Delphi Complete Works of Juvena

by Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis Juvenal

  expectet spargatque luto iumenta recenti? 180

  hic potius, namque hic mundae nitet ungula mulae.

  parte alia longis Numidarum fulta columnis

  surgat et algentem rapiat cenatio solem.

  quanticumque domus, ueniet qui fercula docte

  conponit, ueniet qui pulmentaria condit. 185

  hos inter sumptus sestertia Quintiliano,

  ut multum, duo sufficient: res nulla minoris

  constabit patri quam filius. ‘unde igitur tot

  Quintilianus habet saltus?’ exempla nouorum

  fatorum transi. felix et pulcher et acer, 190

  felix et sapiens et nobilis et generosus

  adpositam nigrae lunam subtexit alutae,

  felix orator quoque maximus et iaculator

  et, si perfrixit, cantat bene. distat enim quae

  sidera te excipiant modo primos incipientem 195

  edere uagitus et adhuc a matre rubentem.

  si Fortuna uolet, fies de rhetore consul;

  si uolet haec eadem, fiet de consule rhetor.

  Ventidius quid enim? quid Tullius? anne aliud quam

  sidus et occulti miranda potentia fati? 200

  seruis regna dabunt, captiuis fata triumphum.

  felix ille tamen coruo quoque rarior albo.

  paenituit multos uanae sterilisque cathedrae,

  sicut Tharsimachi probat exitus atque Secundi

  Carrinatis; et hunc inopem uidistis, Athenae, 205

  nil praeter gelidas ausae conferre cicutas.

  di maiorum umbris tenuem et sine pondere terram

  spirantisque crocos et in urna perpetuum uer,

  qui praeceptorem sancti uoluere parentis

  esse loco. metuens uirgae iam grandis Achilles 210

  cantabat patriis in montibus et cui non tunc

  eliceret risum citharoedi cauda magistri;

  sed Rufum atque alios caedit sua quemque iuuentus,

  Rufum, quem totiens Ciceronem Allobroga dixit.

  [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.”

  quis gremio Celadi doctique Palaemonis adfert 215

  quantum grammaticus meruit labor? et tamen ex hoc,

  quodcumque est (minus est autem quam rhetoris aera),

  discipuli custos praemordet acoenonoetus

  et qui dispensat frangit sibi. cede, Palaemon,

  et patere inde aliquid decrescere, non aliter quam 220

  institor hibernae tegetis niueique cadurci,

  dummodo non pereat mediae quod noctis ab hora

  sedisti, qua nemo faber, qua nemo sederet

  qui docet obliquo lanam deducere ferro,

  dummodo non pereat totidem olfecisse lucernas 225

  quot stabant pueri, cum totus decolor esset

  Flaccus et haereret nigro fuligo Maroni.

  [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.

  rara tamen merces quae cognitione tribuni

  non egeat. sed uos saeuas inponite leges,

  ut praeceptori uerborum regula constet, 230

  ut legat historias, auctores nouerit omnes

  tamquam ungues digitosque suos, ut forte rogatus,

  dum petit aut thermas aut Phoebi balnea, dicat

  nutricem Anchisae, nomen patriamque nouercae

  Anchemoli, dicat quot Acestes uixerit annis, 235

  quot Siculi Phrygibus uini donauerit urnas.

  exigite ut mores teneros ceu pollice ducat,

  ut si quis cera uoltum facit; exigite ut sit

  et pater ipsius coetus, ne turpia ludant,

  ne faciant uicibus. non est leue tot puerorum 240

  obseruare manus oculosque in fine trementis.

  ‘haec’ inquit ‘cura; sed cum se uerterit annus,

  accipe, uictori populus quod postulat, aurum.’

  [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?

  Stemmata quid faciunt? quid prodest, Pontice, longo

  sanguine censeri, pictos ostendere uultus

  maiorum et stantis in curribus Aemilianos

  et Curios iam dimidios umeroque minorem

  Coruinum et Galbam auriculis nasoque carentem, 5

  [quis fructus generis tabula iactare capaci

  Coruinum, posthac multa contingere uirga

  fumosos equitum cum dictatore magistros,]

  si coram Lepidis male uiuitur? eff
igies quo

  tot bellatorum, si luditur alea pernox 10

  ante Numantinos, si dormire incipis ortu

  luciferi, quo signa duces et castra mouebant?

  cur Allobrogicis et magna gaudeat ara

  natus in Herculeo Fabius lare, si cupidus, si

  uanus et Euganea quantumuis mollior agna, 15

  si tenerum attritus Catinensi pumice lumbum

  squalentis traducit auos emptorque ueneni

  frangenda miseram funestat imagine gentem?

  tota licet ueteres exornent undique cerae

  atria, nobilitas sola est atque unica uirtus. 20

  Paulus uel Cossus uel Drusus moribus esto,

  hos ante effigies maiorum pone tuorum,

  praecedant ipsas illi te consule uirgas.

  prima mihi debes animi bona. sanctus haberi

  iustitiaeque tenax factis dictisque mereris? 25

  agnosco procerem; salue Gaetulice, seu tu

  Silanus: quocumque alto de sanguine rarus

  ciuis et egregius patriae contingis ouanti,

  exclamare libet populus quod clamat Osiri

  inuento. quis enim generosum dixerit hunc qui 30

  indignus genere et praeclaro nomine tantum

  insignis? nanum cuiusdam Atlanta uocamus,

  Aethiopem Cycnum, prauam extortamque puellam

  Europen; canibus pigris scabieque uetusta

  leuibus et siccae lambentibus ora lucernae 35

  nomen erit pardus, tigris, leo, si quid adhuc est

  quod fremat in terris uiolentius. ergo cauebis

  et metues ne tu sic Creticus aut Camerinus.

  [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-favoured, 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!

  his ego quem monui? tecum mihi sermo, Rubelli

  Blande. tumes alto Drusorum stemmate, tamquam 40

  feceris ipse aliquid propter quod nobilis esses,

  ut te conciperet quae sanguine fulget Iuli,

  non quae uentoso conducta sub aggere texit.

  ‘uos humiles’ inquis ‘uolgi pars ultima nostri,

  quorum nemo queat patriam monstrare parentis, 45

  ast ego Cecropides.’ uiuas et originis huius

  gaudia longa feras. tamen ima plebe Quiritem

  facundum inuenies, solet hic defendere causas

  nobilis indocti; ueniet de plebe togata

  qui iuris nodos et legum aenigmata soluat; 50

  hinc petit Euphraten iuuenis domitique Bataui

  custodes aquilas armis industrius; at tu

  nil nisi Cecropides truncoque simillimus Hermae.

  nullo quippe alio uincis discrimine quam quod

  illi marmoreum caput est, tua uiuit imago. 55

  [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!

  dic mihi, Teucrorum proles, animalia muta

  quis generosa putet nisi fortia. nempe uolucrem

  sic laudamus equum, facili cui plurima palma

  feruet et exultat rauco uictoria circo;

  nobilis hic, quocumque uenit de gramine, cuius 60

  clara fuga ante alios et primus in aequore puluis.

  sed uenale pecus Coryphaei posteritas et

  Hirpini, si rara iugo uictoria sedit.

  nil ibi maiorum respectus, gratia nulla

  umbrarum; dominos pretiis mutare iubentur 65

  exiguis, trito ducunt epiraedia collo

  segnipedes dignique molam uersare nepotes.

  ergo ut miremur te, non tua, priuum aliquid da

  quod possim titulis incidere praeter honores

  quos illis damus ac dedimus, quibus omnia debes. 70

  [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.

  haec satis ad iuuenem quem nobis fama superbum

  tradit et inflatum plenumque Nerone propinquo;

  rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa

  fortuna. sed te censeri laude tuorum,

  Pontice, noluerim sic ut nihil ipse futurae 75

  laudis agas. miserum est aliorum incumbere famae,

  ne conlapsa ruant subductis tecta columnis.

  stratus humi palmes uiduas desiderat ulmos.

  esto bonus miles, tutor bonus, arbiter idem

  integer; ambiguae si quando citabere testis 80

  incertaeque rei, Phalaris licet imperet ut sis

  fals
us et admoto dictet periuria tauro,

  summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori

  et propter uitam uiuendi perdere causas.

  dignus morte perit, cenet licet ostrea centum 85

  Gaurana et Cosmi toto mergatur aeno.

  [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.

  expectata diu tandem prouincia cum te

  rectorem accipiet, pone irae frena modumque,

  pone et auaritiae, miserere inopum sociorum:

  ossa uides rerum uacuis exucta medullis. 90

  respice quid moneant leges, quid curia mandet,

  praemia quanta bonos maneant, quam fulmine iusto

  et Capito et Tutor ruerint damnante senatu,

  piratae Cilicum. sed quid damnatio confert?

  praeconem, Chaerippe, tuis circumspice pannis, 95

  cum Pansa eripiat quidquid tibi Natta reliquit,

  iamque tace; furor est post omnia perdere naulum.

  [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.