COUNTRY LIVING
One of the troubles of urban life was faenus (we saw the ablative, faenore) or interest from moneylending. After sixty-six lines of beautiful rural rhapsody, Horace pulls a neat trick. The last four lines reveal that it is not the poet himself speaking. The long hymn to agriculture is quoted from Alfius, a moneylender. In case we miss the irony, he uses the word faenerator:
haec ubi locutus faenerator Alfius,
iam iam futurus rusticus,
omnem redegit Idibus pecuniam,
quaerit Kalendis ponere.
Having said all this, the moneylender Alf,
bound for the farm life any minute now,
called in his cash in the middle of the month,
the better to lend it out again on the first.
It’s a genuinely funny turn, I think, but the best thing about it is that it doesn’t invalidate the earlier section of the poem. The praise of the country life is idealised, of course. But read it a few times and visit a working farm, and you’ll find some lines that still have resonance for you. We will return to Horace, and to this wonderful poem, in future lessons. For now, let’s look at a very different poet.