Proxima tempestas, velut hoc dilata sereno. Quisnam hominum est quem tu contentum videris uno science, the ominous character of the first lull. 230. missum ad sua corpora morbum] See note on Hor. C. ii. 8. 1: "Ulla si juris tibi pejerati Poena, Barine, nocuisset unquain, 233. Laribus cristam promittere galli] See note on xii. 96, and as to sacello' see S. x. 354, n. With 'nocentibus aegris' compare v. 124. It means the sick if they be guilty.' 235. vel quae non dignior hostia vita?] This is most severe of all. The life of any animal that could be offered in sacrifice was worth more than his. The theory of sacrifice rests upon the innocence of the victim, and mischievous animals would not be accepted. 236. Mobilis et varia est] He says by way of consoling his friend that the man who has cheated him is sure to come to punishment; for such is generally (ferme) the nature of the wicked that they fluctuate between sin and remorse while their crime is doing they are firm enough; but when it is done they find out when it is too late (tandem) the difference between right and wrong; but then again they go back to the practices conscience had condemned, as Horace says in a different connexion, 230 235 240 "Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret " (Epp. i. 10. 24). The Jewish proverbs, "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly," and "the sow that was washed has returned to its wallowing in the mire," will occur to every one. 'Fas nefasque' are often joined, as in Hor. Epod. v. 87: “Venena magnum fas nefasque non valent," &c. 240. mutari nescia:] See S. xiv. 231, n. 242. attrita de fronte] This is like 'frons durior' in S. viii. 189. • Dabit in laqueum vestigia' is he will put his foot in his own snare, he will be caught in his guilt some day and suffer for it, he will be strangled in prison and dragged out with a hook as criminals were (see S. x. 66, n., "Sejanus ducitur unco;" and Cic. pro C. Rabirio, c. 5, "a verberibus, ab unco, a crucis denique terrore," Long's note), or banished to Seriphos or some of those places. See note on S. i. 73: "Aude aliquid brevibus Gyaris et carcere dignum." Ruperti says 'uncum' is a hook or ring in the prison wall to which the man's chain was attached. Exsulibus magnis' does not mean that they were great in any thing but wickedness. Nominis' means the man, a common use of ovoua, but not of 'nomen.' Tiresias the prophet of Thebes was blind. His story is told by Ovid in the 3rd book of the Metamorphoses, 316– 338. Perfidus, et nigri patietur carceris uncum, 245 SATIRA XIV. INTRODUCTION. THIS satire contains some golden rules and is throughout written in Juvenal's best style. It exposes one of the radical causes of the prevailing immorality, which was the contagious example and bad teaching of parents, acting from their earliest years upon their children. In a vicious home nothing but vice can be learnt: the sin of the father is visited upon the son because the son contracts and exaggerates the father's vices: the gamester begets gamesters; the licentious beget profligates; the spendthrift is the father of spendthrifts and the miser of misers; partly from the force of infection and partly because teaching cannot as a general rule rise above practice, and he who parades his faults before his child cannot even reprove that child if he adopts them. There is not a more pregnant sentence in any author than that, "Maxima debetur pueris reverentia." It is a truth which the better instincts of mankind at once acknowledge, and it could not have been better expressed or supported in more dignified language than Juvenal has here used. It would have been pleasant if his experience or the scope of his satire had admitted of his drawing a picture of a home in which virtue grows by the same means as vice grows by in others, and showing us how domestic example and the influence of a happy home act on the characters of men and the well-being of society. The inherited vices Juvenal speaks of are gaming, luxurious living, violence of temper, contempt for inferiors, sensuality, extravagance, superstition, and avarice. The greater part of the satire is taken up with the last, and the love of getting, for the sake of having or for display, is traced from its earliest impression on the young mind, to which in general it is not natural, through injustice, selfishness, crime, and danger, to the miserable anxiety that waits upon possession after all has been done to secure it. Once only he touches shortly on the influence of mothers' example on their daughters. There is as might be expected a reference to the simplicity of the olden time, and there are one or two pictures, as of the anxious host (v. 59, sqq.) and the soldier's family (166, sqq.) such as Juvenal sketches with peculiar power. ARGUMENT. There's many an act of foul report, Fuscinus, leaving its stain for ever on young minds, which parents teach their children both by precept and example. The old man games, his boy too shakes the dice. What hope is there of him who learns in youth to season fig-peckers and mushrooms, taught by his father? Give him a thou sand teachers he will never cease to love good living. Does Rutilus train his son to gentleness, holding that slaves and masters are one flesh, or cruelty, when all he loves is the sweet sound of the lash, the monster of his trembling household, happiest when a wretch is tortured for a trifle? What does he teach his boy who loves the grating of the chain, the brand, and workshop? Shall Larga's child be pure who cannot count her mother's paramours? She was her confidante, and now she writes her own love letters at her dictation, and sends them by her filthy menials. V. 31. It is but nature, home examples come with great authority, and so corrupt more speedily than any. One or two of better sort may spurn them, but others follow in their fathers' footsteps and the old track of crime long put before them. So keep from wrong, if for no other reason yet for this, that those who are born of us will imitate our faults, for all are teachable in vice; a Catiline you'll find in every town, a Cato or a Brutus nowhere. V. 44. Let nothing foul approach that house that holds a boy. Away ye girls and parasites: great reverence is due to boys. If you are meditating wickedness think not the child too young to see it. Whatever wrong you do he'll grow up like you not in face alone and stature but in morals, and follow in your footsteps: and after this you'll punish him and disinherit him forsooth! How can you act the father when you the sire are worse, an empty-headed madman? V. 59. When guests are coming you will sweep your house and scold and rave for fear a speck of dirt offend the company, and yet you care not that your son should see his home all spotless. You give your country a great boon if you shall make him a good citizen. It matters much how you shall train him up. The bird when fledged will scek the food his mother brought him in the nest. V. 86. Cetronius took to building every where grand marble houses, and so broke his fortune but he left his son no small inheritance, which he wasted in his turn in building finer houses than his father. V. 96. The father shows respect to the Jews' worship, the son becomes a Jew and goes all lengths with Moses' law. V. 107. But though the young are prone to imitate all other vices, to avarice they're forced against their will. They're cheated with the show of gravity it wears, the praise it wins for carefulness and skill in getting. These are the craftsmen to make fortunes grow! Yes, any how, the forge and anvil working on for ever. The father too thinks only misers happy, and bids his boys go on that road with those philosophers. All vices have their rudiments, in these he trains them first and afterwards they learn the insatiable desire for money. He pinches his slaves' bellies and his own: saves up the fragments and puts them under seal for next day's supper, a meal the beggars would not share. V. 135. What worth is money got at such a price? What madness is it to live a pauper's life in order to die rich! As money grows the love of it grows too. He wants it least who has it not. So you go adding house to house and field to field, and if your neighbour will not sell, you send your beasts to eat his crops. "Tis thus that many properties change owners. V. 152. But what will people say? "And what care I for that? I do not value at a beanshell all the world's praise if I am to be poor to earn it." Then you are to escape the pains and cares of life and live for many a year, because you've land as much as Rome possessed when Tatius reigned! And after that two jugera was counted ample for old soldiers broken in the wars, and they were well content. For us 'tis not enough for pleasure-ground. V. 173. Hence come more murders than from any cause, for he who would be rich would be so quickly. And who that hastens to be rich cares aught for laws? The old Sabellian spake thus to his sons: "Be happy with your cottages and mountains: 66 let the plough get us bread; so shall we please the country gods, whose help and favour got us corn for mast. That man commits no crimes who wears rough boots and clothes himself in hides. Outlandish purples lead to every crime." Now all is changed the father wakes his son at midnight. : Up, get out your, tablets, write, read, study law, petition for a centurionship: let the commander see you rough and hairy. Go fight and in your sixtieth year you'll get the eagle. Or if your courage fails turn merchant, don't be particular, stinking hides will do. Money smells sweet wherever it may come from. The poet's words be ever on your lips, well worthy of the gods and Jove himself, whence you get no one asks, but get you must." This is what nurses teach, the boys and girls learn this before their alphabet. When I hear fathers urging thus their sons, I answer, Fool, what need of all this haste? I warrant you the pupil will outstrip his teacher. Make yourself easy, he'll surpass his father, as Ajax Telamon, Achilles Peleus. He's young, when he begins to shave he'll swear and lie for a mere trifle. Woe to his wife if she is rich! He knows a shorter way to wealth than ranging sea and land. Crime is no trouble. "I never taught him this,” you'll say some day. But you're the cause of all his wickedness. Who trains his son to avarice gives him the reins, and if he tries to check him he refuses and spurns his driver and the goal. He thinks it not enough to err as far as you will let him. Tell him the man's a fool who helps his friend, teach him to rob and cheat, by every crime get money, which you love as ever patriot loved his country, and then you'll see the spark yourself have lighted blown to a flame and carry all before it: you'll not escape yourself, the lion you have reared will tear his keeper. Your horoscope is told, you say: but he'll not wait, you'll die before your thread of life is out. He's weary of your obstinate old age. Buy yourself antidotes, such as kings and fathers should take before their meals. V. 256. No play is half so good as to look on and see what risk they run to increase their store. Can the petaurus or the rope-dancer amuse us more than he who lives at sea, a wretched trafficker in perfumed bags or raisin wine from Crete? The dancer does it for a livelihood, you but for countless gold and houses. The sea is full of ships; more men there than ashore; wherever gain may call them there they go. A fine return for all your toil, to come with full purse back and boast you've seen the monsters of the deep. Madness may vary, but that man is mad who fills his ship and risks his life for silver cut in little heads and letters. The clouds are lowering, "'tis nothing," cries the master, "mere summer thunder," and that night perhaps his ship is wrecked and he himself must swim for life; and he who thought the gold of Tagus and Pactolus little must beg in rags carrying his picture with him. V. 303. What danger gets anxiety must guard. Licinus posts his regiment of slaves with buckets all the night, in terror for his plate and marble and all his finery. The Cynic's tub burns not; break it and he will make another or patch up the old one. So Alexander when he saw the man who made that tub his home, then learnt how happier far was he who wanted nothing, than he who coveted a world and went through every toil to get it. All gods are there where Prudence is; 'tis we who make Fortune a goddess. If any ask me what is the measure of a private fortune, I tell them just as much as nature wants, or Epicurus for his little garden, or Socrates before him. Nature and Philosophy always speak alike. But if I seem too hard upon you, mix a little from our habits with the old. Make up an eques' fortune: if that be not enough, then two, or even three. If that does not suffice, then will not Croesus' treasures or Persia's kingdom or Narcissus' wealth. PLURIMA sunt, Fuscine, et fama digna sinistra 2. maculam haesuram] This appears to be the true reading, but it is preserved only in P. The other MSS. have 'ac rugam' or 'et rugam,' which reading Heinrich conjectures with great probability the monks introduced from the Vulgate, where St. Paul says (Eph. v. 27), "ut exhiberet ipse sibi gloriosam ecclesiam non habentem maculam aut rugam aut aliquid hujusmodi, sed ut sit sancta et immaculata." Forcellini, whose lexicon is of less service for Juvenal than for other authors, quotes and explains this place thus: "nitidis rebus maculam et rugam figere: h. e. res bonas corrumpere, ut rugae in vultu pulcritudinem oris corrumpunt." A similar perversion, noticed by Bentley, is found in Hor. C. iii. 18. 12, where "Festus in prato vacat otiosus cum bove pagus" is changed into "cum bove pardus." The Scholiast quotes Hor. C. iv. 4.36: "Utcunque defecere mores Indecorant bene nata culpae." Juvenal says there are many habits which deserve to be evil spoken of and which fasten a stain upon fair things that will never leave them. The fair things are the unspoilt minds of children. These habits corrupt their minds and get them bad repute. 'Figere' and 'haerere' both express the lasting mischief these practices do. Monstrant traduntque' is, they not only show these practices in their own conduct but teach them to their children. 'Tradere' is a common word for teaching, as above, S. vi. 239, and in Cicero, de Divin. ii. 1: "Nulla major occurrebat quam si optimarum artium vias traderem meis civibus." As to 'alea' see S. xi. 176, n., and i. 88, n. The kind of gaming here alluded to is explained in the next verse, where 'arma' means the 'tali' or 'tesserae,' and fritillus' was the box from which they were thrown. Other names for the box were 'pyrgus' (rúpyos) or turricula' and 'phimus' (puós). See note on Hor. S. ii. 3. 171, "te talos, Aule, nucesque," and 7. 17, "mitteret in phi mum talos." Heres' is equivalent to 'filius,' here and in S. xii. 95, since a man's children were all his heredes' if they were in his power at his death (x. 237, n.). As to bullatus' see S. v. 164. n., 7. qui radere tubera terrae,] See S. v. 116, n., "tradentur tubera ;" and v. 147, "Boletus domino." Juvenis' is opposed to 'heres bullatus.' 'Eodem jure' is the mushroom sauce, not "in eodem quo parens mergebat," as Ruperti says (after Britannicus). He immediately afterwards explains mergere' by 'devorare;' "nam ficedulae totae a gulosis comedi solebant.” They swallowed them therefore swimming in the same sauce as their fathers swallowed them in. Any one will see what mergere' is. The 'ficedula' is the 'beccafico' of modern Italy, which is also a regular visitor of this country, and one of our sweetest songsters in spring and summer. Pettychaps is the English naturalist's name for it. By the older English writers it was called Cyprus-bird, and they speak of it as a great delicacy (Penny Cyclopaedia). It feeds upon different fruits, such as the currant and grape; but its partiality for the fig is shown by the circumstance that it is found in England most abundantly on the coast of Sussex, where that fruit is finest. Gellius (xv. 8) says that epicures would not have the whole of any birds eaten but the 'ficedula,' “negant ullam avem praeter ficedulam totam comesse oportere" (not swallowed at a mouthful as Ruperti's language would lead one to suppose). Martial makes the second syllable long: "Cerea quae patulo lucet ficedula lumbo Cum tibi forte datur, si sapis, adde piper." (xiii. 5, see also 49.) Perhaps therefore 'ficedulas' should be pronounced as a word of three syllables. 9. nebulone parente] I do not understand Heinrich's explanation "a patre gu loso." Discere aliquo' is not Latin, as |