The Works of Horace eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 281 pages of information about The Works of Horace.

The Works of Horace eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 281 pages of information about The Works of Horace.
parts.  You may rouse the jaded toper with roasted shrimps and African cockles; for lettuce after wine floats upon the soured stomach:  by ham preferably, and by sausages, it craves to be restored to its appetite:  nay, it will prefer every thing which is brought smoking hot from the nasty eating-houses.  It is worth while to be acquainted with the two kinds of sauce.  The simple consists of sweet oil; which it will be proper to mix with rich wine and pickle, but with no other pickle than that by which the Byzantine jar has been tainted.  When this, mingled with shredded herbs, has boiled, and sprinkled with Corycian saffron, has stood, you shall over and above add what the pressed berry of the Venafran olive yields.  The Tiburtian yield to the Picenian apples in juice, though they excel in look.  The Venusian grape is proper for [preserving in] pots.  The Albanian you had better harden in the smoke.  I am found to be the first that served up this grape with apples in neat little side-plates, to be the first [likewise that served up] wine-lees and herring-brine, and white pepper finely mixed with black salt.  It is an enormous fault to bestow three thousand sesterces on the fish-market, and then to cramp the roving fishes in a narrow dish.  It causes a great nausea in the stomach, if even the slave touches the cup with greasy hands, while he licks up snacks, or if offensive grime has adhered to the ancient goblet.  In trays, in mats, in sawdust, [that are so] cheap, what great expense can there be?  But, if they are neglected, it is a heinous shame.  What, should you sweep Mosaic pavements with a dirty broom made of palm, and throw Tyrian carpets over the unwashed furniture of your couch! forgetting, that by how much less care and expense these things are attended, so much the more justly may [the want of them] be censured, than of those things which can not be obtained but at the tables of the rich?

Learned Catius, entreated by our friendship and the gods, remember to introduce me to an audience [with this great man], whenever you shall go to him.  For, though by your memory you relate every thing to me, yet as a relater you can not delight me in so high a degree.  Add to this the countenance and deportment of the man; whom you, happy in having seen, do not much regard, because it has been your lot:  but I have no small solicitude, that I may approach the distant fountain-heads, and imbibe the precepts of [such] a blessed life.

* * * * *

SATIRE V.

In a humorous dialogue between Ulysses and Tiresias, he exposes those arts which the fortune hunters make use of, in order to be appointed the heirs of rich old men.

Beside what you have told me, O Tiresias, answer to this petition of mine:  by what arts and expedients may I be able to repair my ruined fortunes—­why do you laugh?  Does it already seem little to you, who are practiced in deceit, to be brought back to Ithaca, and to behold [again] your family household gods?  O you who never speak falsely to anyone, you see how naked and destitute I return home, according to your prophecy:  nor is either my cellar, or my cattle there, unembezzled by the suitors [of Penelope].  But birth and virtue, unless [attended] with substance, is viler than sea weed.

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The Works of Horace from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.