LAUDATOR TEMPORIS ACTI

HEN said Ganymede:-"You're talking in the air, and nobody gives a thought to the famine which threatens us. By Hercules! I haven't been able to get a crumb of bread to-day. And why not? The long drought. Why, I've been on short rations for a year now! The ædiles-curse 'em!-are in league with the bakers. 'One good turn deserves another,' is their motto; and so the poor toil on, and the jaws that crush them make one long holiday. Oh, if we only had some of those valiant defenders, such as I found here when first I came from Asia. That was living. This sort of thing had been going on in the interior of Sicily: there had been a drought as though Jupiter were in a rage with the Sicilians. But I remember Safinius; when I was a boy he lived by the old arch. What a keen tongue the man had! Wherever he went, he caused a flare-up! But he was an upright man, on whom you could depend who stood by his friends-with whom you could play morra in the dark. But when he spoke in the Senate! How he dealt his adversaries one after another a knock-down blow: he didn't talk in the air, either, but went straight to the point. When he was pleading at the bar his voice would peal out like a trumpet; but he never got hot or had to clear his throat. He had a certain something of us Asiatics about him, you see. And how kindly he was! always returned your bow! never forgot a name! Just like one of us! By the same token, when he was ædile, living was dirt-cheap. Two men couldn't get to the end of a penny loaf; while those you get for the same price nowadays are about as a bull's eye. These are bad times; this colony is growing backwards like a calf's tail. And why not? We have a good-for-nothing ædile, who would rather gain a penny than save one of our lives. He lives high, and makes more in one day than all another man's fortune. I know what brought him in a thousand nummi in gold; but if we were any good, we should make him laugh out of the other side of his mouth. But we are all alike, brave as lions at home, timid as a fox abroad. As for me, I've eaten my wardrobe, and if the scarcity continues I shall sell my little cottage. For what will become of us if neither god nor man has compassion on this colony? I wish I may starve if I don't believe it all comes from the gods! For

XIX-713

nobody believes in heaven any longer; nobody keeps the fasts; nobody cares a straw for Jove: but all shut their eye to everything but their possessions. In olden times the women used to go barefoot to the Capitol, their hair loose and their thoughts pure, and implore Jupiter the god of Rain; and immediately the water would come down in bucketfuls, and all laughed with joy. Never a bit of it now! The feet of the women are shod, and the feet of the gods are slow; it's because we don't keep up our religious ceremonies that the fields lie waste."

"Come now," said Echion, the rag-man, "be a little more complimentary! 'Here we go up, and here we go down!' as the peasant said when he lost his spotted pig. What to-day is not, will be to-morrow. Such is life. By Hercules! our country would be all right, if it had any men in it. It's passing through a crisis just now. And that's not the whole of it. We ought to take things as we find them: the zenith is always overhead. If you were in another land, you would say that here the pigs walked round all ready roasted. And we are to have a fine treat in three days' time on the feast-day; none of your professional gladiators, but a lot of freedmen. Our friend Titus has a warm heart and a clever head. He's got something or other up his sleeve. I ought to know, for I'm a great friend of his. He's no sparer of flesh: he will give them good swords and no quarter; the spectators will have a solid heap of dead in their midst: and he can afford it. His father left him a million and a half. Suppose he spends twenty thousand: his fortune won't feel it, and his name will live forever."

Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature by L. P. D.

IN

THE MASTER OF THE FEAST

N THE best of humors, Trimalchio began:-"My friends, even slaves are men, and suck the same milk as ourselves, though ill-luck keeps them down in the world. And by my life! they shall soon drink of the water of freedom. In short, I have set them all free in my will. I have given, besides, a farm to Philagyras, and the woman who lives with him, and to Carrio a whole block of buildings free of taxes, and a bed with bedding. Fortunata I make my residuary legatee, and I recommend her to the care of all my friends; and I make these facts known that

my slaves may love me as well now as though I were already dead."

All began to express their gratitude to their indulgent master. He took it with perfect seriousness; and ordered a copy of his will to be brought, which he repeated from the first word to the last, amid the groans of his household. Then, turning towards Habinnas, "Promise, my dearest friend," said he, "that you will build my monument according to my directions. Let there be a little dog at the feet of my statue, and deck it with garlands and perfumes, and paint about it all the incidents of my life; so by your kindness, though dead, I shall still live. Moreover, I want my lot to have a hundred feet frontage, and be two hundred feet deep. I want you to plant all kinds of apple-trees about my ashes, and plenty of grape-vines. For it is wrong to beautify the homes of the living only, and neglect those abodes where we are sure to make a longer stay. And so I beg you, above all things, to set up a notice: This monument does not pass to the heir.' Moreover, I will provide in my will against any insult being offered my remains: I will put one of my freedmen in charge of my sepulchre, whose business shall be to see that no nuisance is committed there. I beg you put ships on my monument, going under full sail, and my likeness, clad in robes of state, and sitting on the tribune's seat, with fine gold rings on my fingers, and scattering a bagful of money among the crowd;-you recollect when I gave a public entertainment and two denarii apiece to the guests all round. And pray have a dining-room, and all the folks enjoying themselves! At my right hand you must put a statue of my beloved Fortunata holding a dove, and leading a small dog by a leash; and have my Cicaro represented, and some big jars tightly sealed, so the wine cannot possibly run out; and see that they carve a broken urn with a boy weeping over it. Finally you must put a timepiece in the centre, so that whoever looks up to learn the hour will have no choice but to read my name."

At this point Trimalchio began to weep; Fortunata and Habinnas also burst out sobbing, and all the slaves followed suit, till the dining-room resounded with lamentations, as though they were all at a funeral. I also was preparing to burst into tears, when Trimalchio checked me by the remark, "Well then, since we know that we must die, why not live while we may?"

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature' by L. P. D.

THE

ON DREAMS

HE dreams that tease us with their phantoms eerie
Come not from holy shrine nor heavenly space,
But from within. Sleep stays the limbs a-weary,

The truant spirit goes its wanton ways.
Deeds of the day, deeds of the dark. The warrior
Sees hosts in flight and hapless towns on fire;
The monarch slain confronts his fell destroyer,
Amid a weltering waste of blood-stained mire
The Forum's all-triumphant pleader trembles
Before the law, or frets within the bar;
The miser his unearthèd gold assembles,

And baying hounds the huntsman call afar;
The sinking seaman grasps the vessel keeling,
The courtesan indites a billet-doux,

The debauchee counts out his coin unwilling,

The very dogs in dreams their hare pursue.

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature by H. W. P.

EPITAPH ON A FAVORITE HUNTING-DOG

(ATTRIBUTED TO PETRONIUS ARBITER)

ATIVE of Gaul was I, and the name they gave me was Cockle,
After a white sea-shell. I was beautiful too,

NAT
Ν

Ay, and brave! I would scour the darkest depths of the forest, Or upon desolate hill startle the quarry hirsute. Never was need at all of ugly chains to withhold me, Never an insolent lash wounded my snowy skin; Softly I used to lie in the lap of my lord or my lady, Or on the high state bed, when I came panting home.

Even my bark, men said, awoke no terror insensate:

Only a poor dumb beast, yet with a speech of my own! Nevertheless the doom ordained from my birthday o'ertook me, Wherefore I sleep in earth under this tiny stone.

Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by H. W. P.

RAGMENTARY and tantalizing as is the flotsam and jetsam drifted to us from the wreck of Greek civilization, we can yet say, of the literary masterpieces at least, that we have almost always a fair selection from the best in each kind. The bitterest loss is in lyric poetry. Probably most lovers of the old life would be tempted to give up even Pindar's cold and resounding splendor to recover the love songs of Sappho.

In the case of comedy, there can be no doubt that Aristophanes was the one exuberantly original genius, whose lonely height has been reached since then only twice at most: by Molière, and by the myriad-sided creator of Jack Falstaff, Caliban, and Bottom the weaver. If Attic comedy could have but one representative surviving in the modern world, there was no one to contest the right of Aristophanes. And yet his very originality, his elemental creativeness, mocks the patient student who attempts to cite from him historical data, traits of manners, or even usages of the theatre! Nothing in his comic world walks our earth, or breathes our heavier air. We may as well appeal for mere facts to the adventurous Alice.

In a memorable passage at the close of Plato's 'Symposium,' after all the other banqueters are asleep, Socrates forces Aristophanes and the tragic poet Agathon-much against the will of both-to concede that their two arts are one, and that he who is a master artist in comedy can create tragedy no less. Though this seems to us like a marvelous foreshadowing of Shakespeare, it probably was in fact suggested to Plato by a process which he must have seen already far advanced; namely, the rapid approximation of the two dramatic forms to each other, until they were practically fused in the realistic melodrama, the comedy of manners. This creation is chiefly associated by the Athenians themselves with the long happy career of Philemon, though later ages preferred his younger and briefer-lived rival Menander.