Society and politics in ancient Rome: essays and sketches by Abbott Frank Frost 1860-1924

Author:Abbott, Frank Frost, 1860-1924. [from old catalog]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York, Biblo and Tannen
Published: 1963-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

TO CICERO

155

wrested a sure one from them; for each opinion has its sponsors. I doubt not that thou, if from thy books I have learned thy mind, which I seem to myself to know as if I had lived with thee, I doubt not that thou, I say, wilt be the champion of the latter view, and that as thou hast given to Latium the palm in oratory,* so thou wilt in poetry, and that thou wilt have already bidden the IHad to yield to the jEneid, which concession from the very beginning of Virgil's work Propertius did not hesitate to demand. For when he contemplated the beginnings of the Pierian work, what he thought of tliem and what he hoped, he proclaimed openly in these verses:

" I cry you, yield ye Roman writers, yield ye Greeks; An offspring greater than the Iliad is born ? " °

So much for the second Latin leader in eloquence and the second hope of mighty Rome; now I return to thee. What I think of thy life, what of thy genius thou hast heard. Thou art waiting to hear of thy books, what fortune has befallen them, to what extent they are admired, whether it be by the common people or by the learned. There are extant then noble works of thine which we are able, let me not say, to read through, nay, not even to enumerate. The fame of thy deeds is widespread, and thy name is great and fills the ears of men; but the studious are very few in number, whether

Tuac. DUp. I, 3,

> Prop. Ill, 26, 65-6.

PETRARCH'S LETTERS

the cause lie in the sternness of the times or in the dulness and sluggishness of men's minds, or what I the rather think, in the greed for gain which drives the thoughts of men toward other ends. Therefore some of thy books, unless I am deceived, have without doubt been lost, perhaps hopelessly, to us who live to-day; to my gi-eat grief, to tne great shame of our generation, to the great loss of posterity. For it has not seemed shameful enough to neglect the cultivation of our own talents, so that coming generations receive therefrom nothing of profit, but we must needs bring to naught the fruit of thy labor and of the labor of thy countrymen by a neglect utterly cruel and intolerable. For what I lament has happened in the case of thy books and in the case of many works of illustrious men. As my remarks just now were concerning thy books, these are the titles of those whose loss is the more noteworthy: the De Re Publica, the De Re Familiari, the De Re Mili-tari, the De Laude Philosophiae, the De Con-solatione, and the De Gloria, although with reference to this last work, there is rather an uncertain hope than a fixed despair,' Nay, we have lost large parts even of thine extant works, so that, just as if they had been overwhelmed in a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.