Legarat Tadius, neu dicta repone paterna: "Fænoris accedat merces; hinc exime sumtus!" "Quid reliquum est?" Reliquum? nunc, nunc impensius reliqua: ast illi tremat omento popa venter? Vende animam lucro: mercare atque excute solers 70 80 NOTES. ́ SATIRE I. ARGUMENT. THIS satire seems, from several incidental circumstances, to have been produced subsequently to most of them, and was probably drawn up after the author had determined to collect and publish his works, as a kind of introduction. It must have been made public, at all events, after A.D. 100, the third year of Trajan, for in that year Marius Priscus (see v. 39, seq.) was condemned. He abruptly breaks silence with an impassioned complaint of the importunity of bad writers in reciting their productions, and with a resolution of retaliating upon them; and, after ridiculing their frivolous taste in the choice of their subjects, he declares his own intention of devoting himself to satire. After exposing the corruption of men, the profligacy of women, the luxury of courtiers, the baseness of informers and fortune-hunters, the treachery of guardians, and the peculation of officers of state, he censures the general passion for gambling, the avarice and gluttony of the rich, and the miserable poverty and subjection of their dependents; and after some bitter reflections on the danger of satirizing living villainy, he concludes with a resolution to attack it under the mask of departed names. (Evans.) 1-2. Semper ego auditor tantum? Supply ero. "Shall I ever be a hearer only ?" i. e., a listener merely to others while reciting their productions. An abrupt commencement, in true satiric tone. Ego being expressed is meant to be emphatic.-Nunquamne reponam. "Shall I never pay back?" i. e., in kind, by reading my own productions. A metaphor taken from the repaying of a debt.—Rauci Theseide Codri. "With the Theseis of the hoarse-bawling Codrus ;" i. e., of Codrus rendered actually hoarse by the frequent and loud reading of his wretched poem on the exploits of Theseus. It was too |