Horace -- Translations into English; Latin poetry -- Translations into English
Who then is sound? He, who is not a fool. What is the covetous man? Both
a fool and a madman. What--if a man be not covetous, is he immediately
[to be deemed] sound? By no means. Why so, Stoic? I will tell you. Such
a patient (suppose Craterus [the physician] said this) is not sick at
the heart. Is he therefore well, and shall he get up? No, he will forbid
that; because his side or his reins are harassed with an acute disease.
[In like manner], such a man is not perjured, nor sordid; let him then
sacrifice a hog to his propitious household gods. But he is ambitious
and assuming. Let him make a voyage [then] to Anticyra. For what is the
difference, whether you fling whatever you have into a gulf, or make no
use of your acquisitions?
Servius Oppidius, rich in the possession of an ancient estate, is
reported when dying to have divided two farms at Canusium between his
two sons, and to have addressed the boys, called to his bed-side, [in
the following manner]: When I saw you, Aulus, carry your playthings and
nuts carelessly in your bosom, [and] to give them and game them away;
you, Tiberius, count them, and anxious hide them in holes; I was afraid
lest a madness of a different nature should possess you: lest you
[Aulus], should follow the example of Nomentanus, you, [Tiberius], that
of Cicuta. Wherefore each of you, entreated by our household gods, do
you (Aulus) take care lest you lessen; you (Tiberius) lest you make that
greater, which your father thinks and the purposes of nature determine
to be sufficient. Further, lest glory should entice you, I will bind
each of you by an oath: whichever of you shall be an aedile or a
praetor, let him be excommunicated and accursed. Would you destroy your
effects in [largesses of] peas, beans, and lupines, that you may stalk
in the circus at large, or stand in a statue of brass, O madman,
stripped of your paternal estate, stripped of your money? To the end,
forsooth, that you may gain those applauses, which Agrippa gains, like a
cunning fox imitating a generous lion?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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