alike my patrimony and my character by singing drunken songs, with my torch put out, before my mistress's dripping door?" "Bravo! my young sir. Show your good sense, and slay a lamb to the Protecting Deities!" "But do you think, Davus, that she will cry if I leave her?” "You're just playing the fool! And won't you be catching it, my boy, with her red slipper, just to teach you not to jib or to gnaw at the tight-drawn meshes! At one moment you're all bluster and indignation; next moment, if she call you back, you'll be saying, 'What am I to do? Am I not to go to her even now, when she sends for me, and actually implores me to return?' No, no, say I, not even now, if once you have got away from her entire and heart-whole." Here, here is the freedom we are looking for, not in the stick brandished by that nincompoop of a lictor. 4 176 And that white-robed 2 wheedler there, dragged open-mouthed by his thirst for office-is he his own master? Up with you before dawn, and deal out showers of vetches for the people to scramble for, that old men sunning themselves in their old age may tell of the splendour of our Floralia ! 3 How grand! But when Herod's birthday comes round, when the lamps wreathed with violets and ranged round the greasy window-sills have spat forth their thick clouds of smoke, when the floppy tunnies' tails are curled round the dishes of red ware, and the white perdasque lupinis (Sat. II. iii. 182). These games were attended by great license, especially among women (Ov. Fast. v. 183-378; Juv. vi. 249-250). Hence the mention of them here leads naturally on to the consideration of the superstitious observances mentioned in the next section (179–188). The Apparently the birthday of Herod the Great. Romans regarded the Jews as practising the basest of all superstitions. See notes on Juv. xiv. 96-106 and vi. 542-547. 387 cauda natat thynni, tumet alba fidelia vino, 185 190 1 Isis was supposed to punish offenders with blindness (Juv. xiii. 93). 2 The idea seems to be that of causing bodies to be possessed by evil spirits as were the Gadarene swine. jars are swollen out with wine, you silently twitch your lips, turning pale at the sabbath of the circumcised. Then, again, there are the black spectres and the perils of the broken egg; there are the huge priests of Ceres, and the one-eyed1 priestess with her rattle, who drive demons into you 2 that make your bodies swell if you do not swallow the prescribed morning dose of three heads of garlic.3 189 If you talk in this fashion among your varicose Centurions, the hulking Pulfennius straightway bursts into a huge guffaw, and bids a clipped hundred-penny piece for a lot of a hundred Greeks.4 3 Persius piles up a list of the best known superstitions. Line 186 refers especially to the rites of Cybele, with her eunuch priests (Galli), and of Isis. See Juv. ii. 111; vi. 512-13, and Hor. Epp. II. ii. 208-9. • Persius once more has his fling at the muscular soldier class. SUMMARY OF SATIRE VI HAS winter taken you back, Caesius Bassus, to your Sabine home, with that manly lyre of yours that strikes every note so fitly, whether grave or gay? I am wintering in my own Luna, regardless of the multitude, without care of flocks, without envy of inferiors richer than myself (1-17). Others may think differently; there are some who meanly stint themselves on feast-days; others waste their substance in good living. Use what you have, say I; thrash out your harvest, and commit a new crop to the soil (18-26). O, but a friend needs help, you say, lying shipwrecked on the Bruttian shore: then break off a bit of your estate for him, that he may not want. "What? am I to incur the wrath of my heir, and tempt him to neglect my funeral rites?" Bestius does well in condemning all foreign notions (27-40). Come, my heir, let me have a quiet talk with you. Have you heard that there's grand news from the front? that the Germans have had a tremendous smashing, and that there are to be rejoicings on a grand scale? Woe to you if you don't join in! I am going to treat the multitude: do you dare stay my hand? (41-52). Well, if you refuse, and if I can find no legitimate heir of my own; if I can find no relation, male or female, sprung from ancestors of mine up to the fourth generation, I will go to Bovillae and find one on the beggars' stand (52-60). Do you object to my spending on myself some part of what is my own? You will have the rest: take what I leave you and be thankful; don't force me to live scurvily for your benefit, and don't serve up to me wise sayings about living on one's income and keeping one's capital intact. Am I to be starved in order that some scape-grace heir of yours may grow a belly? Sell your life for gain; ransack the world in your quest for wealth; let it come back to you with a two-fold, a three-fold, ay a ten-fold increase: if you can tell me where to stop, Chrysippus, your fallacy of the Sorites will have been solved (61-80)! |