Delphi Complete Works of Juvena

by Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis Juvenal

  [211] If free suffrage were granted to the people, who would be so abandoned as not to prefer Seneca to Nero — Nero, for whose chastisement no single ape or adder, no solitary sack, should have been provided? His crime was like that of Agamemnon’s son; but the case was not the same, seeing that Orestes, at the bidding of the Gods, was avenging a father slain in his cups. Orestes never stained himself with Electra’s blood, or with that of his Spartan wife; he never mixed poison-drafts for his own kin; he never sang upon the stage, he never wrote an Epic upon Troy! For of all the deeds of Nero’s cruel and bloody tyranny, which was there that more deserved to be avenged by the arms of a Verginius, of a Vindex or a Galba? These were the deeds, these the graces of our high-born Prince, whose delight it was to prostitute himself by unseemly singing upon a foreign stage, and to earn a chaplet of Greek parsley! Let thy ancestral images be decked with the trophies of thy voice! Place thou at the feet of a Domitius the trailing robe of Thyestes or Antigone, or the mask of Melanippa, and hang up thy harp on a colossus of marble!

  [231] Where can be found, O Catiline, nobler ancestors than thine, or than thine, Cethegus? Yet you plot a night attack, you prepare to give our houses and temples to the flames as though you were the sons of trousered Gauls, or sprung from the Senones, daring deeds that deserved the shirt of torture. But our Consul is awake, and beats back your hosts. Born at Arpinum, of ignoble blood, a municipal knight new to Rome, he posts helmeted men at every point to guard the affrighted citizens, and is alert on every hill. Thus within the walls his toga won for him as much name and honour as Octavius gained by battle in Leucas; as much as Octavius won by his blood-dripping sword on the plains of Thessaly; but then Rome was yet free when she styled him the Parent and Father of his country! Another son of Arpinum used to work for hire upon the Volscian hills, toiling behind a plough not his own; after that, a centurion’s knotty staff would be broken over his head if his pick were slow and sluggish in the trench. Yet it is he who faces the Cimbri, and the mightiest perils; alone he saves the trembling city. And so when the ravens, who had never before seen such huge carcasses, flew down upon the slaughtered Cimbri, his high-born colleague is decorated with the second bay.

  [254] Plebeian were the souls of the Decii, plebeian were their names; yet they were accepted by the Gods beneath and by Mother Earth in lieu of all the Legions and the allies, and all the youth of Latium, for the Decii were more precious than the hosts whom they saved.

  [259] It was one born of a slave who won the robe and diadem and fasces of Quirinus — the last he of our good Kings — whereas the Consul’s own sons, who should have dared some great thing for endangered liberty — some deed to be marvelled at by Mucius or Cocles, or by the maiden who swam across the river-boundary of our realm — were for traitorously loosing the bolts of the city gates to the exiled tyrants. It was a slave — well worthy he to be bewailed by matrons — who revealed the secret plot to the Fathers, while the sons met their just punishment from scourging and from the axe then first used in the cause of Law.

  [269] I would rather that Thersites were your father if only you were like the grandson of Aeacus, and could wield the arms of Vulcan, than that you should have been begotten by Achilles and be like Thersites. Yet, after all, however far you may trace back your name, however long the roll, you derive your race from an ill-famed asylum: the first of your ancestors, whoever he was, was either a shepherd or something that I would rather not name.

  Satire 9. The Sorrows of a Reprobate

  [1] I should like to know, Naevolus, why you so often look gloomy when I meet you, knitting your brow like a vanquished Marsyas. What have you to do with the look that Ravola wore when caught playing that dirty trick with Rhodope? If a slave takes a lick at the pastry, he gets a thrashing for his pains! Why do you look as woe-begone as Crepereius Pollio when he goes round offering a triple rate of interest, and can find no fool to trust him? Why have you suddenly developed those wrinkles? You used to be an easily contented person, who passed as a home-bred knight that could make biting jests at the dinner-table and tell witty town-bred stories. But now you are a different man. You have a hang-dog look; your head is a forest of unkempt, unanointed hair; your skin has lost all the gloss that it got from swathes of hot Bruttian pitch, and your legs are dirty and rough with sprouting hair. Why are you as thin as a chronic invalid in whom a quartan fever has long made its home? One can detect in a sickly body the secret torments of the soul, as also its joys: the face takes on the stamp of either. You seem, therefore, to have changed your mode of life, and to be going in a way opposite to your past. Not long ago, as I remember, you were a gallant more notorious than Aundius; you used to frequent the Temple of Isis and that of Peace with its Ganymede, and the secret courts of the Foreign Mother — for in what temple are there not frail fair ones to be found?

  [27] “Many men have found profit in my mode of life; but I have made nothing substantial out of my labours. I sometimes have a greasy cloak given me that will save my toga — a coarse and crudely dyed garment that has been ill-combed by the Gallic weaver — or some trifle in silver of an inferior quality. Man is ruled by destiny; even those parts of him that lie beneath his clothes. . . . What greater monster is there in the world than a miserly debauchee? ‘I gave you this,’ says he, ‘and then that; and later again ever so much more.’ Thus he makes a reckoning with his lusts. Well, set out the counters, call in the lads with the reckoning board, count out five thousand sesterces all told, and then enumerate my services. ... I am less accounted of than the poor hind who ploughs his master’s field. You used to deem yourself a delicate and good-looking youth, fit to be Jove’s own cup-bearer; but will men like you, who are unwilling to pay for your own morbid pleasures, ever show a kindness to a poor follower or a slave? A pretty fellow to have presents sent him of green sunshades or big amber balls on a birthday, or on the first day of showery spring, when he lolls at full length in a huge easy chair counting over the secret gifts he has received upon the Matron’s Day!

  [54] “Tell me, you sparrow, for whose benefit are you keeping all those hills and farms in Apulia, all those pasture-lands that tire out the kites? Your stores are filled with rich grapes from your Trifoline vineyard, or from the slopes that look down upon Cumae, or the unpeopled Gaurus; whose vats seal up more vintages destined for long life than yours? Would it be a great matter to present a few acres to the loins of an exhausted client? Is it better, think you, that this country woman, with her cottage and her babe and her pet dog, should be bequeathed to a friend who plays the timbrels? ‘You’re an impudent beggar,’ you say. Yes, but my rent cries on me to beg; and so does my single slave-lad — as single as that big eye of Polyphemus which helped the wily Ulysses to make his escape. And one slave is not enough; I shall have to buy a second and feed them both. What shall I do, pray, when the winter howls? What shall I say to their shivering feet and shoulders when December’s north wind blows? Shall I say ‘Hold on, and wait till the grasshoppers arrive’?

  [70] “And though you ignore and pass by my other services, what price do you put on this, that were I not your true and devoted client, your wife would still be a maid? You know how often, and in what ways, you have asked that service of me, and what promises you made to me. . . . There’s many a household in which a union that was unstable, ready to break up, and all but dissolved, has been saved by the intervention of a lover. Which way can you turn? Which service do you put first, which last? Is it to be no merit, you thankless and perfidious man, none at all, that I have presented you with a little son or daughter? For you rear the children, and love to spread abroad in the gazette the proofs of your virility. Hang up garlands over your door! You are now a father; I have given you something to set up against ill fame. You have now parental rights; through me you can be entered as an heir, and receive a legacy entire, with a nice little extra into the bargain; to all which perquisites many more will be added if I make up your family to the full number of three.”

  [90] Ind
eed, Naevolus, you have just cause of complaint. But what has he got to say on the other side? “He takes no notice, and looks out for another two-legged donkey like myself. But remember, my secrets are for your ears alone; keep my complaints fast locked up in your own bosom. It is a fatal thing to have for your enemy a man who keeps himself smooth by pumice-stone! The man who has lately entrusted me with a secret has a consuming hatred of me, believing I have revealed everything that I know; he will not hesitate to take up a sword, or to lay open my head with a club, or to put a lighted candle against my door. Nor can you disregard or make nothing of the fact that for a man of his means the price of poison is never high. So keep my secrets close — as close as did the Council of Areopagus!”

  [102] O my poor Corydon! Do you suppose that a rich man has any secrets? Though his slaves hold their tongues, his beasts of burden and his dog will talk; his door posts and his marble columns will tell tales. Let him shut the windows, and close every chink with curtains; let him fasten the doors, remove the light, turn everyone out of the house, and permit no one to sleep in it — yet the tavern-keeper close by will know before dawn what he was doing at the second cock-crow; he will hear also all the tales invented by the pastry-man, by the head cook and the carver. For what calumny will they hesitate to concoct against their masters when a slander will avenge them for their strappings? Nor will some tippling friend be wanting to look for you at the crossways, and, do what you will, pour his drunken story into your ear. So just ask those people to hold their tongues about the things you questioned me about just now! Why, they would rather blab out a secret than drink as much stolen wine as Saufeia used to swill when conducting a public sacrifice. There are many reasons for right living; but the chiefest of them all is this, that you need pay no attention to the talk of your slaves. For the tongue is the worst part of a bad slave; and yet worse still is the plight of a man who cannot escape from the talk of those whom he supports with his own bread and money.

  [124] “Your advice is excellent, but it is vague. What do you advise me to do now, after all my lost time and disappointed hopes? for the short span of our poor unhappy life is hurrying swiftly on, like a flower, to its close: while we drink, and call for chaplets, for unguents, and for maidens, old age is creeping on us unperceived.”

  [130] Be not afraid; so long as these seven hills of ours stand fast, pathic friends will never fail you: from every quarter, in carriages and in ships, those gentry who scratch their heads with one finger will flock in. And you have always a further and better ground of hope — if you fit your diet to your trade.

  [135] “Such maxims are for the fortunate; my Clotho and Lachesis are well pleased if I can fill my belly with my labours. O my own little Lares, whom I am wont to supplicate with a pinch of frankincense or corn, or with a tiny garland, when can I assure myself of what will keep my old days from the beggar’s staff and mat? Twenty thousand sesterces, well secured; some vessels of plain silver — yet such as Censor Fabricius would have condemned — and a couple of stout Moesian porters on whose hired necks I may be taken comfortably to my place in the bawling circus. Let me have besides a stooping engraver, and a painter who will quickly dash off any number of likenesses. Enough this for a poor man like me. It is a pitiful prayer, and I have little hope even of that; for whenever Fortune is supplicated on my behalf, she plugs her ears with wax fetched from that selfsame ship which escaped from the Sicilian songstresses through the deafness of her crew.”

  Satire 10. The Vanity of Human Wishes

  [1] In all the lands that stretch from Gades to the Ganges and the Morn, there are but few who can distinguish true blessings from their opposites, putting aside the mists of error. For when does Reason direct our desires or our fears? What project do we form so auspiciously that we do not repent us of our effort and of the granted wish? Whole households have been destroyed by the compliant Gods in answer to the masters’ prayers; in camp and city alike we ask for things that will be our ruin. Many a man has met death from the rushing flood of his own eloquence; others from the strength and wondrous thews in which they have trusted. More still have been ruined by money too carefully amassed, and by fortunes that surpass all patrimonies by as much as the British whale exceeds the dolphin. It was for this that in the dire days Nero ordered Longinus and the great gardens of the over-wealthy Seneca to be put under siege; for this was it that the noble Palace of the Laterani was beset by an entire cohort; it is but seldom that soldiers find their way into a garret!

  Though you carry but few silver vessels with you in a night journey, you will be afraid of the sword and cudgel of a freebooter, you will tremble at the shadow of a reed shaking in the moonlight; but the empty-handed traveller will whistle in the robber’s face.

  [23] The foremost of all petitions — the one best known to every temple — is for riches and their increase, that our money-chest may be the biggest in the Forum. But you will drink no aconite out of an earthenware cup; you may dread it when a jewelled cup is offered you, or when Setine wine sparkles in a golden bowl. Then will you not commend the two wise men, one of whom would laugh while the opposite sage would weep every time he set a foot outside the door? To condemn by a cutting laugh comes readily to us all; the wonder is how the other sage’s eyes were supplied with all that water. The sides of Democritus shook with unceasing laughter, although in the cities of his day there were no purple-bordered or purple-striped robes, no fasces, no palanquins, no tribunals. What if he had seen the Praetor uplifted in his lofty car amid the dust of the Circus, attired in the tunic of Jove, hitching an embroidered Tyrian toga on to his shoulders, and carrying a crown so big that no neck could bear the weight of it? For a public slave is sweating under the burden; and that the Consul may not fancy himself overmuch, the slave rides in the same chariot with his master. Add to all this the bird that is perched on his ivory staff; on this side the horn-blowers, on that the duteous clients preceding him in long array, with white-robed Roman citizens, whose friendship has been gained by the dinner-dole snugly lying in their purses, marching at his bridle-rein. Even then the philosopher found food for laughter at every meeting with his kind: his wisdom shows us that men of high distinction and destined to set great examples may be born in a dullard air, and in the land of mutton-heads. He laughed at the troubles, ay and at the pleasures, of the crowd, sometimes too at their tears, while for himself he would bid frowning fortune go hang, and point at her the finger of derision.

  [54] Thus it is that the things for which we pray, and for which it is right and proper to load the knees of the Gods with wax, are either profitless or pernicious! Some men are hurled headlong by over-great power and the envy to which it exposes them; they are wrecked by the long and illustrious roll of their honours: down come their statues, obedient to the rope; the axe hews in pieces their chariot wheels and the legs of the unoffending horses. And now the flames are hissing, and amid the roar of furnace and of bellows the head of the mighty Sejanus, the darling of the mob, is burning and crackling, and from that face, which was but lately second in the entire world, are being fashioned pipkins, pitchers, frying-pans and slop-pails! Up with the laurel-wreaths over your doors! Lead forth a grand chalked bull to the Capitol! Sejanus is being dragged along by a hook, as a show and joy to all! “What a lip the fellow had! What a face!”— “Believe me, I never liked the man!”— “But on what charge was he condemned? Who informed against him? What was the evidence, who the witnesses, who made good the case?”— “Nothing of the sort; a great and wordy letter came from Capri.”— “Good; I ask no more.”

  [72] And what does the mob of Remus say? It follows fortune, as it always does, and rails against the condemned. That same rabble, if Nortia had smiled upon the Etruscan, if the aged Emperor had been struck down unawares, would in that very hour have conferred upon Sejanus the title of Augustus. Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and
longs eagerly for just two things — Bread and Games!

  [81] “I hear that many are to perish.”— “No doubt of it; there is a big furnace ready.”— “My friend Brutidius looked a trifle pale when I met him at the Altar of Mars. I tremble lest the defeated Ajax should take vengeance for having been so ill-defended.”— “Let us rush headlong and trample on Caesar’s enemy, while he lies upon the bank!”— “Ay, and let our slaves see us, that none bear witness against us, and drag their trembling master into court with a halter round his neck.”