Satire 4

      Such poets as Cratinus, Eupolis,

      and Aristophanes—and numerous

      other proponents of Old Comedy—

      were of this habit: if, deservedly,

      somebody should be called out as a louse5

      or thief, a killer, or a cheating spouse,

      they would not feel restrained as they applied

      their brand. Lucilius wholly relied

      on them; he'd copy them but rearrange

      their feet and rhythms as the only change.10

      He was keen-witted and a keen-nosed guy,

      though crude when giving poetry a try.

      This was his flaw: convinced it was a feat,

      he'd stand upon one foot as he'd complete

      two hundred lines of verse in just one hour.15

      During this slog, you'd wish you had the power

      of correcting what he was reciting.

      He was a gasbag, lazy in his writing

      (writing competently, anyway);

      as for his mounds of verse, I am blasé.20

      Look! Here's Crispinus sneaking up to tease

      me with a “deal”:

      “Go grab your tablets, please,

      and I will grab mine. Let's arrange a place,

      a time, and referees, and have a race

      to see who writes the most!”

      The gods were kind25

      in shaping me a poor and puny mind,

      which rarely has much insight to express,

      but as for you, go chase your happiness

      and imitate the air enclosed within

      a bellows struggling against goat-skin30

      until the iron softens in the fire!

      How fortunate is Fannius, supplier

      of his own books and busts, while what I write

      goes unread, and I'm frightened to recite

      in public for this reason: with my style35

      there are some people who will barely smile

      since nearly everyone deserves some scorn. Pick someone from a crowd! He'll be forlorn from greediness or failures in his life. This fellow's lusting for another's wife—40 that guy for boys. The glint of silver captures yet another fellow; bronze enraptures Albius. Another's deals are done from distant regions of the rising sun to places heated by its evening rays.45 Indeed, he's carried headlong through hard days just like a whirlwind's dust, afraid to lose his capital or profits he pursues. This bunch is stupefied by verse, and scorns the poets: “He has hay upon his horns!50 Stand back!” If he stirs laughter, he won't spare himself or friends, and he'll be thrilled to share whatever he has scribbled on his sheets with everybody beating their retreats from a hot oven or a water trough,55 including crones and slaveboys! Don't race off! Come listen to a bit of my reply: to start with, I do not identify myself as a real poet. You'd opine that it is not enough to write a line60 in meter, and a person such as me who writes a chatty sort of poetry could never be regarded in your eyes as a real poet. You would recognize a person who is brilliant, with a mind65 that is far more inspired and the kind of voice that resonates. Based on that thought, some doubted whether comic verses ought to count as verse because they can't convey great force and energy in what they say70 or how they say it. Though arranged in feet (unlike prose) that incessantly repeat, it's still just prose. “And yet the father raves because his spendthrift son who madly craves his slutty girlfriend doesn't take a deal75 to marry for a dowry that's unreal, and shames himself by marching drunk through town with torches though the sun is not yet down.”

      So would it be less acrimonious

      with the late father of Pomponius?80

      Accordingly, it is inadequate

      to write a line that is inanimate,

      which, if examined closely, would portray

      a father's rage exactly the same way

      it happened in that play. As for all this85

      I'm writing now and what Lucilius

      produced in times past, if you rearranged

      the meter and the rhythm, and exchanged

      our first and latest words “when dreaded War's

      unlocking iron-studded gates and doors,”90

      a