EPISTLE LXXXVI.
spick-and-span bathing establishments have been devised, men are really fouler than of yore. 13. What says Horatius Flaccus, when he wishes to describe a scoundrel, one who is notorious for his extreme luxury? He says: “Buccillus[1] smells of perfume.” Show me a Buccillus in these days; his smell would be the veritable goat-smell—he would take the place of the Gargonius with whom Horace in the same passage contrasted him. It is nowadays not enough to use ointment, unless you put on a fresh coat two or three times a day, to keep it from evaporating on the body. But why should a man boast of this perfume as if it were his own?
14. If what I am saying shall seem to you too pessimistic, charge it up against Scipio’s country-house, where I have learned a lesson from Aegialus, a most careful householder and now the owner of this estate; he taught me that a tree can be transplanted, no matter how far gone in years. We old men must learn this precept; for there is none of us who is not planting an olive-yard for his successor. I have seen them bearing fruit in due season after three or four years of unproductiveness.[2] 15. And you too shall be shaded by the tree which
Is slow to grow, but bringeth shade to cheer
Your grandsons in the far-off years,[3]
as our poet Vergil says. Vergil sought, however, not what was nearest to the truth, but what was most appropriate, and aimed, not to teach the farmer, but to please the reader. 16. For example, omitting all other errors of his, I will quote the passage in which it was incumbent upon me to-day to detect a fault:
319
