prorogation[1] of the contest.” For contest is wont to beget trembling emulation and strife, and strife cruel enmities and funereal war.
EPISTLE XX.[2]
TO HIS BOOK.
In vain he endeavors to retain his book, desirous of getting abroad; tells it what trouble it is to undergo, and imparts some things to be said of him to posterity.
You seem, my book, to look wistfully at Janus and Vertumnus;[3] to the end that you may be set out for sale, neatly polished by the pumice-stone of the Sosii.[4] You hate keys and seals, which are agreeable to a modest [volume]; you grieve that you are shown but to a few, and extol public places; though educated in another manner. Away with you, whither you are so solicitous of going down:[5] there will be no returning for you, when you are once sent out. “Wretch that I am, what have I done? What did I want?”—you will say: when any one gives you ill treatment, and you know
- ↑ Diludia posco. The Latins used deludere, to leave off playing. From thence came diludia, to signify a space of time and intermission of fighting given to the gladiators during the public games. Horace therefore pleasantly begs he may have time allowed him to correct his verses, before he mounts the stage and plays for the prize in public. Fran.
- ↑ In 733, Horace published a collection of his Epistles and Satires, and probably placed this Epistle at the head of them, from whence Sanadon places it as a preface to his moral poetry. Under an allegory of a child, unwillingly confined in his father's house, and wishing for liberty, the poet gives his book some critical advice, which may be of much importance to authors in general. The character he draws of himself is natural, and nothing is disguised by modesty or vanity. Fran.
- ↑ Vertumnum Janumque. Vertumnus, according to the Scholiast, was the god who presided over buying and selling, from whence he had a statue and temple in the forum.
- ↑ The Sosii were a plebeian family, well known in Rome, two brothers of which distinguished themselves by the correctness of their books and the beauty of the binding. Comment.
- ↑ The forum was situated between the hills on which Rome was built, from whence we frequently find in forum decendere in Cicero and Seneca. The present reading is of all the manuscripts. Bent. Cun. San.
