04 - “Oh, anxious humankind! How great the universe’s void! Who’ll read this stuff? This you ask me? No one, dammit. No one?” Persius, Satire 1.1-2

Below I include the opening of Persius' third satire, translated into fourteeners, following Stallings' Lucretius' The Nature of Things (a poem with which Persius' 6-part libellus makes important contact, for example with "void" in the last position of the first line of Satire 1, above). I have made an effort to translate the notorious ambiguity of this scene's "voices" (Housman, Reckford, D'Alessandro-Behr) in contrast to available English translations (Conington-Nettleship, Braund, Rudd), which all seek to mark out voices, characters, or even scenery, formatting the text in ways that render void the interpretive work inherent in ancient lectio. I have tried to make the active experience of "reading" Persius accessible to the contemporary reader. This is a sample of the full satire.

Satire 3.1-34

Of course - it's this. Relentless. Brilliant morn's already at

the windows, and it magnifies the narrow cracks with light.

We're snoring loud enough to ventilate Falernum's foam,

stiff stuff - the dial's shadow (meanwhile) says it's almost noon.

What are you doing? Crazy Dog-Day heat's been cooking crops

for hours now, and every sheep's beneath a sheltering elm,

says someone from my crew. What, really? Truly? Hurry, come

here, someone! No one? Glass-green bile arises, surging up:

I split in half - you'd think the herds of Arcady were braying.

And now a book and two-toned skin whose hairs are shaven off

have reached my hands, as well as papers and a knotty reed.

Then we complain: the liquid's hanging clumpy from the pen

But after adding eau de source to thin out black squid-ink,

we then complain because the nib is dribbling doubled drips.

You loser, more a loser every day: is this what things,

what we have come to? Why not like a little baby dove

or puerile prince demand food mashed to pap-puree,

then wrathfully refuse the teat of mommy's lullaby?

Am I to work with such a pen? Who gets these words? Why chant

these ambiguities? The joke's on you. You've come unglued,

deplorable. A half-baked pot, when struck, rings false, responds

deficiently when still composed of greenish, uncooked slime.

You're wet, soft mud: away with you (and quick), upon the bitter

wheel for shaping without end! But on your father's farm

there's grain in moderation and a sacred jar for salt

(Why be afraid?) and offering-dish, protectress of the hearth.

Is that enough? Or would you put on airs and bust a lung

since you're the thousandth branch upon the Tuscan family tree

or since you don your special toga just to greet your censor?

Leave medals to the masses. I know you inside, skinside.

You're not ashamed to live like Natta, sloppy, belt undone?

But that guy's numbed with vice: the fatted grease has overgrown

his entrails, too; he knows no shame, nor what he's lost. He's sunk

so deep his bubbles nevermore will rise to break the waves.

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Presenters

Kate Meng Brassel, University of Pennsylvania

  SCS-27