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From Specimens of the Poets and Poetry of Greece and Rome by Various Translators, edited by William Peter, A. M. of Christ-church, Oxford; Philadelphia: Carey and Hart; 1847; p. 425.
425
LABERIUS
[Died 43 B. C.]
A ROMAN knight f respectable family and character, and a composer of Mimes; but chiefly kown to posterity by a prologue which he wrote and spoke, on being compelled by Julius Cæsar to appear upon the stage. Though acquitting himself with grace and spirit as an actor, he could not refrain from expressing his detestation of the tyranny which had made him such. In one of the scenes he personated a Syrian slave, and, whilst escaping form the lash of his master, exclaimed — “Porro, Quriites, libertatem perdidimus;” and shortly after added — “Necesse est multos timeat, quem multi timent;” at which the eyes of the whole audience were instantly turned towards Cæsar, who was present in the theatre.
It as not merely to entertain the people, who, (as it ahs been justly observed,) would have been as well amused with the representation of any other actor, nor to wound the private feelings of Laberius, that Cæsar forced him on the stage. HI sole object was to degrade the Roman knighthood, to subdue their spirit of independence and honour, and to strike the people with a sense of his unlimited sway. It was the same policy which afterwards led him, and his successors in the empire, to convert their senators into gladiators and buffoons, and to encourage men of the noblest families, their Fabii and Mamerci, to caper about the stage, barefooted and smeared with soot, for the amusement of the rabble.
Laberius did not long survive his mortification. Retiring form Rome, he died at Puteoli, about ten months after the assassination of Cæsar.
The titles, and a few fragments, of his Mimes are still extant; but, excepting the prologue, these remains are too inconsiderable and detached for us to judge either of their subject or their merits.*
* See Dunlop’s History of Roman Literature, vol. i., p. 554.
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PROLOGUE .
Translated by Neaves and Ayton
NECESSITY — the current of whose sway
Many would stem, but few can find the way —
To what abasement has she made me bend,
Now when life’s pulse is ebbing to its end!
Whom no ambitious aim, nor sordid bait,
Fear, force, nor influence of the grave and great,
Nor meed of praise, nor any lure beside,
Could move, when youthful, from my place of pride;
Lo, in mine age how easily I fall!
One honied speech from Cæsar’s tongue was all;
For how might I resist his sovereign will,
Whose every wish the gods themselves fulfil?
Twice thirty years without a blemish spent,
Forth from my home this morn a knight I went,
And thither I return — as what? a mime!
O, I have lived one day beyond my time!
Fortune — still wayward both in bad and good,
If ’twas thy pleasure in thy changeful mood,
To tear the wreath of honour from my brow,
Why was I not far earlier taught to bow,
When with such aid as youth and strength afford,
I might have won the crowd, and pleased their lord?
Now, why thus humbled in the frost of age?
What scenic virtues bring I to the stage?
What fire of soul, what dignity of mien,
What powers of voice to grace the mimic scene?
As creeping ivy kills the strangled tree,
So the land clasp of years has dealt with me.
Nought left, alas! of all my former fame,
Save the poor legend of a tomb — my name!
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