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As often as the infant-parasite comes to his table.
Doubtful funguses are put to mean friends,

A mushroom to the lord; but such as Claudius ate

Before that of his wife, after which he ate nothing more.

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Virro will order to himself, and the rest of the Virros, those

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Apples to be given, with the odour alone of which you may be fed,

Such as the perpetual autumn of the Phæacians had ;

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Which you might believe to be stolen from the African sisters. You will enjoy the scab of an apple, which in a trench he gnaws Who is covered with a shield and helmet, and, fearing the whip, Learns from the rough Capella to throw a dart.

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in the Ionian sea, where there was feigned to be a perpetual autumn, abounding with the choicest fruits.

152. The African sisters.] Meaning the Hesperides, Egle, Heretusa, Hespertusa, the three daughters of Hesperus, brother of Atlas, king of Mauritania, who are feigned to have had orchards in Africa, which produced golden fruit, kept by a watchful dragon, which Hercules slew, and obtained the prize.

153. The scab of an apple.] While Virro and his rich guests have before them fruits of the most fragrant and beautiful kinds, you, Trebius, and such as you, will be to enjoy scabby, specky, rotten apples, and such other fruit as a poor half-starved soldier in a fortress, who is glad of any thing he can get, is forced to take up with.

154. Fearing the whip.] Being under severe discipline.

155. Learns to throw, &c.] Is training for arms, and learning to throw the javelin.

From the rough Capella.] This was probably the name of some centurion, or other officer, who, like our adjutant or serjeant, taught the young recruits their exercise, and stood over them with a twig or young shoot of a vine, (which flagellum sometimes signifies, see AINSW.) and with which they corrected them if they did amiss. See sat. viii. 1. 247, 8, and note.

The epithet hirsuto, here, may intimate the appearance of this centurion, either from his dress, or from his person. As to the first, we may observe, that the soldiers wore a sort of hair-cloth, or rough garment, made of goat's hair.-VIRGIL, G. iii. 311-13, says, that the shepherds shaved the beards of the he-goats for the service of the camps, and for coverings of mariners:

Nec minus interea barbas, incanaque menta
Cyniphii tondent hirci, setasque comantes,

Usum in castrorum, et miseris velamina nautis.

Usum in castrorum-may mean, here, coverings for the tents, but also (as Ruæus observes) hair cloths for the soldiers garments, as well as for those of mariners.

The roughness of his person must appear from the hairiness of its appearance-from the beard which he wore, from the neglected hair

Forsitan impense Virronem parcere credas:
Hoc agit, ut doleas: nam quæ comoedia-mimus
Quis melior plorante gulâ? ergo omnia fiunt,
Si nescis, ut per lachrymas effundere bilem
Cogaris, pressoque diu stridere molari.

Tu tibi liber homo, et regis conviva videris;
Captum te nidore suæ putat ille culina:

Nec male conjectat: quis enim tam nudus, ut illum
Bis ferat, Hetruscum puero si contigit aurum,

Vel nodus tantum, et signum de paupere loro?

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165

Spes bene cœnandi vos decipit: ecce dabit jam
Semesum leporem, atque aliquid de clunibus apri:
Ad nos jam veniet minor altilis: inde parato,

of his head, and, in short, from the general hairiness of his whole body. See sat. ii. l. 11, 12. and sat. xiv. l. 194, 5.

Sed caput intactum buxo, naresque pilosas
Annotet, et grandes miretur Lælius alas.

This passage of Juvenal has been the occasion of various conjectures among commentators, which the reader may find in Holyday's note, who himself seems to have adopted the least probable. The reading hirsuto Capella as the name and description of some person, appears to me, as it does to Marshal and others, the most simple and

natural.

156. Perhaps you may think.] The poet, with much archness, and, at the same time, with due severity, concludes this Satire by setting the behaviour of the patron, as well as that of the parasite, in its true light, and, from thence, endeavours to shame Trebius qut of his mean submission to the indignities which he has to expect, if he pursues his plan of attending the tables of the great. A useful lesson is to be drawn from hence by all who affect an intimacy with their superiors, and who, rather than not have the reputation of it, submit to the most insolent treatment; not seeing that every affront which they are forced to endure is only an earnest of still greater.

Virro spares, &c.] Perhaps you will set all this down to a principle of parsimony in the great man, and that, to save expense, Virro lets you fare so ill-but you are mistaken.

157. He does this, &c.] All this is done, (ergo omnia fiunt, 1. 158.) first to vex you, and then to laugh at you.

For what comedy, &c.] There can be no higher comedy, or any buffoon or jester (mimus) more laughable, than a disappointed glutton (gula, lit. throat) bemoaning himself (plorante) with tears of anger and resentiment at such ill fare, and gnashing and grating his teeth together, having nothing to put between them to keep them asunder.-This, if you know it not already, I now tell you, to be the motive of Virro's treatment of you, when he sends for you to sup with him.

Perhaps you may think Virro spares expense:

He does this that you may grieve: for what comedy—what
Mimic is better, than deploring gluttony? therefore all is done,
If you know not, that by tears to pour forth vexation

You may be compell'd, and long to creek with a press'd grinder. 160
You seem to yourself a free man, and a guest of the great man;
He thinks you are taken with the smell of his kitchen,
Nor does he guess badly; for who so naked, that would
Bear him twice if the Etruscan gold befel him when a boy,
Or the nodus only, and the mark from the poor strap?
The hope of supping well deceives you: Lo-now he will give
"An half-eaten hare, or something from the buttocks of a boar:
"To us will now come the lesser fat fowl"-then with prepared,

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161. A free man, &c.] A gentleman at large-as we say-and think that you are a fit guest for a rich man's table, and that, as such, Virro invites you.

162. He thinks, &c.] He knows you well enough, to suppose that you have no other view in coming but to gormandize, and that therefore the scent of his kitchen alone is what brings you to his house in this he does not guess amiss, for this is certainly the case. Nidor signifies the savour of any thing roasted or burnt.

163. For who so naked, &c.] So destitute of all things, as after once being so used, would submit to it a second time? This plainly indicates your mean and sordid motives for coming.

164. If the Etruscan gold, &c.] The golden boss, or bulla, brought in among the Romans by the Etrurians, was permitted, at first, only to the children of nobles: afterwards to all free-born. It was an ornament, made in the shape of an heart, and worn before the breast, to prompt them to the study of wisdom-they left it off at the age of sixteen. See sat. xiii. 1. 33.

165. The nodus only.] A bulla or boss of leather, a sign or note of freemen, worn by the poorer sort of children, and suspended at the breast by a leathern thong.

The meaning of 1. 164, 5. seems to be, that no man, one should think, could bear such treatment a second time, whatever situation of life he himself might be in, whether of a noble, or of a freedman's family.

166. The hope of supping well deceives.] Your love of gluttony gets the better of your reflection, and deceives you into a notion, that however ill-treated you may have been before, this will not happen again.

——“Lo—now he will give, &c.] This is supposed to be their reasoning upon the matter.

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167. An half-eaten hare.] "Now," say they, "we shall have set before us what Virro leaves of a hare-or part of the haunches "of a wild boar."

168. The lesser fat fowl.] A fat hen or pullet-called minor al

Intactoque omnes, et stricto pane tacetis.
Ille sapit, qui te sic utitur: omnia ferre
Si potes, et debes; pulsandum vertice raso
Præbebis quandoque caput, nec dura timebis
Flagra pati, his epulis, et tali dignus amico.

170.

tilis, as distinguishing these smaller dainties from the larger, such as. geese, &c.

168. Then with prepared, &c.] Then, with bread ready before you-which remains untouched, as you reserve it to eat with the expected dainties, and ready cut asunder into slices, or, as some, ready drawn out-metaph. from the drawing a sword to be ready against an attack.

169. Ye are silent.] You wait in patient expectation of the good things which you imagine are coming to you.

170. He is wise, &c.] Mean while, Virro does wisely; he treats

And untouched, and cut bread, ye are silent.

He is wise who uses you thus: all things, if you can,

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You also ought to bear: with a shaven crown you will some time
Offer your head to be beat, nor will you fear hard
Lashes to endure, worthy these feasts, and such a friend.

you very rightly, by sending none of his dainties to your part of the table: for if you can bear such usage repeatedly, you certainly deserve to bear it.

171. With a shaven crown, &c.] q. d. You will soon be more abject still; like slaves, whose heads are shaven, in token of their servile condition, you will submit to a broken head; you'll not mind an hearty flogging.

173. Worthy these feasts, &c.] Thus you will prove yourself deserving of such scurvy fare as you are insulted with at Virro's table, and of just such a patron as Virro to give it you.

END OF THE FIFTH SATIRE.

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