/lit/ - Literature

Where the fuck are the classics threads?

Back in the olden days there were groups here learning Greek and Latin.

Lately I've been really into Horace's satires and epistles, mostly because his flaccid epicureanism reflects my own flaccid hedonism. I've also been reading the metamorphoses at work. I didn't used to like Horace, I thought of him as a sort of Alexander Pope, and I still do, but he was definitely a great poet and I'm glad I got back into him.

In Greek I'm reading Homeric Hymns

What is /lit/ reading?

Hello /lit/, I was wondering if anyone could help me with Horace Serm. I.iii.68-72

nam vitiis nemo sine nascitur: optimus ille est
qui minimis urgetur. amicus dulcis, ut aequum est,
cum mea compenset vitiis bona, pluribus hisce,
si modo plura mihi bona sunt, inclinet, amari
si volet: hac lege in trutina ponetur eadem.

for no one is born without faults: he is best,
who is affected with the least. A sweet friend, as is just,
when he weighs my good qualities against my faults, and there are more faults,
if there are only more good things for me, let him lean in, be loved
if he wants: under this condition he will be weighed on the same scale

What the fuck does this even mean? Horace is definitely the final boss of Classical lit.

Fairclough rendered it
>My kindly friend must, as is fair, weigh my virtues against my faults, if he wishes to gain my love, and must turn the scales in their favour as being the more numerous - if only my virtues are the more numerous. On that condition he shall be weighed on the same scale.

But "must turn the scales in their favour as being the more numerous" doesn't make sense, shouldn't "pluribus hisce" be taken with "vitiis"?

Acronius glosses this passage: Amicus bonus debet conpensare mea uitia cum bonis et, si plura sunt bona, ad ea propensior fieri, idest ea magis laudare.
"A good friend should weigh my faults with my virtues and, if there are more virtues, praise them more."

So he seems to take it the same way. What am I missing?

>In pompous introductions, and such as promise a great deal, it generally happens that one or two verses of purple patch-work, that may make a great show, are tagged on; as when the grove and the altar of Diana and the meandering of a current hastening through pleasant fields, or the river Rhine, or the rainbow is described. But here there was no room for these [fine things]: perhaps, too, you know how to draw a cypress: but what is that to the purpose, if he, whe is painted for the given price, is [to be represented as] swimming hopeless out of a shipwreck? A large vase at first was designed: why, as the wheel revolves, turns out a little pitcher? In a word, be your subject what it will, let it be merely simple and uniform.

>The great majority of us poets, father, and youths worthy such a father, are misled by the appearance of right. I labor to be concise, I become obscure: nerves and spirit fail him, that aims at the easy: one, that pretends to be sublime, proves bombastical: he who is too cautious and fearful of the storm, crawls along the ground: he who wants to vary his subject in a marvelous manner, paints the dolphin in the woods, the boar in the sea. The avoiding of an error leads to a fault, if it lack skill.

Was Horace just a meme poet?