Tables, a curator or guardian was appointed by the praetor in the cases of persons of unsound mind. Cf. Hor. Epp. i. 1, 102, 103.

289. Ad summum latus, to the topmost edge: i. e. to the very top of the bulwarks. - Tabula distinguitur unda, is separated from the water by a single plank :

"digitis a morte remotus

quattuor aut septem, si sit latissima taeda." -Sat. xii. 58 sq.

291. Silver cut up into small coins, having on them the "image and superscription" of the emperor.

292. Solvite funem, loose the cable. Cf. Verg. Aen. iii. 266 sq. 294. Fascia nigra, this black streak or black belt of clouds. 298, Modo, but now.

300. Sufficient, sc. ei, the antecedent of cujus (298).

301 sq. Shipwrecked men had paintings made of the scene of their misfortune, and carried them around with them to gain sympathy and alms. Picta se tempestate tuetur, maintains himself by a painting of the storm.

-

305. Amis = hămis. - "In the days of the empire there were seven cohorts of night police, whose business it was to ensure to the citizens protection from fire. The wealthy, however, who kept an immense number of slaves (cf. iii. 141), did not trust to this common protection, but had their own private watchman (here cohortem servorum). Nero ordered all who could afford it to keep custodes et subsidia reprimendis ignibus in propatulo (Tac. Ann. vi. 43). They were furnished with hamae- buckets filled with water- and with siphones, and other instruments for checking conflagrations." 306. Attonitus, "wild with fear."

307 sq. Electro. Cf. v. 38. — Signis. Cf. viii. 110. - Phrygia. Synnada, in Phrygia, was famed for its marble. — Ebore. Cf. xi. 123 sqq. Testudine. Cf. xi. 94 sq. It was common to inlay furniture with tortoise-shell. Or lata testudo may refer to the vaulted and highly ornamented roof of the palace.

308 sqq. Dolia. The "tub" of Diogenes was made of clay. If any one broke it, he could make another next day, nay more, he could patch the old one with lead. — Commissa, soldered.

311 sqq. The story of Alexander's visit to Diogenes, and how the Cynic told him not to stand between him and the sun, when asked if there was anything that could be done for him, is told by Plutarch (Alex. 14).

319. Hortis. Cf. xiii. 123, note.

320. The extreme frugality of Socrates's mode of life was appealed to by himself in proof of his disinterestedness (Apol. xviii.), and is attested by Xenophon and Aristophanes.

322. Cludere

rigid examples?"

claudere. "Do I seem to confine you by too

323. Nostris, our (modern).

324. On the fourteen rows and the law of Otho, cf. iii. 154, note. 325. If this makes you knit your brow and pout your lip. 326. Duodecies sestertium was the census senatorius.

327. Gremium. The fold of the toga (sinus), in which the purse was commonly carried. Cf. vii. 215. - Ultra, i. e. for more.

329. Narcissus was the chief favorite of Claudius Caesar. He made a fortune of about four million of our money. It was he, and not Claudius, who ordered the death of Messalina. The subject of paruit is Claudius. Cf. Plin. Epp. viii. 6: imaginare Caesarem liberti precibus vel potius imperio . . obtemperantem.

X

SATIRE XV.

ARGUMENT.

1-32. ALL know, Volusius, the monsters Egypt worships; here 't is the crocodile, the ibis there; the long-tailed ape at Thebes where Memnon strikes his lyre; cats, river fish, and dogs (but not Diana). Onions and leeks no tooth may harm. O holy people, whose gods grow in their gardens! A sheep or goat they may not eat, but human flesh they may. When once Ulysses told such marvellous tales to Alcinous and his guests, some more sober than the rest no doubt were wroth, and would have thrown him into the sea, with his tales about Laestrygones and Cyclopes. His Scylla and his clashing rocks and bladders full of storms and comrades turned to swine, were not so hard to swallow. He had no witness to support him; but my story, a crime not known in all the tragedies, was acted publicly the other day.

33-71. Two neighboring peoples, Ombites and Tentyrites, have long fallen out with deadly hatred, only for this, that each maintain there are no other gods but those they worship. It was a holiday at Ombi, a fit occasion for the enemy, who were resolved to spoil their seven days' sport (for these barbarians vie with the infamous Canopus in good living): and they expected easy victory when they were drenched with wine. On one side there was dancing, flowers, perfumes (such as they were); on the other, hatred and an empty belly. First, they cry out words of abuse, with hot courage; this is the trump of battle. Then they charge with mutual shout: their weapons are their fists; scarce any cheeks were left without a wound, or any nose unbroken. Faces contused you'd see throughout the host, cheeks burst and bones all starting through the skin, fists reeking with the blood of eyes knocked out. But this is child's play: what use is such a crowd of combatants if none are killed? So they grow fiercer and throw stones, not such as Turnus, Ajax, or Tydides threw, but such as men can wield in these degenerate days, when all are bad and puny, so that heaven laughs at men and hates them.

72-92. But to return. One party reinforced get bold and ply the sword and bow; and Tentyra flies, as they pursue. One slips and falls in his haste; they take him prisoner and cut him up and eat him raw. How lucky they profaned not the holy element! But they who ate had never a more happy meal. Don't think it was the first taste only that was sweet; the last man when the carcase was

all gone, scraped up the blood on the ground and licked it from his fingers.

93-131. Vascones, they tell us, lengthened life by food like this: but that was fortune's spite and war's extremity, a long blockade and famine. Such cases we should pity, when, after all their food is gone to the last blade of grass, men eat each other, as they would themselves: these gods and men may pardon, as the ghosts would do of those they've eaten. Zeno may teach us all things must not be done even for life; but how should they be Stoics, and that in old Metellus's time? Now all the world have got our learning and the Grecian too. Gaul teaches Britain how to plead, and Thule talks of hiring soon a rhetorician. But yet that noble people and Saguntum had some excuse for what they did. But Egypt was more savage than the Tauric altar; for there (if we're to trust the story) the goddess only sacrificed the men, and nothing more. What led these people to their crime, what accident, blockade, or famine? Suppose the Nile had left the country dry, what greater insult could they show the god? The Cimbri, Britones, and Scythians were never yet so savage as this useless cowardly herd, who swarm upon the river in their painted boats. No punishment is hard enough for those whose passion is as bad as famine.

131-174. Nature has given soft hearts to men, as tears will prove. She bids us weep for friends in sorrow, for the poor wretch on trial for his life, or boy, that brings his fraudulent guardian to justice, with weeping face and streaming hair. She bids us weep when a young maiden dies or little babe. What good man and true but counts all human miseries his own? 'T is this distinguishes us men from beasts; for this we've minds to take in things divine and exercise all arts; and sense from heaven, which they have not who look down to the earth. They've breath but we have soul, so that sympathy bids us seek mutual help, join in communities, and quit the woods our fathers lived in, build houses, join our habitations for mutual safety, stand by each other and protect the fallen, fight side by side at one signal, share the same walls and towers. But now the snakes are more harmonious than we are; the wild beast preys not on his kind: but as for man 't is not enough to have forged the fatal sword, though the first smiths knew only to make tools. But now we see whole peoples not content with killing in their passion, but they must eat each other. What would Pythagoras say, where would he run to, if he saw these monstrous doings, he who abstained from all kinds of meat and ate not every kind of vegetable ?-MACLEANE, with modifications.

1. Of Volusius Bithynicus, to whom this carelessly written letter is addressed, we know nothing.

3. The ibis does not eat snakes, although Herodotus (ii. 75, 76) and Cicero (N. D. i. 36) speak of it as destroying flying serpents.

4. Nitet aurea, glitters in gold. So jacet obruta (6), lies in ruin.

5. "Memnon's statue that at sunrise played' "" was mutilated (dimidio). It was afterwards restored, perhaps by Septimius Severus. 7. Aeluros, cats (aïλoups). An emendation of Brodaeus, now generally adopted. P has aeruleos, the other MSS. caeruleos.

19 sq. Concurrentia saxa Cyaneis. Either the rocks that dash against each other in the Cyanean sea (i. e. the Symplegades), or the rocks that clash with the Cyanean waves (dative), or the rocks that dash against the Cyanean isles. I prefer the first interpretation. Cf. Soph. Antig. 966: Kvavéwv nedayśwv. Juvenal confounds the Symplegades, at the entrance of the Thracian Bosporos from the Euxine, with rocks in the Sicilian sea which Circe advised Ulysses to avoid.

20. When Ulysses was leaving the island of Aeolus, the king gave him a leathern bag containing all the winds. His companions let them out on the bag, causing a tempest. (Odys. x. 19, 46.)

22. Et etiam.

26. Canebat, chantait, = recitabat.

27. Junco. So P, Jahn, Hermann, Ribbeck, Mayor, Weidner. There was a consul of the name of Juncus under Hadrian, A. D. 127. (Dissertazioni della pontificia Acad. Rom. di Archeologia vi. 231.) From ignorance of this fact, other MSS. and editors altered the reading to Junio.

28. Super, above, i. e. to the south of; up the country.

30. A Pyrra. As we say, since the flood. Syrmata. For tragoedias. Cf. viii. 229.

33. Finitimos. The term is used laxly.

39. Alterius populi. The people celebrating the festival were the Ombites.

40. Inimicorum. The Tentyrites.

45. Quantum ipsi notavi. These words imply that their author had visited Egypt. Most lives of Juvenal, following the pseudoSuetonius, relate that he was sent to Egypt, when eighty years of age, as prefect of a cohort stationed at Syene, and that this, under the appearance of an honorary appointment, was in reality meant as a species of exile. The story is incredible in itself, and apparently derived from the present passage. (Mayor.)

46. Canopus, though in Egypt, was a cosmopolitan city, a centre of Greek and oriental culture and luxury; and its manners were no type of those of Egypt in general.