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THIETEEN SATIEES OE JUVENAL 
 
u.ver’P_iiS, He-c-n-'. I S 
 
 THIRTEEN SATIRES 
 
 OF 
 
 JUVENAL 
 
 TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDEE LEEPEE, M.A., LL.D. 
 
 WARDEN OF TRINITY COLLEGE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE 
 LATE SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, AND OF 
 ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 NEW AND REVISED EDITION 
 
 SLonlion 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1897 
 
 A// rights reserved 
 
First published by Macmillan and Co., 1882 
 Reprinted^ 1886, 1888 
 New and Revised Edition^ i8g2 
 1897 
 

 8^1 
 
 \El 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 This translation was originally brought out as the 
 joint work of Dr. H. A. Strong, at that time Professor 
 of Classics in Melbourne University, and the present 
 writer. Three issues of the first edition having been 
 sold out, the book has now been thoroughly revised 
 and, to a large extent, rewritten. Dr. Strong’s 
 appointment to the Chair of Latin in Liverpool 
 University College made a renewal of the literary 
 partnership, for the purposes of any later edition, 
 impracticable. For any defects, therefore, in the 
 new edition the present writer must be held solely 
 responsible. 
 
 The text generally followed is that of the second 
 edition of Otto Jahn, which is, in the main, identical 
 ^ with that of Mayor ; but Mayor’s punctuation, where 
 ^ differing from Jahn’s, has been for the most part 
 ^ adopted, and some of Biicheler’s corrections have 
 been accepted. The more important cases of diver- 
 
 
 434052 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 gence from the Jahn-Mayor text have been duly 
 indicated. 
 
 Some brief Notes have been added to the transla- 
 tion, partly to distinguish the reading adopted by 
 the translator, and partly for the purpose of justifying 
 the rendering offered. A few illustrative quotations 
 have also been included in the Notes, though Pro- 
 fessor Mayor's magnificent work leaves very little 
 to be gleaned by those who come after him. 
 
 The leading commentaries and versions, both 
 English and foreign, have of course been consulted. 
 The translator is under the weightiest obligation to 
 Professor Mayor's edition, next to which he has 
 derived most assistance from the late Mr. J. D. 
 Lewis's notes. The translation by Mr. Lewis being 
 a perfectly literal rendering (for the most part, it 
 must be said, very accurate), has a somewhat dif- 
 ferent aim from the present version, which does not 
 seek to compete with it upon its own lines. 
 
 The translator desires to express his very grateful 
 acknowledgments to Professor Tucker of Melbourne 
 University for many ingenious and learned sugges- 
 tions ; also to Mr. K. T. Elliott, M.A., late of 
 Worcester College, Oxford, and now Classical 
 Lecturer in Trinity College, Melbourne, who with 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Vll 
 
 great kindness carefully read and revised the proof- 
 sheets, and gave much scholarly and valuable assist- 
 ance. The view taken by Professor Tucker of the 
 earlier part of the twelfth Satire seems well worthy 
 of attention. 
 
 It should, perhaps, be added that, until the notes 
 had been printed, neither Professor Tucker nor the 
 translator was aware that the suggestions there 
 made had been to some extent anticipated by 
 Haenicke in 1877. 
 
 Some allowance will, no doubt, be made for the 
 difficulties besetting a work of this kind when pro- 
 duced at so great a distance from the older seats of 
 learning, and with necessarily inferior opportunities 
 of access to reference libraries and to special branches 
 of periodical literature. 
 
 Trinity College, Melbourne University, 
 
 Oct 26, 1891, 
 
THIRTEEN SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 5 *^ 
 
 Am I to be for ever nothing but a listener ? Never 
 to pay back ^ in kind, after being so often bored by 
 that Theseid that has made Cordus hoarse ? Is there 
 then to be no redress, when one person has read me 
 his comedy and another his elegy ? No redress, when 
 a whole day has been wasted by the bulky Telephus, 
 or by Orestes, who, when the border to the very end 
 of the roll was filled, was written all over on the back 
 as well, and even yet is not finished ? There is not 
 a man more familiar with his own house than I am 
 with the ' Grove of Mars ’ and ' Vulcan’s cave hard 
 by Aeolian cliffs.’ ^ What the winds are about, what 
 ghosts Aeacus is torturing, from what place such a one 
 is carrying off the gold of the pilfered fleecelet, what 
 the size of the mountain ashes that Monychus is 
 hurling — all this is being for ever shouted by Fronto’s 
 planes and shivered marbles, and his pillars which are 
 split with the everlasting reading.^ Be the poet the 
 Sb B 
 
2 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 I. 14-35 
 
 greatest or the least, you have the same to expect 
 from him. Well, but I too have flinched from the 
 rod. I too have tendered my advice to Sulla to 
 retire into private life and get a sound sleep. It is a 
 foolish leniency, when at every turn you run against 
 so many inspired bards, to spare the paper which is 
 sure to be spoilt.^ But why I have a fancy for going 
 through my paces on this very course over which 
 Aurunca’s great foster-son ^ guided his racers, if you 
 have time and will quietly listen to my reasons, I 
 will make known. 
 
 Since effeminate eunuchs take wives, and a Mevia 
 spears the Tuscan boar, and bares her breasts, and 
 wields the hunter’s lance : and the whole patrician 
 order is challenged to compete with the wealth of a 
 single person, a fellow against whose razor my beard 
 used to grate in my younger days : and a scrap of the 
 proletariat of Egypt, Crispinus, a slave born and bred 
 at Canopus, hitches up a Tyrian mantle with his 
 shoulder, and fans the summer ring on his perspiring 
 finger, unable to bear the weight of his heavier signet — 
 why, to keep from writing satire is the difficulty. Eor 
 who so tolerant of this wrong-headed city, who so cal- 
 lous, that he can contain himself, when Lawyer Matho’s 
 brand-new litter comes along, filled with his Greatness, 
 and, after him, the betrayer of his distinguished friend, 
 who will soon finish off the remnants of our nobility 
 already preyed upon — the man whom Massa dreads, 
 
I. 35-55 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 3 
 
 whom Carus coaxes with gifts, as does Latimis too, in 
 his panic privately despatching his Thymele ; when 
 you must ‘move on ’ for those who earn a place in a will 
 by foul night-work, men w^ho are transported to the 
 summit of their hopes by what is nowadays the 
 surest path to the highest preferment — a rich old 
 dame’s lust? Proculeius gets one poor twelfth, but 
 Gillo eleven -twelfths — each inheriting in proportion 
 to his powers. By all means let him pocket the 
 price of his life-blood, and be as pale as one who has 
 trodden with his bare heel upon a snake, or as a speaker 
 just on the point of declaiming at the Altar of Lyons.® 
 Need I tell with what passion my fevered bosom 
 burns when this wretch who plundered his ward and~ 
 drove him to infamy is jostling the Eoman people 
 with his throngs of retainers ; or when this man — 
 Marius — after being condemned by a bootless verdict 
 (for what matters disgrace, so the cash be safe?) is 
 beginning his carousals in the land of his exile at 
 two o’clock in the day,"^ enjoying the wrath of heaven, 
 while you, poor province, are left with your verdict 
 and your tears ? Am I not to deem such things 
 worthy of the midnight oil of the Venusian, am I 
 not to pursue such themes? Well, but what should 
 have the preference ? The Geste of Hercules, say you, 
 or of Diomede, or the bellowing in the Labyrinth, the 
 Boy’s splash in the sea, and the Smith ^ on the wing ? 
 What! seeing that a pander-husband inherits the 
 
4 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 I. 55-76 
 
 goods of the adulterer, when the wife cannot lawfully 
 take them — a husband who has been schooled to 
 gaze at the ceiling, schooled to snore over his cups 
 with a wide-awake nose : seeing that a man thinks 
 it no sin to aspire to the command of a cohort, who 
 has lavished his substance on the stables, and has 
 stripped himself of all his family wealth by furious 
 driving on the Flaminian Eoad — a true young Auto- 
 medon, for he handled the reins himself to show off 
 to his mistress in the soldier’s cloak? Is not one 
 moved to fill a bulky note-book right in the middle 
 of the cross-roads, when a man is carried past, already 
 indulging in six bearers, showing himself to view on 
 both sides — his sedan almost without a curtain — 
 reminding one not a little of the way Maecenas used 
 to lounge — a forger who^ has made^® himself aristocrat 
 and millionaire with a little tablet and a damp seal ? 
 Now you are confronted by a lady of position, who, 
 when her husband is thirsty, just before she hands 
 him the mild Calenian, puts in a dash of poison, and, 
 like a superior Lucusta, teaches her unsophisticated 
 kinswomen to carry their livid husbands to burial right 
 through the Town and all its gossip. If you would 
 be a somebody,^^ then dare a something, to entitle 
 you to the narrow bounds of Gyara and to a gaol. 
 Virtue’s lot is praise and — shivering in the cold. It is 
 to crimes that men owe their pleasure grounds, their 
 ‘ castles,’ banquets, old silver, and goblets with goat’s 
 
I. 76-96 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 5 
 
 figure in relief. Who can rest for the seducer who 
 plays on his daughter-in-law's greed, for the thought 
 of betrothed girls ruined, and adulterers in their 
 teens? When Nature refuses, sheer scorn produces^ 
 verse — the best it can : the kind of verses I write — / 
 or Cluvienus. 
 
 Beginning from the time when the rain-clouds 
 lifted up the sea, and Deucalion climbed the mountain 
 in a ship and asked for an oracle, and the breath of 
 life gradually warmed the stones into soft flesh, and 
 Pyrrha displayed to the men her naked maids — all ^ 
 men's doings from that time on, their wishes and ^ • 
 fears, their resentments, their pleasures, their various 
 pursuits, all these make up my literary hotchpotcbr 
 And when had vice a more luxuriant crop ? When 
 did avarice open her pocket wider? When had 
 gambling such spirit ? Why, nowadays, men do 
 not try the haza rd of jhe taliLe-with^-a^mexe cash -box 
 to help them, but they stake their caffers on the 
 game. What battles you will see going on there, 
 with tha cashier for armour-bearer ! Is it lunacy or 
 something worse to squander thus a hundred thou- 
 sand sesterces, while you deny your shivering slave 
 his shirt ?^^ Which of our forefathers ever raised 
 so many country-houses or had seven courses 
 when he dined’ alone? Nowadays the dole is set 
 out in all its paltriness at the outer edge of the 
 vestibule for the crowd to scramble for in their 
 
6 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 I. 96-118 
 
 Roman gowns. And yet the great man first scrutin- 
 ises your features, and is all of a shiver lest you may 
 be an impostor coming to apply under a false name. 
 When identified you will get your share. He orders 
 even those of true Trojan blood (for they too, just 
 like ourselves, infest his threshold) to be called up 
 by his ' herald.’ ' Give to the praetor : give then 
 to the tribune.’ But a freedman takes pre- 
 cedence. ‘I am first,’ says he, ‘why fear or hesi- 
 tate to hold my own, although born by the 
 Euphrates — a fact which the womanish loop-holes 
 in my ears will prove at once, even if I deny it ? 
 Still five shops bring me in four hundred thousand 
 <^sterbil^ What does the broader purple offer worth 
 a wish, if a Corvinus is but a hired shepherd in the 
 Laurentine district, while I hold more land than 
 Pallas or a Licinus?’ Let them wait then, those 
 tribunes : let wealth gain the day : and let him who 
 was but lately come to Town, with his feet pipeclayed, 
 (decline to make room for the sacred office, since 
 |with us the divinity of riches is the most revered of 
 
 / all, even though mischievous money has not yet a 
 fixed abode in any temple, and we have raised no 
 altar as yet to Cash, after the manner in which we 
 worship Peace and Honour, Victory and Virtue, and 
 Concord, the goddess who twitters when we salute 
 her nest. But when chief magistrates calculate at 
 the year’s end what the dole brings in, how much it 
 
E. 118-139 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 7 
 
 adds to their income, what will retainers do who owe 
 to this their gowns, to this their shoes, and the 
 household food and fuel ? The litters come in throngs 
 for the hundred mites, and the wives though ill 
 (perhaps pregnant) accompany their husbands and 
 are taken the whole round. Here is one who makes 
 a claim for his wife, though she is absent — by practice - 
 grown an adept at the trick — pointing to the closed 
 but empty sedan which stands for the wife. ‘ It is 
 my Galla,’ he says, ‘ make haste and pass us on ! 
 Why so long ? Galla, put your head out ! Nay, 
 don’t disturb her, she’ll be dozing.’ 
 
 The very day has its elegant round of varied engage- 
 ments. The do le : next the courts and Apollo, that 
 finished lawyer, and the triumphal statues, among 
 which some Egyptian fellow — some Arab official — has 
 had the effrontery to place his record, against whose 
 ^Sffigy'irwere no sin to commit the worst of nuisances. 
 They turn away from the door, those retainers, old and 
 weary, and give over their longings, although the hopo' ' ' 
 of a dinner is the last that a man will part with. Poor 
 creatures ! they must pay fortheir cabbage andfuel; and 
 all the while their liege lord will be devouring the deli- 
 cacies of wood and ocean, reclining in lonely grandeur 
 amid his empty couches. For, with all their handsome 
 broad slabs of such rare antiquity, they use only one 
 table, and eat up whole fortunes off it. There will be hcT" 
 such thing as a parasite soon. But who can put up with 
 
8 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 J. 139-161 
 
 a stingy extravagance like this ? What an appetite 
 that must be that serves up for itself a whole boar, a 
 creature that nature made for dinner-parties! But 
 retribution is at hand, when after a surfeit you take 
 off your clothes, and carry an undigested peacock into 
 your bath. Hence sudden deaths of old men intest- 
 ate and the news, not unwelcome, that goes the round 
 of the dinner-tables ; forth comes the funeral proces- 
 sion, to be greeted with cheers by disgusted friends. 
 
 ^There will be nothing left for posterity to add to 
 our wicked ways ; the same will our children do and 
 desire. EveryLvicaJias^r^^ its climax.^ Up with 
 your sails, poet ; unfurl all your“cahvas. Here you 
 will say perhaps : ‘ Whence talent equal to the 
 theme? Whence our fathers’ straightforward style 
 of writing whatsoever they vrould when their hearts 
 burned within them ? ’ ' Whose is the name I dare 
 
 not mention'? What does it matter whether Mucins 
 pardon my gibes or not ?' ' Dare to portray Tigellinus, 
 and you will be all alight in that coat of pitch 
 in which the wretches stand burning who smoke 
 with a stake through their breasts.^® Nay, you are 
 already marking a broad furrow across the middle 
 of the arena.’ What, then : is the man who dosed 
 three uncles with aconite to ride in a swinging couch 
 of down, and shall he thence look scornfully upon 
 us? ‘When he comes across you, lay your finger 
 on your lip. To him the man who says but the 
 
I. 161-171 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 9 
 
 word ''That is he” will be an accuser. You may 
 safely pit Aeneas against the dashing Eutulian.^^ 
 No one comes to any harm through wounding Achilles, 
 nor through Hylas, who went the way of his pitcher, 
 and was sought so long. But whenever Lucilius 
 with soul on fire has gnashed his teeth and bared his 
 satiric blade, the hearer reddens up ; guilt chills his 
 soul ; his inmost parts sweat 'neath the load of secret 
 sin. " Hence rage and tears.” Therefore turn this 
 over in your mind "or e’er -the- trumpot- sound.”^ 
 The helmet donned, too late to rue the fray.’ Why, 
 then, I will try to what lengths I may go against 
 those whose ashes are covered by the Flaminian and 
 Latin highways. 
 
 i 
 
 III 
 
 Much as I am troubled by the departure of my 
 old friend, yet I commend him for his intention of 
 making his home in deserted Cumae, and of present- 
 ing the Sibyl with at least one citizen. It is the 
 entrance to Baiae — a delightful watering-place, pic- 
 turesque and secluded. I, for my park, prefer even 
 Prochyta to the Subura. For what spot has ever yet 
 been seen so miserable, so lonely, that you would 
 not prefer it to the terror of fires, the incessant falling 
 
10 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 III. 7-29 
 
 of houses, the countless other perils of t his cru el 
 Eome o f ours , with poets giving readings in the 
 month of August? But while his whole establishment 
 was being packed on a single dray, jUmbricius halted 
 hard by the old arches of thd"' tripping Capena gate, 
 and thereupon we went down to where Nurna kept 
 nightly tryst with his^mistr^. In these days the 
 grove and shrine of the holy spring are let out to the 
 Jews, whose basket and wisp of hay are all their 
 furniture ; for every tree has been called on to pay 
 rent to the State : the wood is a mass of beggary, and 
 the native muses have been ejected. So we went 
 down into the ‘Valley of Egeria,’ and the grottoes 
 so little like nature's. How much better would the 
 spirit of the spring make her presence felt if grass 
 just enclosed the waters with a fringe of green, 
 and no marble profaned the native tufa ! - C 
 
 And at that spot Umbricius then begins : ‘ Since,’ 
 said he, (there is no room in Town for an honourable 
 career, no reward for hard work, and since one’s pro- 
 perty to-day is less than yesterday, and yet again to- 
 morrow will lose somethingmore from its small residue,^ 
 I propose migrating to the spot where Daedalus doffed 
 his weary wings,, whilst my gray hairs are yet a new 
 thing, whilst my old age is still fresh and unbent, whilst 
 some of my life’s thread is left for Lachesis to spin, 
 and whilst I carry myself upon my own feet without 
 a staff supporting my hand. Let me away from my 
 
THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 11 
 
 , a 
 
 in. 29-52 
 
 birtliplS'CG. IjGt A.rtorius and. Catulus liv6 in your 
 midst, and let those stay who swear black is white, 
 who do not scruple to take temple, river, harbour con- 
 tracts, contracts for emptying sewers or for furnishing 
 funerals, nor to put up their civic rights for sale under 
 the spear that confers ownership. Yon fellows — once 
 the horn-blowers and regular hangers-on of the pro- 
 vincial circus, whose puffed cheeks were a familiar sight 
 through all the country towns — now give the shows, 
 and butcher, for popularity, the wretch on whom the 
 mob passes sentence with thumbs turned inwards . 
 when they come home they farm the public jakes. 
 ^nd why not anything, since it is such as these that 
 Fortune, when in a frolicsome mood, uplifts from 
 meanness to high pinnacles of power ? Wkat_anLl_ 
 to do at Eome ? T do not k iiow-hDW..to lie. When a 
 book is bad I cannot praise it and beg the loan of it. 
 I am a dunce at astrology, and as for guaranteeing 
 a parent’s demise, I neither will nor can. I have 
 never investigated the entrails of frogs : conveying to 
 a married lady an admirer’s presents or messages 
 others know how to do. No rogue shall ever have 
 my help ; and so I go out in no governor’s suite, just 
 as though I were a cripple — a useless lump with a 
 withered hand. Who has a friend now, unless he be 
 an accomplice, unless his fevered heart throb with the 
 guilty secret his tongue may never tell?^ He who 
 has made you the repository of an honourable secret 
 
 
12 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 III. 52-72 
 
 — nothing is what he thinks he owes you, and nothing 
 V will he ever pay you. The mapu: who can p rosecute 
 Yerres at ^ any moment, he will be ^ erres^ riend. 
 But prize not all the sands of the murky Tagus, with 
 all its gold that rolls into the sea, so highly as for its 
 sake to lose your sleep, and to your sorrow accept 
 gifts that you cannot keep, and be always feared by 
 your great friend. 
 
 ‘ And now I will at once admit to you — no false 
 shame shall stop me — what class is most in favour 
 with our wealthy men, and whom most of all I am 
 flying from. I cannot abide, fellow - citizens, a 
 Greecised Eome ; and "yet, after all, what a fraction 
 of that canaille are true Achaeans ! Syrian Orontes 
 has long been rolling his flood into Tiber, and has 
 brought with him his language and morals, his slant- 
 ing harp -strings and pipers, the timbrels of the 
 country, too, and the courtesans who ply their trade 
 at the circus under orders. Thither away, all ye who 
 have a fancy for an outlandish wench in a gaudy 
 turban. Your yeoman citizen, Quirinus, dons his 
 Greek boots and wears a Greek collar upon a neck 
 rubbed with Greek ointment. Here is one who has 
 turned his back on Sicyon on the Hill, another on 
 Amydon, a third on Andros, another on Samos, another 
 on Tralles or Alabanda — all bound for the Esquiline, 
 and the hill that is the osier’s namesake, to become the 
 intimates of great men’s households, and in the end 
 
THE SATIRES OF JUYEFTAL 
 
 13 
 
 III. 7S-96 
 
 their masters. What a quick intellect, what desperate 
 effrontery, what a ready tongue, surpassing Isaeus him-^ 
 self in fluency ! Tell me, now, what do you take him 
 for ? In his own person he has brought us — why, whom 
 you will — critic, rhetorician, geometer, painter, trainer, 
 prophet, rope-dancer, doctor, sorcerer. The starveling 
 Greek knows everything. Order him to heaven — hell 
 be off. In a word, it was no Moor, nor Sarmatian, 
 nor Thracian, that did take wings and fly, but one 
 born in the heart of Athens. Shall I not flee from 
 their purple robes ? Is yonder fellow, whom the wind 
 blew to Eome with our plums and figs, to have pre- 
 cedence of me in signing his name ? Is he to pillow 
 his form on a superior couch at table ? Is it to go so 
 utterly for nought that my babyhood breathed the 
 
 . air of the Aventine, and was nurtured on the Sabine 
 
 1 
 
 A berry? ^ Mark how that race, so adroit in flattery, 
 extols the foolish frien ds conversa lmn. the ill-favoured 
 friend’s features ; how they compare some weakling’s 
 scraggy neck with the throat of a Hercules holding 
 Antaeus far above the ground, or admire a harsh 
 voice which is not a whit better than the cry of a cock 
 when he feathers his hen. True, we may flatter just 
 like them ; but they are believed. Does any come- 
 •dian surpass them in playing a Thais, or a matron, or 
 a Dorian maid with her simple attire — and in truth, 
 to all appearance, it is a real woman speaking, not a 
 stage impersonation : you would swear there was a 
 
14 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 III. 96-119 
 
 woman's form before your eyes ! And yet, not 
 Antiochus even, nor Stratocles, no, nor Demetrius, nor 
 girlish Haemus will rouse astonishment in Greece^ 
 The whole breed of the m are actors. If you but 
 smile, your Greek shakes his sides with heartier 
 merriment ; he weeps, if he has spied a tear in his 
 friend’s eye, and yet he feels no grief. If you ask in 
 winter time for a bit of fire, he takes an overcoat : 
 should you remark, '' I feel^warm,” he is in a sweat. 
 So we are not on^^ual terms, ^.^^e advantage is 
 with the man who caS?bork)w an exp% from his 
 neighbour’s face, who at a moment’s notice will throw 
 up his hands and applaud, if his patron has hiccoughed 
 freely, or done some other natural act successfully, or 
 turned his gold cup bottom up and drained it with a 
 smack. Ay, and nothing is held sacred by them : 
 nothing is safe from their lust — not the matron of 
 
 Eome, nor the virgin daughter, nor the beardless lad 
 betrothed to her, nor your son untainted hitherto. 
 Failing all these, he debauches his friend’s grand- 
 mother. They are bent on knowing the secrets of the 
 family, and so being formidable. And, since we have 
 come to talk of Greeks, leave out of count the play- 
 grounds of vice, and hear a crime of a higher degree. 
 Barea, although his friend and pupil, was done to 
 death by the old Stoic turning informer, who was 
 bred on that river side where lighted the pinion of 
 the Gorgon-hack.^ No opening is left for any Eoman 
 
/ 
 
 / 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVEHAL 
 
 15 
 
 III. 119-142 
 
 here under the kingship of a Protogenes, a Diphilus, 
 or Hermarchus, who, true to the national failing, never 
 shares a friend, but keeps him to himself ; for, when 
 he has infused into his patron’s receptive ear a drop of 
 the poison he owes to his nature and his country, I 
 must ‘'move on” from his doorway — the years of 
 tedious servitude have gone for nothing. Nowhere 
 else is a client’s loss so trifling. 
 
 ‘ Besides, not to flatter ourselves, of what avail at 
 Eome a re a poor m mi^s^friendly offices^ or service 
 rende red, ho y^yer__diligenfr-^he- be- ta - set ' off at a 
 run in full dress ere dayl^reak, seeing that even a 
 praetor is urgingTorward his lictor, and bidding him 
 go his fastest, because childless widows have long 
 been awake, and haply his colleague may be the first 
 to say good-morning to Albina and Modia.? Here 
 we have one of gentle blood giving the wall to a 
 wealthy slaye, for the latter bestows on one of his high- 
 born mistresses the pay of all the tribunes of a legion 
 each time he seeks her favours, while you think twice 
 before you venture on the cheapest dissipation. At 
 Kome, if you produce a witness of character as spotless 
 as the host of Ida’s Deity, — nay, though Numa him- 
 self come into court, or he who rescued the scared 
 Minerva from her blazing temple, — we straightway 
 refer to his j ncome ; the last inquiry made will be 
 of character. “ How many servants does he keep ? 
 How many acres of land does he hold ? Number and 
 
16 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL iii. 142-161 
 
 a, 
 
 size of the dishes on his table The value of one’s 
 word is measured strictly by the c^sh he keeps in his 
 coffer. Swear, if you will, by the shrines of^ all the 
 gods of Eome, and Samothrace to boot ; if poor, it is 
 thought that you despise Heaven and its thunders, 
 and that the gods themselves don’t mind. And think 
 what occasion and excuse for merriment the poor 
 man gives to the world, with his shabby, ragged cloak, 
 or his slightly soiled gown, or a hole in one of his 
 shoes where the leather has burst, or (if the wound 
 "has been closed) a number of scars showing the 
 ^ coarse, fresh stitching. This is the hardest thing 
 that wretched penury brings with it — it makes a man 
 a laughing-stock. Away with the fellow for very 
 
 shame,’’ ^sTlie w ''let him get off the knights’ 
 ^ cushions ; his means do not satisfy the statute ! 
 And give those seats to pimps’ brats — no matter 
 A^at^othel was^thejjLld ^^ Here let the son 
 
 of a smart auctioneer clap hands among a gladiator’s 
 foppish boys and a fencing-master’s bullies. Such 
 was the pleasure of empty-headed Otho, who assigned 
 the seats.” Who is approved as a son-in-law at 
 Eome, if his means are too small to match the lady’s 
 fortune ? What poor man is ever named in a will ? 
 When is he an aedile’s assessor? Eome’s warriors 
 (the penniless ones) ought long ago in serried ranks 
 to have — emigrated. ’Tis hard for men to rise 
 whose worth finds its way barred by straitened 
 
III. 165-187 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 17 
 
 means ; but at Eome they have the sorest struggle of 
 all. How dear the meanest lodging ! how dear slaves’ 
 ke^ ! and the plainest little dinner how dear ! And 
 here you blush to dine off earthenware, which you 
 would say was no disgrace, were you transported 
 suddenly among the Marsi or to a Sabine dinner- 
 table. There, too, you would wear contentedly your 
 coarse green hood. Through much of Italy (if we 
 can admit that truth to ourselves) none wear the 
 citizen’s gown till after death. Yea, and what timeS 
 they celebrate in sod-built theatre the festal rites of/ 
 holy days, and when the familiar farce now comes % 
 upon the boards once more, and the peasant babe, at 
 its mother’s breast, shrinks in terror from the ghastly 
 gaping mask, you will see but one sort of dress — . 
 populace and reserved seats just the same ; even the 
 high and mighty village magistrates find their white 
 blouses enough to cover their honoured worships. 
 In Eome men dress in a showy style beyond their 
 means, and the '' more ” than we require we now and 
 again borrow from a neighbour’s coffer. The vice is 
 universal. Here we live in pretentious beggary— 
 every one of us. Why go on? In Eome every^ 
 thing costs money. 
 
 ny 
 
 \ 
 
 y 
 
 What do you pay to be alloweE^ ' 
 
 an occasional morning call on Cossus, or that Veiento 
 may give a condescending glance without opening his 
 lips? One shaves the beard, another cuts off the 
 locks of a favourite slave. The house is full of cakes 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL iii. 187-210 
 
 — FOR sale! So take your cake, and take this 
 thought to leaven it: We poor dependents have to 
 pay blackmail to swell the perquisites of pampered 
 menials. 
 
 ' Who fears or ever feared the fall of a house at 
 cool Praeneste, or Volsinii that lies among its wooded 
 hills, or in unsophisticated Gabii, or on the heights 
 of sloping Tibur? But the city we live in now 
 consists largely of the flimsy props that shore it up. 
 For thus the house-agent keeps us from toppling over, 
 and, when he has covered an old gaping crack, he 
 bids us sleep in peace, — and a collapse imminent! 
 I must live in some place where flres and night-alarms 
 are unknown. Hark ! Ucalegon is bawling for water, 
 and now he’s shifting liis chattels, and, there you are ! 
 the second floor is smoking, you all unconscious! 
 For, if the alarm is raised at the foot of the stairs, the 
 last to ignite will be the lodger, who has only a tile 
 to keep the rain off him, up there where the gentle 
 doves lay their eggs. Codrus had a bed too short for 
 Procula, and six little pipkins to make his sideboard 
 gay. Besides, there was a tiny drinking -bowl be- 
 neath, and a recumbent Chiron, too, under the same 
 marble slab, and a well worn hamper held his Greek 
 books, and there the barbarian mice were gnawing the 
 heaven -born poems. In fact Codrus had nothing. 
 Too true ! Still he has lost the whole of that nothing, 
 poor soul ! And this — the flnal crown to his woes — 
 
ni. 210-231 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 19 
 
 when he is naked and begging for scraps, not one will 
 comfort him with a meal, not one with the shelter of 
 a roof. But if '' The Asturian’s grand mansion has 
 been laid low, mothers put on wedes, the nobility goes 
 into mourning, the judge adjourns the court. Ah! 
 then we lament the accidents of city life, and hate the 
 very name of fire I It is still burning, and already 
 one hurries up to offer the marble and a share in the 
 cost of rebuilding. Another will send white marble 
 nudes ; another some choice work of Euphranor or 
 Polyclitus, time-honoured ornaments of '' slippered ” 
 gods ; and another again will offer books and cases, 
 and with them a Minerva as a centre-piece; and 
 another a peck of silver. Persicus, the most sumptu- 
 ous of our childless men,^ improves in quantity and 
 quality on what he lost, and is ere long suspected 
 (and with reason) of having fired his house with his 
 own hand. If you can tear yourself from the circus 
 games, an excellent house is to be got at Sora, 
 Fabrateria, or Frusino for one year’s rent of that dark 
 den of yours. There, with your bit of garden, and a 
 well not too deep down, where the water needs no 
 rope to lift it, but is easily drawn off and poured 
 upon the tiny plants, live on, a votary of the hoe, and 
 lord of a well-kept manor, from which you could dine 
 a hundred Pythagoreans. It is something, in what- 
 ever spot, in whatever nook, to have made yourself 
 the proprietor of even a solitary lizard. 
 
20 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL iii. 232-255 
 
 ‘Many a patient here is killed by sleeplessness 
 (though the illness had its origin in undigested 
 food clogging and inflaming the stomach)^ for what 
 lodging-house gives admittance to sleep? |In Eome 
 sleep is a luxury of the wealthy, and this is the root 
 of the disease.^ The traffic of carts in narrow, winding 
 streets, and the din when a herd of cattle is blocked, 
 would rob of his sleep even a Drusus, or a sea-calf ! 
 
 ‘If social duty call your rich man forth, the 
 crowd will give way as he is borne along, and he 
 will spee.d on above their heads in his big palanquin, 
 reading or writing upon the way, or even dozing 
 inside (for a litter with its windows closed promotes 
 slumber), and yet he will get there first. As I 
 hurry on, I am stopped by the surging mass in 
 front, while a great host of people following presses at 
 my back ; one hits me with his elbow, a second with 
 the hard pole of a litter, a third bangs a beam, and 
 another a jar against my head. My legs are caked 
 with mud ; and then those around trample me with 
 their big feet, and a soldier’s boot-nail sticks in my 
 toe. See what a smoke rises from the crowd round 
 “ The Dole,” — a hundred guests, each with his private 
 stove behind him. A Corbulo could scarcely bear 
 on top of his head all those big utensils, all that gear, 
 which the poor little slave carries with neck unbent, 
 keeping the fire alight by his pace. The blouses^(not 
 long mended) are torn afresh, as a float comes on with 
 
in. 255-276 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 21 
 
 a tall fir swaying to and fro, while another vehicle 
 carries a pine : the trees nod high in air and menace 
 the people of Eome. Only suppose a dray loaded 
 with Ligurian marble to have turned over, and to 
 have upset that mountain of rock, and discharged it 
 on the troops of passers-by, and what is there left of 
 them ? Who can find the limbs and bones ? Every 
 one of their vulgar carcasses is pulverised, and 
 vanishes like, a breath. Meanwhile some unsuspect- 
 ing household is even now washing the plates, puffing 
 away, and blowing up the little fire, oiling and clatter- 
 ing the flesh-scrapers, and laying out the towels and 
 a freshly filled ointment bottle; but, while the 
 servants briskly ply their various tasks, the master 
 is already seated on the river -bank, filled with a 
 newcomer’s horror of the grim Ferryman, nor does he 
 hope, poor soul ! to be ferried over the turbid stream, 
 having no copper in his mouth to tender. 
 
 ‘Now, deign a glance at other and distinct perils 
 of the night : the height of those towering housetops 
 from which a potsherd strikes your skull ! Think 
 how often cracked or broken earthenware is thrown 
 from the windows ! See with what force it dents 
 and scores the flint pavement. You might well be 
 deemed apathetic and careless about casualties if 
 you went out to dine and no will made : so true is 
 it that death waits for you at every open lighted 
 window that you pass that night. Then hope and 
 
22 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL iii. 276-298 
 
 pray, with silent agonised vows, that the windows 
 may content themselves with merely emptying on 
 you the broad foot-pans. Tour drunken bravo, too, if 
 
 so be he has cudgelled no one,^ffers forjt by having 
 as bad a night as ^(^%hen moutnmg for 
 
 his friend — now lying bn Iris' fece^^^ moment after on 
 his back. Is this the only way then for him to get 
 his sleep? With some people, only a fight gives rest. 
 Still, however reckless from youth and heated with 
 wine, he gives a safe berth to one from whom he is 
 warned off by the scarlet mantle and long-drawn 
 escort, with its many torches and bronze lamps. 
 For me, who have generally only the moon to see me 
 home, or else a short-lived dip, the wick of which I 
 must husband and economise — for me he has nothing 
 but scorn. Mark the prelude to the wretched fight, if 
 that be a fight where you give, and I just take the 
 knocks. He halts in front, and bids me halt. I 
 must needs obey, for what is one to do when at the 
 mercy • of a madman stronger than one’s self ? 
 ‘‘Whence do you come?” he yells. “Whose sour 
 wine, whose beans have puffed you up^ like that? 
 What cobbler has shared with you his cutleek and 
 sodden sheep’s head ? Do you not answer me ? 
 Speak, or be kicked ! Out with it 1 Where do you 
 stand to beg? In what Jews’ chapel^ am I to look 
 for you?” Whether you try to speak or silently 
 retreat, it’s all one.; they beat you all the same, 
 
III. 299-320 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 23 
 
 and then they get indignant and bind you over to| 
 appear in Court. This is the poor man’s privilege." 
 When thrashed, he may beg, when mangled with 
 buffets, may entreat permission to take just a few of 
 his teeth away with him. Nor is this all you have 
 to fear. You will not be left without some one to 
 rob you when the houses are shut up, shop-doors 
 everywhere barred and chained, and all quiet. Some- 
 times, too, the footpad suddenly appears and goes to 
 work with the knife. At such times as the Pomptine 
 Marsh and Gallinarian Pine-wood are kept in safety 
 by the presence of an armed ,guard, then they all 
 swarm thence to Eom^, as if to their feeding-ground. 
 Is there a furnace, is there an anvil that is not 
 forging heavy chains ? Most of our iron is used on 
 fetters, so that you may well fear a dearth of plough- 
 shares, a scarcity in rakes and mattocks. Happy, you 
 may say, w^e our grandsires’ grandsires, and blest 
 the age kings and of tribunes long ago, which 
 saw Eonie satisfied with one solitary gaol. 
 
 ' To these I could have added many other reasons. 
 But my team calls me ; the sun is setting ; I must 
 away. The muleteer has long been brandishing his 
 whip and signalling to me. And so, farewell. Do not 
 forget me, and as often as Eome restores you, when 
 seeking to recruit your health, to the care of your own 
 Aquinum, draw me away, too, from Cumae to visit 
 Helvian Ceres and your patroness Diana. I will 
 
24 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 IV. 1-16 
 
 don my soldier's boots and come to your cool land 
 for active service with your satires, unless they blush 
 to have my aid.' 
 
 IV 
 
 Crispinus again ! Yes, I must often cast him 
 for his role.^ A monster! without one virtue to 
 redeem his vice. A sickly voluptuary, strong in 
 nothing but lust. An adulterer! who scorns no 
 charms save those of the husbandless. What matter, 
 then, how large the colonnades where he breathes his 
 team, how vast the shady groves through which he 
 is borne, how many acres and what mansion he has 
 bought near the Forum? No vicious man is happy, 
 least of all a seducer — an incestuous one, to boot : 
 who so lately debauched a vestal — ay, and with her 
 sacred fillet on — and doomed her to a living tomb. 
 But now of faults less heinous, 'tis true, and yet such 
 as, if another had committed them, would convict him 
 before the censor ; for that which means disgrace to 
 honest Titius and Seius sat gracefully upon Crispinus. 
 What are you to do when a character is so abominable 
 that its foulness transcends any accusation? He 
 bought a mullet for 6000 sesterces ; true, he got a 
 
IV. 16-38 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVEHAL 
 
 25 
 
 pound of fish for each thousand — at least so say they 
 who make a good story better. All honour to the 
 master-stroke, if, by a gift even of such a price, he 
 carried off the first place in a childless old man’s will! 
 He had a still further excuse, if he presented it to his 
 noble mistress, who takes her airing in her closed 
 ' grotto ’ with the big windows. Do not expect any 
 such thing. He bought it for himself. We see many 
 things nowadays which poor thrifty Apicius^ never 
 did. Was this the price, you who once wore the 
 national papyrus apron (and nothing else), was this 
 the price, Crispinus, you paid for a bit of fish I Me- 
 thinks the fisherman could have been bought cheaper 
 than the fish. The provinces can sell you a manor 
 at the price — ay, and Apulia a really big one. 
 What feasts must we suppose our ' Captain ’ ^ to 
 have gorged when the be-purpled jester of his exalted 
 court swallowed all those thousands in one small 
 fraction taken from the side-dishes of an ordinary 
 dinner 1 And now he is our Chief Knight ; he who 
 once used to cry for sale a damaged lot of his fellow- 
 burghers — the shads. Begin, Calliope ! You may 
 even keep your seat. It is not an epic. There is a 
 true tale on hand. Tell it, Pierian maids, and give 
 me your blessing for calling you maids. 
 
 What time the last of the Flavian line was 
 mangling the world, which was even then half dead 
 and Pome was in bondage to 'Nero the Bald, 
 
THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 IV. 39-62 
 
 just in front of Venus’ house, perched on Doric 
 Ancon’s height, there fell into the net an Adriatic 
 turbot, a marvel of size, which filled its folds. The 
 captive was no whit smaller than those that the 
 Maeotic ice encloses, until it is dissolved at last by 
 the suns of summer, when it discharges them into the 
 channel of the rushing Pontus, sluggish and bloated 
 after their long winter’s idleness. The master of the 
 boat and net reserves this prodigy for the High 
 Priest for who would dare to offer for sale or to pur- 
 chase such a fish, when even the sea-shore swarmed 
 with crowds of informers ? Those ubiquitous ‘ in- 
 spectors of sea- weed’ would quickly take the law of the 
 fisherman before he could dress, nor scruple to declare 
 the fish a runaway, that had long fed in Caesar’s pre- 
 serves, had thence escaped, and ought to revert to its 
 original owner. If we can trust Palfurius and 
 Armillatus at all, there is not a fine nor fair creature 
 all ocean over, no matter where it swims, but is a 
 perquisite of the Emperor. So it shall be made a gift, 
 lest it go for nought. And now, though deadly 
 Autumn was flying before the frosts, and fever 
 patients were hoping for a change to ague : though 
 the bleak winter wind was howling and keeping the 
 prize untainted, yet he hurries as though the Sirocco 
 were chasing him. And when the lakes lay at his 
 feet where Alba even in ruins keeps Troy’s fire alive, 
 and worships Vesta the Less, the wondering crowd 
 
IV. 62-84 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 27 
 
 for a moment barred bis entry. Then, as they stood 
 aside, the doors with condescending hinges opened 
 wide. The Fathers excluded gaze at the fish ad- 
 mitted. It is ushered into the presence of the ' Son 
 of Atreus,’ and the man of Picenum says, ‘Take 
 what is too great for a subject’s kitchen, and keep 
 to-day as sacred to your Genius. Lose no time in 
 making room for the dainty,^ and eat up a turbot 
 reserved expressly for your days. The fish even 
 courted capture.’ What more barefaced ? And yet 
 his Highness’ crest began to rise. There is no flattery 
 that ‘ Majesty,’ when exalted to the level of the Gods, 
 cannot swallow. But there was no dish large enough 
 for the fish. And so he calls a council of his courtiers, 
 those courtiers whom he detested, and on whose faces 
 sat the pallor and the misery of Eoyalty’s friends 
 ‘ Make haste, he is seated,’ cries the Liburnian usher, 
 and the first to snatch up his cloak ®and come hurrying 
 in was Pegasus, lately appointed bailiff of the scared 
 city. Were the Prefects then anything else than 
 Bailiffs? He was the best of them, and the most 
 conscientious expounder of the law, although he 
 thought that Justice might in all her administration 
 dispense with her sword, even in that dreadful time. 
 Next comes genial old Crispus, whose character 
 matched his eloquence — a man of kindly temper. 
 What better minister for the ruler of all seas, and 
 lands, and nations, if under the sway of that deadly 
 
28 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 IV. 84-108 
 
 pest it were possible to condemn cruelty and offer 
 honest counsel ? But what more capricious than the 
 ear of a despot who holds in the balance all the 
 time the life of his ^friend/ who is going to talk 
 about the rain, or the heat, or the spring thunder- 
 storms? And so he never struck out against [the 
 stream, nor was he patriot enough to give free utter- 
 ance to his thoughts, and stake his life upon the truth. 
 Thus armed, even in that court he was secure, and 
 saw the flight of many a winter — yea, his eightieth 
 summer. The next to hurry in was one of equal 
 years, Acilius, with his young son, who little deserved 
 the cruel death awaiting him, that untimely death 
 by his 'Lord’s’ cut-throats. But old age in the 
 person of a nobleman has long been nothing less than 
 miraculous ; and so I would rather be the little brother 
 of a ' son of the soil.’ Therefore it availed the poor 
 wretch nothing that in the light dress of a hunter he 
 closed with Numidian bears, and speared them in the 
 circus at Alba. For who can now fail to see through 
 these aristocratic arts ? Who, Brutus, now admires 
 that primitive craft of yours ? It is an easy matter 
 to outwit an old-world monarch. And there went 
 Eubrius, with face no less gloomy, spite of his low 
 birth — guilty in days gone by of the sin we must not 
 mention, and yet more impudent than a profligate 
 who writes satire. Montanus’ big belly is also in 
 attendance — its bulk delayed him; and Crispinus, 
 
IV. 108-132 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 29 
 
 early as it is, reeking of perfumes, enough almost for 
 two funerals ; and Pompeius too, more ruthless yet 
 than he in slitting throats by an insinuating whisper ; 
 and Fuscus, who was nursing his vitals for the 
 Dacian vultures, and planning campaigns in his 
 marble mansion ; sly Veiento too, with the murderous 
 Catullus, wh6 burned with passion for a girl whom 
 he never saw, a monster strange and startling even 
 in these days — the blind toady, the loathsome bridge- 
 loafer come to court ; fit only to beg at the side of 
 carriages on the Arician Eoad, and blow his sweet 
 kisses to the descending vehicles. Not one of them 
 lost his head more over the turbot, for he poured 
 forth his admiration, turning to his left-^and all the 
 time the monster lay on his right. Even so he would 
 admire the strokes and skill of Cilix, and the stage 
 machinery that shot boys up to the awnings. Veiento 
 is not to be outdone ; but, as it were, in a frenzy, and 
 stung, Bellona, by thy gad-fly, he breaks into pro- 
 phecy: ‘A solemn intimation this of a great and 
 glorious triumph ! Some king shall be your captive, 
 or Arviragus shall tumble from his British chariot ! 
 The monster is a foreigner ! See those spines pre- 
 sented rearwards.’^ Fabricius was at fault only as 
 to the turbot's age and nation. ‘ How do you vote, 
 then? For cutting up?' 'Heaven spare it that 
 indignity!' exclaimed Montanus. 'Prepare a deep 
 dish to enclose its vast circumference with a thin 
 
30 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 IV. 132-154 
 
 wall. Such dish demands the prompt assistance of 
 a great Prometheus. Quick, there! Clay and a 
 potter’s wheel 1 But, Caesar, from this time forward 
 let potters be attached to your camp.’ ^ The resolu- 
 tion was adopted ; worthy of its mover, so familiar 
 with the Court luxury of former days, and Nero’s 
 orgies kept up till midnight, and the unnatural 
 appetite that came when the vitals were heated with 
 Falernian. Never in my time has there been a more 
 finished gourmet. He had skill to discriminate at 
 the first taste whether oysters were Circean ‘ natives,’ 
 or bred on Lucrine rocks, or the produce of the beds 
 of Eutupiae. One glance at a sea-urchin and he 
 would name its native shore. The council rises. The 
 meeting is dissolved, and the nobles are dismissed, 
 whom their mighty Chief had dragged to his Alban 
 Castle in panic and urgent haste, as though he had 
 some news to tell of the Catti or of the savage Sicam- 
 brians, or as though alarming despatches had come 
 with the speed of the wind from opposite quarters of 
 the world. 
 
 And would that he had chosen to spend on 
 such trifling all the bloody days in which he robbed 
 Eome of those lofty, noble souls, with none to punish, 
 none to avenge ! But not till the ‘ Cobblers ’ began 
 to take alarm did he fall. That was what brought 
 destruction on one who reeked with the blood of 
 the Lamiae. 
 
V. 1-17 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 81 
 
 V 
 
 If you are not yet ashamed of your course of life, if 
 you are still of the same mind, so as to think that 
 the ‘ chief good ’ is living on your neighbour’s loaf, 
 if you can stand affronts which even Sarmentus and 
 the worthless Gabba would not have brooked at 
 Caesar’s ill-assorted dinners, I should hesitate to 
 accept your evidence, no matter how you had sworn 
 to it. I know nothing easier to support than the 
 stomach. But, grant that you have been left without 
 even so much as quiets a craving belly, is there no 
 unoccupied kerbstone, is there no bridge, nor half a 
 beggar’s mat anywhere vacant ? Can you so prize a 
 dinner bought with flouts : can your hunger be raven- 
 ous enough for this, when it would be less degrading 
 to shiver in the street and to gnaw a coarse dog- 
 biscuit ? 
 
 Impress this, first of all, on your mind. The 
 invitation to his table is the payment in full for 
 your patient attentions. The great man’s friendship 
 has produced — a meal ! Your liege lord makes a merit 
 of it — yes, a merit of it, however rare his favours. 
 And so, if once in a couple of months he has taken 
 it into his head to invite his well-snubbed hanger-on, 
 but only that a third place might not be wasted and 
 
32 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 V. 17-41 
 
 a couch left unfilled, ' Make one of us,’ he says. 
 The zenith of your hope ! What more do you want ? 
 Trebius is paid for his broken slumbers, and shoe- 
 strings left untied through fear lest the whole host 
 of morning visitors may have already made their 
 round, while the stars are paling, or even while the 
 sluggish Wains of the Herdsman are turning in a 
 wintry sky. But what a dinner ! The wine is such 
 that greasy wool would scorn to imbibe it. You 
 will see it transforming the guests into maniacs. 
 Jeers are the prelude to the fray. Presently you are 
 flinging goblets and you have got a wound, and mop 
 your gashes with a napkin red with blood — all this, 
 whenever a quarrel begins between yourself and his 
 suite of quondam slaves, and is hotly waged with 
 Saguntine ware for weapons. The host drinks wine 
 racked off in days when Consuls wore the beard. 
 The cup he holds contains the juice of grapes crushed 
 in the Social War ; but never a spoonful will he send 
 to a dyspeptic friend. To-morrow he will drink of a 
 brand from Alba’s or Setia’s hills, with name and 
 vintage worn away by age, and with soot coating the 
 old jar — such as used to be drunk by Thrasea and 
 Helvidius when wearing their garlands upon the 
 birthdays of Cassius and the Bruti. Host Virro uses 
 large goblets embossed with amber and beryl-studded 
 beakers. Hot even gold is trusted in your hands, or 
 if it ever be, a guard is posted hard by, to count the 
 
V. 41-65 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 33 
 
 jewels and keep a watch upon sharp finger-nails. 
 Excuse him. There is a jasper there ^ — a splendid 
 one, and much admired ; for Virro, like many others, 
 transfers his gems from his fingers to his cups — those 
 gems that the young hero who was preferred to jealous 
 larhas used to wear upon the front of his scabbard. 
 You will drain a crazy four-nozzled cup that bears 
 the name of Beneventum’s Cobbler, and that with 
 its cracked glass is asking to be changed for brim- 
 stone. If wine and food fever his lordship’s stomach, 
 boiled water, cooled with Getic snows, is in re- 
 quest. Was I complaining just now that the same 
 wines are not served to you ? The very water that 
 you drink is different. Your cup will be handed 
 by a Berber footboy, or by a bony-fingered, swarthy 
 Moor, whom you would not care to meet at midnight 
 when riding past the tombs on the steep Latin Eoad. 
 Before the host will stand the Flower of Asia, who cost 
 a sum beyond the joint estates of 'Fighting Tullius’ 
 and Ancus — more, in short, than all the goods and 
 chattels of Eome’s whole line of kings. So, when 
 you are thirsty, look to your Berber Ganymede. A 
 youth, who cost so many thousands, is quite above 
 mixing a poor man’s wine ; but his beauty and his 
 years justify his disdain. When does he come to 
 you ? When does he answer your call, and serve 
 you with ' hot ’ or ' cold ’ ? In fact he scorns to attend 
 on an old retainer, and resents your giving orders 
 D 
 
34 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 V. 65-88 
 
 and reclining, while he stands. All great houses 
 abound with insolent menials. Note how that 
 other grumbled, as he handed you the bread almost 
 too hard to break — stale and mouldy lumps of meal, 
 only too likely to loosen your back teeth, and quite 
 bite-proof. But for my lord there is kept soft snowy 
 bread of the finest fiour. Hands off, remember ! 
 Eespect the sacred bread-pan! Suppose yourself, 
 however, a trifie presuming, then there is some one 
 standing over you to make you drop the bread. 
 'You saucy guest, be good enough to satisfy your 
 wants from your accustomed tray, and recognise the 
 colour of your own bread.’ 'And so it was for 
 this,’ you will say, ' that I so often left my life’s 
 side, and hurried over the steep of the bleak Esquiliae, 
 while the Thunder God was growling, and the spring 
 hail pelted pitilessly, and my cloak was all a-dripping 
 with the drenching shower.’ But see the lobster 
 that is brought to my lord — with how stately a front 
 it parts in twain ^ the dish : see the hedge of asparagus 
 around it, and the tail with which it flouts the 
 company, as it makes its entry, borne high in the 
 tall footman’s hands; while a little crawfish, gar- 
 nished ^ with half an egg, is set before you upon a tiny 
 platter — fit for a funeral feast. The great man souses 
 his fish in the oil of Venafrum. The sickly cab- 
 bages brought to you, my poor fellow, will reek of 
 the lamp. On your plates is bestowed a something 
 
V. 88-109 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 35 
 
 that was brought up the Tiber in some Micipsa’s 
 sharp-prowed canoe — the same thing that keeps our 
 countrymen from bathing in a Bocchar's company, 
 and is a sure protection against venomous snakes. 
 My lord’s mullet will be one that has been sent 
 him by Corsica or the rocks of Tauromenium ; 
 for all our own seas have been ransacked, and 
 have already become exhausted, while Gluttony’s 
 rage is not appeased ; and so our Fish-market with 
 persevering net goes on exploring the neighbouring 
 waters, and we do not suffer the Tuscan fish to 
 attain maturity. And thus it is the provinces supply 
 our kitchens. Thence are procured the dainties for 
 fortufie-hunting Laenas to buy, and for his Aurelia 
 to sell again. Virro is served with a lamprey — the 
 largest yielded by the Sicilian whirlpool ; for while 
 the South Wind keeps himself quiet, and sits in his 
 prison, drying his dripping wings, the very midst of 
 Charybdis has no terrors for the reckless seines. 
 For you there waits an eel, the cousin of the long 
 snake, or else a pike of the Tiber, mottled with 
 frost-bite — he too^ a low-born native of the bank, 
 that has grown fat on the stream of sewage, and that 
 has many a time explored the drains in the heart of 
 Subura. 
 
 And now I should like a word with the host, if he 
 would listen graciously. No one asks you for such 
 bounties as Seneca’s ordinary gifts to his poor 
 
36 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 V. 109-130 
 
 friends, nor for presents like what worthy Piso and 
 Cotta used to lavish; for in the days of old the distinc- 
 tion of giving was valued more than titles and insignia. 
 We only ask that you be our equal at dinner. Do 
 this, and you may remain — yes, you may remain — like 
 many nowadays, a spendthrift on your own pleasures, 
 a niggard on your friends’. 
 
 Before the master there steams the liver of an 
 overgrown goose, a crammed fowl as big as a goose, 
 a boar worthy of 'yellow-haired’ Meleager’s steel. 
 Then truffles will be handed to him, if it be 
 Spring, and welcome thunderstorms enrich his 
 bill of fare. 'Libya, keep your corn to yourself,’ 
 Alledius cries, ' and unyoke your oxen, if only you 
 send us truffles.’ Meantime, to make you angry 
 as can be, observe that capering carver making 
 his flourishes with his nimble knife, until he has 
 gone through the whole of the professor’s lesson. 
 No doubt it makes no slight difference with what 
 gestures the hare and fowl respectively are carved. 
 If once you dare to open your lips, on the strength of 
 being the possessor of three names like any free man, 
 then, just like Cacus after the bludgeoning he got 
 from Hercules, you will be dragged forth by the 
 heels and deposited outside. When- does Virro 
 pledge you, or take a cup polluted by your lips? 
 And which of you so reckless and so lost to shame 
 as to ask His Majesty to take wine with you? 
 
V. 130-152 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 37 
 
 There is many a speech tabooed to a ragged coat. 
 Suppose a God or some m^re mortal, equal to the 
 Gods and kinder than the Fates, presented you with 
 a knight’s estate — from being a nobody, oh, what a 
 friend, what a friend of Virro’s would you then 
 become ! ‘ Help Trebius.’ ‘ Set this before Trebius.’ 
 
 ' Dear brother, have a slice of the under-cut.’ ^ Ah, 
 Money, it is you he honours thus — it is you who are 
 his brother ! But if you would be yourself a patron 
 and your patron’s lord, then have not 
 
 ‘ A small Aeneas gambolling in your hall,’ 
 
 nor a daughter, sweeter still to your heart. One’s 
 wife’s barrenness makes one a welcome and an 
 honoured friend.^ But, as it is, your Mygale may be 
 brought to bed, and set a triplet of boys upon" their 
 father’s knee ; your lord will be delighted with the 
 chattering brood, and will order in the green jerkin, 
 and the filberts, and the copper that little Master 
 Parasite begs for whenever he comes to table. The 
 despised hangers-on will be served with mushrooms 
 of a dubious sort, his lordship with a beauty, ay, as 
 fine as Claudius ate before that given him by his wife, 
 alter which he never ate again. Virro will have 
 himself and the rest of the Virros helped to fruit, on 
 the bare scent of which you might make a meal ^ — 
 like the produce of Phaeacia’s endless harvest-tide, or 
 such as you might fancy were filched from the 
 
THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 V. 152-173 
 
 ' coloured ’ Sisters, whilst you regale yourself with a 
 rotten apple, such as is munched upon the Embank- 
 ment by the figure that wears the casque and buckler, 
 and is schooled by the terrors of the lash to shoot his 
 javelin from the back of his shaggy goat. Perhaps 
 you may fancy that Virro wants to economise. No, he 
 sets himself to torment you. (^Por what dinner-farce 
 or interlude can surpass ' The Wail of the Belly ’ 
 So, let me tell you, it is all done to make you vent 
 your spite in tears, and gnash and grind your teeth 
 again and again. You think yourself a free man 
 and a monarch's guest. He regards you as the slave 
 of his savoury cookery. Nor is he far wrong ; for 
 who, however destitute, could tolerate the fellow 
 more than once, whether one has been born to the 
 Tuscan gold or to the poor man's badge — the leathern 
 knot ? A vision of fine fare lures you on. ‘ See ! 
 He is going now to send the remaining half of the 
 hare and a piece of the boar's haunch ! That capon, 
 too small for himself, will reach us presently ! ' And 
 so you wait in silence, with bread in hand un- 
 broken, ready for action. He shows his sense who 
 makes this use of you. If you can endure every 
 affront, then you deserve it. Some day you will 
 shave your head and let it be whacked — ay, and you 
 will even brave the sting of the lash, and so prove 
 yourself worthy of such a feast and such a friend. 
 
VII. 1-22 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 39 
 
 VII 
 
 The future of literature and the inducements to it 
 depend on Caesar wholly. He alone looked with pity 
 on the disconsolate Muses in these times, when even 
 poets of fame and note were trying the experiment of 
 renting a little bathing-house at Gabii, or a bakery 
 at Home, and others thought it no disgrace or shame 
 to turn public criers : when Clio, for very hunger, 
 left Aganippe’s glades, and removed to the auction- 
 rooms. Tor if not one copper reveals its face to you 
 in the Pierian groves, then be content with a Ma- 
 chaera’s fame and fare, and sell (for it is the better 
 course) what the strife of the auction-room disposes 
 of to the bidders — wine -holders, tripods, cabinets, 
 baskets, Paccius’ Alcithoe^ or Faustus’ Thebes and 
 Tereus, Better this than to swear in court ‘ I wit- 
 nessed,’ what you witnessed not, though Knights 
 of Asia and Cappadocia may do so, and bare-footed 
 Knights of Bithynia,^ whom Kew Gaul sends to us in 
 shiploads. But henceforth none will be forced to 
 drudgery degrading to the poet’s calling, if he unites 
 an eloquent diction with tuneful measures, and has 
 chewed the bay. Lads, persevere! Your gracious 
 sovereign has an eye for you all, and is spurr j ou 
 on, and seeking out objects for his bounty. If you 
 
40 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 VII. 22-43 
 
 think to look for patronage of your art from any one 
 else, and with this hope are filling up, page after 
 page, the yellow parchment,^ then — lose no time, call 
 for a bit of fuel, and make a present of your works, 
 my Telesinus, to Venus’ goodman, or else stow away 
 your volumes, and let them be food for worms in 
 their last resting-place.^ Wretch ! break your pen, 
 and blot out the battles that have cost you your sleep, 
 you who write soaring poems in a tiny closet, to earn 
 some day an ivy wreath and a lantern-jawed bust. 
 Beyond the Emperor you have no resource. Close- 
 fisted millionaires of late have learned to admire and 
 praise (but nothing more) the gifted ones, as boys do 
 Juno’s bird. But it is ebbing away, that time of life 
 that has strength for the sea, the helmet, or the spade. 
 Then weariness steals on the mind : then Hhe old 
 man eloquent’ — and without a coat to his back — 
 curses himself and the Muse who inspired him. 
 
 Now hear the rich man’s shifts. Courting his 
 favour, you abandon the shrine of the Muses and 
 Apollo. In order to save a subscription, he turns 
 poet himself, and yields the palm to Homer only, 
 and that on the score of his thousand years. If, 
 fired by fame’s delights, you would recite, he lends 
 a mildewed ^ building ; this house that is placed at 
 your service is out of the way/ and, with its iron bars, 
 the door suggests the gates of a beleaguered town. He 
 sees his way to offering you an audience of freedmen 
 
VII. 43-65 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 41 
 
 to sit at the ends of the rows, and to distributing 
 through the room his loud-voiced retainers. But 
 none of your grandees will give the cost of the seats, 
 of the tiers of benches with framework to prop them 
 (this hired as well), and of the chairs (to be returned) 
 that are arranged in the orchestra. Yet we work 
 on, cutting our furrows in the shallow dust, turning 
 up the sand with unproductive plough. For, though 
 you may struggle to escape, the pernicious habit holds 
 you fast in its toils, a victim of ambition ; for many a 
 one is possessed by an incurable mania for scribbling, 
 which goes on growing in the disordered mind. But 
 the poet that stands out from the herd : of no trite 
 vein : who is not always hammering at some well- 
 worn theme, and minting hackneyed lays with the 
 stamp of commonplace— such a one as I cannot 
 anywhere point out, but can only conceive — is the 
 product of a spirit free from anxiety, intolerant of 
 any bitterness — a spirit that pines for the woods, and 
 is worthy to drink of the Muses’ rills. To sing within 
 the Pierian grotto, to wield the wand of inspiration — 
 these are denied to cheerless poverty, that lacks the 
 pelf that the body needs by night and day. He has 
 dined has Horace when he shouts his ' Evoe.’ Your 
 hearts admit not of divided interests — what room 
 there for a poet’s frenzy, unless the only restless- 
 ness they feel is that of inspiration, unless they 
 career along in the train of the Lords of Cirra and 
 
42 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 VII. 66-90 
 
 Nysa ? It was the creation of a great mind (agitated, 
 if you will — but not about the price of a blanket), 
 that vision of chariots, and horses, and faces celestial, 
 and of the Fury’s form when dazing the Eutulian. 
 Were Vergil left without a slave and a decent lodging, 
 then every snake would tumble from his locks : his 
 trumpet would be hushed, and sound forth no more 
 impressive notes. Can we expect Eubrenus Lappa 
 to rival the Tragedy of old, when his Atreus pawns 
 both his crockery and his overcoat ? Poor Numitor 
 has nothing to send to a friend ; he has enough for 
 presents to Quintilla, ay, and there was plenty of 
 money to buy a lion ready tamed, that must be fed 
 with lumps of meat — no doubt the monster’s keep 
 costs less, and a poet’s inside takes more to fill it. 
 Lucan may loll among the marbles in his grounds, 
 and be content with fame; but what will all the 
 glory in the world do for Serranus and poor Saleius, 
 if it is only glory ? Crowds rush to hear the sweet- 
 voiced reciter and the verses of the people’s pet Thebais, 
 when Statius has thrown the Town into ecstasies by fix- 
 ing a day for a reading ; so powerfully does he captivate 
 and charm our hearts, so delightedly does the public 
 listen ! Yet, when his lines have brought down the 
 house, he is still hungry, unless he sells his ' maiden ’ 
 Agave to Paris, who scatters military commissions 
 broadcast, and places on poets’ fingers the six months’ 
 service ring. What nobles deny a harlequin will 
 
VII. 90-112 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 43 
 
 give. Do you still hang about Barea, and the Cam- 
 erini, and noblemen's great houses ? Why, a Pelopea 
 appoints the prefects, and a Philomela the tribunes. 
 Yet you need not envy the bard who is fed by 
 the stage. ^Who will be a Maecenas to you now, or 
 a Proculeius, or a Fabius ? Who will act Cotta's part 
 again, or prove a second Lentulus ? In their days 
 talent had its due reward.) Then many a one found 
 it worth while to have no colour in his cheeks, and be 
 a stranger to wine through all the December revels. 
 
 But to proceed — Historians, is your toil more pro- 
 ductive ? It demands ^ more time and more oil. Each 
 of you doubtless has his pages rising by the hundred, 
 knowing no limit, growing towards bankruptcy with 
 the pile of papyrus. The vast amount of matter 
 and the conditions of the work require it. But what 
 is your harvest — what does opening up that field 
 yield you ? Who will pay a historian as much as he 
 would pay a reporter ? ^ 
 
 ‘ A race of drones,' you exclaim, ‘ that love their 
 sofa and seclusion!' Then say what public services 
 and the ever-present big packet of documents bring in 
 to our advocates. They talk big enough themselves 
 about their fees, but most of all within hearing of 
 their creditors, or when spurred by a yet sharper 
 stimulus, a litigant who comes with a heavy ledger 
 to prop a shaky claim. Oh, the unmeasured false- 
 hoods those windbags then blow off, spitting upon 
 
44 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL vii. 112-132 
 
 their breasts for luck ! But would you know their 
 real gains ? In one scale set a hundred advocates 
 estates, in the other just that of Lacerna the Eed 
 Jockey. ‘ The Potentates have toUen their seat ' — You " 
 rise, a second Ajax, but with pallid face, to plead 
 before Judge Bumpkin the cause of liberty imperilled. 
 Strain, poor wretch, your vitals till they burst, and 
 all for this — that, after all your toil, a fresh palm- 
 branch may be fastened up, to glorify your little 
 stairs ! And what price does your shouting fetch ? 
 A rusty hind-quarter of pork, and a pot of under- 
 sized tunnies, or some shrivelled onions (a nigger’s 
 rations), or wine brought down the Tiber — of that 
 full five big jars. If you have held four briefs, and 
 one gold piece has fallen to your lot, the attorneys’ 
 shares have to be lopped off even that according to 
 the agreement. Aemilius will be paid all that the 
 Law allows, and yet we poor lawyers pleaded better ! 
 And all because there stands within his porch a 
 brazen car with a stately four-in-hand — and a figure 
 of himself, too, seated on a fiery charger, poising 
 threateningly his quivering lance, and taking a 
 murderous aim, one bronze eye closed. By aping 
 such Pedo is bankrupt and Matho fails. This, too, 
 is the end of Tongilius, who goes to bathe with a 
 huge rhinoceros-horn of oil, and crowds the Bath 
 with his draggled retinue, and weighs down his 
 Thracian lackeys with the immense pole of his 
 
VII. 132-153 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 45 
 
 sedan, when making his progress through the Forum, 
 to buy slave-boys, plate, agate cups, and country 
 houses. His purple stuff, brought by sea from Tyre, 
 secures him credit. But all this serves their purpose ; 
 the purple makes your pleader sell better; violet 
 robes, too, have the same virtue. It pays these 
 people to live with a bustle and display beyond their 
 means. The extravagance of Eome sets no limit to 
 expense. Trust to eloquence, indeed ! No one nowa- 
 days would give two hundred sesterces to Cicero, 
 unless a big ring glittered on his hand. This is the 
 first thing to which the suitor looks, whether you 
 have your eight slaves and your ten hangers-on : 
 whether you have a sedan at your back, and citizen 
 friends to walk in front. And so Paulus used to 
 hire a sardonyx ring to wear when pleading, and so 
 had higher fees for pleading than a Callus or a Basilus. 
 Eloquence seldom goes with a shabby coat. When has 
 Basilus a chance of bringing into court a mother in 
 tears ? Who would tolerate eloquence in him ? 
 Make your home in Gaul, or, better still, in Africa, 
 foster-mother of lawyers, if you must set a price upon 
 your tongue. 
 
 Do you teach Ehetoric? 0 Vettius! how you 
 must steel your breast, while that crowded class of 
 yours is killing off the savage tyrants! Why, the 
 whole of what they had just read from their seats 
 they will stand up to rehearse word for word, yes. 
 
46 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL vii. 153-175 
 
 word for word they will drone it out, and line for 
 line. This is what kills the poor teachers — this ever* 
 lasting cabbage. How to colour the case, what class 
 it belongs to, the actual matter in dispute, the points 
 that the other side may raise — these matters all 
 would know ; but pay the fee — not one ! ‘ What ! 
 
 dunning for your fee ! Why ! what have I learnt ? ’ 
 ‘ Of course the teacher is in fault, because not a throb 
 of genius pulses in the left side of that true son of 
 Arcadia, who on one day in every six dins his 
 Hannibal the Terrible in my poor head ; whatever 
 be the point that he debates — whether to march 
 from Cannae on the city : or again, whether to be 
 warned by the thunder-clouds and lightning, and 
 lead his dripping cohorts into shelter from the storm. 
 Bargain for as much as you like, and you can have 
 payment on the spot,® to get his father to hear him as 
 often as I do.’ Half a dozen or more other professors 
 cry out in chorus to like effect. The ‘ ravisher ’ is 
 dropped : they plead a real suit now. No more 
 about the 'poisoned draught,’ nor the 'vile, ungrate- 
 ful husband,’ nor ' the drugs that cure the blindness 
 of old age.’ So, if my counsel will influence him, he 
 will give himself a discharge from business, and enter 
 on a different walk in life, if he must come down from 
 the rhetorician’s cloistered shades into the arena of the 
 courts, or else lose his little pittance, the price of a 
 paltry bread ticket ; for that is his most liberal fee. 
 
VII. 175-198 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 47 
 
 Find by trial on what terms Chrysogonus or Pollio 
 teaches the sons of aristocrats, and yon will tear up 
 your Theodorus’ Elements of Ehetoric, They will 
 spend 600,000 sesterces on baths, still more upon a 
 colonnade, where my lord may drive on rainy days — 
 would you have him wait till it clears and splash his 
 team with the fresh mud ? No, better drive here where 
 the mule can be kept clean and its hoofs bright. On 
 the other side a dining-hall must rise, supported by 
 stately shafts of Numidian marble, and it must catch 
 the winter sun. However great the cost of the house, 
 a scientific table -layer will be forthcoming too, 
 and an expert in made-dishes likewise. Amid 
 extravagance like this, two thousand sesterces at 
 the utmost will be enough for Quintilian. Nothing 
 will cost the father less than his own son. 'Then 
 how does Quintilian own all those pasture lands?’ 
 Leave out the cases of exceptional good fortune. 
 Your lucky man is both handsome and bold. Your 
 lucky man is wise, and noble, and well bred, and 
 sews the crescent on front of his dark senatorial shoe. 
 Your lucky man, too, is best of orators and athletes — 
 and sings well, — yes, even with a cold. It makes a 
 vast difference what stars greet you, when just begin- 
 ning your first cry, with the red hue of birth 
 still upon you. If fortune will, from rhetorician you 
 will be turned into Consul; again, if so she will, 
 from Consul you will be turned into rhetorician. 
 
48 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL vii. 199-221 
 
 For what was Ventidius? what was Tullius? Just 
 what they were made by their star, and by the magic 
 influence of mysterious Destiny. Destiny will give 
 a throne to a slave, a triumph to a captive. But 
 still your lucky man is rarer than a white raven. 
 Many a one has grown sick of the empty, barren 
 honours of the Preceptor’s chair, as the end of Thrasy- 
 machus and Secundus Carrinas proves ; and, Athens, 
 in these days you saw a third in want, yet had 
 the heart to give him nothing better than the chill- 
 ing hemlock. Ye Gods! softly and lightly let the 
 earth rest upon the ashes of the men of old ; let the 
 sweet breath of saffron and eternal springtide be 
 around their tombs. They gave the teacher the sacred 
 rank of a father. Achilles, though quite a big boy, was 
 still in awe of the rod, when he was learning singing 
 on his native hills — not likely, in those days, to be 
 betrayed into laughing at his music-master’s tail. 
 But nowadays Eufus, like other teachers, is whipped 
 by his own pupils — Eufus, whom they so often styled 
 ' The Allobrogian Cicero.’ 
 
 Who places in Celadus’ and learned Palaemon’s 
 lap a due reward for their scholastic toils? Yet, 
 little as it is (indeed, it is less than a rhetorician’s 
 fee), the pupil’s stupid body-servant takes the first 
 bite, and the steward will snip off a something for 
 himself. Submit to it, Palaemon ; let something be 
 abated of your due, as if you were a-huckstering 
 
VII. 221-243 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 49 
 
 winter blankets and white counterpanes ; only let 
 it not go for nothing that you have sat in school from 
 the hour of midnight, when no carpenter nor one of 
 those who teach wool-carding with the comb would 
 sit at work ; only let it not go for nothing that you 
 have smelt all those lamps, as many lamps as there 
 were boys in class, ruining all Flaccus’ complexion, 
 and blackening Maro with the adhering smuts. 
 Yet, even so, few fees are paid without a suit 
 before the tribune. But all the same make your 
 merciless terms, ye parents; the teacher’s syntax 
 must be free from flaw ; he must read every history, 
 and know every author as well as his own nails and 
 Angers ; he must say offhand, if on his way to the 
 Casino or to Phoebus’ Bath he should happen to be 
 asked the question, who was Anchises’ nurse : the 
 name and country of Anchemolus’ stepmother : how 
 many years Acestes lived : how many jars of Sicilian 
 wine he gave the Phrygians. Insist upon his mould- 
 ing with an artist’s hand the children’s plastic natures 
 like one who fashions busts of wax. Insist upon his 
 being a very father to the whole company, and guard- 
 ing against all obscene play and against dirty practices. 
 It is no light matter to keep a watch upon the hands 
 and eyes of all those boys. ^ This is your task,’ ^ the 
 father cries, ‘ and when the year has rolled its course, 
 receive your golden reward — just what the mob 
 demands for a winning jockey.’ 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 VIII. 1-20 
 
 VIII 
 
 Of what avail are pedigrees ? What boots it, Ponticus, 
 taking rank by length of descent, and having one's 
 ancestors' portrait-masks to show off, with an Aemili- 
 anus erect in his chariot, a mutilated Curiiis,a Corvinus 
 minus his shoulders, and a noseless, earless Galba ? 
 What do you gain by the display of a Corvinus in 
 your big family roll, or by your affinity, through 
 many a branch of your tree, later on, with smoke- 
 begrimed Masters of the Horse (to say nothing of a 
 Dictator), if you live a life of shame in the very face of 
 the Lepidi ? To what purpose all these statues of 
 warriors, if you gamble the whole night through in 
 presence of a Humantinus : if you begin your sleep 
 at the rising of Lucifer — the time when generals used 
 to shift their standards and their camp ? Why should 
 a Fabius, though born in the very home of Hercules, 
 plume himself on an Allobrogicus and the Great Altar, 
 if he be greedy and vain, and far and away feebler 
 than a Euganean lamb : if he rub his soft loins with 
 the pumice of Gatina, and thus bring shame on his 
 beardc grandsires, and, by buying poison, put his 
 unhappy clan to the disgrace of breaking his bust ? 
 Ho, though time-honoured waxen likenesses adorn the 
 length and breadth of your hall, still Virtue is the 
 
VIII. 20- 44 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 51 
 
 sole and only nobility. Be a Paulus, a Cossus, or a 
 Drusus in character. Bank that above the statues 
 of your ancestors; let that take its place in line 
 before the very consular rods, if Consul you be. 
 The first thing you are bound to show me is a 
 good heart. If by word and deed you deserve the 
 character of a blameless man, one who cleaves to the 
 right — good : I recognise the noble ; I salute you, 
 Gaetulicus be you, or Silanus, or of whatever other 
 blood you come — rare windfall of a fine citizen to 
 your exultant country! One would fain cry out 
 what the people exclaim when Osiris is found. For 
 who will call ' noble ’ one who shames his race, and 
 challenges notice by the lustre of his name alone ? 
 Some one’s dwarf we call Atlas^ an Ethiopian Swan, a 
 stunted and deformed girl Europa ; lazy curs, hairless 
 with old-standing mange, that lick the dried-up oil off 
 the mouth of the lamps, will get the name of ‘ pard,’ 
 ^ tiger,’ ‘ lion,’ or any other beast on earth of still fiercer 
 temper. Take care, then ; tremble, lest this be the 
 sense in which you may be a Creticus or a Camerinus. 
 
 Whom have I thus admonished ? I am speaking 
 to you, Eubellius Blandus. You are as inflated with 
 your lofty Drusine pedigree, as if your noble bii^th and 
 conception by an illustrious dame of Juliam^olood, 
 rather than by one who weaves for wages under 
 shelter of the wind-swept Embankment, were the fruit 
 of your own exertions. ‘ You are low-born,’ you say. 
 
52 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 VIII. 44-65 
 
 ‘ the dregs of our canaille^ of whom not one could point 
 to his parent’s birthplace. But I am a son of Cecrops.’ 
 Long life to you, and long may you enjoy the happi- 
 ness of such a descent ! But, spite of your scorn, you 
 will find an eloquent son of Eome even in the lowest 
 ranks. Here is one who ofttimes takes up the cause 
 of an unlettered aristocrat ; from our gowned popu- 
 lace one will be forthcoming to solve knotty points of 
 legal science, and the riddles of the statutes. There is 
 another in his prime repairing to the Euphrates, or to 
 where our Eagles watch the conquered Batavians, an 
 unfiagging campaigner ; but you — you are a son of 
 Cecrops, and that is all — as like as can be to a 
 Hermes-bust. In fact, you have the advantage in no 
 other respect than this — he has a head of marble : 
 you are a live effigy. Offspring of Trojan heroes, 
 tell me who accounts dumb animals well-bred, if 
 they have no mettle? Why, we praise a racer’s 
 fleetness only when it wins easily,^ amid the excite- 
 ment of prize succeeding prize, and exultant cries 
 of victory rising till the spectators are hoarse. He 
 is a 'noble’ steed, whatever grass he comes from, 
 who takes rank above his fellows in — pace, and 
 who raises the dust upon the course ahead of all ; but 
 the progeny of Coryphaeus and Hirpinus are ' stock 
 for sale,’ if Victory has rarely perched on their collar. 
 There there is no regard for ancestors, no favouritism 
 towards the shades of the departed. At a word the 
 
VIII. 65-87 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 53 
 
 horses change masters for a trifle, and haul cart-ropes 
 till their necks are sore, if they are slow of pace, and 
 fit for nothing better than turning a Nepos’^ mill. 
 Therefore, so that we may admire yourself and not 
 your belongings, give me something of your own to 
 carve ’neath your statue, beyond the honours which 
 we have rendered, and render still, to those who 
 made you all you are. 
 
 So much for the young man whom rumour describes 
 as proud, puffed up, and full of his ISTeronian kinship ; 
 for consideration for others is for the most part rare in 
 that state of life. But I should not like to have you 
 valued for your kin’s reno'wn, Ponticus, if so be you 
 do nought yourself to gain renown hereafter. It is a 
 poor thing to rest on the fame of others ; the roof 
 might collapse and fall in, if the columns were to 
 be removed, and lie like a vine prostrate on the earth 
 and pining for the elm left all alone. Be a good 
 soldier, a good guardian — yes, and an incorruptible 
 judge. If ever you be summoned as witness in a 
 difficult and doubtful case, even though a Phalaris 
 charges you to be untruthful, and brings his bull up 
 beside you, as he dictates the perjury, regard it as the 
 height of infamy to value the breath of your body 
 more than your honour, and for life’s sake to sacrifice 
 life’s ends. One who merits death is dead,^ though 
 he dine upon a hundred oysters of Gaurus, and plunge 
 in a whole cauldron of Cosmus’ scents. When the 
 
54 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 VIII. 87-108 
 
 long-looked-for Province at last receives you as its 
 Governor, bridle and check your temper and your 
 greed. Pity our impoverished allies. You see only 
 the bones of the native princes,^ sucked dry of 
 their marrow. Eeflect what the laws enjoin : what 
 the Senate House commands : what great rewards 
 await integrity : how just a bolt smote down, under 
 the Senate’s sentence, Capito and Numitor who 
 plundered the (pirate) Cilicians. But what does a 
 ‘ sentence ’ give the province ? Look out, Chaerippus, 
 for an auctioneer to sell your rags, since Pansa 
 robs you of all Natta’s leavings, and at last learn 
 silence. It is madness to throw your passage-money 
 after all the rest. ( There were no groans like this 
 of old, nor was the sting of loss so sharp when 
 our allies were prosperous, — but recently conquered. 
 Then every house was well supplied, and the money 
 stood in big heaps, with Spartan cloaks and purples 
 from Cos ; and side by side with Parrhasius’ pictures 
 and Myron’s statues was the breathing ivory of 
 Phidias ; there was much handiwork, too, of Polyclitus 
 everywhere, and few were the tables then without a 
 Mentor. But now from one quarter a Dolabella, 
 from another Antony, from another again the godless 
 Verres began to carry home in their deep-laden 
 vessels their smuggled spoils, and many a trophy won 
 — but not from war. How the tiny plot of land will 
 be seized,^ and our allies plundered of their few yoke 
 
VIII. 108-129 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 55 
 
 of oxen, the little herd of mares, and the very sire of 
 the stud ; and then actually of their Hearth-Gods, if 
 there be an image worth a glance, if there be still a 
 solitary deity left in his little shrine.^ Such things, 
 indeed, now represent the best prizes, for such are 
 now the greatest to be had.i Perchance you may, 
 and with reason, too, scorn the un warlike Ehodians, 
 and Corinth with its unguents ; what could those be- 
 resined youths and all the race of ' Smoothlegs ’ do 
 to you ? But beware of the shaggy Spaniards, of the 
 land of the Gaul, of the Illyrian coast. Keep your 
 hands, too, off those reapers who fill Eome’s belly 
 and leave it free for Stage and Circus. Besides, 
 what prize will you gain from them great enough to 
 be a set-off to such terrible guilt, seeing that Marius 
 has so lately stript the poor Africans of their very 
 girdles ? Above all, beware lest any flagrant wrong 
 be done to those who are brave as well as destitute. 
 You may rob them of all the gold and silver they 
 possess, you will still leave them sword and buckler, 
 javelin and helmet ; though plundered, they still have 
 arms. What I have just laid down is no mere com- 
 monplace — it is truth ; regard me as reading you one 
 of the Sibyl’s leaves. If your staff of officers be 
 blameless, if there be no young ‘ Longhair ’ selling 
 your judgments, no scandal against your wife, if 
 she be not a Harpy, bent on circling' round the 
 assizes and every town in the province, and swoop- 
 
56 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL viii. 130-152 
 
 ing with crooked talons on the cash, then you may 
 trace your line from Picus ; and, if high-sounding 
 names be your fancy, range all the Titan warriors, 
 ay, and Prometheus himself, among your ancestors — 
 and appropriate for yourself a great-grandfather from 
 any book you like. If, however, ambition and lust 
 sweep you along in their current, if you break 
 rod after rod on the bleeding backs of the allies, if 
 axes blunted and lictors wearied delight your heart, 
 then the very rank of your sires begins to rise in 
 judgment against you, and to hold a bright torch 
 before your deeds of shame. ^ The higher the sinner’s 
 standing the more glaring the guilt of every vice of 
 his heart^ What boots it that your grandsire reared 
 the temples where you seal forged wills, or that full 
 in view of you stands a triumphal figure of your 
 father? What of all that, if you draw a Gaulish 
 hood over your brows for a disguise, and go forth 
 for a night of debauchery ? 
 
 Past the ashes and the bones of his ancestors fat 
 Lateranus whirls along in his light curricle, and with 
 his own hand, his very own hand, our Muleteer-Con- 
 suP locks the wheel with the drag ; by night, I admit : 
 still the moon sees it, still the accusing stars are 
 straining their eyes at him. When his term of office 
 has expired, Lateranus will take whip in hand in the 
 glare of daylight, and, if he meets a friend — even 
 one of venerable years — will never quail before him ; 
 
VIII. 153-173 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 57 
 
 nay, with his whip he will give the first salute, 
 and will untie the hay -trusses and shake out 
 barley for *his tired team. Meantime, while, like a 
 very ISTuma, he is sacrificing his fleecy victims and his 
 russet^ steer, even^® before the high altar of Jove he 
 swears only by the Goddess of Jockeys and the forms 
 daubed by the reeking stalls. But when he takes it 
 into his head to patronise once more the pothouses 
 that turn night into day, the Syrophoenician reeking 
 with the inevitable pomade — the Syrophoenician, 
 whose home was once the gate of Idumaea — hurries 
 to meet him. With a host's obsequious air he salutes 
 him as 'My Lord and Master,’ and Cyane comes 
 bustling up with a jar of wine for sale. One 
 will excuse his fault, and plead 'We, too, did all this 
 in our youth.’ No doubt; that is, you have now 
 ceased doing it, and have not cherished your folly 
 too long. Let your essay in vice be short. There are 
 certain faults which should be cut off along with the 
 first hairs on your chin. Indulgence is only for boys. 
 Lateranus, who makes his way to the potations of 
 the taproom with its painted awnings, is of an age 
 for soldiering, for guarding the rivers of Armenia and 
 Syria, or the Ehine and Danube. Vigour like his 
 might assure Nero of his safety. Caesar, despatch 
 your general to Ostia. Do, by all means, but you 
 will have to seek that general in the great — pot- 
 house. You will And him lounging with an assassin, 
 
58 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVEHAL viii. 174-196 
 
 one of a medley of thieves, sailors, and runaways : 
 surrounded by hangmen and coffin-makers, with a 
 priest of Cybele, who is busy at his debauch while his 
 timbrels rest. There you have Liberty and Equality : 
 the cups are common property : no one has a separate 
 couch : no one a table apart from the rest. What 
 would you do, Ponticus, if you had chanced to get a 
 slave like him? Surely you would send him to 
 Lucania, or to the Tuscan houses of correction. But 
 you, of the blue blood of Troy, make allowances for 
 yourselves, and what would disgrace a lourgeois will 
 grace Brutus or a Volesus. 
 
 But suppose none of the cases I cite are so foul 
 and so shameful as not to leave worse remaining! 
 Damasippus, when his fortune was spent, leased his 
 voice to the stage to play the uproarious ' Ghost ’ of 
 Catullus ; ay, and nimble Lentulus acted the 
 Laureolus to the life, and in my opinion merited 
 a real cross for his pains. Still you cannot excuse 
 the people either; more thick-skinned even than 
 he is that people that sits and gazes at the arch- 
 buffooneries of our Patricians, and listens to a bare- 
 footed Fabius, and can bring itself to laugh at the 
 Mamerci and their stage-buffets. What matter, then, 
 at what price they sell their lives ? They sell them 
 at no Nero’s bidding — hesitate not to sell them at 
 the sports of the exalted Praetor. Yet suppose the 
 sword set here, and there the stage — which were the 
 
VIII. 196-217 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 59 
 
 better ? Has any one yet been scared by fear of death 
 into taking the role of Thymele’s jealous lord, or into 
 playing to the clown Corinthus? But why marvel 
 at a buffoon noble under a fiddling emperor ? What 
 lower depth than this save the gladiator’s school? 
 And you have there now the real scandal of Town, a 
 Gracchus fighting, but not in the armour of the 
 helmeted gladiator, and not with the shield, nor up- 
 turned falchion ! Ho ! he scouts any such disguises : 
 scouts them, and hates them, and does not hide his 
 face with a helmet. See how he swings his trident, 
 and,^^ when he flings out his right arm and has made 
 a false throw of his casting-net, then he raises his 
 bared face to the spectators, as he flies right 
 through the arena for all to see and know. We 
 cannot mistake that tunic, for the gold-embroidered 
 lasso reaches down from his neck, dangling from his 
 wide shoulder-guard.^^ And so the 'Pursuer’ has 
 had to brook a disgrace worse than any wound ; for 
 he was — matched with Gracchus ! 
 
 If the right of free voting were given to the 
 people, who would be so abandoned as to hesitate to 
 put a Seneca before a Hero — a Hero whose fit punish- 
 ment required something more than one ape, and 
 one serpent, and one sack ? The crime of Agamem- 
 non’s son was similar, but the motives make the 
 cases unlike. You see, Orestes at the prompting of 
 the Gods avenged his father, who had been slain 
 
60 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL viii. 217-240 
 
 when carousing ; but he did not stain himself with 
 the murder of Electra, nor with the blood of his 
 Spartan spouse : he mixed no poison for his relatives, 
 never sang on the stage, wrote no 'Epic of TroyM 
 For what deed of Nero’s during his grim and cruel 
 tyranny called more loudly for the vengeance of 
 Verginius’ sword, or of Galba and Vindex, than did 
 this ? These are the feats, these the accomplishments 
 of our high-born sovereign, who prides himself on 
 making little of himself by a degrading performance 
 upon a foreign stage, and on winning the bit of 
 parsley that makes a Greek crown. Let your family 
 statues, Nero, receive the trophies of your warbling. 
 Before the feet of Domitius lay down Thyestes’ 
 long train or the mask of Antigone or Menalippe, 
 and hang your harp upon his gigantic marble effigy. 
 
 What can any one find more exalted, Catiline and 
 Cethegus, than your pedigrees ? Yet you plan your 
 midnight rebellion, and the firing of houses and 
 temples, as if you were sons of the Bracati, de- 
 scendants of the Senones — daring deeds which would 
 be fitly punished with 'the stinging shirt.’ Ah, 
 but the Consul is on the alert, and checks your onset. 
 This 'upstart’ of Arpinum — no noble — but yester- 
 day a provincial knight at Eome, stations at every 
 point his well-accoutred forces to protect the scared 
 citizens ; every hill in Eome is the scene of his 
 activity. And so, within the City walls, the garb of 
 
VIII. 240-262 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 61 
 
 peace brought him as great a name and title as was 
 won by Octavius at Leucas, with so sore an effort/^ 
 and on the Thessalian plain, after his sword, time 
 after time, had dripped with blood. | But Eome was 
 free, when she styled Cicero her ‘ Parent,’ free, when 
 she called him ^Pather of Fatherland.^ There was 
 another man of Arpinum that used in the Volscian 
 highlands to look for wages for his labours over his 
 master’s plough. Later on, he began with the help 
 of his skull to break the knotty vinesticks, at times 
 when he was lazy, and his pick slack over work 
 at the entrenchment. Yet this is he who copes 
 with the Cimbri and the supreme crisis of the State, 
 and single-handed protects Eome in her terror. So, 
 when the ravens, which had never yet touched better- 
 sized corpses, began to wing their way to the 
 butchered Cimbrians, the aristocratic colleague is 
 decorated with — the second-best laurel. Plebeian 
 were the souls of the Decii, and plebeian their names ; 
 and yet the Nether Deities and Mother Earth 
 thought them an equivalent for all our legions, and 
 all our allies, and all the chivalry of Latium ; for 
 more precious were the Decii than all they saved. 
 It was a waiting-woman’s child that won the royal 
 robe, and diadem, and fasces of Quirinus, and was the 
 last of our good kings. It was the Consul’s own sons 
 that would have treacherously unbarred the gates to 
 the banished tyrants — men of whom might have been 
 
62 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL viii. 263-275 
 
 expected some gallant feat for imperilled liberty, 
 such as to win praise from Codes, and Mucins, and 
 the maid who swam the Tiber, then the limit of our 
 empire. It was a slave who earned the matrons’ 
 tears by divulging the traitors’ secrets to the Fathers, 
 while the guilty are visited with the just vengeance 
 of the lash and of the axe, that then first armed the 
 hand of Law. 
 
 I had rather your father were a Thersites, so that 
 
 you were like the race of Aeacus, and fit to handle 
 
 « 
 
 the arms of Vulcan, than that an Achilles should 
 beget you, to be a second Thersites. And, after all, 
 however far back you explore, however far you trace 
 back your name, you draw your origin from that 
 notorious Sanctuary. Whoever was the founder of 
 your family, he was either a shepherd, or — what I 
 would rather not say. 
 
 X 
 
 Through all lands — from Cades to the country of the 
 Dawn and its Ganges — but few are they who can clear 
 themselves of the mists of error, and discriminate 
 between real blessings and what are quite the reverse. 
 For in what fear or wish of ours are we guided by 
 
X. 5-26 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 63 
 
 reason’s rule ? No matter how auspiciously you start 
 with a plan, do you not live to regret your efforts and 
 the attainment of your desiro? Whole households 
 have been overthrown ere now, at their own petition, 
 by a too gracious Heaven. By the arts of peace and 
 war alike we strive for what will only hurt us. The 
 full flow of his own eloquence has borne death to 
 many a one ; confidence in his strength and superb 
 muscles was the ruin of that man of old. Yet more 
 are suffocated by the money that has been scraped 
 together with inordinate care, and by an income by 
 which all other fortunes are overshadowed as much 
 as the dolphin by the British whale. And so in the 
 reign of terror, at Nero’s command, a whole cohort, 
 after blockading Longinus and the spacious pleasure- 
 grounds of Seneca the millionaire, besets the sumptu- 
 ous mansion of a Lateranus ; but how rarely does a 
 soldier trouble a poor man’s garret ! Though you 
 carry but a few small pieces of plain silver plate, 
 yet, if you begin a journey after nightfall, you will 
 have sword and pike to fear, and you will quake at 
 the shadow^ of a reed quivering in the moonlight, 
 whereas your empty-handed traveller will sing in 
 your footpad’s face. The first prayer w jth most 
 and the prayer with whicyaHo^^ arejimst 
 
 familial^ is^]^^ our w ^glf h ma y grow ^nd 
 
 our money-chest be the largest in the whole Forum. 
 But one does not drink aconite out of delf ; the time 
 
64 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 X. 26-49 
 
 to dread it is when you take a jewelled cup in your 
 hand, and when the Setine wine shows its fire in a 
 broad gold beaker. By this time, then, you must 
 approve of one of the sages laughing, and the rival 
 Doctor weeping, every time they left their thres- 
 hold and put one foot before the other ? But, while 
 anybody can play the censor with a dry laugh,^ the 
 marvel is whence the other’s eyes got their water- 
 supply. Democritus used to shake his lungs with 
 endless laughter, though the cities of his land had no 
 state robes, regal gowns, lictors, palanquins. Praetor’s 
 court. What, had he seen our Praetor towering in 
 his stately car, borne high amid the dusty Circus in 
 Jove’s own tunic, and trailing from his shoulders 
 his curtain-like, embroidered toga of Tyrian purple, 
 and with his big crown — too heavy a hoop for any 
 single neck to support ? See how he sweats under it, 
 that public slave who has to hold it up, and to ride 
 in the same car, just to bate the pride of ‘ His Consul- 
 ship.’ Then do not omit the bird soaring from the 
 ivory sceptre, the horn-blowers on that side, and on 
 this, at the horses’ reins. Pome’s proud citizens in 
 snow-white garb — a long guard of honour, marching 
 in front — whose affections have been won by the dole 
 buried deep down in the cash-box. Even in those days 
 he found matter for laughter in every meeting with 
 his kind. Such wisdom as his shows that men of the 
 highest type, and likely to set a noble example, may 
 
X. 50-70 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 65 
 
 be born in the country of mutton-pates, and under a 
 foggy atmosphere. He would laugh at the worries, 
 as well as the enjoyments of the crowd, sometimes, 
 too, at their tears, while, for himself, he bade Fortune 
 and her frowns go hang, and showed her the finger of 
 scorn. 
 
 Well, then, seeing that ^ the things we pray for are 
 either useless or injurious, what things are there for 
 which we are justified in waxing tEo-UMs' knees ? 
 
 Some are brought to ruin through their great 
 power, subject^ itsel f to envy jus t as great; they are 
 wrecked by their long and brilliant roll of honours ; 
 down from the pedestaIs~~comu~t^ statues, and 
 follow where the rope leads, and now the stroke of 
 the axe shatters the very wheels of the triumphal 
 cars, and the unoffending nags^ have their legs 
 broken. Hark! now the fires are hissing, now, by 
 dint of bellows and forge, that head, the people’s idol, 
 is a-glow ; and the great Sejanus is a-crackling ! And 
 soon from the face second to one only in the whole 
 world they are making pipkins, and basins, and a 
 pan — ay, and even meaner vessels! Ho! wreathe 
 your houses with bays : ho ! lead to the Capitol the 
 great pipe-clayed^ ox : Sejanus is drawn along by the 
 hook, a sight for all. There is general rejoicing. 
 ‘ What a sneering lip! What an expression! Believe 
 me, I never liked the man. But through what charge 
 did he fall? Who was the informer? By what 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 X. 70-92 
 
 approvers, by what witness did he*^ make good his 
 case?’ ‘Oh, nothing of the kind. A long, wordy 
 despatch arrived from Capreae.’ ‘ Oh, it is all right ; 
 I have nothing more to ask.’ But what does the 
 rabble of Eemus? It waits on Fortune, as it always 
 does, and is bitter against the condemned. The same 
 populace, had Nortia smiled on her Tuscan — had the 
 old Emperor been caught off his guard — at this very 
 hour would be hailing Sejanus as ‘ Augustus.’ Long 
 ago, ever since we gave up selling our votes, it 
 shuffled off its public interests ; for, whereas it once 
 conferred commands, commissions, legions, every- 
 thing, now it curbs its ambition, and covets earnestly 
 just these two things — its bread and its games. ‘ I 
 hear that a good many are to die.’ ‘Not a doubt of 
 it ; the “ little furnace ” is big enough for all ; my 
 friend Brutidius met me at the altar of Mars, and 
 he was rather pale. How I fear lest “Ajax” may 
 demand satisfaction for his defeat — for the weak 
 defence ! Let us run at full speed, and, even while 
 he yet lies on the bank, let us kick Caesar’s enemy. 
 But take care that our slaves see us, lest any 
 deny it, and drag his master to the bar with a 
 rope round his neck,^ and all of a shiver.’ This was 
 the talk about Sejanus, these the smothered whispers 
 of the crowd. Do you wish to have as many morning 
 visitors as Sejanus : to own as much : to give the 
 liighest curule offices to one : to set another over the 
 
X. 92-113 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 67 
 
 Forces: to be looked on as the 'guardian’ of the 
 Emperor, who squats on the narrow rock of Capreae 
 with his gang of astrologers? You would like, at 
 least, to have the 'pikes and cohorts,’ a staff of 
 young nobles, and a bodyguard in your house. Whv 
 should you not? Even those who do not wish to 
 take a man’s life wish for t he po wer to do it. Yet 
 what glory or success is worth having, if the joy of 
 it is counterbalanced by tl^evil ? Say, would you 
 rather don the state-robe of this wretch now being 
 dragged along, or be a municipal magnate of Eidenae 
 or Gabii, delivering judgments on weights and 
 measures, or a tattered Aedile at lonely Ulubrae, 
 breaking up pots that are below the standard ? Well, 
 then, you admit that Sejanu s did not know what 
 was really to be desired; for, while desiring an 
 excess of honours, and hankering after an excess of 
 wealth, he was only adding story td^tory of a lofty 
 tower, to make his fall all the greater, and his over- 
 throw, when hurled in ruin,^ terrible to behold. 
 What laid low a Crassus, and a Pompey, and that 
 leader who broke the proud Eomans’ spirit and 
 brought them under his lash? Why, it was just the 
 unscrupulous struggling for the highest place, and the 
 prayer of ambition, heard but too well by the malicious 
 Gods. It is but seldom that a king does not take 
 a murderous wound with him down to Ceres’ son-in- 
 law : seldom that a despot dies without blood-letting. 
 
68 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 X. 114-136 
 
 The boy who is still courting a not-exorbitant 
 Minerva with a single copper, and is attended to 
 school by a slave urchin in charge of the little book- 
 box, begins already to pray for the eloquence and 
 fame of Demosthpnes^^Cm and prays for it the 
 whole March holiday t hroug h. But the curse of 
 both orators was their own eloquence : it was the 
 bountiful and exuberant flow of genius ^t con- 
 signed both to their death. Genius had hand and 
 head lopt off ; but the Eostra never yet ran with the 
 life-blood of a feeble pleader. 
 
 ‘ Ah ! Rome, that fortunate child of my consulate ! ’ 
 
 He might have scorned Antony’s swords, had all his 
 utterances been like this. Let the ridiculous doggerel 
 be mine, rather than the heaven -inspired Philippic, 
 of fame pre-eminent — the second in the scroll. How 
 cruel, too, the end that hurried from the world that 
 orator, the wonder of Athens, that torrent of eloquence, 
 who, all the while,^^ controlled, as with a bridle, the 
 thronged theatre. He was born under the frown of 
 Heaven and an adverse destiny, whom his father, him- 
 self half blinded by the fumes of the red-hot iron, 
 sent away from the coals, and tongs, and sword-fashion- 
 ing anvil, and sooty Fire-god to the Elocution-master. 
 
 The spoils of campaigns — a breastplate fastened to 
 a stump of a trophy, a cheek-piece hanging from a 
 broken helmet, a yoke docked of its pole, the flag- 
 
X. 136-158 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 69 
 
 staff of some prize trireme, an image of a dejected 
 captive on the top of a triumphal arch — these are 
 deemed to transcend all earthly boons :^to such each 
 and every Captain of old, Eoman, Greek, barbarian, 
 alike has aspired.^ In these he has found incentives to 
 hazard and toil. So much keener is the thirst for 
 fame than for virtue ! Why, who embraces virt uejfor 
 herself, ap ?^T-t fro jin hen -x^ards ? And yet Fatherland 
 is ofttimes ruined by a few men’s love of glory, 
 and desire for praise and for an epitaph, meant to 
 linger on the slabs which are to guard their ashes, 
 but which the malign vigour of the barren fig-tree 
 is quite able to break up — for tombs also have 
 their day of doom. Just weigh Hannibal. How 
 many pounds’ weight will you find in that greatest of 
 leaders ? This is the man for whom Africa is too 
 small — Africa, lashed by the Moorish main, and 
 stretching thence to the tepid Nile, and on another 
 side again to the Ethiopian tribes with their towering 
 elephants ! He adds Spain to his empire : he bounds 
 over the Pyrenees ; Nature barred his path with her 
 Alp and her snow : he rives the rocks and bursts the 
 mountain with vinegar. Now he holds Italy, yet he 
 still strains forward. ' Nothing,’ cries he, ' is gained 
 unless we storm the city gates with our Punic soldiery, 
 and this hand plants my standard in the very heart 
 of Subura.’ Oh, what a sight ! oh, what a subject for 
 a caricature — the one-eyed general bestriding the 
 
70 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 X. 158-180 
 
 Gaetulian monster ! What, then, is his end ? F ie, glory ! 
 Why, he in his turn is conquered, and flies headlong 
 into exile ; and there he sits, that august dependent, 
 — a gazing-stock at a king’s gates — until it may please 
 His Majesty of Bithynia to awake. The soul which 
 once turned the world upside down shall be quelled, 
 not by a sword, not by a stone, no, nor by a javelin ; 
 but by that Nemesis of Cannae, the avenger of all that 
 blood — just a ring. Off with you, madman ! Scour 
 the bleak Alps, that so you may — catch the fancy of 
 schoolboys, and become a theme for recitation! A 
 single world is not enough for the young warrior of 
 Pella: he frets, poor soul! at the scanty limits of 
 the world,^^ just as if confined within the rocks of 
 Gyarus and tiny Seriphus. But when once he has 
 entered the ^Bricklayer’s Fortress,’ one stone coffin 
 will meet all his wants. Death alone reveals the 
 insignificance of these p ^r bodies of ours. The 
 world has long believed that Athos was sailed across, 
 together with all the other lies that Grecian history 
 hazards ; we believe that the sea was ' paved ’ with 
 that same fleet, making a solid carriage -road, and 
 that deep rivers failed and streams were drunk dry 
 when the Mede had his lunch, and all the rest that 
 Sostratus drones out till his armpits reek with his 
 efforts.^^ Still in what plight did he come home — that 
 fugitive from Salamis, he who, like the barbarian 
 that he was, would rage, lash in hand, at Nor’wester 
 
X. 180-202 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 71 
 
 and South-easter, though never did they have such 
 treatment in the jail of Aeolus — he who had clapped 
 chains on the very Earth -Shaker Himself? (Too 
 kind of him, upon my word, not to think it a case for 
 the branding- iron as well!) Would any deity be 
 content to serve such a lord ? But in what case did 
 he return? Why, with one vessel, through blood- 
 stained waves, and with a mass of corpses clogging 
 his bows. Such was the penalty exacted by that oft- 
 coveted glory 1 
 
 ' Grant me a long span of life, grant me many 
 years, 0 Jupiter !’ This you crave with the firm look 
 of health, and this and nought else when pale with 
 sickness. But see with what endless and grievous 
 troubles a protracted o ld age tee msT Mark that 
 hideous face, repulsive beyond anything — so unlike its 
 proper self, with a hideous hide instead of skin : see 
 the flabby cheeks and wrinkles, the picture of those\ 
 which a mother-monkey scratches on her aged jowl ! 
 under the shade of Thabraca’s spreading woods. The ! 
 young have many points of contrast : one is hand- 
 somer than another, and he than a third ; another, 
 again, is much sturdier than his neighbour : old men 
 all look the same ; limbs and tongue alike palsied ; a 
 scalp grown hairless ; a nose snivelling like an infant’s; 
 toothless gums, with which the poor wretch must 
 mumble his bread. He is now so loathsome to wife 
 and child and self as to turn the stomach even of 
 
72 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 X. 202-229 
 
 Cossus the legacy-hunter ! His relish for wine and 
 food is no more the same, for the palate is now dull. 
 As to sexual pleasures, those are long forgotten, or 
 else, if an attempt be made at their renewal, physical 
 energies prove unequal to the task. What has this 
 gray decrepitude of lust to hope for? Do we not rightly 
 view with suspicion the pruriency that has the will 
 without the power to perform ? Look now at the decay 
 of another organ. What pleasure has he in the music 
 of a harper, however eminent — say that of a Seleucus, 
 and of the other ‘ stars ’ that glitter in their golden 
 cloaks ? What matters it to him in what part of the 
 spacious theatre he sits, when he will scarcely hear 
 clearly the horn-blowers and the blare of the trum- 
 pets ? It needs a shout for his ear to catch the sound, 
 should his servant announce a visitor or tell the hour 
 of the day. Besides, the small remnant of blood in 
 his frozen body needs a fever to warm it. Maladies 
 in every guise hover round him in battalions. Should 
 you ask their names, I will sooner tell the number of 
 Oppia’s gallants, or of the patients despatched in a 
 single autumn by Dr. Themison, the partners cheated 
 by Basilus, the wards by Hirrus — ay, I will run over 
 more quickly the list of mansions now owned by him 
 whose razor used to draw harsh music from my young 
 beard. One is ailing in the shoulder, another in the 
 loins, another in the hips ; another, again, has lost both 
 eyes, and envies those who have one left ; this man’s 
 
X. 229-252 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 73 
 
 bloodless lips receive their food from strange hands ; 
 he himself, who used instinctively to stretch his jaws 
 at the sight of dinner, now feebly gapes for his food 
 like a young swallow, to which the mother-bird, 
 though fasting herself, flies with her beak full. But 
 worse than any physical failure is the loss oflnnn d — 
 one's own slaves' names grown unfamiliar, and the face 
 of the friend with whom one dined the night before, 
 and even of those whom one has begotten and reared. 
 For by a heartless will the old man disinherits his 
 own kin ; all his property is made over to Phiale in 
 return for foul service rendered. But suppose his 
 faculties be sound, yet still he must conduct his 
 sons to their burial; must gaze at the pyre^of his 
 beloved wife, and of his brother, and on urns filled 
 with what was once his~sist^. This is the forfeit 
 laid upon lo ngevit y, to pass to ol d age am id bereave- 
 ment after bereavement, amid thick-coming griefs and 
 one wearyluu^^ wdth the garb of the 
 
 mourner never laid aside. The King of Pylos — if you 
 put any faith in grand old Homer — was a case of 
 longevity surpassed only by the crow. Happy man ! 
 one would say, who deferred his death for so many 
 generations, and is now telling the tale of his years 
 on his right hand, and has tasted the new wine 
 of so many vintages. Pray, hearken a moment how 
 sorely he complains of the decrees of fate, and of the 
 inordinate length of his life's thread, when he sees 
 
74 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 X. 252-276 
 
 his brave Antilochus’ beard in the flame of the pyre, 
 and asks of each and every comrade present why he 
 should last all this while, what deed of shame he has 
 committed to merit so tedious a life. The same plaint 
 comes from Peleus, when he mourns the loss of his 
 Achilles ; and from that other, too, whom nature bids 
 to mourn for his Ithacan ‘ afloat.’ Priam, while Troy 
 was yet unscathed, would have descended to Assaracus’ 
 shade with gorgeous rites, with Hector and the rest 
 of the band of brothers bearing the corpse on their 
 shoulders, and amid the tears of the Ilian women, with 
 Cassandra to lead the dirge, and Polyxena, too, with her 
 robe rent, if only he had lost his life at another time, 
 ere Paris had begun to build his adventurous bark. 
 So length of days gained him — what ? The spectacle 
 of general ruin and the destruction of Asia by sword 
 and flame. Then the poor tottering soldier laid down 
 his crown and took up arms, and was laid low before 
 the altar of high J ove, like an aged ox that has long been 
 discarded by the ungrateful ploughshare, and that has 
 but a poor lean neck now to present to its owner’s 
 knife. However, he died at least the death of a man ; 
 whereas his queen, who survived him, became a glower- 
 ing, yelping, snarling cur. I pass quickly to our own 
 worthies, omitting the King of Pontus, and Croesus, 
 who was charged by the eloquent tongue of Solon the 
 Just to look to the last round in life’s long course. 
 That banishment, that jail, Minturnae’s swamps, and 
 
X. 277-300 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 75 
 
 the bread of beggary in conquered Carthage, all had 
 their origin in — a long life. What happier being in 
 the world than that Eoman could Nature, could Eome 
 ever have produced, if, after leading round the train 
 of captives amid all ' the circumstance of war,’ he had 
 breathed out his soul in glory, when just stepping 
 down from his Teutonic car ? Campania in her fore- 
 sight had bestowed upon Pompeius her fevers — a 
 boon worth praying for ; but a host of cities with their 
 public prayers were too strong for her, and so his own 
 and Eonm’s fortune preserved him, to suffer defeat 
 and lose his head. Lentulus escaped that* horror; 
 Cethegus was spared that penalty, and fell unmutilated ; 
 Catiline, too, lay with his carcase whole. 
 
 A mother, as she looks at Venus’ shrine, prays 
 eagerly in accents low for beauty for her boys, for 
 her girls in louder tones, becoming even fastidious 
 in her requests. ‘ Why take me to task ?’ she says, 
 ' Latona finds pleasure in her Diana’s beauty.’ Yet 
 Lucretia’s end is a warning against craving a fair 
 face like hers ; Virginia would be glad to take Eutila’s 
 hump, and make a present of her charms to Eutila. 
 A son, however, possessed of uncommon beauty always 
 keeps his parents in misery and anxiety ; so rare the 
 uTiipn of chas jd ty and beauty. Although a rugged 
 household of the old Sabine school may have passed 
 on the tradition of a pure morality ; and although, 
 yet further, bounteous Nature may with generous 
 
76 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 X. 300-324 
 
 hand bestow on him a chaste mind and a cheek flush- 
 ing with the glow of modesty (for what more can 
 Nature, that is more potent than any custodian and 
 any vigilance, impart to him ?), he is not suffered tc 
 become a man. The lavish and unscrupulous seducer 
 is bold enough even to tamper with the parents. Such 
 is the confldence felt in the_power of bribes. But no 
 despot in his cruel castle ever yet castrated a mis- 
 shapen youth, nor did a Nero ever outrage a boy that 
 had a club-foot or a wen, that was pot-bellied and 
 humpbacked. Go now, and be vain, if you will, of 
 the beauty of your boy ; but greater dangers still 
 await him. He will become Paramour-General, and 
 will have to dread such vengeance as a jealous hus- 
 band may inflict ; nor is he likely to have more luck 
 than Mars, so as never to get caught in the trap. 
 Sometimes, indeed, a husband's resentment exacts 
 more than any law has conceded to it. One gives 
 the adulterer a fatal stab, another scourges him till 
 he bleeds. Certain lechers also make acquaintance 
 with the ' mullet.' Your Endymion, you think, will 
 become the paramour of some matron whom he loves ; 
 yes, but, before long, when Servilia offers him money, 
 of one, too, whom he hates, and he will strip her of all 
 her flnery ; for what is there that any of them, whether 
 she be an Oppia, or a yet more abandoned Catulla, 
 will deny to her paeons? Woman's whole nature 
 is centred there. Still, if he be chaste, what harm in 
 
X. 324-345 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 77 
 
 his beauty ? Nay, what did their virtuous resolve do 
 for Hippolytus and Bellerophon ? Why, Stheneboea 
 flushed red, as if slighted by this rebuff ; and she, 
 too, like the Cretan dame, blazed up, and both of 
 them shook for very fury. Woman is then most 
 pitiless, when shame spurs hatred. 
 
 Make up your mind, what counsel you think one 
 ought to give the man whom Caesar’s wife intends 
 to wed ? He, the best, though comeliest,^'^ scion of a 
 noble house, poor wretch, is hurried off to be destroyed 
 by — Messalina’s eyes. She has been sitting there a 
 long time with her wedding veil ready ; the mar- 
 riage bed with the Tyrian coverlet is being set out 
 publicly in the gardens ; the dowry of a million will 
 be given in the time-honoured form; augur and 
 witnesses will be in attendance. You thought this a 
 secret, Silius, and entrusted to but a few. Nay, she 
 will be no bride, except in the orthodox style. Say 
 what is your will. Eefuse to assent, and you die 
 before lamp-lighting ; commit the crime, and you 
 will get n trifling respite until this news, which is 
 the gossip of the Town and the mob, reach the mon- 
 arch’s ears. He will be the last to learn the dis- 
 honour of his house. Meanwhile, do you obey 
 your orders, if the few days’ life is worth the 
 price. Whichever you deem the easier and the 
 better course, in any case this comely white neck 
 will have to be submitted to the sword. 
 
78 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 X. 346-366 
 
 Shall men then pray for nothing? If you will 
 take my advice, you will allow the Gods themselves 
 to determina-Av h at js jneet for us, and suited to our 
 lot ; for the Gods will give us — not what is pleasant, 
 but what is most befitting in each case. Man 
 is dearer to them than to himself. Urged on 
 by impulse, by blind and violent desires, we pray 
 for a wife,^a nd for o ffspring; but only they know 
 what the children will be, and of what character 
 the wife. Still, if you must make your petition 
 and must vow a meat-offering at the shrine — 
 holy sausages made from a little white porker^® — 
 then pray for a he althy m ind in a healt hy body; 
 pray for a brave spirit f ree fro m the fear oFdhath 
 — a spirit that regards life’s close as one of Nature’s 
 boons,^^ that can endure any toil, that is innocent 
 of anger and free from desire, and that looks on 
 the sufferings of Hercules and his cruel labours as 
 more blessed than all the wantoning, and revelling, 
 and down-couches of a Sardanapallus. I am prescrib- 
 ing what you could administer to yourself; it is 
 certain that the only path to a life of pjeace lies 
 through virtue. Fortune, thou hast no divinity 
 where wisdom exists ; it is we, it is we who deify 
 thee, and enshrine thee in Heaven. 
 
XI. 1-19 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 79 
 
 XI 
 
 Atticus, if he dine sumptuously, is considered 
 stylish, Eutilus crazy. Indeed, what is greeted 
 with louder laughter from the mob than a penniless 
 epicure? At every social gathering, public bath, 
 lounge, and theatre the talk is of Eutilus. For, 
 while his sturdy young frame is equal to the helmet, 
 and is fired with warm blood, the story goes that — 
 not, indeed, forced by the Tribune, but also not pre- 
 vented — he is about to copy out the agreement and 
 despotic orders of the Trainer. Further, there are many 
 others that you see, whom the creditor, so often baffled, 
 is constantly looking for just at the market’s entrance; 
 these have no motive for living but their palate ! 
 He has a finer and better dinner than the rest who 
 is most ' in distress ’ of them all, and who must soon 
 come down : indeed the light is already showing 
 through the crack in the wall. But, meanwhile, they 
 are ransacking every element for relishes. Price is 
 never a bar to their gratification. Watch more 
 closely, and you see that the greater the cost the 
 greater the enjoyment. And so they feel no scruple in 
 raising a sum to squander, though they must pawn 
 their dishes or break up a mother’s bust ; no scruple 
 in heaping dainties worth four hundred sesterces 
 
80 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XI. 19-41 
 
 upon the ‘ gluttonous earthenware.’ It is thus they 
 come to the messes of the gladiatorial school. And 
 so it makes all the difference who it is that procures 
 these same things. In Eutilus, it is dissipation ; in 
 Ventidius, it assumes a creditable name, and derives 
 a fair repute from his income. I shall be right in 
 despising one who knows how much higher Atlas is 
 than all the other mountains in Libya, if he — that 
 very same man — has yet to learn the difference 
 between a small purse and an iron-bound money- 
 chest. From Heaven came down that ‘Know Thyself’: 
 words to be implanted and cherished faithfully in 
 your heart, whether you seek a wife, or fain would 
 be a member of the august^ Senate — for even Thersites 
 does not ask for the breastplate of Achilles, in which 
 Ulysses made but a poor show. Or, if you aspire to 
 defend a risky cause having momentous issues, then, 
 in that case, question yourself, inform yourself who 
 you are — an impassioned orator, or like those wind- 
 bags Curtins and Matho. You must know the 
 measure of Self, and keep it in view in matters great 
 and small, yes, even when you have only to buy 
 some fish — that you may not hanker for a mullet 
 with but the price of a gudgeon in your purse. Why, 
 what end awaits you if your larder is shrinking as 
 your appetite grows ; if patrimony and substance 
 have been engulfed in a maw, that can find room 
 alike for interest, silver plate, cattle, and lands ? 
 
XI. 42-63 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 81 
 
 In such a case, when everything else is gone, last of 
 all the knight’s ring passes away from him, and then 
 Pollio turns to begging with his finger bare. It is not 
 the untimely urn nor the too-early grave that is formid- 
 able to self-indulgence Q)ld age has more terrors for it 
 than death^ The steps are mostly these. The money 
 borrowed at interest is frittered away at Eome under 
 the owner’s eyes, and then, when some poor trifle 
 only is left, and the usurer looks anxious, they give 
 leg-bail, and hurry off to Baiae and its oysters. For 
 disappearing from ’Change is nowadays no more dis- 
 creditable than shifting one’s quarters from bustling 
 Subura to Esquiliae. One pang, one grief afflicts the 
 exiles — to have lost for one whole year the circus 
 shows ! There is not a drop of blood left in their 
 cheeks to blush with. Few try to stop the flight 
 from Town of that ridiculous creature Modesty. 
 
 To-day, Persicus, you shall see whether, instead 
 of making good these ideas — so very fine to talk 
 about — in my life, in my principles and my practice, 
 I am really a glutton in secret, though commending 
 a diet of pulse, and call to my servant in others’ 
 hearing ' porridge,’ while I whisper in his ear ^ cakes.’ 
 For, as you are my promised guest, you shall find 
 an Evander in me ; you shall come in the char- 
 acter of the hero of Tiryns, or of the guest inferior 
 indeed to him, and yet himself linked with Heaven 
 by kinship — the one ushered into the skies by watei; 
 
 G 
 
82 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL xi. 63-84 
 
 the other by fire. Hear now your bill of fare, which 
 no market furnished forth. There will come to table 
 from my estate at Tibur the fattest of my sucking 
 kids, the tenderest of all the flock ; it is innocent of 
 grass, and has not yet summoned up courage to crop 
 the drooping willow’s shoots ; it has in its body 
 more milk than blood. Next — mountain asparagus, 
 culled by my bailiff’s goodwife to the neglect of her 
 spinning. Besides these, huge eggs, warm in their 
 hay-wisps, together with the hens that laid them, are 
 here, and grapes, preserved throu^-^great part of 
 the year, fresh as when on the vj^s ; pears, too, of 
 Signia and of Syria : and from the self-same basket 
 come apples that can match those of Picenum, 
 smelling quite fresh ; but you need not dread them 
 now that they have got rid of their autumn harsh- 
 ness and of the dangers of unripe juice, thanks to 
 the drying cold. Such was once the dinner of our 
 Senators, when already growing less simple. Curius 
 used with his own hands to set upon his modest 
 fire the plain vegetables he had gathered in his 
 tiny garden — a mess at which nowadays the dirty 
 wretch who digs in heavy chains turns up his nose, 
 remembering the flavour of a sow’s paunch in the 
 steaming cookshop. It was in old times the usual 
 thing to keep for holidays the flitch of smoked pork 
 that hung from the rack with its few pegs, and to 
 set fat bacon before one’s kith and kin at birthday 
 
XI. 84-108 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 83 
 
 feasts, a fresh joint being added if a sacrifice gave 
 the chance. To such a meal as this some kinsman, 
 thrice dubbed ‘Consul,’ who had held command of 
 the Forces and the rank of Dictator, would trudge 
 back earlier than usual, shouldering the mattock 
 fresh from its conquest of the hillside. Moreover, ^ 
 in the days when men quailed before a Fabius and 
 the iron Cato, before a Scaurus and a Fabricius, 
 when, in short, even his own colleague had to fear 
 the censor’s stern character, no one considered it 
 worth reckoning among life’s serious concerns what 
 kind of turtle swam in ocean’s wave to make for 
 ‘Sons of the Trojans’ a fine and noble — sofa-leg; 
 no, the short couch, with sides quite plain, displayed 
 upon its brass front a wreathed ass’s head, rudely 
 worked, near which the sportive young rustics used 
 to romp.^ And so the diet was in keeping with 
 house and furniture. In those days the rough 
 soldier, unable to appreciate Greek art, when cities 
 were razed, would break up the goblets that had 
 been wrought by the great masters, if found in his 
 share of loot, that his charger might have trappings 
 to be vain of, and that his own embossed helmet 
 might show the dying enemy the image of Eomulus’ 
 wild beast, tamed at the bidding of our empire’s 
 destiny, with the twin Quirini under the rock, and 
 the nude figure of the god descending with shield 
 and spear and bending over them.^ And so they 
 
84 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XL 108-130 
 
 used to serve up their porridge in Tuscan delf. 
 What silver there was all glittered on their armour. 
 All then, indeed, was such as you might grudge them, 
 if you had the least touch of envy. Then, too, the 
 divine presence in the shrines was closer to us. In 
 those days was a voice once heard near midnight 
 through the heart of Eome, when the Gauls were on 
 their way from the confines of the ocean, and the 
 Gods were doing duty for the seers. Such was the 
 warning that Jupiter gave us such was the care that 
 he bestowed upon the affairs of Latium, while yet in 
 his clay stage, before gold had spoilt him. Those 
 days saw tables of home make and of our native 
 timber, the wood being stacked for such purposes if 
 the east wind had chanced to blow down an old 
 walnut tree. But nowadays the rich find no pleasure 
 in dinner, no flavour in turbot or venison, and think 
 the perfumes and the roses tainted, unless the expanse 
 of table rests on a mass of ivory, a wide-yawning 
 rampant leopard, formed of the tusks which have been 
 sent us by the Pass of Syene, or by the nimble blacka- 
 moors, or the still blacker Indians, or which the 
 monster has shed in some Nabataean forest, when 
 they have grown too large and become a nuisance 
 to his head. This is what raises the appetite and 
 the tone of the digestion. Por in these men’s eyes a 
 silver leg to a table is as an iron ring on the finger. 
 And so I am on my guard against a stuck-up guest. 
 
XI. 131-156 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 85 
 
 who would make comparisons between himself and 
 me, and who scorns my scanty means.^ So wholly 
 innocent am I of even one ounce of ivory : I have 
 not even dice nor draughtmen of that substance: 
 my very knife-handles are only bone. Yet none of 
 my viands get tainted because of that, nor does the 
 fowl cut up any the worse. But neither will there 
 be a professional to whom every school of carving 
 should give way ; no pupil, I say, of Professor 
 Trypherus, in whose class the huge sow's breast, the 
 hare, the boar, the antelope, the fowl of Scythia, the 
 tall flamingo, and Gaetulia’s wild goat — a most 
 choice dinner, albeit of elm-wood — are carved with 
 blunted knives, making their clatter heard all 
 through Subura. My waiter has never learnt to 
 purloin a slice of chamois, nor the wing of a 
 guinea-fowl — a mere tyro he, whose whole life has 
 been as yet in the novice stage, and who is pro- 
 Acient only in filching tiny scraps. A boy, clad 
 simply, yet so as to defy the cold, will hand 
 you homely cups that a few coppers bought. No 
 Phrygian nor Lycian will be there : no slave got 
 from a dealer, and at a high price, too. When you 
 ask for wine,® ask in Latin. All have the same garb ; 
 with straight hair, short cut, and combed to-day only 
 because of ' company.' This is a hardy shepherd's 
 son, a cow-herd's that. This boy of the ' gentle ' looks 
 and the 'gentle' modest bearing — just what those 
 
86 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XI. 156-183 
 
 who wear the flaring purple should be — sighs for his 
 mother, whom he has not seen for so long, and pines, 
 poor fellow, for the little cottage and his friends the 
 kids. He has had no training in lewdness, is not 
 effeminate, nor troubled by false shame. He will 
 hand you wine that was bottled on the hills from 
 which he comes himself, and beneath whose crest he 
 has played; for he is a fellow-countryman of the 
 wine that he hands round. You will look in vain for 
 immodest dancing girls, such as married ladies gaze 
 at with their husbands beside them, though a man 
 would blush even to name such things in their 
 presence. (All the same, women care for such sights 
 more than we.) But this sort of thing is not for 
 people like ourselves. The rattle of the castanets, 
 and songs too foul even for a harlot’s lips, and all 
 the arts of lust may be left to those who have marble 
 floors to spit their wine on after tasting. In their 
 case we make allowance for wealth ; but the dice-box 
 disgraces, and adultery too disgraces, the man of 
 moderate means. When your rich men practise all 
 these same vices they get the name of ' merry blades,’ 
 ‘gay sparks.’ Our feast to-day will offer another 
 kind of treat. The poet of the ‘ Tale of Troy ’ shall be 
 rehearsed,^ and the verses of deep-toned Maro that 
 dispute the palm with his rival’s song. What matters 
 it with what voice such lines as theirs are read ? 
 
 But now a truce to your anxieties ; banish busi- 
 
XT. 183-208 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 87 
 
 ness, and treat yourself to a welcome rest, for you 
 may ® idle the whole day long. Not ^ a word about 
 usury; do not gather spleen in secret against your 
 wife, though she often goes out at early morn and 
 comes home late with suspicious signs about her. 
 Hey, presto! divest yourself of all your troubles 
 before my door. Leave there your housekeeping, 
 and your slaves, and all their breakages and waste. 
 Above all, leave there the ingratitude of friends. 
 Meanwhile, the gazing crowd pays worship to the 
 Idaean rites of the Mighty Mother’s ‘dish -clout.’ 
 As in a triumph, there sits the Praetor, the victim of 
 horse-flesh ; and, if I may say so by leave of the 
 countless, overgrown populace, the Circus holds all 
 Eome to-day; and a din strikes on my ear, from 
 which I gather the success of the green ‘rag.’ For, 
 were it to fail, you’d see this Eome of ours sullen 
 and dazed, as when her consuls were routed on 
 Cannae’s dusty field. Let the young men sit there 
 and gaze at it. It suits their years to bawl, and 
 make bold wagers, and sit beside a smart young 
 woman. Let our wrinkled skin bask in the spring 
 sunshine, and be relieved of the formal gown. Now 
 you may go at once to the public baths, and need not 
 blush, though a whole hour be wanting yet to noon. 
 But you could not do this for five days consecu- 
 tively,^® for ennui is potent even in a life like this. 
 
 (A sparing indulgence sweetens enjoyment^ 
 
88 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XII. 1-17 
 
 XII 
 
 Sweeter to me, Corvinus, than my birthday is this 
 morning’s dawn, when the festal altar of turf is 
 waiting for the beasts pledged to the Gods. It is a 
 snowy ewe-lamb that we lead to sacrifice to 'The 
 Queen ’ ; and every whit as good a fleece shall be 
 bestowed on Her whose weapon is the Mauritanian 
 Gorgon. But the victim reserved for Tarpeian Jove 
 has pulled out the whole length of his rope, and is 
 jerking it impatiently, and tossing his brow. A 
 high-spirited young steer, in truth : ripe for temple 
 and altar and for his baptism of wine : e’en now 
 he feels ashamed of tugging his dam’s udder, and 
 begins to gore the oak trees with his budding horn. 
 If I had large means of my own and equal to my 
 regard, a bull fatter than Hispulla, and lazy from 
 sheer bulk, should be led to his death — not one of 
 your home-bred kine; no, one with blood pro- 
 claiming the rich pastures of Clitumnus, and with 
 a neck that would task a tall slaughterer to deal 
 it the death-blow, should go to the altar in honour 
 of the return of my friend, who is still quaking 
 at the dreadful sufferings he has gone through so 
 lately, and marvelling to find himself alive. For he 
 
XII. 17-41 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 89 
 
 escaped not only the dangers of the sea but thunder- 
 bolts as well. Dense darkness hid the firmament 
 in one unbroken cloud, when a sudden fiash smote 
 the yardarms. Every one fancied that blow had 
 fallen on himself, and, for the moment, in his scare, 
 felt that no kind of wreck could be compared with a 
 fire at sea.^ Just like this, just as grievous, are all 
 the incidents, when a storm gets up in a poem. 
 Look ! Listen ! A new kind of danger. More pity 
 wanted ! even though the rest is but a part of the 
 same mishap,^ which, however dreadful, has been 
 experienced by not a few, as many a shrine testifies 
 with its little votive pictures. Who does not know 
 that painters are fed by Isis? A like misfortune 
 befell friend Catullus. As ^ the hold was now half 
 full of waves, the seas tossing up first one side and 
 then the other, and when all the hoary skipper’s 
 cunning failed to ease the crazy craft,^ our friend 
 proceeded to compromise the matter with the wind 
 at a sacrifice — copying the beaver that emasculates 
 himself in his eagerness to escape even minus his 
 pouch, so well does he understand the virtues of 
 his groin. ‘Over with my property! With all of 
 it ! ’ Catullus kept crying, ready to pitch away his 
 best finery, his purple raiment fit for even a dandy 
 of the Maecenas type, and other stuffs, too, dyed 
 even on the backs of the sheep by the properties 
 of the rich pasture — not but what the fine water by 
 
90 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XII. 42-63 
 
 its mysterious virtues, and the climate of Baetica, 
 too, help somewhat. Nor was he the man to hesitate 
 to despatch his silver plate, his salvers, Parthenius’ 
 handiwork, and his three - gallon bowl, fit for a 
 Pholus with a thirst on him or for Puscus’ wife. 
 Bhrow in the baskets as well, hundreds of dinner 
 plates, and a quantity of embossed cups from which 
 the wily purchaser of Olynthus had drunk. But 
 what other man in the present day — what man, I say, 
 is there, and in what region of the Universe, with 
 the hardihood to hold his life more precious than his 
 plate, his safety than his substance ? ^Certain people 
 do not make a fortune in order to live, but in the 
 blindness of their avarice they live in order to make 
 a fortune^ The chief part of his 'necessaries’ is 
 flung away; yet even these sacrifices do not give 
 relief. Then by stress of difficulty he was reduced 
 to this, to put his mast under treatment by the axe. 
 So he frees himself from his straits! A desperate 
 pass indeed, when the very succour we bring will 
 make the ship smaller ! Go to, now ; commend 
 your life to the winds, and put your faith in a rough- 
 hewn board with four finger-breadths (seven, if the 
 plank be extra thick) between yourself and death. 
 And, together with your bag of bread and your corpu- 
 lent flagon, look betimes to your hatchet — for use in 
 storms ! But as soon as the sea sank and was smooth, 
 and as soon as the voyager’s good luck and destiny 
 
XII. 63-84 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 91 
 
 getting the better of wind and wave smiled upon 
 him, and as soon as the Fates cheered up, and took 
 to spinning white thread with a kindlier hand, and 
 drew a better sort of work off their distaffs, and a 
 breeze scarcely stronger than a ' light air ’ comes to 
 the rescue, then onward sped the poor bow with its 
 own sail (the sole survivor), and the sorry makeshift 
 of a spread of clothes. And now, as the storm-winds 
 die away, hope of life returns with the sunlight. 
 Then they descry the towering height that lulus 
 loved, and preferred for a home to his step-mother’s 
 Lavinium — the height to which the white sow with 
 the paunch that astonished and delighted the 
 Phrygians gave its name. Was there ever such a 
 sight as that famous creature with her thirty paps ? 
 At last he passes within those structures carried 
 through the water and enclosing it, with the Pharos of 
 Tuscany and the arms which run out to meet mid- 
 ocean, and leave Italy far behind, and then bend 
 back again.^ (You will not then wonder so much at 
 the harbours that Nature has given.) However,® as 
 his bark is crippled, the master makes for the calm 
 waters of the sheltered inner basin, which a pinnace 
 of Baiae could navigate, and there the crew, assured 
 of safety, shave their crowns, and take delight in 
 telling the wordy tale of their adventures. 
 
 Go, then, slaves : with reverent tongues and hearts 
 put wreaths upon the shrines and meal upon the 
 
92 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XII. 84-106 
 
 knives, and decorate the altars of soft green turf 
 Anon I will follow, and, after due performance of 
 the chief rite, will come back to my home, where my 
 tiny images with their sleek coat of crumbling wax 
 welcome their slender wreaths. There I will win 
 the favour of our domestic Jove, and will offer 
 incense to my ancestral Lares and scatter violets of 
 every hue. All looks gay ; the front door has 
 mounted its trailing boughs, and in its gala dress 
 joins in the rites with morning lamps. 
 
 Do not regard this with suspicion, Corvimis. 
 Catullus, in honour of whose return I rear all 
 those high altars, possesses three little heirs. I am 
 curious to know who would lay out on so unpromising 
 a friend even an invalided hen that was just closing 
 her eyes on life. Tut! too extravagant an outlay 
 that ! not a quail will ever be laid low for the sake 
 of one who is a father. If Gallitta, the millionaire, 
 and Pacius — who are childless — have begun to be 
 feverish, their vestibules forthwith are lined all over 
 with votive tablets, fixed up in orthodox style, and 
 people start up to vow a hecatomb : not, it is true, 
 of elephants, but only because there are none for 
 sale in Italy, and because monsters of that kind do 
 not breed in Latium, nor anywhere beneath our skies. 
 No, they were brought from the land of the blacks, 
 though now they browse on the Eutulians’ trees and 
 the dominion of Turnus, and they are Caesar’s own 
 
XII. 106-129 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 93 
 
 stud, and by no means disposed to submit to anybody 
 less than an Emperor ; for their progenitors were in 
 the service of Hannibal the Tyrian, and of our 
 national heroes, and the Molossian King, and used to 
 bear on their backs whole cohorts — no small part 
 of the host — very towers stalking into battle. So it 
 is not the fault of Kovius or Pacuvius Hister that yon 
 ‘ Ivory ’ is not led to the altars to fall before Gal- 
 litta’s Lares, as the only victim worthy of such great 
 household Gods and of those who court them. Kay, 
 one of the pair, if you permit the offering, will vow 
 the best grown and goodliest ‘bits of flesh’ in his 
 gang of slaves, or will put the sacrificial band upon 
 his pages and on the brows of his handmaidens, and, 
 should he have in his house an Iphigenia ripe for 
 wedlock, he will offer her to the altar, although he 
 dare not hope for a sly substitution of the hind of 
 Tragedy. Bravo, fellow-countryman! What are a 
 thousand vessels to a legacy ? Por, if the sick man 
 elude the Funeral- Queen, he is imprisoned like a 
 fish in a lobster-pot, and will unmake his will after 
 that really marvellous service, and perhaps will curtly 
 bequeath everything exclusively to Pacuvius, who 
 will then strut along triumphantly, to the discom- 
 fiture of his rivals. And so you see what a fine 
 reward for his pains he gets by cutting the fair 
 Mycenian’s throat. Heaven grant long life to Pacu- 
 vius : yea, a whole Kestor’s span 1 and may he own 
 
94 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XIII. 1-18 
 
 as much as Nero stole, and pile up his gold mountains 
 high, and love no one, and be loved by no one. 
 
 XIII 
 
 Every act that forms an evil precedent is rued by 
 the doer. With this his punishment begins — no 
 criminal is acquitted at the bar of his own conscience, 
 though the Praetor’s urn may have been tampered 
 with, and corrupt influence have gained a verdict. 
 But what do you suppose, Calvinus, the world thinks 
 of that late guilty act, that crime of breach of trust ? 
 However,^ the property that fell to you is not small 
 enough for the weight of a moderate loss to crush you, 
 and yours is an everyday trouble. Such a calamity 
 is familiar to many ; it is quite ^ ordinary one, and 
 drawn at random from fortune’s heap. Let us give 
 over immoderate grief. A man’s indignation should 
 not blaze too high, should not be disproportioned to 
 the blow. Do you find it so hard to bear the very 
 tiniest scrap of trouble, however light ; and does 
 your heart boil with passion because your friend 
 appropriates what was solemnly given on trust ? And 
 this surprises one who has already left behind him 
 sixty years of life, and was born in Fonteius’ consul- 
 ship! Has so much experience of the world no 
 
XIII. 18-42 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 95 
 
 better result ? Noble, no doubt, are the maxims that 
 Philosophy, mistress of Fortune, lays down in her 
 sacred writings. ^Still we think those fortunate, too, 
 whom life has schooled to bear life’s vexations, nor 
 fret beneath the yoke. What day is so complete a 
 holiday as to slacken in supplying theft, treachery, 
 and fraud — the quest of gain by every form of 
 villainy, the winning wealth by dagger or poison- 
 box ?\The good indeed are few, hardly as many as the 
 gates w Thebes or the mouths of the teeming Nile. 
 We live in the nin th century , an era ^orse than the 
 Age of Iron.'^ To match its badness nature can find 
 from her own stores no name, no metal base enough 
 to represent it./ We make appeal to all that’s honest 
 in heaven and earth as noisily as his dole-paid 
 claqueurs applaud Faesidius’ pleading. But say, my 
 venerable friend, whom childhood’s badge suits so 
 well, do you not kn§w the charms of your neighbour’s 
 money? Do you not know what merriment your 
 simple wit awakens in the public, when you press 
 any one to keep from perjury, and to believe in a 
 celestial presence at any shrine or blood-stained altar 
 whatever ? Such were the principles of the old sons 
 of the soil, ere Saturn fled, and, laying by his crown, 
 took to a peasant’s sickle, in days when Juno was 
 a little wench, and Jupiter still lived in a private 
 station among the caves of Ida. No merry-making 
 then above the clouds among the denizens of Heaven, 
 
96 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XIII. 43-67 
 
 no Trojan page and Hercules’ lovely wife for cup- 
 bearers, nor Vulcan to strain the nectar, before he wiped 
 off his hands the soot from his workshop at Lipara. 
 Each God then dined alone. Then there was no such 
 mob of deities as now. The stars, satisfied with a mere 
 handful of divinities, pressed lightlier on poor Atlas. 
 Ho one as yet had won by lot Hell’s gloomy realm. 
 There was no grim Pluto with his Sicilian bride, no 
 Ixion’s wheel, no Furies, no stone of Sisyphus, no fell 
 vulture’s vengeance ; Hell was without a king, and 
 the Ghosts had a jolly time. >fJnscrupulousness was 
 a thing to wonder at in those day^^days when they 
 thought it a heinous sin that death alone could purge, 
 if a young man had failed to rise before his senior, 
 or a boy before a bearded youth, no matter whom, 
 albeit the former had more strawberries at home to 
 look at, and bigger heaps of acorns. So great the 
 dignity of four years’ seniority ; so much alike in 
 honour were venerable age and the incipient beard. 
 But now, if a friend does not disavow a deposit, if 
 he restore the old bag with all its rust, oh what 
 portentous honesty ! it is fit for a place in the 
 Etruscan books, and should be charmed away with 
 a wreath-crowned lamb. If I descry a man of 
 honesty and honour, I liken the anomaly to a 
 hybrid boy, or fishes found under a plough (to 
 its great surprise), or a mule in foal. I feel as 
 much disquieted as though it had rained stones, 
 
XIII. 68-92 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 97 
 
 and a swarm of bees had lit in a trailing cluster on 
 the roof of a temple, or as though a river had flowed 
 to sea, rolling a portentous flood of eddying ^ milk. 
 
 Do you complain that your ten thousand sesterces 
 have been embezzled by perjury and fraud ? What, 
 if your neighbour has lost two hundred thousand in 
 the same way, but unattested ; a third a still larger 
 sum, which a big coffer with every corner crammed 
 could barely hold ? So easy and obvious a thing it 
 is to ignore the witness of the Gods, if no mortal know 
 the fact. Mark his loud denial, his confldent, though 
 feigned, look. He swears by the Sun’s beams and the 
 Tarpeian bolts, by the pike of Mars and the shafts of 
 Cirra’s Prophet God, by the arrows and quiver of the 
 Huntress Maid, by thy trident, Neptune, Father of the 
 Aegean : he throws in, too, the bow of Hercules, 
 Minerva’s javelin — yea, all the weapons in Heaven’s 
 armouries. But if he be a father too, he says, ‘ If 
 not, may my son be boiled, and may I have to eat 
 his poor head, soused in Egyptian vinegar !’ 
 
 Some there are who assign everything to the 
 caprice of Fortune, and believe that no ruler controls 
 the Universe, and that it is Nature that regulates the 
 revolutions of days and years ; and so they have no 
 misgiving in touching any altar you please. Another 
 fears that punishment attends on crime. He believes 
 in Gods, yet, while perjuring himself, thus reasons in 
 his heart: ‘Let Isis pass what sentence she please 
 H 
 
98 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL xiii. 92-116 
 
 upon my body, and smite my eyes with the rattle of 
 her wrath, if only, when I lose my sight, I clutch the 
 gold, the receipt of which I disavow. Consumption, 
 festering sores, and mutilated leg are a fair price to 
 pay for that. Even a Ladas, if penniless, should not 
 hesitate (unless, indeed, he needs Anticyra’s drug or 
 the services of Archigenes) to pray for the gout of the 
 wealthy. For what avail the fame of fleetness, what 
 the branches of Olympian olive — with starvation? 
 Though the Gods’ wrath be heavy, yet certainly it is 
 slow. If, then, they are careful to punish every cul- 
 prit, when will they reach me ? But haply, too, I 
 shall find the Deity indulgent. He often pardons 
 faults like this. Many commit like crimes with 
 varying results. One man’s rascality earns the gibbet, 
 another’s wins the crown.’ And so he steels his 
 heart if it flutter with the horror of a dreadful crime, 
 and if you challenge him to come to a holy shrine, he 
 leads the way : nay, more, is eager to convey you 
 there, and press you to the test ; for when a bad 
 cause finds support in great effrontery, it is thought by 
 many conscious innocence. Yet all the while he is 
 playing a farce like witty Catullus’ runaway slave. 
 Poor man, you bawl loud enough to drown the voice 
 of Stentor, nay, even as loudly as Homer’s Mars, ' 0 
 Jupiter, dost hear all that, and yet not ope thy lips, 
 when, even though only marble or brass, thou shouldst 
 have broken silence ? Else, why do we empty in thy 
 
XIII. 116-139 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 99 
 
 censer our paper bag of holy incense, and offer 
 minced calf s liver and pig’s white chitterlings ? As 
 far as I can see, there is nought to choose between 
 the images of you Gods and the statue of a Vagellius.’ 
 Hear, on the other hand, what comfort can be 
 offered even by one unread alike in Cynic lore and the 
 maxims of the Stoics (differentiated from Cynicism 
 by wearing a shirt), by one who does not look up to 
 Epicurus, so happy in the shrubberies of his tiny 
 garden. Let desperate cases be treated by great 
 physicians ; but you may trust your vein even to a 
 pupil of Philippus. If you can point to no crime so 
 detestable throughout the world, I have no more to 
 say. I do not forbid you to thump your breast with 
 clenched fist, nor to beat your brow with open palm. 
 Of course we must shut up our house when suffering 
 from a loss, and loss of money is sorrowed for with 
 more domestic wailing and more ado than loss by 
 death. For under this calamity none counterfeit 
 distress : no one contents himself with slitting the 
 edge of his tunic and torturing his eyes to force a 
 tear. The loss of money is bewailed with genuine 
 tears. But, if you see at every judgment-seat the 
 like complaints abounding : if, after their own bills 
 have been read out ten times over on the opposite 
 side, they say the bond is forged, and the tablets 
 worthless — convicted, as they are, by their own writ- 
 ing and their signet, the queen of sardonyxes, treasured 
 
100 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL xiii. 139-164 
 
 up in an ivory casket — think you, my fine gentleman, 
 to be exempted from the common lot because you are 
 a white hen’s cockerel, and we but sorry chickens, 
 hatched of unlucky eggs? Your suffering is but 
 slight, and one you could endure with moderate 
 chagrin, if you but glanced at more serious crimes. 
 Compare the hiring an assassin, or a stealthy attempt 
 with the aid of sulphur at incendiarism — lighting the 
 fire, too, at the street-door. Compare, too, the case 
 of those who carry off some ancient temple’s mas- 
 sive chalices with their venerable rust, a nation’s gifts, 
 or crowns that a monarch of old dedicated. But if 
 there be none such, a meaner temple-burglar starts 
 up to scrape a gilded Hercules’ thigh and Neptune’s 
 face itself, and strip from Castor his gold leaf. Need 
 he hesitate, when it is no uncommon thing for him 
 to melt a Thunderer down entire ? ^ Compare, besides, 
 the poison-makers and the poison-mongers ; and that 
 other who has to be sent to sea in a cow’s hide with an 
 innocent ape, that has the misfortune to be confined 
 along with him. Yet what a fraction this of the 
 crimes that Gallicus, the City Prefect, hears of from 
 rise of Lucifer to set of Sun ! If you w^ould know the 
 dispositions of mankind, that single building is enough. 
 Spend a few days therein, and when you leave it call 
 yourself a subject for pity — if you dare. In the Alps, 
 who wonders at goitre ? or in Meroe, at the mother’s 
 breast bigger than her chubby baby ? Who was ever 
 
XIII. 164-187 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 101 
 
 astounded at a German with blue eyes, and at his 
 yellow hair, with his greasy curls twisted in tufts ? 
 Simply because they are all of a common type. To 
 meet the screaming cloud of swooping Thracian birds 
 the Pigmy warrior rushes in his dwarfish armour. 
 Next moment, succumbing to his foe, he is borne 
 through the air, and swept away by a savage crane with 
 its crooked talons. If you saw this among ourselves, 
 you would be convulsed with laughter; but there, 
 though like encounters are continually^ witnessed, 
 none laugh, because the whole army there does not 
 exceed a foot in height. 
 
 Shall there, then, be no punishment for the per- 
 jured creature — for his horrible treachery ? Suppose 
 him dragged off forthwith with a heavy chain upon 
 him, and executed to our order (what more could 
 vengeance wish ?) ; yet still that loss remains, nor will 
 you ever get the trust-money back ; while the con- 
 solation of some drops of blood from his headless 
 corpse will bring hatred with it. ' Ay, but revenge is a 
 boon sweeter than life itself.’ Why, that is what the 
 ignorant say, whose passions you may see blaze up on 
 trifling provocation (at times with none at all) ; in- 
 deed, however insignificant the occasion, it is suffi- 
 cient to enrage them. Ohrysippus w’ill not agree 
 with you, nor gentle-tempered Thales, nor the old sage 
 who lived hard by Hymettus, that hill of sweets, and 
 who in his cruel bondage would have been loth to share 
 
102 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL xiii. 187-210 
 
 with his accuser his own dose of hemlock. For blest 
 Philosophy divests us by degrees of almost every 
 natural taint and every wrong belief. She gives us 
 our first lesson in what is right. In fact, vindictive- 
 ness is ever the delight of stunted, weak, mean spirits, 
 as you may immediately infer from this, that no one 
 feels more pleasure than a woman in revenge. But 
 why suppose they have escaped, whom the guilty 
 memory of their dreadful crime keeps in a state of 
 terror, and smites with noiseless whip — with the 
 invisible scourge that a torturing conscience wields ? 
 No, theirs is a sharp punishment, a much more piti- 
 less one than any of those invented by stern Caedicius 
 and Ehadamanthus — to bear their accuser in their 
 breast ^ night and day. The Pythian Prophetess, in 
 answer to a certain Spartan, said he should some day 
 be punished, because he had harboured the thought 
 of embezzling trust-money, and supporting the fraud 
 by perjury ; for he was inquiring what was the mind 
 of Heaven, and if Apollo advised the crime. And 
 so from cowardice, not conscience, he gave it back, 
 yet furnished proof that every utterance from the 
 shrine was true and worthy of that fane ; for he was 
 cut off, and all his children with him, and his house- 
 hold, and all his relatives, however remote the line of 
 their kinship. Such punishment attends the mere 
 desire to sin ; for he who in secret meditates a crime 
 in his heart incurs the guilt of the deed. And 
 
XIII. 210-233 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 103 
 
 what, if he has carried out his ends ? Then his dis- 
 quietude knows no relief, abating not even at meal- 
 times, when his mouth is parched as if with fever, 
 and the food clings and swells between his molars. 
 Poor wretch, he spits out the wines of Setia ^ ; the 
 costly Alban mellowed by old age disgusts him. Offer 
 him a choicer brand ; still clouds of wrinkles gather 
 on his brow, such as tart Falernian might cause. At 
 night — if so be his solicitude has vouchsafed him a 
 little doze, and, after tossing all over the couch, his 
 limbs at last are resting — straightway he sees in a 
 dream the shrine and altars of the outraged God, and 
 what oppresses his heart with a peculiar horror — a 
 vision of yourself ! Tour form, weird and colossal, 
 scares him with terror, and drives him to a confession. 
 It is such as he that quake and blench at every 
 lightning-flash, and when it thunders, faint with fear 
 even at the firmament’s first rumble, as though not 
 from mere chance or violence of wind, but in wrath and 
 judgment the flame was falling on the earth. If the 
 last storm did no hurt, the next is feared with more pro- 
 found anxiety, as though this lull was but a reprieve. 
 And then, too, the instant that they feel the pain of 
 pleurisy, with its fever and sleeplessness, these they 
 regard as slings and arrows of the Gods, and think 
 the sickness has been aimed at their frames by an 
 offended Heaven. They dare not vow to the shrine a 
 bleating lamb, or promise a cock’s comb to their 
 
104 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XIII. 233-249 
 
 Household Gods ; for what hope is left to the villain's 
 sick couch ? Nay, what victim is not more worthy 
 to live ? The nature of the bad is for the most part 
 fickle and unstable. When they commit the sin they 
 are supported by daring ; the difference betwixt right 
 and wrong they begin to feel too late, when their 
 crimes are accomplished. But still nature fixed and 
 unalterable harks back to the habits reprobated ; for 
 who ever yet prescribed a limit to his sins ? or when 
 has any one gained back the blush once banished from 
 his brazen face ? What man have you yet seen con- 
 tent himself with one misdeed ? Our perjured friend 
 will step into the trap, will make acquaintance with 
 the hangman's hook in the dark prison, or with some 
 cliff in the Aegean, where exiles of the first quality 
 swarm upon the crags. You will exult in the bitter 
 punishment of one you hate, and then at length will 
 joyfully admit that none of the Gods is either deaf 
 or like ' the sightless seer.' 
 
 XIV 
 
 Fuscinus, there are many acts meriting infamy and 
 imprinting a lasting stain on Nature's fair creations, 
 which parents of themselves suggest and pass on to 
 their boys. If your old age finds solace in the ruinous 
 dice, your heir takes to gambling while still wearing 
 
XIV. 5-29 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 105 
 
 the boy’s badge, and rattles the missiles of your war- 
 fare in his miniature dice-box. Nor will any of his kin 
 be allowed to hope better things of a young man who 
 has learnt from the teachings of a good-for-nothing 
 parent and a hoary-headed glutton how to peel truffles, 
 and dress mushrooms, and set the beccaficoes a-swim- 
 ming in his papa’s sauce. When seven years have 
 passed over the boy’s head, before his second crop of 
 teeth has all sprung up, though you set bearded sages 
 at him, a thousand at each elbow, still he will desire 
 always to dine in sumptuous style, and to have no 
 decline in the glories of his kitchen. Does Eutilus 
 enjoin gentleness and leniency towards trivial faults ? 
 Does he think that slaves’ souls and bodies have like 
 constituents and common elements with ours ? Or does 
 he not rather teach cruelty, this Eutilus, who delights 
 in the blood-curdling hiss of the knout, preferring the 
 music of the lash to all the Sirens’ songs — an Anti- 
 phates and Polyphemus to his cowering household — 
 then at his happiest when the torturer is called and 
 some one is branded with the hot iron, all on account 
 of a pair of towels ? What does his joy in the clanking 
 of chains suggest to his son ? Or his strange delight in 
 branded gangs and country bridewells ? Do you expect 
 Larga’s daughter to be moral, when she can never 
 rehearse her mother’s paramours however rapidly, 
 string them together however trippingly, without full 
 thirty gasps for breath ? While still a girl she was 
 
106 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XIV. 29-54 
 
 mamma's accomplice ; and now, at her dictation, she 
 fills her own tiny tablets, and sends them to her 
 partners in sin by the same disreputable go-betweens. 
 Such is Nature's law. Bad home-examples taint more 
 quickly, because they enter our minds with weightier 
 authority. Perhaps they may be spurned by a youth 
 or two, whose hearts the Titan with gracious purpose 
 moulded of finer clay ; but the rest, instead of flee- 
 ing, follow their fathers' footprints, and are drawn on 
 in the track of habitual crime so long familiar to their 
 eyes. Therefore refrain from all that merits blame. 
 There is at any rate one motive that commands this 
 course — the fear lest our own offspring copy our vice ; 
 for all of us are easily schooled to imitate what is base 
 and bad ; you will find a Catiline in any nation, under 
 any sky, but nowhere a Brutus, no, nor a Cato.^ 
 Let no foul word or sight come nigh the threshold 
 where dwells the father of a family.^ Away with the 
 panders' wenches ! Away with the songs of that night- 
 bird the parasite! You owe your boy the profoundest 
 respect. If meditating aught that is base, despise not 
 your boy's tender years ; but let the image of your 
 infant son arrest you on the verge of sin. For should 
 he some day do a deed to earn the censor's wrath, 
 and show himself not only your counterpart in face 
 and figure, but the heir of your character as well — 
 one to follow in your steps, and sin every sin in worse 
 degree — you will chide and scold him, no doubt, with 
 
XIV. 54-78 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 107 
 
 loud reproaches, and then proceed to change your will. 
 But whence that boldness, whence those parental 
 rights, when you do worse, despite your old age, and 
 though the windy ^ cupping-instrument has long been 
 on the look-out for that brainless pate of yours ? 
 
 If company is coming, none of your people will 
 have any rest. ‘ Sweep the pavement ! Let me see the 
 pillars glistening ! Down with that shrivelled spider 
 and all her web ! Ho ! you ! polish the plain silver, 
 and you the figured cups !’ So the master storms at 
 the top of his voice, urging them on, with rod in 
 hand. Poor wretch! are you in such a fidget lest 
 the hall, soiled with dogs’ droppings, may offend your 
 friend’s eye, when he comes, and lest the vestibule be 
 splashed with mud — all of which one little page with 
 one half-peck of sawdust puts to rights — but yet 
 bestow no thought on this, that your son’s eye shall 
 rest upon a household unsullied, stainless, innocent 
 of vice ? We thank you that you gave a citizen to 
 your country and your people, if you make him 
 worthy of that country, helpful to its soil, helpful 
 in public work in peace and war ; for it will matter 
 much in what lessons and principles you train 
 him. The stork supports her young with snakes and 
 lizards found in lonely wilds, and when full-fledged 
 they seek the same kind of prey. The vulture speeds 
 from the gibbet, and dead horse, and dog, home to its 
 young, and bears to them their share of the carcase. 
 
108 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL xiv. 79-103 
 
 Such, therefore, is the food of the young vulture when 
 it too grows up, and forages for itself, and makes a 
 nest in a tree of its own ; whereas the noble birds 
 that are Jove’s ministers chase in the woods the hare 
 or wild goat, with the flesh of which they supply their 
 nest ; but when their brood is full-grown and has 
 taken to the air, impelled by hunger, it swoops upon the 
 prey which it flrst tasted when it cracked its shell. 
 
 Cretonius had a craze for building. Now on 
 Gaeta’s winding shore, and now on Tibur’s topmost 
 heights, or on Praeneste’s hills, he reared his high- 
 roofed villas with marbles brought from Greece or 
 farther still, dwarfing both Fortune’s shrine and that 
 of Hercules just as Eunuch Posides eclipsed our 
 own Capitol. Thus grandly housed, Cretonius spent 
 his cash and wrecked his fortunes. Yet still the 
 amount of the residue was far from small ; but all 
 of this was madly squandered by the son in raising 
 up new villas of still finer stone. 
 
 Some, to whom Fortune has given a father super- 
 stitious about Sabbaths, are worshippers of nought 
 except the clouds and the divine sky, and think the 
 flesh of swine (from which their fathers shrank) 
 exactly on a par with that of man. Soon they are 
 also circumcised. But, trained to scorn the laws of 
 Pome, they learn by heart, obey, and reverence the 
 Jewish code, the whole of that which Moses in his 
 mystic volume handed down — to show the way to 
 
XIV. 103-127 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 109 
 
 none but fellow-worshippers, to guide none but the 
 circumcised to the well they seek. The fault lies 
 with the father, who made of every seventh day a day 
 of sloth and unconcerned with any of life’s interests. 
 
 But other vices youths copy of themselves ; avarice 
 and avarice alone they are commanded to practise, 
 even against their will. For its enormity escapes 
 attention through its virtuous guise and semblance ; 
 since its demeanour is grave, its garb and look 
 austere ; and the skinflint may get unqualified praise 
 as a thrifty soul, a frugal man, whose money is in surer 
 keeping than if the hoard were guarded by Hesperian 
 or Colchian dragon. Besides, the multitude think 
 him of whom I speak a master of the ‘ Art of Getting’; 
 and certainly these are the craftsmen who make a for- 
 tune grow beneath their hand, yes, grow by all means, 
 fair and foul alike. The anvil ever at work and forge 
 always alight increase its bulk. And so the father, 
 too, considers a miser’s to be a happy disposition; 
 and, worshipping money, and reflecting that never 
 was there an instance of a poor man ‘well off,’ 
 counsels his sons to follow that path, and join that 
 school of Philosophers. Vice, so to say, has its own 
 alphabet; in this he trains them first, and makes 
 them learn by rote the pettiest meannesses, and soon 
 he instils the unquenchable desire for money-getting. 
 With a short measure he pinches his slaves’ bellies, 
 not forgetting to stint himself too. Never, indeed. 
 
110 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL xiv. 127-152 
 
 can he bear to eat at once all the decaying scraps of 
 mouldy bread; for it is his practice, even in the 
 middle of September, to save the mince of yesterday, 
 and put by under his seal for to-morrow’s dinner, 
 ay, even in summer time, the dish of beans and 
 fragments of lacertus or half a stale shad, and to lock 
 up the cut -leek parings^ — first counting them! 
 To such a meal a beggar from a bridge will refuse 
 an invitation. But why amass wealth at cost of such 
 pain, when it is sheer madness, transparent lunacy, 
 to live a pauper’s life, so as to die a millionaire? 
 Meantime, while the money-bag swells, filled to the 
 mouth, the love of lucre is growing fast as the wealth 
 itself has grown; he who has it not covets it least. And 
 so you get a second country-house, now that one estate 
 does not suffice ; and you keep wishing to extend your 
 bounds, and thinking your neighbour’s corn-field a 
 bigger and a better than your own. That, too, you seek 
 to buy : his plantations, and his hill with its pale olive 
 woods ; but, if no price can tempt the owner, you 
 will send by night upon his green corn-lands your 
 lean kine and your fagged and famished team, nor 
 drive them home till all the standing crop has made 
 its way into their ravenous bellies ; you would think 
 that sickles did the work. You could scarce say 
 how many have to mourn over mischief of such sort, 
 how many properties are forced upon the market by 
 outrages like this. ' But what a scandal ! What an 
 
XIV. 152-175 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 111 
 
 Ugly tale for rumour to blare abroad !' ‘ What 
 
 harm V is his reply. ‘ I care less than a pea-pod for the 
 praise of my neighbour throughout all the country- 
 side, if I am to reap only a poor handful of corn from 
 a scanty farm.’ No doubt you will be free from 
 sickness and infirmity : you will be exempt from 
 grief and care : long years of life with happier lot 
 from this time forward will be yours, if only you be 
 sole owner of as much ploughed land as the Koman 
 people tilled under Tatius’ rule. In later days even 
 worn-out veterans, who took the knocks of Cartha- 
 ginian warfare or of the fierce Pyrrhus and his 
 Molossian sabres, received at length, as pay for their 
 many wounds, barely two acres each. And yet to 
 none of them did such return for their blood and toil 
 appear in any case beneath their merits, nor like a 
 breach of faith by a thankless country. A little plot 
 like that would satisfy the goodman himself and the 
 inmates of his hut, where lay a wife in childbed, 
 with four youngsters romping round — one slave boy, 
 and three young masters, whose grown-up brothers 
 would find, on their return from trenching or from 
 ploughing, a later and more plentiful meal in the big 
 steaming pots of porridge. But nowadays a piece 
 of land like that is not enough for our pleasure- 
 ground. Hence the main source of crime. No 
 vice of the human heart has mixed more poison, 
 or handles oftener the assassin’s knife, than savaize 
 
112 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL xiv. 175-201 
 
 greed for boundless wealth. For he who would be 
 rich would be rich quickly ; but what respect for law, 
 what fear, what shame is ever found in one who makes 
 haste to be rich ? ' Live in contentment with your 
 
 huts and hills, my lads V the old Marsian, Hernican, 
 or Vestinian would say in days of yore. ‘ Let us with 
 the plough win bread sufficing for our board. This 
 gains the blessing of the rural Gods, by whose help and 
 favour there came to man disdain of the old-fashioned 
 oak, after the welcome boon of corn. He will not 
 hanker for forbidden pleasures who feels no shame in 
 wearing country high-lows in the frost, and who with 
 furs reversed sends the east wind about its business. It 
 is that outlandish purple, whatever it be, of which we 
 know nothing, that leads to sin and turpitude.’ So those 
 old worthies taught their children. But nowadays, even 
 after autumn’s close, a father rouses with a shout his 
 slumbering son at midnight : ‘ Get up, lad : take your 
 tablets : write : prepare your pleas : peruse the old 
 red-lettered Acts : or else memorialise for a commis- 
 sion. But see that Laelius observes your head inno- 
 cent of the comb, and your hirsute nostrils, and marks 
 admiringly your breadth of shoulder. Overthrow the 
 Moorish huts or the Brigantian forts — that so your 
 sixtieth year may bring you the eagle and a fortune. 
 Or, if you hate the camp’s monotonous toil, if sound 
 of horn and clarion upset your stomach with fright, 
 procure some stock you may retail for half as 
 
XIV. 201-227 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 113 
 
 much again ; and do not turn up your nose at any- 
 thing saleable, although tabooed on our side of Tiber. 
 And do not suppose that there is anything to choose 
 between perfumery and hides. Money smells sweet, 
 however got. Have ever on your lips this truth, worthy 
 of a poet of Heaven, ay, of Jove himself, ''None ask 
 how you get ; but get you must.’’ ’ This old withered 
 nurses teach to boys before they walk ; and this the 
 girls all learn before their A, B, C. This is the ad- 
 monition which I might address to any father who was 
 urging such like counsels : ' Say, fool, who spurs you 
 on ? I guarantee the pupil will beat his master : you 
 may go off, and set your mind at rest. You will be out- 
 done by him, as Telamon was surpassed by Ajax, and 
 Peleus outdone by Achilles. Allowfor his tender years."' 
 The taint of full-blown vice has not yet struck to the 
 bone. But, when he has begun to comb his beard, and 
 introduce it to a long razor’s edge, he will be a per- 
 jured witness, and for a trifle sell his oath, with hand 
 on Ceres’ foot and altar. Count your son’s wife as dead 
 and buried, if she passes your threshold with fateful 
 dowry. Ha 1 what hands are those strangling her in 
 her sleep ! What you would compass sea and land 
 to gain he will make his way to by a shorter path. 
 A monstrous crime gives trifling trouble. You will 
 say some day, " I never taught him this, nor gave such 
 counsel.” And yet in you is the fount and source 
 of his depravity ; for he who has inspired a lust for 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL xiv. 227-251 
 
 inordinate wealth, and brings his sons up to be misers by 
 his sinister counsels, and teaches them to double their 
 estates by fraud,® such a one relieves them from control, 
 and flings loose reins to the chariot. If you recall the 
 youth now, he cannot stop. Deaf to your warning, he 
 sweeps along, leaving the turning-posts far behind. No 
 one is satisfied to sin only just so much as you allow. 
 So sure are men to give themselves more latitude. 
 Assure a youth that he is a fool who would give to a 
 friend or would raise and set upon his feet a poor 
 relation ; you teach him thus to rob, to swindle, and to 
 win by every form of crime that wealth for which 
 your love is as strong as was the love of country in 
 the Decii’s hearts ; as strong (if true those tales of 
 Greece) as Menoeceus felt for Thebes, where shielded 
 hosts sprout up in furrows from seed of dragon’s 
 teeth, and take at once to deadly strife, as if a bugler 
 rose beside them. And so you will see the fire, the 
 seeds of which you yourself supplied, blazing far and 
 near and carrying all before it ; nor will you, poor 
 wretch, be spared, and there, in his own den, the 
 lion you have reared will with a mighty roar despatch 
 his terrified keeper. Your horoscope is known to 
 the astrologers ; but it is wearisome to wait upon the 
 tardy distaff. So you must die before your thread 
 of life is broken off. Even at this moment you are 
 standing in his light and baulking his wishes. Already 
 your son is plagued with your length of years, as 
 
XIV. 251-275 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 115 
 
 tedious as a stag’s. Seek an Archigenes at once, and 
 buy the '' Mithridatic Mixture,” if ever you would 
 again pluck a fig, or even cull the roses of another 
 spring. You ought to have by you the antidote which 
 every father and king should take before his meals.’ 
 
 I now proceed to point out to you a capital diver- 
 sion, with which no play and no sumptuous Praetor’s 
 show can bear comparison, to watch at what peril to 
 life a man buys the increase of his substance, his 
 pile of money-bags in brass-bound coffers, and his 
 hoard of gold that Castor the Watchman^ must take 
 in charge, now that Mars, the Avenging God, has 
 actually lost his helmet, and failed to save his own 
 effects. You may leave, then, all the shows of Flora, 
 Ceres, and Cybele. Far finer is the farce of human 
 life. What! is there more amusement in figures 
 propelled from a spring-board, and in a practised 
 tight-rope dancer, than in the sight that you afford, 
 for ever hanging about that Cilician craft, and mak- 
 ing it your house — to be everlastingly tossed about by 
 Mistral and Sirocco — and braving everything, to 
 drive a low trade in odoriferous bags, gloating over < 
 your cargoes of full-bodied raisin-wine and jars — 
 J ove’s fellow-burghers from Crete’s classic shore ? But 
 he, as he paces on with hazardous step, by that wage 
 of his gets food, and by that rope of his keeps off the 
 cold and hunger. You risk your life to gain a thou- 
 sandth talent or a hundredth villa. Behold the 
 
116 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL xiv. 275-298 
 
 harbours and Ocean itself crowded with mighty ships ! 
 Most people are now at sea. A fleet will go wher- 
 ever hope of gain may call, and not only will it dance 
 over the Carpathian and Gaetulian seas, but, leaving 
 Calpe far behind, it will hear the Sun God hissing as 
 he dips in Hercules’ surge. It is well worth while 
 to have paid a visit to the Ocean monsters and the 
 young folks of the sea, in order to return to your 
 home with well-crammed money-bags — with swelling 
 port and swollen purse. Each head is turned with 
 its own particular craze. One in his sister’s arms is 
 in the ‘horrors’ at the Furies’ scowls and fire- 
 brands ; another stabs an ox, and thinks its lowing 
 the voice of Agamemnon or of the Prince of Ithaca. 
 He may have mercy on his shirts and coats, still that 
 man needs a guardian who crams a ship with mer- 
 chandise up to the bulwark’s edge — kept from a watery 
 grave by one plank’s breadth ; while some silver, 
 carved into tiny heads and legends, supplies the only 
 motive for all that pain and peril ! The rain comes 
 on with lightning. ‘ Let go the cable,’ cries the 
 owner of the corn or pepper that has been bought up. 
 ‘ There is nothing menacing in the colour of the sky 
 nor in yon dark cloud-rack ; it is summer thunder.’ 
 This very night mayhap the wretch, swept from his 
 foundering bark, will be engulfed and overwhelmed 
 in billows, clutching his purse with his left hand and 
 his teeth. But ^ all in vain — the man, whose wishes 
 
XIV. 298-321 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 117 
 
 SO recently could not be satisfied with all the gold 
 washed down by the Tagus and Pactolus’ red sands, 
 will now be satisfied with the rags that hide his 
 shivering loins and with a scanty meal, the while he 
 begs a copper ^ for a shipwrecked sailor,’ and makes 
 a living for himself with a picture of the storm. 
 
 Wealth so hardly earned demands still greater care 
 and anxiety to keep. It is wretched work — this 
 guarding a big fortune. Licinus, the millionaire, 
 posts a regiment of his slaves to range the fire-buckets 
 and keep night-watch, in a fever of anxiety for the 
 amber, and the statues (all his own), and for his 
 Phrygian shafts, his ivory, and broad slabs of tortoise- 
 shell. The naked Cynic’s tub does not take fire. 
 Break it, he will get a new house made to-morrow — 
 even^^ the old one, if soldered, will still serve. Alex- 
 ander, gazing upon that vessel’s illustrious tenant, felt 
 how much happier was he, with no desires, than 
 himself, who craved the whole world for his own, and 
 was foredoomed to perils that might well counterpoise 
 his glories. (Ah, Fortune ! thou hast no divinity, if 
 Wisdom be with us. It is we, it is we who deify 
 thee.) Yet still, if any ask of me what measure of 
 wealth is enough, then would I say : ‘ Enough to 
 meet the calls of hunger, thirst, and cold ; as much 
 as was enough for thee, Epicurus, in thy modest 
 garden : as much as the Household Gods of Socrates 
 received in earlier days, Never is Nature’s voice 
 
118 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XIV. 321-331 
 
 opposed to Wisdom's . Think you, I bind you down 
 by too ascetic patterns ? Then infuse something of our 
 modern notions. Make the sum that which Otho’s 
 law thinks worthy of '' The Fourteen Eows." If this 
 still makes you frown and pout, take that which 
 represents two knights, nay, make up a third four 
 hundred thousand. If I have not yet filled your lap, 
 if it still yawns for more, not even Croesus' wealth nor 
 Persia's Empire will content your heart, no, nor the 
 riches of Narcissus, whose every whim the Caesar 
 Claudius humoured, whose every order he obeyed — 
 ^^yes, even to the killing of his consort V 
 
 XV 
 
 VoLUSius Bithynicus, who does not know the kind 
 of monsters that that mad country Egypt wor- 
 ships? One district adores the crocodile, another 
 quakes before an ibis with its maw full of snakes. 
 The image of the holy ape with the long tail flashes 
 its golden rays where Memnon broken in twain 
 makes music on the wizard chords, and where ancient 
 Thebes with her hundred gates lies in ruins. Here 
 whole towns worship cats, there river -fish, there 
 the dog, but none Diana Leek and onion it is 
 
XV. 9-20 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 119 
 
 impious to desecrate or lacerate with a tooth. What 
 a religious race, that has such Gods a- sprouting 
 in its gardens ! At every table the fleecy tribe is 
 tabooed. There it is a crime to spill the blood 
 of the she-goat’s young, while it is lawful to feed on 
 human flesh. When Ulysses over the supper-table 
 told the amazed Alcinous of an atrocity of this kind, 
 he found he had roused the gall, or maybe the ridi- 
 cule, of some of the guests, and figured as a lying 
 charlatan. ^ Is there no one to pitch this fellow into 
 the sea, with his inventions of savage Laestrygones and 
 Cyclopes — deserving as he does a real Charybdis with 
 a vengeance? I would sooner swallow his tale of 
 Scylla, or of the sides of the Dark Crags clashing to- 
 gether, or of the skins full of storms, or of Elpenor 
 receiving a gentle tap from Circe and falling a-grunt- 
 ing in concert with his shipmates turned into pigs. 
 Did he take the Phaeacian people for such num- 
 skulls ? ’ Even thus might one of them have fairly 
 spoken while still sober — one who had quaffed his 
 wine but sparingly from the Corcyrean bowl ; for the 
 man of Ithaca recited this his tale upon his own 
 authority, unsupported by witnesses. Though strange 
 the tale that I will tell, yet it is of things done but 
 the other day in Juncus’ consulship, away beyond the 
 walls of parched-up Coptus — a tale of a people's 
 crime, of worse horrors than all the scenes of tragedy ; 
 for though you may overhaul all tragic themes from 
 
120 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XV. 30-51 
 
 the age of Pyrrha, you will find the poets of tragedy 
 never bring on a nation committing a murder. 
 Let me, then, offer you a sample of what barbarous 
 cruelty has done for our own generation. 
 
 Between the neighbours Ombi and Tentyra there is 
 still a hot and long-standing feud of remote origin, an 
 undying rancour, and incurable soreness. The animos- 
 ity of the mob on both sides is chiefiy due to this, that 
 each place dislikes its neighbour’s religion, holding 
 that no Gods should be recognised but those of its 
 own cult. However, it was the holiday time of one 
 of the two peoples, and the chance seemed to all the 
 great men and the rulers of the hostile tribe one to 
 be snatched at, to prevent their enemies enjoying 
 their day of mirth and festivity^ and the ecstasy of a 
 big feed, with tables laid out at the temples and 
 crossways, and the couches not meant for sleep 
 remaining spread all night and day — still found 
 there sometimes by the seventh morning’s sun. 
 (Egypt, indeed, is savage enough, yet in self-indul- 
 gence, so far as I have myself observed, its mob of 
 barbarians does not yield to infamous Canopus.) Add 
 this, too, that victory is easy to gain over men 
 drunk, stammering, and staggering in their cups. See, 
 on the one side, actually grown men dancing to a 
 negro piper, perfumes (such as they are !), fiowers, 
 and no lack of garlands on their heads ; on the 
 other side, hate — and an empty stomach ! But, to 
 
XV. 51-74 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 121 
 
 proceed, their passions are on fire, and taunts are the 
 first thing heard — the bugle-call to the fray. Then 
 with answering cheers they charge, and, failing 
 weapons, hare hands do the cruel work. Few are 
 the cheeks ungashed. Scarcely one — indeed, none — 
 in all the crowd of combatants has got a whole nose 
 left. And now all through the lines one might see 
 mutilated faces, features disfigured, cheeks cut open 
 and the bones starting out, fists dripping with the blood 
 from men’s eyes. Still they think themselves only 
 sporting, only like children playing at soldiers, because 
 there are no trampled corpses. And, indeed, what is 
 the good of all those thousands of fighting mobsmen 
 if none are to be killed ? And so they charge more 
 furiously, and now set to hurling stones, which with 
 bended arms they had gathered on the ground (handy 
 weapons for a riot) ; but no such stone as Turnus 
 and Ajax hurled, none heavy as that with which the 
 son of Tydeus smote Aeneas’ hip, but such as hands 
 quite different from theirs — the creation of our own 
 age — could fling. For this race of ours was already 
 on the wane even in Homer’s lifetime. The men the 
 Earth breeds nowadays are not merely vicious, but 
 puny ; so any God that ever deigned to look at them 
 laughs at, as well as hates, them. 
 
 But to get back my story from this digression. 
 When, after being reinforced, one side dares to draw 
 the sword and to renew the fight with a discharge of 
 
122 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XV. 74-98 
 
 arrows, the dwellers in Tentyra, near neighbour to 
 the palm-groves, show their backs in headlong flight 
 to the men of Ombi who are on their heels. At this 
 point ^ one man in excess of terror overruns himself, 
 slips, and is taken. Then the mob of conquerors cut 
 him up into many scraps and morsels, so that the single 
 corpse might serve for the whole multitude, and then 
 they ate up the whole of him and picked the bones, 
 without cooking him either in a seething-pot or on a 
 spit — such very tiresome, tedious work they thought 
 it to wait for a Are, being well contented with the 
 carcase raw ! Here we may well rejoice they did not 
 desecrate the fire Prometheus stole from Heaven’s 
 citadel and gave to Earth. Congratulations, Element ! 
 You must be glad, I am sure. However, the man 
 who did not flinch from chewing ‘ corpse ’ never ate 
 anything with greater gusto than that meat. Ask 
 not nor wonder if, when the crime was one so great, 
 only the first ^ to taste it relished it. I tell you, the 
 last who stood there waiting, when the whole corpse 
 was now consumed, scraped his fingers along the 
 ground, and secured himself a taste of blood. The 
 Vascones, in days of old, so runs the tale, prolonged 
 their lives on food like this. But then the case vras 
 different. For, while there there was Fortune’s spite, 
 war’s extremities, a desperate plight, the frightful 
 famine of a long blockade, the instance, of which I now 
 speak, of this kind of feeding should wake our pity. 
 
XV. 98-119 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 123 
 
 In the case of the nation I have just named, it was 
 only when every green thing and every living thing 
 had been used up, and everything to which the rage 
 of a craving appetite drove them (so that their very 
 foemen pitied their pale and haggard faces and wasted 
 frames), that they tore to pieces in their hunger the 
 limbs of others, and were ready to eat — ay, even 
 their own ! Say, what man or what God would 
 refuse forgiveness to bellies ^ that had suffered such 
 dire extremities? The very ghosts of the men 
 whose bodies they were eating might well have 
 pardoned them. It is true that Zeno’s maxims 
 teach us something better. They inculcate that 
 some things, but not all things, should be done to 
 save one’s life.^ But how should a Cantabrian be a 
 Stoic, and that too in old Metellus’ time ? Nowadays, 
 it is true, all the world has got the culture of both 
 Greece and Eome; Gaul, home of eloquence, has 
 taught the Britons to be pleaders ; Thule now talks 
 of hiring a rhetorician. Still that famous people, 
 whom we have mentioned, and Zagynthos, too — their 
 equal in valour and honour, more than their equal in 
 suffering — have some such excuse to plead. But 
 Egypt is yet more ruthless than the Maeotic Altar. 
 For the Tauric goddess, the foundress of that horrid 
 rite — to grant for the moment the credibility of 
 poets’ tales — merely sacrifices men ; the victim has 
 nothing further, nothing more grievous than the knife 
 
124 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL xv. 119-142 
 
 to fear. Only, what calamity drove these to their 
 purpose ? What extremity of famine, or what pressure 
 of blockade impelled them to venture on so hate- 
 ful an atrocity? Could they, if Memphis’ land 
 went dry, bring any worse reproach ® upon the Nile 
 for refusing to rise ? Such a frenzy as was never felt 
 by the dread Cimbri, or Britons, or fell Saiiromatians, 
 or savage Agathyrsi — now fires that cowardly and 
 worthless mob, who spend their lives navigating 
 their clay canoes with their little bits of sails, and 
 straining their muscles over the stumpy paddles of 
 their gay craft of — earthenware. No penalty that 
 you will invent can match their crime ; nor will you 
 be able to devise a fit punishment for tribes like these, 
 in whose nature anger has equal and like effect with 
 hunger. That the heart she gives mankind is the 
 most tender of all Nature herself avows — that 
 Nature who gave us the ‘ gift of tears,’ the best of our 
 emotions. So she prompts us to grief for the mournful 
 guise of a friend pleading his cause, a prisoner at the 
 bar, or when a cheating guardian is called into court 
 by a ward whose tear-bedewed features and girlish 
 tresses disguise his sex. It is at Nature’s bidding that 
 we mourn when a marriageable maiden’s funeral 
 meets us, or when the grave closes upon a babe too 
 little for the flame of the pyre. For what good man, 
 worthy of the mystic torch, and such as Ceres’ priest 
 would have him be, thinks any one’s troubles no 
 
XV. 142-165 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 125 
 
 concern of his ? It is this which separates ns from 
 the herd of speechless brutes. This is the reason that 
 we alone have received a reverential mind, and can 
 apprehend things divine, and are fitted to practise and 
 understand the arts of life, and have derived from high 
 Heaven the boon of sympathy which creatures lack 
 that stoop and stare at earth. At the beginning of 
 the world our common Author granted to them merely 
 the gift of life, to us of mind as well, that mutual 
 feelings of regard might urge us to seek and render 
 aid : to draw the scattered into a nation : to shift our 
 quarters from the ancestral woods, leaving the 
 groves that were our grandsires’ homes : to build 
 houses : to place our home next another’s roof-tree, 
 that confidence born of union might vouchsafe us 
 sleep in the security lent by a neighbour’s threshold : 
 to protect with arms a fellow-citizen prostrate or 
 staggering beneath a heavy blow : to sound war-signals 
 on a common trumpet : to shelter ourselves behind the 
 self-same walls, and to be kept safe with the key of a 
 common portal. But, as it is, there is greater concord, 
 among serpents. The beast of like race is tender to 
 its spotted kin. When has a stronger lion taken 
 a brother-lion’s life ? In what woodland has ever boar 
 expired by the tusk of a larger boar ? The Indian 
 tigress keeps an unbroken peace with its savage 
 sister, and there is harmony between the fierce bears. 
 But for man it is not enough to have forged the 
 
126 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XV. 166-174 
 
 fatal blade upon the accursed anvil, although the 
 smiths of yore were wont to fashion only mattocks 
 and hoes, and to weary themselves with making pick 
 and ploughshare, and knew not how to hammer out 
 the sword. We see whole nations now, whose wrath 
 mere murder does not satisfy, — men who have come 
 to regard their victim’s chest, and arms, and face as a 
 variety of food. What would Pythagoras then say, 
 or whither would he not take flight, if he saw such 
 horrors as these to-day ; he who abstained from all 
 brutes’ flesh as if it were man’s, nor even indulged 
 his belly with every kind of pulse ? 
 
 XVI 
 
 Who, Gallius, could enumerate the advantages of 
 lucky soldiering ? Why, if only I can enter a crack 
 regiment, then let the camp -gate give welcome to a 
 bashful recruit like myself — but may it be beneath 
 a lucky star! For greater in its influence is one 
 hour of favouring fortune than an introduction to 
 Mars by a letter from Venus, or by that mother of 
 his, who loves the sands of Samos. 
 
 First, let us touch on the privileges that all soldiers 
 enjoy. This will prove not the least of them — that 
 
XVI. 8-30 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 127 
 
 no citizen would venture to thrash you ; nay, should 
 he he thrashed, he would hush it up, nor venture to 
 show the Praetor his knocked-out teeth, his face, 
 all one dark, livid, swollen mass, and his eye 
 still in its place, indeed, but despaired of^ by his 
 doctor. And, if he would get redress for this, the 
 judge assigned him is a soldier’s boot and burly 
 calves to suit the capacious bench,^ for the old 
 martial law and the rules of Camillus are observed, 
 that no soldier shall be a litigant outside the camp nor 
 far from the standards. ' So there is to be a thoroughly 
 fair trial of the soldier’s case by the Centurions ; nor 
 shall I fail to get satisfaction if a fair ground of com- 
 plaint be presented.’ Nay, but the whole battalion is 
 opposed to you, and all the companies, acting in 
 perfect concert, take good care that the redress you 
 get shall need a doctor’s treatment, too, and prove a 
 greater grievance even than the wrong. And so it 
 would be worthy of the mulish wits of that ranter 
 Vagellius, seeing you have but two legs, to fall foul 
 of so many soldiers’ boots, and so many thousand 
 soldiers’ spikes. Besides this, who would go all 
 that way from Town? Who would be such a 
 Pylades, as to venture beyond the big Embankment ? 
 Dried be our tears at once, and let us not worry our 
 friends, who are sure to make excuses. When the 
 judge says, ' Produce your witness,’ let the one who 
 saw the fisticuffs, any chance bystander, dare to say, 
 
128 
 
 THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 XVI. 30-53 
 
 ‘ I saw it/ and I will deem him worthy the beard, 
 worthy the long locks of the men of old. You could 
 more readily bring forward a false witness against a 
 civilian than a truthful one to hurt the pocket or to 
 hurt the honour of a man-at-arms. 
 
 Now, let us look at other prizes and other gains 
 from the oath of enlistment. Say an unscrupulous 
 neighbour has filched from me a glade or meadow of 
 my family lands, and dug up from the middle of the 
 boundary-line the sacred stone, which my beans and 
 flat cake have yearly honoured, or a debtor persists 
 in not repaying the cash he borrowed, saying the 
 signature is forged and the tablets worthless, I have 
 to wait for that indefinite time that is to begin the 
 suits of — the whole of Eome. And even then we must 
 put up with a thousand delays, a thousand hindrances; 
 so often does a cushion only occupy the Bench! 
 And, even while Caedicius the Eloquent is putting 
 off his cloak, and Fuscus is getting ready, we have 
 to part, though fully equipped for battle, and so we 
 wage our strife in the Court’s wearisome arena. But 
 for the men whom armour clothes and baldric girds, 
 the time that suits themselves is the time appointed 
 for the pleading, nor is their substance worn away 
 by the Law’s tedious drag. 
 
 Besides, to soldiers only is the right allowed of 
 making bequests during a father’s lifetime; for 
 what is earned by military service the Law directs 
 
XVI. 53 ad Jin. THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 
 
 129 
 
 shall form no part of that property of which the 
 father has entire control. And so Coranus, who 
 marches with the standards, and earns regimental 
 pay, is courted for his fortune by his own father, 
 though now palsied with age. Well-merited favour 
 gives the soldier his promotion, and pays the due 
 reward to his honest efforts. Clearly it seems the 
 interest of the General himself that the brave man 
 should likewise be the most lucky : that all may pride 
 themselves on their decorations, and all on their 
 golden collars. 
 
 K 
 
NOTES 
 
 \y 
 
 I 
 
 » Cf. Mart. 12 18 15. 
 
 2 ‘ The group of entirely volcanic islands . . . designated . . . 
 insulae Vulcaniae, or, owing to the strong gases which are evolved 
 by the eruptions, “ wind-islands,” AioXideSf Al6\ov vijaoL ’ (Kiepert). 
 
 ^ Wickham on Hor. Od, 16 2. 
 
 Cf. Luc. 1 147, ‘temerando parcere ferro’: an imitation not 
 mentioned by Heitland. See his long list in Haskins’ edition, 
 Introd. pp. cxxx. sq. 
 
 ^ Henry, Aeneidea, on 1 160, and 5 28. For the metaphor 
 cf. Verg. Georg. 2 541-42. 
 
 ^ The ‘ Ara Augusti.’ See reff. in Heinrich. 
 
 ^ Cf. Shaksp. A. and 0. ‘Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to 
 his bed ’ (2 5 21). 
 
 ® Mayor’s note is ‘ “Joiner,” sarcastic (84) of this eponymous 
 hero of art. ’ 
 
 ® Leg. ‘ signator falso, qui ’ (supported by Friedlander). 
 
 Leg. ‘fecerit.’ 
 
 Leg. ‘aliquis’ (Jahn). 
 
 An imitation of Pers. 1 54, though with a different meaning 
 (Conington). For ‘ reddere ’ cf. Catull. 64 362 ; 66 37. 
 
 ‘ Parva ’ ; note emphatic position of the word ; also of ‘ togatae. ’ 
 
 ‘Praeco’ is perhaps used ironically for the ‘ nomenclator. * 
 The great man is called ‘rex’ in 136. 
 
 15 ‘ “ parant,” produce ; probably as yearly income ’ (Mayor). 
 
 Leg. ‘habitat.’ 
 
 These are only for show, not hospitality. 
 
132 
 
 NOTES 
 
 Mayor reads 4t’ in 4th ed. (1886) for ‘et’ in former ed., 
 quoting in support Ov. F, 1 15 ; but in Pref. p. xlix. returns to 
 ‘et,’ adopting Biicheler’s punctuation. 
 
 Leg. ‘ dices ’ (P). 
 
 Leg. ‘pectore.’ 
 
 Leg. ‘ deducis ’ : supported by Biicheler and Friedlander. 
 
 The poet is often represented as doing himself what he only 
 describes. Cf. Yerg. Ed. 6 62 ; 9 20. 
 
 A prov. expr. fr. Ter. And. 126. Note omission of verb, 
 Drager, I. 198. 
 
 Another prov. expr. Cf. Yerg. Aen. 11 424. 
 
 Ill 
 
 1 Cf. Aesch. Cho. 1004, 
 
 2 ‘Caballus,’ a vulgar word for ‘equus,’ — a characteristic scoff 
 at mythology. 
 
 ^ ‘ Asturici,’ the former owner ; Persicus is the present owner. 
 
 ^ Or perhaps, the best supplied of the destitute ; see Heinrich. 
 
 ® It seems not unlikely that there is a play on the double sense 
 of ‘tumeo.’ Cf. 8 40. 
 
 ® See Alford on Acts 16 13. 
 
 lY 
 
 ^ ‘ Bring him on the stage ’ (Mayor). 
 
 2 ‘ Sordid and niggardly Apicius.’ So Mayor ; but ‘ frugi ’ seems 
 to be almost always used in a good sense — here, of course, ironical. 
 
 2 The use of the archaic form is no doubt ironical. Probably 
 also, as has been suggested, there is a hint at Domitian’s ill success 
 in military affairs. Cf. 135. 
 
 ^ Probably with a hint, as Simcox observes, that the ‘monstrum’ 
 would need the ‘ procuratio ’ of the Pontifex. 
 
 ® Leg. ‘saginae’ (Jahn). 
 
 ® For reasons against taking abolla here as ‘ philosopher’s cloak, ’ 
 see Mayor, i. p. 407. 
 
 ^ ‘ Erectas in terga sudes. ’ The expression is obscure and perhaps 
 hopelessly unintelligible. It is lightly passed over by most editors. 
 Lewis translates, ‘Do you perceive the bristles erect on his back V 
 
NOTES 
 
 133 
 
 — a rendering hard to justify grammatically. ‘ Sudes ’ properly = 
 
 ‘ stakes ’ ; but seems to be used here of the fin-rays of the turbot : 
 see Badham’s Prose Halieutics p. 362. It may be that there is 
 a play upon the word, and that ‘ erectas in terga sudes ’ = ‘ erectam 
 in terga sudium aciem’ (cf. ‘erigere aciem in clivum,’ etc., and 
 for ‘ sudes ‘ aciem sudium’ cf. ra 07rXa = 67rX?rat). Prof. Tucker 
 cites as parallel Shaksp. Ven. and Ad, (of a wild boar) — 
 
 ‘ On his how-hack he hath a battle set 
 Of bristly spikes ^ that ever threat his foes.’ 
 
 ® Or perhaps ‘court.’ See Ducange and Georges, s.v, 
 
 V 
 
 ^ ‘Illi’ locative; cf. Plant. Am. 133 and 744 ; Ter. Ad. 116; 
 Hec. 217 ; Roby § 524. Others take it as dativus commodi. 
 
 2 Leg. ‘ distinguat. ’ ‘Distendat’ would mean ‘tries the cap- 
 acity of. ’ 
 
 2 ‘ Constrictus ’ must also contain the idea ‘ pinched for room. ’ 
 Not only is an inferior kind of fish given you, but they serve it on 
 so small a plate that the half-egg used for dressing cramps it for 
 space. 
 
 ^ ‘ He too ’ i.e. he also is of low origin, like the eel, which like- 
 wise comes from a drain. 
 
 ® Blicheler takes it ‘ ah ipsis ilihus f rater plane consanguineus, ’ 
 — giving quite an undue emphasis to f rater ^ to say nothing of 
 other objections. 
 
 ® I.e. in case one is rich ; but as matters now stand (since you 
 are poor) you may have as many children as you please without 
 estranging him. 
 
 7 Or, as the word used is ‘solo’ not ‘mero,’ perhaps the more 
 natural sense is ‘ on the smell of which (and only that) you are to 
 feast.’ 
 
 YII 
 
 ^ ‘ Bithynia and Galatia had got very much mixed up together.’ 
 Munro ap. Mayor. 
 
 2 Leg. ‘ crocea membrana tabella ’ (Jahn), approved by Munro. 
 ‘ Croceae membrana tabellae,’ K. F. Hermann, Biicheler, Beer, 
 Weidner. 
 
134 
 
 NOTES 
 
 ^ A choice between cremation or interment. 
 
 ^ Leg. ‘maculosas’ with Heinrich. ‘Maculonis,* Bucheler 
 with P. 
 
 ® Heinrich explains ‘ longe ’ = ‘ din. ' So too AVeidner, quoting 
 Hor. Od. 2 20 4 in justification ; but it does not seem possible to 
 find a parallel use of the positive. 
 
 ® Leg. ^ petit’ ‘ Perit,’ Beer, Bucheler, and Weidner after P. 
 
 ^ See Revue de Philologie^ iii. p. 14. 
 
 ® Leg. ‘quod do’ with Mayor. ‘Quid do, Ut totiens ilium 
 pater audiat V (Biich.) 
 
 ^ Leg. ‘curas.’ Mayor prefers ‘cura: set* 
 
 VIII 
 
 ^ ‘Facili’ dat (So Mayor, ind.) Others join ‘facili’ with 
 ‘ palma, ’ and ‘ plurima ’ with ‘ victoria. ’ 
 
 2 Leg. ‘ Nepotis.’ Mayor notes ‘ a miller of the day * ; but there 
 does not appear to be any authority for the statement. Bucheler 
 reads ‘ nepotes, ’ following P. 
 
 ^ ‘Perit,’ prob. pf. as in 6 563, etc., and in Phaedr., Sen., etc. 
 For the sense, cf. Sen. Ep. 82 2 : ‘ Puto, aeque, qui in odoribus 
 jacet, mortuus est, quam qui rapitur unco. Otium sine literis mors 
 est et hominis vivi sepultura.’ 
 
 ^ Leg. ‘regum.’ Jahn and Bucheler read ‘rerum.’ 
 
 ® Leg. ‘eripietur’ (Bucheler, following^ w). 
 
 ® The passage from Petron. 29, quoted by Mayor and others, 
 appears to be conclusive in favour of the rendering adopted. 
 
 ^ This seems undoubtedly an allusion to Verg. Aen. 8 724, ‘dis- 
 cinctos Afros.’ ‘ Discincti’ describes the national dress of the Car- 
 thaginians, and is contrasted with that of the Roman soldiers, who 
 were ‘ praecincti. ’ (See Henry at? loc.) Juvenal satirically attri- 
 butes the absence of the girdle to the fact of the Romans having 
 stolen their purses. 
 
 ® Leg. ‘Mulio consul,’ Bucheler’s restoration for ‘multo’ {p w). 
 Apparently accepted by Robinson Ellis {Clas. Rev. ii. 71), also by 
 Weidner, who, after Mayor (Pref. I. xlviii.), compares ‘meretrix 
 Augusta’ (6 118) and ‘meretrix regina,’ Prop. 4 11 39. Cf. also 
 
NOTES 
 
 135 
 
 Auson. Epigr. 10 1, ‘ uxor moecha ’ ; Tac. Ann. 3 6, ‘imperator 
 populus,’ and other exx. in Drager I. 668 sq. and II. ix. 
 
 ^ ‘robum.’ Mayor notes that the word is archaic (‘more 
 Numae ’). 
 
 Jahn places a comma after ‘altaria.’ Biicheler’s punctuation 
 has been adopted. 
 
 ‘Altaria,’ see Rich’s Diet, of Ant. s.v. 
 
 Leg. ‘ tridentem et,’ with K. F. Hermann and Mayor. 
 
 Heinrich and most of the commentators take spira for the 
 strings of the spiked cap {galerus) worn by the priests of Mars. 
 The same view is held by Rich {Diet, of Ant. s.vv.) Gracchus is 
 mentioned as a priest of Mars in Sat. 2 117 sqq. Mayor, following 
 Sehol., takes galerus for the shoulder -guard, which served the 
 retiarms as a kind of shield, and spira for ‘ a band passing round 
 the body from the left shoulder to the right hip, and attached to 
 the net.’ So also Friedlander and Guhl and Koner. 
 
 Leg. ‘quantum vix Leucade’ the conj. of K. F. Hermann, 
 adopted by Mayor. Jahn and Biicheler read ‘non,’ following^ w. 
 
 X 
 
 ^ Leg. ‘umbram,’ P, followed by Beer and Biicheler. 
 
 2 Others, not very poetically, understand it of ‘a laugh that 
 contracts the muscles of the face for a moment.’ 
 
 ^ Leg. ‘ aut ut ’ with Munro and Mayor ; Doederlein reads ‘ aut 
 vel’; ‘aut ne p. petantur,’ Lachmann ; Biicheler, 
 
 ‘ ergo supervacua aut quae perniciosa petuntur ? 
 propter quae fas est genua incerare deorum ? ’ 
 
 ^ Oxymoron — suhjeeta potentia. 
 
 ® See note 2 on Satire 3. Key’s notion {Diet, s.v.) that 
 ‘ caballus ’ is a dignified term seems inconsistent with its exclusion 
 from Horace’s lyrics, while it occurs five times in Satt. and Epp. 
 Nor is it found in heroics. Nettleship notes its use in a fragment 
 of Cato in Anth. Lat. 388 (Riese). See especially quotations from 
 S. Hieron. Ep. ad Hel., and Gregorius Turon. in Ducange, s.v. 
 
 ® Cretatum^ ‘ tauntingly said, ’ Mayor. ‘ Creta seems to have 
 been a kind of pipe-clay, as our ehalk appears to be quite unknown 
 in Italy.’ — Munro ap. Mayor. 
 
 ^ I.e. the Delator, not Tiberius, as Britann. and Ruperti. 
 
136 
 
 NOTES 
 
 ^ ‘ Cervice obstricta/ probably merely a figurative expression. 
 
 ® ‘ Impulsae.’ ‘ Impellere ’ not merely to ^ush but to overthrow 
 with a push. See Henry on Yerg. Aen» 2 460, and 8 239. The 
 whole passage looks like a verbal reminiscence of Aen. 2 460-65. 
 Cf. praeceps, turris tabulata, impulsae, ruinae. There are many 
 more of these echoes of the earlier poets in Juvenal than have yet 
 been noted by the commentators; e.g. Sat. 1 149 {Aen. 2 460). 
 A considerable number of reminiscences or parodies of Ovid, etc. , 
 are collected in Apparatus Criticus ad Juven. (C. Hosius), pp. 
 47 sq. Add Ov. Am. 2 15 26 (Juv. 10 164-66). 
 
 Mayor translates ‘ 0 Rome, new born to fortune in my Con- 
 sulship ! ’ This hardly brings out the force of the accusative of 
 exclamation. There seems also to be more point in regarding (with 
 M. Guerin) the boast as referring to ‘ pater ’ and ‘ parens ’ ‘ patriae ’ 
 (cf. 8 243). Rome was thus the ‘ child of the Consul.’ It is only 
 for the sake of the assonance that ‘ my consulate ’ instead of ‘ me 
 the Consul ’ has been used in the version. For * natus ’ with the 
 bare ablative, which seems to be the most common const, in the 
 case of the father {ex of the mother), cf. 14 241 ; 6 12 ; 13 142, 
 etc. To reff. in comm, add Sen. Be Ira^ ^ ad fin. There 
 seems to be nothing to show whether the line is from the poem on 
 Cicero’s Consulship, or from the epic Be Temporibus Meis. 
 
 For ‘ et ’ = ‘ and yet ’ cf. Catull. 29 9 ; Phaedr. 1 8 12. 
 Ka^ is similarly used, e.g. Ev. Luc. 7 35 ; Joh. 16 32. 
 
 ‘Facies,* possibly ‘sight,’ ‘appearance.’ On ‘caricature’ see 
 Mayor’s note ; cf. also Burn’s R. Lit. and Artj pp. 60 and 63 ; 
 Pint. Adv. Col. 17. 
 
 ‘ Mundi ’ Mayor renders ‘universe,’ the more usual meaning 
 of the word ; but it also means ‘world,’ e.g. Hor. Od. 3 3 53 ; 24 
 38 ; and this meaning seems more appropriate to the present 
 passage, the other being too extravagant. 
 
 ‘Er lies’t aus Leibeskraften und schwitzt fiber und fiber,’ 
 Heinrich, followdng the Scholiast, ‘ut alae ejus sudent.’ 
 
 Mayor renders the passage, ‘ This prayer you offer with set, 
 unflinching look, this alone even pale [with fear of refusal].’ 
 
 Leg. ‘hac’ (Haupt, Jahn, Mayor), ‘haec . . . repulso,’P and 
 Bficheler. 
 
 Cf. 128 and Tac. Ann. 11 36 ‘modesta juventa, sed corpore 
 insigni.’ 
 
NOTES 
 
 137 
 
 For the satirical tone Mayor compares 1 84 (see refF. in note 
 
 ib.) 
 
 Lewis suggests an alternative rendering, ‘who reckons 
 mere length of life the smallest of Nature’s boons.’ This view 
 is now taken by Mayor (4th ed.) 
 
 XI 
 
 ^ ‘Sacri,’ cf. Ov. Fpp. ex Pon. 4 9 17 ; Hor. Od, 4 5 4; Verg. 
 Aen, 1 426 ; Cic. Cat 14 9. 
 
 For ‘sive’ — ‘vel’ Drager quotes Yerg. Cat 5 10 and Anthot 
 Lat I. 725 10 (Riese). 
 
 ^ Sometimes explained as if ‘ ludebant ’ = ‘ alludebant ’ ; but of 
 such a const, as ‘ ad aliquid ludere ’ exx. are wanting. 
 
 3 An ingenious conjecture ‘ clipeoque nitentis ’ by W. W. Merry 
 is put forward in Clas, Rev. ii. 85. 
 
 ^ Jahn, Madvig, and Mayor punctuate at ‘peragentibus,’ 
 regarding ‘his’ and ‘hanc’ as parallel. 
 
 ® Lewis takes ‘ res ’= ‘ fare, ’ quoting Cic. Epp. ad Att 4 10, and 
 Hor. S. 2 6 110 ; but in former passage (if the text be sound) the 
 word most probably = ‘ scenery,’ and in the latter may occur in the 
 ordinary use with ‘ bonae ’= ‘ prosperity, comfort.’ Better exx. 
 perhaps are Petron. 36, ‘Res electissimas ridentes adgredimur,’ and 
 Ter. Ad. 765, ‘ Postquam intus sum omnium rerum satur ’ ; cf. Eng. 
 ‘good things.’ The lexx. generally ignore this use of ‘res.’ Mayor 
 reads ‘ comparat,’ following w : ‘ compare! ’ P and Biicheler. ‘ Com- 
 parat’ suits ‘despicit’ better, and ‘-et’ might easily be caused 
 by ‘ et ’ following ; but on the other hand ‘ comparet ’ may be a 
 reminiscence of Ov. Am. 1 8 33. 
 
 ® Leg. ‘ erit et magno ; cum posces.’ It seems impossible to make 
 any satisfactory sense out of ‘ in magno,’ the reading of P adopted 
 by Biicheler. 
 
 7 ‘ Cantabitur.’ Referring to the intonation; or else, ‘instead 
 of the “cantus” of the singing-girl, our song shall be that of the 
 author of the Iliad.' 
 
 ^ Leg. ‘quando licebit,’ etc. Biicheler, ‘quando licebat Per 
 totum cessare diem ’ ? 
 
 ^ ‘Non’ — Quintilian, 1 5 50, condemns use of ‘non’ for ‘ne’ 
 as a solecism, cf. Hor. S. 2 5 91 ; Pers. 5 45 ; Yerg. Aen. 12 78 ; 
 
138 
 
 NOTES 
 
 Ov. A. A, 3 129, on which Key remarks, ‘ non is more emphatic 
 than ne, like our “never.”’ See Journal of Philology^ vol. vii. 
 54-59. 
 
 Mayor compares Hor. /S'. 1 3 16 (Epp. 171 might be added), 
 but it seems most probable that there is a reference to the days of 
 the festival. 
 
 XII 
 
 1 I take it that from ‘ densae ’ to ‘ ardentibus ’ is a mock- 
 quotation (if not a real one). The rhythm is heroic. Juvenal 
 quotes it, and then goes on : ‘ that’s the way it’s done in 
 poetry.’ 
 
 Is naufragium a mistake for auxilium ? * and thought no help 
 could be given to the burning sails,’ ^.e. that they were past hope. 
 — T. G. T. 
 
 2 Is there a reference to sors = ‘ stock-in-trade ’ ? — T. G. T. 
 
 2 Here mark a mock- quotation again from ‘cum plenus’ to 
 ‘cum ventis’ in the heroic vein, followed by Juvenal’s own 
 flippant style. This is the new kind, the new development men- 
 tioned above. — T. G. T. 
 
 ^ If this be a quotation, then it is easy to account for arhorl ; 
 Indeed, if it be a quotation, the scansion would be effective. — T. G. T. 
 ‘Arbor,’ however, in itself seems a particularly suitable word for a 
 swaying mast, and its use for ‘mast’ is not confined to poetry, 
 e.g. ‘curvatur arbor’ in Pliny, Ep. 9 26. In addition to exx. in 
 Mayor, see Key, Diet., and Nettleship, Contributions. 
 
 ® There is an excellent plan of the harbour, etc. , in Rich’s Diet, 
 of Ant. p. 522, taken from Labacco’s survey in sixteenth century. 
 
 Mayor renders ‘moles,’ etc., by ‘moles carried out amidst en- 
 closed seas ’ ; but this would be to identify the ‘ moles ’ with the 
 ‘ bracchia, ’ and make a weak tautology. There are two other pos- 
 sible ways of explaining the passage. Both seem preferable to 
 Mayor’s : (1) moles = molem, referring to the breakwater opposite 
 the entrance. Thus the objects are given precisely in the order in 
 which they meet the view of one approaching from the sea, and 
 the words ‘ moles ’ and ‘ bracchia ’ are used exactly as by Suetonius 
 {Claud. 20) in his description of the work ; or (as suggested by 
 
NOTES 
 
 139 
 
 R. T. Elliott) (2) ‘ moles ’ may be used generally of the whole of the 
 structures that formed the harbour, while vv. 76, 77 go on to give 
 a more detailed description. 
 
 ® Or sed perhaps = 5 ’oSj/ — resumptive. 
 
 XIII 
 
 ^ ‘Sed nec’; cf. 11 7 and 136. The connection seems to be — 
 ‘ But, apart from the sympathy with you, and against the evil-doer, 
 there is the further consideration that, ’ etc. 
 
 ^ See Henry’s Aeneidea, vol. i. p. 378; ‘gurges,’ the stream; 
 ‘ vortex,’ the stream’s eddies. 
 
 ^ Leg. with Munro ‘solitumst.’ Mayor has now (4th ed.) aban- 
 doned this, and reads ‘solitus.’ The difficulty is got over, to some 
 extent, by supposing that ‘solitus’ refers to the thief’s earlier 
 career of villainy. Professor {Hermathena, ii. pp. 195, 196) 
 
 takes ‘ minor ’ as predicate, ‘ turns out on this occasion a sacrilegus 
 on a smaller scale in that he only scratches (qui radat).’ 
 
 ^ ‘ Assidue ’ is taken by Jacobs, Lewis, and others as ‘ frequenter.’ 
 On the other hand see Heinrich’s note. 
 
 ® Cf. Tennyson, ‘Sea-Dreams’ — 
 
 ‘ A silent court of Justice in his breast.’ 
 
 ® Leg. ‘ Setina * (Jahn, Mayor, and Ribbeck) ; ‘ sed vina ’ is the 
 reading of P w. 
 
 XIV 
 
 1 There is a remarkable parallelism (pointed out by Messrs. 
 Tyrrell and Purser, Correspondence oj- Cicero, vol. 3) between this 
 passage and Cic. ad Att. 5 21 13, ‘ Habes meam causam : quae si 
 Bruto non probatur, nescio cur ilium amemus ; sed avunculo ejus 
 certe probabitur. ’ For the typical use of Cato’s name see Cic. Q. 
 Fratr. 1 2 15, ‘Civis Romanus et Cato.’ Cf. Yell. Paterc. 2 
 18, ‘Odio in Romanos Hannibal.’ 
 
 2 Leg. ‘ pater. ’ ‘ Puer ’ s. 
 
 3 ‘ V entosa. ’ The epithet can scarcely refer, as some editors take 
 it, to the pressure of the atmosphere on the outer surface of the 
 ‘ cucurbita, ’ nor yet, as others think, to the current of air with- 
 drawn by exhausting the instrument. The word means ‘ windy. 
 
140 
 
 NOTES 
 
 ‘ full of wind/ e.g» ‘ folles ’ Verg. A, 8 449 ; ‘ speluncae,’ Lucr. 6 537 ; 
 ‘concha/ Luc. 9 349 ; and seems to have been used by Juvenal in 
 ignorance of the true principle of the cupping-glass. 
 
 ^ ‘ Fila ' sometimes taken to = strings ; but Mart. 11 52 6 would 
 go to show that it refers to the cutting of the leek. ‘Slices’ 
 would, perhaps, be nearer the mark than ‘parings,’ the rendering 
 in the version. 
 
 ® Leg. ‘ parcendum est teneris : nondum implevere medullas 
 maturae mala nequitiae. Ast cum ’ ( Jahn). 
 
 Biicheler reads 
 
 ‘ parcendum est teneris, nondum implevere medullas : 
 naturae mala nequitia est. Cum.’ 
 
 ‘ Naturae ’ and ‘ nequitia est ’ are supported by P. 
 
 ® ‘Et qui per fraudes,’ etc., must, if it is to have any syntax, 
 follow ‘ praecepit amorem,’ and so is out of place, as it now stands. 
 
 7 The version follows Hermann’s punctuation. 
 
 ® ‘ Castor mgil^ because a guard kept watch in the temple * 
 (Mayor). ‘ Yigil ’ seems also to contain a covert reproach of Mars, 
 on whom it was especially incumbent to be watchful. ‘Mars, 
 vigila’ was the formula of invocation to the god when war was 
 proclaimed. See Serv. ad Yerg. Aen. 8 3. 
 
 ® But it is possible that the ‘ sed ’ may be meant to heighten 
 the contrast between the rich merchant and the poor castaway. 
 This use of ‘ sed ’ is familiar enough. See exx. given by Mayor 
 and Lewis on 5 147. Sonnenschein on Bud. 799 gives two other 
 exx. from Plant. Cas. (in one anticipated by Tyrrell, Clas. Rev. ii. 
 23 a). Ad Alt. 7 12 (see Boot, ad loc., who, however, in ref. Mart. 
 3 24 5, has adopted a false reading) is perhaps the only instance 
 in Cicero of ‘ sed ’ alone in this use ; but even here it is possible 
 that it is merely resumptive = b'odv, and so Drager, II. p. 101. 
 The use is common in Martial, from whom Mayor gives 8 exx., 
 Friedlander (on Mart. 1 117 7) contributing as many more. Add (si 
 tanti est) 1 43 9. 
 
 ‘Dolia,’ ordinarily translated ‘tub,’ of course strictly an 
 earthenware vessel. 
 
 Leg. ‘ atque.’ For this sufficiently common use of ‘ atque ’ see 
 Nettleship, Contributions, s.v. Another reading is ‘aut.’ 
 
NOTES 
 
 141 
 
 XV 
 
 ^ The dog’s mistress. 
 
 2 Leg. ' hie ’ with w, supported hy Munro (ap. Mayor), who com- 
 pares 3 12. If the reading of P ‘ hinc ’ be retained, it would seem 
 better to take it as=‘ex hac parte,’ rather than with Mayor 
 ‘ “hereupon,” owing to the hasty flight.’ 
 
 ^ The sense seems to be : ‘ If you have any doubts as to whether 
 the first liked Ms taste (which would naturally be the choicest tit- 
 bit), I can tell you the last liked it sufliciently to scoop a spoonful 
 of the blood ofi* the very ground.’ ‘Nam’ (v. 89) refers to the 
 remark that they liked it, ‘for I can tell you,’ etc. ‘Sed’ (v. 87) 
 is either (1) merely resumptive after digression, 5’ otv or 5e, or (2) 
 it contrasts the feelings of the cannibals with your feelings and 
 mine, Volusius. 
 
 ^ Leg. ‘ventribus’ H. Valesius, followed by Jahn, Ribbeck, 
 and Hermann ; ‘ urbibus ’ P s accepted by BtLcheler and Mayor. 
 
 ® Leg. ‘ nec enim omnia, quaedam ’ with Jahn and Hermann. 
 Biicheler, followed by Mayor, reads, ‘nec enim omnia quidam.’ 
 
 ® I.e. by a more terrible sacrifice even than this. 
 
 XVI 
 
 ^ Mayor, however, takes ‘relictum’ to mean ‘given over, 
 abandoned ’ ! 
 
 2 Spartianus, referred to by Lewis, says of Hadrian ‘ nulli vitem 
 nisi robusto et bonae famae daret.’ In v. 14 it seems to be ironi- 
 cally suggested that the burly legs are made or chosen to match 
 the huge subsellia : for somewhat analogous uses of ‘ ad ’ see Hand, 
 Tursell. vol. i. pp. 112-122. Add Hor. Sat. 1 6 95. 
 
 Printed hy R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinbtirgh. 
 
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