JUVENAL'S SATIRES. (continued 2)

I hear the advice that my good friends of ancient days would give—"Put on a lock! keep her in confinement!" But who is to guard the guards themselves? Your wife is as cunning as you, and begins with them. And, in our days, the highest and the lowest are fired with the same lust. Nor is she that wears out the black pavement with her feet, better than she who is borne on the shoulders of her tall Syrian slaves.

Ogulnia, in order that she may go in due state to the games, hires a dress, and attendants, and a sedan, and pillow, and female friends; and a nurse, and yellow-haired girl[264] to whom she may issue her commands. Yet all that remains of her family plate, and even the very last remnants of it,[265] she gives to well-oiled Athletes. Many women are in straitened circumstances at home; yet none of them has the modest selfrestraint that should accompany poverty, or limits herself within that measure which her poverty has allotted and assigned to her. Yet men do sometimes look forward to what may be to their interest hereafter, and, with the ant for their instructress, some have at last felt a dread of cold and hunger. Yet woman, in her prodigality, perceives not that her fortune is fast coming to naught; and as though money, with vegetative power, would bloom afresh[266] from the drained chest, and the heap from which she takes would be ever full, she never reflects how great a sum her pleasures cost her. Some women ever take delight in unwarlike eunuchs, and soft kisses, and the loss of all hope of beard, that precludes the necessity of abortives. Yet the summit of their pleasure is when this operation has been performed in the heat and prime of manhood, and the only loss sustained is that the surgeon Heliodorus cheats the barber of his fees. Such is his mistress' will: and, conspicuous from afar, and attracting the eyes of all, he enters the baths, and vies even with the god that guards our vines and gardens. Let him sleep with his mistress! But, Postumus, suffer not the youthful Bromius to enter the lists with him.

If she takes delight in singing, the fibula of none of these fellows that sells his voice to the prætor holds out: the instruments are forever in her hands; the whole lyre sparkles with the jewels thickly set. She runs over the strings with the vibrating quill,[267] with which the soft Hedymeles performed: this she holds in her hands; with this she consoles herself, and lavishes kisses on the plectrum, dear for its owner's sake. One of the clan of the Lamiæ,[268] a lady of lofty rank, inquired with meal-cake and wine of Janus and Vesta, whether Pollio might venture to hope for the oaken crown at the Capitoline games,[269] and promise it to his lyre. What more could she do were her husband sick? What, if the physicians had despaired of her infant son? She stood before the altar, and thought no shame to veil her head for a harper: and went through in due form the words prescribed,[270] and grew pale as the lamb was opened. Tell me now, I pray, tell me, thou ancientest of gods, father Janus! dost thou return answer to these? Great must be indeed the leisure[271] of heaven! There can be no business there, as far as I see, stirring among you. One woman consults you about comic actors; another would fain commend a tragedian to your notice: the soothsayer will become varicose.[272]

But let her rather be musical than fly through the whole city, with bold bearing; and encounter the assemblies of men, and in her husband's presence herself converse with generals in their scarlet cloaks,[273] with unabashed face and breasts exposed. She too knows all that is going on in the whole world—what the Seres[274] or Thracians are engaged in—the secrets of the step-mother and her son—what adulterer is in love, or is in great request. She will tell you who made the widow pregnant—in what month it was—in what language and manner each act of love takes place. She is the first[275] to see the comet that menaces the Armenian and Parthian king; and she intercepts[276] at the gates the reports and freshest news. Some she invents as well. That Niphates[277] has overwhelmed whole nations, and that the whole country is there laid under water by a great deluge; that cities are tottering, the earth sinking down—this she tells in every place of resort to every one she meets.

And yet that vice is not more intolerable, than that, though earnestly entreated,[278] she will seize upon her poor neighbors, and have them cut in two with lashes. For if her sound slumbers are disturbed by the barking of a dog, "Bring the clubs[279] here at once!" she cries: and orders the owner first to be beaten with them, and then the dog. Terrible to encounter, most awful in visage, she enters the baths by night—by night she orders her bathing vessels and camp to be set in motion. She delights in perspiring with great tumult; when her arms have sunk down wearied with the heavy dumb-bells; and the sly anointer has omitted to rub down no part of her body. Her poor wretches of guests meanwhile are overcome with drowsiness and hunger. At last the lady comes; flushed, and thirsty enough for a whole flagon,[280] which is placed at her feet and filled from a huge pitcher: of which a second pint is drained before she tastes food, to make her appetite[281] quite ravenous. Then having rinsed out her stomach, the wine returns in a cascade on the floor—rivers gush over the marble pavement,[282] or the broad vessel reeks of Falernian—for thus, just as when a long snake has glided into a deep cask, she drinks and vomits. Therefore her husband turns sick; and with eyes closed smothers his rising bile.

And yet that woman is more offensive still, who, as soon as she has taken her place at table, praises Virgil, and excuses the suicide of Dido: matches and compares poets together: in one scale weighs Maro in the balance, and Homer in the other. The grammarians yield; rhetoricians are confuted; the whole company is silenced; neither lawyer nor crier[283] can put in a word, nor even another woman. Such a torrent of words pours forth, you would say so many basins or bells were all being struck at once. Henceforth let no one trouble trumpets or brazen vessels; she will be able singly to relieve the moon when suffering[284] an eclipse. The philosopher sets a limit even to those things which are good in themselves. For she that desires to appear too learned and eloquent, ought to wear a tunic reaching only to the middle of the leg, to sacrifice a pig to Sylvanus,[285] and bathe for a quadrans. Let not the matron that shares your marriage-bed possess a set style of eloquence, or hurl in well-rounded sentence the enthymeme curtailed[286] of its premiss; nor be acquainted with all histories. But let there be some things in books which she does not understand. I hate her who is forever poring over and studying Palæmon's[287] treatise; who never violates the rules and principles of grammar; and skilled in antiquarian lore, quotes verses I never knew; and corrects the phrases of her friend as old-fashioned,[288] which men would never heed. A husband should have the privilege of committing a solecism.

There is nothing a woman will not allow herself, nothing she holds disgraceful, when she has encircled her neck with emeralds, and inserted earrings of great size in her ears, stretched with their weight. Nothing is more unbearable than a rich woman!

Meanwhile her face, shocking to look at, or ridiculous from the large poultice, is all swollen; or is redolent of rich Poppæan unguents,[289] with which the lips of her wretched husband are glued up. She will present herself to her adulterer with skin washed clean. When does she choose to appear beautiful at home? It is for the adulterers her perfumes are prepared. It is for these she purchases all that the slender Indians send us. At length she uncases her face and removes the first layer. She begins to be herself again; and bathes in that milk,[290] for which she carries in her train she-asses, even if sent an exile to Hyperborean climes. But that which is overlaid and fomented with so many and oft-changed cosmetics, and receives poultices of boiled and damp flour, shall we call it a face,[291] or a sore?

It is worth while to find out exactly what their occupations and pursuits are through the livelong day. If her husband has gone to sleep with his back toward her, the housekeeper is half killed—the tire-women are stripped to be whipped—the Liburnian slave is accused of having come behind his time, and is forced to pay the penalty of another's sleep; one has rods broken[292] about him, another bleeds from the whips, a third from the cowhide. Some women pay a regular salary to their torturers. While he lashes she is employed in enameling her face. She listens to her friend's chat, or examines the broad gold of an embroidered robe. Still he lashes. She pores over the items in her long diary.[293] Still he lashes. Until at length, when the torturers are exhausted, "Begone!" she thunders out in awful voice, the inquisition being now complete.

The government of her house is no more merciful than the court of a Sicilian tyrant. For if she has made an assignation, and is anxious to be dressed out more becomingly than usual, and is in a hurry, and has been some time already waited for in the gardens, or rather near the chapels of the Isiac[294] procuress; poor Psecas arranges her hair, herself with disheveled locks and naked shoulders and naked breasts. "Why is this curl too high?" Instantly the cowhide avenges the heinous crime of the misplacing of a hair. What has poor Psecas done? What crime is it of the poor girl's if your own nose has displeased you?

Another, on the left hand, draws out and combs her curls and rolls them into a band. The aged matron assists at the council, who, having served her due period[295] at the needle, now presides over weighing out the tasks of wool. Her opinion will be first taken. Then those who are her inferiors in years and skill will vote in order, as though their mistress's good name or life were at stake. So great is the anxiety of getting beauty! Into so many tiers she forms her curls, so many stages high she builds[296] her head; in front you will look upon an Andromache, behind she is a dwarf—you would imagine her another person. Excuse her, pray, if nature has assigned her but a short back, and if, without the aid of high-heeled buskins, she looks shorter than a Pigmy[297] maiden; and must spring lightly up on tip-toe for a kiss. No thought meanwhile about her husband! not a word of her ruinous expenditure! She lives as though she were merely a neighbor[298] of her husband's, and in this respect alone is nearer to him—that she hates her husband's friends and slaves, and makes grievous inroads on his purse.

But see! the chorus of the maddened Bellona and the mother of the gods enters the house! and the huge eunuch (a face to be revered by his obscene inferior) who long ago emasculated himself with a broken shell; to whom his hoarse troop and the plebeian drummers give place, and whose cheek is covered with his Phrygian tiara. With voice grandiloquent he bids her dread the approach of September and the autumn blasts, unless she purifies herself with a hecatomb of eggs, and makes a present to him of her cast-off murrey-colored[299] robes: that whatever unforeseen or mighty peril may be impending over her may pass into the tunics, and at once expiate the whole year. She will break the ice and plunge into the river in the depth of winter, or dip three times in Tiber at early dawn, and bathe her timid head in its very eddies, and thence emerging will crawl on bleeding knees, naked and shivering, over the whole field of the haughty king.[300] If white Io command, she will go to the extremity of Egypt, and bring back water fetched from scorching Meroë, to sprinkle on the temple of Isis, that rears itself hard by the ancient sheepfold.[301] For she believes that the warning is given her by the voice of the goddess herself. And this, forsooth, is a fit soul and mind[302] for the gods to hold converse with by night! He therefore gains the chief and highest honor, who, surrounded by his linen-robed flock,[303] and a bald-headed throng of people uttering lamentations, runs to and fro personating the grinning Anubis. He it is that supplicates for pardon whenever the wife does not refrain from nuptial joys on days to be observed as sacred, and a heavy penalty is incurred from the violation of the snowy sheeting. And the silver serpent was seen to nod his head! His are the tears, and his the studied mumblings, that prevail on Osiris not to withhold pardon for her fault, when bribed by a fat goose and a thin cake. When he has withdrawn, some trembling Jewess, having quitted her basket and hay, begs in her secret ear, the interpretess of the laws of Solyma, the potent priestess of the tree—the trusty go-between from highest heaven![304] And she crosses her hand with money, but sparingly enough: for Jews will sell you any dreams you please for the minutest coin. The soothsayer of Armenia or Commagene,[305] handling the liver of the dove still reeking, engages that her lover shall be devoted, or promises the rich inheritance of some childless rich man; he pries into the breasts of chickens and the entrails of a puppy; sometimes too even of a child—he does acts of which he will himself turn informer![306]

But their confidence in Chaldæans will be greater still: whatever the astrologer tells them, they will believe reported straight from the fountain of Ammon; since at Delphi the oracles are dumb, and darkness as to the future is the punishment of the human race. However, of these he is in the highest repute who has been often banished; by whose friendship and venal[307] tablets it came to pass that a citizen of high rank[308] died, and one dreaded by Otho. Hence arises confidence in his art, if both his hands have clanked with chains, and he has been long an inmate of the camp-prison. No astrologer that has never been condemned will have any reputation for genius; but he that has hardly escaped with his life, and scarcely had good fortune enough to be sent to one of the Cyclades,[309] and at length to be set free from the confined Seriphos, he it is whom your Tanaquil[310] consults about the death of her jaundiced mother, for which she has been long impatient; but first, about yourself! when she may hope to follow to the grave her sister and her uncles; whether her adulterer will survive her, for what greater boon than this have the gods in their power to bestow?

And yet she is ignorant what the ill-omened planet of Saturn forebodes; with what star Venus presents herself in fortunate conjunction; what is the month for ill-luck; what seasons are assigned to profit.

Remember to shun even a casual meeting with her in whose hands you see, like the unctuous amber,[311] their calendars well thumbed; who instead of consulting others is now herself consulted; who when her husband is going to join his camp or revisit his home, will refuse to accompany him if restrained by the calculations of Thrasyllus.[312] When it is her fancy to ride as far as the first mile-stone, the lucky hour is taken from her book; if the corner of her eye itches when she rubs it, she calls for ointment after a due inspection of her horoscope: though she lies sick in bed no hour appears suited to taking food, save that which Petosiris[313] has directed. If she be of moderate means, she will traverse the space on both sides of the pillars of the circus, and draw lots, and present her forehead and her hand to the fortune-teller that asks for the frequent palming. The rich will obtain answers from some soothsayer of Phrygia or India hired for the purpose, from some one skilled in the stars and heavens, or one advanced in years who expiates the public places which the lightning[314] has struck. The destiny of the plebeians is learnt in the circus, and at Tarquin's rampart.[315] She that has no long necklace of gold to display, inquires in front of the obelisks and the dolphin-columns,[316] whether she shall jilt the tapster and marry the old-clothes man.

Yet these, when circumstances so require, are ready to encounter the perils of childbirth, and endure all the irksome toils of nursing. But rarely does a gilded bed contain a woman lying-in: so potent are the arts and drugs of her that can insure barrenness, and for bribes kill men while yet unborn. Yet grieve not at this, poor wretch! and with thine own hand give thy wife the potion, whatever it be: for did she choose to bear her leaping children in her womb, thou wouldst perchance become the sire of an Æthiop; a blackamoor would soon be your sole heir, one whom you would not see of a morning.[317]

I say nothing of supposititious children, and all a husband's joys and fond hopes baffled at the dirty pools;[318] and the Pontifices and Salii selected thence, who are to bear in their counterfeit persons the noble name of Scauri. Fortune, that delights in mischief, takes her stand by night and smiles upon the naked babes. All these she cherishes and fosters in her bosom: then proffers them to the houses of the great, and prepares in secret a rich sport for herself. These she dotes on:[319] on these she forces her favors; and smiling, leads them on to advancement as her own foster-children.

One fellow offers a wife magical incantations. Another sells her love potions from Thessaly, to give her power to disturb her husband's intellects, and punish him with the indignity of the slipper. To these it is owing that you are reduced to dotage: hence comes that dizziness of brain, that strange forgetfulness of things that you have but just now done. Yet even this is endurable, if you do not go raving mad as well, like that uncle of Nero for whom his Cæsonia infused the whole forehead of a foal new dropped. Who will not follow where the empress leads? All things were wrapped in flames and with joints disruptured were tottering to their fall, exactly as if Juno had driven her spouse to madness. Therefore the mushroom[320] of Agrippina had far less of guilt: since that stopped the breath but of a single old man, and bade his trembling head descend to heaven,[321] and his lips that slavered with dribbling saliva. Whereas this potion of Cæsonia[322] calls aloud for fire and sword and tortures, and mangles in one bloody mass both senators and knights. So potent is a mare's offspring! Such mighty ruin can one sorceress work!

Women hate their husbands' spurious issue. No one would object to or forbid that. But now it is thought allowable to kill even their husbands' sons by a former marriage.

Take my warning, ye that are under age and have a large estate, keep watch over your lives! trust not a single dish! The rich meats steam, livid with poison of your mother's mixing. Let some one take a bite before you of whatever she that bore you hands you; let your pedagogue, in terror of his life, be taster of your cups.

All this is our invention! and Satire is borrowing the tragic buskin, forsooth; and transgressing the limits prescribed by those who trod the path before us, we are wildly declaiming in the deep-mouthed tones of Sophocles[323] a strain of awful grandeur, unknown to the Rutulian hills and Latin sky. Would that it were but fable! But Pontia[324] with loud voice exclaims, "I did the deed. I avow it! and prepared for my own children the aconite, which bears palpable evidence against me. Still[325] the act was mine!" "What, cruelest of vipers! didst thou kill two at one meal! Two, didst thou slay?" "Ay, seven, had there haply been seven!"

Then let us believe to be true all that tragedians say of the fierce Colchian or of Progne. I attempt not to gainsay it. Yet they perpetrated atrocities that were monstrous even in their days—but not for the sake of money. Less amazement is excited even by the greatest enormities, whenever rage incites this sex to crime, and with fury burning up their very liver, they are carried away headlong; like rocks torn away from cliffs, from which the mountain-height is reft away, and the side recedes from the impending mass.

I can not endure the woman that makes her calculations, and in cold blood perpetrates a heinous crime. They sit and see Alcestis[326] on the stage encountering death for her husband, and were a similar exchange allowed to them, would gladly purchase a lapdog's life by the sacrifice of their husband's! You will meet any morning with Danaides and Eriphylæ in plenty; not a street but will possess its Clytæmnestra. This is the only difference, that that famed daughter of Tyndarus grasped in both hands a bungling, senseless axe.[327] But now the business is dispatched with the insinuating venom of a toad. But yet with the steel too; if her Atrides has been cautious enough to fortify himself with the Pontic antidotes of the thrice-conquered[328] king.

FOOTNOTES:

SATIRE VII.

All our hope and inducement to study[329] rests on Cæsar[330] alone. For he alone casts a favoring eye[331] on the Muses, who in our days are in a forlorn state. When poets, now become famous and men of renown, would fain try and hire a little bath at Gabii, or a public oven at Rome. While others, again, would esteem it neither shocking nor degrading to turn public criers: since Clio herself, if starving, would quit the vales of Aganippe, and emigrate to courts.[332] For if not a single farthing is offered you in the Pierian shades, be content with the name and calling of Machæra:[333] and sooner sell what the auction duly set[334] sells to those that stand around; wine-flagons, trivets, book-cases, chests; the "Alcyone" of Paccius, or the "Thebes" and "Tereus" of Faustus. This is preferable to asserting before the judge that you are a witness of what you never did see.[335] Even though Asiatic,[336] and Cappadocian, and Bithynian knights stoop to this: fellows whom Gallo-Græcia transports hither with chalked feet.[337] Hereafter, however, no one will be compelled to submit to an employment derogatory to his studies, who unites loftiness of expression to tuneful numbers, and has chewed the bay.[338] Set vigorously to work then, young men! The kindness[339] of the emperor is looking all around, and stimulates your exertions, while he is seeking worthy objects of his patronage. If you think that from any other quarter you may look for encouragement in your pursuits, and with that view fill the parchment of your yellow[340] tablet; call with all speed for a fagot, and make a present of all your compositions, Telesinus, to Venus' husband:[341] or lock them up, and let the bookworm[342] bore them through as they lie stowed away. Destroy your pens, poor wretch! Blot out your battles that have lost you your nights' rest, you that write sublime poetry in your narrow garret,[343] that you may come forth worthy of an ivy-crown and meagre image. You have nothing farther to hope for. The stingy patron of our days has learned only to admire and praise the eloquent as boys do Juno's peacock.[344] But your prime of life is ebbing away; that is able to bear the fatigue of the sea, the helmet, or the spade. Then weariness creeps over the spirits: and an old age, that is indeed learned but in rags,[345] curses itself and the Muses that it courted. Now learn the devices of the great man you pay court to, to avoid laying out any money upon you: quitting the temple of the Muses, and Apollo, he composes verses himself, and only yields the palm to Homer himself on the score of his priority by a thousand years. But if inflamed by the charms of fame you recite your poetry, he kindly lends you a dirty mansion, and places at your service one that has been long barred up, whose front gate emulates those of a city in a state of siege. He knows how to place his freedmen in seats at the farther end of the audience, and how to arrange his clients who are to cheer you lustily.[346] None of these great lords will give you as much as would pay for the benches,[347] or the seats that rise one above another on the platform you have to hire; or your orchestra of chairs, which must be returned when your recitation is over. Yet still we ply our tasks, and draw furrows in the profitless dust, and keep turning up the sea-shore with sterile plow. For even if you try to abandon the pursuit, the long habit[348] of indulging in this vain-glorious trifling,[349] holds you fast in its fetters. An inveterate itch of writing, now incurable, clings to many, and grows old in their distempered body. But the poet that is above his fellows, whose vein is not that of the common herd; that is wont to spin out no stale or vulgar subject, and stamps no hackneyed verse from a die that all may use; such an one as I can not embody in words, and can only feel in my soul, is the offspring of a mind free from solicitude, exempt from all that can embitter life, that courts the quiet of the woods, and loves to drink the fountains of the Aonides. Nor can it be that poverty should sing in the Pierian cave, or handle the thyrsus, if forced to sobriety, and lacking that vile pelf the body needs both day and night. Well plied with food and wine is Horace when he shouts out his Evoe![350] What scope is there for fancy, save when our breasts are harassed by no thoughts but verse alone; and are hurried along[351] under the influence of the lords of Cirrha and Nysa, admitting of no divided[352] solicitude. It is the privilege of an exalted soul, and not of one bewildered how to get enough to buy a blanket, to gaze on chariots and horses and the forms of divinities, and in what dread shapes Erinnys[353] appalls the Rutulian. For had Virgil lacked a slave and comfortable lodging, all the serpents would have vanished from Alecto's hair: his trumpet, starved to silence, would have blazed no note of terror. Is it fair to expect that Rubrenus Lappa should not fall short of the buskin of the ancients, while his Atreus[354] forces him to pawn his very sauceboats and his cloak?

Poor Numitor is so unfortunate as to have nothing he can afford to send his protégé! Yet he can find something to give Quintilla—he managed to pay for a tame lion, that must have pounds of flesh to feed him. No doubt the huge beast is kept at far less expense; and a poet's stomach is far more capacious! Let Lucan recline at his ease in his gardens among his marble statues, satisfied with fame alone. But to poor Serranus, and starving Saleius, of what avail will glory be, however great, if it be glory only? All flock in crowds to hear his sweet voice, and the tuneful strains of the Thebais, when Statius[355] has gladdened the city, and fixed the day for reciting it. So great is the charm with which he captivates their souls; such the eager delight with which he is listened to by the multitude. But when the very benches are broken down by the ecstasies with which his verses are applauded, he may starve, unless he sells[356] his unpublished "Agave"[357] to Paris. It is he that bestows on many the honors due to military service, and encircles the fingers of poets with the ring that marks their six months' command.[358] What nobles will not give, a player will! And dost thou, then, still pay court to the Camerini and Bareæ, and the spacious halls of nobles? It is "Pelopea" that makes prefects, "Philomela" tribunes. Yet envy not the bard whom the stage maintains. Who is your Mæcenas now, or Proculeius, or Fabius? Who will act Cotta's part again, or be a second Lentulus? In those days talent had its meet reward: then it was profitable to many to become pale, and abstain from wine[359] the whole of December.

Your toil, forsooth, ye writers of histories! is more profitable, it requires more time and more oil. For regardless of all limit, it rises to the thousandth page; and grows in bulk, expensive from the mass of paper used. This the vast press of matter requires, and the laws of composition. Yet what is the crop that springs from it? what the profit from the soil upturned? Who will give an historian as much as he would a notary?[360] "But they are an idle race, that delight in sofas and the cool shade." Well, tell me then, what do the services rendered their fellow-citizens, and their briefs they carry about with them in a big bundle, bring in to the lawyers? Even of themselves they talk grandly enough, but especially when their creditor is one of their hearers; or if one still more pressing nudges their side, that comes with his great account-book to sue for a doubtful debt. Then the hollow bellows of their lungs breathe forth amazing lies; they foam at the mouth till their breast is covered. But if you like to calculate the actual harvest they reap, set in one scale the estate of a hundred lawyers, and you may balance it on the other side with the single fortune of Lacerna, the charioteer of the Red.[361]

The chiefs have taken their seats![362] You, like Ajax, rise with pallid cheek, and plead in behalf of liberty that has been called in question, before a neat-herd[363] for a juryman! Burst your strained lungs, poor wretch! that, when exhausted, the green palm-branches[364] may be affixed to crown your staircase with honor! Yet what is the reward of your eloquence? A rusty ham, or a dish of sprats; or some shriveled onions, the monthly provender of the Africans;[365] or wine brought down the Tiber. Five bottles[366] for pleading four times! If you have been lucky enough to get a single gold piece,[367] even from that you must deduct the stipulated shares of the attorneys.[368] Æmilius will get as much as the law allows;[369] although we pleaded better than he. For he has in his court-yard a chariot of bronze with four tall horses[370] yoked to it; and he himself, seated on his fierce charger, brandishes aloft his bending spear, and meditates battles with his one eye closed. So it is that Pedo gets involved, Matho fails. This is the end of Tongillus, who usually bathes with a huge rhinoceros' horn of oil, and annoys the baths with his draggled train; and weighs heavily in his ponderous sedan on his sturdy Median slaves, as he presses through the forum to bid for[371] slaves, and plate, and myrrhine vases, and villas. For it is his foreign[372] purple with its Tyrian tissue that gets him credit. And yet this answers their purpose. It is the purple robe that gets the lawyer custom—his violet cloaks that attract clients. It suits their interest to live with all the bustle and outward show of an income greater then they really have. But prodigal Rome observes no bounds to her extravagance. If the old orators were to come to life again, no one now would give even Cicero himself two hundred sesterces, unless a huge ring sparkled on his finger. This is the first point he that goes to law looks to—whether you have eight slaves, ten attendants, a sedan to follow you, and friends in toga to go before. Paulus, consequently, used to plead in a sardonyx, hired for the occasion: and hence it was that Cossus' fees were higher than those of Basilus. Eloquence is a rare quality in a threadbare coat!

When is Basilus allowed to produce in court a weeping mother? Who could endure Basilus, however well he were to plead? Let Gaul become your home, or better still that foster-nurse of pleaders, Africa, if you are determined to let your tongue for hire.

Do you teach declamation? Oh what a heart of steel must Vectius have, when his numerous class kills cruel tyrants! For all that the boy has just conned over at his seat, he will then stand up and spout—the same stale theme in the same sing-song. It is the reproduction of the cabbage[373] that wears out the master's life. What is the plea to be urged: what the character of the cause; where the main point of the case hinges; what shafts may issue from the opposing party;—this all are anxious to know; but not one is anxious to pay! "Pay do you ask for? why, what do I know?" The blame, forsooth, is laid at the teacher's door, because there is not a spark of energy in the breast of this scion of Arcadia,[374] who dins his awful Hannibal into my ears regularly every sixth day. Whatever the theme be that is to be the subject of his deliberation; whether he shall march at once from Cannæ on Rome; or whether, rendered circumspect after the storms and thunderbolts, he shall lead his cohorts, drenched with the tempest, by a circuitous route. Bargain[375] for any sum you please, and I will at once place it in your hands, on condition that his father should hear him his lesson as often as I have to do it! But six or more sophists are all giving tongue at once; and, debating in good earnest, have abandoned all fictitious declamations about the ravisher. No more is heard of the poison infused, or the vile ungrateful husband,[376] or the drugs that can restore the aged blind to youth. He therefore that quits the shadowy conflicts of rhetoric for the arena of real debate, will superannuate himself, if my advice has any weight with him, and enter on a different path of life; that he may not lose even the paltry sum that will purchase the miserable ticket[377] for corn. Since this is the most splendid reward you can expect. Just inquire what Chrysogonus receives, or Pollio, for teaching the sons of these fine gentlemen, and going into all the details[378] of Theodorus' treatise.

The baths will cost six hundred sestertia, and the colonnade still more, in which the great man rides whenever it rains. Is he to wait, forsooth, for fair weather? or bespatter his horses with fresh mud? Nay, far better here! for here the mule's hoof shines unsullied.[379] On the other side must rise a spacious dining-room, supported on stately columns of Numidian marble, and catch the cool[380] sun. However much the house may have cost, he will have besides an artiste who can arrange his table scientifically; another, who can season made-dishes. Yet amid all this lavish expenditure, two poor sestertia will be deemed an ample remuneration for Quintilian. Nothing will cost a father less than his son's education.

"Then where did Quintilian get the money to pay for so many estates?" Pass by the instances of good fortune that are but rare indeed. It is good luck that makes a man handsome and active; good luck that makes him wise, and noble, and well-bred, and attaches the crescent[381] of the senator to his black shoe. Good luck too that makes him the best of orators and debaters, and, though he has a vile cold, sing well! For it makes all the difference what planets welcome you when you first begin to utter your infant cry, and are still red from your mother. If fortune so wills it, you will become consul instead of rhetorician; or, if she will, instead of rhetorician, consul! What was Ventidius[382] or Tullius aught else than a lucky planet, and the strange potency of hidden fate? Fate, that gives kingdoms to slaves, and triumphs to captives. Yes! Quintilian was indeed lucky, but he is a greater rarity even than a white crow. But many a man has repented of this fruitless and barren employment, as the sad end of Thrasymachus[383] proves, and that of Secundus Carrinas.[384] And you, too, Athens, were witness to the poverty of him on whom you had the heart to bestow nothing save the hemlock that chilled[385] his life-blood!

Light be the earth, ye gods![386] and void of weight, that presses on our grandsires' shades, and round their urn bloom fragrant crocus and eternal spring, who maintained that a tutor should hold the place and honor of a revered parent. Achilles sang on his paternal hills, in terror of the lash, though now grown up; and yet in whom even then would not the tail of his master, the harper, provoke a smile? But now Rufus[387] and others are beaten each by their own pupils; Rufus! who so often called Cicero "the Allobrogian!" Who casts into Enceladus'[388] lap, or that of the learned Palæmon,[389] as much as their grammarian labors have merited! And yet even from the wretched sum, however small (and it is smaller than the rhetorician's pay), Acænonoëtus, his pupil's pedagogue, first takes his slice; and then the steward who pays you deducts his fragment. Dispute it not, Palæmon! and suffer some abatement to be made, just as the peddler does that deals in winter rugs and snow-white sheetings.[390] Only let not all be lost,[391] for which you have sat from the midnight hour, when no smith would sit, nor even he that teaches how to draw out wool with the oblique iron. Lose not your whole reward for having smelled as many lamps as there were boys standing round you; while Horace was altogether discolored, and the foul smut clave to the well-thumbed Maro. Yet rare too is the pay that does not require enforcing by the Tribune's court.[392]

But do you, parents, impose severe exactions on him that is to teach your boys; that he be perfect in the rules of grammar for each word—read all histories[393]—know all authors as well as his own finger-ends; that if questioned at hazard, while on his way to the Thermæ or the baths of Phœbus, he should be able to tell the name of Anchises' nurse,[394] and the name and native land of the step-mother of Anchemolus—tell off-hand how many years Acestes lived—how many flagons of wine the Sicilian king gave to the Phrygians. Require of him that he mould their youthful morals as one models a face in wax. Require of him that he be the reverend father of the company, and check every approach to immorality.

It is no light task to keep watch over so many boyish hands, so many little twinkling eyes. "This," says the father, "be the object of your care!"—and when the year comes round again, Receive for your pay as much gold[395] as the people demand for the victorious Charioteer!

FOOTNOTES:

SATIRE VIII.

What is the use of pedigrees?[396] What boots it, Ponticus, to be accounted of an ancient line, and to display the painted faces[397] of your ancestors, and the Æmiliani standing in their cars, and the Curii diminished to one half their bulk, and Corvinus deficient of a shoulder, and Galba that has lost his ears and nose[4]—what profit is it to vaunt in your capacious genealogy of Corvinus, and in many a collateral line[398] to trace dictators and masters of the horse begrimed with smoke, if before the very faces of the Lepidi you lead an evil life! To what purpose are the images of so many warriors, if the dice-box rattles all night long in the presence of the Numantini:[399] if you retire to rest at the rising of that star[400] at whose dawning those generals set their standards and camps in motion? Why does Fabius[401] plume himself on the Allobrogici and the "Great Altar," as one born in Hercules' own household, if he is covetous, empty-headed, and ever so much more effeminate than the soft lamb of Euganea.[402] If with tender limbs made sleek by the pumice[403] of Catana he shames his rugged sires, and, a purchaser of poison, disgraces his dishonored race by his image that ought to be broken up.[404]

Though your long line of ancient statues adorn your ample halls on every side, the sole and only real nobility is virtue. Be a Paulus,[405] or Cossus, or Drusus, in moral character. Set that before the images of your ancestors. Let that, when you are consul, take precedence of the fasces themselves. What I claim from you first is the noble qualities of the mind. If you deserve indeed to be accounted a man of blameless integrity, and stanch love of justice, both in word and deed, then I recognize the real nobleman. All hail, Gætulicus![406] or thou, Silanus,[407] or from whatever other blood descended, a rare and illustrious citizen, thou fallest to the lot of thy rejoicing country. Then we may exultingly shout out what the people exclaim when Osiris is found.[408]

For who would call him noble that is unworthy of his race, and distinguished only for his illustrious name? We call some one's dwarf,[409] Atlas; a negro, swan; a diminutive and deformed wench, Europa. Lazy curs scabbed[410] with inveterate mange, that lick the edges of the lamp now dry, will get the name of Leopard, Tiger, Lion, or whatever other beast there is on earth that roars with fiercer throat. Therefore you will take care and begin to fear lest it is upon the same principle you are a Creticus[411] or Camerinus.

Whom have I admonished in these words? To you my words are addressed, Rubellius[412] Plautus! You are puffed up with your descent from the Drusi, just as though you had yourself achieved something to deserve being ennobled; and she that gave you birth should be of the brilliant blood of Iulus, and not the drudge that weaves for hire beneath the shelter of the windy rampart.[413] "You are the lower orders!" he says; "the very dregs of our populace! Not a man of you could tell where his father was born! But I am a Cecropid!" Long may you live![414] and long revel in the joys of such a descent! Yet from the lowest of this common herd you will find one that is indeed an eloquent Roman. It is he that usually pleads the cause of the ignorant noble.[415] From the toga'd crowd will come one that can solve the knotty points of law, and the enigmas of the statutes. He it is that in his prime carves out his fortune with his sword, and goes to Euphrates, and the legions that keep guard over the conquered Batavi. While you are nothing but a Cecropid, and most like the shapeless pillar crowned with Hermes' head. Since in no other point of difference have you the advantage save in this—that his head is of marble,[416] and your image is endowed with life! Tell me, descendant of the Teucri, who considers dumb animals highly bred, unless strong and courageous? Surely it is on this score we praise the fleet horse—to grace whose speed full many a palm glows,[417] and Victory, in the circus hoarse with shouting, stands exulting by. He is the steed of fame, from whatever pasture he comes, whose speed is brilliantly before the others, and whose dust is first on the plain. But the brood of Corytha, and Hirpinus' stock, are put up for sale if victory sit but seldom on their yoke. In their case no regard is had to their pedigree—their dead sires win them no favor—they are forced to change their owners for paltry prices, and draw wagons with galled withers, if slow of foot, and only fit to turn Nepos'[418] mill. Therefore that we may admire you, and not yours, first achieve some noble act[419] that I may inscribe on your statue's base, besides those honors that we pay, and ever shall pay, to those to whom you are indebted for all.

Enough has been said to the youth whom common report represents to us as haughty and puffed up from his relationship to Nero.[420] For in that rank of life the courtesies[421] of good breeding are commonly rare enough. But you, Ponticus, I would not have you valued for your ancestors' renown; so as to contribute nothing yourself to deserve the praise of posterity. It is wretched work building on another's fame; lest the whole pile crumble into ruins when the pillars that held it up are withdrawn. The vine that trails along the ground,[422] sighs for its widowed elms in vain.

Prove yourself a good soldier, a faithful guardian, an incorruptible judge. If ever you shall be summoned as a witness in a doubtful and uncertain cause, though Phalaris himself command you to turn liar, and dictate the perjuries with his bull placed before your eyes, deem it to be the summit of impiety[423] to prefer existence to honor,[424] and for the sake of life to sacrifice life's only end! He that deserves to die is dead; though he still sup on a hundred Gauran[425] oysters, and plunge in a whole bath of the perfumes of Cosmus.[426]

When your long-expected province shall at length receive you for its ruler, set a bound to your passion, put a curb on your avarice. Have pity on our allies whom we have brought to poverty. You see the very marrow drained from the empty bones of kings. Have respect to what the laws prescribe, the senate enjoins. Remember what great rewards await the good, with how just a stroke ruin lighted on Capito[427] and Numitor, those pirates of the Cilicians, when the senate fulminated its decrees against them. But what avails their condemnation, when Pansa plunders you of all that Natta left? Look out for an auctioneer to sell your tattered clothes, Chærippus, and then hold your tongue! It is sheer madness to lose, when all is gone, even Charon's fee.[428]

There were not the same lamentations of yore, nor was the wound inflicted on our allies by pillage as great as it is now, while they were still flourishing, and but recently conquered.[429] Then every house was full, and a huge pile of money stood heaped up, cloaks from Sparta, purple robes from Cos, and along with pictures by Parrhasius, and statues by Myro, the ivory of Phidias seemed instinct with life;[430] and many a work from Polycletus' hand in every house; few were the tables that could not show a cup of Mentor's chasing. Then came Dolabella,[431] and then Antony, then the sacrilegious Verres;[432] they brought home in their tall[433] ships the spoils they dared not show, and more[434] triumphs from peace than were ever won from war. Now our allies have but few yokes of oxen, a small stock of brood-mares, and the patriarch[435] of the herd will be harried from the pasture they have already taken possession of. Then the very Lares themselves, if there is any statue worth looking at, if any little shrine still holds its single god. For this, since it is the best they have, is the highest prize they can seize upon.

You may perhaps despise the Rhodians unfit for war, and essenced Corinth: and well you may! How can a resin-smeared[436] youth, and the depilated legs of a whole nation, retaliate upon you. You must keep clear of rugged Spain, the Gallic car,[437] and the Illyrian coast. Spare too those reapers[438] that overstock the city, and give it leisure for the circus[439] and the stage. Yet what rewards to repay so atrocious a crime could you carry off from thence, since Marius[440] has so lately plundered the impoverished Africans even of their very girdles?[441]

You must be especially cautious lest a deep injury be inflicted on those who are bold as well as wretched. Though you may strip them of all the gold and silver they possess, you will yet leave them shield and sword, and javelin and helm. Plundered of all, they yet have arms to spare!

What I have just set forth is no opinion of my own. Believe that I am reciting to you a leaf of the sibyl, that can not lie. If your retinue are men of spotless life, if no favorite youth[442] barters your judgments for gold, if your wife[443] is clear from all stain of guilt, and does not prepare to go through the district courts,[444] and all the towns of your province, ready, like a Celæno[445] with her crooked talons, to swoop upon the gold—then you may, if you please, reckon your descent from Picus; and if high-sounding names are your fancy, place the whole army of Titans among your ancestors, or even Prometheus[446] himself. Adopt a founder of your line from any book you please. But if ambition and lust hurry you away headlong, if you break your rods[447] on the bloody backs of the allies, if your delight is in axes blunted by the victor worn out with using them—then the nobility of your sires themselves begins to rise[448] in judgment against you, and hold forth a torch to blaze upon your shameful deeds.[449] Every act of moral turpitude incurs more glaring reprobation in exact proportion to the rank of him that commits it. Why vaunt your pedigree to me? you, that are wont to put your name to forged deeds in the very temples[450] which your grandsire built, before your very fathers' triumphal statues! or, an adulterer that dares not face the day, you veil your brows concealed beneath a Santon[451] cowl. The bloated Damasippus is whirled in his rapid car past the ashes and bones of his ancestors—and with his own hands, yes! though consul! with his own hands locks his wheel with the frequent drag-chain.[452] It is, indeed, at night. But still the moon sees him! The stars strain on him their attesting eyes.[453] When the period of his magistracy is closed, Damasippus[454] will take whip in hand in the broad glare of day, and never dread meeting his friend now grown old, and will be the first to give him the coachman's salute, and untie the trusses and pour the barley[455] before his weary steeds himself. Meantime, even while according to Numa's ancient rites he sacrifices the woolly victim and the stalwart bull before Jove's altar, he swears by Epona[456] alone, and the faces daubed over the stinking stalls. But when he is pleased to repeat his visits to the taverns open all night long, the Syrophœnician, reeking with his assiduous perfume,[457] runs to meet him (the Syrophœnician that dwells at the Idumæan[458] gate), with all the studied courtesy of a host, he salutes him as "lord"[459] and "king;" and Cyane, with gown tucked up, with her bottle for sale. One who wishes to palliate his crimes will say to me, "Well; we did so too when we were young!" Granted. But surely you left off, and did not indulge in your folly beyond that period. Let what you basely dare be ever brief! There are some faults that should be shorn away with our first beard. Make all reasonable allowance for boys. But Damasippus frequents those debauches of the bagnios, and the painted signs,[460] when of ripe age for war, for guarding Armenia[461] and Syria's rivers, and the Rhine or Danube. His time of life qualifies him to guard the emperor's person. Send then to Ostia![462] Cæsar—send! But look for your general in some great tavern. You will find him reclining with some common cut-throat; in a medley of sailors, and thieves, and runaway slaves; among executioners and cheap coffin-makers,[463] and the now silent drums of the priest of Cybele, lying drunk on his back.[464] There there is equal liberty for all—cups in common—nor different couch for any, or table set aloof from the herd. What would you do, Ponticus, were it your lot to have a slave of such a character? Why surely you would dispatch him to the Lucanian or Tuscan bridewells.[465] But you, ye Trojugenæ! find excuses for yourselves, and what would disgrace a cobbler[466] will be becoming in a Volesus or Brutus!

What if we never produce examples so foul and shameful, that worse do not yet remain behind! When all your wealth was squandered, Damasippus, you let your voice for hire[467] to the stage,[468] to act the noisy Phasma[469] of Catullus. Velox Lentulas acted Laureolus, and creditably too. In my judgment he deserved crucifying in earnest. Nor yet can you acquit the people themselves from blame. The brows of the people are too hardened that sit[470] spectators of the buffooneries of the patricians, listen to the Fabii with naked feet, and laugh at the slaps on the faces of the Mamerci. What matters it at what price they sell their lives: they sell them at no tyrant's compulsion,[471] [nor hesitate[472] to do it even at the games of the prætor seated on high.] Yet imagine the gladiator's sword[473] on one side, the stage on the other. Which is the better alternative? Has any one so slavish a dread of death as to become the jealous lover of Thymele,[474] the colleague of the heavy Corinthus? Yet it is nothing to be wondered at, if the emperor turn harper, that the nobleman should turn actor. To crown all this, what is left but the amphitheatre?[475] And this disgrace of the city you have as well—Gracchus[476] not fighting equipped as a Mirmillo, with buckler or falchion (for he condemns—yes, condemns and hates such an equipment). Nor does he conceal his face beneath a helmet. See! he wields a trident. When he has cast without effect the nets suspended from his poised right hand, he boldly lifts his uncovered face to the spectators, and, easily to be recognized, flees across the whole arena. We can not mistake the tunic,[477] since the ribbon of gold reaches from his neck, and flutters in the breeze from his high-peaked cap. Therefore the disgrace, which the Secutor had to submit to, in being forced to fight with Gracchus, was worse than any wound. Were the people allowed the uncontrolled exercise of their votes, who could be found so abandoned as to hesitate to prefer Seneca[478] to Nero? For whose punishment there should have been prepared not a single ape[479] only, or one snake or sack.[480] "His crime is matched by that of Orestes!"[481] But it is the motive cause that gives the quality to the act. Since he, at the instigation of the gods themselves, was the avenger of his father butchered in his cups. But he neither imbrued his hands in Electra's blood, or that of his Spartan wife; he mixed no aconite for his relations. Orestes never sang on the stage; he never wrote "Troïcs." What, blacker crime was there for Virginius'[482] arms to avenge, or Galba leagued with Vindex? In all his tyranny, cruel and bloody as it was, what exploit did Nero[483] achieve? These are the works, these the accomplishments of a high-born prince—delighting to prostitute[484] his rank by disgraceful dancing on a foreign stage, and earn the parsley of the Grecian crown. Array the statues of your ancestors in the trophies of your voice. At Domitius'[485] feet lay the long train of Thyestes, or Antigone, or Menalippe's mask, and hang your harp[486] on the colossus of marble.

What could any one find more noble than thy birth, Catiline, or thine, Cethegus! Yet ye prepared arms to be used by night, and flames for our houses and temples, as though ye had been the sons of the Braccati,[487] or descendants of the Senones. Attempting what one would be justified in punishing by the pitched shirt.[488] But the consul is on the watch[489] and restrains your bands. He whom you sneer at as a novus[490] homo from Arpinum, of humble birth, and but lately made a municipal knight at Rome, disposes every where his armed guards to protect the terrified people, and exerts himself in every quarter. Therefore the peaceful toga, within the walls, bestowed on him such honors and renown as not even Octavius bore away from Leucas[491] or the plains of Thessaly, with sword reeking with unintermitted slaughter. But Rome owned him for a parent. Rome, when unfettered,[492] hailed Cicero as father of his father-land.

Another native of Arpinum was wont to ask for his wages when wearied with another's plow on the Volscian hills. After that, he had the knotted vine-stick[493] broken about his head, if he lazily fortified the camp with sluggard axe. Yet he braved the Cimbri, and the greatest perils of the state, and alone protected the city in her alarm. And therefore when the ravens, that had never lighted on bigger carcasses,[494] flocked to the slaughtered heaps of Cimbrians slain, his nobly-born colleague is honored with a laurel inferior to his.[495]

The souls of the Decii were plebeian, their very names plebeian. Yet these are deemed by the infernal deities and mother Earth a fair equivalent for the whole legions, and all the forces of the allies, and all the flower of Latium. For the Decii[496] were more highly valued by them than all they died to save!

It was one born from a slave[497] that won the robe and diadem and fasces of Quirinus, that last of good kings! They that were for loosening the bolts of the gates betrayed to the exiled tyrants, were the sons of the consul himself! men from whom we might have looked for some glorious achievement in behalf of liberty when in peril; some act that Mucius' self, or Cocles, might admire; and the maiden that swam across[498] the Tiber, then the limit of our empire. He that divulged to the fathers the secret treachery was a slave,[499] afterward to be mourned for by all the Roman matrons: while they suffer the well-earned punishment of the scourge, and the axe,[500] then first used by Rome since she became republican.

I had rather that Thersites[501] were your sire, provided you resembled Æacides and could wield the arms of Vulcan, than that Achilles should beget you to be a match to Thersites.

And yet, however far you go back, however far you trace your name, you do but derive your descent from the infamous sanctuary.[502] That first of your ancestors, whoever he was, was either a shepherd, or else—what I would rather not mention!

FOOTNOTES:

SATIRE IX.

I should like to know, Nævolus,[503] why you so often meet me with clouded brow forlorn, like Marsyas after his defeat. What have you to do with such a face as Ravola had when detected with his Rhodope?[504] We give a slave a box on the ear, if he licks the pastry. Why! Crepereius Pollio[505] had not a more woe-begone face than yours; he that went about ready to pay three times the ordinary interest, and could find none fools enough to trust him. Where do so many wrinkles come from all of a sudden? Why, surely before, contented with little, you used to live like a gentleman's gentleman[506]—a witty boon-companion with your biting jest, and sharp at repartees that savor of town-life!

Now all is the reverse; your looks are dejected; your tangled hair bristles like a thicket;[507] there is none of that sleekness over your whole skin, such as the Bruttian plaster of hot pitch used to give you; but your legs are neglected and rank with a shrubbery of hair. What means this emaciated form, like that of some old invalid parched this many a day with quartan ague and fever that has made his limbs its home? You may detect[508] the anguish of the mind that lurks in the sickly body—and discover its joys also. For the face, the index of the mind, takes its complexion from each. You seem, therefore, to have changed your course of life, and to run counter to your former habits. For, but lately, as I well remember, you used to haunt the temple of Isis,[509] and the statue of Ganymede in the temple of Peace,[510] and the secret palaces of the imported mother[511] of the gods; ay, and Ceres too (for what temple is there in which you may not find a woman)—a more notorious adulterer even than Aufidius, and under the rose, not confining your attentions to the wives!

"Yes: even this way of life is profitable to many. But I never made it worth my while: we do occasionally get greasy cloaks, that serve to save our toga, of coarse texture and indifferent dye, the clumsy workmanship of some French weaver's lay; or a small piece of silver of inferior metal.[512] The Fates control the destinies of men: nay, there is fate even in those very parts which the lap of the toga conceals from view. For if the stars are unpropitious, your manly powers, remaining unknown, will profit you nothing, even though the liquorish Virro has seen you stripped, and seductive billets-doux, closely following each other, are forever assailing you: for such a fellow as he even entices others to sin. Yet, what monster can be worse, than one miserly as well as effeminate?"[513] "I gave you so much, then so much, and then soon after you had more!" He reckons up and still acts the wanton. "Let us settle our accounts! Send for the slaves with my account-book! Reckon up five thousand sesterces in all! Then count up your services!" Are then my duties so light, and so little against the grain? Far less wretched will be the poor slave that digs the great man's land! But you, forsooth, thought yourself delicate, and young, and beautiful! fit to be a cup-bearer in heaven!

Will you ever bestow favors on a humble dependent, or be generous to one that pays you court, when you grudge even the money you spend on your unnatural[514] gratifications? See the fellow! to whom you are to send a present of a green parasol and large amber[515] bowls, as often as his birthday comes round, or rainy spring begins; or pillowed on his cushioned sofa, he fingers presents set apart for the female Kalends![516]

Tell me, you sparrow, for whom it is you are keeping so many hills, so many Apulian[517] farms, so many kites wearied in flying across your pastures? Your Trifoline estate[518] enriches you with its fruitful vines; and the hill that looks down[519] on Cumæ, and caverned Gaurus. Who seals up more[520] casks of wine that will bear long keeping? How great a matter would it be to present the loins of your client, worn out in your service, with a few acres? Would yon rustic child, with his mother, and her hovel,[521] and his playmate cur, more justly become the inheritance of your cymbal-beating friend? "You are a most importunate beggar!" he says: But Rent cries out to me "Beg!" My only slave calls on me to beg! loudly as Polyphemus[522] with his one broad eye, by which the crafty Ulysses made his escape. I shall be compelled to buy a second, for this one is not enough for me; both must be fed. What shall I do in mid-winter? When the chill north wind whistles in December,[523] what shall I say, pray, to my poor slaves' naked feet and shoulders? "Courage,[524] my boys! and wait for the grasshoppers?" But however you may dissemble and pass by all other matters, at how much do you estimate it, that had I not been your devoted client your wife would still remain a maid? At all events, you know all about those services, how hard you begged, how much you promised! Often when your young wife was eloping, I caught her in my embrace. She had actually torn[525] the marriage contract, and was on the point of signing a new one. It was with difficulty that I set this matter right by a whole night's work, while you stood whimpering outside the door. I appeal to the bed as my witness! nay, to yourself, who heard the noise, and the lady's cries! In many a house, when the marriage bonds were growing feeble and beginning to give way, and were almost severed, an adulterer has set all matters right. However you may shift your ground, whatever services you may reckon first or last, is it indeed no obligation, ungrateful and perfidious man! is it none, that you have an infant son or daughter born to you through me? For you bring them up as yours! and plume yourself on inserting at intervals in the public registers[526] these evidences of your virility! Hang garlands[527] on your doors! You are now a father! I have given you what you may cast in slander's teeth! You have a father's privileges; through me you may inherit a legacy, yes, the whole sum[528] left to you, not to mention some pleasant windfall![529] Besides, many other advantages will be added to these windfalls, if I make the number complete and add a third!"

"Your ground of complaint is just indeed, Nævolus; what does he allege in answer?"

"He casts me off, and looks out for some other two-legged ass to serve his turn! But remember that these secrets are intrusted to you alone; keep them to yourself, therefore, buried in the silence of your own breast; for one of these pumice-smoothed[530] fellows is a deadly thing if he becomes your enemy. He that intrusted his secret to me but the other day, now is furious, and detests me just as though I had divulged all I know. He does not hesitate to use his dagger, to break my skull with a bludgeon, or place a firebrand at my doors:[531] and deem it no light or contemptible matter that to men of his wealth the price of poison is never too costly. Therefore you must keep my secrets as religiously as the court of Mars at Athens."

"Oh! Corydon,[532] poor simple Corydon! Do you think aught that a rich man does can be secret? Even though his slaves should hold their tongues, his cattle will tell the tale; and his dogs, and door-posts, and marble statues! Close the shutters, cover all the chinks with tapestry, fasten the doors, remove every light from the chamber,[533] let each one keep his counsel, let not a soul lie near. Yet what he does at the second cock-crow,[534] the next tavern-keeper will know before dawn of day; and will hear as well all the fabrications of his steward, cooks, and carvers.[535] For what charge do they scruple to concoct against their masters, as often as they revenge themselves for their strappings[536] by the lies they forge? Nor will there be wanting one to hunt you out against your will in the public thoroughfares, and pour his drunken tale into your miserable ears. Therefore ask them what you just now begged of me! They hold their tongues! Why they would rather blaze abroad a secret than drink as much Falernian (all the sweeter because stolen) as Saufeia[537] used to drink, when sacrificing[538] for the people!

"One should lead an upright life for very many reasons; but especially for this—that you may be able to despise your servants' tongues. For bad as your slave may be, his tongue is the worst part about him. Yet far worse still is he that places himself in the power of those whose body and soul he keeps together with his own bread and his own money.[539]

"Well, the advice you have just given me to enable me to laugh to scorn my servants' tongues is very good, but too general. Now, what do you advise in my particular case, after the loss of my time and the disappointment of my hopes? For the short-lived bloom[540] and contracted span of a brief and wretched life is fast fleeting away! While we are drinking,[541] and calling for garlands, and perfumes, and women, old age steals on us unperceived! Do not be alarmed! So long as these seven hills stand fast you will never lack a pathic friend. Those effeminates, who scratch their heads with one finger,[542] will flock from all quarters to these hills, in carriages and ships. You have still another and a better hope in store. All you have to do is to chew eringo vigorously." "Tell this to luckier wights! My Clotho and Lachesis are well content, if I can earn a subsistence by my vile labors. Oh! ye small Lares,[543] that call me master, whom I supplicate with a fragment of frankincense, or meal, and a poor garland, when shall I secure[544] a sum that may insure my old age against the beggar's mat and crutch? Twenty thousand sesterces as interest, with good security for the principal; some small vessels of silver not enchased, but such as Fabricius,[545] if censor, would condemn; and two sturdy Mœsian slaves,[546] who, bearing me on their shoulders, might bid me stand without inconvenience in the noisy circus! Let me have besides an engraver stooping[547] over his work, and another who may with all speed paint[548] me a row of portraits. This is quite enough—since poor I ever shall be. A poor, wretched wish indeed! and yet I have no hope even of this! For when dame Fortune[549] is invoked for me, she stops her ears with wax fetched from that ship which escaped the Sirens' songs with its deaf rower."

FOOTNOTES:

SATIRE X.

In all the regions which extend from Gades[550] even to the farthest east and Ganges, there are but few that can discriminate between real blessings and those that are widely different, all the mist[551] of error being removed. For what is there that we either fear or wish for, as reason would direct? What is there that you enter on under such favorable auspices, that you do not repent of your undertaking, and the accomplishment of your wish? The too easy gods have overthrown[552] whole families by granting their owners' prayers. Our prayers are put up for what will injure us in peace and injure us in war. To many the copious fluency[553] of speech, and their very eloquence, is fatal. It was owing to his strength[554] and wondrous muscle, in which he placed his trust, that the Athlete met his death. But money heaped up with overwhelming care, and a revenue surpassing all common patrimonies as much as the whale of Britain[555] exceeds dolphins, causes more to be strangled. Therefore it was, that in that reign of Terror, and at Nero's bidding, a whole cohort[556] blockaded Longinus[557] and the spacious gardens of the over-wealthy Seneca,[558] and laid siege to the splendid[559] mansion of the Laterani.[560] It is but rarely that the soldier pays his visit to a garret. Though you are conveying ever so few vessels of unembossed silver, entering on your journey by night, you will dread the bandit's knife and bludgeon, and tremble at the shadow of a reed as it quivers in the moonshine.[561] The traveler with empty[562] pockets will sing even in the robber's face.

The prayers that are generally the first put up and best known in all the temples are, that riches,[563] that wealth may increase; that our chest may be the largest in the whole forum.[564] But no aconite is drunk from earthenware. It is time to dread it when you quaff jeweled cups,[565] and the ruddy Setine blazes in the broad gold. And do you not, then, now commend the fact, that of the two sages,[566] one used to laugh[567] whenever he had advanced a single step from his threshold; the other, with sentiments directly contrary, used to weep. But easy enough to any one is the stern censure of a sneering laugh: the wonder is how the other's eyes could ever have a sufficient supply of tears.[568] Democritus used to shake his sides with perpetual laughter, though in the cities of those regions there were no prætextæ, no trabeæ,[569] no fasces, no litter, no tribunal! What, had he seen the prætor[570] standing pre-eminent in his lofty car, and raised on high in the mid dust of the circus, dressed in the tunic of Jove, and wearing on his shoulders the Tyrian hangings of the embroidered toga; and the circlet of a ponderous crown,[571] so heavy that no single neck could endure the weight:[572] since the official, all in a sweat, supports it, and, that the consul may not be too elated, the slave rides in the same car. Then, add the bird that rises from his ivory sceptre: on one side the trumpeters; on the other, the long train of attendant clients, that march before him, and the Quirites, all in white togas, walking by his horses' heads; men whose friendship he has won by the sportula buried deep in his chest. Even in those days he found subject for ridicule in every place where human beings meet, whose wisdom proves that men of the highest intellect, men that will furnish noble examples, may be born in the country of wether-sheep, and in a foggy[573] atmosphere. He used to laugh at the cares and also the joys of the common herd; sometimes even at their tears: while he himself would bid Fortune, when she frowned, "Go hang!" and point at her his finger[574] in scorn! Superfluous therefore, or else destructive, are all those objects of our prayers, for which we think it right to cover the knees of the gods with waxen tablets.[575]

Power, exposed to great envy, hurls some headlong down to ruin. The long and splendid list of their titles and honors sinks[576] into the dust. Down come their statues,[577] and are dragged along with ropes: then the very wheels of the chariot are smashed by the vigorous stroke of the axe, and the legs of the innocent[578] horses are demolished. Now the fires roar! Now that head, once worshiped[579] by the mob, glows with the bellows and the furnace! Great Sejanus crackles! Then from that head, second only in the whole wide world, are made pitchers, basins, frying-pans,[580] and platters! "Crown your doors with bays![581] Lead to Jove's Capitol a huge and milk-white ox! Sejanus is being dragged along by the hook! a glorious sight!" Every body is delighted. "What lips he had! and what a face! If you believe me, I never could endure this man!" "But what was the charge under which he fell! Who was the accuser? what the information laid? By whose witness did he prove it?" "Nothing of the sort! a wordy and lengthy epistle came from Capreæ." "That's enough! I ask no farther. But how does the mob of Remus behave!" "Why, follow Fortune,[582] as mobs always do, and hate him that is condemned?" That self-same people, had Tuscan Nurscia[583] smiled propitious on her countryman—had the old age of the emperor been crushed while he thought all secure—would in that very hour have saluted Sejanus as Augustus. Long ago they have thrown overboard all anxiety. For that sovereign people that once gave away military command, consulships, legions, and every thing, now bridles its desires, and limits its anxious longings to two things only—bread, and the games of the circus! "I hear that many are involved in his fall." "No doubt: the little furnace[584] is a capacious one; I met my friend Brutidius[585] at the altar of Mars looking a little pale!" "But I greatly fear that Ajax, being baffled,[586] will wreak fearful vengeance, as having been inadequately defended. Let us rush headlong; and, while he still lies on the river-bank, trample on Cæsar's foe? But take care that our slaves witness the act! lest any of them should deny it, and drag his master to trial with a halter round his neck!" Such were the conversations then about Sejanus; such the smothered whispers of the populace? Would you then have the same court paid to you that Sejanus had? possess as much, bestow on one the highest curule honors, give another the command of armies,[587] be esteemed the lawful guardian[588] of the prince that lounged away[589] his days with his herd of Chaldæan astrologers, in the rock of Capreæ that he made his palace?[590] Would you have centuries and cohorts, and a picked body of cavalry,[591] and prætorian bands at your beck? Why should you not covet these? Even those who have not the will to kill a man would gladly have the power. But what brilliant or prosperous fortune is of sufficient worth that your measure of evils should balance your good luck? Would you rather put on the prætexta of him that is being dragged along, or be the magistrate of Fidenæ or Gabii, and give sentence about false weights,[592] and break up scanty measures as the ragged ædile of the deserted Ulubræ?[593]

You acknowledge, therefore, that Sejanus did not know what ought to have been the object of his wishes. For he that coveted excessive honors, and prayed for excessive wealth, was but rearing up the multiplied stories of a tower raised on high, only that the fall might be the deeper,[594] and horrible the headlong descent of his ruin[595] once accelerated!

What overthrew the Crassi?[596] and Pompey and his sons?[597] and him that brought Rome's haughty citizens quailing[598] beneath his lash? Surely it was the post of highest advancement, reached by every possible device, and prayers for greatness heard by gods who showed their malignity in granting them! Few kings go down without slaughter and wounds to Ceres' son-in-law. Few tyrants die a bloodless death!

He that as yet pays court to[599] Minerva, purchased by a single as, that is followed by his little slave[600] to take charge of his diminutive satchel, begins to long, and longs through all his quinquatrian[601] holidays, for the eloquence and the renown of Demosthenes or Cicero. But it was through their eloquence that both of these orators perished: the copious and overflowing fount of talent gave over each to destruction; by talent, was his hand and head cut off! Nor did the Rostra[602] ever reek with the blood of a contemptible pleader.

"O fortunate Rome, whose natal day may date from me as consul!" He might have scorned the swords of Antony,[603] had all he uttered been such trash as this. I had rather write poems that excite only ridicule, than thee, divine Philippic of distinguished fame! that art unrolled next to the first! Cruel was the end that carried him off also whom Athens used to admire as his words flowed from his lips in a torrent[604] of eloquence, and he swayed at will the passions of the crowded theatre. With adverse gods and inauspicious fate was he born, whom his father, blear-eyed with the grime of the glowing mass, sent from the coal, and pincers,[605] and the sword-forging anvil, and sooty Vulcan,[606] to the rhetorician's school!

The spoils of war, the cuirass fastened to the truncated[607] trophy, the cheek-piece hanging from the battered helm, the car shorn of its pole, the streamer of the captured galley,[608] and the sad captive on the triumphal arch-top,[609] are held to be goods exceeding all human blessings. For these each general, Roman, or Greek, or Barbarian, strains as his prize! Full compensation for his dangers and his toils he sees in these! So much greater is the thirst after fame than virtue. For who would embrace[610] virtue herself, if you took away the rewards of virtue? And yet, ere now, the glory of a few has been the ruin of their native land; that longing for renown, and those inscriptions that are to live on the marble that guards their ashes; and yet to burst asunder this, the mischievous strength of the barren fig-tree has power enough. Since even to sepulchres[611] themselves are fates assigned. Weigh[612] the remains of Hannibal! How many pounds will you find in that most consummate general! This is the man whom not even Africa, lashed by the Mauritanian ocean, and stretching even to the steaming Nile, and then again to the races of the Æthiopes and their tall[613] elephants, can contain! Spain is annexed to Carthage's domain. He bounds across the Pyrenees. Nature opposed in vain the Alps with all their snows; he cleaves the rocks and rives the mountains with vinegar.[614] Now he is lord of Italy! Yet still he presses on. "Naught is achieved,"[615] he says, "unless we burst through the gates of Rome with the soldiery of Carthage, and I plant my standard in the heart of the Suburra!" Oh what a face![616] and worthy what a picture! when the huge Gætulian beast bore on his back the one-eyed[617] general! What then was the issue? Oh glory! This self-made man is conquered, and flees with headlong haste to exile, and there, a great and much-to-be-admired client, sits at the palace of the king, until his Bithynian majesty[618] be pleased to wake! To that soul, that once shook the very world's base, it is not sword, nor stone, nor javelin, that shall give the final stroke; but, that which atoned for Cannæ, and avenged such mighty carnage,[619] a ring! Go then, madman, and hurry over the rugged Alps, that you may be the delight of boys, and furnish subjects for declamations![620]

One[621] world is not enough for the youth of Pella! He chafes within the narrow limits of the universe, poor soul, as though confined in Gyarus'[622] small rock, or scanty Seriphös. Yet when he shall have entered the city that the brickmakers[623] fortified, he will be content with a sarcophagus![624] Death alone discloses how very small are the puny bodies of men! Men do believe that Athos was sailed through of yore; and all the bold assertions that lying Greeks hazard in history—that the sea was bridged over by the same fleets, and formed into a solid pavement for the transit of wheels. We believe that deep rivers failed, and streams were drunk dry[625] when the Persian dined; and all the flights of Sostratus'[626] song, when his wings are moistened by the god of wine. And yet, in what guise did he return after quitting Salamis, who, like a true barbarian as he was, used to vent his rage in scourges on Corus and Eurus, that had never suffered in this sort in Æolus' prison; and bound in gyves Ennosigæus[627] himself. It was, in fact, an act of clemency that he did not think he deserved branding[628] also. Would any of the gods choose to serve[629] such a man as this? But how did he return? Why, in a single ship; through waves dyed with blood, and with his galley retarded[630] by the shoals of corpses. Such was the penalty that glory, for which he had so often prayed, exacted.

"Grant length of life, great Jove, and many years!" This is your only prayer in health and sickness. But with what unremitting and grievous ills is old age crowded! First of all, its face is hideous, loathsome, and altered from its former self; instead of skin a hideous hide and flaccid cheeks; and see! such wrinkles, as, where Tabraca[631] extends her shady dells, the antiquated ape[632] scratches on her wizened jowl! There are many points of difference in the young: this youth is handsomer than that; and he again than a third: one is far sturdier than another. Old mens faces are all alike—limbs tottering and voice feeble,[633] a smooth bald pate, and the second childhood of a driveling nose; the poor wretch must mumble his bread with toothless gums; so loathsome to his wife, his children, and even to himself, that he would excite the disgust even of the legacy-hunter Cossus! His palate[634] is grown dull; his relish for his food and wine[635] no more the same; the joys of love are long ago forgotten; and in spite of all efforts to reinvigorate them, all manly energies are hopelessly extinct. Has this depraved and hoary lechery aught else to hope? Do we not look with just suspicion on the lust that covets the sin but lacks the power?[636]

Now turn your eyes to the loss of another sense. For what pleasure has he in a singer, however eminent a harper it may be; nay, even Seleucus himself; or those whose habit it is to glitter in a cloak of gold?[637] What matters it in what part of the wide theatre he sits, who can scarcely hear the horn-blowers, and the general clang of trumpets? You must bawl out loud before his ear can distinguish who it is his slave says has called, or tells him what o'clock it is.[638] Besides, the scanty blood that flows in his chill[639] body is warmed by fever only. Diseases of every kind dance round him in full choir. If you were to ask their names, I could sooner tell you how many lovers Hippia had; how many patients Themison[640] killed in one autumn; how many allies Basilus plundered; how many wards Hirrus defrauded; how many lovers long Maura received in the day; how many pupils Hamillus corrupts. I could sooner run through the list of villas owned by him now, beneath whose razor[641] my stiff beard resounded when I was in my prime. One is weak in the shoulder; another in the loins; another in the hip. Another has lost both eyes, and envies the one-eyed. Another's bloodless lips receive their food from others' fingers. He that was wont to relax his features to a smile at the sight of his dinner, now only gapes[642] like the young swallow to whom the parent bird, herself fasting,[643] flies with full beak. But worse than all debility of limb is that idiocy which recollects neither the names of his slaves nor the face of the friend with whom he supped the evening before; not even those whom he begot and brought up! For by a heartless will he disinherits them; and all his property is made over to Phiale:[644]—such power has the breath of her artificial mouth, that stood for hire so many years in the brothel's dungeon.

Even though the powers of intellect retain their vigor, yet he must lead forth the funerals of his children; must gaze upon the pyre of a beloved wife, and the urns filled with all that remains of his brother and sisters. This is the penalty imposed on the long-lived, that they must grow old with the death-blow in their house forever falling fresh—in oft-recurring sorrow—in unremitting mourning, and a suit of black.[645] The king of Pylos,[646] if you put any faith in great Homer, was an instance of life inferior in duration only to the crow's.[647] Happy, no doubt! was he who for so many years put off his hour of death; and now begins to count his years on his right hand,[648] and has drunk so often of the new-made wine. I pray you, lend me your ear a little space; and hear how sadly he himself complains of the decrees of fate, and too great powers of life, when he watches the blazing beard of Antilochus[649] in his bloom, and asks of every friend that stands near, why it is he lingers on to this day; what crime he has committed to deserve so long a life! Such, too, is Peleus' strain, when he mourns for Achilles prematurely snatched from him: and that other, whose lot it was to grieve for the shipwrecked[650] Ithacensian.

Priam would have joined the shade of Assaracus with Troy still standing, with high solemnities, with Hector and his brothers supporting his bier on their shoulders, amid the weeping Troades, so that Cassandra would lead off the wail, and Polyxena[651] with mantle rent, had he but died at any time but that, after that Paris had begun to build his audacious ships. What then did length of days confer on him? He saw his all o'erthrown: Asia laid low by flame and sword. Then the poor tottering warrior[652] laid down his diadem and donned his arms, and fell before the altar of supreme Jove; like some old ox[653] that yields his attenuated and miserable neck to his owner's knife, long ago scorned[654] by the ungrateful plow.

That was at all events the death of a human being: but his wife who survived him barked fiercely from the jaws of a bitch.[655]

I hasten on to our own countrymen, and pass by the king of Pontus, and Crœsus,[656] whom the eloquent voice of the right-judging Solon bade look at the closing scene[657] of a life however long. Banishment, and the jail, and the marshes of Minturnæ,[658] and his bread begged in conquered Carthage, took their rise from this. What could all nature, what could Rome, have produced more blessed in the wide world than that citizen, had he breathed forth his soul[659] glutted with spoils, while the captive train followed around his chariot, in all the pomp and circumstance of war, when he was about to alight from his Teutonic[660] car! Campania,[661] in her foresight for Pompey, had given him a fever he should have prayed for. But the many cities and their public prayers prevailed. Therefore his own malignant fortune and that of Rome preserved him only that conquered he should lose his head. Lentulus[662] escaped this torment; Cethegus paid not this penalty, but fell unmutilated; and Catiline lay with corpse entire. The anxious mother, when she visits Venus' temple, prays for beauty for her boys with subdued whisper;[663] with louder voice for her girls, carrying her fond wishes[664] even to the verge of trifling. "But why should you chide me?" she says; "Latona[665] delights in the beauty of Diana." But, Lucretia[666] forbids a face like hers to be the subject of your prayers: Virginia would gladly give hers to Rutila, and receive her wen in exchange. But, a son possessed of exquisite person keeps his parents in a constant state of misery and alarm. So rare is the union[667] of beauty with chastity. Though the house, austere in virtue, and emulating the Sabines of old, may have handed down,[668] like an inheritance, purity of morals, and bounteous Nature with benignant hand may give, besides, a chaste mind and a face glowing with modest blood (for what greater boon can Nature bestow on a youth? Nature, more powerful than any guardian, or any watchful care!), still they are not allowed to attain to manhood. For the villainy of the corrupter, prodigal in its guilt, dares to assail with tempting offers the parents themselves. So great is their confidence in the success of bribes! No tyrant in his cruel palace ever castrated a youth that was deformed; nor did even Nero carry off a stripling if club-footed, or disfigured by wens, pot-bellied, and humpbacked! Go then, and exult in the beauty of your darling boy! Yet for whom are there greater perils in store? He will become the adulterer of the city, and dread all the punishments[669] that angry husbands inflict. Nor will he be more lucky than the star of Mars, even though he never fall like Mars into the net.[670] But sometimes that bitter wrath exacts even more than any law permits, to satisfy the husband's rage. One dispatches the adulterer with the sword; another cuts him in two with bloody lashes; some have the punishment of the mullet. But your Endymion, forsooth, will of course become the lover of some lady of his affections! But soon, when Servilia[671] has bribed him, he will serve her whom he loves not, and will despoil her of all her ornaments. For what will any woman refuse, to get her passions gratified? whether she be an Oppia, or a Catulla. A depraved woman has all her morality[672] concentred there. "But what harm does beauty do one that is chaste?" Nay, what did his virtuous resolve avail Hippolytus, or what Bellerophon? Surely she[673] fired at the rejection of her suit, as though treated with indignity. Nor did Sthenobæa burn less fiercely than the Cretan; and both lashed themselves into fury. A woman is then most ruthless, when shame sets sharper spurs[674] to her hate. Choose what course you think should be recommended him to whom Cæsar's wife[675] purposes to marry herself. This most noble and most beautiful of the patrician race is hurried off, poor wretched man, a sacrifice to the lewd eyes of Messalina. She is long since seated with her bridal veil all ready: the nuptial bed with Tyrian hangings is openly prepared in the gardens, and, according to the antique rites, a dowry of a million sesterces will be given; the soothsayer[676] and the witnesses to the settlement will be there! Do you suppose these acts are kept secret; intrusted only to a few? She will not be married otherwise than with all legal forms. Tell me which alternative you choose. If you refuse to comply, you must die before nightfall.[677] If you do commit the crime, some brief delay will be afforded you, until the thing, known to the city and the people,[678] shall reach the prince's ears. He will be the last to learn the disgrace of his house! Do you meanwhile obey her behests, if you set so high a value on a few days' existence. Whichever you hold the better and the safer course, that white and beauteous neck must be presented[679] to the sword!

Is there then nothing for which men shall pray? If you will take advice, you will allow the deities themselves to determine what may be expedient for us, and suitable to our condition. For instead of pleasant things, the gods will give us all that is most fitting. Man is dearer to them than to himself. We, led on by the impulse of our minds, by blind and headstrong passions, pray for wedlock, and issue by our wives; but it is known to them what our children will prove; of what character our wife will be! Still, that you may have somewhat to pray for, and vow to their shrines the entrails and consecrated mincemeat[680] of the white porker, your prayer must be that you may have a sound mind in a sound body. Pray for a bold spirit, free from all dread of death; that reckons the closing scene of life among Nature's kindly boons;[681] that can endure labor, whatever it be; that deems the gnawing cares of Hercules,[682] and all his cruel toils, far preferable to the joys of Venus, rich banquets, and the downy couch of Sardanapalus. I show thee what thou canst confer upon thyself. The only path that surely leads to a life of peace lies through virtue. If we have wise foresight, thou, Fortune, hast no divinity.[683] It is we that make thee a deity, and place thy throne in heaven![684]

FOOTNOTES:

SATIRE XI.

If Atticus[685] sups extravagantly, he is considered a splendid[686] fellow: if Rutilus does so, he is thought mad. For what is received with louder laughter on the part of the mob, than Apicius[687] reduced to poverty?