Jean-Bruno Gassies, French
“I’ve Managed To Get Hold of Mark Anthony’s Christmas List, Augustus. He’s Asking for an XBox, a Panini Press, and Something Called a ‘Sex Swing’? Oh, and Dominion Over the Known World,” 1814
Oil on canvas
Follow That Is Priceless on Social Media and GoComics (the Link button):
Click to Follow This Blog or Share This Masterpiece:
Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated French Wikipedia page has more).
/// Rome’s Augustus charged Virgil to write
The Aeneid and then to recite
his grand epic out loud
to a small select crowd.
Cæsar’s sister slumps, senseless from fright.
/// Though it seems she dozed off because bored,
she’d, in fact, heard a verse she abhorred.
Chapter six, being read,
praised her son who is dead,
so she fainted, which Cæsar ignored.
/// His wife, Livia isn’t aware
sis Octavia sags in her chair.
She sits, hands clasped and meek,
listening to Virgil speak.
On her face an odd, half-frightened stare.
/// Liv has no idea what Virgil means,
but she never complains, causing scenes.
She thinks, “Stay still and small.
They won’t see you at all.
Just don’t move ‘til the banquet convenes.”
/// She’d be crushed if her Gus should allege
she’s too dumb for an epic with “edge.”
Once, she quietly fled
when some Homer was read.
She backed bit-by-bit into a hedge.
/// Great Augustus is rapt, peering hard
at the lips of his favorite bard.
He supported the Arts,
and can’t wait for the parts
all about him and in which he starred.
/// The Imperator, Gus, thinks it’s vital
that the skills shown by Virgil entitle
him to perfect attention.
That’s why Cæsar won’t mention
his sis fainting from grief mid-recital.
/// From Demosthenes, Virgil would seek
proven cures to improve how to speak.
With his mouth opened wide
he placed pebbles inside.
Now his Latin sounds like mumbled Greek.