Book 1
Imperial Juvenal Latin- Satire I Must I be always only a listener? Never strike back,
so often racked by hoarse Cordus and his Theseid?
Shall this one read me out his comedies unpunished,
that one his elegies? Shall some monstrous Telephus
burn up my whole day unavenged, or an Orestes
written to the margin's edge and onto the back, still not finished?
No man knows his own house better than I know
the grove of Mars and Vulcan's cave hard by the Aeolian crags.
What the winds are at, what shades Aeacus
is racking, from what spot another sneaks off the gold
of the stolen fleece, how huge the ash-trees Monychus hurls—
Fronto's plane-trees and battered marble shriek it
forever, his columns cracked by the relentless reciter.
You may expect the same from poet greatest and least.
I too have pulled my hand back from the schoolmaster's cane, I too
have counseled Sulla to sleep soundly as a private man;
it is foolish mercy, when you meet so many bards
on every side, to spare the paper that is doomed to perish.
Yet why I would rather run my course over this same field
down which Aurunca's great foster-son drove his horses,
I will tell you, if you have leisure and will calmly hear my reason.
When a soft eunuch takes a wife, when Mevia spears
a Tuscan boar and grips the hunting-spear with breast laid bare,
when one man alone challenges all the patricians in wealth—
the man whose razor rasped my stiff young beard;
when a piece of the Nile's rabble, when Canopus' homebred slave
Crispinus hitches up the Tyrian cloak on his shoulder
and airs his summer gold on sweating fingers,
unable to bear the weight of a heavier gem—
it is hard not to write satire. For who is so patient
of this unjust city, so iron-hard, that he can hold himself in,
when up comes the brand-new litter of the pleader Matho,
filled with the man himself; behind him the informer on his great friend,
soon to snatch what survives of the gnawed nobility,
the man whom Massa fears, whom Carus soothes with a bribe,
and to whom trembling Latinus sends Thymele in secret?
When men shove you aside who earn legacies
by their nights' work, and are raised to heaven by the surest road
now to high advancement—an old rich woman's lust?
Proculeius gets a twelfth, but Gillo eleven-twelfths,
each heir's share matched to the measure of his loins.
Let him take his wage of blood, by all means, and grow
as pale as the man who has trodden a snake with naked heel,
or the orator about to speak at the Lyons altar.
Why should I tell how my dry liver blazes with rage,
when this plunderer crowds the people with his troops of attendants—
he who robbed his ward and drove the boy to the streets, and that one
condemned by a verdict worth nothing? For what is disgrace, with the cash kept safe?
Marius, an exile, drinks from the eighth hour and enjoys the angry
gods, while you, victorious province, weep.
Shall I not think these things worthy of the Venusine lamp?
Shall I not have at them? But why rather Hercules' labors,
or Diomedes', or the bellowing of the labyrinth,
and the sea struck by the boy and the craftsman who flew,
when the pimp takes the adulterer's goods, if the wife
has no right to inherit—skilled to study the ceiling,
skilled to snore into his cup with wakeful nose?
When a man thinks he may rightly hope to command a cohort
who has squandered his fortune on stables and lost all
his ancestors' wealth, while he flies down the Flaminian Way
at full speed, a boy Automedon? For he held the reins himself,
when he showed off before his cloaked mistress.
Is one not tempted to fill broad tablets in the middle
of the crossroads, when there is carried by, on six men's necks now,
open on this side and that, all but reclining bare in his chair,
and looking much like the lolling Maecenas,
a forger who has made himself sleek and rich
by a scrap of paper and a moistened seal?
Up comes a powerful matron who, about to pass
her husband soft Calenian wine, mixes in a toad,
and—a better Locusta—teaches her green neighbors
to carry out their blackened husbands through gossip and the crowd.
Dare something worthy of cramped Gyara and the cell,
if you would be anything; honesty is praised and freezes.
To their crimes men owe their gardens, mansions, tables,
old silver and the goat that stands out from the cup.
Who can sleep when the corrupter of the greedy daughter-in-law,
when shameless brides and the boy-adulterer still in his bordered gown, are about?
If nature denies it, indignation makes the verse,
such as it can—the sort that I, or Cluvienus, write.
Ever since Deucalion, when the clouds raised the sea,
climbed the mountain in his ship and asked the oracle for an answer,
and little by little the soft stones grew warm with life,
and Pyrrha showed naked girls to the men,
whatever men do—prayer, fear, rage, pleasure,
joy, bustling about—is the medley of our little book.
And when was there a richer crop of vices? When did
the lap of avarice gape wider? When did the dice-box
hold such spirits? For men do not go to the hazard of the table
with purse in pocket, but play with the strongbox set down beside them.
What battles you will see there, with the steward for armor-bearer!
Is it plain madness to lose a hundred thousand sesterces
and not give a tunic to a shivering slave?
Which of our grandfathers built so many villas, which one dined
on seven courses by himself, in private? Now a little dole
sits on the outer threshold, to be snatched by the toga-clad mob;
yet the giver first inspects each face, and trembles lest
you come as an impostor and claim under a false name:
once recognized, you will get it. He bids the crier summon
even the true-born Trojans, for they too besiege the threshold
along with us. "Give to the praetor, then give to the tribune."
But a freedman comes first. "I was here first," he says, "I am present.
Why should I fear or hesitate to defend my place, though
I was born by the Euphrates—the soft holes in my ears
would prove it, though I deny it myself? But my five shops
bring in four hundred thousand. What does the broad purple confer
worth wishing for, if a Corvinus guards in the Laurentine fields
his hired sheep, while I own more
than Pallas and the Licini?" Let the tribunes wait, then;
let riches win; let the man not yield his sacred office
who came lately to this city with whitened feet,
since among us the most sacred majesty is that of riches—
though, deadly Money, you do not yet dwell in a temple,
we have raised no altars to coin
as we worship Peace and Faith, Victory, Virtue,
and Concord, who chatters when men greet her nest.
But when the highest magistrate reckons up at the year's end
what the dole brings in, how much it adds to his accounts,
what shall the clients do, whose toga, whose shoes come from this,
and whose bread and hearth-smoke at home? The litters press in thick
after the hundred farthings, and the wife follows her husband,
sick or pregnant, and is carried round in the throng.
This one, a practiced cheat by a familiar trick, begs for an absent wife,
displaying an empty, shut sedan in her stead:
"It is my Galla," he says, "let us through quickly, you delay us—
show your head, Galla. No, do not trouble her, she is resting."
The day itself is marked off in a fine order of affairs:
first the dole, then the forum and Apollo learned in law,
and the triumphal statues, among which some Egyptian—
I know not who—an Arabarch, has dared to set his titles,
at whose effigy it is allowed to do worse than make water.
The old and weary clients leave the porches
and lay down their hopes, though a man's longest-lived
hope is dinner; the poor wretches must buy their cabbage and their fire.
Meanwhile their king will devour the best of woods and waters,
and lie alone at his empty couches.
For from so many fine and broad and ancient
tables they eat up whole fortunes at one sitting.
There will soon be no parasites at all. But who could endure
such squalid luxury? How great the gullet that serves up to itself
whole boars, a beast born to be a feast!
Yet the punishment is at hand, when you peel off your clothes
bloated, and carry an undigested peacock into the baths;
hence sudden deaths and old age cut off without a will,
and the new tale runs—and no one grieves—through all the dinners:
the funeral is led out to applauding, angry friends.
There will be nothing left for our descendants to add
to our morals; the men to come will do and crave the same.
Every vice has reached its sheer cliff-edge: spread your sails,
throw open all your canvas. Here perhaps you say: "Where
is genius to match the matter? Where is that frankness
of the ancients in writing whatever the burning heart
was pleased to write? 'Whose name dare I not speak?
What does it matter whether Mucius pardons my words or not?'"
Name Tigellinus, and you will blaze in the same torch
in which they stand and burn who smoke with throats pierced through,
and you trace a broad furrow through the middle of the sand.
So the man who gave three uncles their aconite is to be borne aloft
on cushioned feathers, and from there look down on us?
"When he comes toward you, put a finger to your lip:
he will be an informer who only says 'That's the man.'
You may safely set Aeneas against the fierce Rutulian,
it troubles no one that Achilles was struck down,
or Hylas, much sought after, who followed his pitcher.
But whenever Lucilius, ablaze as with drawn sword,
roars out, the listener reddens, whose mind is cold
with crime, and his heart sweats with secret guilt:
hence anger and tears. So turn these things over
in your mind before the trumpets sound; once helmeted, it is too late
to repent the war." I will try what is allowed against those
whose ashes are covered by the Flaminian Way and the Latin.
- Satire II I long to flee beyond the Sarmatians and the icy
Ocean, whenever men make bold to speak of morals
who ape the Curii and live like Bacchanals—
unlearned, in the first place, though you find every shelf
stuffed with plaster Chrysippuses; for the most perfect of them
is whoever buys some likeness of Aristotle or Pittacus
and bids his cases guard the originals of the Cleanthes.
There is no trusting the face; for what street does not abound
with grim debauchees? You chastise foul deeds, when you are
the most notorious ditch among the Socratic deviants?
Shaggy limbs, indeed, and stiff bristles along the arms
promise a fierce spirit; but the surgeon laughs as he cuts
the swollen piles on your smooth backside.
They have little to say, and a vast lust for silence,
and hair shorter than their eyebrows. Truer therefore,
and more honest, is Peribomius; him I charge to the fates,
who confesses his disease by his face and his gait.
Their plain folly is pitiable; their very frenzy
earns them pardon. But worse are those who attack such things
in the words of a Hercules, and after preaching virtue
waggle the rump. "Am I to respect you when you wriggle, Sextus?"
asks infamous Varillus. "How am I worse than you?
Let the straight man mock the bandy-legged, the white man the Ethiopian.
Who could endure the Gracchi complaining of sedition?
Who would not confound heaven with earth and sea with sky,
if Verres disliked a thief, Milo a murderer,
Clodius accused adulterers, Catiline Cethegus,
if the three pupils railed against Sulla's proscription-roll?
Such was that adulterer lately defiled by a union
worthy of tragedy, who was then reviving the bitter laws
dreaded by all, and even by Venus and Mars themselves,
while Julia, fruitful, emptied her womb of so many
abortions, pouring out lumps that resembled her uncle.
Is it not then by right and merit that the lowest vices
despise the false Scauri, and bite back when they are chastised?
One of them Laronia could not stand—a grim fellow
shouting again and again, "Where now, Julian Law? Are you asleep?"
And so with a smile she said: "Happy times, that set
you up against our morals! Now let Rome have shame:
a third Cato has fallen from the sky. But still, where
do you buy these things—this balsam that breathes from your hairy
neck? Don't be ashamed to point out the master of the shop.
But if laws and rights are to be vexed, the Scantinian
should be cited before all: look first at the men
and examine them; they do more, but their numbers
defend them, and their close-locked phalanx of shields.
There is great concord among the soft ones; you will find no
example in our sex so detestable.
Media does not lick Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla:
it is Hispo who submits to young men, and pales with the double disease.
Do we plead cases, do we know the civil law,
or stir your courts with any uproar?
A few of us wrestle, a few eat athletes' diet:
you spin the wool and bring back in baskets the finished
fleeces, you twist the spindle pregnant with fine thread
better than Penelope, more deftly than Arachne,
such work as the bristly slave-mistress does, perched on her block.
It is well known why Hister filled his tablets to his freedman
alone, why in his lifetime he gave the young wife so much.
She will be rich who sleeps a third in the great bed.
So marry and keep silent: secrets buy you jewels.
After all this, is the grim sentence passed against us?
The censorship pardons the crows and harasses the doves."
The Stoic spawn fled in a panic from her, who sang
what was true and plain; for what false thing did Laronia say? But what
will others not do, when you put on gauze, Creticus,
and harangue the marveling people in this dress
against the Proculae and Pollittae? "Fabulla is an adulteress,
condemn her, if you like; condemn Carfinia too: but even
condemned she would not wear such a gown." "But it is July, I am scorching,
I sweat." Then plead naked: madness is less disgraceful.
Look at the garb in which you propose laws and rights
to a people but now victorious with their wounds still raw,
and to that mountain rabble who have laid down their plows.
What would you not cry out, if you saw such stuff
on the body of a judge? I ask whether gauze becomes a witness.
You, the keen and untamed master of liberty,
Creticus, are see-through. This taint a plague has spread,
and will spread to more, just as in the fields a whole herd
falls from one pig's scab and mange,
and one grape draws its livid color from another.
Some day you will dare something fouler than this dress;
no one ever became the vilest of men at a stroke. Little by little
those will take you in who at home put on long fillets
over their brows, and have hung necklaces all round their throats,
and appease the Good Goddess with the paunch of a young sow
and a great mixing-bowl; but by a sinister reversal
a woman is driven far off and may not cross the threshold:
the goddess' altar is open to males alone. "Away, profane women!"
is the cry—no flute-girl moans here on her horn.
Such were the rites that the Baptae, wont to wear out
Athenian Cotytto, kept by torchlight in secret.
One draws out his eyebrow, stained with moist soot,
with a slanting needle, and paints his fluttering eyes,
lifting them; another drinks from a glass Priapus,
and binds his hair in a golden net,
clothed in sky-blue checks or smooth pale-green,
while the slave swears by Juno after his master's fashion.
That one holds a mirror, the gear of the pathic Otho,
"the spoil of Auruncan Actor," in which he viewed himself
in armor, when he was already ordering the standards raised—
a thing to be recorded in fresh annals and recent
history: a mirror among the baggage of a civil war!
Of course it takes a supreme general to kill Galba
and keep his skin smooth; the steadiness of a supreme citizen
to grasp at the spoils of the Palace on the fields of Bebriacum,
and to smear his face with the dough spread by his fingers—
what neither quivered Semiramis did in her Assyrian realm,
nor mournful Cleopatra on her Actian ship.
Here is no shame in their words, no reverence for the table;
here is the foul license of Cybele and the cracked
falsetto voice; an old fanatic with white hair,
the priest of the rites, a rare and memorable example
of a great gullet, a master worth hiring.
Yet what do they wait for? It were high time for them now,
Phrygian-fashion, to cut off the superfluous flesh with the knife.
Gracchus gave four hundred thousand as a dowry
to a horn-blower—or had this one sounded the straight trumpet?
The contract was signed, "Good luck!" was cried, a huge
dinner sat down, the new bride lay in her husband's lap.
O nobles, do we need a censor or a soothsayer?
Would you, I suppose, shudder and reckon it a greater portent,
if a woman gave birth to a calf, or a cow to a lamb?
He puts on the trimmed dress and the long robes and the bridal veil,
he who, bearing the sacred objects swaying on the mystic strap,
sweated under the sacred shields. O father of the city,
whence came such wickedness upon the Latin shepherds? Whence
did this nettle sting your grandsons, Gradivus?
See—a man renowned for birth and wealth is handed over to a man
in marriage, and you neither shake your helmet nor strike the earth
with your spear, nor complain to your father? Go then, and quit
the acres of the stern Campus that you neglect. "A duty tomorrow
at sunrise must be done by me in Quirinus' valley."
What is the duty's occasion? "Why ask? A friend is taking
a husband, and has invited only a few." Just let us live, and
these things will happen, will happen openly, will crave to be entered
in the records. Meanwhile a great torment grips these brides:
that they cannot bear children, and keep their husbands by childbirth.
But it is better that nature grants the mind
no power over the body: barren they die, and for them
it is no use that swollen Lyde keeps her drugs in a box,
nor any use to offer their palms to the nimble Lupercus.
Yet Gracchus outdid even this monster, in a tunic,
with his trident, and ranged in flight across the middle of the sand,
a gladiator more nobly born than the Capitolini and the Marcelli,
than the descendants of Catulus and Paulus and the Fabii,
than all the spectators on the podium—grant that you place there
the very man at whose show he then cast the net.
That there are any shades and underground realms,
a Cocytus, and black frogs in the Stygian pool,
and that so many thousands cross the ford in a single skiff—
not even boys believe, except those too young to bathe for a coin.
But suppose them true: what does Curius feel, and both
the Scipios, what Fabricius and the shade of Camillus,
what the legion of the Cremera and the youth consumed at Cannae,
so many souls of so many wars, whenever such
a ghost comes to them from here? They would long to be cleansed,
if there were sulphur to be had with torches, and a moist laurel-branch.
There, alas, we wretches are paraded. Our arms indeed
we have pushed beyond the shores of Ireland and the lately taken
Orkneys, and the Britons content with their brief night;
but the things now done in the city of the conquering people,
those whom we conquered do not do. And yet one
Armenian, Zalaces, softer than all the youths,
is said to have yielded himself to a passionate tribune.
See what intercourse does: he had come as a hostage—
here they are made men. For if a longer stay has indulged
the boys with the city, they will never lack a lover.
Off go the trousers, the knives, the bridle, the whip:
so they carry back to Artaxata the manners of Rome.
- Satire III Though shaken by my old friend's departure,
I yet approve that he resolves to fix his home in empty Cumae
and present one citizen to the Sibyl.
It is the gateway to Baiae and a pleasant shore of agreeable
retreat; I myself prefer even Prochyta to the Subura.
For what so wretched, so lonely a thing have we seen, that you would not
think it worse to dread the constant fires, the everlasting
collapse of houses, and the thousand perils of the cruel
city, and the poets reciting in the month of August?
But while his whole household was being packed into a single cart,
he halted at the old arches and the dripping Capena gate,
here, where Numa used to meet his nightly mistress.
Now the grove of the sacred spring and its shrines are leased out
to Jews, whose furniture is a basket and some hay
(for every tree is ordered to pay the people its rent,
and the wood, with the Muses cast out, goes begging).
We go down into the vale of Egeria and the caves
unlike the real ones—how much nearer would the spirit
of the waters be, if grass enclosed the streams
with a green margin, and no marble violated the native rock.
Here then Umbricius said: "Since for honest skills
there is no place in the city, no reward for labor,
since my estate is less today than it was yesterday, and tomorrow
the same will wear away yet a little more, I am minded to go
there where Daedalus put off his weary wings,
while my gray hair is new, while old age is fresh and upright,
while something is left for Lachesis to spin, and I carry myself
on my own feet, with no staff propping my right hand.
Let us yield our native land. Let Artorius live there
and Catulus, let those stay who turn black into white,
for whom it is easy to take contracts for a temple, rivers, harbors,
draining a flood, carrying a corpse to the pyre,
and to offer a head for sale under the master's spear.
Once these men were horn-blowers, the perpetual companions
of the municipal arena, known by their puffed cheeks through the towns;
now they put on shows, and when the mob with thumb turned
bids it, they kill to please the crowd; then, back again,
they take contracts for public privies—and why not everything,
since they are the kind whom Fortune, whenever she chooses to play,
lifts from the lowest dregs to the highest pinnacles of things?
What should I do at Rome? I cannot lie: a book,
if it is bad, I cannot praise and beg a copy of; the motions
of the stars I do not know; to promise a man his father's
funeral I neither wish nor am able; the entrails of frogs
I have never examined; what the adulterer sends to a bride,
what he charges, others know how to carry; with me as helper
no man will be a thief, and so I go forth no one's companion,
like a cripple, a body useless with a dead right hand.
Who is loved now, except an accomplice, and one whose seething
mind boils with secrets that must forever be kept silent?
He thinks he owes you nothing, will never give you anything,
who has made you sharer of an honest secret;
dear to Verres will be the man who can accuse Verres
whenever he wishes. Let not all the sand of shaded Tagus
and the gold it rolls into the sea be worth so much to you,
that you should lose your sleep and take rewards that must
sadly be laid down, and forever be feared by a great friend.
What race is now most acceptable to our rich men,
and whom above all I would flee, I will hasten to confess,
nor will shame stand in my way. I cannot bear, Romans,
a Greek Rome; and yet how small a fraction of the dregs is Achaean?
Long since the Syrian Orontes has flowed into the Tiber,
and brought with it its language and its morals, and its strings
slanting with the flute, and its native timbrels too,
and the girls bidden to stand for hire by the circus.
Off with you, all who fancy a barbarian whore in a painted turban!
Your rustic, Quirinus, puts on Greek dinner-slippers,
and wears Greek prize-medals on his oil-smeared neck.
This man from high Sicyon, that one having left Amydon,
this from Andros, that from Samos, this from Tralles or Alabanda,
make for the Esquiline and the hill named from the willow,
to be the vitals of great houses and their future masters.
Quick wit, reckless daring, speech
ready and more torrential than Isaeus—say, what
do you take him to be? He has brought us, in himself, any man you please:
grammarian, rhetor, geometer, painter, masseur,
augur, rope-dancer, doctor, magician—the hungry little Greek
knows everything; bid him go to heaven, he will go.
In short, it was no Moor, no Sarmatian, no Thracian
who put on wings, but one born in the heart of Athens.
Am I not to flee these men's purple? Shall that fellow
sign before me, and recline propped on a better couch,
borne to Rome by the wind that brings plums and figs?
Does it count for nothing, then, that my infancy drank in
the Aventine air, and was nourished on the Sabine berry?
What of this—that this race, most expert in flattery, praises
the talk of the ignorant, the face of an ugly friend,
and likens a weak man's long neck to the shoulders
of Hercules holding Antaeus high off the earth,
and admires a thin voice, no worse than which sounds
the cock by whom the hen is pecked at, her mate?
We too may praise these same things, but they
are believed; for is any actor better, when he plays Thais,
or the wife, or Doris ungirded by any cloak?
It is plainly a woman herself, not a mask, that seems to speak;
you would call everything below the belly smooth and level,
parted by a thin crack. Yet not even Antiochus
will be a marvel there, nor Stratocles,
nor Demetrius with soft Haemus: theirs is a nation of actors.
You laugh: he is shaken with a louder cackle; he weeps,
if he catches sight of a friend's tears, though he feels no grief;
if you ask for a little fire in winter's season,
he puts on his thick cloak; if you say "I am hot," he sweats.
So we are not equals: he is the better who always, every
night and day, can take his expression from another's
face, and is ready to throw up his hands and applaud,
if his friend has belched well, or pissed straight,
or if the golden chamber-pot has rung when its bottom is turned up.
Besides, nothing is sacred, nothing safe from his lust:
not the lady of the house, not the virgin daughter, nor the still
beardless betrothed himself, nor the son once chaste;
and if none of these is to hand, he tumbles his friend's grandmother.
And since mention of the Greeks has begun, pass on
to their schools, and hear the crime of a graver gown.
A Stoic, an old man, an informer, killed his friend Barea,
his own pupil, reared on that bank
to which the wing of the Gorgon's horse glided down.
There is no place here for any Roman, where there reigns
some Protogenes or Diphilus or Hermarchus,
who by his race's vice never shares a friend,
but keeps him to himself; for once he has dripped into the willing ear
a little of his country's and his nature's poison,
I am thrust from the door, and the long years
of my service are wasted; nowhere is the loss of a client counted less.
Besides—not to flatter ourselves—what duty, or what
merit of a poor man, is there here, if he troubles to run
in his toga by night, when the praetor drives on his lictor
and bids him hurry headlong to greet the long-wakeful childless ladies,
lest his colleague salute Albina and Modia first?
Here the freeborn son of a citizen yields the wall
to a rich man's slave; for one of these gives Calvina or Catiena
as much as the tribunes in a legion receive,
to writhe upon her once or twice; but you,
when the face of a well-dressed harlot pleases you, hang back
and hesitate to hand Chione down from her lofty chair.
Produce at Rome a witness as holy as was the host
of the Idaean deity; let Numa come forward, or the man
who saved trembling Minerva from her burning shrine:
straight to his fortune they go; the question of his morals
comes last of all. "How many slaves does he feed? How many acres
of land does he own? On how big and how full a platter does he dine?"
As much money as a man keeps in his strongbox,
so much credit he has. Though you swear by the altars
of Samothrace and our own, the poor man is believed to scorn
the thunderbolts and the gods, with the gods themselves pardoning him.
What of this—that the same man supplies the matter and the cause
of jokes to all, if his cloak is foul and torn,
if his toga is a little dirty and one shoe gapes
with split leather, or if more than one scar shows the coarse,
fresh thread where the gash has been sewn up?
Nothing harder does unhappy poverty hold in itself
than that it makes men ridiculous. "Let him go out," says one,
"if he has any shame, and rise from the knight's cushion,
whose wealth does not satisfy the law, and here let the pimps'
sons sit, born in whatever brothel;
here let the son of the glossy auctioneer applaud, among
the trim youths of the net-fighter and the youths of the trainer."
So it pleased vain Otho, who marked us off by rank.
What son-in-law here found favor with less wealth, unequal
to the girl's little baggage? What poor man is named as heir?
When is one on the aediles' council? Long ago
the needy Romans should have marched out in a body.
Not easily do men rise whose virtues are crossed
by narrow means at home; but at Rome the effort is harder for them:
dear is wretched lodging, dear
the bellies of slaves, dear a frugal little supper.
It shames you to dine off earthenware, which you would deny was vile
if you were suddenly carried off to the Marsians and a Sabellian table,
and were content there with a hood of coarse Venetian wool.
There is a great part of Italy, if we admit the truth, in which
no one puts on the toga except when dead. Even the dignity itself
of festal days, if ever it is honored in the grassy theater,
and the familiar farce returns at last to the boards,
when the rustic infant in his mother's lap shrinks
from the gaping mouth of the pale mask—
there you will see costumes alike, and alike
the orchestra and the people; for the highest aediles' badge
of bright office, white tunics suffice.
Here the splendor of dress is beyond one's means; here something more
than is enough is sometimes taken from another's strongbox.
This vice is common: here we all live in a showy
poverty. Why detain you? Everything at Rome
has its price. What do you pay to greet Cossus now and then,
to have Veiento glance at you with sealed lips?
This man shaves the beard, that one lays down the hair of a favorite;
the house is full of cakes for sale. Take them, and keep
this leaven for yourself: we clients are forced to pay tribute
and to swell the savings of well-groomed slaves.
Who fears or has ever feared a collapse at chilly Praeneste,
or at Volsinii nestled among the wooded ridges, or at
simple Gabii, or the citadel of sloping Tibur?
We inhabit a city propped up in great part by a thin
prop; for thus the steward stays the falling walls,
and, having papered over the gap of an old crack,
bids us sleep secure under a ruin that hangs above.
We must live where there are no fires, no nightly terrors.
Already Ucalegon is calling for water, already shifting
his sticks of furniture; already your third floor is smoking:
you do not know it; for if the alarm is raised from the bottom stairs,
the last to burn will be the man whom a single tile protects
from the rain, where the soft doves lay their eggs.
Codrus had a bed too short for Procula, six little jugs
as the ornament of his sideboard, and a small tankard
below, and a reclining Chiron under the same marble,
and now an old chest kept his Greek volumes,
and barbarous mice gnawed his divine poems.
Codrus had nothing, who denies it? And yet that whole
nothing the poor wretch lost; but the crowning peak
of his misery is this—that, naked and begging for scraps,
no one will help him with food, or with shelter and a roof.
If the great house of Asturicus has fallen, the mother goes unkempt,
the nobles wear black, the praetor adjourns his hearings;
then we lament the city's fate, then we hate the fire.
It is still ablaze, and already someone runs up to offer marble,
to contribute to the cost; this man gives bare white statues,
this some masterpiece of Euphranor and Polyclitus,
this the ancient ornaments of Asiatic gods,
this will give books and bookcases and a Minerva for the middle,
this a bushel of silver: Persicus, the most splendid
of the childless, replaces more and better—and deservedly now
is suspected of having set fire to his own house.
If you can tear yourself from the games, the best house
at Sora, or Fabrateria, or Frusino, may be had
for the price you now pay to rent darkness for a single year.
Here is a little garden, and a shallow well not needing a rope,
easy to draw, and poured out over your tender plants.
Live there, in love with the mattock, master of a tended garden,
from which you might give a feast to a hundred Pythagoreans.
It is something, in whatever spot, in whatever retreat,
to have made oneself master of a single lizard.
Here many a sick man dies of sleeplessness (but the languor
itself is bred by undigested food clinging
to the burning stomach); for what rented rooms
allow sleep? Only with great wealth can one sleep in the city.
There lies the source of the disease: the passing of carts
in the narrow winding lanes, and the curses of the halted drove,
would rob sleep from a Drusus or the seals of the sea.
If duty calls, the rich man will be borne over the people's heads
as the crowd gives way, and will run on his great Liburnian litter,
and on the way will read, or write, or sleep inside;
for the closed window of the litter brings on sleep.
Yet he will arrive first: as we hurry, the wave ahead
blocks us, and the throng that follows presses our loins
in a great column; one strikes me with his elbow, another
with a hard pole, this one knocks a beam against my head, that one a wine-jar.
My legs are caked with mud, then on every side huge
feet trample me, and a soldier's hobnail sticks in my toe.
Do you not see with what smoke the dole is celebrated?
A hundred guests, each followed by his own kitchen.
Corbulo could scarcely carry so many huge vessels, so many
things piled on his head, which the wretched little slave
bears with neck held straight, and fans the fire as he runs.
Tunics newly patched are split, a long fir-trunk
quivers as the wagon comes, and other carts carry
a pine; they nod on high and threaten the crowd.
For if the axle that hauls Ligurian stones gives way
and pours its overturned mountain down upon the throng,
what is left of the bodies? Who finds the limbs, who the bones?
The whole crushed corpse of the common man perishes
like his soul. Meanwhile the household, untroubled, already
washes the dishes, and blows up the brazier with puffed cheek,
and clatters with greasy scrapers, and lays out the towels by the full oil-flask.
These tasks are hurried by the slaves in their several ways, while he—
the new arrival—already sits on the bank and shudders at the grim
ferryman, and the wretch has no hope of the skiff of the muddy pool,
nor a coin in his mouth to hold out for the fare.
Consider now the other and different perils of the night:
what a height it is to the lofty roofs from which a potsherd
strikes your brain, how often cracked and chipped vessels
fall from the windows, with what weight they mark and gash
the pavement they strike. You might be thought careless
and heedless of sudden mishap, if you go out to dinner
without making your will: there are as many fates
as there are wakeful open windows on that night as you pass by.
So pray, and carry with you the pitiable wish
that they may be content to pour down on you only their broad basins.
The drunk and insolent man, who by chance has beaten no one,
pays the penalty, and passes a night like that of Achilles
mourning his friend: he lies face down, then soon on his back;
a brawl gives him sleep. But however reckless with his years
and hot with wine, he steers clear of the man whom the scarlet cloak
bids him avoid, and the very long train of attendants,
and besides the many torches and the lamp of bronze.
But me, whom the moon is wont to escort, or the brief light
of a candle, whose wick I husband and tend,
he scorns. Learn the prelude to the wretched brawl,
if it is a brawl, where you strike and I only take the blows.
He stands in my way and bids me halt: obey I must;
for what can you do, when a madman drives you on, and the same man
is the stronger? "Where do you come from?" he shouts. "On whose vinegar,
whose beans are you bloated? What cobbler ate sliced leek with you,
and the lips of a boiled wether?
Nothing to say to me? Speak, or take a kick.
Tell me where you doss—in what synagogue shall I look for you?"
Whether you try to say something or retreat in silence,
it is all the same: they beat you just as much, and then in anger
bind you over to appear. This is the liberty of the poor man:
beaten, he begs, and pummeled with fists, he prays
that he may be let go home with a few of his teeth.
Nor is this all you have to fear; for there will be no lack
of one to rob you when the houses are shut, after every
chain-bound, bolted shop has fallen silent everywhere.
Sometimes too a footpad does his work suddenly with the knife;
whenever the Pomptine marsh and the Gallinarian pine
are kept safe by an armed guard,
from there they all run here as if to a game-preserve.
What furnace, what anvil, is not heavy with chains?
The largest amount of iron goes into fetters, so that you may fear
the plowshare will run short, that hoes and mattocks will fail.
Happy, you would call the forefathers of our forefathers, happy
the ages which once, under kings and tribunes,
saw a Rome content with a single prison.
To these I could add many more reasons besides;
but the beasts are calling, and the sun sinks, I must go;
for the muleteer has long been nodding to me with his cracking
whip. So farewell, and remember me, and whenever
Rome restores you, hastening for refreshment, to your own Aquinum,
call me too away from Cumae to your Helvine Ceres
and your Diana; I will come, a listener to your satires,
booted, into the chilly fields—if they are not ashamed of me."
- Satire IV Here is Crispinus again, and I must often call him
to play his part—a monster redeemed by no virtue
from his vices, a sickly voluptuary strong only in lust,
an adulterer who spurns none but widows.
What does it matter, then, how great the colonnades
in which he wearies his horses, in how vast a shade of woods
he is carried, how many acres he has bought near the forum, what houses?
the incestuous man, with whom but lately lay, her blood still living,
a fillet-wreathed priestess doomed to go beneath the earth.
But now of lighter doings, though if another
had done the same, he would fall under the judge of morals;
for what was foul for the good Titius and Seius, became
a Crispinus: what can you do, when the man himself
is more loathsome than any crime? He bought a mullet
for six thousand—a sum that matched, indeed, six thousand
sesterces to its pounds, as those report who make great things greater.
I praise the schemer's cunning, if by so great a gift
he carried off the first place in some childless old man's will;
there is a deeper motive, if he sent it to a great mistress,
who is borne in a closed sedan with broad windows.
Expect nothing of the sort: he bought it for himself. Many things we see
which the poor and frugal Apicius never did. Was it you,
Crispinus, once girt with your native papyrus, who did this?
This price for scales? You might perhaps have bought the fisherman
for less than the fish; in the provinces an estate sells for as much,
but Apulia sells larger ones.
What banquets, then, do we suppose the Emperor himself
gulped down, when so many sesterces—a small part,
a trifle taken from the margin of a modest dinner—
were belched up by that purple buffoon of the great Palace,
now chief of the knights, who once with a great voice was wont
to hawk his fellow-townsmen's catfish from a broken stock?
Begin, Calliope. And you may sit—there is no need
for singing; a true affair is in hand. Tell the tale, maidens
of Pieria; may it profit me to have called you maidens.
When the last Flavian was tearing at a world half-dead
and Rome was a slave to a bald Nero,
there came, before the temple of Venus which Dorian Ancona
upholds, a wondrous bulk of Adriatic turbot,
and filled the net; for no smaller had it stuck there
than those that the Maeotic ice covers, and at last,
when the suns have broken it, pours out at the mouth of the rushing Pontus,
sluggish from sloth and fat from the long cold.
The master of the skiff and line marks this monster
for the chief priest; for who would dare to offer such a thing
for sale, or to buy it, when the very shores were full
of informers? The scattered inspectors of the seaweed
would at once bring a charge against the naked boatman,
not hesitating to call the fish a runaway,
long fattened in Caesar's preserves, and thence
slipped away, bound to return to its old master.
If we trust Palfurius at all, if we believe Armillatus,
whatever is choice and beautiful in the whole sea
belongs to the treasury, wherever it swims. So it shall be given away,
that it may not be wasted. Now, with deadly autumn
yielding to the frosts, now while the sick hoped for their quartan ague,
ugly winter screeched, and kept the catch fresh;
yet the man hurries, as if the South Wind were urging him.
And when he came near the lake where, though ruined, Alba
still keeps the Trojan fire and worships the lesser Vesta,
a marveling crowd blocked his entrance for a little while;
when it gave way, the doors opened on an easy hinge;
the senators, shut out, watch the dainties admitted.
He goes in to Atrides. Then said the man of Picenum: "Receive
a thing too great for private hearths; let this day
be kept festal; make haste to relax your stomach with stuffing,
and devour, in your own age, the turbot kept whole for it.
It wished to be caught itself." What could be plainer? And yet
his crest was rising; there is nothing that power, equal to the gods,
cannot believe of itself when it is praised.
But there was no dish to match the fish; so the nobles
are summoned to council—men whom he hated,
on whose faces sat the pallor of that wretched and great
friendship. First, as the Liburnian shouted "Run!
He is already seated!"—Pegasus came hurrying, his cloak snatched up,
newly appointed bailiff of the astonished city.
And what else were the prefects then? Of these the best, and
the most holy interpreter of the laws, thought that all things,
even in those grim times, should be handled by unarmed
justice. There came too the pleasant old age of Crispus,
whose character matched his eloquence, a gentle
spirit; for one ruling seas and lands and peoples,
what companion more useful—if under that plague and ruin
it had been allowed to condemn savagery and to bring honest
counsel? But what is more violent than a tyrant's ear,
with whom a friend, about to speak of rains or heat
or a showery spring, had his life hanging in the balance?
So that man never set his arms against the torrent,
nor was he a citizen who could utter the free
words of his mind, and stake his life upon the truth.
So he saw many winters and his eightieth
solstice, safe by these very weapons even in that court.
Next of the same age hastened Acilius
with his son, a youth unworthy of the fate so cruel
that awaited him, so hastened by the master's swords; but long since
old age in the noble is a thing as marvelous as a portent;
hence I would rather be a giant's little brother.
It profited the poor youth nothing, then, that hand to hand
he speared Numidian bears, naked, on the Alban sand,
a hunter; for who now does not see through the patrician
tricks? Who marvels at that old shrewdness,
Brutus, of yours? It is easy to fool a bearded king.
No better in face, though of no noble birth, went
Rubrius, guilty of an old offense that must not be told,
and yet more shameless than a deviant writing satire.
Montanus' belly is there too, slow with its paunch,
and Crispinus sweating with morning balsam,
as much as scarcely two funerals breathe out; and fiercer than he,
Pompeius, skilled at opening throats with a faint whisper;
and Fuscus, who kept his entrails for the Dacian vultures,
planning his battles in a marble villa;
and shrewd Veiento with deadly Catullus,
who blazed with love of a girl he had never seen—
a great and conspicuous monster even of our time,
a blind flatterer, a grim henchman from the bridge,
worthy to beg by the Arician wheels
and blow fawning kisses at the carriage rolling downhill.
No one marveled more at the turbot; for he said many things,
turned to the left, while on his right the beast
lay. So he used to praise a Cilician's fights and thrusts,
and the stage-machine, and the boys snatched up from it to the awnings.
Veiento does not fall short, but like a fanatic struck
by your frenzy, Bellona, plays the seer and says: "A great
omen you have," he says, "of a mighty and glorious triumph.
You shall capture some king, or Arviragus shall fall
from his British chariot-pole. The beast is foreign: do you see
the spikes bristling on its back?" This one thing was lacking
to Fabricius—to record the turbot's homeland and its years.
"What then do you advise? Shall it be cut up?" "Far from it,
away with that disgrace," said Montanus; "let a deep dish be got ready
to gather the spacious circle in its thin wall;
a great and sudden Prometheus is owed to the platter.
Quick, hurry with the clay and the wheel; but from this
time on, Caesar, let the potters follow your camp."
The opinion, worthy of the man, prevailed: he had known
the old luxury of the court, and Nero's nights,
now half over, and a second hunger, when the lungs
burn with Falernian. No one in my time had greater skill
in eating; he could tell at the first bite whether oysters
were born off Circeii, or at the Lucrine rock,
or bred on the bed of Rutupiae,
and at one glance he named the shore of a sea-urchin.
They rise, and the nobles are bidden to leave the council dismissed—
men whom the great chief had dragged, astonished,
to his Alban citadel, and forced to hurry,
as if he were about to say something of the Chatti and grim
Sygambri, as if from the far parts of the world
an anxious dispatch had come on swift wing.
And would that to such trifles he had rather given all
that time of his savagery, in which he robbed the city
of bright and illustrious souls, unpunished and with none to avenge them.
But he perished after he had begun to be feared by
the lowborn; this destroyed him, drenched with the blood of the Lamiae.
- Satire V If you are not yet ashamed of your purpose, and your mind is still the same,
so that you reckon it the highest good to live off another's crust;
if you can endure what neither Sarmentus nor cheap Gabba
would have borne at Caesar's unkind tables,
I would be afraid to trust you even as a sworn witness.
I know nothing more frugal than the belly; yet suppose this very thing
lacking, the little that suffices an empty paunch:
is there no curb-stone free? Nowhere a bridge, and no shorter
half of a beggar's mat? Is the insult of such a dinner worth so much,
so keen the hunger, when it were more honorable there
both to shiver and to gnaw the foul scraps of a dog's bread?
Fix this firmly first—that when you are bidden to take your place,
you receive the full payment for your old services.
The fruit of a great friendship is a meal; the patron counts it to your account,
and though it is rare, still he counts it. So if, after two
months, it has pleased him to invite a neglected client,
that the third cushion might not stand idle on an empty couch,
"Let us be together," he says. The height of your prayers! What more
do you ask? Now Trebius has reason to break his sleep
and hurry off with his sandal-straps untied, anxious lest
the whole saluting throng has already finished its round,
while the stars are fading, or at that hour when the cold
wagon of slow Bootes wheels about.
And yet what a dinner! Wine that greasy wool
would refuse to drink: you will see your fellow-guest turn Corybant.
The quarrels begin as preludes, but soon you hurl cups too,
wounded, and wipe your gashes with a red napkin,
as often as a battle, joined with a Saguntine flagon,
rages between you and the cohort of freedmen.
The host himself drinks a vintage drawn off when consuls wore long hair,
and holds a grape trodden in the wars of the allies,
never about to send a cup to a heart-sick friend;
tomorrow he will drink something from the Alban hills, or from
the Setine, whose homeland and date old age has
blotted out with the thick soot of the ancient jar—
such as garlanded Thrasea and Helvidius used to drink
on the birthdays of the Bruti and of Cassius. Virro himself holds capacious
cups crusted with amber and goblets uneven with beryl:
to you no gold is entrusted, or, if it ever is given,
a guard is fixed there on the spot
to count the gems and watch your sharp nails.
Pardon him—the splendid jasper on it is much praised;
for Virro, like many, transfers gems to his cups
from his fingers, gems that the youth preferred to jealous Iarbas
used to set on the front of his scabbard.
You will drain a cup that bears the name of the Beneventan
cobbler, cracked by now in its four noses, and demanding
sulphur for its broken glass.
If the master's stomach is heated with wine and food,
a decoction is fetched, colder than Getic frosts.
I complained just now that the same wines were not set before you both:
the very water you drink is different; a Gaetulian runner
will give you your cup, or the bony hand of a black Moor,
one you would not wish to meet in the middle of the night,
as you are carried past the monuments of the steep Latin Way.
The flower of Asia stands before the master, bought at a greater price
than was the fortune of warlike Tullus and of Ancus,
and—not to keep you—than all the trinkets
of the kings of Rome. Since this is so, when you are thirsty,
look round for your Gaetulian Ganymede. A boy bought for so many thousands
does not know how to mix drink for the poor; but his beauty, his age
deserve his disdain. When does he come to you?
When, though asked, is he there to serve hot water or cold?
Of course he scorns to obey an old client,
and that you should ask for anything, and recline while he stands.
See with what a grumble another holds out the bread,
scarcely to be broken, lumps of solid dough now moldy,
that work the jaws and will not let themselves be bitten;
but soft and snowy bread, made of fine flour,
is kept for the master. Remember to hold back your hand:
let the reverence due the bread-basket be preserved. Yet suppose
you grow a little bold—there is one at hand to make you put it down:
"Will you, presumptuous guest, fill yourself from the usual
baskets, and learn the color of your own bread?"
"So this, I suppose, was why I so often left my wife
and ran up the steep hill and the chilly Esquiline,
when the spring sky thundered with savage hail,
and my cloak dripped with the heavy storm!"
See with how long a body it sets off the dish—
that crayfish borne to the master, hedged about on every side
with asparagus, with what a tail it looks down on the guests,
as it comes, raised in the hands of a lofty servant.
But to you is set a crab cramped with half an egg,
a funeral dinner on a tiny plate.
He drowns his fish in Venafran oil: but the cabbage that comes,
pale, to you, poor wretch, will smell of the lantern;
for what is given to your dishes is the oil that the sharp prow
of a Numidian canoe brought up,
on account of which no one at Rome will bathe with Boccar,
and which even keeps men safe from black serpents.
There will be a mullet for the master, sent by Corsica or by
the Taormina cliffs, since all our own sea is plundered
and exhausted, while the gullet rages,
with the market searching the nearest grounds by ceaseless nets,
and we do not let the Tyrrhenian fish grow.
So the province stocks the kitchen; from there is taken
what the legacy-hunter Laenas may buy, and Aurelia sell.
To Virro a lamprey is given, the largest that comes
from the Sicilian gulf; for while the South Wind holds itself in,
while it sits drying its wet wings in prison,
the reckless lines despise the midst of Charybdis.
But you—an eel awaits you, cousin of the long snake,
or a Tiber-fish flecked with grey spots,
itself a homebred slave of the banks, fat from the rushing sewer,
and wont to penetrate the vault of the mid-Subura.
To the man himself I would say a few words, if he would lend an easy ear.
"No one asks for the gifts that used to be sent to modest friends
by Seneca, that good Piso, that Cotta were wont
to bestow; for once the glory of giving was reckoned
greater than titles and the rods of office. We only
ask that you dine like a citizen. Do this, and be,
be—as many now are—rich for yourself, poor to your friends."
Before the master himself a great goose's liver, a fowl
as big as the goose, and a boar steaming, worthy
of yellow-haired Meleager's steel. After this, truffles will be served,
if it is spring then, and the longed-for thunder makes the dinners
grander. "Keep your corn for yourself," says Alledius,
"O Libya, unyoke your oxen, so long as you send truffles."
Meanwhile, that no provocation be lacking, you may watch
the carver dancing and gesturing with his flying
knife, until he runs through all his master's
instructions; and it makes no small difference, to be sure,
with what gesture a hare and with what a hen is carved.
You will be dragged out by the heel, like Cacus struck by Hercules,
and set outside the door, if you ever try
to open your mouth, as though you had three names. When does
Virro drink your health, or take a cup touched by your lips?
Which of you is so rash, so
abandoned, as to say "Drink" to the king? There are very many things
that men dare not say with a threadbare cloak about them.
If some god, or some demigod kinder than the fates,
should give you four hundred thousand, what a man—
out of nothing—what a man you would become, a friend of Virro's!
"Give to Trebius, set it before Trebius. Will you, brother, have some
of the loin itself?" O money, it is to you he pays this honor;
you are his brother. Yet if you would become master and king of masters,
let no little Aeneas play in your hall,
nor a daughter sweeter than he;
a barren wife makes a friend pleasant and dear.
But suppose your Mycale now gives birth, and pours three boys
at once into the father's lap—he will rejoice in the chattering
nest, will order a green vest to be brought,
and tiny nuts and the begged-for penny,
whenever the parasite infant comes to the table.
To the cheap friends will be served doubtful mushrooms,
a boletus to the master, but such as Claudius ate
before that of his wife, after which he ate nothing more.
Virro will order such fruits to be given to himself
and the other Virrones, on whose scent alone you may feed,
such as the eternal autumn of the Phaeacians had,
which you might believe stolen from the African sisters:
but you enjoy a scabby apple, such as gnaws on the rampart
the man covered by shield and helmet, who, fearing the lash,
learns from a shaggy she-goat to hurl the javelin.
Perhaps you suppose that Virro grudges the expense:
it is done that you may grieve; for what comedy, what mime
is better than a weeping gullet? So everything is done,
if you do not know it, that you may be forced to pour out your bile
through tears, and to grind your clenched molars a long while.
You think yourself a free man and the king's guest:
he thinks you caught by the smell of his kitchen;
nor does he guess amiss. For who is so destitute as to bear him
twice, if as a boy he had the Etruscan gold,
or even the knot alone and the badge of a poor leather strap?
The hope of dining well deceives you: "See, he will give us now
a half-eaten hare, or something of a boar's haunch,
soon a smaller fowl will come to us." So with bread
made ready, untouched and grasped, you all sit silent.
He is wise who so treats you. If you can bear all,
then bear it you should; some day you will offer your shaven head
to be beaten, nor will you fear to endure the hard
whips—worthy of such feasts and such a friend."