Book 3

7. Satire VII All the hope and reason of learning rests on Caesar alone;

for he alone in this age has looked with favor on the sad Muses,

when poets now famous and well known

were trying to take a little bath-house at Gabii, or ovens at Rome,

and others thought it neither foul nor shameful

to become auctioneers, when hungry Clio,

her Aganippean valleys deserted, migrated into the salerooms.

For if not one farthing is shown to you in the Pierian

shade, you might come to love the name and livelihood of Machaera

and sell instead, as the auctioneer sells to the bystanders

what is put in his charge—a wine-jar, tripods, cabinets, chests,

the Alcithoe of Pacuvius, the Thebes and Tereus of Faustus.

This is better than to say before a judge, "I saw"

what you did not see—let the Asian knights do that,

and the Cappadocians, whom the other Gaul brands on their bare ankle.

Yet no one henceforth will be forced to bear toil

unworthy of his studies, whoever weaves vocal

eloquence into tuneful measures, and has bitten the laurel.

Set to it, young men: the indulgence of our leader watches over you,

and spurs you on, and seeks out matter for itself.

If you think any other support for your affairs

is to be looked for elsewhere, and so the parchment of the saffron

tablet is filled up—be quick, ask for some firewood, and the verses

you compose, Telesinus, give to Venus' husband,

or shut them away and let the bookworm bore through the shelved volumes;

break your pen, poor wretch, and blot out the battles you sat up to write,

you who make sublime poems in a cramped little cell,

that you may come out worthy of the ivy and a lean bust.

There is no hope beyond. The rich miser has now learned

only to admire, only to praise the eloquent,

as boys do Juno's bird. But the time of life slips away

that can endure the sea and the helmet and the mattock.

Then weariness creeps over the spirit, then eloquent

and naked old age hates itself and its own Terpsichore.

Now hear the tricks, so that the man may give you nothing—

the man you cultivate, having quit the temple of the Muses and Apollo.

He himself writes verses, and yields only to Homer

on account of his thousand years; and if, fired by the sweetness

of fame, you give a reading, he lends you a dingy hall;

this house, far off and iron-barred, is set to serve you,

a house whose door mimics anxious city-gates.

He knows how to post freedmen seated in the farthest part

of the row, and to arrange the loud voices of his clients:

none of these great men will give what the benches cost,

and the tiers that hang from a hired beam,

and the orchestra set out with chairs to be carried back.

Yet we keep at this, and draw furrows in the thin

dust, and turn the shore with a barren plow.

For if you try to break away, the noose of the ambitious

itch for writing holds you, and grows old in your sick heart.

But the poet of distinction, who has no common vein,

who is not wont to spin out anything trite, nor

to strike a vulgar song from common coin—

such a one, whom I cannot point out and only feel,

is made by a mind free from anxiety, impatient of all

bitterness, eager for the woods, and fit to drink

the springs of the Aonides. For poverty cannot sing

in the Pierian grotto or touch the thyrsus, when it is

cast down and bare of the coin which night and day

the body needs: Horace is well fed when he cries "Euhoe!"

What room is there for genius, unless when your hearts,

vexed by song alone and swept away by the lords of Cirrha and Nysa,

admit no two cares at once?

It is the work of a great mind, not one struck dumb by the thought

of buying a blanket, to gaze on chariots and horses and the faces

of gods, and on the sort of Fury that confounds the Rutulian.

For if Virgil had lacked a slave-boy and a tolerable

lodging, all the snakes would have fallen from the Fury's hair,

the muffled trumpet would have groaned nothing deep: do we ask that

Rubrenus Lappa be no less than the ancient buskin,

he who pawns his bowls and his cloak to write his Atreus?

Unhappy Numitor has nothing to send a friend:

he has something to give Quintilla, nor did he lack

the means to buy a lion to be fattened on much flesh,

already tamed; no doubt the beast costs less to keep—

a poet's guts, of course, take more.

Let Lucan lie content with fame in his marble

gardens; but for Serranus and slender Saleius,

what is glory, however great, if it is glory only?

Men run to the sweet voice and song of the beloved

Thebaid, when Statius has gladdened the city

and named the day: with such sweetness he affects

the captive souls, and with such delight he is heard

by the crowd; but when he has shattered the benches with his verse,

he goes hungry, unless he sells his virgin Agave to Paris.

That man bestows on many the honor of military rank,

and rings poets' fingers with the gold of a six-month tribuneship:

what the nobles do not give, an actor will. Do you court

the Camerini and a Barea, the great halls of the nobility?

Pelopea makes prefects, Philomela tribunes.

Yet you need not envy the poet whom the stage feeds:

who will be your Maecenas now, who Proculeius

or Fabius? Who another Cotta, who a second Lentulus?

Then the reward matched the talent, then it profited many

to grow pale and to drink no wine the whole of December.

Moreover, is your labor more fruitful, you writers

of history? More time perishes here, and more oil.

For the thousandth page, knowing no limit, rises

for each of you, and the costly heap of papyrus grows;

the vast number of facts demands it, and the law of the work.

Yet what harvest comes from it? What fruit of the broken ground?

Who will give a historian as much as he would a clerk reading the gazette?

"But they are a lazy breed, fond of the couch and the shade."

Tell me, then, what civic duties profit the pleaders,

and the briefs that go along in a great bundle.

They sound off grandly themselves, but chiefly when a creditor

is listening, or if someone keener than he has touched their side—

a man who comes about a doubtful debt with a great ledger.

Then the empty bellows breathe out vast lies,

and the front of the toga is spat upon: if you care to grasp

the real harvest, set on this side the estates of a hundred pleaders,

on the other put alone the wealth of Lacerta, the Red charioteer.

The chiefs have taken their seats; you rise, a pale Ajax,

to plead for doubtful liberty before a cowherd

for judge. Burst your strained liver, poor wretch, so that, worn out,

the green palms, the glory of your staircase, may be set up for you.

And what is the price of your voice? A dry little ham, and a jar

of sprats, or some old onions, the monthly ration of the Moors,

or wine carried down the Tiber—five flagons.

If you have pleaded four times, if one gold piece has come your way,

from that the agents' shares fall due by agreement.

To Aemilius will be given as much as the law allows, though we

pleaded better; for his bronze chariot stands, with tall

four-horse teams, in his hall, and he himself, seated

on a fierce war-horse, threatens with a curved spear from afar,

and rehearses battles with his one-eyed statue.

So Pedo goes bankrupt, Matho fails; this is the end

of Tongilius, who is wont to bathe with a great rhinoceros-horn flask

and to plague the baths with his muddy throng,

and presses the young Maedians through the forum with his long pole-borne litter,

about to buy boys, silver, murrhine, villas;

for his ship-borne purple, with its Tyrian thread, stands surety.

And yet this pays them: purple sells

the pleader, the amethyst-dyed cloaks sell him; it suits him

to live with the noise and the show of a greater fortune.

But spendthrift Rome keeps no limit to expense.

Do we trust to eloquence? No one would now give Cicero

two hundred coins, unless a great ring flashed.

The man who goes to law looks first at this: whether you have

eight slaves, ten companions, a sedan behind you, men in togas

before your feet. And so Paulus pleaded in a hired

sardonyx, and so charged more than Gallus,

than Basilus. Eloquence is rare in a threadbare cloak.

When is Basilus allowed to bring forward a weeping mother?

Who could bear Basilus, though he speak well? Let Gaul take you,

or rather Africa, the nursemaid of pleaders,

if you have resolved to set a price on your tongue.

Do you teach declamation? O iron heart of Vettius,

when his numerous class destroys cruel tyrants!

For whatever he has just read sitting down, the same he will deliver

standing, and will chant the same in the same verses;

the cabbage served up again kills the wretched masters.

What the color, what the kind of case, where the chief

question lies, what arrows may come from the opposing side—

all wish to know, no one to pay the fee.

"The fee, you say?" "Why, what do I know?" The teacher's fault,

of course, is blamed, that in the left side of his breast

nothing throbs for the Arcadian youth, who every sixth

day fills my wretched head with his dreadful Hannibal,

whatever it is he is debating: whether to march on Rome

from Cannae, or, after the storms and lightning, cautiously

wheel back his cohorts, soaked by the tempest.

Bargain for any sum you please, and take it down at once: what would I give

to have the father hear him as often as I do? These six others,

or more, all clamor with one mouth, the sophists,

and plead real cases, the abductor abandoned;

the poisonings fall silent, the wicked and ungrateful husband,

and the mortars that now cure the old and blind.

So he will give himself his own discharge, if he heeds

our counsel, and will enter on a different path of life,

the man who has come down from the rhetorician's shade to the fight,

lest the little sum perish for which a cheap ticket of grain

is bought; for this is the choicest of wages. Try

how much Chrysogonus, how much Pollio charges to teach

the children of the rich: you will tear up Theodorus' treatise.

Baths cost six hundred thousand, and more the colonnade in which

the master is carried whenever it rains—is he to wait for fair weather,

or splatter his beasts with fresh mud?

Here rather, for here the hoof of the clean mule shines.

In another part let a dining-hall, propped on tall

Numidian columns, rise and catch the cold sun.

Whatever the house, there will come one to set out the courses

skillfully, one to season the relishes.

Among such expenses, two thousand sesterces for Quintilian

would be plenty; nothing will cost a father less

than his son. "Whence then has Quintilian

so many estates?" Pass over the examples of new

fortunes: lucky, handsome, and keen,

lucky, wise, noble, and well-born,

the lucky man stitches the crescent to his black shoe;

lucky too the greatest orator and javelin-thrower,

and, even if he has caught a chill, he sings well. For it makes a difference

what stars receive you, just as you begin to utter your first

cries, still red from your mother.

If Fortune wills, you will become a consul out of a rhetor;

if this same Fortune wills, a rhetor out of a consul.

For what was Ventidius? What Tullius? Anything but

a star and the marvelous power of hidden fate?

Fate gives kingdoms to slaves, a triumph to captives.

Yet that lucky man is rarer even than a white crow.

Many have repented of the empty and barren chair,

as the end of Thrasymachus proves, and of Secundus

Carrinas; and you, Athens, saw him poor,

having dared to bestow on him nothing but cold hemlock.

May the gods grant our forefathers' shades light, weightless earth

and breathing crocuses and an everlasting spring in the urn,

who decreed that a teacher should hold the place

of a revered parent. Achilles, now grown great, in dread of the rod

would sing in his native hills, and even then the tail

of his lyre-master could draw a laugh from no one;

but his own pupils flog Rufus and the rest, each man his own—

Rufus, whom he so often called the Allobrogian Cicero.

Who pays into the lap of Celadus or learned Palaemon

as much as the grammarian's toil has earned? And yet out of this,

whatever it is—and it is less than the rhetor's fee—

the boy's escort, the boorish guardian, takes a first bite,

and the steward breaks off something for himself. Give way, Palaemon,

and bear with some shrinkage from it, just as

the peddler of a winter mat and snowy blanket does,

provided only that nothing be lost of what, from the midnight hour,

you sat for, when no workman, when no one would sit

who teaches to draw out wool with the slanting iron;

provided only that nothing be lost of having smelled as many lamps

as there stood boys, while Flaccus grew quite discolored

and the soot clung to a blackened Maro.

Yet the fee is rare that does not need the tribunal's

cognizance. But you, impose your savage laws,

that the rule of words hold good for the teacher,

that he read the histories, know all the authors

as well as his own nails and fingers, so that, asked by chance

while going to the warm baths or the baths of Phoebus, he may tell

the nurse of Anchises, the name and country of the stepmother

of Anchemolus, may say how many years Acestes lived,

how many jars of Sicilian wine he gave the Phrygians;

require that he mold tender characters as with the thumb,

as one shapes a face in wax; require that he be

even the father of the company himself, lest they play foul games,

lest they do shameful things by turns; it is no light task

to watch the hands and the trembling eyes of so many boys.

"This," he says, "is your charge; but when the year has come round,

receive the gold the people demand for a victor."

8. Satire VIII What do pedigrees avail? What use is it, Ponticus, to be reckoned

by long descent, to show the painted faces

of ancestors, the Aemiliani standing in their chariots,

and the Curii now but halves, a Corvinus reduced to a shoulder,

and a Galba lacking ears and nose?

What profit to flaunt on the spreading family-tree

a Corvinus, and thereafter to touch with many a branch

the smoke-stained masters of the horse along with a dictator,

if you live basely before the Lepidi? To what end so many

images of warriors, if the dice are played all night

before the Numantini, if you begin to sleep at the rising

of the morning star, when the generals were moving their standards and camp?

Why should a Fabius, born in the household of Hercules, rejoice

in the title "Allobrogicus" and the Great Altar, if he is greedy, if

vain, and softer than any Euganean lamb,

if, his tender loin smoothed with Catanian pumice,

he disgraces his rough ancestors, and—a buyer of poison—

dishonors his wretched line with an image that must be broken?

Though ancient waxen busts adorn your halls on every side,

nobility is the one and only virtue.

Be a Paulus or a Cossus or a Drusus in your morals;

set these before the images of your ancestors,

let them go before the very rods when you are consul.

You owe me first the goods of the soul. Do you earn to be held holy

and steadfast in justice in deed and word?

I recognize a noble: hail, Gaetulicus, or you,

Silanus, of whatever other blood, a rare

and excellent citizen, you fall to your rejoicing country—

one is moved to cry out what the people cry when Osiris

is found. For who would call him noble who is

unworthy of his line and distinguished only

by an illustrious name? We call some man's dwarf an Atlas,

an Ethiopian a Swan, a crooked, deformed girl

a Europa; lazy curs, smooth with old mange,

and licking the rim of a dry lamp,

will be named Panther, Tiger, Lion, or whatever else there is

that roars more fiercely on the earth; so you will beware

and fear lest you be a "Creticus" or "Camerinus" in that fashion.

Whom have I warned by this? With you is my discourse, Rubellius

Blandus. You swell with the high pedigree of the Drusi, as though

you had yourself done something to make you noble,

something to make her who shines with the blood of Iulus conceive you,

not the woman hired to weave beneath the windy embankment.

"You are low," you say, "the very dregs of our rabble,

none of whom could point to his father's birthplace;

but I am a son of Cecrops." Long life to you, and may you

bear long the joys of this origin: yet from the lowest commons

you will find an eloquent Roman; this man is wont to defend the cases

of an unlettered noble; from the toga-clad plebs will come

one to untie the knots of the law and the riddles of statutes;

from here a young man, busy in arms, makes for the Euphrates

and the eagles that guard the conquered Batavian. But you

are nothing but a son of Cecrops, most like a headless Herm:

for there is no other difference between you, except that

his head is of marble, and your image lives.

Tell me, offspring of the Teucri: who would think dumb

animals well-bred, unless they are strong? It is for this, surely,

that we praise the swift horse, for whom many a palm

burns easily and victory exults in the hoarse circus;

that one is noble, from whatever pasture he comes, whose

flight is glorious before the rest and who is first to raise the dust on the course;

but the offspring of Coryphaeus and Hirpinus are a salable herd,

if victory has rarely settled on their yoke;

there is no regard there for ancestors, no favor

for the shades; they are bidden to change masters for a paltry

price, and, slow-footed, with worn-down neck, drag the cart,

grandsons fit to turn the mill.

So, that we may admire you and not your forebears, give us something of your own,

something I may carve on your titles besides the honors

we give and have given to those to whom you owe everything.

This is enough for the youth whom rumor hands down to us as proud

and puffed up and full of his kinsman Nero;

for common sense is generally rare in that

high fortune. But I would not have you, Ponticus,

valued by the praise of your forebears in such a way that you yourself do nothing

for future glory. It is wretched to lean on the fame of others,

lest, the columns withdrawn, the roof come crashing down.

The vine-shoot stretched on the ground longs for its widowed elms.

Be a good soldier, a good guardian, an upright

arbiter too; if ever you are summoned as witness

in a doubtful and uncertain case, though Phalaris command you to be

false and dictate perjury with his bull brought near,

believe it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor,

and, for the sake of living, to lose the grounds of living.

He who deserves death has perished, though he dine on a hundred oysters

from the Gauran rock and bathe in a whole cauldron of Cosmus' scent.

When the long-awaited province at last receives you

as its governor, set a curb and a limit to your anger,

set one to your greed as well; pity the needy allies:

you see the bones of their realm, sucked dry of marrow;

mark what the laws advise, what the senate enjoins,

what great rewards await the good, with what just thunderbolt

both Capito and Numitor fell, the senate condemning them,

pirates of the Cilicians. But what does a sentence avail?

Look for an auctioneer, Chaerippus, for your rags,

since Pansa snatches whatever Natta left you;

and now be silent: it is madness, after losing all, to lose the fare too.

The groan was not the same in old days, nor was the wound equal,

when our allies' losses were fresh and they but lately conquered.

Every house was then full, and a great heap

of coins stood there, a Spartan cloak, Coan purples,

and along with the paintings of Parrhasius and the statues of Myron,

the ivory of Phidias was alive, nor was the much

labor of Polyclitus lacking anywhere, and rare were the tables without a Mentor.

From there Dolabella, from there Antonius, from there

sacrilegious Verres carried back in their tall ships

hidden spoils, and more triumphs over peace than over war.

Now from the allies a few yoke of oxen, a small herd of mares,

and the father of the flock will be snatched from a captured little field,

then the household gods themselves, if there is any notable statue,

if any single god in his little shrine; for these indeed are now

their greatest things, these are now their utmost. You might perhaps

despise the unwarlike Rhodians and oiled Corinth;

and despise them with reason: what will the resined youths

and the smooth legs of a whole nation do to you?

But shun rough Spain, the Gallic clime,

and the Illyrian coast; spare too those harvesters

who fill the city that has leisure for the circus and the stage.

And what reward will you bring from there for so dire a crime,

now that Marius has lately stripped the impoverished Africans?

Above all take care that no great wrong be done

to the brave and the wretched: though you take away all the gold

and silver there is anywhere, you will leave them shield and sword.

What I have just set down is no mere maxim: it is truth—

believe that I recite to you a leaf of the Sibyl.

If your band of companions is holy, if no long-haired page

sells your tribunal, if there is no fault in your wife,

nor any Harpy ready to go through the assizes and all the towns

with hooked talons to snatch your money,

then you may count your descent from Picus, and if lofty

names delight you, set among your forebears the whole

Titanian war and Prometheus himself,

take your great-grandsire from whatever book you please.

But if ambition and lust drag you headlong,

if you break your rods in the blood of the allies, if you delight

in blunted axes and a weary lictor,

then the very nobility of your own ancestors begins

to stand against you, and to hold a bright torch before your shameful deeds.

Every fault of the soul carries the more conspicuous

guilt the greater the man who sins is held to be.

To what end do you tell me of your wont to seal false tablets

in the temples your grandfather built, and before your father's

triumphal statue? To what end, if a nocturnal adulterer,

you veil your muffled temples in a Santonic hood?

Past the ashes and bones of his ancestors, in a flying

carriage, fat Lateranus is whirled, and he himself,

the consul-muleteer, locks the wheel with his own brake.

By night, indeed, but the Moon sees, but the stars as witnesses

strain their eyes. When his term of office is ended,

Lateranus will take up his whip in broad daylight,

and will not blush to meet a friend

now old, and will salute him first with his wand, and will untie

the hay-bundles and pour out the barley for his weary beasts.

Meanwhile, while he slaughters the woolly victims and the russet bullock

in Numa's fashion, he swears before Jupiter's altars

by Epona alone and the faces painted on the rank stalls.

But when he chooses to revisit the all-night taverns,

a Syrophoenician, greasy with constant balsam, runs to meet him,

a Syrophoenician dwelling at the Idumaean gate,

and with a host's affection greets him as lord and king,

and Cyane too, girt up, with her wine-jar for sale.

The defender of the fault will say to me: "We did

these things too, as young men." Granted; you stopped, of course, nor

beyond that did you nurse the error: let your shameful daring be brief.

Some faults should be cut off with the first beard;

grant pardon to boys: but Lateranus goes to those

bath-house cups and inscribed napkins

ripe for the war of defending the rivers of Armenia and Syria,

and the Rhine and the Danube; this age is fit to keep

Nero secure. Send to Ostia, Caesar,

send—but seek your legate in a great cookshop;

you will find him lying with some cutthroat,

mixed in with sailors and thieves and runaways,

among hangmen and coffin-makers

and the silent timbrels of a sprawled-out priest of Cybele.

There is equal liberty there, shared cups, a couch

no different for anyone, a table set no farther off for any.

What would you do, Ponticus, if you got such a slave?

You would send him, surely, to the Lucanians or a Tuscan workhouse.

But you, sons of Troy, forgive yourselves, and what is shameful

in a cobbler will befit a Volesus or a Brutus.

What if we never use examples so foul

and so shameful that worse do not remain?

Your wealth consumed, Damasippus, you hired your voice

to the curtain, to play the noisy Ghost of Catullus.

Nimble Lentulus too acted Laureolus well,

worthy in my judgment of a real cross; nor would I pardon

the people itself: the brow of this people is too hard,

which sits and watches the buffooneries of patricians,

hears the barefoot Fabii, can laugh at

the slaps of the Mamerci. At what price they sell their deaths,

what does it matter? They sell with no Nero compelling them,

nor do they hesitate to sell themselves at the lofty praetor's games.

Yet suppose swords were set on one side and stages on the other,

which is better? Has anyone so shuddered at death

as to be the jealous husband of Thymele, the colleague of dull Corinthus?

It is no great wonder, though, that, with a lyre-player for emperor,

a noble plays the mime. Beyond this, what is there but the arena? And there

you have the city's disgrace: not a Gracchus fighting in a murmillo's

arms, nor with shield, nor with a trident leveled;

for he condemns such garb—condemns it and hates it;

nor does a helmet hide his face. Look, he wields the trident.

After he has cast, with hand quivering, the dangling nets

in vain, he lifts his bare face to the spectators

and flees, to be recognized over the whole arena.

Let us believe the tunic, when the gold cord

stretches from his throat and the spiral tosses from his long cap.

So the pursuer, ordered to fight with the Gracchus, bore a disgrace

heavier than any wound.

If free votes were given to the people, who would be so

abandoned as to hesitate to prefer Seneca to Nero?

For whose punishment one ape should not have been provided,

nor one serpent, nor one sack.

Equal was the crime of Agamemnon's son, but the cause makes

the matter unlike: for he, with the gods to authorize it, avenged

his father slain amid the cups; but he did not

defile himself with Electra's throat, nor Sparta

with the blood of a wife, mixed aconite for no kinsmen,

never sang Orestes on the stage,

wrote no Trojan poem. For what should Verginius rather

have avenged with arms, or Galba with Vindex,

than the deeds Nero did in his savage and cruel tyranny?

These are the works and these the arts of a high-born prince,

who delighted to prostitute himself with foul song on foreign stages

and to earn the parsley of a Greek garland.

Let your ancestors' images have the insignia of your voice;

before Domitius' feet set down the long train

of Thyestes, or of Antigone, or the mask of Melanippe,

and hang your lyre from your marble colossus.

What, Catiline, will anyone find loftier than your birth

and Cethegus'? Yet you prepare nocturnal arms

and flames for houses and temples,

like the sons of the trousered ones and the descendants of the Senones,

daring what may be punished with the painful tunic.

But the consul is awake and curbs your standards;

this new man from Arpinum, low-born and but lately

a municipal knight at Rome, posts a helmeted

guard everywhere for the terrified, and toils on every hill.

So within the walls the toga won for him as much

as Octavius took on the fields of Leucas and Thessaly

with a sword wet from constant slaughter; but Rome, while free,

called Cicero parent, Rome called him father of his country.

Another man of Arpinum was wont, on the Volscian hills,

to ask his wages, weary of another's plow;

after that he would break the knotty vine-staff on his head,

if he were slow in fortifying the camp with a sluggish mattock;

yet this man meets the Cimbri and the utmost perils of the state,

and alone protects the trembling city.

And so, after the ravens, which had never lit on greater corpses,

flew to the Cimbri and the slaughter,

his noble colleague is honored with a second laurel.

Plebeian were the souls of the Decii, plebeian their names;

yet these sufficed, for whole legions and for

all the auxiliaries and the whole Latin youth,

to the gods below and Mother Earth;

for the Decii were worth more than what they saved.

Born of a slave-woman, the last of the good kings earned

the royal robe and diadem of Quirinus and the rods.

The consul's own sons were loosing the bolts of the gates,

betrayed, to the exiled tyrants, sons who ought to have dared

something great for liberty in its peril,

something Mucius might marvel at, with Cocles, and the maid

who swam the Tiber, the boundary of empire:

a slave brought the hidden crimes to the senators—

a slave to be mourned by matrons; but them the lash

afflicts with just penalties, and the first axe of the laws.

I would rather you had Thersites for a father, provided you were

like the grandson of Aeacus and could wield the arms of Vulcan,

than that Achilles should beget you like Thersites.

And yet, however far back you trace, however far you unroll

the name, you draw your line from an infamous sanctuary:

the first of your ancestors, whoever he was,

was either a shepherd or that which I would rather not say.

9. Satire IX I should like to know, Naevolus, why so often you meet me

downcast, your brow clouded like Marsyas defeated.

What have you to do with the look that Ravola wore when he was caught,

while he rubbed Rhodope's privates with his wet beard?

We give a cuff to a slave who licks the pastries.

Crepereius Pollio will have no more pitiable a face than this,

who, ready to pay triple interest, goes round

and finds no fools. Whence, all at once,

so many wrinkles? Surely you used to play, content with little,

the homebred knight, a guest with a biting jest,

vehement with the wit and salt born within the city bounds.

Now everything is the reverse: a grave face, a rough, dry

thicket of hair, no gloss at all on your whole skin, such as

the Bruttian gum of warm bird-lime once gave you,

but your legs neglected and squalid with sprouting hair.

What of this leanness, like that of an old sick man whom for a long time

the quartan fever roasts, and the once-domestic ague?

You may detect the torments of a soul hidden in a sick

body; you may detect its joys too; the face takes

both habits from within; so you seem to have turned

your purpose and to be going against your former life.

For lately, as I recall, the shrine of Isis and the Ganymede

of Peace, and the secret Palatine of the imported Mother,

and Ceres (for in what temple does no woman stand for sale?),

you were wont to haunt, an adulterer more notorious than Aufidius,

and—what you keep silent—to bend over the very husbands too.

"This way of life is profitable to many, but to me no

reward of my labor has come of it: now and then some greasy cloaks,

the toga's defenses, of a hard and coarse color

and badly beaten by the comb of a Gallic weaver,

a thin bit of silver, of the second vein.

Fate rules men, fate governs even those parts

which the garment hides; for if your stars fail you,

the unmeasured length of your member will avail you nothing,

though Virro see you naked with foaming lip,

and coaxing notes, thick and unceasing,

solicit you—for of himself a deviant draws a man on.

Yet what monster is worse than a stingy lecher?

'I gave you this, then I gave you that, soon you got more':

he reckons it up, and wags his rump. Let the counter be set out, let the boys

be at hand with the slate; count up five thousand sesterces

for all my services: then let my labors be counted too.

Is it easy and downhill work to drive a proper member

into the bowels, and there to meet yesterday's dinner?

The slave who has dug a field will be less wretched

than he who digs his master. But you, of course, thought yourself

a tender boy, and fair, and worthy of the cup and of heaven.

Will you, you patrons, you, ever indulge a humble hanger-on,

a faithful worshipper, now that you are not even ready to give for the disease?

There's the man for whom you should send a green parasol, for whom

great pieces of amber, whenever his birthday returns or the moist spring

begins, and, laid out on his cushioned, long chair,

he handles in secret the gifts of the women's Kalends.

Tell me, you sparrow, for whom do you keep so many hills, so many Apulian

estates, so many kites grown weary within your pastures?

The Trifoline land stocks you with fertile vines,

and the ridge that looks down on Cumae, and empty Gaurus—

for who coats more jars with must that will last?—

how much would it have cost to give your exhausted client's loins

a few acres? Is it better that this country infant,

with his mother and his cottage and his playmate puppy,

be left as a legacy to the friend who beats the cymbals?

'You are shameless to ask,' he says. But the rent cries out 'Ask';

and so does my one slave, like the broad eye of Polyphemus

by which clever Ulysses made his escape.

A second must be bought, for this one is not enough; both

must be fed. What shall I do when the winter wind blows? What, pray,

what shall I say to my boys' shoulders and feet

in the December north-wind? 'Hold out, and wait for the cicadas'?

But, however you dissemble it, though you pass over all the rest, at what

price do you reckon it, that, had I not been your devoted

and dedicated client, your wife would still be a virgin?

You know well, surely, in what ways, how often you begged this of me,

and what you promised: the fleeing girl I often

seized in my embrace; she had even torn up the contract and was now

re-signing: this I scarcely redeemed in a whole night

while you wept outside; the little bed is my witness, and you,

to whom the sound of the couch and the mistress's voice came through.

A marriage unstable, begun to break up, and now almost dissolved,

the adulterer has saved in many a house.

Which way will you turn? What will you set down first, what last?

Is it nothing, then, ungrateful and treacherous one, nothing,

that a little son or a daughter is born to you from me?

For you acknowledge them, and love to scatter through the public records

the proofs of your manhood. Hang garlands on your doors:

now you are a father; I have given you what you may set against gossip;

you have a parent's rights; thanks to me you are written down an heir,

you take whole legacies, and the sweet windfall too.

And many advantages besides will be added to the windfalls,

if I complete the number, if I make it three." Just is the cause

of your grief, Naevolus; but what does he bring against it?

"He neglects me and seeks himself another two-legged donkey.

Remember to keep these things, entrusted to you alone, hidden,

and silently lock my complaints within yourself.

For it is deadly to have an enemy smooth with pumice;

he who lately shared a secret burns and hates,

as if I had betrayed all I know. He does not hesitate to take up

steel, to open a head with a club, to set a candle to the doors;

nor are you to scorn or despise the fact that,

with these riches, poison is never dear.

So keep my secrets hidden as the court of Mars at Athens."

O Corydon, Corydon, do you think any secret of a rich man's

can stay hidden? Though the slaves keep silent, the beasts will speak,

and the dog and the doorposts and the marble. Close the windows,

let curtains cover the chinks, fasten the doors, take away the light,

drive everyone out of the way, let no one lie near:

yet what he does at the second cock-crow,

the nearest tavern-keeper will know before daybreak, and will hear what

the confectioner and the head-cooks' carvers

have invented alike. For what crime do they scruple to frame

against their masters, as often as they avenge with rumors

their floggings? Nor will one be lacking to seek you through the crossroads

against your will, and drunkenly soak your wretched ear.

So beg of them what you were lately asking

of us: that they keep silent. But they would rather betray

a secret than drink the stolen Falernian,

doing for the people as much as Saufeia used to drink.

One should live uprightly for many reasons, but chiefly

for these: that you may scorn the tongues of your slaves,

for the tongue is the worst part of a bad slave;

yet worse is he who is not free of those

whose lives he keeps with his own grain and money.

"You have given useful counsel just now, but a commonplace one;

what do you advise me now, after my loss of time and my deceived

hopes? For the little flower of our narrow and wretched life

hastens to run swiftly down to its briefest

portion; while we drink, while we call for garlands, perfumes, girls,

old age creeps up unperceived."

Never fear; you will never lack a pathic friend

while these hills stand safe and sound: from everywhere to them

will gather, by carriage and by ship, all

who scratch their head with one finger. A still greater

hope remains for you: only set your tooth to the rocket-salad.

"Keep these counsels for the fortunate; but my Clotho

and my Lachesis are content, if the belly is fed through the groin.

O my little household gods, whom with a grain of incense

or meal and a slender garland I am wont to entreat,

when shall I fix on something to make my old age safe

from the beggar's mat and the staff? Twenty thousand in interest

on pledges laid down, some little vessels of plain silver—

but such as the censor Fabricius would mark down—and two stout

fellows from the Moesian herd, who, with their necks lent me,

may bid me stand secure in the clamorous circus;

let me have besides a stooping engraver, and another

who paints many faces quickly: these are enough,

since I shall be poor. A pitiable wish, and no hope

even of this; for when Fortune is invoked on my behalf,

she has stopped her ears with the wax fetched from that ship

which escaped the Sicilian songs with its deafened oarsman."