perience, the experience of those who were no Christians, and had no knowledge to deter them but that which was suggested from within. If we are surprised to read in Juvenal language or sentiments which, if delivered from a Christian pulpit, would be appropriate and searching, it is because we are apt to forget that human nature, with its desires, its corruptions, and its self-deceptions, has always been the same in the main, and that God has never been without his witness against guilt in the heart of man. This satire represents the common moral sense of mankind. The law of Christianity confirms the unwritten law of which conscience has always been the guardian and the exponent, and of which such writings as Juvenal's, especially this poem, are the clearest evidence." SATIRE XIV. ARGUMENT. 1-30. THERE's many a wrong act, Fuscinus, which is taught 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? Give him a thousand teachers, he will never cease to be a gourmand. Does Rutilus train his son to gentleness, holding that servants 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 wretched slave is tortured for a trifle? What does he teach his boy who loves the grating of the chain, the brand, the workhouse? 31-43. 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 elders' 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. 44-85. Let nothing evil come near the young. 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! 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 take no care 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 seek the food his mother brought him in the nest. 86-95. Cetronius took to building everywhere 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. 96-106. The father shows respect to the Jews' worship, the son becomes a Jew and goes all lengths with the law of Moses. 107-134. But though the young are prone to imitate all other vices, to avarice they're actually forced against their will. It looks too much like a virtue, to attract them of itself. 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, anyhow, the forge and anvil working on forever. 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. 135-151. 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 neighbor will not sell, you send your beasts to eat his crops. 'Tis thus that many properties change owners. 152-172. 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 't is not enough for pleasure-ground. 173-255. 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: let the plough get us bread; so shall we please the country gods, whose help and favor got us corn for acorns. 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, 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, he'll weary of your obstinate old age. Buy yourself antidotes, such as kings and fathers should take before their meals. 256-302. No play is half so good as to look on and see what risk they run to increase their store. Can the petaurista 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; "'t is nothing," cries the master, mere summer thunder," and that night perhaps his ship is lost and he himself must swim for life; and he who thought the gold of Tagus and Pactolus little, must beg in rags, carrying with him the picture of his wreck. 66 303-331. 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; 't is 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 a knight's fortune: if that be not enough, then two, or even three. If that does not suffice, then will not Croesus's treasures or Persia's kingdom or Narcissus's wealth.-MACLEANE, with modifications. 1. Fuscinus. Some friend of Juvenal, unknown to us. 2. Nitidis rebus. "The minds of the children, in their first innocence, are the 'bright things.' 5. Bullatus. Cf. v. 164, note. — Fritillus is a dice-box. - Arma, i. e. the dice. Cf. Verg. Aen. i. 177: Cerealiaque arma expediunt. 7. Radere tubera terrae, to peel truffles. 9. Ficellas (= ficedulas). So Mayor, after Lachmann. The MSS. ficedulas, which alone will be found in the Lexicons. The beccafico was the only bird of which epicures allowed the whole to be eaten. 10. Monstrante, showing the way. 12. Barbatos. Beards were much affected by those who set up for philosophers. 15. Modicis erroribus aequos, indulgent to small transgressions. Cf. Hor. Sat. i. 3, 118, 140. 16 sq. Nostra is taken with materia. On the sentiment cf. Macrob. I. xi. 6: tibi autem unde in servos tantum et tam inane fastidium, quasi non ex eisdem tibi et constent et alantur elementis eundemque spiritum ab eodem principio carpant? 18. Rutilus. Some father. Hardly the same person as in xi. 2. 19. Nullam Sirena. I. e. no Siren's song. 20. The Antiphates and the Polyphemus of his trembling household. Antiphates, the grewsome king of the Laestrygones, ate up one of the three men whom Ulysses sent out as explorers, and sunk all his ships but one. (Odys. x. 80-132.) The story of the cyclops Polyphemus (Odys. ix. 182–542; Aen. iii. 618 sqq.) is well known. 22. Duo propter lintea, for the loss of a couple of towels. 24. Inscripta ergastula, the branded slaves in the workhouse. (Cf. viii. 180, note.) In ergastula we have a bold metonymy, - the container for the thing contained. Inscriptus is not found elsewhere in Juvenal in the sense of branded, but is so used by Pliny, Martial, and Gellius. The common word is inustus or compunctus. 33. Cum subeant. Subjunctive as giving the reason. Pg, subeunt. 35. The Titan is Prometheus, (a son of the Titan Iapetus,) the fabled creator of the human race. 38 sq. Hujus.... est, for there is at least one reason that commands this (i. e. to keep clear from grievous sins). 43. The uncle of Brutus was Cato Uticensis. 45. A (ah) is the interjection. It is a conjecture of Cramer's, adopted by the best editors. The MSS. have hinc, hanc, ac (P). 46. The parasite that makes a night of it is "the contemptible guest who for a dinner sits up all night drinking or gaming, or both, and singing low songs." 49. Notice the hiatus before the caesura in the third arsis. 52 sq. Qui.... peccet, one to follow in your steps and exaggerate all your faults. 55. Tabulas. I. e. your will. 56. Unde tibi frontem, etc. On the ellipsis, cf. Hor. Sat. ii. 7, 16: unde mihi lapidem ? . . . unde sagittas? .... 57 sq. Vacuum.. quaerat. You are mad, and want cupping. The cupping-glass is called windy, perhaps from the pressure of the external air. In the Middle Ages the adjective ventosa itself became |