On an Old Man of Verona Who Never Left His Farm
Lucky old man who spends his days among fields he owns,
whose boyhood house is roof to his gray hairs,
who leaning with cane on the soil of his first footsteps
looks on farmland the long years have not changed.
No unforeseen misfortunes stormed his head with sorrow.
He never tasted the river Far-From-Home.
No merchant, no soldier to quake at breakers, at the trumpet,
no plaintiff buffeted in the raucous forum.
Guiltless of the world, even of his neighboring towns,
he searches the sky’s blue with a carefree eye.
Names of crops, not of consuls, are his calendar:
autumn is apple-picking, spring opening flowers.
His same fields daily send up and receive the sun.
Each day hourly provides its routine chores.
That tall oak, he tells, was an acorn in his pocket.
That orchard, he says, and he grew up together.
Verona? It might be farther off than sunbaked India.
Lake Garda? I might be talking of the Red Sea.
Yet his handshake is firm and friendly; his grandchildren
hang on his muscled arms like two stout boughs.
Trudge, restless traveler, to the sea cliffs of remote Iberia.
You journey, seeking life. He, tending his hearth, found it.
Translation © Carey Jobe. Original:
De sene Veronensi qui Suburbium numquam egressus ist
Felix, quipropiis aevum transegit in Arvis,
ipsa domus puerum quem vidit, ipsa senem;
qui baculo nitens in qua reptavit harena
unius numerat saecula longa casae.
Illum non vario traxit fortuna tumult,
nec bibit ignotas mobilis hospes aquas.
non freta Mercator tremuit, non classica miles,
non rauci lites pertulit ille fori.
indocilis rerum, vicinae nescius Urbis
adspectus fruitur liberiori poli.
fruigibus alternis, non consule computat annum:
autumnum pomis, ver sibi flore notat.
idem condit ager soles idemque reducit,
metiturque suo rusticus orbe diem,
ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum
aequaevumque videt consenuisse nemus,
proxima cui nigris Verona remotiot Indis
Benacumque putat litora Rubra lacum.
sed tamen indomitae vires firmisque lacertis
aetas robustum tertis cernit aevum.
erret et extremos alter scrutetur Hiberos:
plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae.
Notes:
The poetical career of Claudius Claudianus (370-404 A.D.), the last great poet of the Roman Empire, was short but brilliant. At an early age he became, in effect, court poet for the Emperor Honorius (reigned 393-423 A.D.). He composed a host of praise poems for emperor, court favorites, and generals, invectives against court foes, and many shorter poems that reveal his personal character and an interest in nature. He disappears from history without explanation a few years before the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 A.D.
We possess no details, other than the poem itself, concerning On an Old Man of Verona Who Never Left His Farm. The idyllic picture of old age depicted in the poem, written probably in the 390s A.D., captures a moment that was not destined to last. Alaric the Visigoth with a large barbarian force invaded northern Italy in late 401 A.D. and occupied the vicinity of Verona. Roman forces defeated the Goths in the Battle of Verona (402 A.D.), but the devastation of war would have been unlikely to spare the tranquility the Old Man enjoyed.
Carey Jobe