Readings from Latin Verse Part 12

The goat was Olenian, i.e. Aetolian. 21. Attica plaustra: Charles' Wain (the Great Dipper), which Bootes was imagined to drive. The latter constellation is called tardus as being so placed in the sky that it requires a long time for its setting. 24. Tiphys: the pilot of the Argo.

28. Thessala pinus: the Argo, the first s.h.i.+p, which, built under the direction of Pallas, with Jason as leader and heroes like Hercules, Castor, and Pollux as crew, sailed to Colchis in the Far East in quest of the Golden Fleece (which perhaps originally meant the fleecy, golden clouds of sunrise). The Sirens, Scylla, and the Symplegades were some of the dangers of the journey. Medea, daughter of the king of Colchis, aided Jason to secure the fleece and fled with him. See Smith, _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology_, 'Argonautae.'

32. illa: the Argo. 34. montes: the Symplegades, floating rocks at the entrance of the Euxine, which clashed together to crush whatever might come between them. 36. velut...sonitu: groaned as with ethereal sound, i.e. dashed together with a sound like thunder. 38. mare deprensum: the sea caught between and forced up by the closing rocks. 42. In the prow of the Argo was a piece of the speaking oak of Dodona. 43. virgo Pelori: Scylla. 45. omnes...hiatus: opened all her mouths together. 48. dirae pestes: the Sirens, maidens who by sweet songs lured sailors to their sh.o.r.e and devoured them. Orpheus saved his companions by drowning the Sirens' song with the music of his lyre.

These stories are told in _Odyssey_, 12, in Apollonius Rhodius, 4. 889 ff., and (in English) in Charles Kingsley's _Greek Heroes_.

55. Medea, abandoned by Jason for Creusa, in the later action of this play slays her rival and her own children. 68-72. Thule: a distant island not identified,--possibly Iceland, more probably the largest of the Shetland Islands,--regarded by the ancients as the northern limit of the known world.

Seneca, considering the progress of maritime discovery in the past, was led naturally to the thought that new lands would some day be discovered beyond the ocean. The conception was not new. Cicero, _Tusculanae Disputationes_, 1. 28, speaks of a south temperate zone, cultivated and inhabited, unknown to us. This, of course, is not necessarily beyond the sea, though Mela places it there. Cicero again in _De Republica_, 6. 20 implies that there are other islands than the Roman world surrounded by other seas than the Atlantic. Plato, _Timaeus_, 24-25, says that beyond and surrounding the Atlantic there is a vast continent, between which and the western coast of Europe and of Libya are a number of islands, of which Atlantis before its submergence was the largest. Strabo, 1. 4. 6, says it is quite possible that in the temperate zone there may be not only the island that forms the world as known to his contemporaries, but two such or even more, especially near the circle of lat.i.tude which is drawn through Athens and the Atlantic Ocean. See Smith, _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography_, 'Atlantic.u.m mare' and 'Atlantis.'

Lowell, in his _Columbus_, represents the discoverer as naming this pa.s.sage,--said also by tradition to have made a deep impression on his mind,--along with Canto XXVI of Dante's _Inferno_ and Plato's _Timaeus_ and _Critias_, as inspiring him to his attempt:

Then did I entertain the poets' song, My great Idea's guest, and, pa.s.sing o'er That iron bridge the Tuscan built to h.e.l.l, I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chains Whose adamantine links, his manacles, The western main shook growling and still gnawed.

I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale Of happy Atlantis, and heard Bjorne's keel Crush the gray pebbles of the Vinland sh.o.r.e: _I listened musing to the prophecy Of Nero's tutor-victim_...

And I believed the poets.

The son of the discoverer wrote in his copy of the tragedies opposite these lines,--'This prophecy was fulfilled by my father, the Admiral Christopher Columbus, in the year 1492.'

_2._ Agamemnon returns to Argos after the capture of Troy, his wife Clytemnestra expressing deep joy at his return. He has brought with him as a captive Ca.s.sandra the seer who, suddenly swooning, sees in prophetic frenzy Agamemnon's death and her own at the hand of Clytemnestra and her paramour, Aegistheus. Agamemnon wors.h.i.+ps Jupiter and Juno at the altar and then enters the palace to his death.

1, 2. Tandem...terra. Cf. Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_, 503 ff., 810 ff.

laris: Roman coloring. 3. diu: taken with felix. 4. Asiae: objective genitive, after potentes, B. 204, 1; A. & G. 349, a.

5. vates: Ca.s.sandra. corpus: accusative of specification. 7. recipit diem: i.e. revives. 9. optatus ff.: with a double meaning to the audience. 10. Festus ff.: Troy fell immediately after the festivities that celebrated the withdrawal of the Greek fleet. Cf. _Aeneid_, 2. 246 ff. 11. Cecidit ff.: for the death of Priam cf. _Aeneid_, 2. 506 ff. 13.

Priamum: King Agamemnon's fate is to be such as King Priam's. Priam was slain at the altar, and these altars (aras, 1. 11) awaken forebodings.

14. Ubi ff.: where faithless wives are, is calamity. 15. Libertas: the freedom of death. 19. dum excutiat deum: until she casts off the influence of Apollo who has thrown her into the prophetic frenzy. 21.

pater: Jupiter. 24. cuncta: accusative of specification. 25. Argolica Iuno: Hera had a famous shrine at Argos. For an account of excavations there see Waldstein, _The Argive Heraeum_. 26. Arab.u.mque donis: incense.

supplice fibra: the entrails of the sacrificed animals (pecore votivo), whose condition was supposed to indicate the will of the G.o.ds.

VII. LUCAN.

39-65 A.D.

Lucan, full of warmth and vehemence, eminently quotable, but, to speak frankly, one whom, orators rather than poets should imitate.-- Quintilian, 10. 1. 90.

When I consider that Lucan died at twenty-six, I cannot help ranking him among the most extraordinary men that ever lived.-- Macaulay.

The whole production (the _Pharsalia_) is youthful and unripe, but indicative of genuine power.--Teuffel, Schwabe, and Warr, _History of Roman Literature_, vol. 2, p. 78.

Lucan was born in Spain; was taken early to Rome; was carefully educated; wrote much; and was much admired; but was disliked by Nero, who forbade him to publish poems or recite them, and finally put him to death on the charge of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso.

In philosophy Lucan was a Stoic, in style a rhetorician. The _Pharsalia_, his only extant work, is an epic poem of about eight thousand lines in ten books on the civil war between Pompey and Caesar.

The Cato of _Selections_ 2-5 is Cato the Younger, or 'the Stoic,' who in 46 B.C. was in Africa in command of a part of the Republican forces opposed to Julius Caesar. After the decisive defeat at Thapsus he refused to survive the Republic, taking his own life at Utica. His memory was revered throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. Vergil makes him the lawgiver of Elysium (_Aeneid_, 8. 670), and Dante represents him as the warden of Purgatory, 'venerable,' his countenance adorned with the 'rays of the four consecrated stars,' his form destined to s.h.i.+ne brightly on the last day.

For her [i.e. Liberty] to thee not bitter Was death in Utica, where thou didst leave The vesture, that will s.h.i.+ne so, the great day.

See Longfellow's translation of the _Purgatorio_, with notes, Canto I.

Haskins, _Lucani Pharsalia_, Introduction, pp. 59-60, examines all allusions to Cato in the _Pharsalia_, and concludes that the picture is in its main outlines truthful, though the failure to depict 'the cross-grained perversity that moved the complaints of Cicero' makes it somewhat one-sided. 'Of course the portrait is colored by a loving hand: but it is none the worse for that.'

For Reference: Teuffel, Schwabe, and Warr, _History of Roman Literature_, vol. 2, p. 78 ff. Haskins, _Lucani Pharsalia_ (London, 1889).

Metre: Dactylic Hexameter, B. 368; A. & G. 616.

_2._ 4. deis placuit: that Caesar 'had the strongest battalions' proves that 'Heaven' was 'on his side.'

_3._ Cato, proceeding by land from the neighborhood of Cyrene toward Numidia, and coming to the temple of Jupiter Ammon,--geographically misplaced by Lucan,--is advised by Labienus to consult the G.o.d concerning the outcome of the war and the nature of virtue. The selection gives his reply. 1. mente gerebat: of. Seneca, _Epistula_ 4.

12 (41). 1, 2. 'G.o.d is near you, is with you, is within you. I have this to say, Lucilius: a sacred spirit has his abode within us.' 3. Labiene: Caesar's former second-in-command, who went over to Pompey's side at the beginning of the Civil War and was finally slain at Munda. 5. et: even.

6, 7. Fortuna perdat minas: whether Fortune threatens vainly. 8.

et...honestum: and whether the right never grows more, right by success.

10. Haeremus ff.: We are in constant intercourse with heaven.--Haskins.

11. Sponte dei: by the inspiration of G.o.d.--Haskins. 12, 13.

dixit...licet: the inner light of conscience. auctor: the Creator.

15-17. These lines suggested the pa.s.sage in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey:

I have felt...a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.

virtus: Grotius quotes Hierocles: 'G.o.d hath not upon earth a place more truly his than the pure heart,' and the Pythian oracle: 'I joy in reverent mortals even as in Olympus.' Superos...ultra: Why further do we seek the G.o.ds? Iuppiter...moveris: All that you see, and all your feelings, that is Jupiter.--Haskins. Cf. Seneca, _De Beneftciis_, 4. 8: Quoc.u.mque te flexeris, ibi ilium videbis occurrentem tibi: nihil ab illo vacat, opus suum ipse implet. 22. Servata fide: true to his word. 23.

populis: dative, to the mult.i.tude, i.e. of Orientals waiting to consult the oracle.

_4._ 10. Fortuna fuit: i.e. was due to fortune rather than to virtue.

Fortuna is predicate nominative. 14. quam...Iugurthae: i.e. than to win the victories of Marius.

_5._ This n.o.ble portrait is that of an ideal Stoic. Roman life had been deeply imbued with this philosophy, which had pa.s.sed beyond the limits of the schools to become at once a religious creed and a practical code of morals for everyday use. See Mackail, _Latin Literature_, p. 171. 2.

servare...tenere: to hold fast the mean, to observe the due limit. These and the following phrases are Stoic formulae. 4. Cf. Seneca, _Epistula_ 95 (15.3). 52-53, where he says 'we are members of a great body.' 'Let this line be both in our hearts and on our lips:

"Human I am, And every human interest is mine."'

See the entire pa.s.sage. 12. sibi nata: selfish.

VIII. STATIUS.

40-95 A.D.

Statius, whose father before him was a poet, was born at Naples. His works consist of the _Thebais_, an epic in imitation of the _Aeneid_ and having for its subject the story of the Seven against Thebes; the _Achilleis_, intended to celebrate the deeds of Achilles, but never completed; and the _Silvae_, a collection of thirty-one miscellaneous poems, of which our selection is one.

For Reference: Fr. Vollmer, _Silvae_, Leipzig, 1898.

Metre: Dactylic Hexameter, B. 368; A. & G. 615.

_1._ 1. placidissime divum: cf. Statius, _Thebais_, 10. 126, 127: mitissime divum, Somne; Ovid, 11. 623-625-.

Somne, quies rerum, placidissime Somne deorum, pax animi, quem cura fugit, qui corda diurnis fessa ministeriis mulces reparasque labori;

and Shakspere, _Macbeth_, II. 2. 37 ff.: