Satire 1.5

Satire 1.5, by diverse hands…  italics represent my corrections.  Tonius has not submitted his lines!

34-42

Willingly we leave behind Fundi with its praetor Aufidius Luscus, laughing at the mad official’s prizes,  the toga praetexta and the broad purple stripe and the chafting dish of charcoal. Then we, weary, remain in  the city of the Mamurrarae, with Murena offering his house, Capito his kitchen.  The next day dawns very welcome [to us]; for Plotius and Varius and Vergil meet us at Sinuessa, --the earth has never borne souls more noble, nor is any other more closely bound to me than they (LC)

 43-49

Oh, what embraces and how much delight(s) there was!

 [sanus= the healthy man that I am?—sort of—[as long as I’m] healthy, I would compare nothing to a pleasant friend.

A   small country house which (= quae) [is] near the Campanus Sea, offered/gave (us) shelter and  officials [offer] firewood and salt, which they are supposed to (quae debent) From here, the mules, after (some) time, put off (their?) pack-saddles in Capua.

Maecenas goes to play (NOTE SUPINE! , (while) Vergil and myself go to sleep;

 For playing ball is unpleasant to the blind and those with indigestion

( JB)

50-

from here Cocceius receives us in his most spacious villa, which is higher than the inns of Caudium. Now, I wish, Muse of mine, that you remind me in a few (words)  of the fight of  the loafer Sarmentus and Messius , and born from what father each went to battle. The race of Oscan Messius is noble; the owner of Sarmentus lives: sprung from these ancestors they came to the fight. First, Sarmentus:  “I say that you look similar to a wild horse.”  (AB)

57-64

We laugh, and Messius himself (says) "I approve" and moves his head.

"Oh, if your forehead were not with the horn having been cut away," he says, "What could you do when, mutilated in this way, you menace in this way?" And indeed, his ugly scar had disfigured the bristly brow of the left side of his face. Having jested about very many things respecting the Campanian disease, and [his] face, he kept asking [him] to dance “The Cyclops as Shepherd” (???), (saying that) there was no need for him to use a mask or tragic high shoes.  (KR)  

This probably refers to a mime-- a comic dance performance.  Theocritus wrote an Idyll in which the crude Cyclops Polyphemus falls in love with a sea nymph and tries to woo her, but makes a fool of himself; the Cyclops in love seems to have been a popular mime topic.