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Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

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RUTILIIS NAMATIANUSBOOK 11My book liad not yet grown too long nor undergonemany windings of its scroll ; '^ in its own rightit might have been longer : but I feared wearinesswould come upon continuous toil—feared lest myreader should shrink from h<strong>and</strong>ling an undividedwork.'' Ofttimes the late-delayed end of a feastbrings distaste for vi<strong>and</strong>s : water in moderatedraughts is the more welcome to thirst : the stonethat by its lettering marks the many miles seems toaftbrd the tired wayfarer some breaks upon the road.'^Between two booklets I divide my nervous modestywhich it had been better to have faced once only.Freed at last from the stormy blockade of the sea,we had the fortune to make for the deep from Pisa'sharbour. Calm smiles the surface of the watersas the sunbeams glitter : the furrowed wave whispers<strong>with</strong> gentle plash. The Apennine slopes heave insight where Thetis ^ chafes at her repulse by a windsweptpromontory.He who would embrace in his view Italy, the queenof the world, <strong>and</strong> form at once a mental picture ofthe whole l<strong>and</strong>, will find that she extends in shapelike an oak leaf,*^^ contracted by the convergingindentation of her sides. In length the distance' i.e. the blushing diffidence of a modest author is spreadover two books instead of one. He ought, he feels, to haveboldly met his qualms of modesty <strong>and</strong> concentrated on asingle book : he now has to meet them over again.^ Thetis, as a sea-goddess, is a metonymy for the sea.Beyond Pisa spurs of the Apennines run out into a loftyheadl<strong>and</strong>.Cf. Plin. X.H. III. 43, referring to Italy as folio mazitne'qutrno adsimilata.823

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