TO MARCUS LOLLIUS.
Lest you for a moment imagine that those words will be lost, which I,
born on the far-resounding Aufidus, utter to be accompanied with the
lyre, by arts hitherto undivulged--If Maeonian Homer possesses the first
rank, the Pindaric and Cean muses, and the menacing strains of Alcaeus,
and the majestic ones of Stesichorus, are by no means obscure: neither,
if Anacreon long ago sportfully sung any thing, has time destroyed it:
even now breathes the love and live the ardors of the Aeolian maid,
committed to her lyre. The Lacedaemonian Helen is not the only fair, who
has been inflamed by admiring the delicate ringlets of a gallant, and
garments embroidered with gold, and courtly accomplishments, and
retinue: nor was Teucer the first that leveled arrows from the Cydonian
bow: Troy was more than once harassed: the great Idomeneus and Sthenelus
were not the only heroes that fought battles worthy to be recorded by
the muses: the fierce Hector, or the strenuous Deiphobus were not the
first that received heavy blows in defense of virtuous wives and
children. Many brave men lived before Agamemnon: but all of them,
unlamented and unknown, are overwhelmed with endless obscurity, because
they were destitute of a sacred bard. Valor, uncelebrated, differs but
little from cowardice when in the grave. I will not [therefore], O
Lollius, pass you over in silence, uncelebrated in my writings, or
suffer envious forgetfulness with impunity to seize so many toils of
thine. You have a mind ever prudent in the conduct of affairs, and
steady alike amid success and trouble: you are an avenger of avaricious
fraud, and proof against money, that attracts every thing; and a consul
not of one year only, but as often as the good and upright magistrate
has preferred the honorable to the profitable, and has rejected with a
disdainful brow the bribes of wicked men, and triumphant through
opposing bands has displayed his arms. You can not with propriety call
him happy, that possesses much; he more justly claims the title of
happy, who understands how to make a wise use of the gifts of the gods,
and how to bear severe poverty; and dreads a reproachful deed worse than
death; such a man as this is not afraid to perish in the defense of his
dear friends, or of his country.
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