write no verses, am found more false than the Parthians:[1] and, awake before the sun is risen, I call for my pen and papers and desk. He that is ignorant of a ship is afraid to work a ship; none but he who has learned, dares administer [even] southern wood to the sick; physicians undertake what belongs to physicians; mechanics handle tools; but we, unlearned and learned, promiscuously write poems.
Yet how great advantages this error and this slight madness has, thus compute: the poet’s mind is not easily covetous; fond of verses, he studies this alone; he laughs at losses, flights of slaves, fires; he contrives no fraud against his partner, or his young ward; he lives on husks, and brown bread; though dastardly and unfit for war, he is useful at home, if you allow this, that great things may derive assistance from small ones. The poet fashions the child’s tender and lisping mouth, and turns his ear even at this time from obscene language; afterward also he forms his heart with friendly precepts, the corrector of his rudeness, and envy, and passion; he records virtuous actions, he instructs the rising age with approved examples, he comforts the indigent and the sick. Whence should the virgin, stranger to a husband, with the chaste boys, learn the solemn prayer, had not the muse given a poet? The chorus entreats the divine aid, and finds the gods propitious; sweet in learned prayer, they implore the waters of the heavens;[2] avert diseases, drive off impend-
- ↑ The Romans had frequent experience of Parthian perfidy. Such was their amusing Crassus with a treaty of peace, and cutting his army in pieces. Even their manner of flying when they fought, was a kind of military lie and imposture, which spoke the character of the nation; nor is it an ill resemblance of a poet who renounces rhyming, yet continues to write. Cruq.
- ↑ In the time of a general drought, sacrifices, called aquilicia, were performed to Jupiter to implore rain. The people walked barefooted in procession, and hymns were sung by a chorus of boys and girls. But to reduce the god to a necessity of hearing them, they rolled a great stone, called lapis manalis through the streets, being persuaded it had a virtue of bringing down rain. But the priests never brought forth this miraculous stone, until they were tolerably well assured of the success. Tages and Baccis, Bœotian and Etruscan soothsayers, had remarked, that the fibers of the sacrifices were of a yellow color, when the wind turned to rain after a long drought, and ordered the water-stones to be then immediately rolled. “Fibræ jecinoris sandaracei colons dum fuant, manales tune verrere opus est petras.” Such miracles required iucb art to support them. Fran.
