Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History BookShall huge "Telephus" waste a whole day for me, or "Orestes," with the margin of the manuscript full to the very edge, and written on the back too,[36] and yet not finished, _and I not retort_? No one knows his own house better than I do the grove of Mars, and Vulcan's cave close to the Æolian rocks. The agency of the winds,[37] what ghosts Æacus is torturing, whence another bears off the gold[38] of the stolen fleece, what huge mountain-ashes Monychus hurls, _all this_ the plane-groves of Fronto,[39] and the statues shaken and the columns split by the eternal reciter, are for ever re-echoing. You may look for the same themes from the greatest poet and the least. And yet I too have shirked my hand away from the rod.[40] I too have given advice to Sylla, that he should enjoy a sound sleep by returning to a private station.[41] When at every turn you meet so many poetasters, it were a foolish clemency to spare paper that is sure to be wasted. Yet why I rather choose to trace my course over that plain through which the great foster-son of Aurunca[42] urged his steeds, I will, if you are at leisure, and with favorable ear listen to reason, tell you. When a soft eunuch[43] marries a wife; when Mævia[44] transfixes the Tuscan boar, and, with breasts exposed, grasps the hunting-spears; when one man singly vies in wealth with the whole body of patricians, under whose razor my beard, grown exuberant, sounded while I was in my prime;[45] when Crispinus, one of the dregs of the mob of the Nile, a born-slave of Canopus, (while his shoulder hitches up his Tyrian cloak,)[46] airs his summer ring from his sweating fingers, and can not support the weight of his heavier gem;--it is difficult not to write satire. For who can be so tolerant of this iniquitous city, who so case-hardened,[47] as to contain himself! When there comes up the bran-new litter of Matho[48] the lawyer, filled with himself; and after him, he that informed upon his powerful friend; and will soon plunder the nobility, already close-shorn, of the little that remains to them; one whom even Massa fears, whom Carus soothes with a bribe; or a Thymele suborned by some trembling Latinus.[49] When fellows supplant you, who earn their legacies by night-work, lifted up to heaven[50] by what is now the surest road to the highest advancement, the lust of some ancient harridan. Proculeius gets one poor twelfth; but Gillo has eleven twelfths. Each gets the share proportioned to his powers. Well! let him take the purchase-money of his blood, and be as pale as one that has trodden on a snake with naked heel, or a rhetorician about to declaim at the altar at Lyons.[51] Why need I tell with what indignation my parched liver boils, when here, the plunderer of his ward (reduced by him to the vilest gains) presses on the people with his crowds of menials, and there, he that was condemned by a powerless sentence. (For what cares he for infamy while he retains the plunder?) Marius,[52] though an exile, drinks from the eighth hour, and laughs at the angry gods, while thou, O Province, victorious in the suit, art in tears! Shall I not deem these themes worthy of the lamp of Venusium?[53] Shall I not lash these? Why rather sing tales of Hercules or Diomede, or the bellowing of the Labyrinth, and the sea struck by the boy Icarus, and the winged artificer?[54] When the pander inherits the wealth of the adulterer (since the wife has lost the right of receiving it),[55] taught to gaze at the ceiling, and snore over his cups with well-feigned sleep. When he considers himself privileged to expect the command of a cohort, who has squandered his money on his stables, and has run through all his ancestors' estate, while he flies with rapid wheel along the Flaminian road;[56] for while yet a youth, like Automedon, he held the reins, while the great man showed himself off to his "mistress-in-his-cloak."[57] Do you not long to fill your capacious tablets, even in the middle of the cross-ways, when there comes borne on the shoulders of six slaves, exposed to view on either side, with palanquin almost uncurtained, and aping the luxurious Mæcenas, the forger, who made himself a man of splendor and wealth by a few short lines, and a moistened seal?[58] Next comes the powerful matron, who when her husband thirsts, mingles the toad's-poison in the mellow wine of Cales which she is herself about to hand him, and with skill superior even to Locusta,[59] initiates her neighbors, too simple before, in the art of burying their husbands, livid from the poison, in despite of infamy and the public gaze.[60] Dare some deed to merit scanty Gyarus[61] and the jail, if you wish to be somebody. Honesty is commended, and starves. It is to their crimes they are indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their tables, their fine old plate, and the goat standing in high relief from the cup. Whom does the seducer of his own daughter-in-law, greedy for gold, suffer to sleep? Or the unnatural brides, or the adulterer not out of his teens?[62] If nature denies the power, indignation would give birth to verses, such as it could produce, like mine and Cluvienus'. From the time that Deucalion ascended the mountain in his boat, while the storm upheaved the sea,[63] and consulted the oracle, and the softening stones by degrees grew warm with life, and Pyrrha displayed to the males the virgins unrobed; all that men are engaged in, their wishes, fears, anger, pleasures, joys, and varied pursuits, form the hotch-potch of my book. And when was the crop of vices more abundant? When were the sails of avarice more widely spread? When had gambling its present spirits? For now men go to the hazard of the gaming-table not simply with their purses, but play with their whole chest[64] staked. What fierce battles will you see there, while the steward supplies the weapons for the contest! Is it then mere common madness to lose a hundred sestertia, and not leave enough for a tunic for your shivering slave![65] Which of our grandsires erected so many villas? Which of them ever dined by himself[66] on seven courses? In our days the diminished sportula is set outside the threshold, ready to be seized upon by the toga-clad crowd.[67] Yet he (that dispenses it), before giving, scans your features, and dreads lest you should come with counterfeit pretense and under a false name. When recognized you will receive your dole. He bids the crier summon the very Trojugenæ themselves. For even they assail the door with us. "Give the prætor his! Then to the tribune." But the freedman must first be served! "I was before him!" he says. "Why should I fear or hesitate to stand up for my turn, though I was born on the banks of Euphrates, which the soft windows[68] in my ears would attest, though I myself were to deny the fact. But my five shops bring me in four hundred sestertia. What does the Laticlave[69] bestow that's worth a wish, since Corvinus keeps sheep for hire in the Laurentine fields? I own more |