12 As to the woods and groves
and that retirement which Aper denounced, they bring such delight to me that I
count among the chief enjoyments of poetry the fact that it is composed not in
the midst of bustle, or with a suitor sitting before one’s door, or amid the
wretchedness and tears of prisoners, but that the soul withdraws herself to
abodes of purity and innocence, and enjoys her holy resting-place. Here
eloquence had her earliest beginnings; here is her inmost shrine. In such guise
and beauty did she first charm mortals, and steal into those virgin hearts
which no vice had contaminated. Oracles spoke under these conditions. As for
the present money-getting and blood-stained eloquence, its use is modern, its
origin in corrupt manners, and, as you said, Aper, it is a device to serve as a
weapon. But the happy golden age, to speak in our own poetic fashion, knew
neither orators nor accusations, while it abounded in poets and bards, men who
could sing of good deeds, but not defend evil actions. None enjoyed greater
glory, or honours more august, first with the gods, whose answers they
published, and at whose feasts they were present, as was commonly said, and
then with the offspring of the gods and with sacred kings, among whom, so we
have understood, was not a single pleader of causes, but an Orpheus, a Linus,
and, if you care to dive into a remoter age, an Apollo himself. Or, if you
think all this too fabulous and imaginary, at least you grant me that Homer has
as much honour with posterity as Demosthenes, and that the fame of Euripides or
Sophocles is bounded by a limit not narrower than that of Lysias or Hyperides.
You will find in our own day more who disparage Cicero’s than Virgil’s glory. Nor is any
production of Asinius or Messala so famous as Ovid’s Medea or the Thyestes of
Varius.
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