SATIRE VIII.

ARGUMENT.

1-38. WHAT use are pedigrees, ancestral blood, statues and images, and noble names, if in the face of our great ancestors we live amiss -gambling all night and going to bed at dawn, when they were up and marching? What joy has Fabius of the Allobroges' victor, of the great altar, of his descent from Hercules, if he be covetous, a fool, effeminate, if he bring shame on his rough ancestors, turn poisoner, and disgrace his house? Line your whole house with images, yet still virtue alone is true nobility. Be Paulus, Cossus, Drusus in your morals, and give them place before your images, ay, and your own lictors too. First I claim the goodness of your heart: be holy, just, in word and deed, and then I count you noble. Hail, Gaetulicus or Silanus. From whatsoever stock you come to your rejoicing country, all may cry, "Eurekamen!" as they do who have found Osiris. What man is generous if he be unworthy of his race, illustrious only for his name? Nicknames go by contraries. We call a dwarf Atlas, an Aethiopian Cycnus, a crooked girl Europa, a mangy dog a pard, a tiger, or a lion. See that your great name is not applied to you on the same principle.

39-70. This is for you, Rubellius Blandus, swelling with your descent from Drusus, as if it were a merit of your own that you were born not of a poor weaver, but of the great Iulus' blood. "Low wretches (say you), ye who cannot tell your father's birthplace. I am a son of Cecrops!" Long may you live to enjoy your birth! But in that low rabble you will find a man of eloquence, who shall defend some noble blockhead, or solve the riddles of the law; and some brave soldiers too; while you are all Cecropian, as useless as a Hermes; the only difference is, his head's of marble, yours has life in it. Tell me, O Trojan, who counts animals noble except they're spirited and brave? We praise a horse who has won many races. Wherever he was reared we call him noble who beats the rest, while a mere herd to be put up and sold are the best bred if they but seldom win. There we have no respect for ancestry: they sell for little, and go to draw a cart or grind a mill. So tell me something of your own to engrave upon your bust, besides the honors that we freely give to those to whom you owe all that you have.

71-86. Enough for him who, lacking common courtesy (rare in that state of life), is puffed up with his relationship to Nero. But you, my friend, I would not have you valued upon the merits of your family, and you yourself do nothing for future time to praise. Tis poor to rest upon another's fame; remove the pillar and the roof falls in; robbed of its elm, the vine comes to the ground. Be a good soldier, honest guardian, upright judge, witness inflexible. Count not your life before your character, your life before the causes for which you live; the man that does that deserves to die, though he fare sumptuously and smell of all perfumes.

87-124. When you have got the province that you've long desired, put reins upon your temper and your covetousness; pity the poor natives; the princes you will see have all the marrow sucked from out their bones. Think of the laws, the trust committed to you, the honors that await the good, the fate of those who were condemned for robbing the Cilicians. Not that such condemnation is worth much, when one takes what another leaves. Go, get an auctioneer to sell your clothes, Chaerippus, and straight say nothing; it were madness to throw away your fare to Rome besides. Those people suffered less when they were beaten first: riches were left them still, shawls and dresses, pictures and statues, and chased silver vessels; then came your governors and carried off more spoils from peace than ever graced a triumph. Now the little that they have they 'll lose it all. You may despise, perhaps, the Rhodians, and Corinth too; but take good care of Spain, of Gaul, Illyricum, the Africans, who send us corn to feed our idleness. Besides, they 've nothing to repay you. Marius has robbed them. Take care you do no great wrong to the brave and poor: take all they have, you will still leave them arms. 125-145. This is no mere opinion of my own; believe, the Sibyl speaks. Be your attendants righteous, no favorite sell your judg ments, your wife no harpy, then, though you may trace your birth to Picus and the Titan brood, and claim Prometheus for your ancestor, you are welcome to any pedigree you like, so far as I am concerned. But if ambition, lust, and cruelty carry you headlong, then your ancestors only hold up the torch to expose your shame. The sin is greatest in the greatest sinner. Why boast yourself to me, you who forge wills in temples which your grandsire built before your father's statue, and steal by night in your cowl to a deed of shame?

146-182. Fat consul Lateranus degrades himself as a coachman, driving right past the ashes of his sires by night,- but the moon and stars look on, and when his consulship is done, he 'll do it in broad day, and meet his aged friend without a blush. He'll do the menial work of a groom, and when he goes to sacrifice to Jove he'll swear by Epona and the stable gods. And when he goes to taverns, the greasy host comes out to meet him, and with an air salutes his lordship; while the officious hostess brings the wine. "But we all did the same when we were young." Yes; but we've left off. Such faults should be cut off with our first beard. Children may be excused; but Lateranus is old enough for the wars. Send him on foreign duty, O Caesar, but seek your legate in the eating-house: you'll find him there with cut-throats, sailors, thieves, runaway slaves and executioners and drunken priests and undertakers, all

pot-fellows together. What would you do, had you a slave such as this? Of course you 'd send him to the slaves' prison and the fields. But you excuse yourselves, ye Trojan-born. Brutus may do what would disgrace a cobbler.

183-210. Bad though this be, yet worse remains behind. His money spent, Damasippus goes upon the stage, and Lentulus acts Laureolus not badly, deserving, as I think, a real cross. The people are to blame to sit and see patrician buffooneries. At what price they sell their honor matters not. No tyrant forces them, and yet they gladly sell themselves to the Praetor for his shows. And even if the choice were that or death, which should they choose? Does any one fear death so much that he should act with Thymele and Corinthus? But nobles acting as mimes are not astonishing, when we've had a harper like Nero for our emperor. After all this, what can there be but gladiatorial shows? This, too, doth shame the town; Gracchus, a noble and a priest, not with helmet or shield, but as a retiarius, undisguised and with face uncovered, casts his net, and failing flies the arena round in sight of all the theatre. His tunic and his cap betray the priest of Mars: can we believe it? More shame it is than any wound for him who suffers the degradation of fighting with a priest.

211-230. Were but the people free, who but would choose a Seneca before a Nero? The death of many parricides was his desert. His crime was like Orestes', but it differed in the cause. One, bid by gods, avenged his father's murder; but he slew not his sister or his wife: he poisoned no relations, never acted, never wrote a rubbishy poem on the Trojan War. What is there that Nero did which so deserved punishment at the hands of Verginius, Vindex, and Galba? These are the practices of a high-born prince, who loved to sing in foreign theatres and earn the parsley crown from Greeks! Hang up your dresses and your masks and harp, the trophies of your glory, before the statues of your ancestors!

231-268. Catilina and Cethegus were of lofty birth, and yet they would have fired the city, like savages, fit to be punished with the shirt of pitch. But our Consul was awake; a new man and not noble guarded the whole town, and got more fame in peace than all Octavius won at Actium or Philippi. Rome was then free, and called our Cicero his country's Father. His townsman too, Marius, followed the plough for hire, and had the vine-switch broken over his head in the ranks. But he stood single-handed, and withstood the Cimbri and delivered Rome, and when the fight was over he was crowned before his colleague. The Decii were plebeians, yet were their lives offering enough for all the host; they were worth more than all that they saved. A slave's son wore the crown of Romulus, and was our last good king. The Consul's sons would have betrayed the city, a slave betrayed their purpose: he worthy to be wept by matrons, they deserved to die, the first condemned by righteous laws.

269-275. You'd better be Thersites' son and like Achilles, than like Thersites and Achilles' son. But go as far back as you will, you still come to the asylum, and whosoe'er was founder of your line must have been a shepherd or something worse. - MACLEANE with modifications.

1. Stemmata, pedigrees. The imagines of ancestors in the atria of noblemen were painted masks of wax placed upon busts prepared for the purpose. These busts with the portrait-masks were arranged in little shrines (armaria), under which inscriptions (tituli) proclaimed the names, honors, and exploits of the ancestors. The imagines were encircled with wreaths (stemmata), running from one to another in such a way as to indicate the genealogical connection of the persons represented. Some scholars suppose that the Romans had family-trees, resembling our own in form, on which were small medallion portraits (pictos vultus, imagines pictas), encircled by wreaths running from one to another; and interpret Plin. H. N. XXXV. 2, and Sen. de Ben. iii. 28, in this manner, rather than in accordance with the explanation given above.

Ponticus was some young noble, to whom Juvenal addresses this satire in the form of an epistle.

2. Pictos vultus majorum. The waxen masks, or the painted faces on the family tree: in either case, the portraits of one's ancestors.

3 sq. The only historical Aemilianus when this was written was the younger Scipio, P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, who gained the agnomen Africanus. Triumphal statues are probably meant, although paintings may be referred to (Marq. 5, 1, 248). — Dimidios, broken in half. Umeros minorem, "short of a head and shoulders."

7. It must be that this verse is an interpolation. What the interpolator meant by contingere virga is doubtful. Virga has been taken for the fasces, for a broom to keep the busts clean, for a wand with which the busts are pointed out, and for a branch of the ancestral tree (like ramus (Pers. iii. 28), linea). In the latter case, translate multa contingere virga, to reach, through many a branch.

8. The ancient imagines of the masters of the horse are dingy with smoke from the focus in the atrium.

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9. Coram Lepidis, like ante Numantinos (11), under the very eyes of great and noble ancestors, i. e. in the presence of their imagines. Quo, to what purpose. Cf. verse 142, Hor. Epp. i. 5, 12. Quo quam ad rem. Cf. Cic. pro Caelio 52: dixeritne Clodiae quam ad rem aurum sumeret; 1b. 53: dixit profecto quo vellet aurum.

11. Numantinus was an agnomen given to Scipio Africanus the younger after the capture of Numantia, B. C. 133. The plural is generic, as in verse 13, and i. 109. Cf. Cic. pro P. Sestio 68: quare imitemur nostros Brutos, Camillos.

12. Quo, sc. tempore. - Duces, those generals, your great ances

tors.

13 sq. Q. Fabius Maximus was surnamed Allobrogicus from his victory over the Allobroges B. C. 121. The Fabia gens were said to be descendants of Hercules; hence natus in Hercules lare, " born in the household of Hercules." The ara maxima, in or near the Forum Boarium, was consecrated by Evander to Hercules, according to one tradition; according to another it was built by Hercules himself after slaying Cacus.

15. The Euganei were originally the occupiers of all the country which the Veneti afterwards possessed, but were afterwards driven farther west and south. The whole region was famous for its

pastures.

16. Effeminate persons smoothed their bodies with pumice-stone. 17. Squalentis traducit avos, disgraces (exposes to contempt) his rugged ancestors. They are rough, rugged, in comparison with the fine, soft skin of their degenerate descendant.

18. The busts and statues of those convicted of capital offences were destroyed by the common executioner. - Funestat is properly "defiles by blood."

21. Moribus, in your morals; in your character.

22 sq. Hos and illi refer to moribus. — Virgas, the fasces.

24. Prima, in the first place.

25. Mereris. The omission of si is lively.

26. Adgnosco procerem, I recognize the nobleman; the true gentleman, Nature's nobleman. Proceres is generally reckoned among the pluralia tantum.

27, 28. The punctuation is that of Jahn, Ribbeck, Hermann. 27. Silanus was a cognomen in the gens Junia.

28. Ovanti. Congratulating itself on the possession of so excellent a citizen.

29 sq. "The Egyptians worshipped their god Osiris under the form of a live bull. When the animal grew old, he was drowned, under the notion that the deity had left his body, to go and inhabit that of a younger bull. The new tenant was accordingly sought for, and when recognized, was received with great rejoicing, and a cry of εὑρήκαμεν, συγχαίρωμεν.”

30. Qui, sc. est.

32. It was fashionable in Rome to keep dwarfs.

33. Parvam. A few MSS. have pravam, which would be repeated in extortam. - Extortam, twisted out of shape, distorted, crooked. 34 sq. Scabie vetusta levibus, "hairless from inveterate mange." 38. Ne tu, sc. sis. Sic, in the same way, on the same principle;