 Satire one of juvenile satires. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Satires by juvenile Satire one. What? Am I to be a listener only all my days? Am I never to get my word in? I that have been so often bought by the thesied of the renting quarters. Shall this one have spouted to me his comedies, and that one his love-ditties, and I be unevented? Shall I have no revenge on one who has taken up the whole day with an interminable telephos or with an arrestus, which after filling the margin at the top of the roll and the back as well hasn't even yet come to an end? No one knows his own house so well as I know the groves of Mars and the cave of Vulcan near the cliffs of Veolus. What the winds are brewing? Whose soul's Euracus has on the wreck? From what country another worthy is carrying off that stolen golden fleece? How big are the ash trees, which Monarchos tosses about? These are the themes with which frontals plain trees and marble halls are forever ringing until the pillars quiver and quake under the continual recitations. Such is the kind of stuff you may look for from every poet, greatest or least. Well, I too have slipped my hand from under the cane. I too have counseled Solot to retire from public life and sleep his fill. It is a foolish clemency when you jostle against poets at every corner to spare paper that will be wasted anyhow. But if you can give me time and will listen quietly to reason, I will tell you why I prefer to run in the same course over which the great nurse in Old Arunca drove his steets. When a soft eunuch takes to Metramony and Mavia with spear in hand and breasts exposed to pig sticking, when a fellow under whose razor my stiff youthful beard used to grade challenges with his single wealth, the whole nobility, when a gutter snipe of the Nile, like Christenus, a slave born Denison of Canopus, hitches a terrarium cloak onto his shoulder whilst on his sweating finger he airs a summer ring of gold, unable to endure the weight of a heavier gem. It is hard not to white satire. For who can be so tolerant of this monstrous city? Who so iron of soul as to contain himself when the brand new litter of lawyer Maytho comes along, filled with his huge self after him, one who is informed against his noble patron and will soon despoil our pillaged nobility of what remains to them. One whom Mather dreads, whom carers propitiates by a bribe and to whom thy meal was made over by the terrified lateness. When you are thrust on one side by men who earn legacies by nightly performances and are raced to heaven by that no royal road to high performant, the favours of an aged and wealthy woman. Each of the lovers will have his share. Proculeos at 12th part, Jilu 11 parts, each in proportion to the magnitude of his services. Let each take the prize of his own blood and turn as pale as a man who has trodden upon a snake barefooted, or of one who awaits his turn to a raid before the altar at Lactonum. Why tell how my heart bones hot with rage when I see the people hustled by a mob of retainers attending on one who has defrauded and debauched his ward, or on another who has been condemned by a futile verdict? For what matters infamy if the cash be kept? The exiled Marius carouses from the eighth hour of the day and revels in the wrath of heaven, while you, poor province, win your cause and weep. Must I not deem these things worthy of the Venusian's lamp? Must I not have my fling at them? Should I do better to tell tales about Hercules, or Diomed, or the bellowing in the labyrinth, or about the flying carpenter and the lad who splashed into the sea? And that in an age when the compliant husband, if his wife may not lawfully inherit, takes money from her paramour, being well trained to keep his eyes upon the ceiling, or to snore with wakeful nose over his cups. An age when one who has squandered his family fortunes upon horse flesh thinks it right and proper to look for the command of a cohort, see him dashing at breakneck speed, like a very automaton along the Flaminian way, holding the reins himself, while he shows himself off to his great courted mistress. Would you not like to fill up a whole notebook at the street crossings when you see a forger born along upon the neck of six porters, and exposed to view on this side and on that in his almost naked litter? And reminding you of the lounging machinus, one who by help of a scrap of paper and a moistened seal has converted himself into a fine and wealthy gentleman, then up comes a lordly dame who, when her husband wants a drink, mixes toad's blood with his old Calenian, and improving upon Locusta herself teaches her artless neighbors to brave the talk of the town and carry forth to burial the blackened corpses of their husbands. If you want to be anybody nowadays, you must dare some crime that merits narrow Gaiaura or a goal. Honesty is praised and starves. It is to their crimes that men owe their pleasure grounds and high commands, their fine tables and old silver goblets with goats standing out in relief. Who can get sleep for thinking of a money-loving daughter-in-law seduced, of brides that have lost their virtue, or of adulterers not out of their teens? Though nature say me nay, indignation will prompt my verse of whatever kind it be, such verses I can write, or a clovinus. From the day when the rain clouds lifted up the waters, and Eucalean climbed that mountain in his ship to seek an oracle. That day when the stones grew soft and warm with life, and pyros showed maidens in nature's garb to men. All the doings of mankind, their vows, their fears, their angers, and their pleasures, their joys and goings to and fro shall form the modless subject of my page. For when was vice more rampant? When did the more of arrowies gape wider? When was gambling so reckless? Men come not now with purses to the hazard of the gaming table, but with a treasure chest beside them. What battles will you there see waged with a steward for armor bureau? Is it a simple form of madness to lose a hundred thousand cesterces, and not have a shirt to give to a shivering slave? Which of our grandfathers built such numbers of villas, or dined with himself of seven courses? Look now at the meagre doles sat down upon the threshold for a toga-clad mob to scramble for. The patron first peers into your face, fearing that you may be claiming under someone else's name. Once recognized, you will get your share. He then bids the cryer call upon the Trojan blooded nobles, for they too beseech the door as well as we. The patron first says he, and after him the tribune. But I was here first, says a freedman who stops the way. Why should I be afraid, or hesitate to keep my place? Though born on the euphrates, a fact which the little windows in my ears would testify, though I myself denied it. Yet I am the owner of five shops, which bring me in four hundred thousand cesterces. What better thing does the broad purple be stow if a Corvinus herds sheep for daily wage in the Laurentian country, while I possess more property than either a palace or a leakiness? So let the tribunes await their turn. Let money carry the day. Let the sacred office give way to one who came but yesterday with whitened feet into our city. For no deity is held in such reverence amongst us as wealth. Though as yet, oh baneful money, though hast no temple of thine own, not yet have reared altars to money in like manner as we worship peace and honor, victory or virtue, or that concord that twitters when we salute your nest. If then the great officers of state reckon up at the end of the year how much the doll brings in, how much it adds to their income, what shall we dependents do who, out of the self-same doll, have to find ourselves in coats and shoes in the bread and fire of our homes? A mob of litters comes in quest of a hundred farthings. Here is a husband going the round, followed by a sickly or pregnant wife. Another, by a clever and well-known trick, claims for a wife that is not there, pointing in her stead to a closed and empty chair. My girl is in there, says he. Let us off quick, will you not? Bella, put out your head. Don't disturb her, she's asleep. The day itself is marked out by a fine round of business. First comes the doll, then the coats, and Apollo learned in the law, and those triumphal statues amongst which some Egypt and Erebaq or other has dared to set up his titles. Against whose statue more than one kind of nuisance may be committed. We written topless, the old clients leave the doll, though the last hope that a man will link which is that of a dinner. The poor wretches must buy their cabbage and their fuel. Meanwhile their lordly patron will be devouring the choicest products of wood and sea, lying alone upon an empty couch. For of those huge and splendid antique dinner tables he will consume a whole patrimony at a single meal. Eolong no parasites will be left. Who can bear to see luxury so mean? What a huge gullet to have a whole boar, an animal created for conviviality, served up to it. But you will soon pay for it, my friend, when you take off your clovers and with distended stomach carry your peacock into the bath undigested. Hence a sudden death and an interstate old age. The new and merry tale runs the round of every dinner table, and the corpse is carried forth to burial amid the cheers of enraged friends. To these ways of ours posterity will have nothing to add. Our grandchildren will do the same things and desire the same things that we do. All vice is at its acme. Up with your sales and shake out every stitch of canvas. Here perhaps you will say, where find the talent to match the theme? Where find that freedom of our forefathers to write whatever the burning soul desired? What men is there that I dare not name? What matters it whether mucous forgives my words or no? But just describe tagalinas, and you will blaze amid those faggots in which men, with their furrows tightly gripped, stand and burn and smoke, and you trace a broad furrow through the middle of the arena. What is a man who has administered aconite to half a dozen uncles to write by and look down upon me from his swaying cushions? Yes, and when he comes near you, put your finger to your lip. He who but says the word, that's the man, will be counted an informer. You may set in ears and the brave futilean in fighting with an easy mind. It will hurt no one's feelings to hear how Achilles was slain, or how Hylas was searched for when he tumbled after his pitcher. But when Lucilius roars and rages as if with sword in hand, the hero whose soul was cold with crime grows red. He sweats with the secret consciousness of sin, hence the wrath and tears. So turn these things over in your mind before the trumpet sounds. The hermit once don't. It is too late to repent you of the battle. Then I will try what I may say of those worthies whose ashes lie under the Flaminian and Latin roads. End of Satire 1. Satire 2. Of the satires by juvenile. Translated by George Gilbert Ramsey. This leap provokes recording is in the public domain. Satire 2. Translated by J. J. Ramsey. Moralists without morals. I would faint flee to Samazia and the frozen sea when people who ate the curry and live like beckonnels dare talk about morals. In the first place, they are unlearned purses, though you may find their houses cramped with plaster casts of chrysipus. For the greatest hero is the man who has bought a lightness of Aristotle, or Pythagoras, or bits his shelves preserve an original portrait of Cleanthus. Men's faces are not to be trusted. Does not every street abound in gloomy visage debauchies? And do you rebuke fool practices when you are yourself the most notorious of the Socratic reprobates? A hairy buddy and arms stiff with bristles give promise of a manly soul, but the doctor grins when he cuts into the groves on your shaved buttocks. Men of your kidney talk little. They glory in tessitonity and cut their hair shorter than their eyebrows. Heribomios himself is more open and more honest. His face, his walk, betray his distemper, and I charge destiny with his failings. Such men excite your pity by their frankness. The very fury of their passions wins them pardon. Far worse are those who denounce evil ways in the language of the Hercules, and after discoursing upon virtue, prepare to practice vice. Am I to respect you, Sextus? Cross the ill-famed by wireless. When you do as I do, how am I worse than yourself? Let the straight-legged man laugh at the club-footed, the white man at the black amour, but who could endure the gracky railing at sedition? Who will not confound heaven with earth, and see with sky if ververs denounce thieves or milo cup-fields? If Claudios condemn adulterers or Catalan operate cathedrals? Or if cellars three disciples invade against prescriptions? If Claudios condemn adulterers or Catalan operate cathedrals? Or if cellars three disciples invade against prescriptions? Such a man was that adulterer who, after lately defiling himself by a union of the tragic style, revived the stern laws that were to be a terror to all men, I, even to Mars and Venus, at the moment when Julia was relieving her fertile womb and giving birth to abortions that displayed the similitude of her uncle. Is it not then right and proper that the very worst of sinners, is it not then right and proper that the very worst of sinners should despise your pretended scurry and bite back when bitten? Leronia could not contain herself when one of these sore-faced worthy's cried out, What of your julian law? Has it gone to sleep? To which she answered smilingly, Oh happy times to have you for a sense of our morals. Once more may Rome regain her modesty, a third Cato has come down to us from the skies. But tell me, where did you buy that balsam juice that excels from your hairy neck? Don't be ashamed to point out to me the shopman. If laws and statutes are to be raked up, you should cite first of all this cantimia, and choir first into the things that are done by men. Men do more wicked things than we do, but they are protected by their numbers and the tight-locked shields of their phalanx. Male effeminates agree wondrously well among themselves. Never in our sex will you find such loathsome examples of evil. Do we women ever plead in the courts? Are we learned in the law? Do your call-houses ever ring with our bawling? Some few of us are restless, some of us eat iterations. Humans spin wool and bring back your tale of work in baskets when it is done. You twirl round the spindle and bake with fine thread, more deftly than pinealope, more delicately than arachnid. Doing work such as unkempt drapes, squatting on a lock would do. Everybody knows why Heister left all his property to his freedmen, why in his lifetime he gave so many presents to his young wife. The woman who sleeps third in a big bed will want for nothing. So when you take a husband, keep your mouth shut, precious stones will be the reward of a well-kept secret. After this, what condemnation can be pronounced on women? Power-sensor absorbs the crowd and passes judgment on the kitchen. While Laronia was uttering these plain truths, the would-be stoics made of in confusion. For what word of untruth had she spoken? Yet what will not other men do when you, pretikers, dress yourself in garments of gauze, and while everyone is marvelling at your attire, launch out against the peculiar and the polite. Fabula is an adulteress, condemn carfinia of the same crime, if you please. But, however guilty, they would never wear such a gown as yours. Oh, but, you see, these July days are so sweltering. And why not plead without clothes? Such madness would be less disgraceful. A pretty garb yours, in which to propose or expound laws to our countrymen, flushed with victory, and with their wounds yet unhealed, and to those mountain rustics who had laid down their plows to listen to you. What would you not exclaim if you saw a judge dressed like that? Would a robe of gauze sit becomingly on witness? You, pretikers, you, the keen, unbending champion of human liberty, to be clothed in a transparency. This plague has come upon us by infection, and it will spread still further, just as in the fields the scape of one sheep or the mange of one pig destroys an entire herd, just as one bunch of grapes takes on its sickly color from the aspect of its neighbor. Some day you will venture on something more shameful than this dress, no one reaches the depth of turpitude all at once. In due time you will be welcomed by those who in their homes put fillets around their brows, sway themselves with necklaces, and propitiate the bonadere with the stomach of a pork and a huge bowl of wine. Though by an evil usage the Goddess warns off all women from the door, none but males may approach her altar. Away with you, profane women, is the cry, no booming horn, no she-men's truth here. Such were the secret torturide orgies, with which the bacteia weareth their sycropian cutitle. One prolongs his eyebrows with some damp soot on the edge of the needle, and lifts up his blinking eyes to be painted. Another drinks out of an obscenely shaped glass, and ties up his long locks in a gilden net. He is clothed in blue checks, or smooth-faced green, the attendance wears by Juneau like his master. Another holds in his hand a mirror, like that carried by the effeminate oathal, a trophy of the Aruncan actor, in which he gazed at his own image in full armor, when he was just ready to give the order to advance, a thing notable and novel in the annals of our time, a mirror among the kit of civil war. It needed, in truth, a mighty general to slay Galba, and keep his own skin shaved. It needed a citizen of highest courage to ape the splendors of the palace on the field of Bibriacan, and plaster his face with dough. Never did the quiver-bearing semi-rum as the like in her Assyrian realm, nor the despairing Cleopatra, and bought her ship at Actio. No decency of language is there here, no regard for the menace of the table. You will hear all the fool-talk and squeaking tones of Cybele, a grey-haired, frenzied old man presides over the wights. He is a rare and notable master of the art of gluttony, and should be hired to teach it. But why wait any longer, when it were time in fragile fashion to lob off the superfluous flesh? Cricus has presented to a cornered player, or perhaps it was a player on the straight home, a dowry of four hundred thousand cisterces. The contract has been signed, the benedictions have been pronounced, the banqueters are seated, the new-maid bride is reclining on the bosom of her husband. Oh ye nobles of Rome, is it a sooth-sayer that we need or sender? Would you be more aghast, would you deem it a greater portent, if a woman gave birth to a calf, or an ox to a lamb? The man who is now arraying himself on the flances and train, and veil of a bride, once carried the grivering shields of mass by the sacred thongs, and sweated under the sacred burden. O father of our city, whence came such wickedness among thy Latin shepherds? How did such lust possess thy grandchildren, O gradiars? Behold, here you have a man of high birth and wealth, being handed over in marriage to a man, and yet neither shakers thy helmet, nor smitest the earth with thy spear, nor yet protestest to thy father? Away with thee, then, begun from the broad martyre plain, which thou hast forgot. I have a ceremony to attend, both one, at dawn tomorrow, in the Quirineo Valley. What is the occasion? No need to ask, a friend is taking to himself a husband quite a small affair. Yes, and if we only live long enough, we shall see these things done openly. People will wish to see them reported among the news of the day. Meanwhile, these would-be brides have one great trouble. They can be a no-children, wherewith to keep the affection of their husbands. Well has nature done in granting to their desires no power over their bodies. They die and felt hard, not a way else than the medicine-chest of the bloated lide, or to hold out their hands to the blows of the swift footed lupalside. Greater still-vaportant than Grecus, platinatunic, played the gladiator and fled trident in hand, accursed the arena. Grecus, a man of nobler birth and the capitalinae, or the matchelli, are the descendants of Catullus or Paulus or the Fabige, nobler than all the spectators in the podium, not accepting him, who gave the show at which that net was flung. That there are such things as mains, and kingdoms below ground, and punt poles, and stygian pools black with frogs, and all those thousands crossing over in a single bark, these things not even boys believe, except such as have not yet had their penny-bath. But just imagine them to be true. What would Curios and the two Scypios think of a bright years of the spirit of Camillus? What would the legion that fought at the Cremera think, or the young manhood that fell at the Canair? What would all those gallant hearts feel when a shade of this sort came down to them from here? They would wish to be purified, if only sulphur and torches and damp laurel branches were to be had. Such is the degradation to which we have come. Our arms indeed we have pushed beyond Giverna's shores to the new conquered orcades and the short-knighted Britain's. But the things which we do in our victorious city will never be done by the man whom we have conquered. And yet they say that once a laces, an Armenian more effeminate than any of our youth, has yielded to the order of a tribe new. Just see what evil communications do. He came as a hostage, but here boys are turned into men. Give them a long sojourn in our city, and lovers will never feel them. They will throw away their trousers and their knives, their bridles and their whips, and carry back to Attaxata the manners of our Roman youth. End of Satire 2. Section 3 of Satires. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Cynthia Moyer. Satires by Juvenile. Translated by G. G. Ramsey. Satire 3. Quid Romae Fakiam. Though put out by the departure of my old friend, I commend his purpose to fix his home at Kumai, and to present one citizen to the Sibyl. That is the Gate of Be'ai, a sweet retreat upon a pleasant shore. I myself would prefer even Prokita to the Sabura, for where has one ever seen a place so dismal and so lonely, that one would not deem it worse to live in perpetual dread of fires and falling houses, and the thousand perils of this terrible city, and poets spouting in the month of August. But while all his goods and chattels were being packed upon a single wagon, my friend halted at the dripping archway of the old Porta Capena. Here Numa held his nightly assinations with his mistress, but now the holy fount and grove and shrine are let out to Jews who possess a basket and a truss of hay for all their furnishings. For as every tree nowadays has to pay toll to the people, the muses have been ejected, and the wood has to go a-begging. We go down to the valley of Egeria, and into the caves so unlike to nature. How much more near to us would be the spirit of the fountain if its waters were fringed by a green border of grass, and there were no marble to outrage the native tufa. Here spoke Umbritius. Since there is no room, quoth he, for honest callings in this city, no reward for labour. Since my means are less to-day than they were yesterday, and to-morrow will rub off something from the little that is left, I purpose to go to the place where Daedalus put off his weary wings, while my white hairs are recent, while my old age is erect and fresh, while La Cases has something left to spin, and I can support myself on my own feet without slipping a staff beneath my hand. Farewell, my country. Let Artorius live there, and Catullus. Let those remain who turn black into white, to whom it comes easy to take contracts for temples, rivers, or harbours, for cleansing drains, or carrying corpses to the pyre, or to put up slaves for sale under the authority of the spear. These men once were hornblowers, who went the round of every provincial show, and whose puffed-out cheeks were known in every village. Today they hold shows of their own, and win applause by slaying with a turn of the thumb, whomesoever the mob bids them slay. From that they go back to contract for cesspools, and why not for any kind of thing, seeing that they are of the kind that fortune raises from the gutter to the mighty places of earth whenever she wishes to enjoy a laugh. What can I do at Rome? I cannot lie. If a book is bad, I cannot praise it and beg for a copy. I am ignorant of the movements of the stars. I cannot and will not promise to a man his father's death. I have never examined the entrails of a frog. I must leave it to others to carry to a bride the presents and messages of a paramour. No man will get my help in robbery, and therefore no governor will take me on his staff. I am treated as a maimed and useless trunk that has lost the power of its hands. What man wins favour nowadays unless he be an accomplice, one whose soul seethes and burns with secrets that must never be disclosed. No one who has imparted to you an innocent secret thinks he owes you anything or will ever bestow on you a favour. The man whom Varys loves is the man who can impeach Varys at any moment that he chooses. Ah, let not all the sands of the shaded Tagus and the gold which it rolls into the sea be so precious in your eyes that you should lose your sleep and accept gifts to your sorrow, which you must one day lay down, and be forever a terror to your mighty friend. And now let me speak at once of the race which is most dear to our rich men, and which I avoid above all others. No shyness shall stand in my way. I cannot abide Quirites, a Rome of Greeks. And yet what fraction of our dregs comes from Greece. The Syrian Orontes has long since poured into the Tiber, bringing with it its lingo and its manners, its flutes and its slanting harp strings, bringing to the timbrels of the breed and the trolls who are bidden ply their trade at the circus. Out upon you, all ye that delight in foreign strumpets with painted headdresses. Your country clown, Quirinus, now trips to dinner in Greek-fangled slippers and wears necaterian ornaments upon a charismatic neck. One comes from Lofti Sisyon, another from Amidon or Andros, others from Samos, Turalis or Alabanda, all making for the Esquilin, or for the hill that takes its name from Osier beds, all ready to worm their way into the houses of the great and become their masters. Quick of wit and of unbounded impudence, they are as ready of speech as Iseus and more torrential. Say, what do you think that fellow there to be? He has brought with him any character you please. Gramarian, orator, geometrician, painter, trainer, or rope dancer, auger, doctor, or astrologer. All sciences a fasting monsieur knows and bid him go to hell, to hell he goes. In fine the man who took to himself wings was not a moor, nor a psalmation, nor a thracian, but one born in the very heart of Athens. Must I not make my escape from purple-clad gentry like these? Is a man to sign his name before me and recline upon a couch above mine, who has been wafted to Rome by the wind which brings us our damnsons and our figs? Is it to go so utterly for nothing that as a babe I drank in the air of the avantine and was nurtured on the Sabine berry? What of this again, that these people are experts in flattery and will commend the talk of an illiterate, or the beauty of a deformed friend, and compare the scraggie neck of some weakling to the brawny throat of Hercules when holding up Anteus from the earth? Or go into ecstasies over a squeaky voice not more melodious than that of a cock when he pecks his spouse the hen? We no doubt can praise the same things that they do, but what they say is believed. Could any actor do better when he plays the part of Thais, or of a matron, or of the nude Doris? You would never think that it was an actor that was speaking, but a very woman complete in all her parts. Yet in their own country, neither Antiochus, nor Stratocles, neither Demetrius, nor the delicate Hymus will be applauded. They are a nation of play actors. If you smile, your Greek will split his sides with laughter. If he sees his friend drop a tear, he weeps though without grieving. If you call for a bit of fire in wintertime, he puts on his cloak. If you say I am hot, he breaks into a sweat. Thus we are not upon a level, he and I. He has always the best of it, being ready at any moment, by night or by day, to take his expression from another man's face, to throw up his hands and applaud if his friend spit or hiccup nicely, or if his golden basin make a gurgle when turned upside down. Besides all this, there is nothing sacred to his lusts, not the matron of the family, nor the maiden daughter, not the as yet unbearded son-in-law-to-be, not even the as yet unpolluted son. If none of these be there, he will debauch the grandmother. These men want to discover the secrets of the family and so make themselves feared. And now that I am speaking of the Greeks, pass on to the schools and hear of a graver crime. The Stoic, who informed against and slew his own young friend and disciple, was born on that river bank where the gorgons winged steed fell to earth. No, there is no room for any Roman here, where some protogenes or defyllis or hemarchus rules the roast, one who by a defect of his race never shares a friend but keeps him all to himself. For when once he has dropped into a facile ear one particle of his own and his country's poison, I am thrust from the door and all my long years of servitude go for nothing. Nowhere is it so easy as at Rome to throw an old client overboard. And besides not to flatter ourselves, what value is there in a poor man's serving here in Rome, even if he be at pains to hurry along in his toga before daylight, seeing that the priter is bidding the lictor to go full speed lest his colleague should be the first to salute the childless ladies, Albina and Modia, who have long ago been awake. Here in Rome the son of freeborn parents has to give the wall to some rich man's slave, for that other will give as much as the whole pay of a legionary tribune to enjoy the chance favors of a calvina or a cattiana. While you, when the face of some gay-decked harlot takes your fancy, scarce venture to hand her down from her lofty chair. At Rome you may produce a witness as unimpeachable as the host of the Idean goddess. Numa himself might present himself, or he who rescued the trembling Minerva from the blazing shrine. The first question asked will be as to his wealth, the last about his character. How many slaves does he keep? How many acres does he own? How big and how many are his dinner dishes? A man's word is believed in exact proportion to the amount of cash which he keeps in his strongbox. Though he swear by all the altars of Samothrace or of Rome, the poor man is believed to care not for gods and thunderbolts, the gods themselves forgiving him. And what of this that the poor man gives food and occasion for jest if his cloak be torn and dirty, if his toga be a little soiled, if one of his shoes gapes where the leather is split, or if some fresh stitches of coarse thread reveal where not one but many a rent has been patched? Of all the woes of luckless poverty, none is harder to endure than this that it exposes men to ridicule. Out you go for very shame, says the Marshal, out of the night's stalls all of you whose means do not satisfy the law. Here let the sons of panders born in any brothel take their seats. Here let the spruce son of an auctioneer clap his hands with the smart sons of a gladiator on one side of him and the young gentleman of a trainer on the other. Such was the will of the numb skull Otho who assigned to each of us his place. Whoever was approved as a son-in-law if he was short of cash and no match for the money bags of the young lady. What poor man ever gets a legacy or is appointed assessor to an ideal. Romans without money should have marched out in a body long ago. It is no easy matter anywhere for a man to rise when poverty stands in the way of his merits, but nowhere is the effort harder than in Rome, where you must pay a big rent for a wretched lodging, a big sum to fill the bellies of your slaves and buy a frugal dinner for yourself. You are ashamed to dine off Delph, but you would see no shame in it if transported suddenly to a Marcian or Sabine table, where you would be pleased enough to wear a cape of coarse Venetian blue. There are many parts of Italy to tell the truth, in which no man puts on a toga until he is dead, even on days of festival when a brave show is made in a theatre of turf and when the well-known farce steps once more upon the boards, when the rustic babe on its mother's breast shrinks back affrighted at the gaping of the pallid masks, you will see stalls and populace all dressed alike, and the worshipful Adels content with white tunics as vesture for their high office. In Rome everyone dresses above his means, and sometimes something more than what is enough is taken out of another man's pocket. This failing is universal here. We all live in a state of pretentious poverty. To put it shortly, nothing can be had in Rome for nothing. How much does it cost you to be able now and then to make your bow to Cossus or to be vouchsafed one glance with lip firmly closed from Viento? One of these great men is cutting off his beard. Another is dedicating the locks of a favourite. The house is full of cakes, which you will have to pay for. Take your cake and let this thought wrinkle in your heart. We, clients, are compelled to pay tribute and add to a shaved menial's perquisities. Who at Coole, Prynesta, or at Volcinii amid its leafy hills was ever afraid of his house tumbling down? Who, in modest Gabi'i, or on the sloping heights of Tivoli? But here we inhabit a city propped up for the most part by slender flute players. For that is how the bailiff patches up the cracks in the old wall, bidding the inmates sleep at ease under a roof ready to tumble about their ears. No, no, I must live where there are no fires, no nightly alarms. Ucalagon below is already shouting for water and shifting his chattels. Smoke is pouring out of your third floor attic above, but you know nothing of it. For if the alarm begins in the ground floor, the last man to burn will be he who has nothing to shelter him from the rain but the tiles where the gentle doves lay their eggs. Codris possessed a bed too small for the dwarf procular, a marble slab adorned by six pipkins with a small drinking cup and a recumbent chiron below, and an old chest containing Greek books whose divine lays were being gnawed by unlettered mice. Poor Codris had nothing, it is true, but he lost that nothing which was his all, and the last straw in his heap of misery is this, that though he is destitute and begging for a bite, no one will help him with a meal, no one offer him board or shelter. But if the grand house of Ostericus be destroyed, the matrons go disheveled, your great men put on mourning, the priter adjourns his court. Then indeed do we deplore the calamities of the city and bewail its fires. Before the house has ceased to burn up comes one with a gift of marble or of building materials, another offers nude and glistening statues, a third some notable work of Euphrenor or Polyclitus, or bronzes that had been the glory of old Asian shrines. Others will offer books and bookcases, or a bust of Minerva, or a hundred weight of silver plate. Thus does Persecus, that most sumptuous of childless men, replace what he has lost with more and better things, and, with good reason, incurs the suspicion of having set his own house on fire. If you can tear yourself away from the games of the circus, you can buy an excellent house at Sora, at Fabratoria, or Fursino, for what you now pay in Rome to rent a dark garret for one year. And you will there have a little garden with a shallow well from which you can easily draw water without need of a rope to bid you your weekly plants. There make your abode, mattock in hand, tending a trim garden fit to feast a hundred Pythagoreans. It is something in whatever spot, however remote, to have become the possessor of a single lizard. Most sick people here in Rome perish for want of sleep, the illness itself having been produced by food lying undigested on a fevered stomach. For what sleep is possible in a lodging? Who but the wealthy get sleep in Rome? There lies the root of the disorder, the crossing of wagons in the narrow winding streets, the slanging of drovers when brought to a stand would make sleep impossible for a drusus or a sea calf. When the rich man has a call of social duty, the mob makes way for him as he is born swiftly over their heads in a huge Liburnian car. He writes or reads or sleeps as he goes along, for the closed window of the litter induces slumber. Yet he will arrive before us, hurry as we may, we are blocked by a surging crowd in front and by a dense mass of people pressing in on us from behind. One man digs an elbow into me, another a sedan pole, one bangs a beam, another a wine cask against my head, my legs are bit plastered with mud, huge feet trample on me from every side and a soldier plants his hobnails firmly on my toe. See now the smoke rising from that crowd which hurries for the daily dole. There are a hundred guests each followed by a kitchener of his own. Corbulo himself could scarce bear the weight of all the big vessels and other gear which that poor little slave is carrying with head erect, fanning the flame as he runs along. Newly patched tunics are torn in two. Up comes a huge log swaying on a wagon and then a second tray carrying a whole pine tree, towering aloft and threatening the people. For if that axle with its load of legurian marble breaks down and pours its spilt contents onto the crowd, what is left of their bodies? Who can identify the limbs? Who the bones? The poor man's crushed corpse disappears, just like his soul. At home meanwhile the folk unwitting are washing the dishes, blowing up the fire with distended cheek, clattering over the greasy flesh scrapers, filling the oil flasks and laying out the towels. And while each of them is thus busy over his own task, their master is already sitting, a new arrival upon the bank and shuddering at the grim ferryman. He has no copper in his mouth too tender for his fare and no hope of a passage over the murky flood. And now regard the different and diverse perils of the night. See what a height it is to that towering roof from which a pot sheared comes crack upon my head every time that some broken or leaky vessel is pitched out of the window. See with what a smash it strikes and dents the pavement. There's death in every open window as you pass along at night. You may well be deemed a fool, improvident of sudden accident, if you go out to dinner without having made your will. You can but hope and put up a piteous prayer in your heart that they may be content to pour down on you the contents of their slop pales. Your drunken bully, who has by chance not slain his man, passes a night of torture like that of Achilles when he bemoaned his friend lying now upon his face and now upon his back. He will get no rest in any other way since some men can only sleep after a brawl. Yet, however reckless the fellow may be, however hot with wine and young blood, he gives a wide berth to one whose scarlet cloak and long retinue of attendance with torches and brass lamps in their hands bid him keep his distance. But to me, who am want to be escorted home by the moon or by the scant light of a candle whose wick I husband with due care, he pays no respect. Hear how the wretched fray begins. If fray it can be cold when you do all the thrashing and I get all the blows. The fellow stands up against me and bids me halt. Obey I must. What else can you do when attacked by a madman stronger than yourself? Where are you from, shouts he, whose swipes, whose beans have blown you out, with what cobbler have you been munching cut leeks and boiled sheep's head? What, Sira, no answer? Speak out or take that upon your shins. Where is your stand, in what prayer shop shall I find you? Whether you venture to say anything or make off silently, it's all one. He will thrash you just the same and then, in a rage, take bale from you. Such is the liberty of the poor man. Having been pounded and cuffed into a jelly, he begs and prays to be allowed to return home with a few teeth in his head. Nor are these your only terrors. When your house is shut, when bar and chain have made fast your shop and all is silent, you will be robbed by a burglar, or perhaps a cut throat will do for you quickly with cold steel. For whenever the pontine marshes and the gallenarian forest are secured by an armed guard, all that tribe flocks into Rome as into a fish preserve. What furnaces, what anvils, are not groaning with the forging of chains? That is how our iron is mostly used, and you may well fear that ere long none will be left for plowshares, none for hose and mattocks. Happy were the forebears of our great grandfathers, happy the days of old which under kings and tribunes beheld Rome satisfied with a single jail. To these I might add more and different reasons, but my cattle call, the sun is sloping, and I must away. My mule tear has long been signalling to me with his whip, and so farewell, forget me not. And if ever you run over from Rome to your own Aquinum to recruit, summon me too from Cumae to your Helvine series and Diana. I will come over to your cold country in my thick boots to hear your satires, if they think me worthy of that honour. End of Satire 3 Section 4 of Satires. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Alex Lau. Satires by Juvenile. Translated by G. G. Ramsey. Satire 4. A Tale of Turbot. Crispiness once again, a man whom I shall often have to call on to the scene, a prodigy of wickedness without one redeeming virtue. A sickly Libertine, strong only in his lusts, which scorn none, save the unwedded. What matters it then, how spacious are the colonnades, which tire out his horses. How large the shady groves in which he drives. How many acres near a forum. How many palaces he has bought. No bad man can be happy, least of all the incestuous seducer with whom lately lay affiliated priestess. Doomed to pass beneath the earth, with the blood still warm within her veins. Today I shall tell of a less heinous deed. Though had any other man done the like, he would fall under the censor's lash. For what would be shameful in good men, like Seus or Teus, sat gracefully on Crispinus? What can you do when the man himself is more foul and monstrous than any charge you can bring against him? Crispinus bought a mullet for six thousand cestices. One thousand cestices for every pound of fish, as those would say who make big things bigger in the telling of them. I could commend the man's cunning if by such a lordly gift he secured the first place in the will of some childless old male, or better still, sent it to some great lady, who rides in a close broad-windowed litter. But nothing of the sort. He bought it for himself. We see many a thing done nowadays, which poor, niggardly, apetious never did. What did you, Crispinus? You who once wore a strip of your native papyrus ran your loins. Give that price for a fish. A price bigger than you need have paid for the fisherman himself. A price for which you might buy a whole estate in some province, or a still-large one in Apulia. What kind of feasts are we to suppose were guzzled by our emperor himself when all those thousands of cestices, forming a small fraction, a mere side dish of a modest entertainment, were belched up by a purple-clad parasite of the August palace. One who is now chief of the knights, and who once used to hawk at the top of his voice. A broken lot of his fellow countrymen, the Sprats. Begin, Caliope. Let us take our seeds. There is no mere fable, but a true tale that is being told. Tell it forth, ye maidens of Piaria, and let it profit me, that I have called you maids. What time the last of the Flavii was flaying the half-dying world, and Rome was enslaved to a bald-headed Nero, there fell into a net in the sea of Hadria, in front of the shrine of Venus that stands in Dorian Ancona. A turbot of wondrous size, filling up all its meshes, a fish no less huge than those which the lake Meotis conceals beneath the ice till it is broken up by the sun, and then sends forth, torpid through sloth and fattened by long cold, to the mouths of the Pontic Sea. This monster, the master of the boats and line designs for the high pontiff, for who would dare to put up for sale or to buy so big a fish in days when even the seashores were crowded with informers? The inspectors of seaweed would straight away have taken the law of the poor fisherman, ready to affirm that the fish was a runaway that had long feasted in Caesar's fishponds, escaped from vents. He must needs be restored to his former master, for if Palfurius is to be believed, or Armillatus, every rare and beautiful thing in the wide ocean, in whatever sea it swims, belongs to the imperial treasury, the fish, therefore, that it be not wasted shall be given as a gift. And now, death-bearing autumn was giving way before the frosts, thievery patience were hoping for a quarter, and bleak winter's blasts were keeping the booty fresh, yet on sped the fisherman, as though the south wind were at his heels. And when beneath him lay the lake where Alba, though in ruins, still holds the Trojan fire, and worships the lesser Vesta, a wandering crowd barred his way for a while. As it gave way, the gates swung open on easy hinge, and the excluded fathers gazed on the dish that had gained an entrance. Admitted to the presence, receive quaffee of Pysenium. A fish too big for a private kitchen, be diskept as a festive day, hasten to fill out thy belly with good things, and devour a turbot that has been preserved to grace thy reign. The fish himself wanted to be caught. Could flattery be more gross? Yet the monarch's comb began to rise. There is nothing that divine majesty will not believe concerning itself, when lauded to the skies. But no platter could be found big enough for the fish. So a council of magnates is summoned, men hated by the emperor, and on whose faces sat the pallor of that great and perilous friendship. First to answer the Ligurians' call, haste, haste, he is seated, was Pegasus. Hastily catching up his cloak, he that had been newly appointed as Baelith over the astonished city, for what else but Baeliths were the prefects of those days? Of whom Pegasus was the best and the most righteous expounder of the law, though he thought that even in those dread days there should be no sword in the hand of justice. Next to come in was the aged genial Crispus, whose gentle soul well matched his style of eloquence. No better advisor than he for a ruler of lands and seas, and nations had he been free under that scourge and plague to denounce cruelties and proper honest councils. But what can be more dangerous than the ear of a tyrant, on whose caprice hangs the life of a friend, who has come to talk of the rain, or the heat, or the showery spring weather? So Crispus never struck out against the torrent, nor was he want to speak freely the thoughts of his heart and stake his life upon the truth. Thus was it that he lived through many winters and saw his 80th solstice, protected even in that court by weapons such as these. Next to him hurried Achilles of like age as himself, and with him the youth, who little merited the cruel death that was so soon hurried on by his master's sword. But to be both young and noble has long since become a prodigy, hence I would rather be a giant's little brother. Therefore it availed the poor youth nothing that he speared the Numidian bears, stripped as a huntsman upon the Alban arena, for who nowadays would not see through patrician tricks? Who would now marvel brutus at that old world cleverness of yours, to an easy matter to be full a king that wears a beard? No more cheerful in face, though of ignoble blood, came rubrius, condemned long since of a crime that may not be named, and yet more shameless than a reprobate, who should write satire. There too was present the unwieldy frame of montanus, and Crispus reeking at early dawn, with odors enough to out-scent two funerals, more ruthless than he Pompeius, whose gentle whisper would cut men's throats, and Fuscus, who planned battles in his marble halls, keeping his death for the dashian vultures. Then, along with the sage Viento, came the death-dealing catalysts, who burnt with love for a maiden whom he had never seen, a mighty and notable marvel, even in these days of ours, a blind flatterer, a dire courtier from a beggar's stand, well-fitted to beg at the wheels of chariots, and blow soft kisses to them, as they rolled down the Orishan hill, non-marveled more at the fish than he, turning to the left as he spoke, only the creature happened to be on his right. In like fashion would he commend the thrusts of a collision gladiator, or the machine which whisks up the boys into the awning. But Viento was not to be outdone, and like a seer in spite, O Bologna, by thine own gadfly, he burst into prophecy, a mighty presage hast thou, O Emperor, of a great and glorious victory, some king will be thy captive, or Arviragus will be hurled from his British chariot. The brute is foreign-born, dost thou not see the prickles bristling upon his back? Nothing remained for Fabricius but to tell the turbid's age and birthplace. What, then, do you advise, quoth the Emperor, shall we cut it up? Nay, nay, rejoins Montanas, let that indignity be spared him, let a deep vessel be provided to gather his huge dimensions within its slender walls. Some great and unforeseen Prometheus is destined for the dish. Haste, haste with clay and wheel, but from this day forth, O Caesar, let potters always attend upon thy camp. This proposal, so worthy of the man, gained the day. Well known to him were the old debauchers of the Imperial court, which Nero carried on to midnight till a second hunger came, and veins were heated with hot fulernian. No one in my time had more skill in the eating-art than he. He could tell at the first bite whether an oyster had been bred at Cersei, or on the Lucrine rocks, or on the beds of Rutupii. One glance would tell him the native shore of a sea urchin. The council rises, and the counsellors are dismissed. Men whom the mighty Emperor had dragged in terror and hot haste to his albin castle, as though to give them news of the chatty, or the savage sycambrie, or as though an alarming dispatch had arrived on wings of speed from some remote quarter of the earth. And yet, with that he had rather given to folly such as these, all those days of cruelty when he robbed a city of its noblest and choicest souls. With none to punish or avenge. He could steep himself in the blood of the lamiae, but when once he became a terror to the common herd, he met his doom. End of Satire 4. Reading by Alex Lau. Section 5 of Satires. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Alex Lau. Satires by Juvenal. Translated by G. G. Ramsey. Satire 5. How Clients Are Entertained. If you are still unashamed of your plan of life, and still deem it to be the highest bliss to live at another man's board, if you can brook indignities which neither Sarmentus nor the despicable Gabba would have endured at Caesar's ill-assorted table, I should refuse to believe your testimony, even upon oath. I know of nothing so easily satisfied as the belly, but even granted that you have nothing wherewith to fill its emptiness. Is there no key vacant, no bridge? Can you find no fraction of a beggar's mat to stand upon? Is a dinner worth all the insults with which you have to pay for it? Is your hunger so important when it might, with greater dignity, be shivering where you are and munching dirty scraps of dog's bread? First of all, be sure of this, that when bidden to dinner, you receive payment in full for all your past services. A meal is the return which your grand friendship yields you. The great man scores it against you, and though it come but seldom, he scores it against you all the same. So, if after a couple of months it is his pleasure to invite his forgotten client, lest the third place on the lowest couch should be unoccupied, and he says to you, come and dine with me. You are in a seventh heaven. What more can you desire? Now at last has Trebius got the reward for which he must needs cut short his sleep, and hurry with shoestrings untied, fearing that the whole crowd of callers may already have gone their rounds, at an hour when the stars are fading, or when the chilly wane of boots is wheeling slowly round. And what a dinner after all. You are given wine that fresh clipped wool would refuse to suck up, and which soon converts your revelers into quarry bands. Foul words are the prelude to the fray, but before long, tankards will be flying about, a battle royal with a sagantine crockery will soon be raging between you and the company of freed men, and you will be staunching your wounds with a bloodstained napkin. The great man himself drinks wine bottled in the days when consoles wore long hair, the juice which he holds in his hand or squeezed during the social wars, but never a glass of it will he send to a friend suffering from dyspepsia. Tomorrow he will drink a vintage from the hills of Alba, or Setia, whose date and name have been effaced by the soot which time has gathered upon the aged jar, such wine as Frasier and Helvidius, used to drink with chaplets on their heads upon the birthdays of Cassius and the Brutti. The cup in Viro's hands is richly crusted with amber and rough with barrel. To you no gold is entrusted, or if it is, a watcher is posted over it to count the gems and keep an eye on your sharp fingernails. Pardon his anxiety, that fine jasper of his is much admired. For Viro, like so many others, transfers from his fingers to his cups, the jewels with which the youth preferred to the jealous Yarbis used to adorn his scabbard. To you will be given a cracked cup with four nozzles that takes its name from a Benaventine cobbler, and calls for Sulfur, wherewith to repair its broken glass. If my Lord's stomach is fevered with food and wine, a decoction colder than frackian whorefrosts will be brought to him. Did I complain just now that you were given a different wine? Why, the water which you client's drink is not the same. It will be handed to by a Ghetulian groom, or by the bony hand of a blackamore whom you would rather not meet at midnight when driving past the monuments on the hilly Latin way. Before mine host stands the very pink of Asia, a youth bought for a sum bigger than the entire fortune of the warlike Tullus, or Ancus, more valuable in short than all the chattels of the kings of Rome. That being so, when you are thirsty to look your suave Ganymede, the page who has cost so many thousands, cannot mix a drink for a poor man, but then his beauty, his youth, justify his disdain. When will he get as far as you? When does he listen to your request for water, hot or cold? It is beneath him to attend to an old dependent. He is indignant, that you should ask for anything, and that you should be seated while he stands. All your great houses are full of saucy slaves. See, with what a grumble another of them has handed you a bit of hard bread that you can scarce break in two, or lumps of dough that have turned mouldy, stuff that will exercise your grinders and into which no tooth can gain admittance. For Viro himself, a delicate loaf is reserved, whiter snow and kneaded of the finest flour. Be sure to keep your hands off it. Take no liberties with the bread basket. If you are presumptuous enough to take a piece, there will be someone to bid you put it down. What, sir impudence, will you please fill yourself from your proper tray, and learn the colour of your own bread? What, you ask, was it for this, that I would so often leave my wife's side on a spring morning, and hurry up to chilly Esquiline, when a spring's skies were rattling down the pitiless hail, and the rain was pouring in streams off my cloak. See now, that huge lobster being served to my lord, all garnished with asparagus. See how his lordly breast distinguishes the dish. With what a tale he looks down upon the company, borne aloft in the hands of that tall attendant. Before you is placed on a tiny plate, a crab hemmed in by half an egg, a fit banquet for the dead. The host sews his fish in venafran oil. The sickly greens offered to you, poor devil, will smell of the lamp, for the stuff contained in your crouettes was brought up the tibre in a sharp, proud Numidian canoe. Stuff which presents anyone at room, sharing a bath with bochar, and which will even protect you from a black serpent's bite. My lord will have a mullet dispatched from Corsica, or the rocks of Taurominium, for in a rage for gluttony our own seas have given out. The nets of the fish market are forever raking our home waters, and prevent terenian fish from attaining their full size. And so the provinces supply our kitchens, from the provinces come the fish for the legacy hunter lanus to buy, and for Aurelia to send to market. Viro is served with a lamprey, the finest at the straits of Sicily can bevay, for so long as the south wind stays at home and sits in his prison house drying his dank wings. Sharibdis has no terrors for the daring fisherman, for you is reserved an eel, first cousin to a water snake, or, per chance, a pike mottled with ice spots. He too was bred on tibre's banks, and was wont to find his way into the inmost recesses of the subura, battening himself amid its flowing sewers. And now, one word with the great man himself, if he will lend his ear, no one asks of you such lordly gifts as Seneca, or the good Piso, or Cotta, used to send to their humble friends, for in the days of old, the glory of giving was deemed grander than titles or fasses. All we ask of you is that you should dine with us a fellow citizen, do this and remain like so many others nowadays, rich for yourself and poor to your friends. Before Viro is put a huge goose's liver, a capon as big as a goose, and a boar piping hot, worthy of yellow-haired Maliga's steel, then will come truffles if it be springtime, and a longed for thunder have enlarged our dinners. Keep your corn to yourself, Olivia, says Alidius, and yoke your oxen if only you send us truffles. During all this time, lest any occasion for disgust should be wanting, you may be hold the carver capering and gesticulating with knife in air, and carrying out all the instructions of his Perceptor, for it makes a mighty difference with what gestures a hair or a hen be carved. If you ever dare to utter one word as though you are possessed of three names, you will be dragged by the heels and thrust out of doors as cacus was. After the drubbing he got from Hercules, when will Viro offer to drink wine with you, or take a cup that is being polluted by your lips, which one of you would be so foolhardy, so lost to shame, as to say you're patron. A glass with you, sir? No, no, there's not many a thing which a man whose coat has holes in it cannot say. But if some god, or godlike mannequin, more kindly than the fates, should present you with four hundred thousand sistercies, O how great a personage would you become, from being a nobody, how dear a friend to Viro. 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 anus 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, but as things now are, though your my cally pour into your paternal bosom three boys at a berth, Viro will be charmed with the chattering brood, and will order queerasses of green rushes to be given them, and little nuts and pennies too if they be asked for, when a little parasites present themselves at his table. 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, to himself and the rest of the Viros, he will order apples to be served who's sent alone would be a feast, apples such as grew in a never-failing autumn of the Faetians, and which you might believe to have been filched from the African sisters, you are treated to a rotten apple, like those munched on a 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. You may perhaps oppose that Viro 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, 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 a guest of grandi, 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 warned a Truscan bullah 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. End of Satire 5 Recording by Alex Lau www.twitter.com slash alex of the day Section 6 of satires. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Martin Geeson Satires by Juvenile Translated by G. G. Ramsey Satires 6 The Ways of Women Part 1 In the days of Saturn, 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 hillbred wife spread her silven bed with leaves and straw, and the skins of her neighbours, the wild beasts, a wife not like to thee Ocynthia, nor to thee Lesbia, whose bright eyes were clouded by a sparrow's dares, but one whose breasts gave suck to lusty babes, often more unkempt herself than her acorn belching spouse. For in those days, when the world was young, and the skies were new, men born of the ribbon oak, or formed of dust, lived differently from now, and had no parents of their own. Under Jove, per chance, some few traces of ancient modesty may have survived, but that was before he had grown his beard, before the Greeks had learned to swear by someone else's head, when men feared not thieves for their cabbages or apples, and lived with unwalled gardens. After that, Astrea withdrew by degrees to heaven, with chastity as her comrade, the two sisters taking flight together. To set your neighbour's bed a shaking pastumus, and to flout the genius of the sacred couch, is now an ancient and long-established practice. All other sins came later, the products of the Age of Iron, but it was the silver age that saw the first adulterers. Nevertheless, in these days of ours, you are preparing for a covenant, a marriage contract, and a betrothal. You are by now getting your hair cut by a master barber. You have also, perhaps, given her a pledge to her finger. What pastumus are you, you who once had your wits, taking to yourself a wife? Tell me what, Tisifone, what snakes are driving you mad? Can you submit to a she-tirant, when there is so much rope to be had, so many dizzy heights of windows standing open, and when the I-Million Bridge offers itself to hand? Or if none of all these modes of exit hit your fancy, how much better to take some boy bed-fellow, who would never wrangle with you at night, never ask presents of you when in bed, and never complain that you took your ease and were indifferent to his solicitations? But Ursidius approves of the Julian Law. He purposes to bring up a dear little heir, though he will thereby have to do without the fine turtles, the bearded mullet, and all the legacy-hunting delicacies of the meat market. What can you think impossible if Ursidius takes to himself a wife? If he, who has long been the most notorious of gallants, who has so often found safety in the corn bin of the luckless Latinus, puts his head into the connubial noose, and what think you of his searching for a wife of the good old virtue assort? Oh, doctors, lance his over-blooded veins! Pretty fellow, you! Why, if you have the good luck to find a modest spouse, you should prostrate yourself before the Torpean threshold, and sacrifice a heifer with gilded horns to Juno. So few are the wives worthy to handle the filets of Ceres, from whose kisses their own father would not shrink. Weave a garland for thy doorpost, and set up wreaths of ivy over thy lintel. But will Iberina be satisfied with one man? Sooner compel her to be satisfied with one eye. You tell me of the high repute of some maiden who lives on her paternal farm. Well, let her live at Gaby, at Fidenae, as she lived in her own country, and I will believe in your paternal farm. But will anyone tell me that nothing ever took place on a mountainside or in a cave? Have Jupiter and Mars become so senile? Can our arcades show you one woman worthy of your vows? Do all the tears in all our theatres hold one whom you may love without misgiving, and pick out vents? When the soft bacillus dances to part of the gesticulating leader, Tokia cannot contain herself. Your Apulian maiden heathes a sudden and longing cry of ecstasy, as though she were in a man's arms. The rustic timili is all attention. It is then that she learns her lesson. Others again, when all the staged draperies have been put away, when the theatres are closed and all is silent saving the courts, and the megalesian games are far off from the plebeian, ease their dullness by taking to the mask the tharsis and the types of achers. Urbicus, in an atellan interlude, raises a laugh by the gestures of our tonnoway. The penniless Aelia is in love with him. Other women pay great prices for the favours of a comedian. Some will not allow Cris Organus to sing. His spulla has a fancy for tragedians, but do you suppose that anyone will be found to love Quintillion? If you marry a wife, it will be that the lyricist Echeon, or Glaphyrus, or the flute player Ambrosius, may become a father. Then, up with the long dais in the narrow street, adorn your doors and doorpost with wreaths of laurel, that your highborn son, O Lentulus, may exhibit in his tortoise shell cradle the lineaments of your realus, or of a murmillo. When Epia, the senator's wife, ran off with a gladiator to Varos and the Nile, and the ill-famed city of Lagos, Canopus itself cried shame upon the monstrous morals of our town. Forgetful of home, of husband and of sister, without thought of her country, she shamelessly abandoned her weeping children, and, more marvellous still, deserted Paris and the Games. Though born in wealth, there was a babe she had slept in a bedisoned cradle on the paternal down, she made light of the sea, just as she had long made light of her good name, a loss but little accounted of among our soft, litter-riding dames. And so, with stout heart, she endured the tossing and the roaring of the Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas, and all the many seas she had to cross. For when danger comes in a right and honourable way, a woman's heart grows chill with fear. She cannot stand upon her trembling feet, but if she be doing a bold, bad thing, her courage fails not. For a husband to order his wife on board ship is cruelty. The bilge water then sickens her, the heavens go round and round. But if she is running away with a lover, she feels no qualms. Then she vomits over her husband. Now she messes with the sailors, she roams about the deck and delights in hauling at the hard ropes. And what were the youthful charms which captivated Epia? What did she see in him to allow herself to be called a she gladiator? Her dear Sergius had already begun to shave. A wounded arm gave promise of a discharge, and there were sundry deformities in his face, a scar caused by the helmet, a huge wane upon his nose, a nasty humour always trickling from his eye. But then he was a gladiator. It is this that transforms these fellows into higher synths. It was this that she preferred to children and to country, to sister and to husband. What these women love is the sword. At this same Sergius received his discharge, he would have been no better than a viento. Do the concerns of a private household and the doings of Epia affect you? Then look at those who rival the gods and hear what Claudius endured. As soon as his wife perceived that her husband was asleep, this august harlot was shameless enough to prefer a common mat to the imperial couch. Assuming a night cowl and attended by a single maid, she eschewed forth. Then, having concealed her raven locks and her light-coloured peruque, she took her place in a brothel, reeking with long-used coverlets. Entering an empty cell reserved for herself, she there took her stand and the feigned name of Laikiska, her nipples bare and gilded, and exposed to view the womb that bore thee, oh nobly born Britannicus. Here she graciously received all comers, asking from each his fee. And when at length the keeper dismissed the rest, she remained to the very last before closing her cell, and with passion still raging hot within her, went sorrowfully away. Then, exhausted but unsatisfied, with soiled cheeks, and begrimed with the smoke of lamps, she took back to the imperial pillow all the odours of the steels. Why tell of love potions, and incantations, of poisons brewed and administered to steppesons, or of the grosser crimes to which women are driven by the imperious power of sex? Their sins of lust are the least of all their sins. But tell me, why is Kinsenia, on her husband's testimony, the best of wives? She brought him a million cisterces. That is the price at which he calls her chaste. He has not pined under the darts of Venus. He was never burnt by her torch. It was the dowry that lighted his fires, the dowry that shot those arrows. That dowry bought liberty for her. She may make what signals, and write what love letter she pleases before her husband's face. The rich woman who marries a money-loving husband is as good as unmarried. Why does Sartorius burn with love for babula? If you shake out the truth, it is the face that he loves, not the woman. Let three wrinkles make their appearance. Let her skin become dry and flabby. Let her teeth turn black, and her eyes lose their luster. Then will his freedman give her the order. Pack up your traps and be off. You've become a nuisance. You are forever blowing your nose. Be off and quick about it. There's another wife coming who will not. Sniffle. But till that day comes, the lady rules the roast, asking her husband for shepherds and canusian sheep, and elms for her felonian vines. But that's a mere nothing. She asks for all his slave boys in town and country, everything that her neighbour possesses, and that she does not possess, must be bought. Then in the wintertime, when the merchant Jason is shut out from view, and his armed sailors are blocked out by the white booths, she will carry off huge crystal vases, vases bigger still of agate, and finally a diamond of great renown made precious by the finger of Berenice. It was given as a present long ago by the barbarian gripper to his incestuous sister, in that country where kings celebrate festal sabbaths with bare feet, and where a long-established clemency suffers pigs to attain old age. Do you say no worthy wife is to be found among all these crowds? Well, let her be handsome, charming, rich, and fertile. Let her have ancient ancestors ranged about her halls. Let her be more chaste than the dishevelled Sabine maidens who stopped the war. A prodigy as rare upon the earth as a black swan. Yet who could endure a wife that possessed all perfections? I would rather have a venusian wench for my wife than you, O Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, if with all your virtues you bring me a haughty brow, and reckon up triumphs as part of your marriage portion. Away with your Hannibal, I beseech you, away with syphax overpowered in his camp, take yourself off, Carthage and all. Be merciful, I pray, O Apollo, and thou, O Cordes, lay down thine arrows, these babes have done naught, shoot down their mother. Thus prayed Ampheon, but Apollo bends his bow, and Niobe led forth to the grave her troop of sons, and their father to boot, because she deemed herself of nobler race than Latona, and more prolific than the white sow of Alba. For is any dignity in a wife, any beauty worth the cost if she is forever reckoning up her merits against you? These high and transcendent qualities lose all their charm when spoiled by a pride that savours more of aloes than of honey, and who was ever so enamoured as not to shrink from the woman whom he praises to the skies, and to hate her for seven hours out of every twelve. Some small faults are intolerable to husbands. What can be more offensive than this, that no woman believes in her own beauty unless she has converted herself from a Tuscan into a Greekling, or from a maid of Sulmo into a maid of Athens. They talk nothing but Greek, though it is a greater shame for our people to be ignorant of Latin. Their fears and their wrath, their joys and their troubles, all the secrets of their souls are poured forth in Greek. Their very loves are carried on in Greek fashion. All this might be pardoned in a girl, but will you who are hard on your eighty-sixth the year still talk in Greek? That tongue is not decent in an old woman's mouth. When you come out with the wanton words, you are using in public the language of the bedchamber, caressing and naughty words like these in sight to love. But though you say them more tenderly than a hymus or a carpoforus, they will cause no flattering of the heart. Your years are counted up upon your face. If you are not to love the woman betrothed and united to you in due form, what reason have you for marrying? Why waste the sapper and the wedding-cakes to be given to the well-filled guests when the company is slipping away, to say nothing of the first night's gift of a salva rich with glittering gold, inscribed with dasier nor Germanic victories. If you are honestly auxorious and devoted to one woman, then bow your head and submit your neck to the yoke. Never will you find a woman who spares the man who loves her. For though she be herself a flame, she delights to torment and plunder him. So the better the man, the more desirable he be as a husband, the less good will he get out of his wife. No present will you ever make if your wife forbids. Nothing will you ever sell if she objects. Nothing will you buy without her consent. She will arrange your friendships for you. She will turn your now-aged friend from the door which saw the beginnings of his beard. Pandas and trainers can make their wills as they please, as also can the gentleman of the arena, but you will have to write down among your heirs more than one rival of your own. Crucify that slave, says the wife. But what crime worthy of death has he committed? asks the husband. Where are the witnesses who informed against him? Give him a hearing at least. No delay can be too long when a man's life is at stake. What you numbskull! You call a slave a man, do you? He has done no wrong, you say. Be it so, but this is my will, and my command. Let my will be the voucher for the deed. Thus does she lord it over her husband. But before long she vacates her kingdom. She flips from one home to another, wearing out her bridal veil. Then back she flies again and returns to her own imprint in the bed that she has abandoned. Leaving behind her the newly decorated door, the pestle hangings on the walls, and the garlands, still green over the threshold. Thus does the tale of her husband's grow. There will be eight of them in the course of five autums. A fact worthy of commemoration on her tomb. Give up all hope of peace, so long as your mother-in-law is alive. It is she that teaches her daughter to revel in stripping and despoiling her husband. It is she that teaches her to reply to a seducer's love letters in no plain and honest fashion. She eludes or bribes your guards. It is she that calls in archigenies, when your daughter has nothing the matter with her, and tosses off the heavy blankets. The lover, meanwhile, is in secret and silent hiding, trembling with impatience and expectation. Do you really expect the mother to teach her daughter honest ways? Ways different from her own. Nay, the vile old woman finds a profit in bringing up her daughter to be vile. There never was a case in court in which the quarrel was not started by a woman. If Manilia is not a defendant, she will be the plaintiff. She will herself frame and adjust the pleadings. She will be ready to instruct Kelsus himself how to open his cage, and how to urge his points. Oh, why need I tell of the purple wraps, and the wrestling oils used by women, who has not seen one of them smiting a stump, piercing it through and through with a foil, lunging at it with a shield, and going through all the proper motions. A matron truly qualified to blow a trumpet at the Floralia. Unless indeed she is nursing some father ambition in her bosom, and is practising for the real arena. What modesty can you expect in a woman who wears a helmet, abjures her own sex, and delights in feats of strength. Yet she would not choose to be a man, knowing the superior joys of womanhood. What a fine thing for the husband and an auction of his wife's effect, to see her belt and armlets and plumes put up for sale, with a gaiter that covers half the left leg. Or if she fight another sort of battle, how charmed you will be to see your young wife disposing of her grieves. Yet these are the women who find the thinnest of thin robes too hot for them. Whose delicate flesh is chafed by the finest of silk tissue. See how she pants as she goes through her prescribed exercises, how she bends under the weight of her helmet, how big and coarse are the bandages which enclose her haunches, and then laugh when she lays down her arms and shows herself to be a woman. Tell us, ye granddaughters of Lepidus, or of the blind Metellus, or of Fabius Gurges, what gladiator's wife ever assumed cootaments like these, when did the wife of a Silas ever gasp against a stump. The bed that holds a wife is never free from wrangling and mutual bickering. No sleep is to be got there. It is there that she sets upon her husband more savage than a tigress that has lost her cubs. Conscious of her own secret slips, she affects the grievance, abusing his slaves, or weeping over some imagined mysteries. She has an abundant supply of tears always ready in their place, awaiting her command in which fashion they should flow. You poor dolt are delighted, believing them to be tears of love, and kiss them away. But what notes, what love letters, you would find if you opened the desk of your green-eyed adulterous wife. If you find her in the arms of a slave, or of a knight, speak, speak, Quintilian. Give me one of your colours, she will say. But Quintilian has none to give. Find it to yourself, says he. We agreed long ago, said the lady, that you were to go your way and I mine. You may confound sea and sky with your bellowing. I am a human being, after all. There's no effrontery like that of a woman caught in the act. Her very guilt inspires her with wrath and insolence. But whence come these monstrosities, you ask, from what fountain do they flow? In days of old the wives of Latium were kept chaste by their humble fortunes. It was toil and brief slumbers that kept vice from polluting their modest homes. Hands chafed and hardened by tusken fleeces, Hannibal nearing the city, and husbands standing to arms at the colline gate. We are now suffering the calamities of long peace. Luxury, more deadly than any foe, has laid her hand upon us and avenges a conquered world. Since the day when Roman poverty perished, no deed of crime or lust has been wanting to us. From that moment Sibaris and Rhodes and Miletus have poured in upon our hills with the begalunded and drunken and unabashed turrentum. Filthy Lucca first brought in amongst us foreign ways. Wealth enervated and corrupted the ages with foul indulgences. What decency does Venus observe when she is drunken, when she knows not one member from another, eats giant oysters at midnight, pours foaming incuence into her unmixed falanian, and drinks out of perfume bowls, while the roof spins dizily round, the table dances, and every light shows double. Go to now and wonder what means the sneer with which Tullia sniffs the air, or what Maurer whispers to her ill-famed foster sister when she passes by the ancient altar of Chastity. It is there that they set down their litters at night and befoul the image of the goddess, playing their filthy pranks for the mourn to witness. Then, home they go, while you, when daylight comes and you are on your way to salute your mighty friends, will tread upon the traces of your wife's abominations. Well known to all are the mysteries of the good goddess, when the flute stirs the loins, and the minads of Priapus sweep along, frenzied alike by the horn blowing and the wine, whirling their locks and howling. What foul longings burn within their breasts, what cries they utter as the passion palpitates within, how drenched their limbs in torrents of old wine. Saufia challenges the slave-girls to a contest, her agility wins the prize, but she has herself in turn to bow the knee to Medullina, and so the palm remains with the mistress whose exploits match her birth. There is no pretense in the game, all is enacted to the life in a manner that would warm the cold blood of a Priam or a Nestor. And now, impatient nature can wait no longer, woman shows herself as she is, and the cry comes from every corner of the den. Let in the men! If one favoured youth is asleep, another is bitten to put on his cowl and hurry along. If better cannot be caught, a run is made upon the slaves. If they too fail, the water carrier will be paid to come in. Oh, would that our ancient practices, or at least our public rites, were not polluted by scenes like these. But every Moor and every Indian knows how Claudius forced his way into a place from which every buck-mouse scuttles away, conscious of his virility, and in which no picture of the male form may be exhibited except behind a veil. Whoever sneered at the gods in days of old, who would have dared to laugh at the earthenware bowls or black pots of Numa, or the brittle plates made out of Vatican clay. But nowadays, at what altar will you not find a Claudius? I hear all this time the advice of my old friends. Keep your women at home, and put them under lock and key. Yes, but who will watch the warders? Wives are crafty, and will begin with them. High or low, their passions are all the same. She who wears out the black cobblestones with her bare feet is no better, than she who rides upon the necks of eight stalwart Syrians.