The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius
Then, when the firstlings of his youth are paid,
And his rough chin requires the razor's aid,
Then he will swear, then to the altar come,
And sell deep perjuries for a paltry sum!-- 300
Believe your step-daughter already dead,
If, with an ample dower, she mount his bed:
Lo! scarcely laid, his murderous fingers creep,
And close her eyes in everlasting sleep.
For that vast wealth which, with long years of pain, 305
You thought would be acquired by land and main,
He gets a readier way: the skill's not great,
The toil not much, to make a knave complete.
But you will say hereafter, "I am free:
He never learned those practices of me." 310
Yes, all of you:--for he who, madly blind,
Imbues with avarice his children's mind,
Fires with the thirst of riches, and applauds
The attempt, to double their estate by frauds,
Unconscious, flings the headlong wheels the rein, 315
Which he may wish to stop, but wish in vain;
Deaf to his voice, with growing speed they roll,
Smoke down the steep, and spurn the distant goal!
None sin by rule; none heed the charge precise,
THUS, AND NO FARTHER, MAY YE STEP IN VICE; 320
But leap the bounds prescribed, and, with free pace,
Scour far and wide the interdicted space.
So, when you tell the youth, that FOOLS alone
Regard a friend's distresses as their own;
You bid the willing hearer riches raise, 325
By fraud, by rapine, by the worst of ways;
Riches, whose love is on your soul imprest,
Deep as their country's on the Decii's breast;
Or Thebes on his, who sought an early grave
(If Greece say true), her sacred walls to save. 330
Thebes, where, impregned with serpents' teeth, the earth
Poured forth a marshaled host, prodigious birth!
Horrent with arms, that fought with headlong rage,
Nor asked the trumpet's signal, to engage.--
But mark the end! the fire, derived, at first, 335
From a small sparkle, by your folly nurst,
Blown to a flame, on all around it preys,
And wraps you in the universal blaze.
So the young lion rent, with hideous roar,
His keeper's trembling limbs, and drank his gore. 340
"Tush! I am safe," you cry; "Chaldæan seers
Have raised my Scheme, and promised length of years."
But has your son subscribed? will he await
The lingering distaff of decrepit Fate?
No; his impatience will the work confound, 345
And snap the vital thread, ere half unwound.
Even now your long and stag-like age annoys
His future hopes, and palls his present joys.
Fly then, and bid Archigenes prepare
An antidote, if life be worth your care; 350
If you would see another autumn close,
And pluck another fig, another rose:--
Take mithridate, rash man, before your meat,
A FATHER, you? and without medicine eat!
Come, my Fuscinus, come with me, and view 355
A scene more comic than the stage e'er knew.
Lo! with what toil, what danger, wealth is sought,
And to the fane of watchful Castor brought;
Since MARS THE AVENGER slumbered, to his cost,
And, with his helmet, all his credit lost! 360
Quit then the plays! the FARCE OF LIFE supplies
A scene more comic in the sage's eyes.
For who amuses most?--the man who springs,
Light, through the hoop, and on the tight-rope swings;
Or he, who, to a fragile bark confined, 365
Dwells on the deep, the sport of wave and wind?
Fool-hardy wretch! scrambling for every bale
Of stinking merchandise, exposed to sale;
And proud to Crete, for ropy wine, to rove,
And jars, the fellow-citizens of Jove! 370
THAT skips along the rope, with wavering tread,
Dangerous dexterity, which brings him bread;
THIS ventures life, for wealth too vast to spend,
Farm joined to farm, and villas without end!
Lo! every harbor thronged and every bay, 375
And half mankind upon the watery way!
For, where he hears the attractive voice of gain,
The merchant hurries, and defies the main.--
Nor will he only range the Libyan shore,
But, passing Calpé, other worlds explore; 380
See Phœbus, sinking in the Atlantic, lave
His fiery car, and hear the hissing wave.
And all for what? O glorious end! to come,
His toils o'erpast, with purse replenished, home,
And, with a traveler's privilege, vent his boasts, 385
Of unknown monsters seen on unknown coasts.
What varying forms in madness may we trace!--
Safe in his loved Electra's fond embrace,
Orestes sees the avenging Furies rise,
And flash their bloody torches in his eyes; 390
While Ajax strikes an ox, and, at the blow,
Hears Agamemnon or Ulysses low:
And surely he (though, haply, he forbear,
Like these, his keeper and his clothes to tear)
Is just as mad, who to the water's brim 395
Loads his frail bark--a plank 'twixt death and him!
When all this risk is but to swell his store
With a few coins, a few gold pieces more.
Heaven lowers, and frequent, through the muttering air,
The nimble lightning glares, or seems to glare: 400
"Weigh! weigh!" the impatient man of traffic cries,
"These gathering clouds, this rack that dims the skies,
Are but the pageants of a sultry day;
A thunder shower, that frowns, and melts away."
Deluded wretch! dashed on some dangerous coast, 405
This night, this hour, perhaps, his bark is lost;
While he still strives, though whelmed beneath the wave,
His darling purse with teeth or hand to save.
Thus he, who sighed, of late, for all the gold
Down the bright Tagus and Pactolus rolled, 410
Now bounds his wishes to one poor request,
A scanty morsel and a tattered vest;
And shows, where tears, where supplications fail,
A daubing of his melancholy tale!
Wealth, by such dangers earned, such anxious pain, 415
Requires more care to keep it, than to gain:
Whate'er my miseries, make me not, kind Fate,
The sleepless Argus of a vast estate!
The slaves of Licinus, a numerous band,
Watch through the night, with buckets in their hand, 420
While their rich master trembling lies, afraid
Lest fire his ivory, amber, gold, invade,
The naked Cynic mocks such restless cares,
His earthen tub no conflagration fears;
If cracked, to-morrow he procures a new, 425
Or, coarsely soldering, makes the old one do.
Even Philip's son, when, in his little cell
Content, he saw the mighty master dwell,
Owned, with a sigh, that he, who naught desired,
Was happier far, than he who worlds required, 430
And whose ambition certain dangers brought,
Vast, and unbounded, as the object sought.--
Fortune, advanced to heaven by fools alone,
Would lose, were wisdom ours, her shadowy throne.
"What call I, then, ENOUGH?" What will afford 435
A decent habit, and a frugal board;
What Epicurus' little garden bore,
And Socrates sufficient thought, before:
These squared by Nature's rules their blameless life--
Nature and Wisdom never are at strife. 440
You think, perhaps, these rigid means too scant,
And that I ground philosophy on want;
Take then (for I will be indulgent now,
And something for the change of times allow),
As much as Otho for a knight requires:-- 445
If this, unequal to your wild desires,
Contract your brow; enlarge the sum, and take
As much as two--as much as three--will make.
If yet, in spite of this prodigious store,
Your craving bosom yawn, unfilled, for more, 450
Then, all the wealth of Lydia's king, increast
By all the treasures of the gorgeous East,
Will not content you; no, nor all the gold
Of that proud slave, whose mandate Rome controlled,
Who swayed the Emperor, and whose fatal word 455
Plunged in the Empress' breast the lingering sword!
SATIRE XV.
TO VOLUSIUS BITHYNICUS.
Who knows not to what monstrous gods, my friend,
The mad inhabitants of Egypt bend?--
The snake-devouring ibis, these enshrine,
Those think the crocodile alone divine;
Others, where Thebes' vast ruins strew the ground, 5
And shattered Memnon yields a magic sound,
Set up a glittering brute of uncouth shape,
And bow before the image of an ape!
Thousands regard the hound with holy fear,
Not one, Diana: and 'tis dangerous here, 10
To violate an onion, or to stain
The sanctity of leeks with tooth profane.
O holy nations! Sacro-sanct abodes!
Where every garden propagates its gods!
They spare the fleecy kind, and think it ill, 15
The blood of lambkins, or of kids, to spill:
But, human flesh--O! that is lawful fare.
And you may eat it without scandal there.
When, at the amazed Alcinous' board, of old,
Ulysses of so strange an action told, 20
He moved of some the mirth, of more the gall,
And, for a lying vagrant, passed with all.
"Will no one plunge this babbler in the waves
(Worthy a true Charybdis)--while he raves
Of monsters seen not since the world began, 25
Cyclops and Læstrigons, who feed on man!
For me--I less should doubt of Scylla's train,
Of rocks that float and jostle in the main,
Of bladders filled with storms, of men, in fine,
By magic changed, and driven to grunt with swine, 30
Than of his cannibals:--the fellow feigns,
As if he thought Phæacians had no brains."
Thus, one, perhaps, more sober than the rest,
Observed, and justly, of their traveled guest,
Who spoke of prodigies till then unknown; 35
Yet brought no attestation but his own.
--I bring my wonders, too; and I can tell,
When Junius, late, was consul, what befell,
Near Coptus' walls; tell of a people stained
With deeper guilt than tragedy e'er feigned: 40
For, sure, no buskined bard, from Pyrrha's time,
E'er taxed a whole community with crime;
Take then a scene yet to the stage unknown,
And, by a nation, acted--IN OUR OWN!
Between two neighboring towns a deadly hate, 45
Sprung from a sacred grudge of ancient date,
Yet burns; a hate no lenients can assuage,
No time subdue, a rooted, rancorous rage!
Blind bigotry, at first, the evil wrought:
For each despised the other's gods, and thought 50
Its own the true, the genuine, in a word,
The only deities to be adored!
And now the Ombite festival drew near:
When the prime Tent'rites, envious of their cheer,
Resolved to seize the occasion, to annoy 55
Their feast, and spoil the sacred week of joy.--
It came: the hour the thoughtless Ombites greet,
And crowd the porches, crowd the public street,
With tables richly spread; where, night and day,