et melior fatis donaret homuncio, quantus, ex nihilo, quantus fieres Virronis amicus ! "da Trebio, pone ad Trebium. vis, frater, ab ipsis 135 ilibus?" o nummi, vobis hunc praestat honorem, vos estis fratres. dominus tamen et domini rex si vis tu fieri, nullus tibi parvolus aula iucundum et carum sterilis facit uxor amicum. Forsitan inpensae Virronem parcere credas. hoc agit ut doleas; nam quae comoedia, mimus quis melior plorante gula? ergo omnia fiunt, 1 i.e. the fortune of an eques. See note on iii. 154–5. 140 145 150 155 2 It was the childless that were courted for their money. poisoned her husband, the The Hesperides. 3 Agrippina the younger. emperor, with a mushroom. She sesterces,1 O how great a personage would you become, from being a nobody; how dear a friend to Virro! "Pray help Trebius to this!" "Let Trebius have some of that!' "Would you like a cut just from the loin, good brother?" O money, money! It is to you that he pays this honour, it is you that are his brother! Nevertheless, if you wish to be yourself a great man, and a great man's lord, let there be no little Aeneas playing about your halls, nor yet a little daughter, more sweet than he; nothing will so endear you to your friend as a barren wife.2 But as things now are, though your Mycale pour into your paternal bosom three boys at a birth, Virro will be charmed with the chattering brood, and will order little green jackets to be given them, and little nuts, and pennies too if they be asked for, when the little parasites present themselves at his table. 146 Before the guests will be placed toadstools of doubtful quality, before my lord a noble mushroom, such a one as Claudius ate before that mushroom of his wife's after which he ate nothing more. 3 To himself and the rest of the Virros he will order apples to be served whose scent alone would be a feast— apples such as grew in the never-failing Autumn of the Phaeacians, and which you might believe to have been filched from the African sisters; you are treated to a rotten apple like those munched on the ramparts by a monkey equipped with spear and shield who learns, in terror of the whip, to hurl a javelin from the back of a shaggy goat. 156 You may perhaps suppose that Virro grudges the expense; not a bit of it! His object is to give you pain. For what comedy, what mime, is so amusing as a disappointed belly? His one object, G 81 si nescis, ut per lacrimas effundere bilem cogaris pressoque diu stridere molari. tu tibi liber homo et regis conviva videris : captum te nidore suae putat ille culinae; 160 nec male coniectat: quis enim tam nudus, ut illum bis ferat, Etruscum puero si contigit aurum vel nodus tantum et signum de paupere loro? 66 spes bene cenandi vos decipit: ecce dabit iam 165 170 SATVRA VI CREDO Pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam in terris visamque diu, cum frigida parvas praeberet spelunca domos ignemque Laremque et pecus et dominos communi clauderet umbra, silvestrem montana torum cum sterneret uxor frondibus et culmo vicinarumque ferarum 5 let me tell you, is to compel you to pour out your wrath in tears, and to keep gnashing your molars against each other. You think yourself a free man, and guest of a grandee; he thinks-and he is not far wrong-that you have been captured by the savoury odours of his kitchen. For who that had ever worn the Etruscan bulla1 in his boyhood, or even the poor man's leather badge-could tolerate such a patron for a second time, however destitute he might be? It is the hope of a good dinner that beguiles you: "Surely he will give us," you say, "what is left of a hare, or some scraps of a boar's haunch; the remains of a capon will come our way by and by." And so you all sit in dumb silence, your bread clutched, untasted, and ready for action. In treating you thus, the great man shows his wisdom. If you can endure such things, you deserve them; some. day you will be offering your head to be shaved and slapped nor will you flinch from a stroke of the whip, well worthy of such a feast and such a friend. SATIRE VI THE WAYS OF WOMEN IN the days of Saturn,2 I believe, Chastity still lingered on the earth, and was to be seen for a time -days when men were poorly housed in chilly caves, when one common shelter enclosed hearth and household gods, herds and their owners; when the hill-bred wife spread her silvan bed with leaves and straw and the skins of her neighbours the wild beasts—a wife not 1 The golden bulla, enclosing a charm, was the sign of free birth (ingenuitas). i.e. in the golden days of innocence. 83 pellibus, haut similis tibi, Cynthia, nec tibi, cuius turbavit nitidos extinctus passer ocellos, sed potanda ferens infantibus ubera magnis et saepe horridior glandem ructante marito. quippe aliter tunc orbe novo caeloque recenti vivebant homines, qui rupto robore nati compositive luto nullos habuere parentes. multa Pudicitiae veteris vestigia forsan 10 aut aliqua exstiterint et sub love, set love nondum 15 barbato, nondum Graecis iurare paratis per caput alterius, cum furem nemo timeret caulibus et pomis, et aperto viveret horto. paulatim deinde ad superos Astraea recessit hac comite, atque duae pariter fugere sorores. Anticum et vetus est alienum, Postume, lectum 'concutere atque sacri genium contemnere fulcri. omne aliud crimen mox ferrea protulit aetas: viderunt primos argentea saecula moechos. conventum tamen et pactum et sponsalia nostra tempestate paras, iamque a tonsore magistro pecteris, et digito pignus fortasse dedisti. certe sanus eras; uxorem, Postume, ducis? dic, qua Tisiphone, quibus exagitare1 colubris? ferre potes dominam salvis tot restibus ullam, cum pateant altae caligantesque fenestrae, 1 exagitare Py: exagitere O. 1 The Cynthia of Propertius. 2 The Lesbia of Catullus. 20 25 30 3 There was a legend that men had been born from oaktrees. Astraea, daughter of Zeus and Themis, was the last |