SATIRE XIII.

TO CALVINUS, ON THE CRIME OF VIOLATED FAITH.

MAN, wretched man, whene'er he stoops to sin,
Feels, with the act, a strong remorse within;
'Tis the first vengeance: Conscience tries the cause,
And vindicates the violated laws;

Though the bribed Prætor at their sentence spurn,
And falsify the verdict of the Urn. (4)

What says the world, not always, friend, unjust,
Of this late injury, this breach of trust?
That thy estates so small a loss can bear,
And that the evil, now no longer rare,
Is one of that inevitable set,

Which man is born to suffer and forget.
Then moderate thy grief; 'tis mean to show
An anguish disproportion'd to the blow.
But thou, so new to crosses, as to feel
The slightest portion of the slightest ill,
Art fired with rage, because a friend forswears
The sacred pledge intrusted to his cares !-
What, thou, Calvinus, bear so weak a mind,
Thou, who hast left full threescore years behind!

Heavens, have they taught thee nothing! nothing, friend!
And art thou grown gray-headed to no end!—
Wisdom, I know, contains a powerful charm,

To vanquish fortune, or, at least, disarm:

VER. 4. This passage refers to the judicial forms of the Romans, In criminal causes, the Prætor Urbanus, who sat as chief judge, put into an urn the names of his assessors, (a kind of jurymen, who, to the amount of some hundreds, were annually chosen for this purpose,) from which he drew out the number prescribed by law, usually about fifty, who sat by him at the trial. When the pleadings were over, they retired, and deliberated on what had passed. On their return, they had each three waxen tablets put into their hands, one of which was marked with the letter C

H

us D
Blest they who walk by her unerring rule!was
And blest are those, who, tutor'd in the school
Of life, have learn'd with patience to submit,
Nor shake the ponderous yoke they cannot quit.
What day so sacred which no guilt profanes,
No secret fraud, no open rapine, stains?
What hour, in which no dark assassins prowl,
Nor point the sword for hire, nor drug the bowl?
And why? THE GOOD ARE FEW! "the valued file "
Scarce pass the Gates of Thebes, the Mouths of Ni
For Now an age is come, that teems with crimes,
Beyond all precedent of former times;

An age so bad, that Nature cannot frame a
A metal base enough to give it name!
Yet you indignant at a paltry cheat,

Call heaven and earth to witness the deceit,
With cries as deafening as the shout that breaks
From the bribed audience, when Fæsidius speaks.
Dotard in nonage! are you to be told
What loves, what graces, deck another's gold?
Are you to learn what peals of mirth resound,
At your simplicity from all around?
When you step forth, and, with a serious air,
Bid them abstain from perjury, and beware
To tempt the altars-for A GOD IS THERE!

Idle old man! there was, indeed, a time,
When the rude natives of this happy climed
Cherish'd such dreams: 'twas ere the king of heav
To change his sceptre for a sithe was driven;
Ere Juno yet the sweets of love had tried,
Or Jove advanced beyond the caves of Ide:

for condemno, guilty; another with the letter A. for absolvo, not and the third with the letters N. L. for non liquet, I am doubtful of these tablets each person dropt privately into the urn, which w brought to the Prætor, who took them out, and pronounced s according to the decision of the majority. In this last transac which Juvenal alludes, a perverse or corrupt judge had an opport juggling, which he did not always let slip.

"Twas when no gods indulged in sumptuous feasts,
No Ganymede, no Hebe served the guests;
No Vulcan, with his sooty labours foul,

Limp'd round, officious, with the nectar'd bowl;
But each in private dined; 'twas when the throng
Of godlings, now beyond the scope of song, (46)
The courts of heaven, in spacious ease, possest,
And with a lighter load poor Atlas prest!
Ere Neptune's lot the watery world obtain'd;
Ere Dis and his Sicilian consort reign'd;
Ere Tityus and his ravening bird were known,
Ixion's wheel, or Sisyphus's stone:

While yet the shades confess'd no tyrant's power,
And all below was one Elysian bower!

Vice was a phoenix in that blissful time,
Believed, but never seen: and 'twas a crime,
Worthy of death, such awe did years engage,
If manhood rose not up to reverend age,
And youth to manhood, though a larger hoard
Of hips and acorns graced the stripling's board.
Then, then, was age so venerable thought,
That every day increase of honour brought;
And children, in the springing down, revered
The sacred promise of a hoary beard.
Now, if a friend, miraculously just,

Restore the ancient pledge, with all its rust,
"Tis deem'd a portent, worthy to appear
Among the wonders of the Tuscan year; (62)
A prodigy of faith, which threats the state,
And a ewe lamb alone can expiate !—

46. Juvenal sneers at the monstrous polytheism of the Romans. His Satire is directly levelled at the frequent apotheoses of the Cæsars, in which the base and abject herd of Rome contentedly acquiesced.

62. These books, in which, amongst other things, all the marvellous events of the year were treasured up, seem to have been something like our almanacks. They were probably called Tuscan, because the old Romans, a race equally ignorant and credulous, first learnt from them the juggling arts of soothsaying and divination.

68. This is said by Tacitus to have really happened in the re Claudius. (Ann. xii. 64.) The soothsayers always considered t portentous of calamity; and it is curious to see with what grave ments the elder Pliny refutes their errors: Apes ostenta faciunt, p et publica: uvá dependente in domibus templisve, sæpe expiatár eventibus. Sedêre in ore infantis Platonis, tunc etiam suavitatem prædulcis eloquii portendentes.

71. The sum of which Calvinus had been defrauded, and about he makes such a clamour, was only ten thousand sesterces; about pounds sterling!

There are, who think that chance is all in all,
That no First Cause directs the eternal ball:
But that brute Nature, in her blind career,
Varies the seasons, and brings round the year:
These rush to every shrine with equal ease,
And, owning none, swear by what Power you please.
Others believe, and but believe, a god,

And think that punishment MAY follow fraud;
Yet they forswear, and, reasoning on the deed,
Thus reconcile their actions to their creed:
"Let Isis storm, if to revenge inclined,

And with her angry sistrum strike me blind, (93)
So, with my eyes, she ravish not my ore,
But let me keep the pledge which I forswore.
Are putrid sores, catarrhs that seldom kill,
And crippled limbs, forsooth, so great an ill!

Ladas, if not stark mad, would change, no doubt, (97) His flying feet for riches and the gout;

For what do they procure him? mere renown,

And the starved honour of an olive crown.

But grant the wrath of heaven be great; 'tis slow,
And days, and months, and years, precede the blow.
If then, to punish ALL, the gods decree,

When, in their vengeance, will they come to me?
But I, perhaps, their anger may appease,
For they are wont to pardon faults like these:
At worst, there's hope; for every age, and clime,
See different fates attend the self-same crime;
Some made by villainy, and some undone,
And this ascend a scaffold, that a throne."
These sophistries, to fix awhile suffice

The mind yet shuddering at the thought of vice;

93. Blindness is a disease more frequent in Egypt than elsewhere: its infliction, therefore, is rightly assigned to an Egyptian deity.

97. Ladas was a celebrated runner of antiquity. Solinus thus speaks of him: Primam palmam velocitatis Ladas quidam adeptus est, qui ita supra cavum pulverem cursitavit, ut arenis pendentibus nulla indicia relinqueret vestigiorum.