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Marcus Dama.Papa! Marco spondente, recusas
Credere tu nummos?-Marco sub judice palles?
-Marcus dixit: ita est.-Assigna, Marce, tabellas.
Hæc mera libertas! Hoc nobis pilea donant !

An quisquam est alius liber, nisi ducere vitam

. Cui licet, ut voluit? licet, ut volo, vivere: non sum • Liberior Bruto!' Mendose colligis, inquit

Stoicus hic, aurem mordaci lotus aceto :

Hoc reliquum accipio; licet illud, et, ut volo, tolle.
Vindictâ postquam meus a prætore recessi,

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Dama, now comes out from him with a noble prænomen, and calls himself Marcus Dama.

79. Wonderful!] What a surprising change! or papæ may introduce the following irony, where a person is supposed to hesitate about lending money, for which Marcus offers to become surety. Papæ-How strange! that you should scruple it, when so respectable a person as Marcus offers his bond, and engages for the payment!

80. Are you pale ?] Do you fear lest you should not have justice done you, where so worthy a person is advanced to the magistracy? 81. Marcus said it, &c.] Marcus gives his testimony, and who can contradict so just and upright a witness-what he says must be

true.

Sign, Marcus, the tablets.] The poet here repeats the word Marcus, and drops the word Dama, as if he would ludicrously insinuate, that however great a rogue Dama was, yet to be sure Marcus

was a very different kind of person. He supposes him called upon to sign his name, as witness to somebody's will, which he could not do when a slave, for their testimony was not received.

The tablets.] Thin planks of wood, smeared over with wax, on which they wrote wills, deeds, &c. See Juv. sat. ii. l. 58, note. Here the will or deed itself.

The poet, in the preceding irony, carries on his grand point, which was to deride the common notion of liberty, or of a change being wrought, with regard to the respectability of those who were still, however emancipated from bodily slavery, slaves under ignorance, vice, and error.

82. Mere liberty.] Mera-bare, naked liberty (says the Stoic) -i. e. in the bare, outward, literal sense of the word; but it is to be understood no farther.

This caps give us.] The slaves went bare-headed, with their hair growing long, and hanging down: but when they were manumitted, their heads were shaved, and a cap, the ensign of liberty, put on their heads in the temple of Feronia, the goddess of liberty. See sat. iii. 1. 106.

83. "Any other free," &c.] Here the poet introduces Dama as re

Marcus Dama. Wonderful! Marcus being security, refuse you

To lend money? Are you pale under judge Marcus ?
Marcus said it it is so.-Sign, Marcus, the tablets.
This is mere liberty-this caps give us.

"Is there any other free, unless he who may live "As he likes?—I may live as I like: am not I

"More free than Brutus ?"-" You conclude falsely," says A Stoic here, having washed his ear with sharp vinegar :

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"I accept this which is left, take away that-"I may," and "as "I will."

"After I withdrew from the pretor, my own by the wand,

plying-" Aye, you may deride my notions of liberty; but pray who is free if I am not? Is there any other freedom but to be "able to live as one pleases? But I may live as I please-therefore "am I not free?"-by this syllogism thinking to prove his point.

85. "More free than Brutus.'] M. Junius Brutus, the great asserter and restorer of liberty, by the expulsion of the Tarquins, &c. who sacrificed his own sons in the cause of freedom, and changed the form of the government into a commonwealth.

"You conclude falsely."] Your argument is bad; the assumption which you make, that "you live as you please," is not true, therefore the conclusion which you gather or collect from it is false, namely," that you are free." See AISNW. Colligo, No. 6.

85--6. Says a Stoic.] i. e. Methinks I hear some Stoic say.

86. Washed his ear, &c.] At 1. 63. we find purgatas aures, where see the note; here, lotus aurem, meaning also the same as before, only under a different image, differently expressed.--By vinegar, here, we are to understand the sharp and severe doctrines of the Stoic philosophy, which has cleansed his mind from all such false ideas of liberty, and made his ear quick in the discernment of truth and falsehood.

87. "I accept," &c.] Your definition of liberty in your first proposition is true; I grant that "all who may live as they please "are free;"-but I deny your minor, or second proposition, viz. that you live as you please;" therefore your conclusion, viz. “that "you are free," is also wrong.

"That-" I may," and "as I will."] i. e. Take away your minor proposition, and I admit what remains--hoc reliquum accipio -viz. all that is contained in the first proposition-that "all who 64 may live as they please are free :"-this is certainly a good definition of liberty; but this is not your case.

88. "From the pretor."] Before whom I was carried, in order to my freedom.

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My own."] Meus-i. e. my own master; being made free, and emancipated from the commands of another, replies Dama, not at all understanding what the Stoic meant by liberty.

"By the wand."] Vindicta.-The pretor laid a wand upon the slave's head, and said-" I will that this man become free," and yol. II.

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• Cur mihi non liceat, jussit quodcunque voluntas ;
Excepto, si quid Masuri rubrica notavit ?"
Disce; sed ira cadat naso, rugosaque sanna,
Dum veteres avias tibi de pulmone revello.

Non prætoris erat, stultis dare tenuia rerum
Officia; atque usum rapidæ permittere vita-
Sambucam citius caloni aptaveris alto.

Stat contra ratio, et secretam garrit in aurem,
Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo.

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then delivered the wand out of his own hand into the lictor's; (see post, 1. 175). This wand was called vindicta, as vindicating, or maintaining liberty. See HoR. lib. ii. sat. vii. 1. 76.

90." Rubric." The text of the Roman laws was written in red letters, which was called the Rubric. DRYDEN.-According to others, the titles and beginnings of the different statutes were only written in red, and therefore to be understood by rubrica. See AINSW. See Juv. sat. xiv. I. 192, 3, note.

“Masurius.”] An eminent and learned lawyer, in the reign of Tiberius, who made a digest of the Roman laws.

q. d. When I received my freedom from the pretor, surely I was at liberty to do as I would, except, indeed, breaking the law; I 'don't say that I might do this.

91. "Learn."] The Stoic here begins his argument, in order to refute what Dama was supposed to say in support of his notion of liberty.

Now listen to me, says the Stoic, that you may learn what true liberty is, and in what it consists.

"Let anger fall," &c.] Cease from your anger at me, for ridiculing your notion of liberty.

It is to be remarked, that the ancients represented the nose as denoting laughter, sat. i. 118. Contempt, sat. i. 40, 1, Anger, as here. So we find the nose, or nostrils, denoting anger frequently in the Hebrew Bible. See the learned and accurate Mr. PARKHURST, Heb. and Eng. Lex. 8, No. 5.

"Wrinkling sneer."] Comp. sat. i. 40, 1, and note.

92. From your breast," &c.] Pulmo, literally, signifies the lungs; but here denotes the whole contents of the breast in a moral sense." Put away anger and sneering at what I say, while I pluck up those foolish notions of liberty, which are implanted and rooted within your mind, and with which you are as pleased and satisfied, as a child is with an old woman's tale." Avia is literally a grandame, or grandmother: hence old women's tales. AINSW..--Fabellæ aniles. HOR. lib. ii. sat. vi. 1. 77, 8. Tgawdus μvdos. 1 Tim.

iv. 7.

93. "It was not of," &c.] It was not in the power of the pretor.

-"The delicate management of things," &c.] Though the pretor might confer civil liberty upon you at your manumission, and though you may know how-to direct yourself, so as to avoid offend

"Why might I not do whatever my will commanded,

"Except if the rubric of Masurius forbad any thing?"

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“Learn: but let anger fall from your nose, and the wrinkling

❝ sneer,

"While I pluck from your breast your old wives tales.

"It was not of the pretor to give the delicate management of things "To fools, and to permit the use of rapid life"You would sooner fit a dulcimer to a tall footman.

"Reason stands against it, and whispers into the secret ear,” "Let it not be lawful to do that, which one will spoil in doing :"

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ing against the letter of the law-yet you could receive from the pretor none of that wisdom and discernment, by which alone you can distinguish aright, as touching those more minute and delicate actions which concern you in the more nice duties of life, and which are to be attained by philosophy alone.-I take this to be meant by tenuia officia rerum-lit. small offices, or duties of things or affairs.

94. "To fools."] The Stoics held, that "all fools were slaves," --and that "nobody was free except the wise." A man must therefore be wise before he is free; but the pretor could not make you wise, therefore he could not make you free.

"To permit the use."] It was not in the pretor's power to commit to such that prudence and wisdom, by which they can alone be enabled to make a right use of this fleeting life, and of all things belonging to it.

95. "Sooner fit," &c.] Sambuca was some musical instrument, as an harp, dulcimer, or the like; but what it exactly was we cannot tell.

"A tall footman.”] Alto caloni-Calo, a soldier's boy, or any meaner sort of servant. AINSW.-Horace seems to use it in the lib. i. sat. vi. 1. 103; and perhaps it is so to be under

latter sense,

stood here.

You might sooner think of putting a harp, or some delicate musical instrument, into the hands of a great overgrown booby of a servant, and expect him to play on it, than to commit the nice and refined duties of life to fools, and expect them either to understand or practise them.-Asinus ad Lyram. Prov.

ear.

96. "Reason stands against it."] Reason itself opposes such an idea. "Whispers into the secret ear."] Secretly whispers into the Hypallage-Comp. supr. 1. 40, and note.

97. "Let it not be lawful."] Ne, before the potential, has the sense of the imperative mood. So HoR. ode xxxiii. lib. i. 1. 1. Ne doleas; and ode xi. 1. Ne quæsieris. Here, ne liceat is likewise imperative, and signifies that the voice of reason secretly whispers in the ear this admonition-" Let it not be permitted, that any should

Publica lex hominum, naturaque continet hoc fas,
Ut teneat vetitos inscitia debilis actus.

Diluis helleborum, certo compescere puncto
Nescius examen ? vetat hoc natura medendi.
Navem si poscat sibi peronatus arator,
Luciferi rudis; exclamet Melicerta, perîsse
Frontem de rebus.--Tibi recto vivere talo
Ars dedit et veri speciem dignoscere calles,

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Ne qua subærato mendosum tinniat auro?

Quæque sequenda forent, quæque evitanda vicissim
Illa prius cretâ, mox hæc carbone notasti ?

Es modicus voti? presso lare? dulcis amicis?
Jam nunc astringas, jam nunc granaria laxes ?

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"undertake what they are not fit for, but would spoil in doing it." Or ne liceat may be understood, here, as non licet,

98. "The public law of men."] The commou rule among mankind, as well as nature, may be said to contain thus much of what is right and just.

99. "That weak ignorance," &c.] That an ignorance of what we undertake, which must render us inadequate to the right performance of it, should restrain us from attempting acts, which, by the voice of human, as well as of natural law, are so clearly forbidden to us. Comp. 1. 96, 7.

100. Do you dilute hellebore."] He here illustrates his argument by examples.

Suppose, says he, you were to attempt to mix a dose of hellebore, not knowing how to apportion exactly the quantity.

100-1. "To a certain point."] Metaph.-Examen signifies the tongue, or beam of a balance, by the inclination of which we judge of proportional weights.

101. "The nature of healing forbids this."] All medical skill, in the very nature of it, must place this among the vetitos actus, which weak ignorance is not to attempt. See l. 99,

102. " High-shoed ploughman."] Peronatus.-The pero was an high shoe worn by rustics, as a defence against snow and cold. See Juv. sat. xiv. 1. 186.

103. "Ignorant of Lucifer."] Knowing nothing of the stars.Lucifer, or the day-star, is here put (by synec.) for all the stars, from which mariners take their observations to steer by.

"Melicerta exclaims," &c.] Also called Portunus, or Portumnus, because supposed to preside over ports. See his story, Ov. Met. lib. iv. fab. xiii.-Melicerta, the sea-god, would exclaim, that all modesty was banished from among those who undertook the management and direction of human affairs, when he saw so impudent an attempt.

"Shame."] Frontem, lit. the forehead, or countenance, the seat of shame-here, by met. shame or modesty itself.

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