PERSIUS, SATIRE V
explosive Pop! No; your language is that of everyday life;[1] skilled in clever phrasing, rounded but not full-mouthed, you know well how to chide vicious ways,[2] how to hit off men's foibles with well mannered pleasantry. Let these be the sources from which you draw; leave to Mycenae her banquets, her heads and extremities, and make acquaintance with the dinners of common folk."
19Nay, indeed, it is no aim of mine that my page should swell with pretentious trifles, fit only to give solidity to smoke. To yourself alone, Cornutus, do I speak; I now shake out my heart to you at the bidding of the Muse; it is a joy to me to show you, beloved friend, how large a portion of my soul is yours. Strike it and note carefully what part of it rings true,[3] what is but paint and plaster of the tongue. It is for this that I would ask for a hundred voices; that I may with clear voice proclaim how deeply I have planted you in the recesses of my heart, and that my words may render up all the love that lies deep and unutterable in my inmost soul.
30When first as a timid youth I lost the guardianship of the purple, and hung up my bulla as an offering to the short-girt household gods; in the days when comradeship was sweet, and my gown, now white,[4] permitted me freely to cast my eyes over the whole Subura— at the age when the path of life is doubtful, and wanderings, ignorant of life, parted my
- ↑ The toga was worn in comedy, as representing the dress of ordinary life, while the praetexta was worn in tragedy. This line, and especially the use of the word iunctura, is imitated from Hor. A. P. 47–8 and 242.
- ↑ The pallor, as elsewhere, is the pallor of debauchery.
- ↑ The metaphor from unbaked pottery is repeated from iii. 21. 22. The phrase pictae tectoria linguae is strained, combining as it does two different ideas;—lit. "the plaster of a painted tongue."
- ↑ Not "my yet unsullied gown" (Conington), but "my gown now white," as distinguished from the toga praetexta of boyhood.
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