1

bed and smeared with greasy unguents, stretches out his heels cold and stark towards the door, and Quirites of yesterday's making, with caps of liberty 2 on their heads, carry him out to burial.

107 "Feel my pulse, poor fool, and put your hand upon my heart; no fever there! Touch my hands and my feet; they are not cold!" No, but if you catch a glimpse of coin, or if the pretty girl next door smiles sweetly on you: will your heart beat steadily then? Or suppose you have a dish of tough cabbage served up to you on a cold plate with bread made of the coarsest flour, would we not discover a sore place in your throat, if we looked into it, which must not be scraped by plebeian beet? You shiver when pale fear sets your bristles up; anon, if a torch is applied to you, your blood boils, your eyes flash with rage, and you say things, and do things, which the mad Orestes himself would swear were the signs of madness!

2 The body is carried to the grave by slaves manumitted by their late master's will. As soon as the slave was manumitted he put on a conical cap (pileus) as a sign of liberty.

355

SUMMARY OF SATIRE IV

PUFFED up by his ancestry, the youthful Alcibiades would fain guide the state. Knowledge of men and morals have come to him before his beard; trusting to his birth, his beauty, and his wheedling tongue, he advises the multitude on the most delicate points of right and policy. Yet he has none but the lowest conceptions of life; he has no higher ideals than an old woman who hawks vegetables in the street (1-22).

Not one of us has any knowledge of himself, though we are all ready to discourse about our neighbours. Ask a question about Vettidius, and you will learn all the particulars of his life; how miserly he is, how he starves alike himself and his slaves. And are you any better, though your vices lie in an opposite direction to his? (23-41).

Do not

Thus we lash and are lashed in turn. deceive yourself; however much the neighbourhood may praise you, care for no man's opinion but your Look carefully into your own heart, and acknowledge how poorly you are furnished (42-52).

own.

SATVRA IV

"REM populi tractas?" barbatum haec crede

magistrum

dicere, sorbitio tollit quem dira cicutae. quo fretus? dic hoc, magni pupille Pericli. scilicet ingenium et rerum prudentia velox ante pilos venit, dicenda tacendave calles. ergo ubi commota fervet plebecula bile, fert animus calidae fecisse silentia turbae maiestate manus. quid deinde loquere? "Quirites, hoc puta1 non iustum est; illud male, rectius illud.” scis etenim iustum gemina suspendere lance

5

10

ancipitis librae, rectum discernis ubi inter curva subit vel cum fallit pede regula varo,

et potis es nigrum vitio praefigere theta.

quin tu igitur, summa nequiquam pelle decorus, ante diem blando caudam iactare popello

15

desinis, Anticyras melior sorbere meracas?

1 puto P2A2L.

1 Socrates.

2 Pericles was guardian to Alcibiades, and introduced him to public life.

See Sat. iii. 52 and note.

4 The Greek letter e, the initial letter of 0ávaros, was used by judges in passing a death sentence.

SATIRE IV

"WHAT? Are you busying yourself with affairs of state?"

Imagine these to be the words of the bearded sage 1 who was carried off by that deadly draught of hemlock. Tell me, you ward of the mighty Pericles,2 what are your qualifications? Sagacity, no doubt, and a knowledge of affairs, have come to you quickly, before your beard; you know well what to say, and what to leave unsaid. So when the bile of the multitude has been stirred to heat, the spirit moves you to impose silence on the fevered mob by a lordly waving of the hand. What will you say after that? "Fellow citizens! This proposal is unjust; that other one is bad; this third plan is the best!" For, of course, you know exactly how to weigh justice in the twin scales of the wavering balance; you can detect the straight line when it comes in between curves,3 even when the straddling leg of the foot-rule would lead you wrong; and you know how to affix to guilt the black mark of death. But seeing that your sleek outside skin will avail you not, why not stop waving that tail of yours to the fawning multitude before your time, when it would be better for you to be swallowing whole islands-full of hellebore undiluted?

There were two towns called Anticyra, one in Phocis, one in Thessaly. Both produced hellebore, the sovereign remedy for madness.

3