Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookhimself, and worry you to put him to this test. For when a wicked cause is backed by impudence, it is believed by many to be the confidence[864] of innocence. He acts as good a farce as the runaway slave, the buffoon in Catullus'[865] Vision! You, poor wretch, cry out so as to exceed Stentor,[866] or, rather, as loudly as Gradivus[867] in Homer: "Hearest thou[868] this, great Jove, and openest not thy lips, when thou oughtest surely to give vent to some word, even though formed of marble or of brass? Or, why then do we place on thy glowing altar the pious[869] frankincense from the wrapper undone, and the liver of a calf cut up, and the white caul of a hog?[870] As far as I see, there is no difference to be made between your image and the statue of Vagellius!"[871] Now listen to what consolation on the other hand he can offer, who has neither studied the Cynics, nor the doctrines of the Stoics, that differ from the Cynics only by a tunic,[872] and pays no veneration to Epicurus,[873] that delighted in the plants of his diminutive garden. Let patients whose cases are desperate be tended by more skillful physicians; you may trust _your_ vein even to Philippus' apprentice. If you can show me no act so heinous in the whole wide world, then, I hold my tongue; nor forbid you to beat your breast with your fists, nor thump your face with open palm. For, since you really _have_ sustained loss, your doors must be closed; and money is bewailed with louder lamentations from the household, and with greater tumult,[874] than deaths. No one, in such a case, counterfeits sorrow; or is content with merely stripping[875] down the top of his garment, and vexing his eyes for forced rheum.[876] The loss of money is deplored with genuine tears. But if you see all the courts filled with similar complaints, if, after the deeds have been read ten times over, and each time in a different quarter,[877] though their own handwriting,[878] and their principal signet-ring,[879] that is kept so carefully in its ivory casket, convicts them, they call the signature a forgery and the deed not valid; do you think that you, my fine fellow, are to be placed without the common pale? What makes _you_ the chick of a white hen, while we are a worthless brood, hatched from unlucky eggs? What you suffer is a trifle; a thing to be endured with moderate choler, if you but turn your eyes to crimes of blacker dye. Compare with it the hired assassin, fires that originate from the sulphur of incendiaries,[880] when your _outer_ gate is the first part that catches fire. Compare those who carry off the ancient temple's massive cups,[881] incrusted with venerable rust--the gifts of nations; or, crowns[882] deposited there by some king of ancient days. If these are not to be had, there comes some sacrilegious wretch that strikes at meaner prey; who will scrape the thigh of Hercules incased in gold, and Neptune's face itself, and strip off from Castor his leaf-gold. Will he, forsooth, hesitate, that is wont to melt down whole the Thunderer[883] himself? Compare, too, the compounders and venders of poisons;[884] or him that ought to be launched into the sea in an ox's hide,[885] with whom the ape,[886] herself innocent, is shut up, through her unlucky stars. How small a portion is this of the crimes which Gallicus,[887] the city's guardian, listens to from break of day to the setting of the sun! Would you study the morals of the human race, one house is quite enough. Spend but a few days there, and when you come out thence, call yourself, if you dare, a miserable man! Who is astonished at a goitred throat[888] on the Alps? or who, in Meroë,[889] at the mother's breast bigger than her chubby infant? Who is amazed at the German's[890] fierce gray eyes, or his flaxen hair with moistened ringlets twisted into horns? Simply because, in these cases, one and all are alike by nature. The pigmy[891] warrior in his puny panoply charges the swooping birds of Thrace, and the cloud that resounds with the clang of cranes. Soon, no match for his foe, he is snatched away by the curved talons, and borne off through the sky by the fierce crane. If you were to see this in our country, you would be convulsed with laughter: but there, though battles of this kind are sights of every day, no one even smiles, where the whole regiment is not more than a foot high. "And is there, then, to be no punishment at all for this perjured wretch and his atrocious villainy?" Well, suppose him hurried away at once, loaded with double irons, and put to death in any way our wrath dictates (and what could revenge wish for more?) still your loss remains the same, your deposit will not be refunded! "But the least drop of blood from his mangled body will give me a consolation that might well be envied. Revenge is a blessing, sweeter than life itself!" Yes! so fools think, whose breasts you may see burning with anger for trivial causes, sometimes for none at all. How small soever the occasion be, it is matter enough for their wrath. Chrysippus[892] will not hold the same language, nor the gentle spirit of Thales, or that old man that lived by sweet Hymettus'[893] hill, who, even amid those cruel bonds, would not have given his accuser one drop of the hemlock[894] he received at his hands! Philosophy, blessed[895] power! strips us by degrees of full many a vice and every error! She is the first to teach us what is right. Since revenge is ever the pleasure of a paltry spirit, a weak and abject mind! Draw this conclusion _at once_ from the fact, that no one delights in revenge more than a woman! Yet, why should you deem those to have escaped scot-free whom their mind,[896] laden with a sense of guilt, keeps in constant terror, and lashes with a viewless thong! Conscience, as their tormentor, brandishing a scourge unseen by human eyes! Nay! awful indeed is their punishment, and far more terrible even than those which the sanguinary Cæditius[897] invents, or Rhadamanthus! in bearing night and day in one's own breast a witness against one's self. The Pythian priestess gave answer to a certain Spartan,[898] that in time to come he should not go unpunished, because he hesitated as to retaining a deposit, and supporting his villainy by an oath. For he inquired what was the opinion of the deity, and whether Apollo counseled him to the act. He did restore it therefore; but through fear,[899] not from principle. And yet he proved that every word that issued from the shrine was worthy of the temple, and but too true: being exterminated together with all his progeny and house, and, though derived from a wide-spreading clan, with all his kin! Such is the penalty which the mere wish to sin incurs. For he that meditates within his breast a crime that finds not even vent in words,[900] has all the guilt of the act! What then if he has achieved his purpose? A respiteless anxiety is his: that ceases not, even at his hours of meals: while his jaws are parched as though with |