The Mimi of Publilius Syrus survive as a collection of single-line Latin maxims, arranged alphabetically by their opening word, on fortune, fear, anger, money, friendship, power, and the conduct of a life. They are the remnants of a Roman stage form—the mime—that flourished in the first century BCE, and the edition these notes follow is a scholarly one: it prints the verses with an address to the reader, gathered testimonies from ancient authors, and a dense apparatus of variant readings drawn from manuscripts and earlier editors.
The collection’s history is a history of salvage. Earlier printings were partial and unreliable: Godofredus worked from corrupt parchments found at Cambridge, with lines stitched in from Seneca; Scaliger altered verses at his own judgment and even substituted a line of Laberius for a Publian one; Henricus Stephanus grouped the maxims by subject rather than by letter. The decisive gain came from a manuscript found in the library at Freising and sent on through two brothers, which supplied many pointed and genuinely Publian lines missing from every previous edition. The editor keeps the traditional alphabetical order so that each letter’s series runs as it always has.
The Editor’s Preface and the Making of a Fuller Syrus
The volume opens with an address to the reader in which the editor explains his relationship to the great Renaissance editions of Publilius Syrus. He is not reprinting Muretus; he publishes his own collection alongside Muretus’s so that the most elegant genius of the present age may be joined to the most elegant genius of antiquity. Godofredus had printed some Mimiambi from parchments found at Cambridge, but Godofredus himself complained that they were badly corrupt and padded with sentences stitched in from elsewhere, many of them lifted from Seneca. Scaliger published some Mimos of Syrus, yet never made clear what foundation he relied on or whose copies he followed; he alters some verses at his own judgment, omits others, and in one place substitutes a verse of Laberius for a Publian one. Henricus Stephanus also issued some Mimiambi, arranging them not by letters, as the others did, but by subject-headings.
The decisive turn came through the church library at Frisingen. Antonius Veiserus, canon of the cathedral church there, found manuscripts and sent them to his brother Marcus, an Augustinian, who passed them to the editor. In the Frisingen codex the editor discovered a large number of Mimiambi of the best quality—truly Publian, elegantly pointed—that were missing from every previous edition. Hence a new edition, the fullest of all. He defends the worth of the material by appeal to Seneca, who selected these sayings from theatrical trifles and adorned the precepts of wisdom with them, knowing that the severe intimate rules of ethics are aptly bound to the numbers of the Mimi. Seneca’s argument, quoted at length, is that nature gave the seeds of virtue and that verse sharpens the sense the way the narrow channel of a trumpet clarifies breath into sound; sentiments in loose prose strike us negligently, but once feet and numbers bind them they are whirled like a weapon from the arm. The theater resounds at lines such as “Many things are lacking to the poor man; to avarice, all things” and “The avaricious man is good to no one; he is worst to himself,” and even the sordid fellow applauds his own vice being rebuked. Because the first collector arranged the Mimi alphabetically, the editor keeps that order, following the series of each letter.
Testimonies from Seneca and Macrobius
The elogia gathered after the preface establish Syrus’s rank. Seneca, in the eighth epistle, asks how many poets say what philosophers have said or ought to say, and observes how much distinguished verse lies among the Mimi—how many things of Publius must be spoken not in slippers but in the buskin. From De tranquillitate vitae comes the praise that Publius, more vehement in tragic and comic genius, whenever he left behind mimical trifles and words aimed at the topmost gallery, produced among other things stronger than the buskin and not merely the stage-curtain: “What can happen to anyone can happen to you.” Macrobius, in the Saturnalia, is cited for the reason why Caesar transferred to Publius Syrus the favor he had earlier shown another.
The Alphabetical Maxims: Fortune, Faith, Fear, Necessity
The main text proceeds as an alphabetical lexicon of sententiae, each headed by its first letter and accompanied by marginal sigla and cross-references to Seneca’s De clementia. Under Fortune the maxims form a compact philosophy of her power: Fortune gives no one more than counsel; she has no right over a man’s character; great fortune is great slavery to its master; she is sooner found than retained; she makes foolish whom she too much favors; she is content to harm no one only once; she inclines where favor inclines; when she flatters she comes to capture; she is glass—when she shines, she breaks; by use she gives many things, by ownership nothing; she takes away nothing except what she gave; nothing is done well that is done on Fortune’s credit; no fortune is so good that you cannot complain of something in it; the worst fortune is one that hides from enemies, or one lacking an enemy.
Fidelity follows: no one loses faith except he who has none; he who loses faith can lose nothing further; faith, like the soul, never returns whence it departed; faith is never safe in base crimes. Fear restrains the wicked, not clemency; fear rarely leaves room for dreams; one should always fear whom you wish to be safe; to fear death is crueler than to die; by contemning death you conquer all fears; no one reaches the highest place by fearing; he whom many fear must fear many; necessity makes the needy liar. Necessity gives law, does not receive it; it obtains from man what it wills; what it hides is sought in vain; what it demands, if you do not give, it snatches; its remedy is frugality; any weapon is useful to it; the wise man never denies anything to necessity; necessity knows nothing except to conquer.
Anger, Crime, and the Rule of Money
Anger is dissected with the same economy: felicity is its nurse; returning to itself it is angry with itself; the angry man thinks even a crime permitted and speaks nothing not in the place of crime; anger forgets law, and law sees the angry man while the angry man does not see the law; the anger of a good man is most grievous; to conquer anger is to surpass the greatest man; brief are the forces of the angry, long those of the enemy. On vice and punishment the collection holds that wickedness is exercised by work, not begun; exile is suffered by him who denies himself to his country; severity of punishment does not make the ruler feared; crime is made more bitter by silence; he confesses the crime who flees judgment; the wicked man, even if he cannot harm, still thinks; a bad man, when he feigns good, then is worst; no one is made good by another’s fear; punishment of the wicked is a safeguard for the good; a judge is condemned when the guilty is absolved; to spare the wicked is to aid wickedness; he who defends the guilty shares the crime.
Money receives its own cluster: money is the queen of all things; it does not sate the miser but irritates; if you know how to use it, it is a handmaid, if not, a mistress; one must command money, not serve it; avarice is like a unique monster; to the miser nothing is lacking, but everything to avarice; in the poor small things are lacking, to avarice all things; the miser is good to no one, worst to himself; no cause of denying is ever lacking to the miser; no gain is so great as to spare what you have; it is better to have lost than to receive basely.
From Perfugere to Vultu: Clemency, Shame, and Friendship
The alphabetical run continues from Perfugere through Vultu. To flee to a weaker party is self-surrender; the bold conquer danger before it arrives, while the timid see dangers even where none exist; clemency is perpetual victory; a force strong only to harm is pestilential. Slanderers curse themselves in cursing the vicious, and the shameful thing charged is recognized in the one who charges it. Most fear reputation, few conscience; many cease from sin through fear, not innocence, and are timid rather than innocent. Fortune hides more than it protects; it is worse than punishment to succumb to injury, worse than death to live wretchedly without means; punishment comes swiftly when it hastens; pain is relieved when grief is loosened; the wicked delays punishment but does not escape it. Whoever is useful to his country is the people’s slave; after calamity the memory of it is another calamity; a merciful powerful man is public happiness; power in adversity is never happiness; to anger the powerful is to seek danger. What is not free cannot be honorable; the absent avenger is always present. Piety to parents, affection to kindred, faith to friends, equity to all are set out; discord begins when something common is made private; the savagery of princes is war. Deliberate before promising, then act; to deny first and do it later is to deceive. Good repute is the greatest inheritance; read faults and erase them; he who gives a benefit well receives a share; a freedman without nature is a son. He who wishes to help but cannot is wretched; to sin for masters counts as virtue; pain that kills pain serves as medicine. Hasty judging is seeking a crime; give much to a friend for a cause, and much even against a friend. Be more religious the better you are; foresee in peace what war profits. Confession holds the place next to innocence; a fool’s joke is sport to the wise; dismissed shame never returns to favor; shame cannot be taught, only born; he who strips another’s shame loses his own; to have shame is a kind of slavery; shame that fear does not bend, it does not break. It is most beautiful to furnish all things demanding nothing; the miser is a pupil of brief age; God looks on pure, not full, hands. The stronger is he who subdues desires rather than enemies; the greatest riches are not to desire riches. She who wishes to seem beautiful denies herself too much; happy is the life passed without business. It is unjust to harm because you hate, more unjust to hate because you are injured; it is great strength to neglect the one who hurts you, for he who avenges feels it. It is great to be praiseworthy without being praised; how evil is he who makes his fault another’s.
A series of “how wretched” maxims follows: ingratitude; being unable to excuse oneself; help that harms; being praised by one you cannot complain of; regretting a good deed; being forced to oppress one you wish saved; a consumed evil renewing itself; losing what few have; desiring death yet unable to die; duty without success; counsel overcome by chance; being caught by those who defended you. How repentant are the things men incur by living long; how often he who refused pardon seeks it. The adviser, however harsh, harms no one. Though you act so no one hates you deservedly, there will always be those who hate. Though what helps is not right, think it right. The later one sins, the more shameful the beginning. Whom you cannot hold by good, restrain by evil; calamity easily finds whomever it seeks; to complain of one you love is itself an evil; whom fame has once crushed is scarcely restored. He who mingles calmly with evils is evil; he who dissembles well harms an enemy sooner. Whatever will be more than just, incline to the more humane part; whatever you concede to a good man, you give a share to yourself; whatever you attempt, consider where you would arrive; whatever is done with virtue is done with glory; whatever fortune adorns is quickly despised; whatever will be highest is born from the lowest; whatever has learned to harm remembers when it can; possessions beyond necessity oppress; the best occasion is whatever must be avenged. He who flatters while grieving is wise after the time; whoever does not wish to harm when he can, helps. Some enemies are grave, some light; some kill enemies not because they had them but because they deserved it. What is sweeter than to have one with whom you dare all things, whom you trust as yourself, to whom you speak as with yourself? How men have wished to have such friends when they cannot themselves be such. The debtor does not love the creditor’s threshold. Nothing is more unhappy than one to whom evil is already necessary. What is it to give a benefit? To imitate a god. What is most hostile to man? Another man. He who serves rightly holds part of mastery. What can anyone hope from one whom he has taught to be a slave?
The Editor at Work on the Text
The commentary that closes the volume is the work of an editor wrestling a corrupt text into sense, verse by verse. His base manuscript, cited throughout as “m. f. f.,” is set against a small family of witnesses: the codex of Freising, the readings of “g.” and “f.,” the notes of Godofredus, and above all Martinus’s Liber de moribus, that much-quoted booklet Godofredus printed alongside Seneca and ascribed to Bishop Martinus. The editor’s recurring observation is that this gnomology is a magpie’s nest, drawing its lines from Seneca, from the Mimi, from Pythagoras and others, so that a verse found there is no proof of Publian authorship.
Conjecture and Correction
At verse 527 he pauses over a sentiment repeated in the De moribus, then moves to repair the manuscript where it faultily reads “Nihil non acerbum prius quam maturum fit.” At 534 he records the variant “Nil proprium ducas quod mutari potest.” At 535 he reconstructs the mime by conjecture from a manuscript line about time and the remedy of safety, reading the scribal compendium “tpe” as “Tempore”—a small decipherment he flags as useful for recovering the German reading behind the text. Verse 536 draws genuine praise: “Turpius quam vitae incipiens senectus,” and he sets beside it Seneca’s third Epistle, where the philosopher mocks those who always begin to live and so live badly, the soul forever imperfect, some beginning to live only when they must cease, others ceasing before they began.
Weighing Witnesses
At 538 he notes that “Nimium altercando veritas amittitur” is cited by Gellius and Macrobius, while the manuscript reads “veritas evertitur”—the tradition itself arguing over whether truth is lost or overturned in quarreling. Verse 539 he corrects by conjecture to “Nimirum est in morte boni, cum nihil sit mali.” At 550 he follows “g.” and Martinus, observing that the manuscript transposes the clause about vices committed in solitude and in the forum. At 554 he gives the manuscript’s line on worshipping God with hands and soul, notes that Martinus inserts only the final sentence into his Gnomologia, and remarks that an elegant mimiambus of Publius lies hidden in the text, waiting to be restored.
Hands, Ruin, and the Chaste House
The verse “Puras Deus, non plenas, aspicit manus” prompts him to dismiss someone’s inept rendering (“Vi ruina perit is quis rimam timet”) and to record instead the readings of Godofredus and the Freising codex: “Non cito ruina perit qui ruinam timet”—he who fears ruin does not swiftly perish by it. At 554 (bis) and 555 he cites Martinus on felicity and on the chaste house. At 557 he notes how many rush to learn who was Scaliger’s source, remarks that Seneca mentions Publius in his Epistle, and quotes “Non est pusillum, si quid maximo est minus.” Verse 559 he assigns to Lucilius, composed in imitation of a Publian mime, on Seneca’s authority in the first Epistle.
Seneca’s Borrowings and a Trochaic Praised
At 562 a sentiment is traced to Seneca’s De ira; at 564 he gives “Non potest non sapere qui se stultum intellegit.” At 565 Martinus cites a mimiambus corruptly. Verse 568 earns warm praise—”Nulla tam bona est fortuna”—an elegant trochaic worth restoring. At 574 Martinus again cites a mime corruptly and the manuscript transposes words. At 577 he gives “Nullus est tantus quaestus, quam eo quod habes parcere,” noting the Freising codex’s faulty “arcere” for “parcere.” At 587 Gellius and Macrobius are cited for “Nunquam periculum sine periculo vincitur,” and at 584 he corrects “cecidit vapor” to “defuit vapor.”
From Reproof to the Voluntary Sin
At 587 (bis) he cites “g.” and Martinus on mixing something bland into reproof. Verse 593 gives Godofredus’s trochaic on hating to sin versus fearing to sin. At 598 he quotes the opening of Martinus’s De moribus: every sin is an act, every act voluntary, therefore every sin voluntary. At 601 “g.” supplies a line on death forestalling those who defer life. At 605 Martinus and Godofredus agree that every affection makes a man think others rage in what he himself rages in.
Stitched from Seneca
At 609–610 the editor observes that the sentiment is stitched together from Seneca’s De remediis fortuitorum, quoting Seneca on evil men speaking ill and on displeasing the wicked being praise, and noting Martinus’s inclusion of it. At 615 Martinus is cited on the orator who must first persuade himself. Verse 617 brings the weightiest attribution: the mime is cited under Publius’s name by Seneca the Rhetorician, the philosopher’s father, in the Controversiae. The manuscript reads “O vitam misero longam, felici brevem,” and the editor recalls the son’s citation in De brevitate vitae of “Exigua pars est vitae quam nos vivimus.”
Cassius Severus and the Closing Word
He then gives the father’s fuller passage: Murrhedius used color, and a Publian sentiment said “Abdicationes suas veneno diluit,” and again “Mortem meam effudi.” Publius, the passage recalls, was complained of when such sentiments had infected young men’s talents, as though he had introduced this madness into the schools. Cassius Severus, a great lover of Publius, said the fault—and there the excerpt breaks off, the volume closing on the half-finished sentence of a devoted reader’s defense.
A World Seen Through Fortune and Fear
Certain preoccupations recur across the alphabet with almost obsessive regularity. Fortune is the collection’s great unstable force: she gives no one more than counsel, holds no right over a man’s character, flatters only to capture, and is glass—when she shines, she breaks. Great fortune is great slavery to its master; no fortune is so good that something in it cannot be complained of. Fear stands beside her as the other governing power: fear restrains the wicked where clemency does not, and to fear death is crueler than to die, so that contempt of death conquers every fear. Necessity, too, gives law and does not receive it, and the wise man never denies anything to necessity. Anger completes the trio of tyrants—the angry man thinks even a crime permitted, law sees the angry man while he does not see the law, and the brief forces of the angry are set against the long forces of the enemy.
Money receives the same unsentimental scrutiny. Money is the queen of all things, yet it should be a handmaid and not a mistress; the miser is good to no one and worst to himself; to the poor, small things are lacking, to avarice all things. The ethical ideal that emerges is self-sufficiency: the mortal who needs least is the one who desires least, and the greatest riches are not to desire riches. The stronger man is the one who subdues his desires rather than his enemies.
The Stage-Tested Shape of a Sentence
Seneca supplies the collection’s best defense, and the editor leans on him heavily. In the eighth epistle he marvels at how much distinguished verse lies among the mimes, and how many things of Publius must be spoken not in the slipper of comedy but in the buskin of tragedy. His explanation, borrowed from Cleanthes, is acoustic: as breath sounds clearer forced through the narrow channel of a trumpet, so the narrow necessity of verse makes our senses clearer. The same thought heard in loose prose strikes less; once meter binds it, the sentiment is whirled as if hurled by the arm. Seneca reports that theaters resound when such lines are spoken—”Many things are lacking to the poor man; to avarice, all things”—and that the most sordid spectator applauds his own vice being rebuked. Macrobius preserves the reason Caesar transferred his favor to Syrus, and Seneca the Rhetorician cites a Publian line in the Controversiae, complaining that such sentiments had infected the talents of the young.
What the Collection Leaves Behind
The maxims themselves are a moral vocabulary rather than a system. They set out duties to parents, kindred, friends, and all; they insist that confession holds the place next to innocence, that a judge is condemned when the guilty is absolved, that sparing the wicked is aiding wickedness. They are equally clear about the cost of integrity: no one loses faith except he who has none, and he who loses faith can lose nothing further. Some lines are almost unbearably compressed—”What is it to give a benefit? To imitate a god”; “What is most hostile to man? Another man.” The editor’s apparatus shows how fragile this inheritance is: verses restored by conjecture, readings corrupted in transmission, a sentiment reassigned from Lucilius, a line recovered from a faulty compendium. What survives is a Roman wisdom literature in its most portable form, sharpened by the constraints of the stage and preserved by the care of readers who thought it worth the trouble.
