Via Sacra and the Via Latina recall the same, and the lofty crown of the Capitol, that mighty seat of empire.… The hidden poison of envy implants its infirmity in wretched affairs, and brings overthrow only to such. That thou shouldst be envied, and not envy, beseems thy skill.… How great the power of the anathema! Whatever Marius and Julius wrought with the slaughter of soldiers, thou dost with thy small voice.… What more does Rome owe to the Scipios and the other Quirites than to thee?"
Perhaps the glyconic metre of this poem was too much for Alphanus. His awkward constructions, however, constantly reflect classic phrases. And how naturally his mind reproduced the old pagan—or fundamental human—views of life, appears again in his admiring sapphics to Romuald, chief among Salerno's lawyers:
"Dulcis orator, vehemens gravisque,
Inter omnes causidicos perennem
Gloriam juris tibi, Romoalde,
Prestitit usus."
Further stanzas follow on Romuald's wealth, station, and mundane felicity. Then comes the sudden turn, and Romuald is praised for having spurned them all:
"Cumque sic felix, ut in orbe sidus
Fulseris, mundum roseo jacentem
Flore sprevisti.…"
Apparently Romuald had become a monk:
"Rite fecisti, potiore vita
Perfruiturus."[1]
This turn of sentiment curiously accorded with the poet's own fortune and way of life; for Alphanus, with all his love of antique letters, was also a monk and an ascetic, of whom a contemporary chronicler tells that in Lent he ate but twice a week and never slept on a bed. Yet monk, and occasional ascetic, as he was, the ordinary antique-descended education and inherited strains of antique feeling made the substratum of his nature, and this although he could inveigh against the philosophic and grammatical studies flourishing
- ↑ "Ad Romualdum causidicum," printed in Ozanam, Doc. inédits, p. 259.
