Pumpkinification

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

"Neither Fur Nor Favor!"

And a one and a two. . . .

YOU AIN'T NUTHIN' BUT A HOUND DAWG!!!

The only extant Menippean Satire swings into 
action in this old English Translation on page 132:

           SENECA'S "APOCOLOCYNTOSIS" 

           I wish to record an occurrence which took place 
           in heaven on the third day before the Ides of October, 
           in the new year which began our fortunate 
           era. I am not going to be diverted by either fear 
           or favor! I shall Tell the unvarnished truth. If 
           anybody asks me where I got my information, 
           I say at once, I'll not answer if I don't want to. 
           Who is going to make me ? I know I have been  
           free to do as I like since the day when he died who 
           had made the proverb true: One must be born 
           either king or fool. If I please to answer, I shall 
           say what comes to my tongue. Who ever demanded 
           affidavits from an historian ? Still, if I 
           must produce my authority, apply to the man who 
           saw Drusilla going heavenward; he will say he 
           saw Claudius limping along in the same direction. 
           Willy-nilly, he has to see everything that happens 
           in heaven; for he is the superintendent of the 
           Appian road, by which you know both the divine 
           Augustus and Tiberius Caesar went to join the 
           gods. If you ask this man he will tell you privately ; 
           in presence of more than one he'll never 
           speak a word. For since the day when he took 
           oath in the Senate that he had seen Drusilla going 
           up to heaven and in return for such good news nobody 
           believed him, he has declared in so many 
           words that he'll not testify about anything, not 
           even if he should see a man murdered in the 
           middle of the Forum. What I have heard from 
           him, then, I state positively and plainly, so help 
           him! 

           Now was come the season when Phoebus had 
                      narrowed the daylight, 
           Shortening his journey, while sleep's dim hours 
                      were left to grow longer; 
           Now victorious Cynthia was widening the bounds 
                      of her kingdom; 
           Ugly-faced Winter was snatching away the rich 
                      glories of Autumn, 
           So that the tardy vintager, seeing that Bacchus 
                      was aging, 
           Hastily, here and there, was plucking the clusters 
                      forgotten. 

           I presume I shall be better understood if I say 
           that the month was October and the day October 
           thirteenth; the exact hour I cannot tell you — it's 
           easier to get philosophers to agree than timepieces — 
           but it was between noon and one o'clock.  
           "Too clumsily put!" you will say. "All the 
           poets are unsatisfied to describe sunrises and sun 
           sets, so that they are even tackling the middle of 
           the day: are you going to neglect so good an 
           hour?" . . . .

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