Past Perfect: From Rome To Brindisi

In the spring of 37 B.C., the Roman poet Horace set off down the Appian Way, the grand, ancient highway beginning in Rome and stretching some 350 miles to the southeastern coast of Italy. His destination: the port city of Brundisium (modern Brindisi), a popular point of embarkation for Romans heading to Greece. Along the way, Horace met up with his patron, Maecenas (who had been summoned to Athens to settle a prickly political dispute between Mark Antony and Octavian), and with other luminaries of Maecenas’s literary circle: Virgil, Plotius Tucca and Varius—“surely the finest [men] the world has to offer,” wrote Horace. For 17 days Horace and his companions negotiated the perils of travel in the ancient world: rainy days, sleepless nights, questionable food, poor accommodations. Horace suffered from an upset stomach and inflamed eyes, not to mention the trickery of a local girl, who had promised the poet a midnight rendezvous. Horace recounts these misfortunes in one of his Satires, the fifth poem of Book I. Though the Satires contain some of the formal rhetoric found in other Augustan poetry, their style primarily mimics the breezy candor of casual conversation. The hexameters of Satire I.5 seem to spring not from the pen of an epic poet, but from the jaw of a spirited raconteur—one who enjoyed nothing more than regaling his companions with his own stories and being entranced by theirs. “As long as I’m in my right mind,” the poet declares, “I’ll never prefer/Anything in the world to a delightful friend.”—Ed.

I left lofty Rome on a trip, stopping first at Aricia,
At a quiet little inn. My companion was Heliodorus,
By far the best Greek rhetorician alive. From Aricia
We pushed on to Forum Appi, a place jammed with boatmen
And sharp innkeepers. This forty miles took us two days—
Took us slowpokes two days: real travelers make it in one.
The Appian Way is less rough if you take it in stages.
At Forum Appi I found the water so foul
I made war on my stomach and waited fuming while friends
Finished their dinner.

Now night was preparing to spread
Her darkness on earth, to station her stars in the heavens.
And boatmen and slaves began cursing each other to pieces.
“In here with that sieve!” yells a porter. “OH, NO!” shouts a slave,
“You’ve already got three hundred on board! Call it quits!”
Never take a night boat, reader. You spend the first hour
Paying fares and hitching up the mule. Then fearless mosquitoes
And resonant swamp frogs keep sleep safely at bay.
A sailor and passenger, soused with cheap wine, compete
In songs to their absent girl friends. The mule driver finally
Drops off to sleep: the lazy driver lets the mule browse,
Fastens the rope to a rock, stretches out, and snores.

Dawn was already at hand before we observed
That the boat hadn’t budged an inch. Then a hot-tempered tourist
Leaped ashore, cut a switch from a willow, lit into the mule
And the driver, drumming on their domes and their bones.
Even so, it was ten when we finally got through the canal
And washed our faces and hands in your sacred spring,
Feronia, goddess of groves.

And then, after breakfast,
We wormed our way onward, taking the rest of the day
To arrive at the village of Anxur, loftily posed
On its limestone cliffs. Here was the rendezvous
With noble Maecenas and Nerva, on a mission of state,
Men deft at settling the quarrels of sensitive allies.
And here I treated my poor inflamed eyes with black salve.
Then Maecenas arrived, and Nerva, and Fonteius Capito,
A perfectly turned-out person, and close friend of Antony.

At Fondi we gladly took leave of His Honor Aufidius
And laughed at this Special Assistant, the so-protocolorful
Erstwhile slave, clad in purple and broad-striped toga,
With his charcoal burner of a thurifer.

Next, Formiae,
Mamurra’s town, of course, where we stayed for a while
Resting up, at the villa of L.L.T.V. Murena,
But took our meals with Capito. The next day’s dawn
Shone forth most auspiciously, for Vergil, you see,
And Plotius and Varius joined our group at Sinuessa.
These men are surely the finest the world has to offer,
And no one is more indebted to them than am I.

We embraced and rejoiced at being together again!
As long as I’m in my right mind, I’ll never prefer
Anything in the world to a delightful friend.

Our next roof
Was a small farmhouse near the bridge as you enter Campania,
Where the padrone is always required, according to law,
To supply you with food and fuel. We went on to Capua,
Where the mules laid aside their packsaddles early in the day.
Maecenas went off to play ball, but Vergil and I
Went to sleep. Playing ball is hard on a man with sore eyes
And a man with a weak digestion.

The farm of Cocceius,
Lying north of the taverns of Caudium, next took us in
And into its well-stocked larder.

Now, Muse, I’ll recite
Quite briefly, the battle of wits between that jackass-
Of-all-trades, Sarmentus, and Messius, named Cock-of-the-Walk.
I’ll review the lineage of each combatant: good Messius
Derives from the Oscan yokels. Sarmentus belonged to
His owner, still living. From these progenitors our heroes
Came to do battle. Sarmentus struck first: “I say you,
You eunuch horn!” That brought the house down; even Messius
Laughed. “Touché!” he agreed, and brandished his forehead.
“Lucky for us,” Sarmentus kept on, “your one horn
Was cut off; you’re bad enough as it is, as you are,
In your amputated state.” (Shaggy Messius’ scar
Cut an ugly line through his forehead.) And Sarmentus kept after him,
Making cracks about his face and allusion to Naples disease.
“Hey, you play the part of Cyclops the Shepherd: you won’t need
A mask, or boots, or anything.” Cock-of-the-Walk
Had a few things to say of his own. “Have you hung up your chains
To the lares, ex voto?” he asked. “You’re a white-collar worker,
Of course, but your owner has property rights, you know.
And why run away in the first place? A thin little thing
Like you could live nicely on one pound of flour.” Such horseplay
Made supper a festive occasion.

Next stop, Benevento.
Here our painstaking host set his house afire while basting
Some skinny little thrushes. The fire slipped out of the grate,
Took a nonchalant stroll around the old kitchen, then rushed
Toward the roof, soaring upward and beginning to lick at the beams.
You should have seen the starved guests and the quavering slaves
Grab their food, and all trying to put out the fire at once.

Next, the familiar hills of my native Apulia
Showed their sirocco-scorched features. We just wriggled through
By the grace of a farmhouse near Trivicus that took us in
For the night. The green branches, leaves and all, in the fireplace
Brought tears to our eyes. Here, like a fool, I was tricked
By a girl who had said she’d drop in. I waited till midnight,
When sleep overcame my desire, and my pique at the cheek
Of such flagrant nocturnal omission. Even so, my dreams,
Composed of improper views, drenched my stomach and nightgown.

We next rolled downhill in carriages twenty-four miles
To stay at a town whose name just won’t scan, but whose nature
It’s easy to describe. They sell water here, but the bread
Is marvelous, so good that the smart tourist loads up his slaves
(For Canusium, formerly founded by brave Diomedes,
Has bread made of gravel and owns not a jug more of water).
Here, Varius sadly took leave of his sorrowful friends.

Then, weary, we came into Rubi—the stretch was a long one
And made worse by the rain. The next day’s weather was better,
But the road was worse, to the walls of fish-fertile Bari.

Gnatia, a town clearly built when the fresh water nymphs
Were at odds with the natives, gave us some jokes and some laughs.
They want you to think that the incense flares on the altars
Without any flame. LET APELLA THE JEW BELIEVE IT—
I WON’T. I’ve been taught that the gods live a carefree life;
That if nature produces a miracle, it is not the gods
In their anger who send it on down from high heaven.

Brindisi
Marked the long journey’s end, and at this point I ran out of paper.

Translated by Smith Palmer Bovie; from The Satires and Epistles of Horace (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1959).

In the spring of 37 B.C., the Roman poet Horace set off down the Appian Way, the grand, ancient highway beginning in Rome and stretching some 350 miles to the southeastern coast of Italy. His destination: the port city of Brundisium (modern Brindisi), a popular point of embarkation for Romans heading to Greece. Along the way, Horace met up with his patron, Maecenas (who had been summoned to Athens to settle a prickly political dispute between Mark Antony and Octavian), and with other luminaries of Maecenas’s literary circle: Virgil, Plotius Tucca and Varius—“surely the finest [men] the world has to […]