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"The days of man are numbered, and his life-time short and irrecoverable; but to increase his renown by the quality of his acts, this is the work of virtue...." Famam extendere factis: no fabulous personage of antiquity made more haste than Guynemer to multiply the exploits that increased his glory.
Virgil not only implies, he often clearly states, the original epic values of life, the Homeric values; as in the famous: Stat sua cuique dies; breve et inreparabile tempus Omnibus est vitae: sed famam extendere factis, Hoc virtutis opus. But to write a poem chiefly to symbolize this simple, heroic metaphysic would scarcely have done for Virgil; it would certainly not have done for his time.
Theocritus and Ovid in turn lament the short life of Adonis, whose blood was changed into flowers. And in Virgil the father of the gods, whom Pallas supplicates before facing Turnus, warns him not to confound the beauty of life with its length: Stat sua cuique dies; breve et irreparabile tempus Omnibus est vitae; sed famam extendere factis, Hoc virtutis opus. . .
All translators have rendered "contus" by "pole," notwithstanding the fact that the word is used in a very different sense in Priapeia, x, 3: "traiectus conto sic extendere pedali," and contrary to the tradition which lay behind the gift of an apple or the acceptance of one. The truth of this may be established by many passages in the ancient writers.
It is the answer solemnly made to the solemnly asked question by the Court of Love held by the Countess of Champagne in 1174, and registered by Master Andrew the King of France's chaplain: "Dicimus enim et stabilito tenore firmamus amorem non posse inter duos jugales suas extendere vires."
Liberti non multum supra servos sunt, raro aliquod momentum in domo, nunquam in civitate; exceptis duntaxat iis gentibus, quae regnantur: ibi enim et super ingenuos et super nobiles ascendunt: apud ceteros impares libertini libertatis argumentum sunt. XXVI. Fenus agitare et in usuras extendere, igno tum: ideoque magis servatur, quam si vetitum esset.
In Barnes's Euripides, Cantab. 1694, fol. p. 515, is a fragment of Euripides with a note which may explain the muddle of Boswell's correspondent: Certe ille deorum Arbiter ultricem cum vult extendere dextram Dementat prius." See ante, ii. 445, note 1. Sir D. O. is, perhaps, Sir D'Anvers Osborne, whose death is recorded in the Gent. Mag. 1753, p. 591.
This whole topic of freedmen is an oblique censure of Roman custom in the age of the Emperors, whose freedmen were not unfrequently their favorites and prime ministers. XXVI. Fenus agitare. To loan money at interest. Et in usuras extendere. And to put out that interest again on interest.
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