Page 195 second only to Cicero, well known to the peoples of Greece and to Egypt, land of my birth (for both have feared and loved thy rule), dost thou ask for poems to appease thy hungry throat? By our friendship, I swear there are none at home. My verses soon learn to trust to their own wings and leave the nest, flying far afield nor ever returning to their humble home. XX. (LII.) _Of an old Man of Verona who never left his home._ Happy he who has passed his whole life mid his own fields, he of whose birth and old age the same house is witness; he whose stick supports his tottering steps o’er the very ground whereon he crawled as a baby and whose memory knows but of one cottage as the scene where so long a life was played out. No turns of fortune vexed him with their sudden storms;[71] he never travelled nor drank the waters of unknown rivers. He was never a trader to fear the seas nor a soldier to dread the trumpet’s call; never did he face the noisy wrangles of the courts. Unpractised in affairs, unfamiliar with the neighbouring town, he finds his delight in a freer view of the sky above him. For him the recurring seasons, not the consuls, mark the year: he knows autumn by his fruits and spring by her flowers. From the selfsame fields he watches the sun rise and set, and, at his work, measures the day with his own round of toils. He remembers yon mighty oak an acorn, and sees the plantation, set when he was born, grown old along [71] This proves the poem to have been written before the Gothic irruption of 401. Abraham Cowley translated this poem (_Essays and Plays, etc._, Camb. Press, 1906, p. 447). * * * * * Page 196 proxima cui nigris Verona remotior Indis Benacumque putat litora Rubra lacum. sed tamen indomitae vires firmisque lacertis aetas robustum tertia cernit avum. 20 erret et extremos alter scrutetur Hiberos: plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae. XXI. (LXXX.) _De Theodoro et Hadriano._ Manlius indulget somno noctesque diesque; insomnis Pharius sacra profana rapit. omnibus hoc, Italae gentes, exposcite votis, Manlius ut vigilet, dormiat ut Pharius. XXII. (XXXIX.) _Deprecatio ad Hadrianum._ Usque adeone tuae producitur impetus irae? nullus erit finis lacrimis? subitisque favorem permutas odiis? quo mens ignara nocendi, quo sensus abiere pii? tantumne licebit invidiae? tantum strepitus valuere maligni? 5 Me dolor incautus, me lubrica duxerit aetas, me tumor impulerit, me devius egerit ardor: te tamen haud decuit paribus concurrere telis. humanae superos numquam tetigere querellae nec vaga securum penetrant convicia caelum. 10 * * * * * Page 197