The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius
is placed at her feet and filled from a huge pitcher: of which a second
pint is drained before she tastes food, to make her appetite[281]
quite ravenous. Then having rinsed out her stomach, the wine returns
in a cascade on the floor--rivers gush over the marble pavement,[282]
or the broad vessel reeks of Falernian--for thus, just as when a long
snake has glided into a deep cask, she drinks and vomits. Therefore her
husband turns sick; and with eyes closed smothers his rising bile.
And yet that woman is more offensive still, who, as soon as she has
taken her place at table, praises Virgil, and excuses the suicide
of Dido: matches and compares poets together: in one scale weighs
Maro in the balance, and Homer in the other. The grammarians yield;
rhetoricians are confuted; the whole company is silenced; neither
lawyer nor crier[283] can put in a word, nor even another woman. Such
a torrent of words pours forth, you would say so many basins or bells
were all being struck at once. Henceforth let no one trouble trumpets
or brazen vessels; she will be able singly to relieve the moon when
suffering[284] an eclipse. The philosopher sets a limit even to those
things which are good in themselves. For she that desires to appear
too learned and eloquent, ought to wear a tunic reaching only to the
middle of the leg, to sacrifice a pig to Sylvanus,[285] and bathe for
a quadrans. Let not the matron that shares your marriage-bed possess a
set style of eloquence, or hurl in well-rounded sentence the enthymeme
curtailed[286] of its premiss; nor be acquainted with all histories.
But let there be some things in books which she does not understand.
I hate her who is forever poring over and studying Palæmon's[287]
treatise; who never violates the rules and principles of grammar; and
skilled in antiquarian lore, quotes verses I never knew; and corrects
the phrases of her friend as old-fashioned,[288] which men would never
heed. A husband should have the privilege of committing a solecism.
There is nothing a woman will not allow herself, nothing she holds
disgraceful, when she has encircled her neck with emeralds, and
inserted earrings of great size in her ears, stretched with their
weight. Nothing is more unbearable than a rich woman!
Meanwhile her face, shocking to look at, or ridiculous from the large
poultice, is all swollen; or is redolent of rich Poppæan unguents,[289]
with which the lips of her wretched husband are glued up. She will
present herself to her adulterer with skin washed clean. When does
she choose to appear beautiful at home? It is for the adulterers her
perfumes are prepared. It is for these she purchases all that the
slender Indians send us. At length she uncases her face and removes
the first layer. She begins to be herself again; and bathes in that
milk,[290] for which she carries in her train she-asses, even if
sent an exile to Hyperborean climes. But that which is overlaid and
fomented with so many and oft-changed cosmetics, and receives poultices
of boiled and damp flour, shall we call it a face,[291] or a sore?
It is worth while to find out exactly what their occupations and
pursuits are through the livelong day. If her husband has gone to
sleep with his back toward her, the housekeeper is half killed--the
tire-women are stripped to be whipped--the Liburnian slave is accused
of having come behind his time, and is forced to pay the penalty of
another's sleep; one has rods broken[292] about him, another bleeds
from the whips, a third from the cowhide. Some women pay a regular
salary to their torturers. While he lashes she is employed in enameling
her face. She listens to her friend's chat, or examines the broad gold
of an embroidered robe. Still he lashes. She pores over the items
in her long diary.[293] Still he lashes. Until at length, when the
torturers are exhausted, "Begone!" she thunders out in awful voice, the
inquisition being now complete.
The government of her house is no more merciful than the court of a
Sicilian tyrant. For if she has made an assignation, and is anxious to
be dressed out more becomingly than usual, and is in a hurry, and has
been some time already waited for in the gardens, or rather near the
chapels of the Isiac[294] procuress; poor Psecas arranges her hair,
herself with disheveled locks and naked shoulders and naked breasts.
"Why is this curl too high?" Instantly the cowhide avenges the heinous
crime of the misplacing of a hair. What has poor Psecas done? What
crime is it of the poor girl's if your own nose has displeased you?
Another, on the left hand, draws out and combs her curls and rolls
them into a band. The aged matron assists at the council, who, having
served her due period[295] at the needle, now presides over weighing
out the tasks of wool. Her opinion will be first taken. Then those who
are her inferiors in years and skill will vote in order, as though
their mistress's good name or life were at stake. So great is the
anxiety of getting beauty! Into so many tiers she forms her curls, so
many stages high she builds[296] her head; in front you will look upon
an Andromache, behind she is a dwarf--you would imagine her another
person. Excuse her, pray, if nature has assigned her but a short back,
and if, without the aid of high-heeled buskins, she looks shorter than
a Pigmy[297] maiden; and must spring lightly up on tip-toe for a kiss.
No thought meanwhile about her husband! not a word of her ruinous
expenditure! She lives as though she were merely a neighbor[298] of her
husband's, and in this respect alone is nearer to him--that she hates
her husband's friends and slaves, and makes grievous inroads on his
purse.
But see! the chorus of the maddened Bellona and the mother of the
gods enters the house! and the huge eunuch (a face to be revered by
his obscene inferior) who long ago emasculated himself with a broken
shell; to whom his hoarse troop and the plebeian drummers give
place, and whose cheek is covered with his Phrygian tiara. With voice
grandiloquent he bids her dread the approach of September and the
autumn blasts, unless she purifies herself with a hecatomb of eggs, and
makes a present to him of her cast-off murrey-colored[299] robes: that
whatever unforeseen or mighty peril may be impending over her may pass
into the tunics, and at once expiate the whole year. She will break
the ice and plunge into the river in the depth of winter, or dip three
times in Tiber at early dawn, and bathe her timid head in its very
eddies, and thence emerging will crawl on bleeding knees, naked and
shivering, over the whole field of the haughty king.[300] If white Io
command, she will go to the extremity of Egypt, and bring back water
fetched from scorching Meroë, to sprinkle on the temple of Isis, that
rears itself hard by the ancient sheepfold.[301] For she believes that
the warning is given her by the voice of the goddess herself. And this,
forsooth, is a fit soul and mind[302] for the gods to hold converse
with by night! He therefore gains the chief and highest honor, who,
surrounded by his linen-robed flock,[303] and a bald-headed throng of
people uttering lamentations, runs to and fro personating the grinning
Anubis. He it is that supplicates for pardon whenever the wife does
not refrain from nuptial joys on days to be observed as sacred, and a
heavy penalty is incurred from the violation of the snowy sheeting.
And the silver serpent was seen to nod his head! His are the tears,
and his the studied mumblings, that prevail on Osiris not to withhold
pardon for her fault, when bribed by a fat goose and a thin cake. When
he has withdrawn, some trembling Jewess, having quitted her basket and
hay, begs in her secret ear, the interpretess of the laws of Solyma,
the potent priestess of the tree--the trusty go-between from highest
heaven![304] And she crosses her hand with money, but sparingly enough:
for Jews will sell you any dreams you please for the minutest coin. The
soothsayer of Armenia or Commagene,[305] handling the liver of the dove
still reeking, engages that her lover shall be devoted, or promises
the rich inheritance of some childless rich man; he pries into the
breasts of chickens and the entrails of a puppy; sometimes too even of
a child--he does acts of which he will himself turn informer![306]
But their confidence in Chaldæans will be greater still: whatever the
astrologer tells them, they will believe reported straight from the
fountain of Ammon; since at Delphi the oracles are dumb, and darkness
as to the future is the punishment of the human race. However, of
these he is in the highest repute who has been often banished; by whose
friendship and venal[307] tablets it came to pass that a citizen of
high rank[308] died, and one dreaded by Otho. Hence arises confidence
in his art, if both his hands have clanked with chains, and he has been
long an inmate of the camp-prison. No astrologer that has never been
condemned will have any reputation for genius; but he that has hardly
escaped with his life, and scarcely had good fortune enough to be sent
to one of the Cyclades,[309] and at length to be set free from the
confined Seriphos, he it is whom your Tanaquil[310] consults about the
death of her jaundiced mother, for which she has been long impatient;
but first, about yourself! when she may hope to follow to the grave her
sister and her uncles; whether her adulterer will survive her, for what
greater boon than this have the gods in their power to bestow?
And yet she is ignorant what the ill-omened planet of Saturn forebodes;
with what star Venus presents herself in fortunate conjunction; what is
the month for ill-luck; what seasons are assigned to profit.
Remember to shun even a casual meeting with her in whose hands you see,
like the unctuous amber,[311] their calendars well thumbed; who instead
of consulting others is now herself consulted; who when her husband is
going to join his camp or revisit his home, will refuse to accompany
him if restrained by the calculations of Thrasyllus.[312] When it is
her fancy to ride as far as the first mile-stone, the lucky hour is
taken from her book; if the corner of her eye itches when she rubs it,
she calls for ointment after a due inspection of her horoscope: though
she lies sick in bed no hour appears suited to taking food, save that
which Petosiris[313] has directed. If she be of moderate means, she
will traverse the space on both sides of the pillars of the circus, and
draw lots, and present her forehead and her hand to the fortune-teller
that asks for the frequent palming. The rich will obtain answers from
some soothsayer of Phrygia or India hired for the purpose, from some
one skilled in the stars and heavens, or one advanced in years who
expiates the public places which the lightning[314] has struck. The
destiny of the plebeians is learnt in the circus, and at Tarquin's
rampart.[315] She that has no long necklace of gold to display,
inquires in front of the obelisks and the dolphin-columns,[316] whether
she shall jilt the tapster and marry the old-clothes man.
Yet these, when circumstances so require, are ready to encounter the
perils of childbirth, and endure all the irksome toils of nursing. But
rarely does a gilded bed contain a woman lying-in: so potent are the
arts and drugs of her that can insure barrenness, and for bribes kill
men while yet unborn. Yet grieve not at this, poor wretch! and with
thine own hand give thy wife the potion, whatever it be: for did she
choose to bear her leaping children in her womb, thou wouldst perchance
become the sire of an Æthiop; a blackamoor would soon be your sole
heir, one whom you would not see of a morning.[317]
I say nothing of supposititious children, and all a husband's joys and
fond hopes baffled at the dirty pools;[318] and the Pontifices and