, and referees, and have a race
to see who writes the most!”
The gods were kind25
in shaping me a poor and puny mind,
which rarely has much insight to express,
but as for you, go chase your happiness
and imitate the air enclosed within
a bellows struggling against goat-skin30
until the iron softens in the fire!
How fortunate is Fannius, supplier
of his own books and busts, while what I write
goes unread, and I'm frightened to recite
in public for this reason: with my style35
there are some people who will barely smile
since nearly everyone deserves some scorn. Pick someone from a crowd! He'll be forlorn from greediness or failures in his life. This fellow's lusting for another's wife—40 that guy for boys. The glint of silver captures yet another fellow; bronze enraptures Albius. Another's deals are done from distant regions of the rising sun to places heated by its evening rays.45 Indeed, he's carried headlong through hard days just like a whirlwind's dust, afraid to lose his capital or profits he pursues. This bunch is stupefied by verse, and scorns the poets: “He has hay upon his horns!50 Stand back!” If he stirs laughter, he won't spare himself or friends, and he'll be thrilled to share whatever he has scribbled on his sheets with everybody beating their retreats from a hot oven or a water trough,55 including crones and slaveboys! Don't race off! Come listen to a bit of my reply: to start with, I do not identify myself as a real poet. You'd opine that it is not enough to write a line60 in meter, and a person such as me who writes a chatty sort of poetry could never be regarded in your eyes as a real poet. You would recognize a person who is brilliant, with a mind65 that is far more inspired and the kind of voice that resonates. Based on that thought, some doubted whether comic verses ought to count as verse because they can't convey great force and energy in what they say70 or how they say it. Though arranged in feet (unlike prose) that incessantly repeat, it's still just prose. “And yet the father raves because his spendthrift son who madly craves his slutty girlfriend doesn't take a deal75 to marry for a dowry that's unreal, and shames himself by marching drunk through town with torches though the sun is not yet down.”
So would it be less acrimonious
with the late father of Pomponius?80
Accordingly, it is inadequate
to write a line that is inanimate,
which, if examined closely, would portray
a father's rage exactly the same way
it happened in that play. As for all this85
I'm writing now and what Lucilius
produced in times past, if you rearranged
the meter and the rhythm, and exchanged
our first and latest words “when dreaded War's
unlocking iron-studded gates and doors,”90
a