[139] Trust in eloquence, indeed? Why, no one would give Cicero himself two hundred pence nowadays unless a huge ring were blazing on his finger. The first thing that a litigant looks to is, Have you eight slaves and a dozen retainers? Have you a litter to wait on you, and gowned citizens to walk before you? That is why Paulus used to hire a sardonyx ring; that is why he earned a higher fee than Gallus or Basilus. When is eloquence ever found beneath a shabby coat? When does Basilus get the chance of producing in court a weeping mother? Who would listen to him, however well he spoke? Better go to Gaul or to Africa, that nursing mother of lawyers, if you would make a living by your tongue!
[150] Or do you teach rhetoric? O Vettius! what iron bowels must you have when your troop of scholars slays the cruel tyrant: when each in turn stands up, and repeats what he has just been conning in his seat, reciting the self-same things in the self-same verses! Served up again and again, the cabbage is the death of the unhappy master! What complexion should be put on the case; within what category it falls; what is the crucial point; what hits will be made on the other side — these are things which everyone wants to know, but for which no one is willing to pay. “Pay indeed? Why, what have I learnt?” asks the scholar. It is the teacher’s fault, of course, that the Arcadian youth feels no flutter in his left breast when he dins his “dire Hannibal” into my unfortunate head on every sixth day of the week, whatever be the question which he is pondering: whether he should make straight for the city from the field of Cannae, or whether, after the rain and thunder, he should lead around his cohorts, all dripping after the storm. Name any sum you please and you shall have it: what would I give that the lad’s father might listen to him as often as I do! So cry half-a-dozen or more of our sophists in one breath, entering upon real lawsuits of their own, abandoning “The Ravisher” and forgetting all about “The Poisoner” or “The wicked and thankless Husband,” or the drugs that restore sight to the chronic blind.
[171] And so, if my counsel goes for anything, I would advise the man who comes down from his rhetorical shade to fight for a sum that would buy a trumpery corn-ticket — for that’s the most handsome fee he will ever get — to present himself with a discharge, and enter upon some other walk of life. If you ask what fees Chrysogonus and Pollio get for teaching music to the sons of our great men, you will tear up the Rhetoric of Theodorus.
[178] Your great man will spend six hundred thousand sesterces upon his baths, and something more on the colonnade in which he is to drive on rainy days. What? Is he to wait for a clear sky, and bespatter his horses with fresh mud? How much better to drive where their hoofs will remain bright and spotless! Elsewhere let a banqueting hall arise, supported on lofty pillars of African marble, to catch the winter sun. And cost the house what it may, there will come a man to arrange the courses skilfully, and the man who makes up the tasty dishes. Amidst expenditure such as this two thousand sesterces will be enough, and more than enough, for Quintilian: there is nothing on which a father will not spend more money than on his son. “How then,” you ask, “does Quintilian possess those vast domains?” Pass by cases of rare good fortune: the lucky man is both beautiful and brave, he is wise and noble and high-born; he sews on to his black shoe the crescent of the Senator. He is a great orator too, a good javelin-man, and if he chance to have caught a cold, he sings divinely. For it makes all the difference by what stars you are welcomed when you utter your first cry, and are still red from your mother’s womb. If Fortune so choose, you will become a Consul from being a rhetor; if again she so wills, you will become a rhetor from being a Consul. What of Ventidius and Tullius? What made their fortunes but the stars and the wondrous potency of secret Fate? The Fates will give kingdoms to a slave, and triumphs to a captive! Nevertheless that fortunate man is rare — rarer than a white crow. Many have repented them of the Professor’s vain and unprofitable chair; witness the ends of Thrasymachus and Secundus Carrinas. Him too didst thou see in poverty on whom thou, O Athens, hadst nothing better to bestow than a cup of cold hemlock! Grant, O Gods, that the earth may lie soft and light upon the shades of our forefathers: may the sweet-scented crocus and a perpetual spring-time bloom over their ashes; who deemed that the teacher should hold the place of a revered parent! Achilles trembled for fear of the rod when already of full age, singing songs in his native hills; nor would he then have dared to laugh at the tail of his musical instructor. But Rufus and the rest are cudgelled each by his own pupils — that Rufus whom they have so often styled “the Allobrogian Cicero.”
[215] Who pours into the lap of Celadus, or of the learned Palaemon, as much as their grammatical labours deserve? And yet, small as the fee is — and it is smaller than the rhetor’s wage — the pupil’s unfeeling attendant nibbles off a bit of it for himself; so too does the steward. But never mind, Palaemon; suffer some diminution of your wage, like the hawker who sells rags and white Gallic blankets for winter wear, if only it do not go for nothing that you have sat from early dawn in a hole which no blacksmith would put up with, no workman who teaches how to card wool with slanting tool: that it do not go for nothing to have snuffed up the odour of as many lamps as you had scholars in your class thumbing a discoloured Horace or a begrimed Virgil.
[228] But it is seldom that the fee can be recovered without a judgment of the Court. And yet be sure, ye parents, to impose the strictest laws upon the teacher: he must never be at fault in his grammar; he must know all history, and have all the authorities at his finger-tips. If asked a chance question on his way to the baths, or to the establishment of Phoebus, he must at once tell you who was the nurse of Anchises, what was the name and birth-place of Anchemolus’ step-mother, to what age Acestes lived, how many flagons of Sicilian wine he presented to the Trojans. Require of him that he shall mould the young minds as a man moulds a face out of wax with his thumb; insist that he shall be a father to the whole brood, so that they shall play no nasty game, and do no nasty trick — no easy matter to watch the hands and sparkling eyes of so many youngsters! “See to all this,” you say, “and then, when the year comes round, receive the golden piece which the mob demands for a winning jockey.”
Satire 8. Stemmata quid Faciunt?
[1] What avail your pedigrees? What boots it, Ponticus, to be valued for one’s ancient blood, and to display the painted visages of one’s forefathers — an Aemilianus standing in his car; a half-crumbled Curius; a Corvinus who has lost a shoulder, or a Galba that has neither ear nor nose? Of what profit is it to boast a Fabius on your ample family chart, and thereafter to trace kinship through many a branch with grimy Dictators and Masters of the Horse, if in presence of the Lepidi you live an evil life? What signify all these effigies of warriors if you gamble all night long before your Numantine ancestors, and begin your sleep with the rise of Lucifer, at an hour when our Generals of old would be moving their standards and their camps? Why should a Fabius, born in the home of Hercules, take pride in the title Allobrogicus, and in the Great Altar, if he be covetous and empty-headed and more effeminate than a Euganean lambkin; if his loins, rubbed smooth by Catanian pumice, throw shame on his shaggy-haired grandfathers; or if, as a trafficker in poison, he dishonour his unhappy race by a statue that will have to be broken in pieces? Though you deck your hall from end to end with ancient waxen images, Virtue is the one and only true nobility. Be a Paulus, or a Cossus, or a Drusus in character; rank them before the statues of your ancestors; let them precede the fasces themselves when you are Consul. You owe me, first of all things, the virtues of the soul; prove yourself stainless in life, one who holds fast to the right both in word and deed, and I acknowledge you as a lord; all hail to you, Gaetulicus, or you, Silanus, or from whatever stock you come, if you have proved yourself to a rejoicing country a rare and illustrious citizen, we would fain cry what Egypt shouts when Osiris has been found. For who can be called “noble” who is unworthy of his race, and distinguished in nothing but his name? We call some one’s dwarf an “Atlas,” his blackamoor “a swan”; an ill-favour
ed, misshapen girl we call “Europa”; lazy hounds that are bald with chronic mange, and who lick the edges of a dry lamp, will bear the names of “Pard,” “Tiger,” “Lion,” or of any other animal in the world that roars more fiercely: take you care that it be not on that principle that you are a Creticus or a Camerinus!
[39] Who is it whom I admonish thus? It is to you, Rubellius Blandus, that I speak. You are puffed up with the lofty pedigree of the Drusi, as though you had done something to make you noble, and to be conceived by one glorying in the blood of Iulus, rather than by one who weaves for hire under the windy rampart. “You others are dirt,” you say; “the very scum of our populace; not one of you can point to his father’s birthplace; but I am one of the Cecropidae!” Long life to you! May you long enjoy the glories of your birth! And yet among the lowest rabble you will find a Roman, who has eloquence, one who will plead the cause of the unlettered noble; you must go to the toga-clad herd for a man to untie the knots and riddles of the law. From them will come the brave young soldier who marches to the Euphrates, or to the eagles that guard the conquered Batavians, while you are nothing but a Cecropid, the image of a limbless Hermes! For in no respect but one have you the advantage over him: his head is of marble, while yours is a living effigy!
[56] Tell me, thou scion of the Trojans, who deems a dumb animal well-born unless it be strong? It is for this that we commend the swift horse whose speed sets every hand aglow, and fills the Circus with the hoarse shout of victory; that horse is noblest, on whatever pasture reared, whose rush outstrips the rest, and whose dust is foremost upon the plain. But the offspring of Coryphaeus or Hirpinus comes to the hammer if Victory light but seldom on his car: no respect is there paid to ancestors, no favour is shown to Shades! The slow of foot, that are fit only to turn a miller’s wheel, pass, for a mere nothing, from one owner to another, and gall their necks against the collar. So, if I am to respect yourself, and not your belongings, give me something of your own to engrave among your titles, in addition to those honours which we pay, and have paid, to those to whom you owe your all.
[71] Enough this for the youth whom report has handed down to us as proud and puffed up with his kinship to Nero: for in those high places regard for others is rarely to be found. But for you, Ponticus, I cannot wish that you should be valued for the glories of your race while doing nothing that shall bring you praise in the days to come. It is a poor thing to lean upon the fame of others, lest the pillars give way and the house fall down in ruin. The vine-shoot, trailing upon the ground, longs for the widowed elm. Be a stout soldier, a faithful guardian, and an incorruptible judge; if summoned to bear witness in some dubious and uncertain cause, though Phalaris himself should bring up his bull and dictate to you a perjury, count it the greatest of all sins to prefer life to honour, and to lose, for the sake of living, all that makes life worth having. The man who merits death is already dead, though he dine off a hundred Lucrine oysters, and bathe in a whole cauldron of Cosmus’ essences.
[87] When you enter your long-expected Province as its Governor, set a curb and a limit to your passion, as also to your greed; have compassion on the impoverished provincials, whose very bones have been sucked dry of marrow; have regard to what the law ordains, what the Senate enjoins; consider what honours await the good ruler, with what a just thunderstroke the Senate hurled down Capito and Numitor, those plunderers of the Cilicians. Yet what profit was there from their condemnation? Look out for an auctioneer, Chaerippus, to sell your chattels, seeing that Pansa has stripped you of all that Natta left. And hold your tongue about it; when all else is gone, it is madness to throw away your passage-money.
[98] Very different in days of old were the wailings of our allies and the harm inflicted on them by losses, when they had been newly conquered and were wealthy still. Their houses then were all well-stored; they had piles of money, with Spartan mantles and Coan purples; beside the paintings of Parrhasius, and the statues of Myron, stood the living ivories of Phidias; everywhere the works of Polyclitus were to be seen; few tables were without a Mentor. But after that came now a Dolabella, now an Antonius, and now a sacrilegious Verres, loading big ships with secret spoils, peace-trophies more numerous than those of war. Nowadays, on capturing a farm, you may rob our allies of a few yoke of oxen, or a few mares, with the sire of the herd; or of the household gods themselves, if there be a good statue left, or a single Deity in his little shrine; such are the best and choicest things to be got now. You despise perchance, and deservedly, the unwarlike Rhodian and the scented Corinthian: what harm will their resined youths do you, or the smooth legs of the entire breed? But keep clear of rugged Spain, avoid the land of Gaul and the Dalmatian shore; spare, too, those harvesters who fill the belly of a city that has no leisure save for the Circus and the play: what great profit can you reap from outrages upon Libyans, seeing that Marius has so lately stripped Africa to the skin? Beware above all things to do no wrong to men who are at once brave and miserable. You may take from them all the gold and silver that they have; but plundered though they be, they will still have their arms; they will still have their shields and their swords, their javelins and helmets.
[125] What I have just propounded is no mere theme, it is the truth; you may take it that I am reading out to you one of the Sibyl’s leaves. If your whole staff be incorruptible: if no long-haired Ganymede sells your judgments; if your wife be blameless; if, in your circuit through the towns and districts, there is no Harpy ready to pounce with crooked talons upon gold, — then you may trace back your race to Picus; if you delight in lofty names, you may count the whole array of Titans, and Prometheus himself, among your ancestors, and select for yourself a great-grandfather from whatever myth you please. But if you are carried away headlong by ambition and by lust; if you break your rods upon the bleeding backs of our allies; if you love to see your axes blunted and your headsmen weary, then the nobility of your own parents begins to rise up in judgment against you, and to hold a glaring torch over your misdeeds. The greater the sinner’s name, the more signal the guiltiness of the sin. If you are wont to put your signature to forged deeds, what matters it to me that you sign them in temples built by your grandfather, or in front of the triumphal statue of your father? What does that matter, if you steal out at night for adultery, your brow concealed under a cowl of Gallic wool?
[146] The bloated Lateranus whirls past the bones and ashes of his ancestors in a rapid car; with his own hands this muleteer Consul locks the wheel with the drag. It is by night, indeed: but the moon looks on; the stars strain their eyes to see. When his time of office is over, Lateranus will take up his whip in broad daylight; not shrinking to meet a now-aged friend, he will be the first to salute him with his whip; he will unbind the trusses of hay, and deal out the fodder to his weary cattle. Meanwhile, though he slays woolly victims and tawny steers after Numa’s fashion, he swears by no other deity before Jove’s high altar than the Goddess of horseflesh, and the images painted on the reeking stables. And when it pleases him to go back to the all-night tavern, a Syro-Phoenician runs forth to meet him — a denizen of the Idumaean gate perpetually drenched in perfumes — and salutes him as lord and prince with all the airs of a host; and with him comes Cyane, her dress tucked up, carrying a flagon of wine for sale.
[163] An apologist will say to me, “We too did the same as boys.” Perhaps: but then you ceased from your follies and let them drop. Let your evil days be short; let some of your misdoings be cut off with your first beard. Boys may be pardoned; but when Lateranus frequented those hot liquor shops with their inscribed linen awnings, he was of ripe age, fit to guard in arms the Armenian and Syrian rivers, the Danube and the Rhine; fit to protect the person of his Emperor. Send your Legate to Ostia, O Caesar, but search for him in some big cookshop! There you will find him, lying cheek-by-jowl beside a cut-throat, in the company of bargees, thieves, and runaway slaves, beside hangmen and coffin-makers, or of some eunuch priest lying drunk with idle timbrels. Here is Liberty Hall! One cu
p serves for everybody; no one has a bed to himself, nor a table apart from the rest. What would you do, friend Ponticus, if you chanced upon a slave like this? You would send him to your Lucanian or Tuscan bridewell. But you gentlemen of Trojan blood find excuses for yourselves; what would disgrace a huckster sits gracefully on a Volesus or a Brutus!
[183] What if I can never cite any example so foul and shameful that there is not something worse behind? Your means exhausted, Damasippus, you hired out your voice to the stage, taking the part of the Clamorous Ghost of Catullus. The nimble Lentulus acted famously the part of Laureolus : deserving, in my judgment, to be really and truly crucified. Nor can the spectators themselves be forgiven: the populace that with brazen front sits and beholds the triple buffooneries of our patricians, that can listen to a bare-footed Fabius, and laugh to see the Mamerci cuffing each other. What matters it at what price they sell their deaths? No Nero compels them to sell; yet they hesitate not to sell themselves at the games of the exalted Praetor. And yet suppose that on one side of you were placed a sword, on the other the stage: which were the better choice? Was ever any man so afraid of death that he would choose to be the jealous husband of a Thymele, or the colleague of the clown Corinthus? Yet when an Emperor has taken to harp-playing, it is not so very strange that a noble should act in a mime. Beyond this, what will be left but the gladiatorial school? And that scandal too you have seen in our city: a Gracchus fighting, not indeed as a murmillo, nor with the round shield and scimitar : such accoutrements he rejects, ay rejects and detests; nor does a helmet shroud his face. See how he wields his trident! and when with poised right hand he has cast the trailing net in vain, he lifts up his bare face to the benches and flies, for all to recognise, from one end of the arena to the other. We cannot mistake the golden tunic that flutters from his throat, and the twisted cord that dangles from the high-crowned cap; and so the pursuer who was pitted against Gracchus endured a shame more grievous than any wound.
Delphi Complete Works of Juvena Page 7