Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

DICTA CATONISprose preface ostensibly directing? its precepts to ason {fli karissime) in what we might call a Cato-likemanner, and between this preface and the Distichaare 57 brief prose senientiae, some only two wordslong. About these opinion is sharply divided. Ithas been, on the one hand, argued that some ofthem may be the oldest part of the sayings, thatsome may even go back to Cato the Censor himself,and that some at least were expanded later intodisticha ; on the other hand, it has been argued thatmay have constituted a sum-these breves sentetitioemary introduction based, as excerpts, upon a oncemuch fuller collection of verse sayings.Despite the excisions and alterations to whichChristian re-editing subjected the inferior ethics ofthe original collection, there have survived evidenttraces not merely of antiquity {e.g. in the prosesentences foro par(c)e or ad praetorium siato), but ofpagan principles in the religious thought or thepractical ad\ice. Thus, in the Disticha the polytheistican di sint of II. 2 must be the original text, andis combined with monotheism (ruitte arcana dei) inone manuscript only : II. 12, on divination, andIV, 38, on sacrifice, may be called pre-Christian,while IV. 14, on cleansing by a victim's blood, maypossibly be directed against the doctrine of theatonement. Occasionally the ring is that of worldlycunning, I, 26, or selfishness in I, 11 and in thesecond line of III. 12. A wife's tears. III. 20,or her comiplaints about her husband's favouriteslave, I, 8, must not, readers are enjoined, be too« Skutsch, in P.W. Rmlencyd. V., on "Dicta Catonis,"maintains the priority of the prose sentences in opposition toBischoff.587