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Read books online » Fiction » The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter (book series for 12 year olds TXT) 📖

Book online «The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter (book series for 12 year olds TXT) 📖». Author Petronius Arbiter



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budding genius. I need not cite the poets for evidence, for I do not find that either Plato or Demosthenes was given to this kind of exercise. A dignified and, if I may say it, a chaste, style, is neither elaborate nor loaded with ornament; it rises supreme by its own natural purity. This windy and high-sounding bombast, a recent immigrant to Athens, from Asia, touched with its breath the aspiring minds of youth, with the effect of some pestilential planet, and as soon as the tradition of the past was broken, eloquence halted and was stricken dumb. Since that, who has attained to the sublimity of Thucydides, who rivalled the fame of Hyperides? Not a single poem has glowed with a healthy color, but all of them, as though nourished on the same diet, lacked the strength to live to old age. Painting also suffered the same fate when the presumption of the Egyptians “commercialized” that incomparable art. (I was holding forth along these lines one day, when Agamemnon came up to us and scanned with a curious eye a person to whom the audience was listening so closely.)







CHAPTER THE THIRD.


He would not permit me to declaim longer in the portico than he himself had sweat in the school, but exclaimed, “Your sentiments do not reflect the public taste, young man, and you are a lover of common sense, which is still more unusual. For that reason, I will not deceive you as to the secrets of my profession. The teachers, who must gibber with lunatics, are by no means to blame for these exercises. Unless they spoke in accordance with the dictates of their young pupils, they would, as Cicero remarks, be left alone in the schools! And, as designing parasites, when they seek invitations to the tables of the rich, have in mind nothing except what will, in their opinion, be most acceptable to their audience --for in no other way can they secure their ends, save by setting snares for the ears--so it is with the teachers of rhetoric, they might be compared with the fisherman, who, unless he baits his hook with what he knows is most appetizing to the little fish, may wait all day upon some rock, without the hope of a catch.”



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CHAPTER THE FOURTH.


What, then, is there to do? The parents who are unwilling to permit their children to undergo a course of training under strict discipline, are the ones who deserve the reproof. In the first place, everything they possess, including the children, is devoted to ambition. Then, that their wishes may the more quickly be realized, they drive these unripe scholars into the forum, and the profession of eloquence, than which none is considered nobler, devolves upon boys who are still in the act of being born! If, however, they would permit a graded course of study to be prescribed, in order that studious boys might ripen their minds by diligent reading; balance their judgment by precepts of wisdom, correct their compositions with an unsparing pen, hear at length what they ought to imitate, and be convinced that nothing can be sublime when it is designed to catch the fancy of boys, then the grand style of oratory would immediately recover the weight and splendor of its majesty. Now the boys play in the schools, the young men are laughed at in the forum, and, a worse symptom than either, no one, in his old age, will confess the errors he was taught in his school days. But that you may not imagine that I disapprove of a jingle in the Lucilian manner, I will deliver my opinions in verse,--







CHAPTER THE FIFTH.



“The man who emerges with fame, from the school of stern art,
Whose mind gropes for lofty ideals, to bring them to light,
Must first, under rigid frugality, study his part;
Nor yearn for the courts of proud princes who frown in their might:
Nor scheme with the riff-raf, a client in order to dine,
Nor can he with evil companions his wit drown in wine
Nor sit, as a hireling, applauding an actor’s grimace.
But, whether the fortress of arms-bearing Tritonis smile
Upon him, or land which the Spartan colonials grace,
Or home of the sirens, with poetry let him beguile
The years of young manhood, and at the Maeonian spring
His fortunate soul drink its fill: Then, when later, the lore
Of Socrates’ school he has mastered, the reins let him fling,
And brandish the weapons that mighty Demosthenes bore.
Then, steeped in the culture and music of Greece, let his taste
Be ripened and mellowed by all the great writers of Rome.
At first, let him haunt not the courts; let his pages be graced
By ringing and rhythmic effusions composed in his home
Next, banquets and wars be his theme, sung in soul-stirring chant,
In eloquent words such as undaunted Cicero chose.
Come! Gird up thy soul! Inspiration will then force a vent
And rush in a flood from a heart that is loved by the muse!”







CHAPTER THE SIXTH.


I was listening so attentively to this speech that I did not notice the flight of Ascyltos, and while I was pacing the gardens, engulfed in this flood-tide of rhetoric, a large crowd of students came out upon the portico, having, it would seem, just listened to an extemporaneous declamation, of I know not whom, the speaker of which had taken exceptions to the speech of Agamemnon. While, therefore, the young men were making fun of the sentiments of this last speaker, and criticizing the arrangement of the whole speech, I seized the opportunity and went after Ascyltos, on the run; but, as I neither held strictly to the road, nor knew where the inn was located, wherever I went, I kept coming back to the same place, until, worn out with running, and long since dripping with sweat, I approached a certain little old woman who sold country vegetables.



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CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.


“Please, mother,” I wheedled, “you don’t know where I lodge, do you?” Delighted with such humorous affability, “What’s the reason I don’t” she replied, and getting upon her feet, she commenced to walk ahead of me. I took her for a prophetess until, when presently we came to a more obscure quarter, the affable old lady pushed aside a crazy-quilt and remarked, “Here’s where you ought to live,” and when I denied that I recognized the house, I saw some men prowling stealthily between the rows of name-boards and naked prostitutes. Too late I realized that I had been led into a brothel. After cursing the wiles of the little old hag, I covered my head and commenced to run through

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