Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookhe barber of his fees. Such is his mistress' will: and, conspicuous from afar, and attracting the eyes of all, he enters the baths, and vies even with the god that guards our vines and gardens. Let him sleep with his mistress! But, Postumus, suffer not the youthful Bromius to enter the lists with him. If she takes delight in singing, the fibula of none of these fellows that sells his voice to the prætor holds out: the instruments are forever in her hands; the whole lyre sparkles with the jewels thickly set. She runs over the strings with the vibrating quill,[267] with which the soft Hedymeles performed: this she holds in her hands; with this she consoles herself, and lavishes kisses on the plectrum, dear for its owner's sake. One of the clan of the Lamiæ,[268] a lady of lofty rank, inquired with meal-cake and wine of Janus and Vesta, whether Pollio might venture to hope for the oaken crown at the Capitoline games,[269] and promise it to his lyre. What more could she do were her husband sick? What, if the physicians had despaired of her infant son? She stood before the altar, and thought no shame to veil her head for a harper: and went through in due form the words prescribed,[270] and grew pale as the lamb was opened. Tell me now, I pray, tell me, thou ancientest of gods, father Janus! dost thou return answer to these? Great must be indeed the leisure[271] of heaven! There can be no business there, as far as I see, stirring among you. One woman consults you about comic actors; another would fain commend a tragedian to your notice: the soothsayer will become varicose.[272] But let her rather be musical than fly through the whole city, with bold bearing; and encounter the assemblies of men, and in her husband's presence herself converse with generals in their scarlet cloaks,[273] with unabashed face and breasts exposed. She too knows all that is going on in the whole world--what the Seres[274] or Thracians are engaged in--the secrets of the step-mother and her son--what adulterer is in love, or is in great request. She will tell you who made the widow pregnant--in what month it was--in what language and manner each act of love takes place. She is the first[275] to see the comet that menaces the Armenian and Parthian king; and she intercepts[276] at the gates the reports and freshest news. Some she invents as well. That Niphates[277] has overwhelmed whole nations, and that the whole country is there laid under water by a great deluge; that cities are tottering, the earth sinking down--this she tells in every place of resort to every one she meets. And yet that vice is not more intolerable, than that, though earnestly entreated,[278] she will seize upon her poor neighbors, and have them cut in two with lashes. For if her sound slumbers are disturbed by the barking of a dog, "Bring the clubs[279] here at once!" she cries: and orders the owner first to be beaten with them, and then the dog. Terrible to encounter, most awful in visage, she enters the baths by night--by night she orders her bathing vessels and camp to be set in motion. She delights in perspiring with great tumult; when her arms have sunk down wearied with the heavy dumb-bells; and the sly anointer has omitted to rub down no part of her body. Her poor wretches of guests meanwhile are overcome with drowsiness and hunger. At last the lady comes; flushed, and thirsty enough for a whole flagon,[280] which is placed at her feet and filled from a huge pitcher: of which a second pint is drained before she tastes food, to make her appetite[281] quite ravenous. Then having rinsed out her stomach, the wine returns in a cascade on the floor--rivers gush over the marble pavement,[282] or the broad vessel reeks of Falernian--for thus, just as when a long snake has glided into a deep cask, she drinks and vomits. Therefore her husband turns sick; and with eyes closed smothers his rising bile. And yet that woman is more offensive still, who, as soon as she has taken her place at table, praises Virgil, and excuses the suicide of Dido: matches and compares poets together: in one scale weighs Maro in the balance, and Homer in the other. The grammarians yield; rhetoricians are confuted; the whole company is silenced; neither lawyer nor crier[283] can put in a word, nor even another woman. Such a torrent of words pours forth, you would say so many basins or bells were all being struck at once. Henceforth let no one trouble trumpets or brazen vessels; she will be able singly to relieve the moon when suffering[284] an eclipse. The philosopher sets a limit even to those things which are good in themselves. For she that desires to appear too learned and eloquent, ought to wear a tunic reaching only to the middle of the leg, to sacrifice a pig to Sylvanus,[285] and bathe for a quadrans. Let not the matron that shares your marriage-bed possess a set style of eloquence, or hurl in well-rounded sentence the enthymeme curtailed[286] of its premiss; nor be acquainted with all histories. But let there be some things in books which she does not understand. I hate her who is forever poring over and studying Palæmon's[287] treatise; who never violates the rules and principles of grammar; and skilled in antiquarian lore, quotes verses I never knew; and corrects the phrases of her friend as old-fashioned,[288] which men would never heed. A husband should have the privilege of committing a solecism. There is nothing a woman will not allow herself, nothing she holds disgraceful, when she has encircled her neck with emeralds, and inserted earrings of great size in her ears, stretched with their weight. Nothing is more unbearable than a rich woman! Meanwhile her face, shocking to look at, or ridiculous from the large poultice, is all swollen; or is redolent of rich Poppæan unguents,[289] with which the lips of her wretched husband are glued up. She will present herself to her adulterer with skin washed clean. When does she choose to appear beautiful at home? It is for the adulterers her perfumes are prepared. It is for these she purchases all that the slender Indians send us. At length she uncases her face and removes the first layer. She begins to be herself again; and bathes in that milk,[290] for which she carries in her train she-asses, even if sent an exile to Hyperborean climes. But that which is overlaid and fomented with so many and oft-changed cosmetics, and receives poultices of boiled and damp flour, shall we call it a face,[291] or a sore? It is worth while to find out exactly what their occupations and pursuits are through the livelong day. If her husband has gone to sleep with his back toward her, the housekeeper is half killed--the tire-women are stripped to be whipped--the Liburnian slave is accused of having come behind his time, and is forced to pay the penalty of another's sleep; one has rods broken[292] about him, another bleeds from the whips, a third from the cowhide. Some women pay a regular salary to their torturers |