Read Ebook: The Satires of Juvenal Persius Sulpicia and Lucilius Literally translated into English prose with notes chronological tables arguments &c. by Juvenal Lucilius Gaius BCE BCE Persius Sulpicia Evans Lewis Translator Gifford William Translator

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You are eager to amass a fortune, by sacrificing a bull; and court Mercury's favor by his entrails. "Grant that my household gods may make me lucky! Grant me cattle, and increase to my flocks!" How can that be, poor wretch, while so many cauls of thy heifers melt in the flames? Yet still he strives to gain his point by means of entrails and rich cakes. "Now my land, and now my sheepfold teems. Now, surely now, it will be granted!" Until, baffled and hopeless, his sestertius at the very bottom of his money-chest sighs in vain.

Were I to offer you goblets of silver and presents embossed with rich gold, you would perspire with delight, and your heart, palpitating with joy in your left breast, would force even the tear-drops from your eyes. And hence it is the idea enters your mind of covering the sacred faces of the gods with triumphal gold. For among the Brazen brothers, let those be chief, and let their beards be of gold, who send dreams purged from gross humors. Gold hath expelled the vases of Numa and Saturnian brass, and the vestal urns and the pottery of Tuscany.

Oh! souls bowed down to earth! and void of aught celestial! Of what avail is it to introduce into the temples of the gods these our modes of feeling, and estimate what is acceptable to them by referring to our own accursed flesh. This it is that has dissolved Cassia in the oil it pollutes. This has dyed the fleece of Calabria with the vitiated purple. To scrape the pearl from its shell, and from the crude ore to smelt out the veins of the glowing mass; this carnal nature bids. She sins in truth. She sins. Still from her vice gains some emolument.

Say ye, ye priests! of what avail is gold in sacrifice? As much, forsooth, as the dolls which the maiden bestows on Venus! Why do we not offer that to the gods which the blear-eyed progeny of great Messala can not give even from his high-heaped charger. Justice to god and man enshrined within the heart; the inner chambers of the soul free from pollution; the breast imbued with generous honor. Give me these to present at the temples, and I will make my successful offering with a little meal.

FOOTNOTES:

ARGUMENT.

In this Satire, perhaps more than in any other, we detect Persius' predilection for the doctrines of the Stoics. With them the summum bonum was "the sound mind in the sound body." To attain which, man must apply himself to the cultivation of virtue, that is, to the study of philosophy. He that does not can aspire to neither. Though unknown to himself, he is laboring under a mortal disease, and though he fancies he possesses a healthy intellect, he is the victim of as deep-seated and dangerous a delusion as the recognized maniac. The object of the Satire is to reclaim the idle and profligate young nobles of his day from their enervating and pernicious habits, by the illustration of these principles.

The opening scene of the Satire presents us with the bedchamber where one of these young noblemen, accompanied by some other youths probably of inferior birth and station, is indulging in sleep many hours after the sun has risen upon the earth. The entrance of the tutor, who is a professor of the Stoical philosophy, disturbs their slumbers, and the confusion consequent upon his rebuke, and the thin disguise of their ill-assumed zeal, is graphically described. After a passionate outburst of contempt at their paltry excuses, the tutor points out the irretrievable evils that will result from their allowing the golden hours of youth to pass by unimproved: overthrows all objections which are raised as to their position in life, and competency of means rendering such vigorous application superfluous; and in a passage of solemn warning full of majesty and power, describes the unavailing remorse which will assuredly hereafter visit those who have so far quitted the rugged path that leads to virtue's heights, that all return is hopeless. He then proceeds to describe the defects of his own education; and the vices he fell into in consequence of these defects--vices however which were venial in himself, as those principles which would have taught him their folly were never inculcated in him. Whereas those whom he addresses, from the greater care that has been bestowed on their early training, are without apology for their neglect of these palpable duties. Then with great force and vigor, he briefly describes the proper pursuits of well-regulated minds; and looks down with contemptuous scorn on the sneers with which vulgar ignorance would deride these truths, too transcendent for their gross comprehension to appreciate. The Satire concludes very happily with the lively apologue of a glutton; who, in despite of all warning and friendly advice, perseveres even when his health is failing, in such vicious and unrestrained indulgence, that he falls at length a victim to his intemperance. The application of the moral is simple. The mind that is destitute of philosophical culture is hopelessly diseased, and the precepts of philosophy can alone effect a cure. He that despises these, in vain pronounces himself to be of sound mind. On the approach of any thing that can kindle the spark, his passions burst into flame; and in spite of his boasted sanity, urge him on to acts that would call forth the reprobation even of the maniac himself. The whole Satire and its moral, as Gifford says, may be fitly summed up in the solemn injunction of a wiser man than the schools ever produced: "Wisdom is the principal thing: therefore get Wisdom."

Whom are you deceiving? Why reiterate these paltry shifts? The stake is your own! You are leaking away, idiot! You will become an object of contempt. The ill-baked jar of half-prepared clay betrays by its ring its defect, and gives back a cracked sound. You are now clay, moist and pliant: even now you ought to be hastily moulded and fashioned unintermittingly by the rapid wheel. But, you will say, you have a fair competence from your hereditary estate; a pure and stainless salt-cellar. Why should you fear? And you have a paten free from care, since it worships your household deities. And is this enough? Is it then fitting you should puff out your lungs to bursting because you trace the thousandth in descent from a Tuscan stock; or because robed in your trabea you salute the Censor, your own kinsman? Thy trappings to the people! I know thee intimately, inside and out! Are you not ashamed to live after the manner of the dissolute Natta?

But he is besotted by vicious indulgence; the gross fat is incrusted round his heart: he is free from moral guilt; for he knows not what he is losing; and sunk in the very depth of vice, will never rise again to the surface of the wave.

O mighty father of the gods! when once fell lust, imbued with raging venom, has fired their spirits, vouchsafe to punish fierce tyrants in no other way than this. Let them see Virtue, and pine away at having forsaken her! Did the brass of the Sicilian bull give a deeper groan, or the sword suspended from the gilded ceiling over the purple-clad neck strike deeper terror, than if one should say to himself, "We are sinking, sinking headlong down," and in his inmost soul, poor wretch, grow pale at what even the wife of his bosom must not know? I remember when I was young I often used to touch my eyes with oil, if I was unwilling to learn the noble words of the dying Cato; that would win great applause from my senseless master, and which my father, sweating with anxiety, would listen to with the friends he had brought to hear me. And naturally enough. For the summit of my wishes was to know what the lucky sice would gain; how much the ruinous ace would sweep off; not to miss the neck of the narrow jar; and that none more skillfully than I should lash the top with a whip.

Whereas you are not inexperienced in detecting the obliquity of moral deflections, and all that the philosophic porch, painted over with trowsered Medes, teaches; over which the sleepless and close-shorn youth lucubrates, fed on husks and fattening polenta. To thee, besides, the letter that divides the Samian branches, has pointed out the path that rises steeply on the right-hand track.

And are you snoring still? and does your drooping head, with muscles all relaxed, and jaws ready to split with gaping, nod off your yesterday's debauch? Is there indeed an object at which you aim, at which you bend your bow? Or are you following the crows, with potsherd and mud, careless whither your steps lead you, and living only for the moment?

When once the diseased skin begins to swell, you will see men asking in vain for hellebore. Meet the disease on its way to attack you. Of what avail is it to promise mountains of gold to Craterus? Learn, wretched men, and investigate the causes of things; what we are--what course of life we are born to run--what rank is assigned to us--how delicate the turning round the goal, and whence the starting-point--what limit must be set to money--what it is right to wish for--what uses the rough coin possesses--how much you ought to bestow on your country and dear relations--what man the Deity destined you to be, and in what portion of the human commonwealth your station is assigned.

Learn: and be not envious because full many a jar grows rancid in his well-stored larder, for defending the fat Umbrians, and pepper, and hams, the remembrances of his Marsian client; or because the pilchard has not yet failed from the first jar.

Here some one of the rank brood of centurions may say, "I have philosophy enough to satisfy me. I care not to be what Arcesilas was, and woe-begone Solons, with head awry and eyes fastened on the ground, while they mumble suppressed mutterings, or idiotic silence, or balance words on their lip pouting out, pondering over the dreams of some palsied dotard, 'that nothing can be generated from nothing; nothing can return to nothing.'--Is it this over which you grow pale? Is it this for which one should go without his dinner?" At this the people laugh, and with wrinkling nose the brawny youth loudly re-echo the hearty peals of laughter.

"Examine me! My breast palpitates unusually; and my breath heaves oppressedly from my fevered jaws: examine me, pray!" He that speaks thus to his physician, being ordered to keep quiet, when the third night has seen his veins flow with steady pulse, begs from some wealthier mansion some mellow Surrentine, in a flagon of moderate capacity, as he is about to bathe. "Ho! my good fellow, you look pale!" "It is nothing!" "But have an eye to it, whatever it is! Your sallow skin is insensibly rising." "Well, you look pale too! worse than I! Don't play the guardian to me! I buried him long ago--you remain." "Go on! I will hold my peace!" So, bloated with feasting and with livid stomach he takes his bath, while his throat slowly exhales sulphureous malaria. But shivering comes on over his cups, and shakes the steaming beaker from his hands; his teeth, grinning, rattle in his head; then the rich dainties dribble from his flaccid lips.

Next follow the trumpets and funeral-torches; and at last this votary of pleasure, laid out on a lofty bier, and plastered over with thick unguents, stretches out his rigid heels to the door. Then, with head covered, the Quirites of yesterday support his bier.

"Feel my pulse, you wretch! put your hand on my breast. There is no heat here! touch the extremities of my feet and hands. They are not cold!"

If money has haply met your eye, or the fair maiden of your neighbor has smiled sweetly on you, does your heart beat steadily? If hard cabbage has been served up to you in a cold dish, or flour shaken through the people's sieve, let me examine your jaws. A putrid ulcer lurks in your tender mouth, which it would not be right to grate against with vulgar beet. You grow cold, when pallid fear has roused the bristles on your limbs. Now, when a torch is placed beneath, your blood begins to boil, and your eyes sparkle with anger; and you say and do what even Orestes himself, in his hour of madness, would swear to be proofs of madness.

FOOTNOTES:

"None other payne pray I for them to be, But, when the rage doth lead them from the right, That, looking backward, Vertue they may see E'en as she is, so goodly faire and bright! And while they claspe their lustes in arms acrosse, Graunt them, good Lord, as thou maist of thy might, To fret inwarde for losing such a losse!" Ep. to Poynes.

"Virtue," says Plato, "is so beautiful, that if men could but be blessed with a vision of its loveliness, they would fall down and worship." ???? ??? ???? ??????? ??? ??? ??? ??????? ??????? ?????????, ? ???????? ??? ?????? ??????? ??? ?? ???????? ?????? ?? ?? ???????? ?????? ??????? ??????? ????????? ??? ???? ??? ??? ????? ??? ??????. Phaedr., c. 65, fin. The sentiment has been frequently repeated. Cic., de Fin., ii., 16, "Quam illa ardentes amores excitaret sui si videretur." De Off., i., 5, "Si oculis cerneretur mirabiles amores, ut ait Plato, excitaret sui." Senec., Epist. 59, 1, "Profecto omnes mortales in admirationem sui raperet, relictis his quae nunc magna, magnorum ignorantia credimus." So Epist. 115. Shaftesbury's Characteristics. The Moralists. Part iii., ? 2.

ARGUMENT.

"Omne animi vitium tanto conspectius in se Crimen habet quanto Major qui peccat habetur." viii., 140.

"For still more public scandal Vice extends, As he is great and noble who offends."--Dryden.

Or had he drawn from the fountains of inspired wisdom, that he had had in his eye a passage of still more solemn import: "A sharp judgment shall be to them that be in high places. For mercy will soon pardon the meanest; but mighty men shall be mightily tormented." Wisdom, vi., 5. Either of these passages might fairly serve as the argument of this Satire. What, however, Persius really took as his model is the First Alcibiades of Plato, and the imitation of it is nearly as close as is that of the Second Alcibiades in the Second Satire. And the subject of his criticism is no less a personage than Nero himself. The close analogy between Nero and Alcibiades will be further alluded to in the notes. We must remember that Nero was but seventeen years old when he was called to take the reins of government, and was but three years younger than Persius himself. The Satire was probably written before Nero had entirely thrown off the mask; at all events, before he had given the full evidence which he afterward did of the savage ferocity and gross licentiousness of his true nature. There was enough indeed for the stern Satirist to censure; but still a spark of something noble remaining, to kindle the hope that the reproof might work improvement. In his First Satire he had ridiculed his pretensions to the name of Poet; in this he exposes his inability as a Politician. The Satire naturally and readily divides itself into three parts. In the first he ridicules the misplaced ambition of those who covet exalted station, and aspire to take the lead in state affairs, without possessing those qualifications of talent, education, and experience, which alone could fit them to take the helm of government; and who hold that the adventitious privileges of high birth and ancient lineage can countervail the enervating effects of luxurious indolence and vicious self-indulgence. The second division of the subject turns on the much-neglected duty of self-examination; and enforces the duty of uprightness and purity of conduct from the consideration, that while it is hopeless in all to escape the keen scrutiny that all men exercise in their neighbor's failings, while they are at the same time utterly blind to their own defects, yet that men of high rank and station must necessarily provoke the more searching criticism, in exact proportion to the elevation of their position. He points out also the policy of checking all tendency to satirize the weakness of others, to which Nero was greatly prone, and in fact had already aspired to the dignity of a writer of Satire; as such sarcasm only draws down severer recrimination on ourselves. In the third part he reverts to the original subject; and urges upon the profligate nobles of the day the duty of rigid self-scrutiny, by reminding them of the true character of that worthless rabble, on whose sordid judgment and mercenary applause they ground their claims to approbation. This love of the "aura popularis" was Nero's besetting vice; and none could doubt for whom the advice was meant. Yet the allusions to Nero throughout the Satire, transparent as they must have been to his contemporaries, are so dexterously covered that Persius might easily have secured himself from all charge of personally attacking the emperor under the plea that his sole object was a declamatory exercise in imitation of the Dialogue cf Plato.

Why do you not then cease to display your tail before the day to the fawning rabble, more fit to swallow down undiluted Anticyras?

What is your chief good? to have lived always on rich dishes; and a skin made delicate by constant basking in the sun? Stay: this old woman would scarce give a different answer--"Go now! I am son of Dinomache!" Puff yourself up!--"I am beautiful." Granted! Still Baucis, though in tatters, has no worse philosophy, when she has cried her herbs to good purpose to some slovenly slave.

How is it that not a man tries to descend into himself? Not a man! But our gaze is fixed on the wallet on the back in front of us! You may ask, "Do you know Vectidius' farms!" Whose? The rich fellow that cultivates more land at Cures than a kite can fly over! Him do you mean? Him, born under the wrath of Heaven, and an inauspicious Genius, who whenever he fixes his yoke at the beaten cross ways, fearing to scrape off the clay incrusted on the diminutive vessel, groans out, "May this be well!" and munching an onion in its hull, with some salt, and a dish of frumety , sups up the mothery dregs of vapid vinegar.

"While the whole neighborhood pronounces me to be super-excellent, shall I not credit them?"

If you grow pale, vile wretch, at the sight of money; if you execute all that suggests itself to your lust; if you cautiously lash the forum with many a stroke, in vain you present to the rabble your thirsty ears. Cast off from you that which you are not. Let the cobbler bear off his presents. Dwell with yourself, and you will know how short your household stuff is.

FOOTNOTES:

ARGUMENT.

"Quem mala stultitia et quemcunque inscitia veri Caeecum agit, insanum Chrysippi porticus et grex Autumat:" i., 43-45,

that man can neither be pronounced free or of sound mind.

He then proceeds to the main subject of the Satire, viz., that all men should aim at attaining that freedom which can only result from that perfect "soundness of mind" which we have shown to be the summum bonum of the Stoics. This real freedom no mere external or adventitious circumstances can bestow. Dama, though freed at his master's behest, if he be the slave of passion, is as much a slave as if he had never felt the praetor's rod. Until he have really cast off, like the snake, the slough of his former vices, and become changed in heart and principles as he is in political standing, he is so far from being really free from bondage that he can not rightly perform even the most trivial act of daily life. True freedom consists in virtue alone; but "Virtus est vitium fugere:" and he who eradicates all other passions, but cherishes still one darling vice, has but changed his master. The dictates of the passions that sway his breast are more imperious than those of the severest task-master. Whether it be avarice, or luxury, or love, or ambition, or superstition, that is the dominant principle, so long as he can not shake himself free from the control of these, he is as much, as real a slave as the drudge that bears his master's strigil to the bath, or the dog that fancies he has burst his bonds while the long fragment of his broken chain still dangles from his neck. The last few lines contain a dignified rebuke of the sneers which such pure sentiments as these would provoke in the coarse minds of some into whose hands these lines might fall; perhaps, too, they may be meant as a gentle reproof of the sly irony in which the Epicurean Horace indulged, while professing to enunciate the Stoic doctrine, that none but the true Philosopher can be said to be of sound mind.

It is the custom of poets to pray for a hundred voices, and to wish for a hundred mouths and a hundred tongues for their verses; whether the subject proposed be one to be mouthed by a grim-visaged Tragoedian, or the wounds of a Parthian drawing his weapon from his groin.

CORNUTUS. What is the object of this? or what masses of robust song are you heaping up, so as to require the support of a hundred throats? Let those who are about to speak on grand subjects collect mists on Helicon; all those for whom the pot of Procne or Thyestes shall boil, to be often supped on by the insipid Glycon. You neither press forth the air from the panting bellows, while the mass is smelting in the furnace; nor, hoarse with pent-up murmur, foolishly croak out something ponderous, nor strive to burst your swollen cheeks with puffing. You adopt the language of the Toga, skillful at judicious combination, with moderate style, well rounded, clever at lashing depraved morals, and with well-bred sportiveness to affix the mark of censure. Draw from this source what you have to say; and leave at Mycenae the tables, with the head and feet, and study plebeian dinners.

PERSIUS. For my part, I do not aim at this, that my page may be inflated with air-blown trifles, fit only to give weight to smoke. We are talking apart from the crowd. I am now, at the instigation of the Muse, giving you my heart to sift; and delight in showing you, beloved friend, how large a portion of my soul is yours, Cornutus! Knock then, since thou knowest well how to detect what rings sound, and the glozings of a varnished tongue. For this I would dare to pray for a hundred voices, that with guileless voice I may unfold how deeply I have fixed thee in my inmost breast; and that my words may unseal for thee all that lies buried, too deep for words, in my secret heart.

When first the guardian purple left me, its timid charge, and my boss was hung up, an offering to the short-girt

Lares; when my companions were kind, and the white centre-fold gave my eyes license to rove with impunity over the whole Suburra; at the time when the path is doubtful, and error, ignorant of the purpose of life, makes anxious minds hesitate between the branching cross-ways, I placed myself under you. You, Cornutus, cherished my tender years in your Socratic bosom. Then your rule, dexterous in insinuating itself, being applied to me, straightened my perverse morals; my mind was convinced by your reasoning, and strove to yield subjection; and formed features skillfully moulded by your plastic thumb. For I remember that many long nights I spent with you; and with you robbed our feasts of the first hours of night. Our work was one. We both alike arranged our hours of rest, and relaxed our serious studies with a frugal meal.

Doubt not, at least, this fact; that both our days harmonize by some definite compact, and are derived from the selfsame planet. Either the Fate, tenacious of truth, suspended our natal hour in the equally poised balance, or else the Hour that presides over the faithful divides between the twins the harmonious destiny of us two; and we alike correct the influence of malignant Saturn by Jupiter, auspicious to both. At all events, there is some star, I know not what, that blends my destiny with thine.

There are a thousand species of men; and equally diversified is the pursuit of objects. Each has his own desire; nor do men live with one single wish. One barters beneath an orient sun, wares of Italy for a wrinkled pepper and grains of pale cumin. Another prefers, well-gorged, to heave in dewy sleep. Another indulges in the Campus Martius. Another is beggared by gambling. Another riots in sensual pleasures. But when the stony gout has crippled his joints, like the branches of an ancient beech--then too late they mourn that their days have passed in gross licentiousness, their light has been the fitful marsh-fog; and look back upon the life they have abandoned. But your delight is to grow pale over the midnight papers; for, as a trainer of youths, you plant in their well-purged ears the corn of Cleanthes. From this source seek, ye young and old, a definite object for your mind, and a provision against miserable gray hairs.

"It shall be done to-morrow." "To-morrow, the case will be just the same!" What, do you grant me one day as so great a matter? "But when that other day has dawned, we have already spent yesterday's to-morrow. For see, another to-morrow wears away our years, and will be always a little beyond you. For though it is so near you, and under the selfsame perch, you will in vain endeavor to overtake the felloe that revolves before you, since you are the hinder wheel, and on the second axle."

It is liberty, of which we stand in need! not such as that which, when every Publius Velina has earned, he claims as his due the mouldy corn, on the production of his tally. Ah! minds barren of all truth! for whom a single twirl makes a Roman. Here is Dama, a groom, not worth three farthings! good for nothing and blear-eyed; one that would lie for a feed of beans. Let his master give him but a twirl, and in the spinning of a top, out he comes Marcus Dama! Ye gods! when Marcus is security, do you hesitate to trust your money? When Marcus is judge, do you grow pale? Marcus said it: it must be so. Marcus, put your name to this deed? This is literal liberty. This it is the cap of liberty bestows on us.

Learn then! But let anger subside from your nose, and the wrinkling sneer; while I pluck out those old wives' fables from your breast. It was not in the praetor's power to commit to fools the delicate duties of life, or transmit that experience that will guide them through the rapid course of life. Sooner would you make the dulcimer suit a tall porter.

Reason stands opposed to you, and whispers in your secret ear, not to allow any one to do that which he will spoil in the doing. The public law of men--nay, Nature herself contains this principle--that feeble ignorance should hold all acts as forbidden. Dost thou dilute hellebore, that knowest not how to confine the balance-tongue to a definite point? The very essence of medicine forbids this. If a high-shoed plowman, that knows not even the morning star, should ask for a ship, Melicerta would cry out that all modesty had vanished from the earth.

Has Philosophy granted to you to walk uprightly? and do you know how to discern the semblance of truth; lest it give a counterfeit tinkle, though merely gold laid over brass? And those things which ought to be pursued, or in turn avoided, have you first marked the one with chalk, and then the other with charcoal? Are you moderate in your desires? frugal in your household? kind to your friends? Can you at one time strictly close, at another unlock your granaries? And can you pass by the coin fixed in the mud, nor swallow down with your gullet the Mercurial saliva?

When you can say with truth, "These are my principles, this I hold;" then be free and wise too, under the auspices of the praetor and of Jove himself. But if, since you were but lately one of our batch, you preserve your old skin, and though polished on the surface, retain the cunning fox beneath your vapid breast; then I recall all that I just now granted, and draw back the rope.

Philosophy has given you nothing; nay, put forth your finger--and what act is there so trivial?--and you do wrong. But there is no incense by which you can gain from the gods this boon, that one short half-ounce of Right can be inherent in fools. To mix these things together is an impossibility; nor can you, since you are in all these things else a mere ditcher, move but three measures of the satyr Bathyllus.

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