Must I always be a hearer only? Shall I never retaliate,[33] though plagued so often with the Theseid of Codrus,[34] hoarse with reciting it? Shall one man, then, recite[35] to me his Comedies, and another his Elegies, with impunity? Shall huge "Telephus" waste a whole day for me, or "Orestes," with the margin of the manuscript full to the very edge, and written on the back too,[36] and yet not finished, and I not retort? No one knows his own house better than I do the grove of Mars, and Vulcan's cave close to the Æolian rocks. The agency of the winds,[37] what ghosts Æacus is torturing, whence another bears off the gold[38] of the stolen fleece, what huge mountain-ashes Monychus hurls, all this the plane-groves of Fronto,[39] and the statues shaken and the columns split by the eternal reciter, are for ever re-echoing. You may look for the same themes from the greatest poet and the least. And yet I too have shirked my hand away from the rod.[40] I too have given advice to Sylla, that he should enjoy a sound sleep by returning to a private station.[41] When at every turn you meet so many poetasters, it were a foolish clemency to spare paper that is sure to be wasted. Yet why I rather choose to trace my course over that plain through which the great foster-son of Aurunca[42] urged his steeds, I will, if you are at leisure, and with favorable ear listen to reason, tell you. When a soft eunuch[43] marries a wife; when MÆvia[44] transfixes the Tuscan boar, and, with breasts exposed, grasps the hunting-spears; when one man singly vies in wealth with the whole body of patricians, under whose razor my beard, grown exuberant, sounded while I was in my prime;[45] when Crispinus, one of the dregs of the mob of the Nile, a born-slave of Canopus, (while his shoulder hitches up his Tyrian cloak,)[46] airs his summer ring from his sweating fingers, and can not support the weight of his heavier gem;—it is difficult not to write satire. For who can be so tolerant of this iniquitous city, who so case-hardened,[47] as to contain himself! When there comes up the bran-new litter of Matho[48] the lawyer, filled with himself; and after him, he that informed upon his powerful friend; and will soon plunder the nobility, already close-shorn, of the little that remains to them; one whom even Massa fears, whom Carus soothes with a bribe; or a Thymele suborned by some trembling Latinus.[49] When fellows supplant you, who earn their legacies by night-work, lifted up to heaven[50] by what is now the surest road to the highest advancement, the lust of some ancient harridan. Proculeius gets one poor twelfth; but Gillo has eleven twelfths. Each gets the share proportioned to his powers. Well! let him take the purchase-money of his blood, and be as pale as one that has trodden on a snake with naked heel, or a rhetorician about to declaim at the altar at Lyons.[51] Why need I tell with what indignation my parched liver boils, when here, the plunderer of his ward (reduced by him to the vilest gains) presses on the people with his crowds of menials, and there, he that was condemned by a powerless sentence. (For what cares he for infamy while he retains the plunder?) Marius,[52] though an exile, drinks from the eighth hour, and laughs at the angry gods, while thou, O Province, victorious in the suit, art in tears! Shall I not deem these themes worthy of the lamp of Venusium?[53] Shall I not lash these? Why rather sing tales of Hercules or Diomede, or the bellowing of the Labyrinth, and the sea struck by the boy Icarus, and the winged artificer?[54] When the pander inherits the wealth of the adulterer (since the wife has lost the right of receiving it),[55] taught to gaze at the ceiling, and snore over his cups with well-feigned sleep. When he considers himself privileged to expect the command of a cohort, who has squandered his money on his stables, and has run through all his ancestors' estate, while he flies with rapid wheel along the Flaminian road;[56] for while yet a youth, like Automedon, he held the reins, while the great man showed himself off to his "mistress-in-his-cloak."[57] Do you not long to fill your capacious tablets, even in the middle of the cross-ways, when there comes borne on the shoulders of six slaves, exposed to view on either side, with palanquin almost uncurtained, and aping the luxurious MÆcenas, the forger, who made himself a man of splendor and wealth by a few short lines, and a moistened seal?[58] Next comes the powerful matron, who when her husband thirsts, mingles the toad's-poison in the mellow wine of Cales which she is herself about to hand him, and with skill superior even to Locusta,[59] initiates her neighbors, too simple before, in the art of burying their husbands, livid from the poison, in despite of infamy and the public gaze.[60] Dare some deed to merit scanty Gyarus[61] and the jail, if you wish to be somebody. Honesty is commended, and starves. It is to their crimes they are indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their tables, their fine old plate, and the goat standing in high relief from the cup. Whom does the seducer of his own daughter-in-law, greedy for gold, suffer to sleep? Or the unnatural brides, or the adulterer not out of his teens?[62] If nature denies the power, indignation would give birth to verses, such as it could produce, like mine and Cluvienus'. From the time that Deucalion ascended the mountain in his boat, while the storm upheaved the sea,[63] and consulted the oracle, and the softening stones by degrees grew warm with life, and Pyrrha displayed to the males the virgins unrobed; all that men are engaged in, their wishes, fears, anger, pleasures, joys, and varied pursuits, form the hotch-potch of my book. And when was the crop of vices more abundant? When were the sails of avarice more widely spread? When had gambling its present spirits? For now men go to the hazard of the gaming-table not simply with their purses, but play with their whole chest[64] staked. What fierce battles will you see there, while the steward supplies the weapons for the contest! Is it then mere common madness to lose a hundred sestertia, and not leave enough for a tunic for your shivering slave![65] Which of our grandsires erected so many villas? Which of them ever dined by himself[66] on seven courses? In our days the diminished sportula is set outside the threshold, ready to be seized upon by the toga-clad crowd.[67] Yet he (that dispenses it), before giving, scans your features, and dreads lest you should come with counterfeit pretense and under a false name. When recognized you will receive your dole. He bids the crier summon the very TrojugenÆ themselves. For even they assail the door with us. "Give the prÆtor his! Then to the tribune." But the freedman must first be served! "I was before him!" he says. "Why should I fear or hesitate to stand up for my turn, though I was born on the banks of Euphrates, which the soft windows[68] in my ears would attest, though I myself were to deny the fact. But my five shops bring me in four hundred sestertia. What does the Laticlave[69] bestow that's worth a wish, since Corvinus keeps sheep for hire in the Laurentine fields? I own more than Pallas[70] and the Licini. Let the tribunes wait then!" Let Riches carry the day, and let not him give place even to the sacrosanct magistrate, who came but the other day to this city with chalked feet.[71] Since with us the most revered majesty is that of riches; even though as yet, pernicious money, thou dwellest in no temple, nor have we as yet reared altars to coin, as we worship Peace and Faith, Victory and Virtue, and Concord, whose temple resounds with the noise of storks returning to their nests.[72] But when a magistrate of the highest rank reckons up at the end of the year, what the sportula brings him in, how much it adds to his revenue, what shall the poor retainers do, who look to this for their toga, for their shoes, their bread and fire at home? A closely-wedged crowd of litters is clamorous for the hundred quadrantes, and his wife, though sick or pregnant, accompanies and goes the rounds with her husband. One practicing a crafty trick now worn threadbare, asks for his wife though really absent, displaying in her stead an empty and closed palanquin: "My Galla is inside," he says, "dispatch us with all speed. Why hesitate?" "Put out your head, Galla!" "O don't disturb her! she's asleep!" The day is portioned out with a fine routine of engagements. First the sportula; then the Forum,[73] and Apollo[74] learned in the law; and the triumphal statues, among which some unknown Egyptian or Arabarch has dared set up his titles, whose image, as though sacred, one dare not venture to defile.[75] At length, the old and wearied-out clients quit the vestibule and give up all their hopes;[76] although their expectation of a dinner has been full-long protracted: the poor wretches must buy their cabbage and fire. Meanwhile their patron-lord will devour the best that the forest and ocean can supply, and will recline in solitary state with none but himself on his couches. For out of so many fair, and broad, and such ancient dishes, they gorge whole patrimonies at a single course. In our days there will not be even a parasite! Yet who could tolerate such sordid luxury! How gross must that appetite be, which sets before itself whole boars, an animal created to feast a whole company! Yet thy punishment is hard at hand, when distended with food thou layest aside thy garments, and bearest to the bath the peacock undigested! Hence sudden death, and old age without a will. The news[77] travels to all the dinner-tables, but calls forth no grief, and thy funeral procession advances, exulted over by disgusted friends![78] There is nothing farther that future times can add to our immorality. Our posterity must have the same desires, perpetrate the same acts. Every vice has reached its climax. Then set sail! spread all your canvas! Yet here perchance you may object, whence can talent be elicited able to cope with the subject? Whence that blunt freedom of our ancestors, whose very name I dare not utter, of writing whatever was dictated by their kindling soul. What matter, whether Mucius forgive the libel, or not? But take Tigellinus for your theme, and you will shine in that tunic, in which they blaze standing,[79] who smoke with throat transfixed, and you will draw a broad furrow in the middle of the sand. "Must he then, who has given[80] aconite to his three uncles, be borne on down cushions, suspended aloft, and from thence look down on us?" Yes! when he meets you press your finger to your lip! There will be some informer standing by to whisper in his ear, That's he! Without fear for the consequences you may match[81] Æneas and the fierce Rutulian. The death of Achilles breeds ill-will in no one; or the tale of the long-sought Hylas, who followed his pitcher. But whensoever Lucilius, fired with rage, has brandished as it were his drawn sword, his hearer, whose conscience chills with the remembrance of crime, grows red. His heart sweats with the pressure of guilt concealed. Then bursts forth rage and tears! Ponder well, therefore, these things in your mind, before you sound the signal blast. The soldier when helmeted repents too late of the fight. I will try then what I may be allowed to vent on those whose ashes are covered by the Flaminian[82] or Latin road. SATIRE II. I long to escape from hence beyond the Sarmatians, and the frozen sea, whenever those fellows who pretend to be Curii and live like Bacchanals presume to read a lecture on morality. First of all, they are utterly unlearned, though you may find all their quarters full of busts of Chrysippus. For the most finished scholar among them is he that has bought an image of Aristotle or Pittacus, or bids his shelves retain originals of Cleanthes. There is no trusting to the outside! For what street is there that does not overflow with debauchees of demure exterior? Dost thou reprove abominations, that art thyself the most notorious sink among catamites who pretend to follow Socrates? Thy rough limbs indeed, and the stiff bristles on thy arms, seem to promise a vigorous mind within; but on thy smooth behind, the surgeon with a smile lances the swelling piles. These fellows affect a paucity of words, and a wonderful taciturnity, and the fashion of cutting their hair shorter than their eyebrows. There is therefore more frankness and sincerity in Peribomius; the man that by his very look and gait makes no secret of his depravity, I look upon as the victim of destiny. The plain-dealing of the latter class excites our pity; their very madness pleads for our forgiveness. Far worse are they who in Hercules' vein practice similar atrocities, and preaching up virtue, perpetrate the foulest vice. "Shall I feel any dread for thee, Sextus, unnatural thyself?" says the infamous Varillus. "How am I worse than thou? Let the straight-limbed, if you please, mock the bandy-legged; the fair European sneer at the Ethiop. But who could tolerate the Gracchi if they railed at sedition? Who would not confound heaven with earth, and sea with sky,[83] if a thief were odious to Verres, or a murderer to Milo? If Clodius were to impeach adulterers, or Catiline Cethegus? If Sylla's three pupils were to declaim against Sylla's proscriptions? Such was the case of the adulterer recently[84] defiled by incest, such as might be found in Greek tragedy, who then set himself to revive those bitter laws which all might tremble at, ay, even Venus and Mars, at the same time that Julia was relieving her fruitful womb by so many abortives,[85] and gave birth to shapeless masses, the image of her uncle! Might not then, with all reason and justice, even the very worst of vices look with contempt on these counterfeit Scauri, and if censured turn and bite again?" Lauronia could not endure some fierce reformer of this class so often exclaiming, "Where is now the Julian law? is it slumbering?" and thus silenced him with a sneer: "Blest days indeed! that set thee up as a censor of morals! Rome now must needs retrieve her honor! A third Cato has dropped from the clouds. But tell me, pray, where do you buy these perfumes that exhale from your neck, all hairy though it be! Do not be ashamed to tell the shopman's name. But if old laws and statutes are to be raked up,[86] before all others the Scatinian ought to be revived. First scrutinize and look into the conduct of the men. They commit the greater atrocities; but it is their number protects them, and their phalanxes close serried with their shields. There is a wonderful unanimity among these effeminates. You will not find one single instance of such execrable conduct in our sex.[87] TÆdia does not caress Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla. Hispo acts both sex's parts, and is pale with two-handed lust. Do we ever plead causes? Do we study civil law? or disturb your courts with any clamor of our tongues? A few of us perhaps may wrestle, or diet themselves on the trainer's food; but only a few. You men, you spin wool, and carry home in women's baskets your finished tasks. You men twist the spindle big with its fine-drawn thread more deftly than Penelope, more nimbly than Arachne; work, such as the dirty drab does that sits crouching on her log. Every one knows why Hister at his death made his freedman his sole heir, while, when alive, he gave his maiden wife[88] so many presents. She will be rich without a doubt, who will submit to lie third in the wide bed. Get married then, and hold your tongue, and earrings[89] will be the guerdon of your silence! And after all this, forsooth, a heavy sentence is to be passed on us women! Censure acquits the raven, but falls foul of the dove!" From this rebuke so true and undeniable, the counterfeit Stoics recoiled in confusion, For what grain of untruth was there in Lauronia's words? Yet, what will not others do, when thou, Creticus, adoptest muslin robes, and to the amazement of the people, inveighest in such a dress against Procula or Pollinea? Fabulla, thou sayest, is an adulteress. Then let her be condemned, if you will have it so, and Carfinia also. Yet though condemned, she would not put on such a dress as that. "But it is July, it is raging hot, I am on fire!" Then plead stark naked![90] To be thought mad would be a less disgrace! Is that a dress to propound laws and statutes in, in the ears of the people when flushed with victory, with their wounds yet green, or that noble race, fresh from their plows? What an outcry would you make, if you saw such a dress on the person of a Judex! I ask, would such a robe be suitable even in a witness? Creticus! the implacable, the indomitable, the champion of liberty, is transparent! Contagion has caused this plague-spot, and will extend it to many more, just as a whole flock perishes, in the fields from the scab of one sheep, or pigs from mange, and the grape contracts the taint from the grape it comes in contact with. Ere long you will venture on something more disgraceful even than this dress. No one ever reached the climax of vice at one step. You will by degrees enter the band of those who wear at home long fillets round their brows, and cover their necks with jewels, and propitiate Bona Dea with the belly of a young sow and a huge bowl of wine; but by an inversion of the old custom women, kept far aloof, dare not cross the threshold. The altar of the goddess is accessible to males alone. "Withdraw, profane females!" is the cry. No minstrel here may make her cornet sound! Such were the orgies by the secret torch-light which the BaptÆ celebrated, who used to weary out even the Athenian Cotytto.[91] One with needle held oblique adds length to his eyebrows touched with moistened soot, and raising the lids paints his quivering eyes. Another drains a Priapus-shaped glass, and confines his long thick hair with a caul of gold thread, clothed in sky-blue checks, or close-piled yellow stuffs; while his attendant also swears by Juno, the patron deity of his master. Another holds a mirror, the weapon wielded by the pathic Otho, "the spoil of Auruncan Actor,"[92] in which he surveyed himself when fully armed, before he gave the signal to engage—a thing worthy to be recorded in the latest annals and history of the day. A mirror! fit baggage for a civil war! O yes, forsooth! to kill old Galba shows the consummate general, to pamper one's complexion is the consistent occupation of the first citizen of Rome; to aspire to the empire as the prize on Bebriacum's[93] plains, and then spread over his face a poultice applied with his fingers! Such an act as neither the quivered Semiramis perpetrated in the Assyrian realms, or Cleopatra flying dejected in her Actian galley. Among this crew there is neither decency of language, nor respect for the proprieties of the table. Here is the foul license that Cybele enjoins, the lisping speech, the aged priest with hoary hair, like one possessed, a prodigy of boundless appetite, open to hire. Yet why do they delay? since long ago they ought after the Phrygian custom to have removed with their knives the superfluous flesh. Gracchus[94] gave four hundred sestertia as his dowry, with himself, to a bugler, or else one that blew the straight trumpet. The marriage deeds were duly signed, the blessing invoked, a great dinner provided, the he-bride lay in the bridegroom's arms. O nobles! is it a censor we need, or an aruspex? You would without doubt be horrified, and deem it a prodigy of portentous import, if a woman gave birth to a calf, or a cow to a lamb. The same Gracchus puts on flounces, the long robe and flame-colored[95] veil, who, when bearing the sacred shields swinging with mysterious thong, sweated beneath the Ancilia! Oh! father of our city! whence came such heinous guilt to the shepherds of Latium? Whence, O Gradivus, came this unnatural lust that has tainted thy race? See! a man illustrious in birth and rank is made over to a man! Dost thou neither shake thy helmet, nor smite the earth with thy lance? Dost thou not even appeal to thy father Jove? Begone then! and quit the acres of the Campus once so severe, which thou ceasest to care for! "I have some duty-work to perform to-morrow at break of day in the Quirinal valley." "What is the occasion?" "Why ask? my friend is going to be married; only a few are invited!" If we only live to see it, these things will be done in the broad light of day, and claim to be registered in the public acts. Meanwhile, there is one grievous source of pain that clings to these male-brides, that they are incapable of bearing, and retaining their lords' affections by bringing them children. No! better is it that nature in this case gives their minds no power over their bodies! They must die barren! Vain, in their case, is fat Lyde with her medicated box; vain the holding out their hands to the nimble Luperci. Yet even this prodigy of crime is surpassed by the trident of Gracchus in his gladiator's tunic,[96] when in full flight he traverses the middle of the arena. Gracchus! more nobly born than the Manlii, and Marcelli, and Catulus' and Paulus' race, and the Fabii, and all the spectators in the front row. Ay, even though you add to these the very man himself, at whose expense he cast his net as Retiarius. That there are departed spirits, and realms beneath the earth—that Charon's pole exists, and the foul frogs in the Stygian whirlpool—and that so many thousand souls cross its waters in a single bark, not even boys believe, save those as yet too young to be charged for their bath.[97] But do thou believe them true! What does Curius feel, and the two Scipios, what Fabricius and the shades of Camillus, what the legion cut off at Cremera, and the flower of Roman youth slaughtered at CannÆ—so many martial spirits—what do they feel when such a shade as this passes from us to them? They would long to be cleansed from the pollution of the contact, could any sulphur and pine-torches be supplied to them, or could there be a bay-tree to sprinkle them with water. To such a pitch of degradation are we come![98] We have, indeed, advanced our arms beyond Juverna's shore, and the Orcades[99] recently subdued, and the Britons content with night contracted to its briefest span. But those abominations which are committed in the victorious people's city are unknown to those barbarians whom we have conquered. "Yet there is a story told of one, an Armenian Zalates, who, more effeminate than the rest of his young countrymen, is reported to have yielded to the tribune's lust." See the result of intercourse with Rome! He came a hostage! Here they learn to be men! For if a longer tarry in the city be granted to these youths, they will never lack a lover. Their plaids, and knives, and bits, and whips, will soon be discarded. Thus it is the vices of our young nobles are aped even at Artaxata.[100] [83] Alluding to the comic exclamation, "O Coelum, O Terra, O Maria Neptuni." Vid. Ter., Adelph., v., i., 4. Cf. Sat. vi., 283. SATIRE III. Although troubled at the departure of my old friend, yet I can not but commend his intention of fixing his abode at CumÆ, now desolate, and giving the Sibyl one citizen at least. It is the high road to BaiÆ, and has a pleasant shore; a delightful retreat. I prefer even Prochyta[101] to the Suburra. For what have we ever looked on so wretched or so lonely, that you would not deem it worse to be in constant dread of fires, the perpetual falling-in of houses, and the thousand dangers of the cruel city,[102] and poets spouting in the month of August.[103] But while his whole household is being stowed in a single wagon, my friend Umbritius halted at the ancient triumphal arches[104] and the moist Capena. Here, where Numa used to make assignations with his nocturnal mistress, the grove of the once-hallowed fountain and the temples are in our days let out to Jews, whose whole furniture is a basket and bundle of hay.[105] For every single tree is bid to pay a rent to the people, and the CamenÆ having been ejected, the wood is one mass of beggars. We descended into the valley of Egeria and the grottoes, so altered from what nature made them. How much more should we feel the influence of the presiding genius of the spring,[106] if turf inclosed the waters with its margin of green, and no marble profaned the native tufo. Here then Umbritius began:[107] "Since at Rome there is no place for honest pursuits, no profit to be got by honest toil—my fortune is less to-day than it was yesterday, and to-morrow must again make that little less—we purpose emigrating to the spot where DÆdalus put off his wearied wings, while my gray hairs are still but few, my old age green and erect; while something yet remains for Lachesis to spin, and I can bear myself on my own legs, without a staff to support my right hand. Let us leave our native land. There let Arturius and Catulus live. Let those continue in it who turn black to white; for whom it is an easy matter to get contracts for building temples, clearing rivers, constructing harbors,[108] cleansing the sewers, the furnishing a funeral,[109] and under the mistress-spear set up the slave to sale."[110] These fellows, who in former days were horn-blowers, and constant attendants on the municipal amphitheatres, and whose puffed cheeks were well known through all the towns, now themselves exhibit gladiatorial shows, and when the thumbs of the rabble are turned up, let any man be killed to court the mob. Returned from thence, they farm the public jakes. And why not every thing? Since these are the men whom Fortune, whenever she is in a sportive mood, raises from the dust to the highest pinnacle of greatness.[111] What shall I do at Rome? I can not lie; if a book is bad, I can not praise it and beg a copy. I know not the motions of the stars. I neither will nor can promise a man to secure his father's death. I never inspected the entrails of a toad.[112] Let others understand how to bear to a bride the messages and presents of the adulterer; no one shall be a thief by my co-operation; and therefore I go forth, a companion to no man,[113] as though I were crippled, and a trunk useless from its right hand being disabled.[114] Who, now-a-days, is beloved except the confidant of crime, and he whose raging mind[115] is boiling with things concealed, and that must never be divulged? He that has made you the partaker of an honest secret, thinks that he owes you nothing, and nothing will he ever pay. He will be Verres' dear friend, who can accuse Verres at any time he pleases. Yet set not thou so high a price on all the sands of shady Tagus,[116] and the gold rolled down to the sea, as to lose your sleep, and to your sorrow take bribes that ought to be spurned,[117] and be always dreaded by your powerful friend. What class of men is now most welcome to our rich men, and whom I would especially shun, I will soon tell you; nor shall shame prevent me.[118] It is that the city is become Greek, Quirites, that I can not tolerate; and yet how small the proportion even of the dregs of Greece! Syrian Orontes has long since flowed into the Tiber, and brought with it its language, morals, and the crooked harps with the flute-player, and its national tambourines, and girls made to stand for hire at the Circus. Go thither, ye who fancy a barbarian harlot with embroidered turban. That rustic of thine, Quirinus, takes his Greek supper-cloak, and wears Greek prizes on his neck besmeared with Ceroma.[119] One forsaking steep Sicyon, another Amydon, a third from Andros, another from Samos, another again from Tralles, or Alabanda,[120] swarm to EsquiliÆ, and the hill called from its osiers, destined to be the very vitals, and future lords of great houses.[121] These have a quick wit, desperate impudence, a ready speech, more rapidly fluent even than IsÆus.[122] Tell me what you fancy he is? He has brought with him whatever character you wish—grammarian, rhetorician, geometer, painter, trainer,[123] soothsayer, rope-dancer, physician, wizard—he knows every thing. Bid the hungry Greekling go to heaven! He'll go.[124] In short, it was neither Moor, nor Sarmatian, nor Thracian, that took wings, but one born in the heart of Athens.[125] Shall I not shun these men's purple robes? Shall this fellow take precedence of me in signing his name, and recline pillowed on a more honorable couch than I, though imported to Rome by the same wind that brought the plums and figs?[126] Does it then go so utterly for nothing, that my infancy inhaled the air of Aventine, nourished on the Sabine berry? Why add that this nation, most deeply versed in flattery, praises the conversation of an ignorant, the face of a hideously ugly friend, and compares some weak fellow's crane-like neck to the brawny shoulders of Hercules, holding AntÆus far from his mother Earth: and is in raptures at the squeaking voice,[127] not a whit superior in sound to that of the cock as he bites the hen. We may, it is true, praise the same things, if we choose. But they are believed. Can he be reckoned a better actor,[128] when he takes the part of Thais, or acts the wife in the play, or Doris[129] without her robe. It is surely a woman in reality that seems to speak, and not a man personifying one. You would swear it was a woman, perfect in all respects. In their country, neither Antiochus, nor Stratocles, or Demetrius and the effeminate HÆmus, would call forth admiration. For there every man's an actor. Do you smile? He is convulsed with a laugh far more hearty. If he spies a tear in his friend's eye, he bursts into a flood of weeping; though in reality he feels no grief. If at the winter solstice you ask for a little fire, he calls for his thick coat. If you say, I am hot! he breaks into a sweat. Therefore we are not fairly matched; he has the best of it, who can at any time, either by night or day, assume a fictitious face; kiss his hands in ecstasy, quite ready, to praise his patron's grossest acts; if the golden cup has emitted a sound, when its bottom is inverted. Besides, there is nothing that is held sacred by these fellows, or that is safe from their lust. Neither the mistress of the house, nor your virgin daughter, nor her suitor, unbearded as yet, nor your son, heretofore chaste. If none of these are to be found, he assails his friend's grandmother. They aim at learning the secrets of the house, and from that knowledge be feared. And since we have begun to make mention of the Greeks, pass on to their schools of philosophy, and hear the foul crime of the more dignified cloak.[130] It was a Stoic that killed Bareas—the informer, his personal friend—the old man, his own pupil—bred on that shore[131] on which the pinion of the Gorgonean horse lighted. There is no room for any Roman here, where some Protogenes, or Diphilus, or Erimanthus reigns supreme; who, with the common vice of his race, never shares a friend, but engrosses him entirely to himself. For when he has infused into his patron's too ready ear one little drop of the venom of his nature and his country, I am ejected from the door; all my long-protracted service goes for naught. Nowhere is the loss of a client of less account. Besides (not to flatter ourselves) what service can the poor man render, what merit can he plead, even though he be zealous enough to hasten in his toga[132] before break of day, when the very prÆtor himself urges on his lictor, and bids him hurry on with headlong speed, since the childless matrons have been long awake, lest his colleague[133] be beforehand with him in paying his respects to Albina and Modia. Here, by the side of a slave, if only rich, walks the son of the free-born;[134] for the other gives to Calvina, or Catiena (that he may enjoy her once or twice), as much as the tribunes in the legion receive;[135] whereas you, when the face of a well-dressed harlot takes your fancy, hesitate to hand Chione from her exalted seat. Produce me at Rome a witness of as blameless integrity as the host of the IdÆan deity;[136] let Numa stand forth, or he that rescued Minerva when in jeopardy from her temple all in flames: the question first put would be as to his income, that about his moral character would come last of all. "How many slaves does he keep? How many acres of public land does he occupy?[137] With how many and what expensive dishes is his table spread?" In exact proportion to the sum of money a man keeps in his chest, is the credit given to his oath. Though you were to swear by all the altars of the Samothracian and our own gods, the poor man is believed to despise the thunderbolts and the gods, even with the sanction of the gods themselves. Why add that this same poor man furnishes material and grounds for ridicule to all, if his cloak is dirty and torn, if his toga is a little soiled, and one shoe gapes with its upper leather burst; or if more than one patch displays the coarse fresh darning thread, where a rent has been sewn up. Poverty, bitter though it be, has no sharper pang than this, that it makes men ridiculous. "Let him retire, if he has any shame left, and quit the cushions of the knights, that has not the income required by the law, and let these seats be taken by"—the sons of pimps, in whatever brothel born![138] Here let the son of the sleek crier applaud among the spruce youths of the gladiator, and the scions of the fencing-school. Such is the will of the vain Otho, who made the distinction between us. Who was ever allowed at Rome to become a son-in-law if his estate was inferior, and not a match for the portion of the young lady?[139] What poor man's name appears in any will? When is he summoned to a consultation even by an Ædile? All Quirites that are poor, ought long ago to have emigrated in a body.[140] Difficult indeed is it for those to emerge from obscurity whose noble qualities are cramped by narrow means at home; but at Rome, for men like these, the attempt is still more hopeless; it is only at an exorbitant price they can get a wretched lodging, keep for their servants, and a frugal meal.[141] A man is ashamed here to dine off pottery ware,[142] which, were he suddenly transported to the Marsi and a Sabine board, contented there with a coarse bowl of blue earthenware, he would no longer deem discreditable. There is a large portion of Italy (if we allow the fact), where no one puts on the toga, except the dead.[143] Even when the very majesty of festival days is celebrated in a theatre reared of turf,[144] and the well-known farce at length returns to the stage,[145] when the rustic infant on its mother's lap is terrified at the wide mouth of the ghastly mask, there you will see all costumes equal and alike, both orchestra and common people. White tunics are quite sufficient as the robe of distinction for the highest personages there, even the very Ædiles. Here, in Rome, the splendor of dress is carried beyond men's means; here, something more than is enough, is taken occasionally from another's chest. In this fault all participate. Here we all live with a poverty that apes our betters. Why should I detain you? Every thing at Rome is coupled with high price. What have you to give, that you may occasionally pay your respects to Cossus? that Veiento may give you a passing glance, though without deigning to open his mouth? One shaves the beard, another deposits the hair of a favorite; the house is full of venal cakes.[146] Now learn this fact, and keep it to work within your breast. We clients are forced to pay tribute and increase the private income of these pampered slaves. Who dreads, or ever did dread, the falling of a house at cool PrÆneste, or at Volsinii seated among the well-wooded hills, or simple Gabii,[147] or the heights of sloping Tibur. We, in Rome, inhabit a city propped in great measure on a slender shore.[148] For so the steward props up the falling walls,[149] and when he has plastered over the old and gaping crack, bids us sleep without sense of danger while ruin hangs over our heads![150] I must live in a place, where there are no fires, no nightly alarms. Already is Ucalegon shouting for water, already is he removing his chattels: the third story in the house you live in is already in a blaze. You are unconscious! For if the alarm begin from the bottom of the stairs, he will be the last to be burned whom a single tile protects from the rain, where the tame pigeons lay their eggs. Codrus had a bed too small for his Procula, six little jugs the ornament of his sideboard, and a little can besides beneath it, and a Chiron reclining under the same marble; and a chest now grown old in the service contained his Greek books, and opic[151] mice-gnawed poems of divine inspiration. Codrus possessed nothing at all; who denies the fact? and yet all that little nothing that he had, he lost. But the climax that crowns his misery is the fact, that though he is stark naked and begging for a few scraps, no one will lend a hand to help him to bed and board. But, if the great mansion of Asturius has fallen, the matrons appear in weeds,[152] the senators in mourning robes, the prÆtor adjourns the courts. Then it is we groan for the accidents of the city; then we loathe the very name of fire. The fire is still raging, and already there runs up to him one who offers to present him with marble, and contribute toward the rebuilding. Another will present him with naked statues of Parian marble,[153] another with a chef-d'oeuvre of Euphranor or Polycletus.[154] Some lady will contribute some ancient ornaments of gods taken in our Asiatic victories; another, books and cases[155] and a bust of Minerva; another, a whole bushel of silver. Persicus, the most splendid of childless men, replaces all he has lost by things more numerous and more valuable, and might with reason be suspected of having himself set his own house on fire.[156] If you can tear yourself away from the games in the circus,[157] you can buy a capital house at Sora, or Fabrateria, or Frusino, for the price at which you are now hiring your dark hole for one year. There you will have your little garden, a well so shallow as to require no rope and bucket, whence with easy draught you may water your sprouting plants. Live there, enamored of the pitchfork, and the dresser of your trim garden,[158] from which you could supply a feast to a hundred Pythagoreans. It is something to be able in any spot, in any retreat whatever, to have made one's self proprietor even of a single lizard. Here full many a patient dies from want of sleep; but that exhaustion is produced by the undigested food that loads the fevered stomach. For what lodging-houses allow of sleep? None but the very wealthy can sleep at Rome.[159] Hence is the source of the disease. The passing of wagons in the narrow curves of the streets, and the mutual revilings of the teamdrivers[160] brought to a stand-still, would banish sleep even from Drusus and sea-calves.[161] If duty calls him,[162] the rich man will be borne through the yielding crowd, and pass rapidly over their heads on the shoulders of his tall Liburnian, and, as he goes, will read or write, or even sleep inside his litter,[163] for his sedan with windows closed entices sleep. And still he will arrive before us. In front of us, as we hurry on, a tide of human beings stops the way; the mass that follows behind presses on our loins in dense concourse; one man pokes me with his elbow, another with a hard pole;[164] one knocks a beam against my head, another a ten-gallon cask. My legs are coated thick with mud; then, anon, I am trampled upon by great heels all round me, and the hob-nail of the soldier's caliga remains imprinted on my toe. Do you not see with what a smoke the sportula is frequented? A hundred guests! and each followed by his portable kitchen.[165] Even Corbulo[166] himself could scarcely carry such a number of huge vessels, so many things piled upon his head, which, without bending his neck, the wretched little slave supports, and keeps fanning his fire as he runs along.[167] Tunics that have been patched together are torn asunder again. Presently, as the tug approaches, the long fir-tree quivers, other wagons are conveying pine-trees; they totter from their height, and threaten ruin to the crowd. For if that wain, that is transporting blocks of Ligustican stone, is upset, and pours its mountain-load upon the masses below, what is there left of their bodies? Who can find their limbs or bones? Every single carcass of the mob is crushed to minute atoms as impalpable as their souls. While, all this while, the family at home, in happy ignorance of their master's fate, are washing up the dishes, and blowing up the fire with their mouths, and making a clatter with the well-oiled strigils, and arranging the bathing towels with the full oilflask. Such are the various occupations of the bustling slaves. But the master himself is at this moment seated[168] on the banks of Styx, and, being a novice, is horrified at the grim ferry-man, and dares not hope for the boat to cross the murky stream; nor has he, poor wretch, the obol in his mouth to hand to Charon. Now revert to other perils of the night distinct from these. What a height it is from the lofty roofs, from which a potsherd tumbles on your brains. How often cracked and chipped earthenware falls from the windows! with what a weight they dint and damage the flint pavement where they strike it! You may well be accounted remiss and improvident against unforeseen accident, if you go out to supper without having made your will. It is clear that there are just so many chances of death, as there are open windows where the inmates are awake inside, as you pass by. Pray, therefore, and bear about with you this miserable wish, that they may be contented with throwing down only what the broad basins have held. One that is drunk, and quarrelsome in his cups, if he has chanced to give no one a beating, suffers the penalty by loss of sleep; he passes such a night as Achilles bewailing the loss, of his friend;[169] lies now on his face, then again on his back. Under other circumstances, he can not sleep. In some persons, sleep is the result of quarrels; but though daring from his years, and flushed with unmixed wine, he cautiously avoids him whom a scarlet cloak, and a very long train of attendants, with plenty of flambeaux and a bronzed candelabrum, warns him to steer clear of. As for me, whose only attendant home[170] is the moon, or the glimmering light of a rushlight, whose wick I husband and eke out—he utterly despises me! Mark the prelude of this wretched fray, if fray it can be called, where he does all the beating, and I am only beaten.[171] He stands right in front of you, and bids you stand! Obey you must. For what can you do, when he that gives the command is mad with drink, and at the same time stronger than you. "Where do you come from?" he thunders out: "With whose vinegar and beans are you blown out? What cobbler has been feasting on chopped leek[172] or boiled sheep's head with you? Don't you answer? Speak, or be kicked! Say where do you hang out? In what Jew's begging-stand shall I look for you?" Whether you attempt to say a word or retire in silence, is all one; they beat you just the same, and then, in a passion, force you to give bail to answer for the assault. This is a poor man's liberty! When thrashed he humbly begs, and pummeled with fisticuffs supplicates, to be allowed to quit the spot with a few teeth left in his head. Nor is this yet all that you have to fear, for there will not be wanting one to rob you, when all the houses are shut up, and all the fastenings of the shops chained, are fixed and silent. Sometimes too a footpad does your business with his knife, whenever the Pontine marshes and the Gallinarian wood are kept safe by an armed guard. Consequently they all flock thence to Rome as to a great preserve. What forge or anvil is not weighed down with chains? The greatest amount of iron used is employed in forging fetters; so that you may well fear that enough may not be left for plowshares, and that mattocks and hoes may run short. Well may you call our great-grandsires[173] happy, and the ages blest in which they lived, which, under kings and tribunes long ago, saw Rome contented with a single jail.[174] To these I could subjoin other reasons for leaving Rome, and more numerous than these; but my cattle summon me to be moving, and the sun is getting low. I must go. For long ago the muleteer gave me a hint by shaking his whip. Farewell then, and forget me not! and whenever Rome shall restore you to your native Aquinum, eager to refresh your strength, then you may tear me away too from CumÆ to Helvine Ceres,[175] and your patron deity Diana. Then, equipped with my caligÆ,[176] I will visit your chilly regions, to help you in your satires—unless they scorn my poor assistance. SATIRE IV. Once more behold Crispinus![177] and often shall I have to call him on the stage. A monster! without one virtue to redeem his vices—of feeble powers, save only in his lust. It is only a widow's charms this adulterer scorns. What matters it then in what large porticoes he wearies out his steeds—through what vast shady groves his rides extend[178]—how many acres close to the forum, or what palaces he has bought? No bad man is ever happy. Least of all he that has added incest to his adultery, and lately seduced the filleted priestess,[179] that with her life-blood still warm must descend into the earth. But now we have to deal with more venial acts. Yet if any other man had committed the same, he would have come under the sentence of our imperial censor.[180] For what would be infamous in men of worth, a Titius or Seius, was becoming to Crispinus. What can you do when no crime can be so foul and loathsome as the perpetrator himself? He gave six sestertia for a mullet.[181] A thousand sesterces, forsooth! for every pound of weight, as they allege, who exaggerate stories already beyond belief. I should commend the act as a master-stroke of policy, if by so noble a present he had got himself named chief heir[182] in the will of some childless old man. A better plea still would be that he had sent it to some mistress of rank, that rides in her close chair with its wide glasses. Nothing of the sort! He bought it for himself! We see many things which even Apicius[183] (mean and thrifty compared with him) never was guilty of. Did you do this in days of yore, Crispinus, when girt about with your native papyrus?[184] What! pay this price for fish-scales? Perchance you might have bought the fisherman cheaper than the fish! You might have bought a whole estate for the money in some of our provinces. In Apulia, a still larger one.[185] What kind of luxuries, then, may we suppose were gorged by the emperor himself, when so many sestertia, that furnished forth but a small portion, a mere side-dish of a very ordinary dinner, were devoured by this court buffoon, now clothed in purple. Chief of the equestrian order now is he who was wont to hawk about the streets shads from the same borough[186] with himself. Begin, Calliope! here may we take our seats! This is no poetic fiction; we are dealing with facts! Relate it, Pierian maids! and grant me grace for having called you maids. When the last of the Flavii was mangling the world, lying at its last gasp, and Rome was enslaved by a Nero,[187] ay, and a bald one too, an Adriatic turbot of wonderful size fell into the net, and filled its ample folds, off the temple of Venus which Doric Ancona[188] sustains. No less in bulk was it than those which the ice of the MÆotis incloses, and when melted at length by the sun's rays, discharges at the outlets of the sluggish Euxine, unwieldly from their long sloth, and fattened by the long-protracted cold. This prodigy of a fish the owner of the boat and nets designs for the chief pontiff. For who would dare to put up such a fish to sale, or to buy it? Since the shores too would be crowded with informers; these inspectors of sea-weed, prowling in every nook, would straightway contest the point[189] with the naked fisherman, and would not scruple to allege that the fish was a "stray," and that having made its escape from the emperor's ponds, where it had long reveled in plenty, ought of course to revert to its ancient lord. If we place any faith in Palfurius or Armillatus, whatever is pre-eminently fine in the whole sea, is the property of the exchequer, wherever it swims. So, that it may not be utterly lost, it will be made a present of, though now sickly autumn was giving place to winter, and sick men were already expecting[190] their fits of ague, though the rude tempest whistled and kept the fish fresh, yet the fisherman hurries on as though a mild south wind were blowing. And when the lakes were near at hand, where, though in ruins, Alba[191] still preserves the Trojan fire, and her Lesser Vesta,[192] the wondering crowd for a short space impeded his entrance; as they made way for him, the folding-doors flew open on ready-turning hinge. The senators, shut out themselves, watch the dainty admitted. He stands in the royal presence. Then he of Picenum begins, "Deign to accept what is too great for any private kitchen: let this day be celebrated as the festival of your genius, haste to relieve your stomach of its burden, and devour a turbot reserved to honor your reign.[193] It insisted on being caught." What could be more fulsome? and yet the great man's crest rose. What flattery is there that it is not prepared to believe, when power is praised as equal to the gods. But there was no dish of sufficient size for the fish. Therefore the senators are summoned to a council—men whom he hated! men on whose faces sat the paleness engendered by the wretched friendship with the great! At the loud summons of the Liburnian slave, "Run! the emperor is already seated!" the first to snatch up his cloak and hurry to the place was Pegasus, lately set as bailiff over the amazed city;[194] for what else were the prÆfects of Rome in those days? of whom he was the best and most conscientious dispenser of the laws, though in those days of terror he thought all things ought to be administered by justice unarmed. Crispus[195] came too, that facetious old man, with high character equal to his eloquence and mild disposition. Who could have been a more serviceable minister to one that ruled seas, and lands, and peoples, if, under that bane and pest of mankind, he had been allowed to reprobate his savage nature and give honest advice? But what is more ticklish than a tyrant's ear, with whom the life even of a favorite was at stake, though he might be talking of showers or heat, or a rainy spring? He, therefore, never attempted to swim against the stream, nor was he a citizen who dared give vent to the free sentiments of his soul, and devote his life to the cause of truth: and so it was that he saw many winters and eighty summers; safe, by such weapons, even in a court like that. Next to him hurried Acilius, a man of the same time of life; with a youth[196] that ill deserved so cruel a death as that which awaited him, so prematurely inflicted by the tyrant's swords; but nobility coupled with old age, has long since been a miracle. Consequently, for myself, I should prefer being a younger brother of the giants.[197] It was of no avail therefore to the wretched man, that as a naked huntsman in the amphitheatre of Alba, he fought hand to hand with Numidian bears. For who, in our days, is not up to the artifices of the patricians? Who would now admire that primitive cunning of thine, Brutus? It is an easy thing to impose on a king that wears a beard![198]. Then came Rubrius not a whit less pale, though he was no noble, one accused of an ancient and nameless crime, and yet more lost to shame than the pathic satirist.[199] There too is to be seen Montanus' paunch, unwieldy from its size, and Crispus reeking with unguent though so early in the day, more than enough to furnish forth two funerals; and Pompeius, still more ruthless even than he at cutting men's throats by his insinuating whisper; and he that kept his entrails only to fatten the Dacian vultures, Fuscus, that studied the art of war in his marble palace; and the shrewd Veiento with the deadly Catullus,[200] who raged with lust for a girl he could not see, a monster and prodigy of guilt even in our days, the blind flatterer, a common bridge-beggar[201] invested with this hateful power, whose worthiest fate would be to run begging by the carriages on the road to Aricia, and blow his fawning kisses to the chariot as it descends the hill. No one showed more astonishment at the turbot, for he was profuse in his wonder, turning toward the left, but unfortunately the fish lay on the other side. This was just the way he used to praise the combat and fencing of the Cilician gladiator, and the stage machinery, and the boys caught up by it to the awning. Veiento is not to be outdone by him; but, like one inspired by the maddening influence of Bellona, begins to divine. "A mighty omen this you have received of some great and noble triumph. Some captive king you'll take, or Arviragus will be hurled from his British car. For the monster is a foreign one. Do you see the sharp fins bristling on his back like spears?" In one point only Fabricius was at fault, he could not tell the turbot's country or age. "What then is your opinion? Is it to be cut up?" "Heaven forefend so great dishonor to the noble fish!" says Montanus. "Let a deep dish be provided, whose thin sides may inclose its huge circumference. Some cunning Prometheus to act on this sudden emergency is required. Quick with the clay and potter's wheel! But henceforth, CÆsar, let potters always attend your armies!" This opinion, worthy of the author, carried the day. He was well versed in the old luxury of the imperial court, and Nero's nights,[202] and a second appetite when the stomach was fired with the Falernian.[203] No one in my day was a greater connoisseur in good eating; he could detect at the first bite whether the oysters were natives from Circeii, or the Lucrine rocks, or whether they came from the Rutupian beds, and told the shore an Echinus came from at the first glance. They rise; and the cabinet being dismissed, the great chief bids the nobles depart whom he had dragged to the Alban height, amazed and forced to hurry, as though he were about to announce some tidings of the Catti and fierce Sicambri; as though from diverse parts of the world some alarming express had arrived on hurried wing. And would that he had devoted to such trifles as these those days of horror and cruelty, in which he removed from the city those glorious and illustrious spirits, with none to punish or avenge the deed! But he perished as soon as he began to be an object of alarm to cobblers. This was what proved fatal to one that was reeking with the blood of the LamiÆ! SATIRE V. If you are not yet ashamed of your course of life,[204] and your feeling is still the same, that you consider living at another man's table to be the chief good; if you can put up with such things as not even Sarmentus or Galba, contemptible as he was, would have submitted to even at the unequal[205] board of CÆsar himself; I should be afraid to believe your evidence though you were on oath. I know nothing more easily satisfied than the cravings of nature. Yet even suppose this little that is needed to be wanting, is there no quay vacant? is there no where a bridge, and a piece of mat, somewhat less than half, to beg upon? Is the loss of a supper so great a matter? is your craving so fierce? when, in faith, it were much more reputable[206] to shiver there, and munch mouldy fragments of dog-biscuit. In the first place, bear in mind, that when invited to dinner, you receive payment in full of your long-standing account of service. The sole result of your friendship with the great man is—a meal! This your patron sets down to your account, and, rare though it be, still takes it into the calculation. Therefore, if after the lapse of two months he deigns to send for his long-neglected client, only that the third place may not be unoccupied in one couch of his triclinium[207]—"Let us sup together," he says; the very summit of your wishes! What more can you desire? Trebius has that for which he ought to break his rest, and hurry away with latchet all untied, in his alarm lest the whole crowd at his patron's levee shall have already gone their round of compliments, when the stars are fading, or at the hour when the chill wain of sluggish Bootes wheels slowly round.[208] But what sort of a supper is it after all? Wine, such as wool just shorn would not imbibe.[209] You will see the guests become frantic as the priests of Cybele. Wranglings are the prelude of the fray: but soon you begin to hurl cups as well in retaliation; and wipe your wounds with your napkin stained with blood; as often as a pitched battle, begun with pitchers of Saguntine ware, rages between you and the regiment of freedmen. The great man himself drinks wine racked from the wood under some consul with long hair,[210] and sips[211] the juice of the grape pressed in the Social war; never likely, however, to send even a small glass to a friend, though sick at heart. To-morrow, he will drink the produce of the mountains of Alba or Setia,[212] whose country and date age has obliterated by the accumulated mould on the ancient amphora; such wine as, with chaplets on their heads, Thrasea and Helvidius used to drink on the birthdays of the Bruti and Cassius. Virro himself holds capacious cups formed of the tears of the Heliades[213] and phialÆ incrusted with beryl. You are not trusted with gold: or even if it is ever handed to you, a servant is set as a guard over you at the same time, to count the gems and watch your sharp nails. Forgive the precaution: the jasper so much admired there is indeed a noble one: for, like many others, Virro transfers to his cups the gems from off his fingers, which the youth, preferred to the jealous Hiarbas,[214] used to set on the front of his scabbard. You will drain a cup with four noses, that bears the name of the cobbler of Beneventum,[215] already cracked, and fit to be exchanged, as broken glass, for brimstone.[216] If your patron's stomach is overheated with wine and food, he calls for water cooled by being boiled and then iced in Scythian snow.[217] Did I complain just now that the wine set before you was not the same as Virro's? Why, the very water you drink is different. Your cups will be handed you by a running footman from GÆtulia, or the bony hand of some Moor, so black that you would rather not meet him at midnight, while riding through the tombs on the steep Latin way. Before Virro himself stands the flower of Asia, purchased at a greater sum than formed the whole revenue of the warlike Tullus, or Ancus—and, not to detain you, the whole fortunes[218] of all the kings of Rome. And so, when you are thirsty, look behind you for your black Ganymede that comes from Africa. A boy that costs so many thousands deigns not to mix wine for the poor. Nay, his very beauty and bloom of youth justify his sneer. When does he come near you? When would he come, even if you called him, to serve you with hot or cold water? He scorns, forsooth, the idea of obeying an old client, and that you should call for any thing from his hand; and that you should recline at table, while he has to stand. Every great house is proportionably full of saucy menials. See, too, with what grumbling another of these rascals hands you bread that can scarce be broken; the mouldy fragments of impenetrable crust, which would make your jaws ache, and give you no chance of a bite. But delicate bread, as white as snow, made of the finest flower, is reserved for the great man. Mind you keep your hands off! Maintain the respect due to the cutter of the bread![219] Imagine, however, that you have been rather too forward; there stands over you one ready to make you put it down. "Be so good, audacious guest, as to help yourself from the bread-basket you have been used to, and know the color of your own particular bread." "So then![220] it was for this, forsooth, that I so often quitted my wife, and hurried up the steep ascent of the bleak Esquiline, when the vernal sky rattled with the pelting of the pitiless hail, and my great coat dripped whole showers of rain!" See! with how vast a body the lobster which is served to your patron fills the dish, and with what fine asparagus it is garnished all round; with what a tail he seems to look down in scorn on the assembled guests, when he comes in raised on high by the hands of the tall slave. But to you is served a common crab, scantily hedged in[221] with half an egg sliced, a meal fit only for the dead,[222] and in a dish too small to hold it. Virro himself drowns his fish in oil from Venafrum; but the pale cabbage set before you, poor wretch, will stink of the lamp. For in the sauceboats you are allowed, there is served oil such as the canoe of the MicipsÆ has imported in its sharp prow; for which reason no one at Rome would bathe in the same bath with Bocchor; which makes the blackamoors safe even from the attacks of serpents. Your patron will have a barbel furnished by Corsica, or the rocks of Tauromenium, when all our own waters have been ransacked and failed; while gluttony is raging, and the market is plying its unwearied nets in the neighboring seas, and we do not allow the Tyrrhene fish to reach their full growth. The provinces, therefore, have to supply our kitchen; and thence we are furnished with what Lenas the legacy-hunter may buy, and Aurelia sell again.[223] Virro is presented with a lamprey of the largest size from the Sicilian whirlpool. For while Auster keeps himself close, while he seats himself and dries his wet pinions in prison, the nets,[224] grown venturesome, despise the dangers even of the middle of Charybdis. An eel awaits you—first-cousin to the long snake—or a coarse pike[225] from the Tiber, spotted from the winter's ice, a native of the bank-side, fattened on the filth of the rushing sewer, and used to penetrate the drain even of the middle of Suburra. "I should like to have a word with Virro, if he would lend an attentive ear. No one now expects from you such presents as used to be sent by Seneca to his friends of humble station, or the munificent gifts which the bountiful Piso or Cotta used to dispense; for in days of old the glory of giving was esteemed a higher honor than fasces or inscriptions. All we ask is that you would treat us at supper like fellow-citizens. Do this, and then, if you please, be, as many now-a-days are, luxurious when alone, parsimonious to your guests." Before Virro himself is the liver of a huge goose; a fat capon, as big as a goose; and a wild boar, worthy of the spear of the yellow-haired Meleager, smokes. Then will be served up truffles, if it happen to be spring, and the thunder, devoutly wished for by the epicure, shall augment the supper. "Keep your corn, O Libya," says Alledius, "unyoke your oxen; provided only you send us truffles!" Meanwhile, that no single source of vexation may be wanting, you will see the carver[226] capering and gesticulating with nimble knife, till he has gone through all the directions of his instructor in the art. Nor is it in truth a matter of trifling import with what an air a leveret or a hen is carved. You would be dragged by the heels, like Cacus[227] when conquered by Hercules, and turned out of doors, if you were ever to attempt to open your mouth, as though you had three names.[228] When does Virro pass the cup to you, or take one that your lips have contaminated? Which of you would be so rash, so lost to all sense of shame, as to say, "Drink, sir!" to your patron lord? There are very many things which men with coats worn threadbare dare not say. If any god, or godlike hero, kinder to you than the fates have been, were to give you a knight's estate, what a great man would you, small mortal, become all at once from nothing at all! What a dear friend of Virro's! "Give this to Trebius![229] Set this before Trebius! My dear brother, will you take some of this sweet-bread?" O money! it is to thee he pays this honor! it is thou and he are the brothers! But if you wish to be my lord, and my lord's lord, let no little Æneas sport in your hall,[230] or a daughter more endearing than he. It is the barrenness of the wife that makes a friend really agreeable and beloved. But even suppose your Mycale should be confined, though she should even present you three boys at a birth, he will be the very one to be delighted with the twittering nest; will order his green stomacher[231] to be brought, and the filberts,[232] and the begged-for penny, whenever the infant parasite shall come to dine with him. Before his friends whom he holds so vile will be set some very questionable toadstools—before the great man himself, a mushroom[233]—but such an one as Claudius ate, before that furnished by his wife, after which he ate nothing more. Virro will order to be served to himself and his brother Virros such noble apples, on whose fragrance alone you are allowed to revel; such as the eternal autumn of the PhÆacians produced; or such as you might fancy purloined from the African sisters. You feast upon some shriveled windfall, such as is munched at the ramparts by him that is armed with buckler and helmet: and, in dread of the lash, learns to hurl his javelin from the shaggy goat's[234] back. You may imagine, perhaps, that Virro does all this from stinginess. No! his very object is to vex you. For what play, what mime is better than disappointed gluttony? All this, therefore, is done, if you don't know it, that you may be forced to give vent to your bile by your tears, and gnash long your compressed teeth. You fancy yourself a freeman—the great man's welcome guest! He looks upon you as one caught by the savor of his kitchen. Nor does he conjecture amiss. For who is so utterly destitute as twice to bear with his insolence, if it has been his good fortune, when a boy, to wear the Tuscan gold,[235] or even the boss, the badge of leather, that emblem of poverty. The hope of a good dinner deludes you. "See! sure he'll send us now a half-eaten hare, or a slice of that wild-boar haunch.[236] Now we shall get that capon, as he has helped himself!" Consequently you all sit in silent expectation, with bread in hand, untouched and ready for action. And he that uses you thus shows his wisdom—if you can submit to all these things, then you ought to bear them. Some day or other, you will present your head with shaven crown, to be beaten: nor hesitate to submit to the harsh lash—well worthy of such a banquet and such a friend as this! SATIRE VI. I believe that while Saturn still was king, chastity lingered upon earth, and was long seen there: when a chill cavern furnished a scanty dwelling, and inclosed in one common shade the fire and household gods, the cattle, and their owners. When a wife, bred on the mountains, prepared a rustic bed with leaves and straw and the skins of the wild beasts their neighbors; not like thee, Cynthia[237]—or thee whose beaming eyes the death of a sparrow dimmed with tears—but bearing breasts from which her huge infants might drink, not suck, and often more uncivilized even than her acorn-belching husband. Since men lived very differently then, when the world was new, and the sky but freshly created, who, born out of the riven oak, or moulded out of clay, had no parents. Many traces of primÆval chastity, perhaps, or some few at least, may have existed, even under Jove; but then it was before Jove's beard was grown; before the Greeks were yet ready to swear by another's head; when no one feared a thief for his cabbages or apples, but lived with garden uninclosed. Then by degrees AstrÆa retired to the realms above, with chastity for her companion, and the two sisters fled together. To violate the marriage-bed, and laugh to scorn the genius that presides over the nuptial couch, is an ancient and a hackneyed vice, Postumus. Every other species of iniquity the age of iron soon produced. The silver age witnessed the first adulterers. And yet are you preparing your marriage covenant, and the settlement,[238] and betrothal, in our days, and are already under the hands of the master barber, and perhaps have already given the pledge for her finger! Well! you used to be sane, at all events! You, Postumus, going to marry! Say, what Tisiphone, what snakes are driving you mad? Can you submit to be the slave of any woman, while so many halters are to be had? so long as high and dizzy windows are open for you, and the Æmilian bridge presents itself so near at hand? Or if, out of so many ways of quitting life, none pleases you, do you not think your present plan better, of having a stripling to sleep with you, who lying there, reads you no curtain lectures, exacts no little presents from you, and never complains that you are too sparing in your efforts to please him? But Ursidius is delighted with the Julian law[239]—he thinks of bringing up a darling heir, nor cares to lose the fine turtledove and bearded mullets,[240] and all the baits for legacies in the dainties of the market. What will you believe to be impossible, if Ursidius takes a wife? If he, of yore the most notorious of adulterers, whom the chest of Latinus in peril of his life has so often concealed, is now going to insert his idiot head in the nuptial halter; nay, and more than this, is looking out for a wife possessed of the virtues of ancient days! Haste, physicians, bore through the middle vein! What a nice man! Fall prostrate at the threshold of Tarpeian Jove, and sacrifice to Juno a heifer with gilded horns, if you have the rare good fortune to find a matron with unsullied chastity. So few are there worthy to handle the fillets of Ceres; so few, whose kisses their own fathers might not dread. Wreathe chaplets for the door-posts, stretch thick clusters of ivy over the threshold. Is one husband enough for Iberina? Sooner will you prevail on her to be content with one eye. "Yet there is a great talk of a certain damsel, living at her father's country-house!" Let her live at Gabii as she lived in the country, or even at FidenÆ, and I grant what you say of the influence of the paternal country-seat. Yet who will dare assert that nothing has been achieved on mountains or in caves? Are Jupiter and Mars grown so old. In all the public walks can a woman be pointed out to you, that is worthy of your wish. On all their benches do the public shows hold one that you could love without misgivings; or one you could pick out from the rest? While the effeminate Bathyllus is acting Leda in the ballet, Tuccia can not contain herself, Appula whines as in the feat of love, Thymele is all attention to the quick, the gentler, and the slow; and so Thymele, rustic as she was before, becomes a proficient in the art. But others, whenever the stage ornaments, packed away, get a respite, and the courts alone are vocal (since the theatres are closed and empty, and the Megalesian games come a long time after the plebeian), in their melancholy handle the mask and thyrsus and drawers of Accius. Urbicus provokes a laugh by his personification of Autonoe in the Atellan farce. Ælia, being poor, is in love with him. For others, the fibula of the comic actor is unbuckled for a large sum. Some women prevent Chrysogonus from having voice to sing. Hispulla delights in a tragic actor. Do you expect then that the worthy Quintilianus will be the object of their love? You take a wife by whom Echion the harper, or Glaphyrus, or Ambrosius the choral flute-player, will become a father. Let us erect long lines of scaffolding along the narrow streets. Let the door-posts and the gate be decorated with a huge bay, that beneath the canopy inlaid with tortoise-shell,[241] thy infant, Lentulus, supposed to be sprung from a noble sire, may be the counterpart of the Mirmillo Euryalus. Hippia, though wife to a senator, accompanied a gladiator to Pharos and the Nile, and the infamous walls of Lagos.[242] Even Canopus itself reprobated the immorality of the imperial city. She, forgetful of her home, her husband, and her sister, showed no concern for her native land, or, vile wretch as she was, her weeping children, and, to amaze you even more, quitted the shows and Paris. But though when a babe she had been pillowed in great luxury, in the down of her father's mansion, and a cradle of richest workmanship, she despised the perils of the sea. Her good name she had long before despised—the loss of which, among the soft cushions of ladies, is very cheaply held. Therefore with undaunted breast she faced the Tuscan waves and wide-resounding Ionian Sea, though the sea was so often to be changed. If the cause of the peril be reasonable and creditable, then they are alarmed—their coward hearts are chilled with icy fear—they can not support themselves on their trembling feet. They show a dauntless spirit in those things which they basely dare. If it is their husband that bids them, it is a great hardship to go on board ship. Then the bilgewater is insufferable! the skies spin round them! She that follows her adulterer has no qualms. The one is sick all over her husband. The other dines among the sailors and walks the quarter-deck, and delights in handling the hard ropes. And yet what was the beauty that inflamed, what the prime of life that captivated Hippia? What was it she saw in him to compensate her for being nicknamed the fencer's whore? For the darling Sergius had now begun to shave his throat; and badly wounded in the arm to anticipate his discharge. Besides, he had many things to disfigure his face, as for instance—he was galled with his helmet, and had a huge wen between his nostrils, and acrid rheum forever trickling from his eye. But then he was a gladiator! It is this that makes them beautiful as Hyacinthus! It was this she preferred to her children and her native land, her sister and her husband. It is the steel they are enamored of. This very same Sergius, if discharged from the arena, would begin to be Veiento in her eyes. Do you feel an interest in a private house, in a Hippia's acts? Turn your eyes to the rivals of the gods! Hear what Claudius had to endure. As soon as his wife perceived he was asleep, this imperial harlot, that dared prefer a coarse mattress to the royal bed, took her hood she wore by nights, quitted the palace with but a single attendant, but with a yellow tire concealing her black hair; entered the brothel warm with the old patchwork quilt, and the cell vacant and appropriated to herself. Then took her stand with naked breasts and gilded nipples, assuming the name of Lycisca, and displayed the person of the mother of the princely Britannicus, received all comers with caresses and asked her compliment, and submitted to often-repeated embraces. Then when the owner dismissed his denizens, sadly she took her leave, and (all she could do) lingered to the last before she closed her cell; and still raging with unsatisfied desire, tired with the toil but yet unsated, she retired with sullied cheeks defiled, and, foul from the smoke of lamps, bore back the odor of the stews to the pillow of the emperor. Shall I speak of the love-philters, the incantations, the poison mingled with the food and given to the step-son? The acts which they commit, to which they are impelled by the imperative suggestions of their sex,[243] are still more atrocious: those they commit through lust are the least of their crimes. "Then, how can it be that even by her husband's showing Cesennia is the best of wives?" She brought him a thousand sestertia! that is the price at which he calls her chaste. It is not with Venus' quiver that he grows thin, or with her torch he burns; it is from that his fires are fed; from her dowry that the arrows emanate. She has purchased her liberty: therefore, even in her husband's presence, she may exchange signals, and answer her love-letters. A rich wife, with a covetous husband, has all a widow's privileges. "Why then does Sertorius burn with passion for Bibula?" If you sift the truth, it is not the wife he is in love with, but the face. Let a wrinkle or two make their appearance, and the shriveled skin grow flaccid, her teeth get black, or her eyes smaller—"Pack up your baggage," the freedman will say, "and march. You are become offensive. You blow your nose too frequently. March! and be quick about it! Another is coming whose nose is not so moist." Meanwhile she is hot and imperious, and demands of her husband shepherds and sheep from Canusium, and elms[244] from Falernum. What a trifle is this? Then every boy she fancies, whole droves of slaves, and whatever she has not in her house, and her neighbor has, must be bought. Nay, in the mid-winter month, when now the merchant Jason is shut up, and the cottage[245] white with hoar frost detains the sailors all equipped for their voyage, she takes huge crystalline vases,[246] and then again myrrhine of immense size; then an adamant whose history is well known, and whose value is enhanced by having been on Berenice's finger. This in days of yore a barbarian king gave his incestuous love—Agrippa to his own sister! where barefoot kings observe festal sabbaths, and a long-established clemency grants long life to pigs. "Is there not one, then, out of such large herds of women, that seems to you a worthy match?" Let her be beautiful, graceful, rich, fruitful; marshal along her porticoes her rows of ancestral statues; let her be more chaste than any single Sabine that, with hair disheveled, brought the war to a close; be a very phoenix upon earth, rare as a black swan; who could tolerate a wife in whom all excellencies are concentrated! I would rather, far rather, have a country maiden from Venusia, than you, O Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, if along with your exalted virtues you bring as portion of your dower a haughty and disdainful brow, and reckon as part of your fortune the triumphs of your house! Away, I beg, with your Hannibal and Syphax conquered in his camp, and tramp with all your Carthage! "Spare, I pray thee, PÆan! and thou, O goddess, lay down thine arrows! The children are innocent. Transfix the mother herself!" So prays Amphion. Yet PÆan bends his bow. Therefore she had to bury her herds of children, together with their sire, while Niobe seems to herself to be more noble than Latona's race, and moreover more fruitful even than the white sow. What dignity of deportment, what beauty, can compensate for your wife's always throwing her own worth in your teeth? For all the satisfaction of this rare and chief good is destroyed, if, entirely spoilt by haughtiness of soul, it entails more bitter than sweet. But who is so devotedly uxorious, as not to feel a dread of her whom he praises to the skies, and hate her seven hours out of every twelve? There are some things, trifling indeed, and yet such as no husband can tolerate. For what can be more sickening than the fact that no one woman considers herself beautiful, unless instead of Tuscan she has become a little Greek—metamorphosed from a maid of Sulmo to a "maid of Athens." Every thing is in Greek. (While surely it is more disgraceful for our countrywomen not to know their mother tongue.) In this language they give vent to their fears, their anger, their joys and cares, and all the inmost workings of their soul. Nay more, they kiss À la Grecque! This in young girls you may excuse. But must thou, forsooth, speak Greek, that hast had the wear and tear of six and eighty years? In an old woman this language becomes immodest, when interspersed with the wanton ??? ?a? ????. You are employing in public, expressions one might think you had just used under the counterpane. For whose passion would not be excited by these enticing and wanton words? It has all the force of actual touching. Yet though you pronounce them all in more insinuating tones than even HÆmus or Carpophorus, your face, the tell-tale of your years, makes all the feathers droop. If you are not likely to love her that is contracted and united to you in lawful wedlock, there seems no single reason why you should marry, nor why you should waste the wedding dinner and bride cakes[247] which you must dispense, when their complimentary attendance is over, to your bridal guests already well crammed; nor the present given for the first nuptial night, when, in the well-stored dish, Dacicus[248] and Germanicus glitters with its golden legend. If you are possessed of such simplicity of character as to be enamored of your wife, and your whole soul is devoted to her alone, then bow your head with neck prepared to bear the yoke. You will find none that will spare a man that loves her. Though she be enamored herself, she delights in tormenting and fleecing her lover. Consequently a wife is far more disastrous to him that is likely to prove a kind and eligible husband. You will never be allowed to make a present without your wife's consent. If she opposes it, you must not sell a single thing, or buy one, against her will. She will give away your affections. That good old friend of many long years will be shut out from that gate that saw his first sprouting beard.[249] While pimps and trainers have free liberty to make their own wills, and even gladiators enjoy the same amount of privilege, you will have your will dictated to you, and find more than one rival named as your heirs. "Crucify that slave." "What is the charge, to call for such a punishment? What witness can you produce? Who gave the information? Listen! Where man's life is at stake no deliberation can be too long." "Idiot! so a slave is a man then! Granted he has done nothing. I will it, I insist on it! Let my will stand instead of reason!" Therefore she lords it over her husband:—but soon she quits these realms, and seeks new empires and wears out her bridal veil. Then she flies back, and seeks again the traces of the bed she scorned.[250] She leaves the doors so recently adorned, the tapestry still hanging on the house, and the branches still green upon the threshold. Thus the number grows: thus she has her eight[251] husbands in five years. A notable fact to record upon her tomb! All chance of domestic happiness is hopeless while your wife's mother is alive. She bids her exult in despoiling her husband to the utmost. She teaches her how to write back nothing savoring of discourtesy or inexperience to the missives of the seducer. She either balks or bribes your spies; then, though your daughter is in rude health, calls in Archigenes, and tosses off the bedclothes as too oppressive. Meanwhile the adulterer, concealed apart, stands trembling with impatient expectation. Do you expect, forsooth, that the mother will inculcate virtuous principles, or other than she cherishes herself? It is right profitable too for a depraved old hag to train her daughter to the same depravity. There is scarcely a single cause in which a woman is not engaged in some way in fomenting the suit. If Manilia is not defendant, she will be plaintiff. They draw up and frame bills of indictment unassisted,[252] quite prepared to dictate even to Celsus[253] the exordium and topics he should use. The Tyrian Endromides[254] and the Ceroma for women who is ignorant of? Or who has not seen the wounds of the Plastron,[255] which she dints with unwearied foil, and attacks with her shield, and goes with precision through her exercise? A matron most pre-eminently worthy of the trumpet of the Floralia. Unless indeed in that breast of hers she is plotting something deeper, and training in real earnest for the amphitheatre.[256] What modesty can a woman show that wears a helmet, and eschews her sex, and delights in feats of strength? And yet, in spite of all, this virago would not wish to become a man. For how small is our pleasure compared to theirs! Yet what a goodly array would there be, if there were an auction of your wife's goods: belt and gauntlets[257] and crest, and the half-armor for the left leg! Or if she shall engage in a different way of fighting,[258] you will be lucky indeed when your young wife sells her greaves. Yet these very same women perspire even in their muslin; whose delicate frames even a slip of sarcenet oppresses. See! with what a noise she makes the home-thrusts taught her by the trainer, and what a weight of helmet bows her down, how firmly she plants herself on her haunches, in what a thick mass is the roll of clothes. Then smile when, laying aside her arms, she takes her oblong vessel. Tell me, ye granddaughters of Lepidus or blind Metellus, or Fabius Gurges, what actress ever wore a dress like this? When would Asylus' wife cry Hah! at the Plastron? The bed in which a wife lies is the constant scene of quarrels and mutual recriminations. There is little chance of sleep there. Then is she indeed bitter toward her husband, fiercer than tigress robbed of her whelps; when, conscious of her secret guilt, she counterfeits groans, or hates the servants, or upbraids you with some rival of her own creation, with tears ever fruitful, ever ready at their post, and only waiting her command in what way to flow. You believe it genuine love. You, poor hedge-sparrow, plume yourself, and kiss off the tears! Ah! what amorous lays, what letters would you read, if you were but to examine the writing-case of that adulteress that counterfeits jealousy so well! But suppose her actually caught in the arms of a slave or knight. "Pray suggest in this case some colorable excuse, Quintilian!" "We are at fault! Let the lady herself speak!" "It was formerly agreed," she says, "that you should do what you pleased, and that I also might have full power to gratify myself. In spite of your outcry and confounding heaven and sea, I am mortal." Nothing is more audacious than these women when detected. They affect resentment, and borrow courage from their very guilt itself. Yet should you ask whence are these unnatural prodigies, or from what source they spring; it was their humble fortune that made the Latin women chaste in days of yore, nor did hard toil and short nights' rest, and hands galled and hardened[259] with the Tuscan fleece, and Hannibal close to the city, and their husbands mounting guard at the Colline tower, suffer their lowly roofs to be contaminated by vice. Now we are suffering all the evils of long-continued peace. Luxury, more ruthless than war, broods over Rome, and exacts vengeance for a conquered world. No guilt or deed of lust is wanting, since Roman poverty has disappeared. This was the source whence Sybaris flowed to these seven hills, and Rhodes too, and Miletus, and Tarentum crowned with garlands, insolent and flushed with wine! Money, the nurse of debauchery, was the first that introduced foreign manners, and enervating riches sapped the sinews of the age with foul luxury. For what cares Venus in her cups? All difference of head or tail is alike to her who at very midnight devours huge oysters, when unguents mixed with neat Falernian foam, when she drains the conch,[260] when from her dizziness the roof seems to reel, and the table to rise up with the lights doubled in number.[261] Go then, and knowing all this, doubt, if you can, with what a snort of scorn Tullia snuffs up the air when she passes the ancient altar of Chastity; or what Collatia says to her accomplice Maura. Here they set down their litters at night, and bedew the very image of the goddess with copious irrigations, while the chaste moon witnesses their abominations,[262] over which, when morn returns, you pass on your way to visit your great friends. The secrets of Bona Dea are well known. When the pipe excites them, and inflamed alike with the horn and wine, these MÆnads of Priapus rush wildly round, and whirl their locks and howl! Then, as their passions rise, how burning is their lust, how frantic their words, when all power of restraining their desires is lost! A prize is proposed, and Saufeia[263] challenges the vilest of her sex, and bears off the prize. In these games nothing is counterfeit, all is acted to the life; so that even the aged Priam, effete from years, or Nestor himself, might be inflamed at the sight. Then their lust admits of no delay. Then the woman appears in all her native depravity; and by all alike is the shout re-echoed from the whole den—"Now is the proper time. Let in the men!" But the adulterer still sleeps; so she bids the youth put on a female hood, and speed to the spot. If none can be found, they have recourse to slaves. If there is no hope of slaves, they will hire some water-carrier to come. If this fails too, and no men can be found, she would not hesitate to descend still lower in the scale of creation. Oh, would that our ancient rites and public worship could at least be celebrated, uncontaminated by such pollutions as these! But even the Moors and Indians know what singing wench produced his wares equal in bulk to CÆsar's two Anticatos, in a place whence even a mouse, conscious of his sex, would flee, and every picture is veiled over that represents the other sex. Yet, even in those days, what man despised the deity? or who had dared to ridicule Numa's earthen bowl and black dish, and the brittle vessels from Mount Vatican. But now what altars are there that a Clodius does not assail? 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. 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 Phoebus, 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! 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 Syrophoenician, reeking with his assiduous perfume,[457] runs to meet him (the Syrophoenician 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! [396] Stemmata. "The lines connecting the descents in a pedigree," from the garlands of flowers round the Imagines set up in the halls (v., 19) and porticoes (vi., 163) of the nobiles; which were joined to one another by festoons, so that the descent from father to son could be readily traced. Cf. Pers., iii., 28. "Stemmate quod Tusco ramum millesime ducis." Of Ponticus nothing is known. 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 Moesian 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." [503] NÆvolus is mentioned repeatedly by Martial, and seems to have been a lawyer, i., Ep. 98; iii., Ep. 71 and 95; iv., Ep. 84: hence perhaps the allusion to Marsyas, whose statue stood in the Forum, opposite the Rostra, as a warning to the litigious. Cf. Hor., i., Sat. vi., 120. Xen., Anab., I., ii., 8. 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 Croesus,[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] [550] Gadibus. Gades, now Cadiz, and Ganges were the western and eastern boundaries of the then known world. 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? Every club,[688] the baths, every knot of loungers, every theatre,[689] is full of Rutilus. For while his sturdy and youthful limbs are fit to bear arms,[690] and while he is hot in blood, he is driven[691] (not indeed forced to it, but unchecked by the tribune) to copy out[692] the instructions and imperial commands of the trainer of gladiators. Moreover, you see many whom their creditor, often cheated of his money, is wont to look out for at the very entrance of the market;[693] and whose inducement to live exists in their palate alone. The greatest wretch among these, one who must soon fail, since his ruin is already as clear[694] as day, sups the more extravagantly and the more splendidly. Meanwhile they ransack all the elements for dainties;[695] the price never standing in the way of their gratification. If you look more closely into it, those please the more which are bought for more. Therefore they have no scruple[696] in borrowing a sum, soon to be squandered, by pawning[697] their plate, or the broken[698] image of their mother; and, with the 400[699] sesterces, seasoning an earthen[700] dish to tickle their palate. Thus they are reduced to the hotch-potch[701] of the gladiator. It makes therefore all the difference who it is that procures these same things. For in Rutilus it is luxurious extravagance. In Ventidius it takes a praiseworthy name, and derives credit from his fortune. I should with reason despise the man who knows how much more lofty Atlas is than all the mountains in Libya, yet this very man knows not how much a little purse differs from an iron-bound chest.[702] "Know thyself," came down from heaven:[703] a proverb to be implanted and cherished in the memory, whether you are about to contract matrimony,[704] or wish to be in a part of the sacred[705] senate:—(for not even Thersites[706] is a candidate for the breast-plate of Achilles: in which Ulysses exhibited himself in a doubtful character:[707])—or whether you take upon yourself to defend a cause of great moment. Consult your own powers; tell yourself who you are; whether you are a powerful orator, or like a Curtius, or a Matho,[708] mere spouters. One must know one's own measure, and keep it in view, in the greatest and in most trifling matters; even when a fish is to be bought. Do not long for a mullet,[709] when you have only a gudgeon in your purse. For what end awaits you, as your purse[710] fails and your gluttony increases: when your patrimony and whole fortune is squandered[711] upon your belly, what can hold your money out at interest, your solid plate, your flocks, and lands? By such proprietors as these, last of all[712] the ring is parted with, and Pollio[713] begs with his finger bare. It is not the premature funeral pile, or the grave, that is luxury's horror, but old age,[714] more to be dreaded than death itself. These are most commonly the steps: money, borrowed at Rome, is spent before the very owners' faces; then when some trifling residue is left, and the lender of the money is growing pale, they give leg-bail[715] and run to BaiÆ and Ostia. For now-a-days to quit the forum[716] is not more discreditable to you than to remove to Esquiline from hot[717] Suburra. This is the only pain that they who flee their country feel, this their only sorrow, to have lost the Circensian games[718] for one[719] year. Not a drop of blood remains in their face; few attempt to detain modesty, now become an object of ridicule and fleeing from the city. You shall prove to-day by your own experience, Persicus, whether all these things, which are very fine to talk about, I do not practice in my life, in my moral conduct, and in reality: but praise vegetables,[720] while in secret I am a glutton: in others' hearing bid my slave bring me water-gruel,[721] but whisper "cheese-cakes" in his ear. For since you are my promised guest, you shall find me an Evander:[722] you shall come as the Tirynthian, or the guest, inferior indeed to him, and yet himself akin by blood to heaven: the one sent to the skies by water,[723] the other by fire. Now hear your bill of fare,[724] furnished by no public market.[725] From my farm at Tibur there shall come a little kid, the fattest and tenderest of the whole flock, ignorant of the taste of grass, that has never yet ventured to browse even on the low twigs of the willow-bed, and that has more milk than blood in his veins: and asparagus[726] from the mountains, which my bailiff's wife, having laid down her spindle, gathered. Some huge eggs besides, and still warm in their twisted hay, shall be served up together with the hens themselves: and grapes kept a portion of the year, just as they were when fresh upon the vines: pears from Signia[727] and Syria: and, from the same basket, apples rivaling those of Picenum,[728] and smelling quite fresh; that you need not be afraid of, since they have lost their autumnal moisture, which has been dried up by cold, and the dangers to be feared from their juice if crude. This would in times gone by have been a luxurious supper for our senate. Curius[729] with his own hands used to cook over his little fire pot-herbs which he had gathered in his little garden: such herbs as now the foul digger in his heavy chain rejects with scorn, who remembers the flavor of the vile dainties[730] of the reeking cook-shop. It was the custom formerly to keep against festival days the flitches of the smoked swine, hanging from the wide-barred rack, and to set bacon as a birthday treat before one's relations, with the addition of some fresh meat, if a sacrificial victim furnished any. Some one of the kin, with the title of "Thrice consul," that had held command in camps, and discharged the dignity of dictator, used to go earlier[731] than his wont to such a feast as this, bearing his spade over his shoulder from the mountain he had been digging on. But when men trembled at the Fabii,[732] and the stern Cato, and the Scauri and Fabricii;[733] and when, in fine, even his colleague stood in dread of the severe character of the strict Censor; no one thought it was a matter of anxiety or serious concern what kind of tortoise[734] floated in the wave of ocean, destined to form a splendid and noble couch for the TrojugenÆ. But with side devoid of ornament, and sofas of diminutive size, the brazen front displayed the mean head of an ass wearing a chaplet,[735] at which the country lads laughed in wantonness. The food then was in keeping with the master of the house and the furniture. Then the soldier, uncivilized, and too ignorant[736] to admire the arts of Greece, used to break up the drinking-cups, the work of some renowned artists, which he found in his share of the booty when cities were overthrown, that his horse might exult in trappings,[737] and his embossed helmet might display to his enemy on the point of perishing, likenesses of the Romulean wild beast bidden to grow tame by the destiny of the empire, and the twin Quirini beneath the rock, and the naked image of the god coming down[738] with buckler and spear, and impending over him. Whatever silver he possessed glittered on his arms[739] alone. In those days, then, they used to serve all their furmety in a dish of Tuscan earthenware: which you may envy, if you are at all that way inclined.[740] The majesty of temples also was more evidently near[741] to men, and a voice[742] heard about midnight and through the midst of the city, when the Gauls were coming from the shore of ocean, and the gods discharged the functions of a prophet, warned us of these. This was the care which Jupiter used to show for the affairs of Latium, when made of earthenware,[743] and as yet profaned by no gold. Those days saw tables made of wood grown at home and from our native trees.[744] To these uses was the timber applied, if the east wind had chanced to lay prostrate some old walnut-tree. But now the rich have no satisfaction in their dinner, the turbot and the venison lose their flavor, perfumes and roses seem to lose their smell, unless the broad circumference of the table is supported by a huge mass of ivory, and a tall leopard with wide-gaping jaws, made of those tusks, which the gate of Syene[745] transmits, and the active Moors, and the Indian of duskier hue than the Moor;[746] and which the huge beast has deposited in some NabathÆan[747] glen, as now grown too weighty and burdensome to his head: by this their appetite[748] is whetted: hence their stomach acquires its vigor. For a leg of a table made only of silver is to them what an iron ring on their finger would be: I therefore cautiously avoid a proud guest, who compares me with himself, and looks with scorn on my paltry estate. Consequently I do not possess a single ounce of ivory: neither my chess-board[749] nor my men are of this material; nay, the very handles of my knives are of bone. Yet my viands never become rank in flavor by these, nor does my pullet cut up the worse on that account. Nor yet will you see a carver, to whom the whole carving-school[750] ought to yield the palm, some pupil of the professor Trypherus, at whose house the hare, with the large sow's udders,[751] and the wild boar, and the roebuck,[752] and pheasants,[753] and the huge flamingo,[754] and the wild goat[755] of GÆtulia, all forming a most splendid supper, though made of elm, are carved with the blunted knife, and resounds through the whole Suburra. My little fellow, who is a novice, and uneducated all his days, does not know how to take dexterously off a slice of roe, or the wing of a Guinea-hen;[756] only versed in the mysteries of carving the fragments of a small collop.[757] My slave, who is not gayly dressed, and only clad so as to protect him from cold, will hand you plebeian cups[758] bought for a few pence. He is no Phrygian or Lycian, or one purchased from the slave-dealer[759] and at great price. When you ask for any thing, ask in Latin. They have all the same style of dress; their hair close-cropped and straight, and only combed to-day on account of company. One is the son of a hardy shepherd, another of a neat-herd: he sighs after his mother, whom he has not seen for a long time, and pines for his hovel[760] and his playmate kids. A lad of ingenuous face, and ingenuous modesty; such as those ought to be who are clothed in brilliant purple. He shall hand you wine[761] made on those very hills from which he himself comes, and under whose summit he has played; for the country of the wine and the attendant is one and the same. Gambling is disgraceful, and so is adultery, in men of moderate means. Yet when rich men commit all those abominations, they are called jovial, splendid fellows. Our banquet to-day will furnish far different amusements. The author of the Iliad[762] shall be recited, and the verses of high-sounding Mars, that render the palm doubtful. What matter is it with what voice such noble verses are read?[763] But now having put off all your cares, lay aside business, and allow yourself a pleasing respite, since you will have it in your power to be idle all day long. Let there be no mention of money out at interest. Nor if your wife is accustomed to go out at break of day and return at night, let her stir up your bile,[764] though you hold your tongue. Divest yourself at once of all that annoys you, at my threshold. Banish all thoughts of home and servants, and all that is broken and wasted[765] by them—especially forget ungrateful friends! Meantime, the spectacles of the Megalesian towel[766] grace the IdÆan solemnity: and, like one in a triumph, the prey of horses, the prÆtor, sits: and, if I may say so without offense to the immense and overgrown crowd, the circus to-day incloses the whole of Rome;[767] and a din reaches my ears, from which I infer the success of the green faction.[768] For should it not win, you would see this city in mourning and amazement, as when the consuls were conquered in the dust[769] of CannÆ. Let young men be spectators of these, in whom shouting and bold betting, and sitting by a trim damsel is becoming. Let our skin,[770] which is wrinkled with age, imbibe the vernal sun and avoid the toga'd crowd. Even now, though it wants a whole hour to the sixth, you may go to the bath with unblushing brow. You could not do this for five successive days; because even of such a life as this there would be great weariness. It is a more moderate use[771] that enhances pleasures. SATIRE XII. This day, Corvinus, is a more joyful one to me than even my own birthday;[772] in which the festal altar of turf[773] awaits the animals promised to the gods. To the queen of the gods we sacrifice a snow-white[774] lamb: a similar fleece shall be given to her that combated the Mauritanian Gorgon.[775] But the victim reserved for Tarpeian Jupiter, shakes, in his wantonness, his long-stretched[776] rope, and brandishes his forehead. Since he is a sturdy calf; ripe for the temple and the altar, and ready to be sprinkled with wine; ashamed any longer to drain his mother's[777] teats, and butts the oaks with his sprouting horn.[778] Had I an ample fortune, and equal to my wishes, a bull fatter than Hispulla,[779] and slow-paced from his very bulk, should be led to sacrifice, and one not fed in a neighboring pasture; but his blood should flow, giving evidence of the rich pastures of Clitumnus,[780] and with a neck that must be struck by a ministering priest of great strength, to do honor to the return of my friend who is still trembling, and has recently endured great horrors, and wonders to find himself safe. For besides the dangers of the sea, and the stroke of the lightning which he escaped, thick darkness obscured the sky in one huge cloud, and a sudden thunder-bolt struck the yard-arms, while every one fancied he was struck by it, and at once, amazed, thought that no shipwreck could be compared in horror with a ship on fire.[781] For all things happen so, and with such horrors accompanying, when a storm arises in poetry.[782] Now here follows another sort of danger. Hear, and pity him a second time; although the rest is all of the same description. Yet it is a very dreadful part, and one well known to many, as full many a temple testifies with its votive picture. (Who does not know that painters[783] are maintained by Isis?) A similar fortune befell our friend Catullus also: when the hold was half full of water, and when the waves heaved up each side alternately of the laboring ship, and the skill of the hoary pilot could render no service, he began to compound with the winds by throwing overboard, imitating the beaver who makes a eunuch[784] of himself, hoping to get off by the sacrifice of his testicles; so well does he know their medicinal properties. "Throw overboard all that belongs to me, the whole of it!" cried Catullus, eager to throw over even his most beautiful things—a robe of purple fit even for luxurious MÆcenases, and others whose very fleece the quality of the generous pasture has tinged, moreover the exquisite water with its hidden properties, and the atmosphere of BÆtica[785] contributes to enhance its beauty. He did not hesitate to cast overboard even his plate, salvers the workmanship of Parthenius, a bowl[786] that would hold three gallons, and worthy of Pholus when thirsty, or even the wife of Fuscus.[787] Add to these bascaudÆ,[788] and a thousand chargers, a quantity of embletic work, out of which the cunning purchaser of Olynthus[789] had drunk. But what other man in these days, or in what quarter of the globe, has the courage to prefer his life to his money, and his safety to his property? Some men do not make fortunes for the sake of living, but, blinded by avarice, live for the sake of money-getting. The greatest part even of necessaries is thrown overboard: but not even do these sacrifices relieve the ship—then, in the urgency of the peril, it came to such a pitch that he yielded his mast to the hatchet, and rights himself at last, though in a crippled state. Since this is the last resource in danger we apply, to make the ship lighter. Go now, and commit your life to the mercy of the winds; trusting to a hewn plank, with but four digits[790] between you and death, or seven at most, if the deal is of the thickest. And then together with your provision-baskets and bread and wide-bellied flagon,[791] look well that you lay in hatchets,[792] to be brought into use in storms. But when the sea subsided into calm, and the state of affairs was more propitious to the mariner, and his destiny prevailed over Eurus and the sea, when now the cheerful ParcÆ draw kindlier tasks with benign hand, and spin white wool,[793] and what wind there is, is not much stronger than a moderate breeze, the wretched bark, with a poor make-shift, ran before it, with the sailors' clothes spread out, and with its only sail that remained: when now the south wind subsided, together with the sun hope of life returned. Then the tall peak beloved by Iulus, and preferred as a home by him to Lavinium,[794] his stepmother's seat, comes in sight; to which the white sow[795] gave its name—(an udder that excited the astonishment of the gladdened Phrygians)—illustrious from what had never been seen before, thirty paps. At length he enters the moles,[796] built through the waters inclosed within them, and the Pharos of Tuscany, and the arms extending back, which jut out into the middle of the sea, and leave Italy far behind. You would not bestow such admiration on the harbor which nature formed: but with damaged bark, the master steers for the inner smooth waters of the safe haven, which even a pinnace of BaiÆ could cross; and there with shaven crowns[797] the sailors, now relieved from anxiety, delight to recount their perils that form the subject of their prating. Go then, boys, favoring with tongues and minds,[798] and place garlands in the temples, and meal on the sacrificial knives, and decorate the soft hearths and green turf-altar. I will follow shortly, and the sacrifice which is most important[799] having been duly performed, I will then return home, where my little images, shining in frail wax, shall receive their slender chaplets. Here I will propitiate[800] my own Jove, and offer incense to my hereditary Lares,[801] and will display all colors of the violet. All things are gay; my gateway has set up long branches,[802] and celebrates the festivities[803] with lamps lighted in the morning. Nor let these things be suspected by you, Corvinus. Catullus, for whose safe return I erect so many altars, has three little heirs. You may wait long enough for a man that would expend even a sick hen at the point of death for so unprofitable a friend. But even this is too great an outlay. Not even a quail will ever be sacrificed in behalf of one who is a father. If rich Gallita[804] and Paccius, who have no children, begin to feel the approach of fever, every temple-porch is covered with votive tablets,[805] affixed according to due custom. There are some who would even promise a hecatomb[806] of oxen. Since elephants are not to be bought here or in Latium, nor is there any where in our climate such a large beast generated; but, fetched from the dusky nation, they are fed in the Rutulian forests, and the field of Turnus, as the herd of CÆsar, prepared to serve no private individual, since their ancestors used to obey Tyrian Hannibal, and our own generals,[807] and the Molossian king, and to bear on their backs cohorts—no mean portion of the war—and a tower that went into battle. It is no fault, consequently, of Novius, or of Ister Pacuvius,[808] that that ivory is not led to the altars, and falls a sacred victim before the Lares of Gallita, worthy of such great gods, and those that court their favor! One of these two fellows, if you would give him license to perform the sacrifice, would vow the tallest or all the most beautiful persons among his flock of slaves, or place sacrificial fillets on his boys and the brows of his female slaves. And if he has any Iphigenia[809] at home of marriageable age, he will offer her at the altars, though he can not hope for the furtive substitution of the hind of the tragic poets. I commend my fellow-citizen, and do not compare a thousand[810] ships to a will; for if the sick man shall escape Libitina,[811] he will cancel his former will, entangled in the meshes of the act,[812] after a service so truly wonderful: and perhaps in one short line will give his all to Pacuvius as sole[813] heir. Proudly will he strut over his defeated rivals. You see, therefore, what a great recompense the slaughtered Mycenian maid earns. Long live Pacuvius, I pray, even to the full age of Nestor.[814] Let him own as much as ever Nero plundered,[815] let him pile his gold mountains high, and let him love no one,[816] and be loved by none. [772] Natali. The birthday was sacred to the "Genius" to whom they offered wine, incense, and flowers: abstaining from "bloody" sacrifices, "ne die qu ipsi lucem accepissent aliis demerent," Hor., ii., Ep. 144. "Floribus et vino Genium memorem brevis avi," Pers., ii., 3. "Funde merum Genio," Censorin., de D. N., 3. Virg., Ecl. iii., 76. Compare Hor., Od., IV., xi., where he celebrates the birthday of MÆcenas as "sanctior poene natali proprio." Cf. Dennis's Etruria, vol. ii., p. 65. SATIRE XIII. Every act that is perpetrated, that will furnish a precedent for crime, is loathsome[817] even to the author himself. This is the punishment that first lights upon him, that by the verdict[818] of his own breast no guilty man is acquitted; though the corrupt influence of the prÆtor may have made his cause prevail, by the urn[819] being tampered with. What think you, Calvinus,[820] is the opinion of all men touching the recent villainy, and the charge you bring of breach of trust? But it is your good fortune not to have so slender an income, that the weight of a trifling loss can plunge you into ruin; nor is what you are suffering from an unfrequent occurrence. This is a case well known to many—worn threadbare—drawn from the middle of fortune's heap.[821] Let us, then, lay aside all excessive complaints. A man's grief ought not to blaze forth beyond the proper bounds, nor exceed the loss sustained. Whereas you can scarcely bear even the very least diminutive particle of misfortune, however trifling, boiling with rage in your very bowels because your friend does not restore to you the deposit he swore to return. Can he be amazed at this, that has left threescore years behind him, born when Fonteius was consul?[822] Have you gained[823] nothing by such long experience of the world? Noble indeed are the precepts which philosophy, that triumphs over fortune, lays down in her books of sacred wisdom. Yet we deem those happy too who, with daily life[824] for their instructress, have learned to endure with patience the inconveniences of life, and not shake off the yoke.[825] What day is there so holy that is not profaned by bringing to light theft, treachery, fraud—filthy lucre got by crime of every dye, and money won by stabbing or by poison?[826] Since rare indeed are the good! their number is scarce so many as the gates of Thebes,[827] or the mouths of fertilizing Nile. We are now passing through the ninth age of the world: an era far worse than the days of Iron; for whose villainy not even Nature herself can find a name, and has no metal[828] base enough to call it by. Yet we call heaven and earth to witness, with a shout as loud as that with which the Sportula,[829] that gives them tongues, makes his clients applaud FÆsidius as he pleads. Tell me, thou man of many years, and yet more fit to bear the boss[830] of childhood, dost thou not know the charms that belong to another's money? Knowest thou not what a laugh thy simplicity would raise in the common herd, for expecting that no man should forswear himself, but should believe some deity is[831] really present in the temples and at the altars red with blood? In days of old the aborigines perhaps used to live after this fashion: before Saturn in his flight laid down his diadem, and adopted the rustic sickle: in the days when Juno was a little maid; and Jupiter as yet in a private[832] station in the caves of Ida: no banquetings of the celestials above the clouds, no Trojan boy or beauteous wife of Hercules as cup-bearer; or Vulcan (but not till he had drained the nectar) wiping[833] his arms begrimed with his forge in Lipara. Then each godship dined alone; nor was the crowd of deities so great[834] as it is now-a-days: and the heavens, content with a few divinities, pressed on the wretched Atlas with less grievous weight. No one had as yet received as his share the gloomy empire of the deep: nor was there the grim[835] Pluto with his Sicilian bride, nor Ixion's wheel, nor the Furies, nor Sisyphus' stone, nor the punishment of the black vulture,[836] but the shades passed jocund days with no infernal king. In that age villainy was a prodigy! They used to hold it as a heinous sin, that naught but death could expiate, if a young man had not risen up to pay honor to an old one,[837] or a boy to one whose beard was grown; even though he himself gloated over more strawberries at home, or a bigger pile of acorns.[838] So just a claim to deference had even four years' priority; so much on a par with venerated old age was the first dawn of youth! Now, if a friend should not deny the deposit[839] intrusted to him, if he should give back the old leathern purse with all its rusty[840] coin untouched, it is a prodigy of honesty, equivalent to a miracle,[841] fit to be entered among the marvels in the Tuscan records,[842] and that ought to be expiated by a lamb crowned for sacrifice.[843] If I see a man above the common herd, of real probity, I look upon him as a prodigy equal to a child born half man, half brute;[844] or a shoal of fish turned up by the astonished[845] plow; or a mule[846] with foal! in trepidation as great as though the storm-cloud had rained stones;[847] or a swarm of bees[848] had settled in long cluster from some temple's top; as though a river had flowed into the ocean with unnatural eddies,[849] and rushing impetuous with a stream of milk. Do you complain of being defrauded of ten sestertia by impious fraud? What if another has lost in the same way two hundred, deposited without a witness![850] and a third a still larger sum than that, such as the corner of his capacious strong-box could hardly contain! So easy and so natural is it to despise the gods above,[851] that witness all, if no mortal man attest the same! See with how bold a voice he denies it! What unshaken firmness in the face he puts on! He swears by the sun's rays, by the thunderbolts of Tarpeian Jove, the glaive of Mars, the darts of the prophet-god of Cirrha,[852] by the arrows and quiver of the Virgin Huntress, and by thy trident, O Neptune, father of the ÆgÆan! He adds the bow of Hercules, Minerva's spear, and all the weapons that the arsenals of heaven hold.[853] But if he be a father also, he says, "I am ready to eat my wretched son's head boiled, swimming in vinegar from Pharos."[854] There are some who refer all things to the accidents of fortune,[855] and believe the universe moves on with none to guide its course; while nature brings round the revolutions of days and years. And therefore, without a tremor, are ready to lay their hands[856] on any altar. Another does indeed dread that punishment will follow crime; he thinks the gods do exist. Still he perjures himself, and reasons thus with himself: "Let Isis[857] pass whatever sentence she pleases upon my body, and strike my eyes with her angry Sistrum, provided only that when blind I may retain the money I disown. Are consumption, or ulcerous sores, or a leg shriveled to half its bulk, such mighty matters? If Ladas[858] be poor, let him not hesitate to wish for gout that waits on wealth, if he is not mad enough to require Anticyra[859] or Archigenes.[860] For what avails the honor of his nimble feet, or the hungry branch of Pisa's olive? All-powerful though it be, that anger of the gods, yet surely it is slow-paced! If, therefore, they set themselves to punish all the guilty, when will they come to me? Besides, I may perchance discover that the deity may be appeased by prayers! "It is not unusual with him to pardon[861] such perjuries as these. Many commit the same crimes with results widely different. One man receives crucifixion[862] as the reward of his villainy; another, a regal crown!" Thus they harden their minds, agitated by terror inspired by some heinous crime. Then, when you summon him to swear on the sacred shrine, he will go first![863] Nay, he is quite ready to drag you there himself, and worry you to put him to this test. For when a wicked cause is backed by impudence, it is believed by many to be the confidence[864] of innocence. He acts as good a farce as the runaway slave, the buffoon in Catullus'[865] Vision! You, poor wretch, cry out so as to exceed Stentor,[866] or, rather, as loudly as Gradivus[867] in Homer: "Hearest thou[868] this, great Jove, and openest not thy lips, when thou oughtest surely to give vent to some word, even though formed of marble or of brass? Or, why then do we place on thy glowing altar the pious[869] frankincense from the wrapper undone, and the liver of a calf cut up, and the white caul of a hog?[870] As far as I see, there is no difference to be made between your image and the statue of Vagellius!"[871] Now listen to what consolation on the other hand he can offer, who has neither studied the Cynics, nor the doctrines of the Stoics, that differ from the Cynics only by a tunic,[872] and pays no veneration to Epicurus,[873] that delighted in the plants of his diminutive garden. Let patients whose cases are desperate be tended by more skillful physicians; you may trust your vein even to Philippus' apprentice. If you can show me no act so heinous in the whole wide world, then, I hold my tongue; nor forbid you to beat your breast with your fists, nor thump your face with open palm. For, since you really have sustained loss, your doors must be closed; and money is bewailed with louder lamentations from the household, and with greater tumult,[874] than deaths. No one, in such a case, counterfeits sorrow; or is content with merely stripping[875] down the top of his garment, and vexing his eyes for forced rheum.[876] The loss of money is deplored with genuine tears. But if you see all the courts filled with similar complaints, if, after the deeds have been read ten times over, and each time in a different quarter,[877] though their own handwriting,[878] and their principal signet-ring,[879] that is kept so carefully in its ivory casket, convicts them, they call the signature a forgery and the deed not valid; do you think that you, my fine fellow, are to be placed without the common pale? What makes you the chick of a white hen, while we are a worthless brood, hatched from unlucky eggs? What you suffer is a trifle; a thing to be endured with moderate choler, if you but turn your eyes to crimes of blacker dye. Compare with it the hired assassin, fires that originate from the sulphur of incendiaries,[880] when your outer gate is the first part that catches fire. Compare those who carry off the ancient temple's massive cups,[881] incrusted with venerable rust—the gifts of nations; or, crowns[882] deposited there by some king of ancient days. If these are not to be had, there comes some sacrilegious wretch that strikes at meaner prey; who will scrape the thigh of Hercules incased in gold, and Neptune's face itself, and strip off from Castor his leaf-gold. Will he, forsooth, hesitate, that is wont to melt down whole the Thunderer[883] himself? Compare, too, the compounders and venders of poisons;[884] or him that ought to be launched into the sea in an ox's hide,[885] with whom the ape,[886] herself innocent, is shut up, through her unlucky stars. How small a portion is this of the crimes which Gallicus,[887] the city's guardian, listens to from break of day to the setting of the sun! Would you study the morals of the human race, one house is quite enough. Spend but a few days there, and when you come out thence, call yourself, if you dare, a miserable man! Who is astonished at a goitred throat[888] on the Alps? or who, in MeroË,[889] at the mother's breast bigger than her chubby infant? Who is amazed at the German's[890] fierce gray eyes, or his flaxen hair with moistened ringlets twisted into horns? Simply because, in these cases, one and all are alike by nature. The pigmy[891] warrior in his puny panoply charges the swooping birds of Thrace, and the cloud that resounds with the clang of cranes. Soon, no match for his foe, he is snatched away by the curved talons, and borne off through the sky by the fierce crane. If you were to see this in our country, you would be convulsed with laughter: but there, though battles of this kind are sights of every day, no one even smiles, where the whole regiment is not more than a foot high. "And is there, then, to be no punishment at all for this perjured wretch and his atrocious villainy?" Well, suppose him hurried away at once, loaded with double irons, and put to death in any way our wrath dictates (and what could revenge wish for more?) still your loss remains the same, your deposit will not be refunded! "But the least drop of blood from his mangled body will give me a consolation that might well be envied. Revenge is a blessing, sweeter than life itself!" Yes! so fools think, whose breasts you may see burning with anger for trivial causes, sometimes for none at all. How small soever the occasion be, it is matter enough for their wrath. Chrysippus[892] will not hold the same language, nor the gentle spirit of Thales, or that old man that lived by sweet Hymettus'[893] hill, who, even amid those cruel bonds, would not have given his accuser one drop of the hemlock[894] he received at his hands! Philosophy, blessed[895] power! strips us by degrees of full many a vice and every error! She is the first to teach us what is right. Since revenge is ever the pleasure of a paltry spirit, a weak and abject mind! Draw this conclusion at once from the fact, that no one delights in revenge more than a woman! Yet, why should you deem those to have escaped scot-free whom their mind,[896] laden with a sense of guilt, keeps in constant terror, and lashes with a viewless thong! Conscience, as their tormentor, brandishing a scourge unseen by human eyes! Nay! awful indeed is their punishment, and far more terrible even than those which the sanguinary CÆditius[897] invents, or Rhadamanthus! in bearing night and day in one's own breast a witness against one's self. The Pythian priestess gave answer to a certain Spartan,[898] that in time to come he should not go unpunished, because he hesitated as to retaining a deposit, and supporting his villainy by an oath. For he inquired what was the opinion of the deity, and whether Apollo counseled him to the act. He did restore it therefore; but through fear,[899] not from principle. And yet he proved that every word that issued from the shrine was worthy of the temple, and but too true: being exterminated together with all his progeny and house, and, though derived from a wide-spreading clan, with all his kin! Such is the penalty which the mere wish to sin incurs. For he that meditates within his breast a crime that finds not even vent in words,[900] has all the guilt of the act! What then if he has achieved his purpose? A respiteless anxiety is his: that ceases not, even at his hours of meals: while his jaws are parched as though with fever, and the food he loathes swells[901] between his teeth. All wines[902] the miserable wretch spits out; old Alban wine,[903] of high-prized antiquity, disgusts him. Set better before him! and thickly-crowding wrinkles furrow his brow, as though called forth by sour[904] Falernian. At night, if anxious care has granted him perchance a slumber however brief, and his limbs, that have been tossing[905] over the whole bed, at length are at rest, immediately he sees in dreams the temple and the altar of the deity he has insulted; and, what weighs upon his soul with especial terrors,[906] he sees thee! Thy awful[907] form, of more[908] than human bulk, confounds the trembling wretch, and wrings confession[909] from him. These are the men that tremble and grow pale at every lightning-flash; and, when it thunders,[910] are half dead with terror at the very first rumbling[911] of heaven; as though not by mere chance, or by the raging violence of winds, but in wrath and vengeance the fire-bolt lights[912] upon the earth![913] That last storm wrought no ill! Therefore the next is feared with heavier presage, as though but deferred by the brief respite of this calm. Moreover, if they begin to suffer pain in the side, with wakeful fever, they believe the disease is sent to their bodies from the deity, in vengeance. These they hold to be the stones and javelins of the gods! They dare not vow the bleating sheep to the shrine, or promise even a cock's[914] comb to their Lares. For what hope is vouchsafed to the guilty sick?[915] or what victim is not more worthy of life? The character of bad men is for the most part fickle and variable.[916] While they are engaged in the guilty act they have resolution enough, and to spare. When their foul deeds are perpetrated, then at length they begin to feel what is right and wrong. Yet Nature[917] ever reverts to her depraved courses, fixed and immutable. For who ever prescribed to himself a limit to his sins? or ever recovered the blush[918] of ingenuous shame once banished from his brow now hardened? What mortal man is there whom you ever saw contented with a single crime? This false friend of ours will get his foot entangled in the noose, and endure the hook of the gloomy dungeon; or some crag[919] in the Ægean Sea, or the rocks that swarm with exiles of rank. You will exult in the bitter punishment of the hated name; and at length with joy confess[920] that no one of the gods is either deaf or a Tiresias.[921] [817] Displicet. "To none their crime the wished-for pleasure yields:
'Tis the first scourge that angry justice wields." Badham.
SATIRE XIV. There are very many things, Fuscinus,[922] that both deserve a bad name, and fix a lasting spot on a fortune otherwise splendid, which parents themselves point the way to, and inculcate upon their children. If destructive gambling[923] delights the sire, the heir while yet a child plays[924] too; and shakes the selfsame weapons in his own little dice-box. Nor will that youth allow any of his kin to form better hopes of him who has learned to peel truffles,[925] to season a mushroom,[926] and drown beccaficas[927] swimming in the same sauce, his gourmand sire with his hoary gluttony[928] showing him the way. When his seventh[929] year has past over the boy's head, and all his second teeth are not yet come, though you range a thousand bearded[930] philosophers on one side of him, and as many on the other, still he will be ever longing to dine in sumptuous style, and not degenerate from his sire's luxurious kitchen. Does Rutilus[931] inculcate a merciful disposition and a character indulgent to venial faults? does he hold that the souls and bodies of our slaves[932] are formed of matter like our own and of similar elements? or does he not teach cruelty, that Rutilus, who delights in the harsh clang of stripes, and thinks no Siren's[933] song can equal the sound of whips; the Antiphates[934] and Polyphemus of his trembling household? Then is he happy indeed whenever the torturer[935] is summoned, and some poor wretch is branded with the glowing iron for stealing a couple of towels! What doctrine does he preach to his son that revels in the clank of chains, that feels a strange delight in branded slaves,[936] and the country jail? Do you expect that Larga's[937] daughter will not turn out an adulteress, who could not possibly repeat her mother's lovers so quickly, or string them together with such rapidity, as not to take breath thirty times at least? While yet a little maid she was her mother's confidante; now, at that mother's dictation[938] she fills her own little tablets, and gives them to her mother's agents to bear to lovers of her own. Such is Nature's law.[939] The examples of vice that we witness at home[940] more surely and quickly corrupt us, when they insinuate themselves into our minds, under the sanction of those we revere. Perhaps just one or two young men may spurn these practices, whose hearts the Titan has formed with kindlier art, and moulded out of better clay.[941] But their sire's footsteps, that they ought to shun, lead on all the rest, and the routine[942] of inveterate depravity, that has been long before their eyes, attracts them on. Therefore refrain[943] from all that merits reprobation. One powerful motive, at least, there is to this—lest our children copy our crimes. For we are all of us too quick at learning to imitate base and depraved examples; and you may find a Catiline in every people and under every sky; but nowhere a Brutus,[944] or Brutus' uncle! Let nothing shocking to eyes or ears approach those doors that close upon your child. Away! far, far away,[945] the pander's wenches, and the songs of the parasite[946] that riots the livelong night! The greatest reverence[947] is due to a child! If you are contemplating a disgraceful act, despise not your child's tender years, but let your infant son act as a check upon your purpose of sinning. For if, at some future time, he shall have done any thing to deserve the censor's[948] wrath, and show himself like you, not in person only and in face, but also the true son of your morals, and one who, by following your footsteps, adds deeper guilt to your crimes—then, forsooth! you will reprove and chastise him with clamorous bitterness, and then set about altering your will. Yet how dare you assume the front severe,[949] and license of a parent's speech; you, who yourself, though old, do worse than this; and the exhausted cupping-glass[950] is long ago looking out for your brainless head? If a friend is coming to pay you a visit, your whole household is in a bustle. "Sweep the floor, display the pillars in all their brilliancy, let the dry spider come down with all her web; let one clean[951] the silver, another polish the embossed[952] plate—" the master's voice thunders out, as he stands over the work, and brandishes his whip. You are alarmed then, wretched man, lest your entrance-hall, befouled by dogs, should offend the eye of your friend who is coming, or your corridor be spattered with mud; and yet one little slave could clean all this with half a bushel of saw-dust. And yet, will you not bestir yourself that your own son may see your house immaculate and free from foul spot or crime? It deserves our gratitude that you have presented a citizen to your country and people,[953] if you take care that he prove useful to the state—of service to her lands; useful in transacting the affairs both of war and peace. For it will be a matter of the highest moment in what pursuits and moral discipline you train him. The stork feeds her young on snakes[954] and lizards which she has discovered in the trackless fields. They too, when fledged, go in quest of the same animals. The vulture, quitting the cattle, and dogs, and gibbets, hastens to her callow brood, and bears to them a portion of the carcass. Therefore this is the food of the vulture too when grown up, and able to feed itself and build a nest in a tree of its own. Whereas the ministers of Jove,[955] and birds of noble blood, hunt in the forest for the hare[956] or kid. Hence is derived the quarry for their nest: hence too, when their progeny, now matured, have poised themselves on their own wings, when hunger pinches they swoop to that booty, which first they tasted when they broke the shell. Centronius had a passion for building; and now on the embayed shore of Caieta,[957] now on the highest peak of Tibur,[958] or on PrÆneste's[959] hills, he reared the tall roofs of his villas, of Grecian[960] and far-fetched marbles; surpassing the temple of Fortune[961] and of Hercules as much as Posides[962] the eunuch outvied our Capitol. While, therefore, he is thus magnificently lodged, Centronius lessened his estate and impaired his wealth. And yet the sum of the portion that he left was no mean one: but all this his senseless son ran through by raising new mansions of marble more costly than his sire's. Some whose lot it is to have a father that reveres sabbaths, worship nothing save clouds and the divinity of heaven; and think that flesh of swine, from which their sire abstained, differs in naught from that of man. Soon, too, they submit to circumcision. But, trained to look with scorn upon the laws of Rome, they study and observe and reverence all those Jewish statutes that Moses in his mystic volume handed down: never to show the road except to one that worships the same sacred rites—to conduct to the spring they are in quest of, the circumcised[963] alone. But their father is to blame for this; to whom each seventh[964] day was a day of sloth, and kept aloof from all share of life's daily duties. All other vices, however, young men copy of their own free choice. Avarice is the only one that even against their will they are constrained to put in practice. For this vice deceives men under the guise and semblance[965] of virtue. Since it is grave in bearing—austere in look and dress. And without doubt, the miser is praised "a frugal[966] character," "a sparing man," and one that knows how to guard his own,[967] more securely than if the serpent of the Hesperides[968] or of Pontus had the keeping of them. Besides, the multitude considers the man of whom we are speaking, a splendid carver[969] of his own fortune. Since it is by such artificers as these that estates are increased. But still, increase they do by all means, fair or foul, and swell in bulk from the ceaseless anvil and ever-glowing forge. The father, therefore, considers misers as men of happy minds,[970] since he admires wealth, and thinks no instance can be found of a poor man that is also happy; and therefore exhorts his sons to follow the same track, and apply themselves earnestly to the doctrines of the same sect. There are certain first elements[971] of all vices. These he instills into them in regular order, and constrains them to become adepts in the most paltry lucre. Presently he inculcates an insatiable thirst for gain. While he is famishing himself, he pinches his servants'[972] stomachs with the scantiest allowance.[973] For he never endures to consume the whole of the blue fragments of mouldy[974] bread, but saves, even in the middle of September,[975] the mince[976] of yesterday;[977] and puts by till to-morrow's dinner the summer bean,[978] with a piece of stockfish and half a stinking shad:[979] and, after he has counted them, locks up the shreds of chopped leek.[980] A beggar from a bridge[981] would decline an invitation to such a meal as this! But to what end is money scraped together at the expense of such self-torture? Since it is undoubted madness,[982] palpable insanity, to live a beggar's life, simply that you may die rich. Meanwhile, though the sack swells, full to the very brim, the love of money grows[983] as fast as the money itself grows. And he that has the less, the less he covets. Therefore you are looking out for a second villa, since one estate is not enough for you, and it is your fancy to extend[984] your territories; and your neighbor's corn-land seems to you more spacious and fertile than your own; therefore you treat for the purchase of this too, with all its woods and its hill that whitens with its dense olive-grove. But if their owner will not be prevailed upon to part with them at any price, then at night, your lean oxen and cattle with weary necks, half-starved, will be turned into his corn-fields while still green, and not quit it for their own homes before the whole crop[985] has found its way into their ruthless[986] stomachs—so closely cropped that you would fancy it had been mown. You could hardly tell how many have to complain of similar treatment, and how many estates wrongs like this have brought to the hammer. "But what says the world? What the trumpet of slanderous fame?—" "What harm does this do me?"[987] he says; "I had rather have a lupin's pod, than that the whole village neighborhood[988] should praise me, if I am at the same time to reap the scanty crops of a diminutive estate." You will then, forsooth, be free from all disease[989] and all infirmity, and escape sorrow and care; and a lengthened span of life will hereafter be your lot with happier destiny, if you individually own as much arable land as the whole Roman people used to plow under king Tatius. And after that, to men broken down with years, that had seen the hard service of the Punic wars, and faced the fierce Pyrrhus and the Molossian swords, scarce two acres[990] a man were bestowed at length as compensation for countless wounds. Yet that reward for all their blood and toil never appeared to any less than their deserts—or did their country's faith appear scant or thankless. Such a little glebe as this used to satisfy the father himself and all his cottage troop: where lay his pregnant wife, and four children played—one a little slave,[991] the other three free-born. But for their grown-up brothers[992] when they returned from the trench or furrow, there was another and more copious supper prepared, and the big pots smoked with vegetables. Such a plot of ground in our days is not enough for a garden. It is from this source commonly arise the motives to crime. Nor has any vice of the mind of man mingled more poisons or oftener dealt[993] the assassin's knife, than the fierce lust for wealth unlimited. For he that covets to grow rich,[994] would also grow rich speedily. But what respect for laws, what fear or shame is ever found in the breast of the miser hasting to be rich? "Live contented with these cottages, my lads, and these hills of ours!" So said, in days of yore, the Marsian and Hernican and Vestine sire—"Let us earn our bread, sufficient for our tables, with the plow. Of this the rustic deities[995] approve; by whose aid and intervention, since the boon of the kindly corn-blade, it is man's fortune to loathe the oaks he fed upon before. Naught that is forbidden will he desire to do who is not ashamed of wearing the high country boots[996] in frosty weather, and keeps off the east winds by inverted skins. The foreign purple, unknown to us before, leads on to crime and impiety of every kind." Such were the precepts that these fine old fellows gave to their children! But now, after the close of autumn, even at midnight[997] the father with loud voice rouses his drowsy son: "Come, boy, get your tablets and write! Come, wake up! Draw indictments! get up the rubricated statutes[998] of our fathers—or else draw up a petition for a centurion's post. But be sure LÆlius observe your hair untouched by a comb, and your nostrils well covered with hair,[999] and your good brawny shoulders. Sack the Numidian's hovels,[1000] and the forts of the Brigantes,[1001] that your sixtieth year may bestow on you the eagle that will make you rich. Or, if you shrink from enduring the long-protracted labors of the camp, and the sound of bugles and trumpets makes your heart faint, then buy something that you may dispose of for more than half as much again as it cost you; and never let disgust at any trade that must be banished beyond the other bank of Tiber, enter your head, nor think that any difference can be drawn between perfumes or leather. The smell of gain is good[1002] from any thing whatever! Let this sentiment of the poet[1003] be forever on your tongue—worthy of the gods, and even great Jove himself!—'No one asks how you get it, but have it you must.' This maxim old crones impress on boys before they can run alone. This all girls learn before their A B C." Any parent whatever inculcating such lessons as these I would thus address: Tell me, most empty-headed of men! who bids you be in such a hurry? I engage your pupil shall better your instruction. Don't be alarmed! You will be outdone; just as Ajax outstripped Telamon, and Achilles excelled Peleus.[1004] Spare their tender years![1005] The bane of vice matured has not yet filled the marrow of their bones! As soon as he begins to trim a beard, and apply the long razor's edge, he will be a false witness—will sell his perjuries at a trifling sum, laying his hand[1006] on Ceres' altar and foot. Look upon your daughter-in-law as already buried, if she has entered your family with a dowry that must entail death on her.[1007] With what a gripe will she be strangled in her sleep! For all that you suppose must be gotten by sea and land, a shorter road[1008] will bestow on him! Atrocious crime involves no labor! "I never recommended this," you will hereafter say, "nor counseled such an act." Yet the cause and source of this depravity of heart rests at your doors; for he that inculcated a love for great wealth, and by his sinister lessons trained up his sons to avarice,[1009] does give full license, and gives the free rein[1010] to the chariot's course; then if you try to check it, it can not be restrained, but, laughing you to scorn, is hurried on, and leaves even the goal far behind. No one holds it enough to sin just so much as you allow him, but men grant themselves a more enlarged indulgence. When you say to your son, "The man is a fool that gives any thing to his friend,[1011] or relieves the burden[1012] of his neighbor's poverty," you are, in fact, teaching him to rob and cheat, and get riches by any crime, of which as great a love exists in you as was that of their country in the breast of the Decii;[1013] as much, if Greece speaks truth, as MenÆceus[1014] loved Thebes! in whose furrows[1015] legions with their bucklers spring from the serpent's teeth, and at once engage in horrid war, as though a trumpeter had arisen along with them. Therefore you will see that fire[1016] of which you yourself supplied the sparks, raging far and wide, and spreading universal destruction. Nor will you yourself escape, poor wretch! but with loud roar the lion-pupil[1017] in his den will mangle his trembling master. Your horoscope is well known to the astrologers.[1018] Yes! but it is a tedious business to wait for the slow-spinning[1019] distaffs. You will be cut off long before your thread[1020] is spun out. You are long ago standing in his way, and are a drag upon his wishes. Long since your slow and stag-like[1021] age is irksome to the youth. Send for Archigenes[1022] at once! and buy what Mithridates[1023] compounded, if you would pluck another fig, or handle this year's roses. You must possess yourself of that drug which every father, and every king, should swallow before every meal. I now present to you an especial gratification, to which you can find no match on any stage, or on the platform of the sumptuous prÆtor. If you only become spectator at what risk to life the additions to fortune are procured, the ample store in the brass-bound[1024] chest, the gold to be deposited in watchful Castor's[1025] temple; since Mars the avenger has lost helmet and all, and could not even protect his own property. You may give up, therefore, the games of Flora,[1026] of Ceres,[1027] and of Cybele,[1028] such far superior sport is the real business of life! Do bodies projected from the petaurum,[1029] or they that come down the tight-rope, furnish better entertainment than you, who take up your constant abode in your Corycian[1030] bark, ever to be tossed up and down by Corus and by Auster? the desperate merchant of vile and stinking wares! You, who delight in importing the rich[1031] raisin from the shores of ancient Crete, and wine-flasks[1032]—Jove's own fellow-countrymen! Yet he that plants his foot with hazardous tread by that perilous barter earns his bread, and makes the rope ward off both cold and hunger. You run your desperate risk, for a thousand talents and a hundred villas. Behold the harbor! the sea swarming with tall ships! more than one half the world is now at sea. Wherever the hope of gain invites, a fleet will come; nor only bound over the Carpathian and GÆtulian seas, but leaving Calpe[1033] far behind, hear Phoebus hissing in the Herculean main. A noble recompense indeed for all this toil! that you return home thence with well-stretched purse; and exulting in your swelled money-bags,[1034] brag of having seen Ocean's monsters,[1035] and young mermen! A different madness distracts different minds. One, while in his sister's arms, is terrified at the features and torches of the Eumenides.[1036] Another, when he lashes the bull[1037], believes it is Agamemnon or Ulysses roars. What though he spare his tunic or his cloak, that man requires a keeper,[1038] who loads his ship with a cargo up to the very bulwarks, and has but a plank[1039] between himself and the wave. While the motive cause to all this hardship and this fearful risk, is silver cut up into petty legends and minute portraits. Clouds and lightning oppose his voyage. "All hands unmoor!" exclaims the owner of the corn and pepper he has bought up. "This lowering sky, that bank of sable clouds portends no ill! It is but summer lightning!" Unhappy wretch! perchance that selfsame night he will be borne down, overwhelmed with shivering timbers and the surge, and clutch his purse with his left hand and his teeth. And he, to whose covetous desires[1040] but lately not all the gold sufficed which Tagus[1041] or Pactolus[1042] rolls down in its ruddy sand, must now be content with a few rags to cover his nakedness, and a scanty morsel, while as a "poor shipwrecked mariner" he begs for pence, and maintains himself by his painting of the storm.[1043] Yet, what is earned by hardships great as these, involves still greater care and fear to keep. Wretched, indeed, is the guardianship[1044] of a large fortune. Licinus,[1045] rolling in wealth, bids his whole regiment of slaves mount guard with leathern buckets[1046] all in rows; in dread alarm for his amber, and his statues, and his Phrygian marble,[1047] and his ivory, and massive tortoise-shell. The tub of the naked Cynic[1048] does not catch fire! If you smash it, another home will be built by to-morrow, or else the same will stand, if soldered with a little lead. Alexander felt, when he saw in that tub its great inhabitant, how much more really happy was he who coveted nothing, than he who aimed at gaining to himself the whole world; doomed to suffer perils equivalent to the exploits he achieved. Had we but foresight, thou, Fortune, wouldst have no divinity.[1049] It is we that make thee a goddess! Yet if any one were to consult me what proportion of income is sufficient, I will tell you. Just as much as thirst and hunger[1050] and cold require; as much as satisfied you, Epicurus,[1051] in your little garden! as much as the home of Socrates contained before. Nature never gives one lesson, and philosophy another. Do I seem to bind you down to too strict examples? Then throw in something to suit our present manners. Make up the sum[1052] which Otho's law thinks worthy of the Fourteen Rows. If this make you contract your brows, and put out your lip, then take two knights' estate, make it the three Four-hundred![1053] If I have not yet filled your lap, but still it gapes for more, then neither Croesus' wealth nor the realms of Persia will ever satisfy you. No! nor even Narcissus'[1054] wealth! on whom Claudius CÆsar lavished all, and whose behest he obeyed, when bidden even to kill his wife. Who knows not, O Volusius[1055] of Bithynia, the sort of monsters Egypt,[1056] in her infatuation, worships? One part venerates the crocodile:[1057] another trembles before an Ibis gorged with serpents. The image of a sacred monkey glitters in gold, where the magic chords sound from Memnon[1058] broken in half, and ancient Thebes lies buried in ruins, with her hundred gates. In one place they venerate sea-fish, in another river-fish; there, whole towns worship a dog;[1059] no one Diana. It is an impious act to violate or break with the teeth a leek or an onion.[1060] O holy nations! whose gods grow for them in their gardens![1061] Every table abstains from animals that have wool: it is a crime there to kill a kid. But human flesh is lawful food. Were Ulysses[1062] to relate at supper such a deed as this to the amazed Alcinous, he would perhaps have excited the ridicule or anger of some, as a lying babbler.[1063] "Does no one hurl this fellow into the sea, that deserves indeed a savage Charybdis and a real one[1064] too, for inventing[1065] his huge LÆstrygones[1066] and Cyclops. For I would far more readily believe in Scylla, or the Cyanean rocks that clash together,[1067] and the skins filled with stormy winds; or that Elpenor, struck with the light touch of Circe's wand, grunted in company with his messmates turned to hogs. Does he suppose the heads of the PhÆacians so void[1068] of brains?" So might any one with reason have argued, who was not yet drunk,[1069] and had taken but a scanty draught[1070] of the potent wine from the CorcyrÆan[1071] bowl; for the Ithacan[1072] told his adventures alone, with none to attest his veracity. We are about to relate events, wondrous indeed, but achieved only lately, while Junius[1073] was consul, above the walls of sultry Coptos.[1074] We shall recount the crime of a whole people, deeds more atrocious than any tragedy could furnish. For from the days of Pyrrha,[1075] though you turn over every tragic theme,[1076] in none is a whole people[1077] made the perpetrators of the guilt. Here, then, an instance which even in our own days ruthless barbarism[1078] produced. There is an inveterate and long-standing grudge,[1079] a deathless hatred and a rankling wound that knows no cure, burning fiercely still between Ombos[1080] and Tentyra, two neighboring peoples. On both sides the principal rancor arises from the fact that each place hates its neighbor's gods,[1081] and believes those only ought to be held as deities which itself worships. But at a festive period of one of those peoples, the chiefs and leaders of their enemies determined that the opportunity must be seized, to prevent their enjoying their day of mirth and cheerfulness, and the delights of a grand dinner, when their tables were spread near the temples and cross-ways, and the couch that knows not sleep, since occasionally even the seventh day's sun finds it still there, spread without intermission of either night or day.[1082] Savage,[1083] in truth, is Egypt! But in luxury, so far as I myself remarked, even the barbarous mob does not fall short of the infamous Canopus.[1084] Besides, victory is easily gained over men reeking[1085] with wine, stammering[1086] and reeling. On one side there was a crew of fellows dancing to a black piper; perfumes, such as they were; and flowers, and garlands in plenty round their brows. On the other side was ranged fasting hate. But, with minds inflamed, they begin first of all to give vent to railings[1087] in words. This was the signal-blast[1088] of the fray. Then with shouts from both sides, the conflict begins; and in lieu of weapons,[1089] the unarmed hand rages. Few cheeks were without a wound. Scarcely one, if any, had a whole nose out of the whole line of combatants. Now you might see, through all the hosts engaged, mutilated faces,[1090] features not to be recognized, bones showing ghastly beneath the lacerated cheek, fists dripping with blood from their enemies' eyes. But still the combatants themselves consider they are only in sport, and engaged in a childish[1091] encounter, because they do not trample any corpses under foot. What, forsooth, is the object of so many thousands mixing in the fray, if no life is to be sacrificed? The attack, therefore, is more vigorous; and now with arms inclined along the ground they begin to hurl stones[1092] they have picked up—Sedition's[1093] own peculiar weapons. Yet not such stones as Ajax[1094] or as Turnus[1095] hurled; nor of the weight of that with which Tydides[1096] hit Æneas' thigh; but such as right hands far different to theirs, and produced in our age, have power to project. For even in Homer's[1097] lifetime men were beginning to degenerate. Earth now gives birth to weak and puny mortals.[1098] Therefore every god that looks down on them sneers and hates them! After this digression[1099] let us resume our story. When they had been re-enforced by subsidies, one of the parties is emboldened to draw the sword, and renew the battle with deadly-aiming[1100] arrows. Then they who inhabit Tentyra,[1101] bordering on the shady palms, press upon their foes, who all in rapid flight leave their backs exposed. Here one of them, in excess of terror urging his headlong course, falls[1102] and is caught. Forthwith the victorious crowd having cut him up into numberless bits and fragments, in order that one dead man might furnish a morsel for many, eat him completely up, having gnawed his very bones. They neither cooked him in a seething caldron, nor on a spit. So wearisome[1103] and tedious did they think it to wait for a fire, that they were even content with the carcass raw. Yet at this we should rejoice, that they profaned not the deity of fire which Prometheus[1104] stole from highest heaven and gave to earth. I congratulate[1105] the element! and you too, I ween, are glad.[1106] But he that could bear to chew a human corpse, never tasted a sweeter[1107] morsel than this flesh. For in a deed of such horrid atrocity, pause not to inquire or doubt whether it was the first maw alone that felt the horrid delight! Nay! he that came up last,[1108] when the whole body was now devoured, by drawing his fingers along the ground, got a taste of the blood! The Vascones,[1109] as report says, protracted their lives by the use of such nutriment as this. But the case is very different. There we have the bitter hate of fortune! the last extremity of war, the very climax of despair, the awful destitution[1110] of a long-protracted siege. For the instance of such food of which we are now speaking, ought to call forth our pity.[1111] Since it was only after they had exhausted herbs of all kinds,[1112] and every animal to which the gnawings of an empty stomach drove them, and while their enemies themselves commiserated their pale and emaciated features and wasted limbs, they in their ravenous famine tore in pieces others' limbs, ready to devour even their own! What man, or what god even, would refuse his pardon to brave men[1113] suffering such fierce extremities? men, whom the very spirits of those whose bodies they fed on, could have forgiven! The precepts of Zeno teach us a better lesson. For he thinks that some things only, and not all, ought to be done to preserve life.[1114] But whence could a Cantabrian learn the Stoics' doctrines? especially in the days of old Metellus. Now the whole world has the Grecian and our Athens. Eloquent Gaul[1115] has taught the Britons[1116] to become pleaders; and even Thule[1117] talks of hiring a rhetorician. Yet that noble people whom we have mentioned, and their equal in courage and fidelity, their more than equal in calamity, Saguntum,[1118] has some excuse to plead for such a deed as this! Whereas Egypt is more barbarous even than the altar of MÆotis. Since that Tauric[1119] inventress of the impious rite (if you hold as worthy of credit all that poets sing) only sacrifices men; the victim has nothing further or worse to fear than the sacrificial knife. But what calamity was it drove these to crime? What extremity of hunger, or hostile arms that bristled round their ramparts, that forced these to dare a prodigy of guilt so execrable? What greater enormity[1120] than this could they commit, when the land of Memphis was parched with drought to provoke the wrath[1121] of Nile when unwilling to rise? Neither the formidable Cimbri, nor Britons, nor fierce Sarmatians or savage Agathyrsi, ever raged with such frantic brutality, as did this weak and worthless rabble, that wont to spread their puny sails in pinnaces of earthenware,[1122] and ply the scanty paddles of their painted pottery-canoe. You could not invent a punishment adequate to the guilt, or a torture bad enough for a people in whose breasts "anger" and "hunger" are convertible terms. Nature confesses that she has bestowed on the human race hearts of softest mould, in that she has given us tears.[1123] Of all our feeling this is the noblest part. She bids us therefore bewail the misfortunes of a friend in distress, and the squalid appearance of one accused, or an orphan[1124] summoning to justice the guardian who has defrauded him. Whose girl-like hair throws doubt[1125] upon the sex of those cheeks bedewed with tears! It is at nature's dictate that we mourn when we meet the funeral of a virgin of marriageable years, or see an infant[1126] laid in the ground, too young for the funeral pyre. For what good man, who that is worthy of the mystic torch,[1127] such an one as Ceres' priest would have him be, ever deems the ills of others[1128] matter that concerns not himself? This it is that distinguishes us from the brute herd. And therefore we alone, endued with that venerable distinction of reason[1129] and a capacity for divine things, with an aptitude for the practice as well as the reception of all arts and sciences, have received, transmitted to us from heaven's high citadel,[1130] a moral sense, which brutes prone[1131] and stooping toward earth, are lacking in. In the beginning of the world, the common Creator of all vouchsafed to them only the principle of vitality; to us he gave souls[1132] also, that an instinct of affection reciprocally shared, might urge us to seek for, and to give, assistance; to unite in one people, those before widely-scattered;[1133] to emerge from the ancient wood, and abandon the forests[1134] where our fathers dwelt; to build houses, to join another's dwelling to our own homes, that the confidence mutually engendered by a neighbor's threshold might add security[1135] to our slumbers; to cover with our arms a fellow-citizen[1136] when fallen or staggering from a ghastly wound; to sound the battle-signal from a common clarion; to be defended by the same ramparts, and closed in by the key of a common portal. But now the unanimity[1137] of serpents is greater than ours. The wild beast of similar genus spares his kindred[1138] spots. When did ever lion, though stronger, deprive his fellow-lion of life? In what wood did ever boar perish by the tusks of a boar[1139] larger than himself? The tigress of India[1140] maintains unbroken harmony with each tigress that ravens. Bears, savage to others, are yet at peace among themselves. But for man![1141] he is not content with forging on the ruthless anvil the death-dealing steel! While his progenitors, those primÆval smiths, that wont to hammer out naught save rakes and hoes, and wearied out with mattocks and plowshares, knew not the art of manufacturing swords.[1142] Here we behold a people whose brutal passion is not glutted with simple murder, but deem[1143] their fellows' breasts and arms and faces a kind of natural food. What then would Pythagoras[1144] exclaim; whither would he not flee, could he be witness in our days to such atrocities as these! He that abstained from all that was endued with life as from man himself; and did not even indulge his appetite with every kind of pulse. Who could possibly enumerate, Gallus,[1145] all the advantages that attend military service when fortunate? For if I could but enter the camp with lucky omen, then may its gate welcome me, a timid and raw recruit, under the influence of some auspicious planet. For one hour of benignant Fate is of more avail than even if Venus'[1146] self should give me a letter of recommendation to Mars, or his mother Juno, that delights in Samos' sandy shore.[1147] Let us treat, in the first place, of advantages in which all share; of which not the least important is this, that no civilian[1148] must dare to strike you. Nay, even though he be himself the party beaten,[1149] he must dissemble his wrath, and not dare to show the prÆtor[1150] the teeth he has had knocked out, and the black bruises on his face with its livid swellings, and all that is left of his eye, which the physician can give him no hopes of saving. If he wish to get redress for this, a Bardiac[1151] judge is assigned him—the soldier's boot, and stalwart calves that throng the capacious benches of the camp, the old martial law and the precedent of Camillus[1152] being strictly observed, "that no soldier shall be sued outside the trenches, or at a distance from the standards." Of course, where a soldier is concerned, the decision of the centurion will needs be most equitable;[1153] nor shall I lack my just revenge, provided only the ground of the complaint I lay be just and fair. Yet the whole cohort is your sworn enemy; and all the maniples, with wonderful unanimity, obstruct the course of justice. Full well will they take care that the redress you get shall be more grievous than the injury itself. It will be an act, therefore, worthy of even the long-tongued Vagellius' mulish heart,[1154] while you have still a pair of legs to provoke the ire of so many buskins, so many thousand hob-nails![1155] For who can go so far from Rome? Besides, who will be such a Pylades[1156] as to venture beyond the rampart of the camp? So let us dry up our tears forthwith, and not trouble our friends, who will be sure to excuse themselves. When the judge calls on you, "Produce your witness,"[1157] let the man, whoever he may be, that saw the cuffs, have the courage to stand forth and say, "I saw[1158] the act," and I will hold him worthy of the beard,[1159] and worthy of the long hair of our ancestors. You could with greater ease suborn a false witness against a civilian,[1160] than one who would speak the truth against the fortune and the dignity of the man-at-arms. Now let us observe other prizes and other solid advantages of the military life. If some rascally neighbor has defrauded me of a portion of the valley of my paternal fields, or encroached on my land, and removed the consecrated stone from the boundary that separates our estates, that stone which my pulse has yearly[1161] honored with the meal-cake derived from ancient days, or if my debtor persists in refusing repayment of the sum I lent him, asserting that the deed is invalid and the signature a forgery: I shall have to wait a whole year occupied with the causes of the whole nation, before my case comes on. But even then I must put up with a thousand tedious delays, a thousand difficulties. So many times the benches only are prepared; then, when the eloquent CÆditius[1162] is laying aside his cloak, and Fuscus must retire for a little, though all prepared, we must break up; and battle in the tediously-protracted arena of the court. But in the case of those who wear armor, and buckle on the belt, whatever time suits them is fixed for the hearing of their cause, nor is their fortune frittered away by the slow drag-chain[1163] of the law. Besides, it is only to soldiers that the privilege is granted, of making their wills while their fathers are still alive.[1164] For it has been determined that all that has been earned by the hard toil of military service should not be incorporated with that sum of which the father holds the entire disposal. And so it is, that while Coranus follows the standards and earns his daily pay, his father, though tottering on the edge of the grave, pays court to his son that he may make him his heir. His duties regularly discharged procure the soldier advancement; and yield to every honest exertion[1165] its justly merited guerdon.[1166] For doubtless it appears to be the interest of the general himself, that he that proves himself brave should also be most distinguished for good fortune, that all may glory in their trappings,[1167] all in their golden chains.
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