[60] But nowadays, if a friend does not disavow a sum entrusted to him, if he restore the old purse with all its rust, his good faith is deemed a portent calling for the sacred books of Etruria, and to be expiated by a lamb decked with garlands. If I discover an upright and blameless man, I liken him to a boy born with double limbs, or to fishes found by a marvelling rustic under the plough, or to a pregnant mule: I am as concerned as though it had rained stones, or a swarm of bees had settled in a long cluster on a temple-roof, or as though some river had poured down wondrous floods of milk into the sea.
[71] You complain, do you, that by an impious fraud you have been robbed of ten thousand sesterces? What if someone else has by a like fraud lost a secret deposit of two hundred thousand sesterces? A third a still greater sum, which could scarce find room in the corners of his ample treasure-chest? So simple and easy a thing is it to disregard heavenly witnesses, if no mortal man is privy to the secret! Hear how loudly the fellow denies the charge! See the assurance of his perfidious face! He swears by the rays of the sun and the Tarpeian thunderbolts; by the lance of Mars and the arrows of the Cirrhaean Seer; by the shafts and quiver of the maiden huntress, and by thine own trident, O Neptune, thou lord of the Aegaean sea. He throws in besides the bow of Hercules, and Minerva’s spear, and all the weapons contained in all the armouries of Heaven; if he be a father, “May I eat,” he tearfully declares, “my own son’s head boiled, and dripping with Egyptian vinegar!”
[86] Some think that all things are subject to the chances of Fortune; these believe that the world has no governor to move it, but that Nature rolls along the changes of day and year; they will therefore lay their hands on any altar you please without a tremor. Another fears that punishment will follow crime; he believes that there are Gods, but perjures himself all the same, reasoning thus within himself: “Let Isis deal with my body as she wills, and blast my sight with her avenging rattle, provided only that even when blind I may keep the money which I disavow; it is worth having phthisis or running ulcers or losing half one’s leg at the price! Ladas himself, if not needing treatment at Anticyra or by Archigenes, would not hesitate to accept the rich man’s gout; for what is to be got out of fame for swiftness of foot, or from a hungry branch of the Pisaean Olive ? The wrath of the Gods may be great, but it assuredly is slow; if then they charge themselves with punishing all the guilty, when will they get my length? And besides I may perchance find the God placable; he is wont to forgive things like this. Many commit the same crime and fare differently: one man gets a gibbet, another a crown, as the reward of crime.”
[106] That is how they reassure their minds when in terror for some deadly guilt. If you summon them then to the holy shrine, they will be there before you; nay, they will themselves drag you thither, and dare you to the proof; for when a bad cause is well backed by a bold face, the man gets credit for self-confidence. Such a one plays a part, like the runaway buffoon of the witty Catullus, but you, poor wretch, may shout so as to out-do Stentor, or rather as loudly as the Mars of Homer, “Do you hear all this, O Jupiter, with lip unmoved, when you ought to have been making yourself heard, whether you be made of marble or of bronze? Else why do I open my packet of holy incense, and place it on your blazing altar? Why offer slices of a calf’s liver or the fat of a white pig? So far as I can see, there is nothing to choose between your images and the statue of Vagellius!”
[120] And now hear what consolations can be offered on the other side by one who has not embraced the doctrines either of the Cynics, or of the Stoics — who only differ from the Cynics by a shirt — nor yet reverenced Epicurus, so proud of the herbs in his tiny garden. Let doubtful maladies be tended by doctors of repute; your veins may be entrusted to a disciple of Philippus. If in all the world you cannot show me so abominable a crime, I hold my peace; I will not forbid you to smite your breast with your fists, or to pummel your face with open palm, seeing that after so great a loss you must close your doors, and that a household bewails the loss of money with louder lamentations than a death. In such a misfortune no grief is simulated; no one is content to rend the top of his garment, or to squeeze forced moisture from his eyes; unfeigned are the tears which lament the loss of wealth.
[135] But if you see every court beset with complaints like to yours; if after a bond has been read over ten times by the opposing party, they declare the document to be waste paper, though convicted by their own handwriting, and. by the signet ring, most choice of sardonyx stones, kept in an ivory case — do you, my fine fellow, suppose that you are to be placed outside the common lot, because you were born of a white hen, while we are common chickens, hatched out of unlucky eggs? Your loss is a modest one, to be endured with a moderate amount of choler, if you cast an eye on grosser wrongs. Compare with your case the hired robber, or the fire purposely started by sulphur, the flame bursting out at your front door; think too of those who carry off from ancient temples splendid cups of venerable antiquity, that were the gift of nations, or crowns dedicated by some ancient monarch! If such things are not to be had, a petty desecrator will be found to scrape off the gilding from the thigh of Hercules, or from the very face of Neptune, or to strip Castor of his beaten gold. And why should he hesitate, when he has been used to melt down an entire Thunderer? Compare too the manufacturers and sellers of poison, and the man who should be cast into the sea inside an ox’s hide, with whom a luckless destiny encloses a harmless ape. What a mere fraction these of the crimes which Gallicus, the guardian of our city, has to listen to from dawn to eve! If you would know what mankind is like, that one court-house will suffice; spend a few days in it, and when you come out, dare to call yourself unfortunate. Who marvels at a swollen throat in the Alps? or in Meroe at a woman’s breast bigger than her sturdy babe? Who is amazed to see a German with blue eyes and yellow hair, twisting his greasy curls into a horn? We marvel not, clearly because this one nature is common to them all. The Pygmy warrior marches forth in his tiny arms to encounter the sudden swoop and clamorous cloud of Thracian birds; but soon, no match for his foe, he is snatched up by the savage crane and borne in his crooked talons through the air. If you saw this in our own country, you would shake with laughter; but in that land, where the whole host is only one foot high, though like battles are witnessed every day, no one laughs!
[174] “What? Is there to be no punishment for that perjured soul and his impious fraud?” Well, suppose him to have been hurried off in heavy chains, and slain (what more could anger ask?) at our good pleasure; yet your loss still remains, your deposit will not be saved; and the smallest drop of blood from that headless body will bring you hatred along with your consolation. “O! but vengeance is good, sweeter than life itself.” Yes; so say the ignorant, whose passionate hearts you may see ablaze at the slightest cause, sometimes for no cause at all; any occasion, indeed, however small it be, suffices for their wrath. But so will not Chrysippus say, or the gentle Thales, or the old man who dwelt near sweet Hymettus, who would have given to his accuser no drop of the hemlock-draught which was administered to him in that cruel bondage. Benign Philosophy, by degrees, strips from us most of our vices, and all our mistakes; it is she that first teaches us the right. For vengeance is always the delight of a little, weak, and petty mind; of which you may straightway draw proof from this — that no one so rejoices in vengeance as a woman.
[192] But why should you suppose that a man escapes punishment whose mind is ever kept in terror by the consciousness of an evil deed which lashes him with unheard blows, his own soul ever shaking over him the unseen whip of torture? It is a grievous punishment, more cruel far than any devised by the stern Caedicius or by Rhadamanthus, to carry in one’s breast by night and by day one’s own accusing witness. The Pythian prophetess once made answer to a Spartan that it would not pass unpunished in after time that he had thought of keeping back a sum entrusted to him supporting the wrong by perjury; for he asked what was the mind of the Deity, and whether Apollo counselled him to do the deed. He therefore restor
ed the money, through fear, and not from honesty; nevertheless he found all the words of the Oracle to be true and worthy of the shrine, being destroyed with his whole race and family and relations, however far removed. Such are the penalties endured by the mere wish to sin; for he who secretly meditates a crime within his breast has all the guiltiness of the deed.
[210] What then if the purposed deed be done? His disquiet never ceases, not even at the festal board; his throat is as dry as in a fever; he can scarcely take his food, it swells between his teeth; he spits out the wine, poor wretch; he cannot abide the choicest old Albanian, and if you bring out something finer still, wrinkles gather upon his brow as though it had been puckered up by some Falernian turned sour. In the night, if his troubles grant him a short slumber, and his limbs, after tossing upon the bed, are sinking into repose, he straightway beholds the temple and the altar of the God whom he has outraged; and what weighs with chiefest terror on his soul, he sees you in his dreams; your awful form, larger than life, frightens his quaking heart and wrings confession from him. These are the men who tremble and grow pale at every lightning-flash; when it thunders, they quail at the first rumbling in the heavens; not as though it were an affair of chance or brought about by the raging of the winds, but as though the flame had fallen in wrath and as a judgment upon the earth. If one storm pass harmless by, they look more anxiously for the next, as though this calm were only a reprieve. If, again, they suffer from pains in the side, with a fever that robs them of their sleep, they believe that the sickness has been inflicted on them by the offended Deity: these they deem to be the missiles, these the arrows of the Gods. They dare not vow a bleating victim to a shrine, or offer a crested cock to the Lares; for what hope is permitted to the guilty sick? What victim is not more worthy of life than they? Inconstant and shifty, for the most part, is the nature of bad men. In committing a crime, they have courage enough and to spare; they only begin to feel what is right and what wrong when it has been committed. Yet nature, firm and changeless, returns to the ways which it has condemned. For who ever fixed a term to his own offending? When did a hardened brow ever recover the banished blush? What man have you ever seen that was satisfied with one act of villainy? Our scoundrel will yet put his feet into the snare; he will have to endure the dark prison-house and the staple, or one of those crags in the Aegaean sea that are crowded with our noble exiles. You will exult over the stern punishment of a hated name, and at length admit with joy that none of the Gods is deaf or like unto Tiresias.
Satire 14. No Teaching like that of Example
[1] There are many things of ill repute, friend Fuscinus, — things that would affix a lasting stain to the brightest of lives, — which parents themselves point out and hand on to their sons. If the aged father delights in ruinous play, his heir too gambles in his teens, and rattles the selfsame weapons in a tiny dice-box. If a youth has learnt from the hoary gluttony of a spendthrift father to peel truffles, to preserve mushrooms, and to souse beccaficoes in their own juice, none of his relatives need expect better things of him when he grows up. As soon as he has passed his seventh year, before he has cut all his second teeth, though you put a thousand bearded preceptors on his right hand, and as many on his left, he will always long to fare sumptuously, and not fall below the high standard of his cookery.
[15] When Rutilus delights in the sound of a cruel flogging, deeming it sweeter than any siren’s song, and being himself a very Antiphates, or a Polyphemus, to his trembling household, is he inculcating gentleness, and leniency to slight faults: does he hold that the bodies and souls of slaves are made of the same stuff and elements as our own; or is he inculcating cruelty, never happy until he has summoned a torturer, and he can brand some one with a hot iron for stealing a couple of towels? What counsel does the father give to his son when he revels in the clanking of a chain, and takes wondrous pleasure in branded slaves, in prisons and his country bridewell? Are you simple enough to suppose that Larga’s daughter will remain virtuous when she cannot count over her mother’s lovers so rapidly, or string their names together so quickly, as not to take breath full thirty times? She was her mother’s confidante as a girl; at her dictation she now indites her own little love-notes, despatching them to her paramours by the hand of the self-same menials. So Nature ordains; no evil example corrupts us so soon and so rapidly as one that has been set at home, since it comes into the mind on high authority. Here and there perhaps a youth may decline to follow the bad example: one whose soul the Titan has fashioned with kindlier skill and of a finer clay; but the rest are led on by the parental steps which they should avoid, and are dragged into the old track of vice which has so long been pointed out to them.
[38] Abstain therefore from things which you must condemn: for this there is at least one all-powerful motive, that our crimes be not copied by our children. For we are all of us teachable in what is base and wrong; you may find a Catiline among any people, and in any clime, but nowhere will you find a Brutus, or the uncle of a Brutus. Let no foul word or sight cross the threshold within which there is a father. Away with you, ye hireling damsels! Away with the songs of the night-revelling parasite! If you have any evil deed in mind, you owe the greatest reverence to the young; disregard not your boy’s tender years, and let your infant son stand in the way of the sin that you propose. For if some day or other he shall do a deed deserving the censor’s wrath, and shall show himself like to you, not in form and face only, but also your child in vice, and following in all your footsteps with sin deeper than your own, you will doubtless rebuke him and chide him angrily and thereafter prepare to change your will. But how can you assume the grave brow and the free tone of a father if you in your old age are doing things worse than he did, and your own empty pate has long been needing the windy cupping-glass?
[59] When you expect a guest, not one of your household will be idle. “Sweep the pavement! Polish up the pillars! Down with that dusty spider, web and all! One of you clean the plain silver, another the embossed vessels!” So shouts the master, standing over them whip in hand. And so you are afraid, poor fool, that the eyes of your expected guest may be offended by the sight of dog’s filth in the hall or of a portico splashed with mud — things which one slave-boy can put right with half a peck of sawdust: and yet will you take no pains that your son may behold a stainless home, free from any stain and blemish? It is good that you have presented your country and your people with a citizen, if you make him serviceable to his country, useful for the land, useful for the things both of peace and war. For it will make all the difference in what practices, in what habits, you bring him up. The stork feeds her young upon the serpents and the lizards which she finds in the wilds; the young search for the same things when they have gotten to themselves wings. The vulture hurries from dead cattle and dogs and gibbets to bring some of the carrion to her offspring; so this becomes the food of the vulture when he is full-grown and feeds himself, making his nest in a tree of his own. The noble birds that wait on Jove hunt the hare or the roe in the woods, and from them serve up prey to their eyrie; so when their progeny are of full age and soar up from the nest, hunger bids them swoop down upon that same prey which they had first tasted when they chipped the shell.
[86] Cretonius was given to building; now on Caieta’s winding shore, now on the heights of Tibur, now on the Praenestine hills, he would rear lofty mansions, with marbles fetched from Greece and distant lands, outdoing the temples of Fortune and of Hercules by as much as the eunuch Posides overtopped our own Capitol. Housed therefore in this manner, he impaired his fortune and frittered away his wealth; some goodly portion of it still remained, but it was all squandered by his madman of a son in building new mansions of still costlier marbles.
[95] Some who have had a father who reveres the Sabbath, worship nothing but the clouds, and the divinity of the heavens, and see no difference between eating swine’s flesh, from which their father abstained, and that of man; and in time they take to circumcision. Having been wont to
flout the laws of Rome, they learn and practise and revere the Jewish law, and all that Moses committed to his secret tome, forbidding to point out the way to any not worshipping the same rites, and conducting none but the circumcised to the desired fountain. For all which the father was to blame, who gave up every seventh day to idleness, keeping it apart from all the concerns of life.
[107] All vices but one the young imitate of their own free will; avarice alone is enjoined on them against the grain. For that vice has a deceptive appearance and semblance of virtue, being gloomy of mien, severe in face and garb. The miser is openly commended for his thrift, being deemed a saving man, who will be a surer guardian of his own wealth than if it were watched by the dragons of the Hesperides or of Colchis. Moreover, such a one is thought to be skilled in the art of money-getting; for it is under workers such as he that fortunes grow. And they grow bigger by every kind of means: the anvil is ever working, and the forge never ceases to glow.
[119] Thus the father deems the miser to be fortunate; and when he worships wealth, believing that no poor man was ever happy, he urges his sons to follow in the same path and to attach themselves to the same school. There are certain rudiments in vice; in these he imbues them from the beginning, compelling them to study its pettiest meannesses; after a while he instructs them in the inappeasable lust of money-getting. He pinches the bellies of his slaves with short rations, starving himself into the bargain; for he cannot bear to eat up all the mouldy fragments of stale bread. In the middle of September he will save up the hash of yesterday; in summer-time he will preserve under seal for to-morrow’s dinner a dish of beans, with a bit of mackerel, or half a stinking sprat, counting the leaves of the cut leeks before he puts them away. No beggar from a bridge would accept an invitation to such a meal! But for what end do you pile up riches gathered through torments such as these, when it is plain madness and sheer lunacy to live in want that you may be wealthy when you die? Meantime, while your purse is full to bursting, your love of gain grows as much as the money itself has grown, and the man who has none of it covets it the least. And so when one country house is not enough for you, you buy a second; then you must extend your boundaries, because your neighbour’s field seems bigger and better than your own; you must buy that too, and his vineyard, and the hill that is thick and grey with olive-trees. And if no price will persuade the owner to sell, you will send into his green corn by night a herd of lean and famished cattle, with wearied necks, who will not come home until they have put the whole crop into their ravenous bellies; no sickle could make a cleaner job! How many bewail wrongs like these can scarce be told, nor how many fields have been brought to the hammer by such outrages.
Delphi Complete Works of Juvena Page 11