Book 4

Satire X In all the lands that stretch from Cadiz to the dawn and to the Ganges, few can tell true goods from their reverse, once the fog of error is dispersed. For what do we, by reason, fear or crave? What plan do you conceive so blessed in its start that you do not repent the effort and the prayer fulfilled? Whole houses the obliging gods have overthrown at the owners' own asking. In civil life and in the camp alike we ask for things that ruin us. To many their own rushing flood of eloquence is deadly; another trusted in his strength and his astonishing arms, and died. But more are throttled by money piled up with too much care, and by a fortune that outdoes all patrimonies as far as a British whale outdoes the dolphins. So in the dreadful days, at Nero's command, a whole cohort shut up Longinus and the vast gardens of the over-rich Seneca, and besieged the noble halls of the Laterani: rarely does the soldier climb to a garret. Though you carry but a few small cups of plain silver by night, you will be afraid of the sword and the spear, you will tremble at the shadow of a reed stirred in the moonlight; the empty-handed traveller will sing in the robber's face. The first and best-known prayer, in every temple, is for riches: that our wealth may grow, that ours may be the largest strongbox in the whole Forum. But no poison is drunk from earthenware: fear it when you take up a jewelled cup, and the Setine wine glows in broad gold. Do you not now approve, then, that of the two sages, one would laugh each time he had moved a single foot across the threshold, while the other, opposite, would weep? But the censure of harsh laughter comes easily to anyone: the wonder is where the other found enough moisture for his eyes. Democritus would shake his lungs with endless laughter, though in those cities of his there were no purple-bordered robes, no rods of office, no litter, no tribunal. What if he had seen the praetor towering high upon his lofty car, raised in the dust of the mid circus, in Jove's own tunic, bearing on his shoulders the Tyrian embroidered hangings of his painted toga, and the great crown's vast circle, too wide for any neck? For a public slave holds it, sweating, and—lest the consul grow too pleased with himself—that slave rides in the same car. Add now the bird that rises on the ivory sceptre, the horn-blowers on this side, on that the long line marching before him in attendance, and the white-robed citizens at his bridle, friends made his own by the dole stowed deep in their purses. Even then Democritus found matter for laughter at every meeting of men: his wisdom shows that the greatest men, who will give great examples, can be born in a land of dolts under a thick, dull sky. He laughed at the cares and likewise at the joys of the crowd, and at times their tears, while to Fortune herself, when she threatened, he would offer the noose and show her the middle finger. So the things we ask for are superfluous or ruinous, those for which it is right to wax the knees of the gods! Some men a power perched too high casts down to envy's ruin; the long and splendid roll of their honours sinks them; down come the statues, dragged along by the rope, then the axe driven into the very wheels of the chariots hacks them, and the legs of the undeserving horses are broken. Now the fires hiss, now in the bellows and the furnaces the head once worshipped by the people glows, and the great Sejanus crackles; then from the face that ranked second in all the world are made jugs, basins, a frying-pan, chamber-pots. Hang up the laurel at your door, lead to the Capitol a great chalked ox! Sejanus is dragged along by the hook, a sight for all; everyone rejoices: "What lips, what a face the man had! Never—if you believe me—did I love this fellow. But on what charge did he fall? Who was the informer? On whose evidence, by what witness, was it proved?" "Nothing of the sort: a long and wordy letter came from Capri." "Quite right—I ask no more." But what does the rabble of Remus do? It follows fortune, as always, and hates the condemned. That same people, had Nortia favoured her Etruscan, had the old emperor been struck down unawares, would this very hour be hailing Sejanus as Augustus. Long since—from the time we sold our votes to no one—it has shed its cares; for the people that once handed out command, the rods, legions, everything, now holds itself in check, and anxiously longs for two things only: bread and the games. "I hear many will perish." "No doubt—the furnace is big." "My poor pale friend Brutidius met me by the altar of Mars; how I fear that the beaten Ajax may exact a penalty, as if defended badly." "Let us run headlong, and while he lies on the bank, trample Caesar's enemy." "But let the slaves look on, lest one of them deny it and drag his terrified master, neck noosed, to judgment." Such was the talk then about Sejanus, these the secret mutterings of the crowd. Would you like to be greeted as Sejanus was, to hold as much, to bestow on this man the highest curule chairs, to set that man over armies, to be reckoned guardian of an emperor who sits on the narrow crag of Capri amid his herd of Chaldaeans? You would surely want the javelins, the cohorts, the splendid knights, and a camp of your own; and why not crave these things? Even men who would kill no one want the power to. But what glory and success is worth so much, that the measure of evils should match the measure of joys? Would you rather take up the bordered robe of this man dragged along, or hold authority over Fidenae and Gabii, and lay down the law over weights, breaking undersized measures, a ragged aedile in deserted Ulubrae? So you admit you did not know what was to be wished: for he who craved excessive honours and demanded excessive wealth was piling up the many storeys of a lofty tower, from which the fall would be the higher, the sheer plunge of the toppled ruin the more vast. What overthrew the Crassi, the Pompeys, and the man who broke the Romans and led them tamed to his own lash? The topmost place, sought of course by every art, and great prayers granted by the malignant gods. Few kings go down to Ceres' son-in-law without slaughter and wound, few tyrants by a bloodless death. Eloquence and the fame of Demosthenes or Cicero each man begins to long for, and longs for through the whole festival, whoever still worships at his thrifty penny's Minerva, attended by a slave to guard his little satchel. Yet by his eloquence each orator perished; the rich and overflowing fountain of his genius gave each to death. For his genius the hand and neck of one was cut off; never did the Rostra drip with the blood of a petty pleader. "O fortunate Rome, born in my consulship!" He could have scorned Antony's swords, had he spoken all his speeches thus. I would rather have his laughable verses than you, divine Philippic of conspicuous fame, unrolling next after the first. And that man too—a savage end snatched him away, whom Athens marvelled at, as he poured forth his torrent and governed the reins of the crowded theatre. He was born under hostile gods, an ill-starred fate, the man whose father, blear-eyed from the soot of the glowing ore, sent him from the coal and the tongs and the forge that fashions swords and from the grimy Vulcan—to a teacher of rhetoric. The spoils of war—a breastplate fixed to a mutilated trophy, a cheek-piece hanging from a broken helmet, a yoke shorn of its pole, the flagstaff of a beaten trireme, and a sad captive on the arch's top— these are believed greater than human goods. To this the Roman, the Greek, the barbarian general has roused himself; for this he had his reasons for danger and toil. So much greater is the thirst for fame than for virtue: for who would embrace virtue herself, if you took away the rewards? Yet long ago the glory of a few brought ruin on their country, and the lust for praise and the title that will cling to the stones that guard their ashes—stones that the worthless strength of a barren fig-tree can shatter, since to the very tombs a fate is given. Weigh Hannibal: how many pounds will you find in that supreme commander? This is the man whom Africa cannot hold, beaten by the Moorish ocean and stretched toward the warm Nile, then back again to the Ethiopian peoples and other elephants! Spain is added to his empire; the Pyrenees he leaps across. Nature set against him the Alps and the snow: he splits the rocks and bursts the mountain with vinegar. Now he holds Italy, yet still he strives to push beyond: "Nothing is done," he says, "until with Punic soldiery I break the gates and plant my standard in the heart of the Subura." O what a face, and worthy of what a portrait, when the Gaetulian beast bore the one-eyed general! What, then, is his end? O glory! That same man is conquered, flees headlong into exile, and there, a great and wondered-at client, sits at a king's palace gate, until it please the Bithynian tyrant to wake. The end of that soul, which once threw human affairs into turmoil, no sword shall give, no stones, no spears—but that avenger of Cannae, that requiter of so much blood, a ring. Go, madman, race across the savage Alps, to please schoolboys and become a theme for declamation! One world is not enough for the youth of Pella; the unhappy man frets at the narrow bounds of the world, as though shut up on the crags of Gyara or tiny Seriphos; yet when he enters the city walled by the potters, a sarcophagus will content him. Death alone confesses how small are the bodies of men. Athos, they say, was once sailed through—whatever lying Greece dares in her histories—and the solid sea was bridged with those same fleets and set beneath the wheels; we believe that deep rivers ran dry, and that the streams were drunk up by the Mede at his breakfast, and all that Sostratus sings of with his dripping wings. Yet how did that man return, after Salamis was left behind— he who was wont to rage with whips against the North-West and the East wind, which never suffered such things in their Aeolian prison, who had bound Earth-Shaker himself with fetters? A mild stroke, surely, that he did not also think the god worth branding! Who of the gods would consent to serve such a master? But how did he come back? In a single ship, indeed, through bloody waves, the prow slow through dense corpses. Such penalties did the glory so often longed-for exact. "Grant length of life, grant many years, O Jupiter": this, with steady face, this alone you pray, and even pale you pray it. But with how unbroken and how great a train of ills is long old age beset! First, look at the face, deformed and hideous and unlike its former self, the ugly hide instead of skin, the sagging cheeks, and wrinkles such as, where Thabraca spreads her shaded glades, an aged mother ape scratches on her withered jowl. Among the young there are many differences: one is handsomer than this, and that than another, one far stronger than the next. But the old have one face: limbs that tremble with the voice, a head now bald, the dripping infancy of a runny nose; the wretch must crumble his bread with toothless gums; so burdensome is he to wife and children and himself that he would stir disgust even in the legacy-hunter Cossus. His dulled palate finds no longer the same joy in wine and food; sex is long since forgotten, or if you try, the small, ruptured member lies still, and though caressed all night, will still lie still. What can it hope for, this grey hair of a sick groin? And is not lust rightly suspect that strives for love without the strength for it? Now look at the loss of another faculty. For what pleasure is there in a singer, be he ever so fine, in a lyre-player or a Seleucus, in those whose custom it is to shine in a gilded cloak? What does it matter in which part of the great theatre he sits, who can scarcely hear the horn-blowers and the blare of the trumpets in concert? A shout is needed for his ear to catch what the boy announces—who has come, what hour it is. Besides, the scant blood now in his chilled body is warm with fever alone; in close array there leap about him every kind of disease, whose names if you should ask, I could sooner reckon up how many adulterers Oppia has loved, how many patients Themison killed in one autumn, how many partners Basilus, how many wards Hirrus has cheated, how many men long Maura drains dry in a single day, how many pupils Hamillus corrupts; I could run through more quickly how many country-houses he owns now under whose shears my heavy beard once rasped as a youth. One is weak in the shoulder, this in the loins, this in the hip; another has lost both his eyes, and envies the one-eyed; this man's pale lips take their food from another's fingers, and he who used at the mere sight of dinner to open wide his jaws now only gapes, like a young swallow to which the fasting mother flies with full mouth. But worse than every loss of limb is the madness that recognizes neither the names of slaves nor the face of the friend with whom he dined the night before, nor those he begot, those he reared. For by a cruel will he forbids his own to be his heirs; the whole estate is carried off to Phiale: so much avails the breath of that practised mouth that stood for many years in the brothel's prison-cell. Though the powers of his mind stay vigorous, still he must lead the funerals of his sons, must look upon the pyre of his beloved wife, and of his brother, and the urns full of sisters. This is the penalty of long life: that, with the household's calamity forever renewed, a man should grow old in many griefs and in unending mourning and in black attire. The king of Pylos—if you give Homer any credit— was a model of a life second only to the crow's, happy no doubt, who through so many ages put off death and now reckons his years on his right hand, and so often drank the new wine. But I beg you, listen a little to how he himself complains of the laws of the Fates and of the over-long thread, when he sees keen Antilochus' beard ablaze, and asks of every comrade present why he has lasted into these times, what crime he has committed to deserve so long an age. This same lament Peleus makes, mourning Achilles snatched away, and another, whose right it is to mourn the Ithacan as he swims. With Troy still standing, Priam might have come to the shades of Assaracus in great solemnity, with Hector bearing his bier, and the rest of his brothers' shoulders, amid the tears of the women of Ilium, while Cassandra began the first wailing, and Polyxena with her robe torn, if he had died at another time, before Paris began to build his reckless ships. What, then, did length of days bring him? He saw everything overthrown, and Asia falling to flame and sword. Then, a trembling soldier, he laid aside his crown, took up arms, and fell before the altar of highest Jove, like an old ox, which offers to its master's knife a thin and pitiful neck, scorned now by the ungrateful plough. That, however it was, was a man's end; but with a dog's snarling jaws his wife, who lived on after him, gave tongue. I hasten to our own, and pass over the king of Pontus and Croesus, whom the eloquent voice of just Solon bade look to the final span of a long life. Exile, prison, the marshes of Minturnae, and bread begged at conquered Carthage— from this length of days these things had their cause. What, of that citizen, could Nature have brought forth on earth, what more blessed could Rome ever have had, if, with the captives' column led about him and all the pomp of war, he had breathed out his rich soul, when he was about to step down from the Teutonic car? Provident Campania had given Pompey fevers much to be wished for; but the many cities and the public prayers prevailed: so the Fortune of himself and of the city took off, preserved for defeat, his head. This torture Lentulus escaped, this penalty Cethegus, and fell whole, and Catiline lay a corpse entire. The anxious mother prays in a low voice for beauty in her boys, in a louder for her girls, when she sees Venus' shrine, right up to extravagance of vows. "But why," she says, "would you reproach me? Latona delights in fair Diana." Yet Lucretia forbids the praying for a face such as she herself had; Verginia would long to take on Rutila's hump and give Rutila her own. Yet a son of outstanding body keeps his parents wretched and afraid forever; so rare is the harmony of beauty and chastity. Though a stern household, in imitation of the old Sabines, has handed down holy ways to him, and though kindly Nature, with a lavish hand, has granted him a chaste disposition and a face that flushes with modest blood—what more can she give a boy than a guardian, and one mightier than any?—still he is not allowed to be a man; for the prodigal shamelessness of the corrupter dares to tempt the very parents: so great is their trust in their bribes. No tyrant ever castrated an ugly youth in his cruel castle, nor did Nero ever carry off a boy who was club-footed or scrofulous or swollen alike with belly and with hump. Go now and take joy in your son's good looks, for whom greater perils wait: he will become a public adulterer, and dread all the penalties that the law of a husband's anger owes; nor will he be luckier than the star of Mars, so as never to fall into the snares. And sometimes that wrath exacts more than any law has granted to wrath: one kills with the sword, another slashes with bloody whips; into some adulterers even the mullet enters. But your Endymion will become the lover of a beloved matron; soon, when Servilia gives him money, he will become hers too whom he does not love, and will strip off all her body's adornment: for what would any woman refuse to her wet loins, whether it be this Oppia or Catulla? The whole character of the woman lies there. "But how does beauty harm the chaste?" Why, what did his stern resolve profit Hippolytus, what Bellerophon? Each woman flushed, as if scorned, at the rebuff, and Stheneboea blazed no less than the Cretan, and both worked themselves to fury: a woman is at her most savage when shame goads her hatred. Now choose what counsel you think should be given to the man whom Caesar's wife is set on marrying. The best of men, and the most handsome too, of a patrician house, is being hauled off, poor wretch, to be undone by Messalina's eyes. She has long been sitting, the bridal veil made ready, the Tyrian marriage-couch spread openly in the gardens, and a million in the old style is to be given, the augur will come with the men who seal the contract. Did you think these things secret, entrusted to a few? She will not marry except in lawful form. Say, what is your choice? If you will not obey, you must die before the lamps are lit; if you commit the crime, a little respite will be given, while the matter, known to city and people, reaches the emperor's ear: last of all will he learn his house's disgrace. Meanwhile obey the command, if a few days of life are worth so much. Whatever you think the lighter or the better course, that fair white neck must be offered to the sword. Shall men then ask for nothing? If you want my counsel, you will let the gods themselves decide what suits us and what is useful for our affairs; for in place of pleasant things the gods will give what is most fitting. Man is dearer to them than to himself. We, driven by the impulse of our hearts and by blind and mighty desire, ask for marriage and for offspring from a wife; but to them it is known what the children, what the wife, will turn out to be. Still, that you may ask something and offer at the shrines the entrails and the divine sausages of a little white pig, you should pray for a sound mind in a sound body. Ask for a brave heart that has no fear of death, that counts the last span of life among the gifts of Nature, that can bear whatever toils, that knows no anger, craves nothing, and holds the labours and savage tasks of Hercules better than the loves and the feasts and the down-pillow of Sardanapalus. What I show you, you can give yourself: the one path to a tranquil life lies surely open through virtue. You have no divine power, Fortune, if there is wisdom: it is we, we who make you a goddess and set you in heaven.

Satire XI If Atticus dines lavishly, he is called a man of taste; if Rutilus does, a madman. For what raises a louder laugh in the crowd than a poor Apicius? Every dinner-party, the baths, the lounging-places, every theatre, is full of Rutilus; for while his strong and youthful limbs are equal to the helmet, and while they burn with blood, he means— not, indeed, that the tribune forces him, but neither does he forbid it— to sign the trainer's terms and the words a gladiator swears. And you see many more whom their oft-tricked creditor is wont to wait for at the very entrance of the meat-market, men whose one reason for living lies in their palate. The most wretched of them dines the most exquisitely, and the best, he who is soon to fall, his ruin already showing through. Meanwhile they hunt for delicacies through all the elements, with no price ever standing in their appetite's way; look closer, and the things that please them more are the ones that cost the more. So it is no hard thing to raise a sum that must be lost by pawning the plate, or by breaking a mother's likeness, and to season a gluttonous dish with four hundred sesterces; thus they come to the gladiator-school's hash. It matters, then, who prepares these same dishes: in Rutilus it is luxury, in Ventidius it takes a praiseworthy name, and draws its fame from his fortune. That man I shall justly despise, who knows how much higher Atlas towers than all the mountains in Libya, yet this same man is ignorant how far the iron-bound strongbox stands from the little money-bag. From heaven came down "Know thyself," to be fixed and pondered in a mindful heart, whether you seek a marriage, or wish to hold a seat in the sacred senate; for Thersites does not demand Achilles' breastplate, in which Ulysses made himself a laughing-stock. If you set about defending a doubtful case at great risk, take counsel of yourself, tell yourself who you are, a forceful orator, or a Curtius and a windbag Matho. A man must know his own measure and keep it in view in matters great and small alike, even when a fish is to be bought: do not crave a mullet when there is only a gudgeon in your purse. For what end awaits you, your purse failing and your gullet swelling, with a father's money and your whole estate sunk into a belly that can hold the weight of usury and silver, of flocks and fields? From such masters last of all, after everything, departs the ring, and Pollio begs with a naked finger. It is not the early ashes nor the untimely funeral that luxury need fear, but old age, more to be dreaded than death. These are mostly the steps: money is borrowed at Rome and spent before the lenders' eyes; then when a little something or other is left, and the moneylender grows pale, they who would change their soil run off to Baiae and the oyster-beds. For to flee the Forum is now no worse a thing than to move from the seething Subura to the Esquiline; the only grief, the only sorrow for those fleeing their country, is to have missed the games for a single year. Not a drop of blood stays in their cheek; few stay to mock at modesty as it flees the city. You shall find out today, Persicus, whether all these fine words I fail to make good by my life, my conduct, my deeds— whether, praising lentils, I am a secret glutton, and order porridge aloud before others, but cakes in the boy's ear. For since you are my promised guest, you will find an Evander in me; you will come as a Tirynthian, or as a guest lesser than he, yet himself too touching heaven by blood, the one sent to the stars by water, the other by fire. Now hear my courses, furnished by no markets. From my Tiburtine farm will come a fattest kid, the tenderest of the whole flock, that knows no grass and has never dared to nibble the twigs of the low willow, that has more milk in him than blood; and mountain asparagus, gathered by the bailiff's wife when her spindle was laid by; besides, great eggs still warm in their twisted hay are here, along with the very hens that laid them; and grapes kept for part of the year, just as they hung on the vines, Signian and Syrian pears, and from the same baskets apples that rival the Picene and smell of fresh fragrance, nor are they to be feared by you, since the cold has dried away their autumn and laid to rest the dangers of unripe juice. This was once a luxurious dinner for our senate; Curius, with his own hands, would set on his small hearth the few greens he had picked in his little garden—greens which now a filthy ditch-digger disdains in his heavy chains, who remembers the taste of a sow's paunch from the hot cook-shop. It was once the custom, on feast-days, to keep the back of a dried pig hanging on an open rack, and to set out the birthday bacon to one's kinsmen, adding fresh meat, if some sacrifice had supplied it. Some kinsman who had borne the title of three times consul, the commands of camps, the honour of dictator, would come to such a feast earlier than was his wont, bringing back his mattock from the hill he had subdued. But when men trembled before the Fabii and stern Cato, before the Scauri and Fabricius, when even his own colleague feared the harsh and rigid censor's ways, no one counted it among his cares and serious concerns what kind of turtle swam in the swell of Ocean, to make a bright and noble headboard for the sons of Troy; but the bronze front of their small couches, with bare sides, showed the cheap head of an ass with a garland on it, about which the children of the playful countryside would frolic: such food, then, as the house and furniture. At that time, rough and unable to admire Greek arts, the soldier, finding among his share of plunder from sacked cities the cups of great craftsmen, would break them up, so that his horse might delight in trappings, and his chased helmet might show to the enemy doomed to die the image of the She-wolf of Rome, tamed by the empire's destiny, of the twin sons of Quirinus under the crag, and the naked figure of the god, advancing with shield and spear, poised in air. They set their spelt-porridge, then, in a Tuscan dish: what silver there was shone on their arms alone. Everything then was such that you would envy it, if you were of an envious bent. The majesty of the temples too was nearer at hand, and a voice heard near midnight, through the middle of the city, when the Gauls were coming from the shore of Ocean and the gods were doing the office of prophet, warned us of these things. Such was the care that he was wont to give to the affairs of Latium, that Jupiter of clay, undefiled by any gold. Those times saw tables born at home, made from our own tree; for this use the wood would stand ready, if perchance the East wind had brought down an aged walnut. But now the rich have no pleasure in dining, no taste in the turbot, in the venison; the perfumes and the roses seem to stink, unless broad table-tops are upheld by great ivory, by a tall leopard with wide-gaping jaws, made from those tusks that the gate of Syene sends, and the swift Moors, and the Indian darker than the Moor, and those that the beast has shed in the Nabataean glade, now grown too large and heavy for its head. From this rises the appetite, from this comes strength to the stomach; for to them a silver foot is what an iron ring is on the finger. So I shun the haughty guest who compares me to himself and despises my scanty means—so utterly is there no ounce of ivory ours, no dice, no counters, of that material; nay, the very handles of my knives are bone. Yet by these no dish is ever made rancid, nor for that reason is the fowl the worse when carved. But there will be no carver to whom must yield every school, no pupil of the master Trypherus, in whose house the sow's udder along with hare and boar and antelope and Scythian fowl and the huge flamingo and the Gaetulian oryx—the most lavish fare—is hacked with a blunt knife, and the whole elmwood feast resounds through the Subura. Neither how to filch a slice of roe-deer nor the flank of an African bird does my boy know, a raw recruit and unskilled at every time, schooled only in the pilfering of a scrap of meat. Common cups, bought for a few coppers, a plain boy will hand you, kept warm against the cold. He is no Phrygian or Lycian, none sought from a slave-dealer at a great price: when you ask, ask in Latin. The dress of all is the same: their hair cropped and straight, and combed today only because of the dinner. This one is the son of a hardy shepherd, that of a herdsman; he sighs for the mother he has not seen this long while, and sadly longs for his cottage and the kids he knew, a boy of honest face and honest modesty, such as should be those whom the glowing purple clothes— not one who carries to the baths, in a raucous voice, a boy's parts, nor offers his armpits already to be plucked, nor, frightened, hides his thick loins behind a held-up flask. This boy will give you wine bottled on those very hills from which he came, beneath whose peak he played as a child. Perhaps you expect that Spanish girls will begin to itch with their tuneful chorus, and, applauded for their skill, sink to the ground with quivering buttocks— this is what wedded women watch, their husbands reclining beside them, a thing one would blush to tell in their very presence— the goad of flagging desire and the sharp nettles of the rich; yet that pleasure is keener in the other sex: the man is the more aroused, and soon his pent-up flood, stirred by ears and eyes, breaks loose. My humble house has no room for such trifles. Let him hear the clatter of the castanets with their words, the things from which a slave standing naked in his stinking brothel-cell abstains—let him enjoy the obscene voices and every art of lust, who slicks his Spartan marble floor with spat-out wine; for there we grant fortune's pardon: the dice are base, base too is adultery, in men of middling rank—but when those great ones do all these same things, they are called witty and refined. Our dinner today will give other sports: the author of the Iliad shall be sung, and the verses of lofty-sounding Maro that make the palm doubtful between them. What does it matter in what voice such verses are read? But now lay aside your business, give over your cares, and grant yourself a welcome rest, since you may be idle the whole day through. No mention of usury; nor, if your wife is wont to go out at first light and return at night, let her vex you into bile, bringing back her flimsy gauze with suspicious creases, her hair disordered, her face and ear hot. At once, before my threshold, strip off whatever pains you: lay aside your household and your slaves, and whatever of theirs gets broken or lost; above all, lay aside your thankless friends. Meanwhile the spectacles of the Megalesian napkin keep the Idaean rite, and like a triumph the praetor sits, the booty of the horses; and—if I may say it without offence to the boundless, excessive crowd— today the whole of Rome is held by the circus, and a roar strikes my ear, by which I gather that the green has won. For if it should fail, you would see this city sad and stunned, as when the consuls were beaten in the dust of Cannae. Let the young men watch—those whom the shouting, the bold betting, and sitting beside a smart girl become. But let our shrivelled skin drink in the spring sun and escape the toga; you may even now go safely to the baths, with unblushing brow, though a solid hour remains till noon. You could not do this five days running, for of such a life too there is great weariness: it is rarer use that gives pleasures their savour.

Satire XII On this my birthday, Corvinus, dearer to me is this day on which the festive turf awaits the beasts promised to the gods. We lead a snow-white lamb for the Queen; a fleece to match will be given to her who fights with the Moorish Gorgon; but afar the wanton victim shakes the long-stretched rope, the bull kept for Tarpeian Jove, and tosses his brow— a fierce calf, indeed, ripe for the temple and the altar, to be sprinkled with wine, ashamed now to draw his mother's teats, who batters the oaks with his new-sprung horn. Were my estate at home ample and matched to my feeling, a bull fatter than Hispulla would be dragged along, one sluggish with his very bulk, fed in no neighbouring pasture, his blood showing the rich meadows of Clitumnus, his neck to be struck by a strapping attendant, for the return of my friend, still trembling and shaken by what he lately suffered, and marvelling that he is safe. For besides the perils of the sea and the lightning-stroke he escaped: thick darkness hid the sky in a single cloud, and a sudden fire struck the yards, while each man believed himself the one struck, and soon, aghast, thought no shipwreck could compare to the burning sails. Everything happens just so, as grievously, whenever a poetic storm arises. Now hear another kind of danger, and pity him again—though all the rest is of the same lot, a dreadful part indeed, yet known to many, and to which very many votive tablets bear witness in the shrines; for who does not know that painters are fed by Isis? A like fortune befell our Catullus too. When the hold was half-full of waves, and now, with the waves overturning each side of the ship in turn, when no skill of the grey-haired helmsman could bring help to the wavering mast, he began to bargain with the winds by jettison, imitating the beaver, who makes himself a eunuch, longing to escape at the cost of a testicle: so well he understands what his drugged groin is worth. "Throw out all that is mine," Catullus kept saying, eager to cast overboard even his fairest things—a robe of purple, fit even for the soft Maecenases, and others whose very wool the nature of a noble breed had dyed; but a fine spring too, with hidden powers, and the air of Baetica had helped. He did not hesitate to throw out the silver—dishes made by Parthenius, a mixing-bowl that would hold an urn, worthy of thirsty Pholus or of the wife of Fuscus— add too the baskets, and a thousand pieces of plate, much of it chased, from which the cunning buyer of Olynthus had drunk. But who else now, in what part of the world, who dares prefer his life to silver, his safety to his goods? The greatest part of his useful gear was thrown out, but not even these losses lightened the ship; then, the danger pressing on, he came to this—to bring an axe down on the mast; and so he frees himself, though hard pressed: the last resort of peril, when we bring relief that makes the ship the smaller. Go now and trust your life to the winds, relying on hewn timber, parted from death by four fingers, or by seven, if the plank is at its widest; soon, along with your nets, your bread, and your paunchy flagon, take care to bring the axes needed in a storm. But after the sea lay flat, after the time grew favourable to the voyager, and his fate stronger than the East wind and the deep, after the Parcae spun better threads with kindly hand, the spinners glad with their white yarn, and a wind came—moderate, not much stronger than a gentle breeze—the ship ran on, pitiable in its poor skill, with garments spread for sails, and the prow with the one sail that had survived. Now, as the south winds fail, hope of life returns with the sun; then the lofty peak dear to Iulus, and preferred as a home before stepmotherly Lavinium, comes into view—the peak to which a white sow gave its name, a marvel to the glad Phrygians, famous for its thirty teats, never seen before. At last he enters the breakwaters set within the enclosed waters, the Tyrrhenian lighthouse, and the arms stretched out again, which run to meet in mid-sea and leave Italy far behind; you would not so admire the harbours that nature has given. But with his crippled stern the captain makes for the inner basin, the pool of a safe bay that a Baian skiff can cross; there, with shaven crowns, the sailors love to chatter and tell of the perils they have passed. Go, then, boys, with reverent tongues and minds, and lay garlands on the shrines and meal upon the knives, and adorn the soft hearths and the green sod. I will follow at once, and when the rite is duly performed, the better part, I will return home, where slender images, gleaming with brittle wax, receive their small garlands. Here I will appease my own Jove, and to the paternal Lares give incense, and scatter all the colours of the violet. Everything shines: the doorway has raised its long boughs, and keeps the feast with lamps from the early morning. And let these things not be suspect to you, Corvinus: Catullus, for whose return I set up so many altars, has three small heirs. One would like to see who would spend even a sick and dying hen on a friend so barren. But this is too great an outlay: no quail will ever fall for a man with sons. If wealthy Gallitta and childless Pacius begin to feel a fever's heat, the whole portico is decked with vows nailed up in lawful form, and men appear who promise a hecatomb, since here there are no elephants, none for sale, nor under our sky, in Latium or anywhere, is such a beast bred, but, fetched from the swarthy nation, it feeds in the woods of the Rutuli and Turnus' land, a herd of Caesar's, ready to serve no private man—since the ancestors of these beasts were wont to obey Tyrian Hannibal and our generals and the Molossian king, and to bear cohorts on their backs, a part of the war, and a tower advancing into battle. So there will be no delay through Novius, no delay through Hister Pacuvius, but that ivory beast shall be led to the altars and fall before Gallitta's Lares, the only victim worthy of such great gods and of their legacy-hunters. For one of them, if you let him, will vow to slaughter the largest and fairest bodies from his troop of slaves, or set the fillets on his boys and on the brows of his slave-girls; and if he has at home some marriageable Iphigenia, he will give her to the altar, even though he does not hope for the stag's secret substitution of tragedy. I praise my countryman, nor do I match a thousand ships against a will; for if the sick man escapes the goddess of death, he will cancel the tablets, shut up in the snare of the net, after a service surely to be marvelled at, and perhaps will leave everything in a few words to Pacuvius alone; that man will strut proudly, his rivals beaten. So you see what a grand reward the slaughter at Mycenae earns. Long live Pacuvius, I pray—as long as Nestor entire; let him possess as much as Nero plundered, let him pile up gold to match the mountains, and love no one, and be loved by none.