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it by your laws; I should offend, O Cæsar, against the public interests, if I were to trespass upon your time with a long discourse.[1]
Romulus, and father Bacchus, and Castor and Pollux, after great achievements, received into the temples of the gods, while they were improving the world and human nature, composing fierce dissensions, settling property, building cities, lamented that the esteem which they expected was not paid in proportion to their merits. He who crushed the dire Hydra, and subdued the renowned monsters by his forefated labor, found envy was to be tamed by death [alone]. For he burns by his very splendor, whose superiority is oppressive to the arts beneath him:[2] after his decease, he shall be had in hon-
- ↑ The poet is thought to begin with apologizing for the shortness of this Epistle. And yet it is one of the longest he ever wrote. How is this inconsistency to be reconciled? The case, I believe, was this. The genius of epistolary writing demands, that the subject-matter be not abruptly delivered, or hastily obtruded on the person addressed; but, as the law of decorum prescribes (for the rule holds in writing, as in conversation), be gradually and respectfully introduced to him. This obtains more particularly in applications to the great, and on important subjects. But now the poet, being to address his prince on a point of no small delicacy, and on which he foresaw he should have occasion to hold him pretty long, prudently contrives to get as soon as possible into his subject; and, to that end, hath the art to convert the very transgression of this rule into the justest and most beautiful compliment.
That cautious preparation, which is ordinarily requisite in our approaches to greatness, had been, the poet observes, in the present case, highly unseasonable, as the business and interests of the empire must, in the mean time, have stood still and been suspended. By sermone, then, we are to understand, not the body of the Epistle, but the proem or introduction only. The body, as of public concern, might be allowed to engage, at full length, the emperor’s attention; but the introduction, consisting of ceremonial only, the common good required him to shorten as much as possible. It was no time for using an insignificant preamble, or, in our English phrase, of making long speeches. This reason, too, is founded, not merely in the elevated rank of the emperor, but in the peculiar diligence and solicitude with which, history tells us, he endeavored to promote, by various ways, the interests of his country. So that the compliment is as just as it is polite. It may be further observed, that sermo is used in Horace to signify the ordinary style of conversation (see 1 Sat. 3. 65, and 4, 42), and therefore not improperly denotes the familiarity of the epistolary address, which, in its easy expression, so nearly approaches to it. Hurd. - ↑ I have partly followed Anthon, but the variety of interpretations in this passage is most perplexing. See M'Caul’s notes.
