HORACE

JOURNEY TO BRUNDISIUM

A SATIRE

1. Companion - Heliodorus – teacher of rhetoric

2. Aricia – humble inn

3. Forum Appii – town packed with boatmen and grasping innkeepers

  • Took two days to complete this part of the journey – usually it would only

take one

  • Suffered an upset stomach due to the bad water – had no evening meal – waited in bad temper for his companion to finish his
  • The barge – boatmen arguing
  • One hour passed in collecting fares and harnessing the mule
  • Vicious mosquitoes and croaking marsh-frogs made sleep impossible
  • Drunken boatman sang of his absent girlfriend and a passenger joined in
  • Passenger eventually fell asleep and the boatman turned the mule out to graze and went to sleep
  • At dawn an angry passenger, realising that the barge wasn’t moving, beat the boatman and mule with a stick
  • Arrived at destination at around ten in the morning

4. Feronia – washed hands and faces in the fountain – after lunch ‘crawled ‘ three

miles to…..

5. Anxur, which is perched on rocks

  • Eyes were giving trouble – smeared black ointment on them
  • Met Maecenas and Cocceius

6. Sinuessa – met by Varius, Plotius and Virgil

  • Provided with food and accomodation for themselves and the horses

7. Capua – unsaddled pack-mules early that evening

  • Maecenas went to play ball
  • Virgil and Horace slept – both suffering from minor ailments –Virgil, from a stomach upset and Horace from sore eyes

8. Caudium – Cocceius treated his guests generously at his farm situated above the inn

9. Beneventum – the innkeeper nearly burned the place down while roasting lean

thrushes on a spit – the kitchen was set on fire and everyone played his part in trying

to salvage supper

10. Apulia – saw the mountains of his native region

11. Trivicum – found lodgings after an arduous journey through the mountains

  • Smoke from the fire at the inn made their eyes water as the innkeeper put green branches on the fire, leaves and all

12. Ausculum – travelled 24 miles there by carriage

  • Here the travellers were charged for water – it cost more than wine!
  • The bread, however, is very good indeed, so that the experienced traveller usually takes some away in his bag for at…

13. Canusium – the bread is as hard as stone.