Months ago I made this comment on a post whose reblogs have now been blocked:
this is literally in Virgil's first Bucolic:
TITYRUS. Urbem quam dicunt Romam, Meliboee, putavi stultus ego huic nostrae similem, quo saepe solemus pastores ovium teneros depellere fetus. Sic canibus catulos similis, sic matribus haedos noram, sic parvis componere magna solebam. Verum haec tantum alias inter caput extulit urbes quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.
paraphrasing, this means Meliboeus you wouldn't believe I was an idiot thinking Rome was going to be like our city but bigger instead it's not only bigger but way cooler than any other city ever
and then further on in the Bucolic he goes on to lick the god-emperor's boots, obviously.
And ever since then guilt has been wracking me HARD.
because I was WRONG and . It's actually unclear whether Virgil in the first Bucolic is licking the god-emperor's boots because:
Octavian was not god-emperor at the time he wrote it;
we aren't even sure he was the divine iuvenis mentioned.
I guess I'm just prejudiced against Augustan age poets, they creep me out. Ok, there was a period of disorders, but the solution they all promoted was to usher in centuries of incompetent or semi-competent all-powered tyrants. To me, their poetry sounds like a stampede of people running to prostrate themselves at the feet of absolute power. A delicate stampede made of lyrical, light-hearted poetry concerning itself with love, shepherds and melancholy myths, of aggrandizing, hypocritical historiography, and of boot-licking epics. To let the masses forget that they used to have a democracy of sorts.
Especially you, Horace. Nunc est bibendum MY ASS, you moron.
Also because there were other poets, like Bibaculus for instance, but their production is gone because they dared to criticize Octavian.
My problem is that the iuvenis in the first Bucolic might be identified as various people, but I believe we still have Virgil's production because he could also be identified with Octavian. Just like the child in the IV Bucolic might be identified with Jesus. And I'm angry about the fact that powers that shouldn't have anything to do with art have managed to shape not only their own age but the way it is perceived and thought of by posterity.
But at least I have corrected my error and my conscience is at peace.
