[474] It is well worth while to ascertain how these ladies busy themselves all day. If the husband has turned his back upon his wife at night, the wool-maid is done for; the tire-women will be stripped of their tunics; the Liburnian chair-man will be accused of coming late, and will have to pay for another man’s drowsiness; one will have a rod broken over his back, another will be bleeding from a strap, a third from the cat; some women engage their executioners by the year. While the flogging goes on, the lady will be daubing her face, or listening to her lady-friends, or inspecting the widths of a gold-embroidered robe. While thus flogging and flogging, she reads the lengthy Gazette, written right across the page, till at last, the floggers being exhausted, and the inquisition ended, she thunders out a gruff “Be off with you!”
[486] Her household is governed as cruelly as a Sicilian Court. If she has an appointment and wishes to be turned out more nicely than usual, and is in a hurry to meet some one waiting for her in the gardens, or more likely near the chapel of the wanton Isis, the unhappy maid that does her hair will have her own hair torn, and the clothes stripped off her shoulders and her breasts. “Why is this curl standing up?” she asks, and then down comes a thong of bull’s hide to inflict chastisement for the offending ringlet. Pray how was Psecas in fault? How would the girl be to blame if you happened not to like the shape of your own nose? Another maid on the left side combs out the hair and rolls it into a coil; a maid of her mother’s, who has served her time at sewing, and has been promoted to the wool department, assists at the council. She is the first to give her opinion; after her, her inferiors in age or skill will give theirs, as though some question of life or honour were at stake. So important is the business of beautification; so numerous are the tiers and storeys piled one upon another on her head! In front, you would take her for an Andromache; she is not so tall behind: you would not think it was the same person. What if nature has made her so short of stature that, if unaided by high heels, she looks no bigger than a pigmy, and has to rise nimbly on tip-toe for a kiss! Meantime she pays no attention to her husband; she never speaks of what she costs him. She lives with him as if she were only his neighbour; in this alone more near to him, that she hates his friends and his slaves, and plays the mischief with his money.
[511] And now, behold! in comes the chorus of the frantic Bellona and the mother of the Gods, attended by a giant eunuch to whom his obscene inferiors must do reverence. . . . Before him the howling herd with the timbrels give way; his plebeian cheeks are covered with a Phrygian tiara. With solemn utterance he bids the lady beware of the September Siroccos if she do not purify herself with a hundred eggs, and present him with some old mulberry-coloured garments in order that any great and unforeseen calamity may pass into the clothes, and make expiation for the entire year. In winter she will go down to the river of a morning, break the ice, and plunge three times into the Tiber, dipping her trembling head in its whirling waters, and crawling out thence naked and shivering, she will creep with bleeding knees right across the field of Tarquin the Proud. If the white Io shall so order, she will journey to the confines of Egypt, and fetch water from hot Meroe with which to sprinkle the Temple of Isis which stands hard by the ancient sheepfold. For she believes that the command was given by the voice of the Goddess herself — a pretty kind of mind and spirit for the Gods to have converse with by night! Hence the chief and highest place of honour is awarded to Anubis, who, with his linen-clad and shaven crew, mocks at the weeping of the people as he runs along. He it is that obtains pardon for wives who break the law of purity on days that should be kept holy, and exacts huge penalties when the coverlet has been profaned, or when the silver serpent has been seen to nod his head. His tears and carefully-studied mutterings make sure that Osiris will not refuse a pardon for the fault, bribed, no doubt, by a fat goose and a slice of sacrificial cake.
[542] No sooner has that fellow departed than a palsied Jewess, leaving her basket and her truss of hay, comes begging to her secret ear; she is an interpreter of the laws of Jerusalem, a high priestess of the tree, a trusty go-between of highest heaven. She, too, fills her palm, but more sparingly, for a Jew will tell you dreams of any kind you please for the minutest of coins.
[548] An Armenian or Commagenian sooth-sayer, after examining the lungs of a dove that is still warm, will promise a youthful lover, or a big bequest from some rich and childless man; he will probe the breast of a chicken, or the entrails of a dog, sometimes even of a boy; some things he will do with the intention of informing against them himself.
[553] Still more trusted are the Chaldaeans; every word uttered by the astrologer they will believe has come from Hammon’s fountain, for now that the Delphian oracles are dumb, man is condemned to darkness as to his future. Chief among these was one who was oft in exile, through whose friendship and venal prophecies the great citizen died whom Otho feared. For nowadays no astrologer has credit unless he have been imprisoned in some distant camp, with chains clanking on either arm; none believe in his powers unless he has been condemned and all but put to death, having just contrived to get deported to a Cyclad, or to escape at last from the diminutive Seriphos.
[565] Your excellent Tanaquil consults as to the long-delayed death of her jaundiced mother — having previously enquired about your own; she will ask when she may expect to bury her sister, or her uncles; and whether her lover will outlive herself — what greater boon could the Gods bestow upon her? And yet your Tanaquil does not herself understand the gloomy threats of Saturn, or under what constellation Venus will show herself propitious, which months will be months of losses, which of gains; but beware of ever encountering one whom you see clutching a well-worn calendar in her hands as if it were a ball of clammy amber; one who inquires of none, but is now herself inquired of; one who, if her husband is going forth to camp, or returning home from abroad, will not bear him company if the numbers of Thrasyllus call her back. If she wants to drive as far as the first mile-stone, she finds the right hour from her book; if there is a sore place in the corner of her eye, she will not call for a salve until she has consulted her horoscope: and if she be ill in bed, deems no hour so suitable for taking food as that prescribed to her by Petosiris.
[582] If the woman be of humble rank, she will promenade between the turning-posts of the Circus; she will have her fortune told, and will present her brow and her hand to the seer who asks for many an approving smack. Wealthy women will pay for answers from a Phrygian or Indian augur well skilled in the stars and the heavens, or one of the elders employed to expiate thunderbolts. Plebeian destinies are determined in the Circus or on the ramparts : the woman who displays a long gold chain on her bare neck inquires before the pillars and the clusters of dolphins whether she shall throw over the tavern-keeper and marry the old-clothes-man.
[592] These poor women, however, endure the perils of child-birth, and all the troubles of nursing to which their lot condemns them; but how often does a gilded bed contain a woman that is lying in? So great is the skill, so powerful the drugs, of the abortionist, paid to murder mankind within the womb. Rejoice, poor wretch; give her the stuff to drink whatever it be, with your own hand: for were she willing to get big and trouble her womb with bouncing babes, you might perhaps find yourself the father of an Ethiopian; and some day a coloured heir, whom you would rather not meet by daylight, would fill all the places in your will.
[602] I say nothing of supposititious children, of the hopes and prayers so often cheated at those filthy pools from which are supplied Priests and Salii, with bodies that will falsely bear the name of Scauri. There Fortune shamelessly takes her stand by night, smiling on the naked babes; she fondles them all and folds them in her bosom, and then, to provide herself with a secret comedy, she sends them forth to the houses of the great. These are the children that she loves, on these she lavishes herself, and with a laugh brings them always forward as her own.
[610] One man supplies magical spells; another sells Thessalian charms by which a wife may u
pset her husband’s mind, and lather his buttocks with a slipper; thence come loss of reason, and darkness of soul, and blank forgetfulness of all that you did but yesterday. Yet even that can be endured, if only you become not raving mad like that uncle of Nero’s into whose drink Caesonia poured the whole brow of a weakly foal; and what woman will not follow when an Empress leads the way? The whole world was ablaze then and falling down in ruin just as if Juno had made her husband mad. Less guilty therefore will Agrippina’s mushroom be deemed, seeing that it only stopped the breath of one old man, and sent down his palsied head and slobbering lips to heaven, whereas the other potion demanded fire and sword and torture, mingling Knights and Fathers in one mangled bleeding heap. Such was the cost of one mare’s offspring and of one she-poisoner.
[627] A wife hates the children of a concubine; let none demur or forbid, seeing that it has long been deemed right and proper to slay a stepson. But I warn you wards — you that have a good estate — keep watch over your lives; trust not a single dish: those hot cakes are black with poison of a mother’s baking. Whatever is offered you by the mother, let someone taste it first; let your trembling tutor take the first taste of every cup.
[634] Now think you that all this is a fancy tale, and that our Satire is taking to herself the high heels of tragedy? Think you that I have out-stepped the limits and the laws of those before me, and am mouthing in Sophoclean tones a grand theme unknown to the Rutulian hills and the skies of Latium? Would indeed that my words were idle! But here is Pontia proclaiming “I did the deed; I gave aconite, I confess it, to my own children; the crime was detected, and is known to all; yes, with my own hands I did it.” “What, you most savage of vipers? you killed two, did you, two, at a single meal?” “Aye, and seven too, had there chanced to be seven to kill!”
[643] Let us believe all that Tragedy tells us of the savage Colchian and of Procne; I seek not to gainsay her. Those women were monsters of wickedness in their day; but it was not for money that they sinned. We marvel less at great crimes when it is wrath that incites the sex to the guilty deed, when burning passion carries them headlong, like a rock torn from a mountain side, when the ground beneath gives way, and the overhanging slopes fall in. I cannot endure the woman who calculates, and commits a great crime in her sober senses. Our wives look on at Alcestis undergoing her husband’s fate; if they were granted a like liberty of exchange, they would fain let the husband die to save a lap-dog’s life. You will meet a daughter of Belus or an Eriphyle every morning: no street but has its Clytemnestra. The only difference is this: the daughter of Tyndareus wielded in her two hands a clumsy two-headed axe, whereas nowadays a slice of a toad’s lung will do the business. Yet it may be done by steel as well, if the wary husband have beforehand tasted the medicaments of the thrice-conquered king of Pontus.
Satire 7. Learning and Letters Unprofitable
[1] On Caesar alone hang all the hopes and prospects of the learned; he alone in these days of ours has cast a favouring glance upon the sorrowing Muses — at a time when poets of name and fame thought of hiring baths at Gabii, or bakehouses in Rome, while others felt no shame in becoming public criers, and starving Clio herself, bidding adieu to the vales of Aganippe, was flitting to the auction rooms. For if you see no prospect of earning a groat within the Muses’ grove, you had better put up with Machaera’s name and profits and join in the battle of the sale-room, selling to the crowd winejars, tripods, book-cases and cupboards — the Alcithoe of Paccius, the Thebes or the Tereus of Faustus! How much better that than to say before a judge “I saw” what you did not see! Leave that to the Knights of Asia, of Bithynia and Cappadocia — gentry that were imported bare-footed from New Gaul!
[17] But from this day forth no man who weaves the tuneful web of song and has bitten Apollo’s laurel will be compelled to endure toil unworthy of his craft. To your task, young men! Your Prince is looking around and goading you on, seeking objects for his favour. If you expect patronage from any other quarter, and in that hope are filling up the parchment of your saffron tablet, you had better order faggots at once, Telesinus, and present your productions to the spouse of Venus; or else put away your tomes, and let bookworms bore holes in them where they lie. Break your pen, poor wretch; destroy the battles that have robbed you of your sleep — you that are inditing lofty strains in a tiny garret, that you may come forth worthy of a scraggy bust wreathed with ivy! No hope have you beyond that; your rich miser has now learnt only to admire, only to commend the eloquent, just as boys admire the bird of Juno. Meantime the years flow by that could have endured the sea, the helmet, or the spade; the soul becomes wearied, and an eloquent but penniless old age curses itself and its own Terpsichore!
[36] And now learn the devices by which the patron for whose favour you desert the temples of the Muses and Apollo seeks to avoid spending anything on you. He writes verses of his own; yielding the palm to none but Homer — and that only because of his thousand years. If the sweets of fame fire you to give a recitation, he puts at your disposal a tumbledown house in some distant quarter, the door of which is closely barred like the gate of a beleaguered city. He knows how to supply you Avith freedmen to sit at the end of the rows, and how to distribute about the room the stalwart voices of his retainers: but none of your great men will give you as much as will pay for the benches, or for the tiers of seats resting on hired beams, or for the chairs in the front rows which will have to be returned when done with. Yet for all that, we poets stick to our task; we go on drawing furrows in the thin soil, and turning up the shore with unprofitable plough. For if you would give it up, the itch for writing and making a name holds you fast as with a noose, and becomes inveterate in your distempered brain.
[53] But your real poet, who has a vein of genius all his own — one who spins no hackneyed lays, and whose pieces are struck from no common mint — such an one as I cannot point to, and only feel — is the product of a soul free from care, that knows no bitterness, that loves the woodlands, and is fitted to drink at the Muses’ spring. For how can unhappy Poverty sing songs in the Pierian cave and grasp the thyrsus when it is short of cash, which the body has need of both by night and day? Horace’s stomach was well filled when he shouted his cry of Evoe! Where can genius find a place except in a heart stirred by song alone, that shuts out every thought but one, and is swept along by the lords of Cirrha and of Nysa! It needs a lofty soul, not one that is dismayed at the cost of a coverlet, to have visions of chariots and horses and Gods’ faces, or to tell with what a mien the Fury confounded the Rutulian : had Virgil possessed no slave, and no decent roof over his head, all the snakes would have fallen from the Fury’s hair; no dread note would have boomed from her voiceless trumpet. Do we expect Rubrenus Lappa to be as great in the buskin as the ancients, when his Atreus has to be pawned for his cloak and crockery? Numitor, poor man, has nothing to give to a needy friend, though he is rich enough to send presents to his mistress, and he had enough, too, to buy a tamed lion that needed masses of meat for his keep. It costs less, no doubt, to keep a lion than a poet; the poet’s belly is more capacious!
[79] Lucan, indeed, reclining amid the statues of his gardens, may be content with fame; but what will ever so much glory bring in to Serranus, or to the starving Saleius, if it be glory only? When Statius has gladdened the city by promising a day, people flock to hear his pleasing voice and his loved Thebais; so charmed are their souls by his sweetness, with such rapture does the multitude listen to him. But when his verses have brought down the house, poor Statius will starve if he does not sell his virgin Agave to Paris : for it is Paris who appoints men to military commands; it is Paris who puts the golden ring round the poet’s finger after six months of service. You can get from a stage-player what no great man will give you: why frequent the spacious antechambers of the Bareae or the Camerini? It is Pelopea 4 that appoints our Prefects, and Philomela our Tribunes! Yet you need not begrudge the bard who gains his living from the play-house: who nowadays will be a Maecenas to you, a
Proculeius, or a Fabius? who another Cotta, or a second Lentulus? Genius in those days met with its due reward; many then found their profit in pale cheeks and in abjuring potations all through December.
[98] And is your labour more remunerative, ye writers of history? More time, more oil, is wasted here; regardless of all limit, the pages run up to thousands; the pile of paper is ever mounting to your ruin. So ordains the vast array of facts, and the rules of the craft. But what harvest will you gather, what fruit, from the tilling of your land? Who will give to an historian as much as he gives to the man who reads out the news?
[105] “O but historians are a lazy crew, that delight in lounging and the shade.” Tell me then what do pleaders get for their services in the courts, and for those huge bundles of papers which they bring with them? They talk big enough, especially if a creditor of their own happens to be listening: or if, more urgent still, they get poked in the ribs by one who has brought a huge ledger to claim a doubtful debt. Then indeed do their capacious bellows pant forth prodigious lies! Then are their breasts be-slobbered! and yet, if you want to discover their real gains, you may put on one side the fortunes of a hundred lawyers, on the other that of a single jockey of the Red! The great men are seated; you rise, a pale-faced Ajax, to declaim before a bumpkin judge in a case of contested liberty. Strain your lungs, poor fool, until they burst, that when exhausted by your labours some green palm-branches may be put up to adorn your garret. What fee will your voice bring in? A dried-up ham; a jar of sprats; some veteran onions which would serve as rations for a Moor, or five flagons of wine that has sailed down the Tiber. If you have pled on four occasions, and been lucky enough to get a gold piece, a bit of it, as part of the compact, will go to the attorney. Aemilius will get the maximum legal fee, though he did not plead so well as we did; but then he has a bronze chariot in his forecourt, with four stately steeds, and an effigy of himself, seated on a gallant charger, brandishing from afar a bending spear, and practising for battle with one eye closed. That is how Pedo becomes bankrupt, and how Matho fails; and such will be the end of Tongilius, who frequents the baths with a huge oil-flask of rhinoceros horn, and disturbs the bathers with a mob of dirty retainers. His Maedian bearers are weighed down by the long poles of his litter as he passes through the Forum on his way to buy slaves or plate, agate vases or country houses; for that foreign robe of his, with its Tyrian purple, gains him credit. These gentlemen get profit out of this display; the purple or the violet robe brings practice to a lawyer; it pays him to live with a racket and an appearance beyond his means, and wasteful Rome sets no limits to extravagance.
Delphi Complete Works of Juvena Page 6