The Epistles
Book I: Epistle II
Translated by A. S. Kline © 2005 All Rights Reserved
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Contents
BkIEpII:1-31 The value of reading Homer
BkIEpII:32-54 Sapere aude: dare to be wise
BkIEpII:55-71 Limit your desires
Lollius
Maximus, while you are orating, at
I’m at Praeneste re-reading Homer’s Trojan War:
Where he tells us what’s foul or fair, beneficial
Or not, more clearly than do Chrysippus or Crantor.
Listen to why I think so, if nothing prevents you.
The tale, which tells how
With a foreign race, because of Paris’s amour,
Records the passions of foolish kings and clans.
Antenor suggests they return the woman who caused
The war: and
To manage his affairs in safety, and live content!
Nestor is keen to end the quarrel of Achilles
And Agamemnon: one fired by love, both by anger.
However the princes rave, the Acheans suffer.
In-fighting, cunning, and crime, lust, and anger,
There’s error inside and outside the walls of
Conversely, in Ulysses, Homer shows us a fine
Example of what virtue and
A tamer of
And the cities of men, and endured many hardships
As he struggled to bring his men and himself back home
Over wide seas, un-drowned by waves of adversity.
You know of the Sirens’ songs and Circe’s potions:
If Ulysses had been foolish and greedy enough
To drink these last like his comrades, he’d have become
Brutish, mindless, in thrall to a whore of a mistress,
Existing like a vile dog, or hog that loves the mire.
We are the masses, born to consume earth’s produce,
Penelope’s idle suitors, or Alcinous’ young
Men, preoccupied with tending their appearance,
Who thought it a fine thing to slumber till
And soothe their cares to rest, to the sound of their lutes.
Brigands rise in the depths of night to cut men’s throats:
Won’t you wake, to save yourself? Just as, you’ll have to
Run with dropsy, if you won’t start now when you’re sound,
So, if you don’t summon a book and a light before dawn,
If you don’t set your mind on honest aims and pursuits,
On waking, you’ll be tortured by envy or lust.
Why so quick to remove a speck from your eye, when
If it’s your mind, you put off the cure till next year?
Who’s started has half finished: dare to be
He who postpones the time for right-living resembles
The rustic who’s waiting until the river’s passed by:
Yet it glides on, and will roll on, gliding forever.
Wealth you want, and a fertile wife to bear children,
And uncultivated woods to be tamed by the plough:
But he who’s handed enough, shouldn’t long for more.
Houses and land, piles of bronze and gold, have
Freed their owner’s sick body from fever, or his spirit
From care: if he wants to enjoy the goods he’s
Their possessor must be well. House and fortune grant
As much pleasure to one who’s full of fear and craving
As painting to sore eyes, poultice to gouty joint,
Or lute to ears that ache from accumulated wax.
Unless the jar is clean whatever you pour in sours.
Scorn pleasures: the pleasure that’s bought with pain does harm.
The greedy always want: set fixed limits to longing.
The envious grow thin while their neighbours fatten.
Sicilian tyrants invented no worse torture
Than envy. The man who fails to control his anger,
Rushing to scourge the hated and un-avenged by force.
Will
Anger’s a brief madness: rule your heart, that unless
It obeys, controls: and check it with bridle and chain.
Its master trains a tender-necked colt that will learn
To take the path its rider directs: a hunting dog
Works the woods from the first moment it barks
At a deer’s hide in the yard. While you’re still a boy,
And pure-hearted, drink in my words, trust your betters.
A jar will long retain the odour of what it was
Dipped in when new. But if you
I don’t wait for the slow, or play follow my leader!
End of Book I Epistle II