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SATIRE XIII.

ARGUMENT.

1-22. BAD acts displease the doers. Conscience convicts them, though the praetor's urn be false. All your friends feel with you; you are not so poor that you should sink with such a loss; besides, the case is common, one out of fortune's heap. Put off excessive grief; the sorrow of a man should not blaze up too high, the pain should not be greater than the wound. A trifle, a mere scrap of ill you scarce can bear, and all your entrails burn because a friend will not give up a deposit: and you a man of sixty! Has not experience taught you? Wisdom is great, mistress of fortune: those we count happy, too, whom life has taught to bear the yoke of life.

23-33. No day so holy but it puts forth thieves and liars. The good are rare, not more in number than gates of Thebes or mouths of Nile. We live in the ninth age, an age so bad no metal is so base that it should give it name. And yet we call upon the faith of gods and men, as loudly as the clients of Faesidius when he pleads!

33-70. Say, art thou in thy second childhood, that thou knowest not the charms of other people's money, or how they laugh at thy simplicity in expecting that any man should not forswear himself or should think that fanes and altars have their gods? The natives in the golden age thought so, before the skies were filled so full of gods and hell so full of victims. Then was dishonesty a prodigy. 'Twas a great crime if youth rose not to age, yea children to their seniors by four years. But now, if friends should not deny a trust but pay it back entire, it is more wonderful than all the prodigies that ever were; an honest man is a lusus naturae.

71-85. Complain that you've been impiously cheated of ten sestertia! What if I tell of one who's lost two hundred, and another more than he can cram into his chest? 'Tis easy to despise the witness of the gods, if human there be none. See with what voice and face the man denies it. He swears by all the gods and goddesses, their bows, spears, tridents, all the armory of heaven: yea, he will offer to boil his son and eat him pickled, if he be a father.

86-119. Some say 'chance governs all things, nature rules the world,' and so they fearless go to any altar. Others believe in gods and punishments, but argue thus: "Let them do with my body what

they will, and strike me blind, so that I keep my gains. We may bear all for that. Let even a Ladas not hesitate, if he be poor, to pray for the rich man's gout, unless he be insane. The racer's barren crown, what does he get by that? The gods may punish, but they punish slow: my turn will not be yet; besides, it may be they will pardon me; the fault is venial. It's all a chance, one gains a cross by his crimes and one a crown." 'Tis thus they quiet conscience, put a bold face upon it, go to the altar of their own accord, abuse or beat you for mistrusting them, and get believed for their audacity. And so they act their farce, while you cry out with voice like Stentor or like Mars, "Jove, hearest thou in silence? Why do we bring thee sacrifice and incense? As far as I can see, your images are no better than the statues of Vagellius."

120-161. Now take such comfort as you may from one unread in all philosophy. Patients in danger may consult great doctors, do you submit to an humbler. If you can prove there never was a crime so bad in all the world, I hold my peace, mourn as you will; I know the loss of money is greater grief than loss of kindred; in its case mourning is not feigned, the tears are real. But if it's everywhere the same that men deny their hand and seal, are you, fine gentleman, to be excepted? How do you make yourself the chick of a fine bird and us the produce of an humble nest? It's but a small thing after all if you compare it with the greater crimes, the hired assassin, the incendiary, the sacrilegious robber who plunders temples, or the petty thief who scrapes the gold from statues; the poisoner, the parricide. How small a part is this of all the crimes the praefect listens to from morn till night! His court alone will teach you what men are. Spend a few days there, and talk about your misery if you dare. 162-173. None wonder at swelled throats in the Alps, or blue eyes and curly hair in Germany, because the people are all the same. So no one in the land of the pygmies laughs at their battles with the cranes, though they are only a foot high.

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174-192. But must not perjury and fraud be punished?" Suppose him carried off and put to death, your loss is still the same, and all you get is odium and a drop of blood shed from a headless corpse. "Oh! but revenge is pleasanter than life." This is fool's language, who flare up for nothing. Chrysippus, Thales, would not say so, nor Socrates, who would not share his cup of poison with his enemy. Philosophy corrects our faults of nature and of practice: she first taught us right from wrong, for only little minds care for revenge, as you may see from women's love of it.

192-235. But why think they escape, whom conscience whips? Their punishment is worse than any down in hell, who night and day carry their witness with them. The Spartan once tempted the oracle and got his answer, which the event established, for he and all his house, though old, have perished. Such was the penalty of even a bad desire. For he who thinks to do an evil deed incurs the guilt, as if he'd done the deed. What if the man has carried out his purpose? Ceaseless anxiety haunts him at meals, parched mouth, contracted brow; bad dreams, through which the altars he has sworn by pass, and your tall ghost, most terrible of all, that drives him to confession. 'Tis these who tremble at the storm and think each bolt

a messenger of wrath. If one storm passes, then they fear the next, and tremble at the calm that goes before it. Every disease they count a stone or dart from heaven. They dare not sacrifice in sickness; what can the guilty hope for? What victim is not worthier to live than they? 236-249. The wicked commonly are changeable; they are firm enough while they're engaged in crime; when it is done, they learn the difference between right and wrong. Yet nature will go back to its old ways. Who ever puts a limit to his guilt? Who ever got back modesty once lost? Who is contented with a single crime? He will be caught some day and pay for it by death or banishment. You shall be happy in the sufferings of him you hate, and shall confess at last the gods are neither deaf nor blind. MACLEANE, with modifications.

1. Exemplo malo. Ablative of quality, used predicatively: quodcumque ita committitur ut malo sit exemplo. Cf. Näg. Stil. ? 9, 1. 3. Absolvo was the legal word for acquittal. Three tablets were given each judex, on one of which was written A (= absolvo), on another C (= condemno), and on a third N. L. (= non liquet, "not proven"). Racine expresses the same sentiment as Juvenal :

"De ses remords secrets triste et lente victime,
Jamais un criminel ne s'absout de son crime."

4. In criminal trials a praetor usually presided. Urna is either the urn into which the names of the judices, who were to be impannelled, were placed, or that into which the judices threw their votes. Either could be called the praetor's urn, inasmuch as he drew the lots in the first place and counted the votes in the second; and in the performance of either of these duties he might betray his trust.

5. Juvenal writes this satire to a friend of his, whom he calls Calvinus, who is in a state of great excitement about a fraud practised upon him by a man to whom he had given in trust a sum of money, and who had denied the trust on oath.

6. Sed, and besides.

13. Quamvis levium, "be they as light as they will."

17. There was a C. Fonteius Capito who was consul A. D. 59 with C. Vipsanius Apronianus. There was another consul Fonteius Capito A. D. 67; and as he is named first of the two consuls of his year, and it was the custom to use the name of the first of the consuls in designating dates, many scholars think that he is the one here

referred to. This supposition brings the date of this satire as far down as A. D. 127.

20. Sapientia, philosophy.

22. Jactare jugum. The opposite of Horace's ferre jugum.

25. Puxide = pyxide. Here for poison; the container for the thing contained.

27. Baotian Thebes had seven gates, the Nile seven mouths.

28. I read nona, with most of the MSS., as do Hermann, Mayor, and Macleane. P has nunc, which Jahn, Ribbeck, and Weidner adopt. The division of the ages of the world into the golden, silver, bronze, and iron is well known. Juvenal says we have got down in the descending scale as far as the ninth age, for which nature herself has found no name nor any metal base enough to designate it. Ninth may be simply a humorous taking of a low number, or may involve an allusion to the Etruscan notion of ten ages, in which the last but one indicates the lowest degradation before the restoration of primitive innocence in the tenth.

31. Clamore, sc. tanto.

32 sq. Faesidius is an advocate, whose clientes, bribed by the sportula, come into court and applaud him loudly. Vocalis sportula is bold metonymy for the partakers of the dole: Heinrich translates, die brüllenden Couverts; Weidner, die brüllende Tisch.

33. Senior. This comparative has a diminutive force, and is used familiarly or kindly.

37. Rubenti. Red with the blood of victims.

40. Fugiens, as an exile. When Saturn was deposed by Jupiter, he went to Italy and engaged in tilling the earth.

41. Privatus adhuc, "not yet a public character." 43. Puer Iliacus. Ganymede. uxor. Hebe.

Formonsa (formosa) Herculis

44 sq. Et is awkward after nec, but it serves to connect Herculis uxor and Vulcanus closely together, making one picture of the two well-contrasted personages. "He comes in reeking from his work. She is at her task on Olympus, and hands him a cup to refresh him, which he first drains and then wipes off the sweat" and soot "from his black arms."

Liparaea nigra taberna, sooty from his forge on Lipara. 46. Sibi, by himself. Literally, for himself.

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48. Atlanta. Cf. Verg. Aen. iv. 482.

49. Profundi. I. e. the sea. Some refer it to Hades, to which they

think the epithet triste is more appropriate. But the Romans, as Macleane says, had a great dread of the sea.

50. Pluto carried off his wife Proserpina from Sicily.

51. Reference is made to Ixion, Sisyphus, and Tityos.

54. Quo. So P, Jahn, Hermann, Ribbeck. Other readings, hoc (s) Macleane, and quod (pw).

55. "Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of an old man."

57. Greater wealth is implied by larger stores of food. The wild strawberries and acorns indicate the simplicity of the times. 59. The order of the words in this verse is noticeable, the first, third, and fifth go together, and the second, fourth, and sixth. So fully was the first down held equal with sacred old age.

62. Tuscis libellis. I. e. the books of the Etrurian soothsayers, in which, among other things connected with religion, various wonderful portents were set down, and rules of procuratio.

63. Coronata, garlanded for sacrifice. — Lustrari = procurari. 64–70. Livy (xli. 26) speaks of a two-headed boy as a prodigy auguring evil. — Miranti. The plough is personified. (Jahn, Hermann, and Ribbeck read mirandis, with P.) — Theophrastus, Pliny, and Livy (xlii. 2), mention the digging up of sea-fish in the land. Fetae, with foal. (Liv. xxxvii, 3; Spallanzi Mem. sopra i Muli, 8.)- Uva, a cluster. (Liv. xxi. 46; xxiv. 10; xxvii. 23. Plin. N. H. xi. 18, 55; Tac. Ann. xii. 64.) — Amnis. I. e. the Tiber.- Miris = prodigiosis, unnatural. Cf. Hor. Epod. xvi. 31. 73. Arcana. Given as a trust in secret: deposited, with the gods only as witnesses.

Modena, 1768, p.

78. Tarpeia. I. e. of Jupiter Capitolinus.

79. Cirraei vatis. I. e. Apollo. Cirrha is near Delphi. Cf. vii. 64. 80. Venatricis puellae. Diana.

83. There is no need of inserting et at the end of the preceding verse, with Heinrich and Hermann. After two or more clauses connected by conjunctions, a third or last may be added without a conjunction, when, as here, it sums up everything in the genus to which the things spoken of in the preceding clauses belong, and thus comprehends them also.

84 sq. He says he will boil his son and eat his poor head, first dipping it in Egyptian vinegar (which was very strong), if he is not speaking the truth.

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89. Tangere aliquid: to swear on something. Cf. Liv. xxi. 1: tactis sacris jure jurando adactum se.

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