Grattius

Grattius Faliscus was a Roman poet who flourished during the life of Augustus (63 BC – AD 14). He is known as the author of Cynegeticon, a poem on hunting.

Quotes

• Blandimenta vagae fugies novitatis.
  • You are to shun the allurements of fleeting novelty.
  • Cynegeticon, 114 (Tr. Duff)

• ——— Sed lubricus errat
  mos et ab expertis festinant usibus omnes.
  • But slippery fashion goes its wandering round, and all men are in haste to discard usages which have been tried.
  • Cynegeticon, 115 (Tr. Duff)
  • Qtd. as an epigraph in John Evelyn, Tyrannus, or, The Mode, 2nd ed. (London: G. Bedel, and T. Collins, ... and J. Crook), title-page, with the variant error for errat: reproduced in Memoirs, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn, 1819), p. 309

• Omnia tela modi melius finxere salubres.
  • All weapons have been the better fashioned by healthy moderation.
  • Cynegeticon, 121 (Tr. Duff)

• Magnum opus et volucres quondam fecere sagittae.
  • Once on a day great work was wrought by swift arrows.
  • Cynegeticon, 126 (Tr. Duff)

• Mille canum patriae ductique ab origine mores
  quoique sua.
  • Dogs belong to a thousand lands and they each have characteristics derived from their origin.
  • Cynegeticon, 154 (Tr. Duff)
  • Cf. Pseudo-Oppian, Cynegetica, I. 400

External links

• J. Wright Duff; Arnold M. Duff, Minor Latin Poets, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library (1934), p. 143

• John Henderson, "Going to the Dogs: Grattius and the Augustan Subject", Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, no. 47 (2001), pp. 1–22