THE SATIRES
OF JUVENAL
A NEW TRANSLATION
WITH AN
INTRODUCTION BY
HUBERT CREEKMORE

			MENTOR BOOK 

TIMES MIRROR
NEW YORK AND SCARBOROUGH. ONTARIO
THE NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY LIMITED, LONDON
COPYRIGHT © 1963 BY HUBERT CREEKMORE Library of Congress Catalog No. 63-20831
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contents
NOTE									Vi
INTRODUCTION							Vii
1 WHY WRITE SATIRE?						25
2 HYPOCRITES AND HOMOSEXUALS 				35 
3  THE PERILS OF LIFE IN ROME 					45 
4 COUNCIL OF STATE WHAT TO Do WITH A FISH, 		63
5 DINNER WITH A PATRON 						72.
6 WHY MARRY? A GALLERY OF WOMEN 				82 
7 THE PLIGHT OF THE CREATIVE MAN 				121 
8 WHAT'S THE USE OF A PEDIGREE? 				134 
9 THE WOES OF A MALE HUSTLER 					150
10 THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES 				159 
11 A SIMPLE DINNER AT HOME 					179 
12 THANKSGIVING FOR A SHIPWRECKED FRIEND 		190 
13 DEFRAUDERS AND GUILTY CONSCIENCE 			198 
14 EVIL PRECEDENTS SET BY PARENTS 				212
15 EGYPTIAN CANNIBALS 						230 
16 (incomplete) THE FORTUNATE SOLDIER 				240
GLOSSARY								244

NOTE
I have used the Latin text of The Loeb Classical Library edition, revised, and the numbers in the margin refer in almost every instance to the line numbers in that text.

Here I wish to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Ursula Schoenheim (Department of Classical Languages, Queens College, Flushing, New York) for her thorough and painstaking comments on the first version of this translation. Her sensitiveness to the nature of both Latin and English, in structure, precision, tone, relevancy, and spirit, and her sympathetic understanding of the problems of a translator have been, invaluable to me. Without her aid, this would be a very different book, but needless to say, whatever defects may be in it can be blamed on me alone.
Introduction

What Juvenal was, we know - the greatest satiric poet of the world. Who he was, however, is all but unknown. The few dependable biographical details are deduced from the text of his sixteen satires, and except for the dates of his birth and death - these dates, even are conjectural -the data are of a minor sort. The life assigned to him is mostly assumption by modern scholars, based on research, and invention by the scholiasts who wrote more than two centuries after his death.
Only one of his contemporaries, Martial, even mentions his name, and he gives no indication that Juvenal was a poet. Martial left Rome in A.D. 98 to return to his native Spain, where he died about 102. Juvenal's first book (Satires I-V) was published around 110, so Martial never, knew what the friend whom he called "eloquent” was to do in later life.
In his mid-forties, Juvenal, apparently got fed up with the morals of his time and with contemporary poetry, as his first satire suggests, and burst forth in angry diatribes. Reading them today, we can sense that they were hardly calculated to win friends among the rulers, politicians, millionaires, writers, philosophers, socialites, sycophants, informers, and fakes of his day. This, to a large degree, may explain why no other Latin writer mentions him until the Christian propagandist Lactantius, early in the fourth century. From that time on, his name and fame grew. Just as Juvenal's examples (though not his themes) for the most part are several decades or a century removed from his era, so it took two centuries for his poems to begin to find a wide audience. The same topics recur in cycles in our Western civilization, and most of his satires could be adapted to twentieth-century society as easily as Samuel Johnson adapted two of them (III and X) to the society of eighteenth-century England and many other poets in other lands to their times.
These facts, as revealed in his poems, are what we know: His first satire was written about 100 - the date is based on the reference to the condemnation of Marius Priscus in January of that year. In support of this date for Satire I, we have veiled attacks on the Emperor Domitian in Satire II*; and in Satire IV the 'reference to his 'death' in 96. In Satire VI Juvenal refers to a comet and an earthquake as omens connected with military affairs in Armenia and` Parthia, the date of which would be 115. The opening, of VII can, sensibly, refer only to Hadrian, who became emperor in 117, though some scholars disagree. The mention of the consul Fonteius as holding office sixty years earlier, in XIII, would place this poem in 127; and the mention of the consul Juncus in XV also gives a date near 127.
Juvenal's poetry is also the source of information concerning his own life. In Satire I he refers to the barber who shaved him when he was "young" that is, according to. Roman standards, before he was forty-five. At the end of XI he says he is too old to enjoy the games and that his "shriveled skin" just wants to soak up the sun. Using such data as a basis, together with collateral research, scholars estimate his birth at 60 and his death at 131.

* See lines 29-33 concerning Julia. Domitian had a niece named Julia. Domitian,; for all his immorality, was also a censor of morals.

The last lines of III indicate that he was born in Aquinum, and this is supported by the discovery in the eighteenth century of a partially destroyed marble tablet on the base of an altar to Ceres, lost since the 1840's. The inscription, as restored by scholars, says that D. Junius Juvenalis, captain of the First
7) Dalmatian battalion, mayor of Aquinum in the census year, and priest of the deified Vespasian, dedicated the offerings to Ceres at his own expense. Is this the poet as a young man? The initial (for Decimus) and the first `two letters of Junius were obliterated. If this is Juvenal, it indicates that his family was prosperous, that he had had a short but successful army career, and that he was important in civic affairs. But when the voice of the satirist, aged forty-five, is raised in Rome, he is poor, a client haunting the vestibules of the rich to collect his dole. Obviously his plans for advancement after military service under the wing of the imperial court had collapsed, and he is bitter about the nouveaux riches, the foreigners, the corrupt aristocrats - everything.
Perhaps he married, but no one really knows. At any rate, he never mentions a wife.
From XV we know that he lived for a while in Egypt. Some have assumed that he commanded an army outpost there, others that he was banished to Egypt for writing a lampoon on Domitian's favorite actor and returned to Rome only after the emperor's death. The tradition of his, exile began early and is much more probable than that of his command of an army garrison. It at least accounts for the loss of his inheritance, which would have been confiscated by Domitian.
Late in life he was apparently in, comfortable circumstances, no longer railing so bitterly but in fact rather, mellow and weary, though still with a bite in his voice. He had a farm near Tivoli (XI) and a town house with slaveboys to help (XI and XII). Perhaps this was made possible by a pension from Hadrian, who may be the enlightened emperor of VII.
Hadrian was, excepting Vespasian and Trajan, the best of the emperors under whom Juvenal lived. In, his early years, during Nero's reign, the poet could not have been impressed by imperial prerogatives and excesses, and in any case he was in Aquinum, not in Rome. But we may assume that even there people heard news of the court scandals. Nero was sixteen when he came to power, and though still under the influence of tutors, he promptly poisoned his rival, Britannicus. Later, he murdered his mother and his wife, indulged in atrocities, perversions, and vicious tyranny, as well as in verse making and playacting on the stage. Faced with revolt and the defection of the praetorian guard in favor of Galba, he committed suicide.
In rapid succession four emperors were raised to the throne, all generals more than they were nobles, and all chosen by Roman armies rather than by the Senate or by a preceding ruler. The first, Galba, was killed within seven months by the praetorians who chose him. Next, Otho committed suicide after a reign of ninety-five days on learning that the armies in Germany had proclaimed Vitellius emperor. Vitellius held the throne only eight months before the armies in the east swore allegiance to Vespasian, whose soldiers, when they reached Rome, murdered Vitellius and brought the first of the Flavian line into power.
Such insecurity and disorder in the court were naturally reflected in the lives of the citizens; but they, unless involved in the intrigues for power, had become inured to imperial corruption. There were, of course, men o£ virtue, such as those whom Pliny the Younger dwells on in his letters, and men who were critical, such as Juvenal, Martial, and the historian Tacitus. To them the reign of Vespasian was a relief in the succession of sadistic tyrants. By nature rugged and rustic, Vespasian governed reasonably well considering that the general moral tone of society was still, as it had been for more than a century, degenerating. He at least died a natural death, and his popular son, Titus, succeeded him until his own death two years later. Titus' brother, Domitian, then became emperor, and tyranny, murder, cruel intrigues, and every sort of vice once again were the order of life in Rome.
Any man who dreamed that the country had left behind the depravities and savagery of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero was sorely deluded. For fifteen years - those of Juvenal's young manhood - Domitian held the Roman Empire in the capricious grasp of a despot. Though he built and restored public buildings, expanded the empire, and was in his early reign seriously concerned with domestic affairs, he gave in to sycophants (see IV, in which Domitian is the emperor) and delators and devoted more of his attention, later on, to his "bed-wrestling exercises" and less to the diplomatic and constructive, exercise of his office. After his assassination in 96 the Senate, seizing the opportunity, chose seventy-year-old Nerva, but he lasted only two years. He was followed by the moderate, progressive rule of Trajan, at whose death the calm, cultivated Hadrian, his ward, acceded to power.
Someone has remarked that it is incredible that Rome could have survived such, emperors as were produced by the Julian and Flavian houses, it is even more incredible that, Rome could have expanded in power and wealth for long afterward. That, however, occurred, and it was more than three centuries, after Juvenal's death before the empire collapsed: More relevant to Juvenal, though, is a comment of Aurelius Victor, a fourth-century writer, that up to the time of Domitian's death emperors had been of Roman or Italian birth and that henceforward they were foreigners.*  It is for some other branch of commentary to examine the reasons why the Romans, beginning with high moral standards in every activity and with a republican form. of government, should have evolved into a more and more corrupt society. The point to note is that after Juvenal was forty, the two emperors he lived under were. "foreigners," a breed the poet hated. Both Trajan and Hadrian were from Spain. But so was Juvenal's friend Martial, whose hundreds of brief poems make much the same bitter comment on Roman life as those of Juvenal. These men were not, however, the particular sort of foreigners whom Juvenal detested and could epitomize as Greek or Oriental or rich, usually with a background of slavery.
* Domitian's successor, Nerva, however, was not a foreigner, but was born in Narnia in Umbria and was a praetor-elect under Nero.

Juvenal's resentment, we may assume, was against those who had come in before and during Domitian's reign, who represented license, perversion, new manners, freed slaves risen to wealth, and in general the new rich. The truth is that Juvenal was clinging to the standards of a bygone age in a time when all was changing. He harks back to the days of the republic, before Julius Caesar, when men were stern in honor and morals and conduct, and he often cites the early heroes of Rome. That he seems unrealistic in this, since the change from the republic to empire had been made almost a century before his birth, is only slightly surprising. Through all of Roman poetry the harking back to the blessed days of the golden age is a convention, and Juvenal follows it. But it is one thing to describe, in line with poetic tradition, the legendary diet of acorns, the simple life, the modest home, the garden that fed the family, and another thing to pit the early heroes and "good kings" of Rome against the corrupt rulers of his time. It is pointless to agree that Numa, Gracchus, Fabius, Marcellus, Cato, Crassus, and others were nobler in every way than the lords of the society he knew. He was not alone in perceiving and registering violently in his writing the change in society that he did not understand the incursions of new people-upstarts, but determined, energetic, unscrupulous, and, if they succeeded, rich. In one way or another, historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius and writers such as Martial and Petronius recorded the shift in Roman society, but none with anger and disgust to equal Juvenal's.
It seems a more serious criticism of Juvenal, the "conservative," the admirer of the "good old days," that he did not pinpoint the causes of the changes than, that he exaggerated the results of the changes. Exaggeration is after all one of the techniques of satire. At the same time, we must recognize that the satirist is most concerned with what is, and not so much with why it is. If Juvenal seems to exaggerate the picture of his times, it might be well to consider the picture of our own times, which are so similar. Certainly there are people of virtue today, ass there were then, but the general temper, the morals, the ethics ("the only crime is to get caught"), are little different. We see today that virtuous people condone and accept rather than reject and protest the stupidity, the ignorance, the extravagance, the profligacy, the chicanery, the double-dealing, ble-dealing, and the crimes of all who are "big names" or powerful corporations. Today, as in ancient Rome, worship of wealth is, obviously, the common denominator between the man of virtue and the man of vice.
III

What Juvenal described but did not interpret in the life of Rome was an intertwined series of revolutions. The ranks of the senators, the nobility, the bulwark of the republic, had been shrinking for years had capitulated to power factions; had decayed through their own debaucheries, perversions, and excesses; had been reduced to poverty by the emperors; or, had extinguished their own lives and lineage by "opening their veins" in the face of imperial threat or command. Few nobles could expect to live to old age. It has been estimated that even in the reign of Claudius, three hundred knights and thirty-five senators were executed. Suetonius wrote that in Tiberius' reign, after the, murder of Sejanus there was at least one execution a day. How many more, then, might have vanished during the reigns of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian? Claudius had to include Venetian and Lombardian Gauls in the Senate because the aristocrats were so depleted, and Vespasian scoured Italy and the provinces for likely candidates to fill their ranks. To the decimation of the noble families by the emperors (who profited in this by proscription of their wealth), add those nobles who were homosexual and had no progeny, or none of substance, and those condemned to exile in distant provinces or islands; at length you have hardly anyone of a great family, or even of position, who also had some wealth. Except....?
Except the "new man" the tradesman who had worked industriously and made a fortune while the aristocratic classes were scorning work and depending on the meager favors of rich patrons. This new class was made up of all those Juvenal loathed the freedman, the Greek, the Oriental and African; immigrant, slave or otherwise. Their becoming free of bondage, sometimes well-to-do in the process, was often related to the depravity of the noble class. And the emancipation of women, who heretofore had seldom ventured outside the house, was again a minor factor in the general depravity and laxity, as well as, in part, in the acceptance of homosexuals.
Juvenal's castigation of the "new woman" is contained in his longest, and to some his finest, poem, Satire VI, which categorizes them within the framework of the question "Why get married?" This new woman, was not actually so new, and had been emerging for many years. She was not the industrious, secluded, virtuous woman of early Rome; she moved about town as she wished, joined men at their dinners, schemed and murdered for wealth and power, and in general lived a life of her own. And like the men, if they were gentlemen, she was supremely idle- even idler than they were - so we can understand if not condone the ways she found to kill time.
Gentlemen in those days were not to be involved in trade; senators were not even allowed to be so involved, and this was the accepted view of Juvenal, who, though scarcely a gentleman, aspired to that status. They might be authors of prose or poetry, or teachers, or lawyers, but they could not descend to the, disgrace of "work." That was left to slaves, freedmen, and immigrants, with what results we know only too well Gentlemen, then, were busy, but not at "business." The emperor, the senators, and other officials, along with their assistants, had many demands and duties to meet. But for the rest, none of the gentle occupations brought in much money, so the learned or talented man, if he had, no wealth, was reduced to becoming a "client" of a rich patron, who as often as not had made his fortune by degrading work. Though Juvenal deplored the client-patron relationship, the irony implicit in it seems almost to have escaped him. The client, at any rate, had a busy day-up at dawn for the rich man's levee and his dole, and then attendance on him throughout the day at law-courts or recitations or discussions in the forum; and the client was also at all times busy minding his manners.
Yet, with all his scorn for work and for tradesmen and slaves, Juvenal overflows with sentiment for his own slaves, nobler in his eyes than the contemporary nobles he praises the commoners and slaves republic who showed their patriotism in heroic deeds; and the whole of XII is woven around his friend Catullus, a tradesman, an importer, though the point of the poem is turned against flatterers and legacy hunters.
Legacy hunting, however, was, virtually a profession, as were informing, falsely accusing, and bearing false witness. In fact, one could become a millionaire overnight if successful at delation. But even this vicious practice had been tolerated, already for many decades.
We may agree, then, that none of Juvenal's material was new or characteristic of only his era. In Nero's day Petronius, in his prose Satyricon, had described the perversion, the low, life, and the new-rich "climber" and perhaps in the lost books much else that would have paralleled Juvenal's subject matter. Before Petronius, the satirist Persius had treated some similar topics, but in a manner that smells of the library rather than the streets. The biographies of Suetonius, who was Hadrian's secretary, reveal the sordid sides of the emperors in a somewhat schematic way, but his guiding force was gossip. Among the writers of the century from Augustus through Hadrian, only Tacitus brings to his work an indignation comparable to that which imbues the writing of Juvenal. Martial, in his epigrams, exposes the vices and follies of the day, but his purpose was to shock, to sting, to entertain. The other authors who have survived ass poets - and they are few - concentrated on safe themes such as historical or mythical heroes and events. Lucan versified The Civil War (Pharsalia), Statius wrote sweet thoughts in his Silvae, and Seneca wrote closet dramas in verse about Hercules, Medea, and other legendary figures. There is, however, one tragedy on a contemporary theme that was long attributed, to Seneca - Octavia, which dealt with the daughter of Claudius and the wife of Nero, who put Octavia to death. In the face of such a widespread retreat from reality, it is no wonder that-Juvenal burst out as he did in the opening of his first satire. When he began, not, even Martial was around to stick a mere pin into the arrogant pretenders and villains. And the basic difference exists in their panoramas of Roman life: Martial made his out of hundreds of sketches, deft, brief, caustic, witty, and mocking; Juvenal, injured in body, heart, and soul by the society he lived in, painted a broad canvas full of indignation, denunciation, and passionate contempt, all of it shaped around moral judgments. His friend Martial may have provided the impetus; but Juvenal expanded his miniatures into full-scale pictures, organized on important if commonplace themes and sustained by detailed examples, and delivered a condemnation that is only implicit in Martial's work.

IV
The satires are written in dactylic hexameter, and Juvenal very likely read the first of them in much the same way that he describes in Satire VII. Later he published Book I, composed of I-V, in or after 410. Publication in those days meant a public recital or circulation of the manuscript to a number of friends. After that the manuscript was reproduced in copies for or by such friends as might wish to own the work. Copying was expensive if done professionally, however, and long before this time a class of "booksellers" had come into being, whose slaves were trained to copy manuscripts; they not only produced copies on commission but also pirated works and sold copies, with no royalty to the author, for fancy prices. Because the impoverished author could not afford such costs, the mere recitation of a work served usually as publication until there was a demand for copies. Juvenal's first book (a book meant what to us might be less than forty pages) opens with a sort of introduction - "Why should I write satire?" - that gives a synthesis of the topics he covers in succeeding books. At the end of this first satire, he states that since.. he cannot name the names of contemporaries without fear of reprisal, he will use the names of the dead. Today this is of slight importance. After all, the cases were the same in his time and for a century before and for us they are, in the shrinkage of past ages, to all effects as if coeval. After this prospectus, the other four satires treat the sexual and philosophical perversion of men, the hazards of life in the palace or slum that was Rome, the ridiculous concerns of Domitian as emperor, and the humiliation of native Romans by the new rich.
Book II is the long - attack on women, made up only of Satire VI. Book III (Satires VII-IX) is concerned with the low condition of the man of learning and talent, with the folly of pride in lineage without personal virtues, and with a portrait of the most ignoble of any class, a whining male whore.
We begin Book IV (Satires X-XII) with a poem that ranks along with III and VI as one of Juvenal's best, and possibly "because of its generally Christian' temperament, a favorite in later times. Its unrelieved pessimism is balanced by the two following satires, one describing a dinner at home with a friend and the other a sacrifice made for, the survival of a friend from shipwreck
Wealth is a dominant theme in Book V (Satires XIII-XVI), published probably in 130, with the first two poems considering the default of a friend who held money in trust; and the ways by which parents train their children in avarice. Then follows a true story of cannibalism , in Egypt, ;and finally there is the fragment dealing with the privileges of the army as against civilians.
We judge the satires today as separate poems rather than as components of a slim book, and their
excellence of form varies, as do; their vigor and passion, their vitality in the scenes of Roman life, and many other qualities. As has been noted, the favorites are VI, on marriage and women; III, on life in Rome; and X, on the vanity of human wishes. But all of them contain valuable, vivid insights into the hazards and corruption of social conditions in Juvenal's time that we would be the poorer without.

If Hadrian, as is assumed, gave Juvenal a post in. his newly established Athenaeum, it is quite possible that the poet deposited a copy of his works in its library; and from that manuscript, long ago vanished, all the texts we now have were derived. It seems certain that only one copy of Juvenal's work survived long enough to be reproduced, for every one of the later manuscripts (there are some five hundred after the fourth century) ends at the same line, of the unfinished sentence in Satire XVI. With a bit more neglect; Juvenal might easily have been completely lost to us. There are differences in the manuscripts, of course, and it is impossible to determine, the number of deletions, rearrangements, and chages made. As recently as 1899 an unknown passage of thirty-four lines of VI was found in the Bodleian Library (known as the 0 fragment and so marked in recent texts).
Let us be thankful that we have Juvenal's work, for it is probably the most lively, brilliant first-hand report existent of life in this crucial, degenerate period of the Roman Empire,. His character shows through the poems - bitter against shabby but rich pretenders, stanch for tradition and noble virtues, tender toward simple people and simple life, and hating all that was changing Rome from a mighty empire into a puny, proud nation of luxury. He was the last of the great pagan authors in Latin. The
best Latin writers after him were Christian, and it was these Christians, ironically, who found so much in common, ethically and morally; between his poems and Christianity that they preserved and praised his work.
V

It has been noted already that the first mention, of Juvenal after his death was by Lactantius in the fourth century. That Roman writers ignored him may be accounted for in the facts that life was comparably happy and that the later emperors espoused one or another of the characteristics that Juvenal attacked -they were pro-Greek or deranged or stupid or perverted. But Lactantius quoted him (much earlier, Tertullian, by obvious echoes, showed that he Must have read him), and his fame gradually was spread by the Christian writers Ausonius, Paulinus, of Nola, Prudentius, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. After that, when copies of his satires were more easily available, Juvenal became better and better known and admired. Scholars worked at editing and collating texts and at adding marginalia and interpretations, from which developed the legends of his life.

Many writers of the medieval period were familiar with his work, and since they were in a sense bilingual, speaking Latin and a vernacular, bits of Juvenal appeared in Old French, Italian, and German, The times were ripe at last for his work to be appreciated, for, its moral tone and denunciation fitted well into the prevailing Christian society. At length Dante, though not really familiar with all the satires, quoted from them and in his Divine Comedy consigned Juvenal fairly comfortably for a pagan to limbo. Dante's successors, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Chaucer, knew, admired, quoted, and sometimes imitated Juvenal.
During the Renaissance, printing became possible; thus Juvenal reached a larger audience of talented readers, and his work was more widely imitated. Translation was inevitable after the many quotations and patent echoes in English authors and those of foreign tongues, and in the seventeenth century the first English translation appeared, done by Sir Robert Stapylton. Later John Dryden produced his versions, and in the nineteenth century there were still more. In other languages, the pattern was much the same, so that his voice became known over all the Western world.
Gilbert Highet, in his book on Juvenal, has said that "what he needs most is one or two good modern verse translations or adaptations-made without pedantry, eliminating or modernizing obsolete allusions, and putting the violence which characterizes so much contemporary literature into Juvenal's own more economical and more effective form." * This is a large, a fairly impossible order. He himself and others have noted that one cannot modernize the characters without danger of libel suits. One can only try, and see what comes out. Two of the best tries that I know are that of William Gifford in 1802 (Satires. Rev.ed. New York: E. P. Dutton and, Company, Inc., 1954) and, more contemporary in every way, that of Rolfe Humphries (Satires. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958).
* Gilbert Highet, Juvenal the Satirist. (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 232.

VI

Two minor points remain to be mentioned. First, the impression that Juvenal has made on modern man, even when he is unaware of its source, is seen in the, current widespread use of certain of his phrases and expressions. The chief of these, "A sound mind in a sound body," might well be attributed by some to the Bible or to Shakespeare. "Bread and circuses" (or "bread and the games") - is, again, a common phrase. Two others we use in their Latin original - rara avis (rare bird) and cacoethes scribendi ("the itch to write"). Often quoted are these: "Honesty's praised, then left to freeze"; "True nobility lies in virtue alone"; "No one sinks all at once to the lowest depths of sin"; "We live in a state of pretentious poverty"; "The censor punishes doves but readily pardons the crows"; and "Who's to guard the guards?" "We suffer the ills of a long peace" was a favorite of politicians; and the passage on how one mangy pig, one rotten grape ("apple" is more pertinent to our own use of the image), can infect all the others - was much cited by ecclesiastics. The image of simple contentment in "lord of a single lizard" - has appealed to many. A small anthology might be: made of less familiar aphorisms, but here are a few: "No bad man is happy" "It's foolish to rest on another man's fame"; "A' man who has nothing can sing in the face of a thief", "The more a thing costs, the more it's enjoyed"; "The smell of profit is clean and sweet, whatever the source."
Then, there is the matter of the authenticity of the two final satires, which has often been questioned. From the early days of interest in Juvenal's work, the last, fragmentary satire has been suspect. Some scholars would not accept that a man who had been in military service could satirize that service. Such pat reasoning seems absurd and evasive of the facts of human nature. What can a man satirize better than what he has experienced? And what man has not changed some of his attitudes over a span of fifty years? Satire XV was also once suspect because of what were assumed to be geographical errors about Egypt; but the whole story of the two towns has been verified by data from contemporary sources, and the location of the towns was established by the archeologist, Flinders Petrie in 1895. Juvenal modified his attitude toward the emperors, the ruling class, and the rich from his first satires to his last. He changed from violent denunciation of homosexuals in II to tolerance, probably acceptance, as suggested in one passage of VI and in IX. How much more reasonable, then, to assume that forty-odd years after his youthful experience in the army, he had better sources to draw on. After all, as a boy he had known the sort of emperors the army chose; and his own youthful hopes, based on army service, had failed long before. Most of all, the satire is not complete, and it is likely that if Juvenal was in fact an officer of a Dalmatian battalion and that if the sixteenth satire were complete, we would find in it references to his personal experiences in that army corps.
But as he himself said: enough of digressions, and to the story - Juvenal's story of Rome in the late first and the early second century. These are the times of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian, though the poems reflect the earlier times of Nero and Domitian as well. His contemporaries for one reason or another apparently hoped to blot out all knowledge of his satires for the future, but most of his writing has come down to us for our delight and instruction. And though you, today, like, Juvenal's contemporaries, may not like what you see in his gloomy mirror and may not find yourself in his picture, you will probably, as you should, see many people you know.
1
Why Write Satire?
Must I be forever only a listener never talk back,
Though bored so often by the Theseid of Cordus, the hack?
Is this man or that, without my revenge, to pour out a stream
Of love wails, farces, a saga of Telephus, ream on ream
To waste a whole day, or a hackneyed Orestes, now distending
All over the margins and onto the back, without ever ending?
No man knows his own house so well as I know the grove of Mars
And Vulcan's cave, close to where the cliffs of Aeolus are.
What the winds are doing, what souls Aeacus in hell torments,
From where someone is stealing that Golden Fleece, how immense 
Are the ash trees Monychus hurls in battle - these epics bombard 
Our eardrums, Fronto's sycamores shake, his statues are jarred, 
And the constant reciting cracks marble pillars and pilasters. 
You get the same kind of tripe from poets or poetasters.
I too had to learn that stuff in school, on pain of the rod;
I too in my speech gave hindsight advice to Sulla to nod
His dotage away in peace and private life. But today
It's surely stupid indulgence, when so many bardlets bray
All around, to spare the paper they're sure to desecrate.
Then why do I wish to foot it over the course where great Lucilius drove, his team? 
If you have the time and will try
To listen patiently, I'll tell you the reasons why.

22 
 When limp-limbed eunuchs take wives; when husky Maevia slits
Wild boars in the games and clamps a spear between naked tits;
When a barber who scraped my beard in youth has a bigger pile 
Of wealth than all the nobility; when that scum of the Nile, 
Crispinus, ex-slave from Canopus, around his shoulder flings
A cloak of Tyrian cloth and wafts a hot-weather gold ring
In the air on his sweating finger, unable to bear thereupon
The extra weight of a heavier jewel when this goes on,
It's hard to keep from writing satire. What paragon
Exists who has such restraint, such steely callousness
To the vices rampant in our city that he can suppress
Comment when lawyer Matho on a brand-new litter goes by,
Bulging all over the sides; and next a government spy
Who informed against his noble friend and soon will shred 
From the blackmailed bluebloods, already eaten out and bled, 
The little that's left a man whom even Massa dreads,
Whom Carus must bribe, to whom a terrified actor must lend
His wife as peacemaker; and when you're cut out of wills by men
Who by their rigid night work inherit estates and wealth
From itchy old frumps who are rich in funds but poor in health – 
The best way to get to the top-and now rise to social heaven? 
Take two - Proculeius gets only one part, but Gillo eleven,
In strict proportion to the size of their instruments.
Let each take the price of his blood and turn pale in consequence
As a man who steps barefoot on a snake or waits, in suspense
To give an oration at the harrowing Lyons contest.

Why tell how great a rage bums dry the heart in my breast
When this embezzler from his ward (he rents him, too,
For sodomy) jostles us with droves of slaves pushing through;	
When Marius, sentenced by futile verdicts (what matters the shame
So long as he keeps the cash?), can revel and make fair game -
Of the angry gods and, exiled,  begin his cocktails at noon?
Triumphant province, well may you  bewail, this legal lampoon!

51 
Am I to consider these topics not worthy a Horace's pen?
Shouldn't I hunt them down? Why keep an driveling again
Of Hercules, or Diomedes, or the bellows that rose
From the Minator, or Daedalus flying while Icarus goes
Plopping into the sea, when today the soft husband takes,
If the law won't let his wife inherit, the fee from rakes
And paramours, for he's adept at seeing no more
Than happens on the ceiling, and guarantees to snore
In his cups with a vigilant nose; or when some youngster thinks
He's entitled to have an army command, though his high jinks
Have squandered the family fortune, splurged on horses, and now,
A travesty of Achilles great charioteer, he's allowed
To break all records - even his axles -  in making a tour
Of the country roads to impress his trench-coated paramour?

63 
Aren't you incited to fill huge  notebooks when you stand
At any street corner and see a litter by eight men manned,
Yet simple and open for all to inspect, and in it barefaced,
Lolling like some Maecenas, a forger of wills embraced
By cafe society now because he's rich from a quick
Shifting of legal papers and giving a seal ring a lick?
And then you see an imperious wife  who serves good wines
To a thirsty husband, but in them a  lizard's venom combines,
And surpassing Lucusta, teaches stupid  housewives the way
To produce black corpses that were  their husbands yesterday,
Yet face down all the rumors.  So if you'd be a big shot,
Dare do what will land you on Alcatraz  as likely as not,	
Or at least in prison.  Honesty's praised, then left to freeze.
Crime doesn't pay, except with huge  mansions, gardens with trees,
Fine tables, and old silver cups with goats embossed on each piece. 
Who can sleep when he knows of greedy  daughters-in-law seduced,
Of brides already corrupted, of teen-age  adulterers used
By rich matrons? If natural talent  is lacking, anger will write
The lines as best it can, just as I - or Cluvienus - might.

81 
From the time when Deucalion rowed a skiff up the mountain slopes
(On the crest of the Flood, of course) to ask man's fate and hopes, 
And the stones grew soft and warm with life when cast behind,
And Pyrrha showed naked girls to men, whatever mankind 
Indulges in his prayers, fears, diversions, rage, 
Delights, and business - that is the medley of my page.
When has there ever been a heavier harvest of vice?
When has the gut of greed swelled fuller, when have dice
Had such attraction? Gamblers don't  go with merely a purse
To bet at the table, they bring whole coffers to disburse.
What battles you see, with stewards- sergeants, I ought to say – 
Passing the ammunition! Is this but a simple display
Of madness, to squander thousands and yet spend not a penny
On clothes for a frozen slave? Which of our sires built so many
Fine villas, or on seven courses dined alone? Nowadays,
Upon the threshold a small dole basket is set in place,
Over which a toga-wearing throng must fight. All the same,
The steward first inspects your face, afraid your claim
Isn't valid and that you're using someone else's name.
If you're known, you get your dole. He tells the butler to call
What's left of the Trojan peerage even they crowd into the hall .
Along with us. "Pay the praetor first!" "The tribune's here too!"
A freedman pushes ahead and says, "I'm first in the queue!
Why should I falter or fear to defend my place? I know
I was born beside the Euphrates, as holes in my ears would show
If I tried to deny I'd been a slave. But now I've got 
Five shops that earn me four hundred thousand. And tell me what
A senator's rank: confers that should be desired, when I've lots
More wealth than other rich freedmen, especially, by damn,
If senators hire out as shepherds and baby-sit for a lamb?"
So let tribunes wait, let money prevail, let him who came
But lately to town with the chalky feet of a slave lay claim
To priority over the sacred offices. For by all odds,
Majestic mighty Wealth is the holiest of our gods.
But as yet, Pernicious Money, you - inhabit: no shrine
Of your own, we've made no altar for you as for the benign
Old deities Peace and Honor, Virtue and Victory,
Or the one where storks croak answers to prayers - Harmony.

While the Big Boys at the end of  the year tot up what their dole
Brings in, how -much it swells their income, what will their old 
Dependents do, who out of it have to get cloaks and shoes
And firewood and bread? A swarm of litters comes up and sues
For dimes. A husband drags a pregnant or sick wife there
To make the rounds. Another, with tricks of the trade to spare, 
Brings an empty curtained litter as proxy to claim double shares.
"It's my wife," he says; "pay us quickly. What's the delay, young chap? 
Stick your head out, Galla. Oh, well, never mind; she's taking a nap."

[127] 

Each day is distinguished by a lovely program of doings:
The dole is paid, then off to the  forum for pleadings and suings.
At Apollo's court to support their  patron, then talk for a while
Beside the statues of heroes, among –  which a wealthy and vile
Egyptian has set up his own;  around the broad base of this,
With no fear of arrest, you may  do even more than merely piss.
Then the weary, aging retainers go from their patron's door,
And give up, hope, though man's  most enduring hope is for
A dinner. Now they must buy sorry  cabbage and wood for heat.
Meanwhile, with no guests to lie on  vacant couches and eat,
Their lord is gobbling the choicest  game and fruits and fishes.
And off those tables, of handsome, enormous antique dishes,
They eat up a whole inheritance in a  single meal.
This will wipe out the parasites, for  who can bear to deal
With such selfish luxury?  What a gaping gullet to stuff
A whole boar inside-a beast made for  banquets! You'll pay soon enough
The full price, my bloated friend,  when you strip yourself and take
To the baths your undigested peacock,  and start to ache.
From this, sudden death-an old man dead without making a will.
As the news flies round the salons, no eyes with tears are filled,
And angry friends, non-heirs,  applaud as the hearse goes by.
The future will find no worse morals to add, no new follies to try; 
Our descendants will desire and do the same things we've done. 
All vice is now at its height; sailinto it, Satirist, run
With canvas unfurled.  Perhaps here
you'll say, "But where will you find  The talent to match the subject?
Where find the, open mind Our distant ancestors had, to write
whatever their hot, Angry passions wished? `Whose name
do I dare not utter? What Does it matter whether Mucius forgives
my words or not?” But write "Tigellinus" today and you'll
blaze among pine sticks Where all those others, standing 
upright, throats tightly fixed To a stake, burn and smoke; and your
corpse plows up a wide band When it's dragged across the
 middle of the arena's sand.

158  

Then a man who poisoned three uncles  may ride and look down on me
With contempt from his downy litter? Of course. And when you see
Him passing, press your fingers  against your lips; if a man
Says merely, `That's the one, he'll be an informer. You can
With safety match Aeneas  and Turnus in war; no one's hurt
If you tell how Achilles died or how many a search was stirred
For Hylas, who fell in a well  with his jug. But when in rage,
As though with drawn sword, Lucilius roars, the hearer, whose wage
Of sin lies cold in his conscience,  burns, he sweats to hear
Of crimes he knows are true.  This brings on anger and tears.
So consider all of these things  before your trumpet sounds;
Once in arms, you can't repent  and flee from the battleground.
Then I'll make a test of how  much I may be allowed to say
Of lords whose ashes lie  beside the Flaminian Way.

2

Hypocrites and Homosexuals

Let me out, let; me flee to Siberia and the Arctic Sea
When such frauds as these, who imitate the austere Curii
But live like Bacchantes, dare to talk about morals. First
Of all, although you may find their homes about to burst
With plaster casts of Chrysippus, they're unlearned, untaught; 
For he's the most perfect one among them all who has bought 
A statue of Aristotle or Pittacus and who sees
That his shelves contain an original picture of Cleanthes.
Looks are deceiving. For what street isn't thick with a crowd
Of grim-faced queers?-Do you rant at vileness when you're avowed 
The most notorious ditch the Socratic buggers have plowed?
The hair on your body, the bristles along your arms, pretend
To show a tough he-man, yet the doctor can't help but grin
When you show a hairless ass to be cured of itching piles.
This type rarely talks; they love deep silence and choose hair styles 
Cut even shorter than their eyebrows. Peribomius, though,
Is more open and honest. I say he was born like this. He shows 
In his leers and his walk that he's a fairy. The frank display
Of such men arouses pity; their very madness today
Brings them a pardon. Worse by far are those who denounce
With Hercules' wrath such vice, and while they talk virtue, bounce 
A stud on their wiggling behinds. "Am I to respect you when you, 
Sextus," the pervert Varillus cries, "do just as I do?
How am I worse than you?" Let the well-shaped mock the knock-kneed, 
The white the Negro; but who could bear the Gracchi to bleat About sedition? 
Who won't confuse earth with heaven, sky
With sea if Verres show hate for a thief, or Milo decry Cutthroats? 
Or if Clodius should condemn adultery,
Or if Catiline should blame Cethegus, or Sulla's three
Disciples denounce proscriptions? Such a man was he,
The adulterer, lately defiled by sexual intercourse
Straight out of the tragedies, who brought back into force
Those hated moral laws that must be feared by all men,
Even Venus and Mars - at a time when Julia, his niece, grown thin
From drugs to produce abortions, would ever so often pour
From her womb a gobbet that favored her uncle. Is it, therefore,
Not proper and right that the vilest of men despise the pack
Of fraudulent Scauri and if they get bitten bite right back?

Laronia couldn't put up with one  of their sour-faced crowd
So often crying: "O Julian law,  where are you now?
Are you asleep?" With a smile she answered, "O happy day
To bring such as you to correct our morals! 
Once more Rome may Regain her decency. 
For Cato the, Third, I'll swear, Has come down from heaven! 
Nevertheless, just tell me where You buy that Eau de Sweet Boys 
that reeks from the tuft of hair At your neck? Don't be ashamed; 
tell me the name of, the store.
If you're digging up laws and statutes,  you ought to cite, before
All the rest, the Scantinian law  against perversion. First
Take a look at what men do;  examine it they do worse
Wild things than women do,  but they've got a majority,
Their ranks are steadfast; queers  have a firm compact. There'll be
No example so monstrous as yours  among our sex: never
Has Media licked at Cluvia,  Flora at Catulla. However,
Hispo's pale from drilling- -on top of and under young fellows.

[51 

"Do we ever argue cases, do we know the law? Do our bellows
Shake rafters in your courtrooms? A few of us wrestle, a few
Eat diets of special meat to build up muscles. But you,
The whole lot, spin wool, tote your stint in baskets full of fleece,
And twist your well-charged spindles, to surpass Penelope's
And Arachne's gossamer weave, employing the very same skill
As a strumpet perched on a log. It's no secret why Hister's will 
Left all to his freedman, why he nave, while alive, so much
To his wife. A girl who sleeps third in a big bed will get rich!
So marry, my girl, and don't talk; your secrets are worth ,a mint! 
Why, after this, are we sentenced as lewd and incontinent?
The censor punishes doves but readily pardons crows."

164  

The make-believe Stoics trembled at hearing her disclose
The obvious truth, and fled.  For wherein has Laronia lied?
But what won't other men do when,  Creticus, you decide
To wear a toga of gauze, and  with all astonished to see
Your clothes, you inveigh against  women given to lechery.
Fabulla's an adulteress; you may sentence Carfinia, too,
If you will, but neither would wear a gown like that one on you.
"But it's July - I'm hot!" Then preside stark naked; there's less
Disgrace in just being crazy.  Look at the way you dress,
Who might be heard expounding  statutes, giving laws,
By men returning, with wounds still fresh, from victorious wars,
And hillbillies who laid. down their plows!  What wouldn't you cry
If you saw that gauze on a judge?  It's proper for witnesses, I
Suppose, to wear chiffon? Keen, stanch champion of those
Who love freedom, Creticus,  you're as transparent as your clothes!
This is a contagious disease, and it will spread and creep
To many more, as the mange of one pig, the scab of one sheep,
Infects the entire drove on the farm;  as one grape seeps
Its livid blue into all of the bunch.  Before long you'll
Dare something more disgraceful  than wearing a robe of tulle;
No one sinks all at once to the lowest depths of sin.

You'll gradually be accepted by cliques  at homes wherein
They deck themselves with tiaras  and ribbons on their brows
And necklaces round their throats,  and worship with duns of sows
And huge wine bowls the Good Goddess;  but by their, perverted rule.
Real women are chased off and may,  not pass the vestibule.
This goddess's shrine is For Men Only.  "Stay out," they warn,
"You unholy females! We need no women to blow our horns.
Like this were the secret torchlit orgies  the Baptae pursued,
Which bored Cotytto of Athens, goddess of all that's lewd.
One swish is doing his eyes, painting lashes and brows
With mascara and tinting the trembling lids.  Another bows
His lips to a phallic, goblet, winds his long hair in a snood
Of golden mesh; he's wearing a drag of rainbow-hued
Big checks or perhaps of chartreuse velvet; the masculine maid
Like his master swears by Juno. Another holds an inlaid
Mirror such as Otho the Homo raised in his hands-.
"The spoil of Auruncan Actor" in which he gave a glance
At his armor before commanding his soldiers to advance.
Something new has-been added, which history shouldn't bypass
A soldier's gear is substandard without a looking glass!
It really took a fine general to kill Galba and still
Keep his own skin from roughness, a man of supreme strong will
To affect the palace pretensions, out on Bebriacum's field
And smear his face with beauty packs! With quiver and shield,
Semiramis never did that in her Assyrian land,
Nor depressed Cleopatra on her ship with Actium at hand.
There's no decent language here, no table manners, no wit,
Only lewdness of speech and high, lisping voices well fit
To Cybele's priests, and an old fanatical man with white hair
Who acts as priest in the rites an example, noteworthy and rare,
Of enormous intake and a teacher all should hire! But why
Are they waiting? Isn't it now high time for them to try
The Phrygian fashion and to make the job complete
Take a knife and lop off that superfluous piece of meat?

Gracchus has settled-four hundred thousand on a lowborn
Trumpet player-or maybe he blows a straight, stiff horn.
The license, the contract, are signed."Congratulations!" Then
A huge reception. The "bride" is lying snugly within
Her husband's arms. O nobles, are soothsayers what we need,
Or is it a censor? Would you dread it more or read
It as a more monstrous sign if a woman birthed a calf,
Or a cow a lamb? The man who, when he carried the staff
And swaying shields of Mars by the
sacred thongs, used to sweat. In holy processions now is dressing
himself in the net
Of a wedding gown, with ruffles, a train, and a bridal veil!

 O Romulus, where did such wickedness come from to assail
Your shepherds? How, O Mars, did this itch spread to your sons?
Just look-a rich man of high birth wed to a man, yet not once
Do you shake your helmet in wrath or strike earth with your spear
Or even protest to your father. Well, then, get out of here;
Give up the wide, rugged field that you yourself neglect!

 "There's a ceremony tomorrow at dawn- I must pay my respects
In the Quirinal valley." "What's the
occasion?" "Why ask? A man I know is to marry a husband; just
a few guests on hand."
If we live long enough, we'll see such mates in public united; 
They'll want it recorded in the papers.'
Meanwhile, these blighted Brides are stuck with a problem that
brings them great dismay:
They can't have babies to chain the husbands who might go astray. 
For Nature's done well in this, to allow their bodies no way
To fulfill this desire; and sterile they die, for there's no aid
In sex pills from Lyde, the fat old quack, or in getting flayed
On the hand with magic whips by running Lupercan priests.

Here's a worse portent: Gracchus, wearing  a tunic, was pleased
To ape a low gladiator and, waving a trident, run
All around the arena-a man of nobler birth than the sons
Of ancient houses, or of Marcellus or the offspring
Of Catulus, Paulus, or Fabius, nobler than the whole ring
Of well-born spectators in the loges; and don't forget
The man who paid for the show where he cast that shameful net.

The notion that there are such things as spirits of the dead,' .
And kingdoms under the earth, and Stygian streams bespread
With black frogs, and all those thousands crossing in one boat,
No boys believe except those too young to pay a groat
For the baths. But suppose that it were true: 
What would Curius and both The Scipios think; and what would
Fabricius and the ghost Of Camillus, the legion slain at the
Cremera, or the host Of youth that fell at Cannae, all those brave hearts, feel
When a shade like Gracchus came among them? They'd appeal
For rites of purification if sulfur were only around
And torches and branches of wet laurel could be found.

 To such degradation we've come! We've pushed a mighty force
To the newly captured Orkneys past green Ireland's shores,
To Britain, whose people like the shortness of their nights.
But those we've conquered would never
do the' things that delight The men of our victorious city. 
And yet they say 
That Zalaces, a boy from Armenia, more girlish in every way.
Than our young men, gave himself to a lusting tribune. See 
What evil contacts do: He came here a hostage, but we
In Rome make men. If boys remain in our city long,
They'll never lack a lover. They'll abandon as wrong
Their trousers, bridles, knives, and whips and then take home
To Artaxata the customs of our youth in Rome.

III

The perils of Life in Rome

Although I'm sad at my old friend's departure, yet I praise
His purpose to make his home in abandoned Cumae and raise 
The count of citizens of the Sibyl by one. For there
Lies the threshold to Baiae, a welcome resort on a fair
And pleasant shore. I'd even choose a desert isle,
Myself, to midtown Rome. For what place have we seen so vile,
So lonely, that you would not consider that it's much worse
To dread the constant fires and tumbling houses, the curse
Of our terrible city's countless perils, and the verse
That poets pour out in the month of August in cataracts?

But while all his goods on a single cart are being packed,
He stops at the old gate where the aqueduct drips overhead.
And here, where Numa once trysted with his beloved in dead
Of night, the sacred spring, the grove, and the shrine today
Are rented to Jews, who own just a basket and some hay.
For when each tree must pay the people a fee, the grove
Itself, with the Muses pushed out, has become a beggarly drove.
We go down to Egeria's vale and the caves-a parody
Of nature. How much closer the nymph of the spring would be
If borders of green grass edged the water instead of blocks
Of polished marble that heap insult on the native rocks!

Umbricius here spoke out: "Since there's no room," he commenced, 
"For honest professions in this city, no recompense
For work, since my assets are less today than yesterday
And tomorrow will. rub from what little's left a bit more away,
I've decided to go where Daedalus shed his exhausted wings
While the gray in my hair is new, while erect though entering
Old age, while some of my life's long thread may still remain
For Lachesis to spin and I can stand on my feet with no cane
In hand. Good-bye, my homeland! Let Artorius live there,
And Catulus; led those who: turn black to white but turn not a hair 
At contracting for temples, rivers, harbors, unclogging sewers,
Trundling corpses to pyres, or selling slaves to viewers
Under their spear of authority stay. These men, who once
Were horn tooters playing around the yokel circuit, whose grunts
And puffed-out cheeks were known in every tank town, today
Produce their own shows, and to delighted applause they slay
Whomever the mob with a twist of the thumb selects as prey.
Then back they go to contracts for flushing privies-why not? 
Why not worse things?  After all, they're the sort who were begot 
In gutters, the sort that Fortune loves to lift up and cloak
With highest success whenever she wants to laugh at a joke!

"What's there in Rome for me to do? I'm not trained to lie.
I can't praise a book if it's bad - and beg for a copy. And I
Know nothing about the movements of stars. I can't and I won't,
To any man, make the promise his father will die; I don't
Inspect, and never did, the entrails of a toad.
Let others learn to bring to a bride the gifts bestowed,
The letters sent, by her paramour. No man will pursue
A robbery with my help, so I leave in the retinue
Of no magistrate, like a crippled, useless body with dead,Slack hands. 
Who's favored today except an accomplice with dread 
Secrets boiling and burning inside his soul that must
Not ever be revealed? Nobody who has in trust
Made you a party to an innocent secret believes
He owes you anything, nor will you ever receive ;
A favor from him: the man that Verres will love is the man
Who can accuse Verres whenever it suits his plan.
Don't let the gold in the sand that the shady Tagus sweeps
To the sea become so precious to you that you can't sleep,
And to your sorrow take gifts, which must be left sometime,
And forever live as a threat to your powerful patron in crime.

"I'll hasten to say what race is most welcome to our millionaires 
Today, one that I especially shun. No bashful care
Shall stop me. O Romans, I can't stand a Rome so Greekified.
But what a small- part of our dregs is Greek! 
Long ago the wide Orontes of Syria poured into the Tiber
and brought With its lingo and morals its flutes and harps with taut,
Oblique strings and its native tambourines and its bitches,
Ordered to hustle' at the circus cribs. If your itch is
To fondle exotic whores in gaudy turbans, go there!
Your country cousin, Romulus, chooses now to wear
A dinner coat from Savile Row, Athens; his chest he trims
With medailles d'honneur, his neck is reeking Parfum du Gym.
One comes from high Sicyon, one from Andros, Tralles, or Samos,
Others from Amydon or Alabanda; all head for the famous
Esquiline Hill or Osier Heights to worm their way
To the heart of the finest homes and end as master some day.
They're quick-witted, brash, to all shame lost, and ready with lots
Of talk, in greater floods than Isaeus poured. But say, what
Do you think that fellow over there might be? His career
Is being whatever you wish - schoolmaster, masseur, engineer,
Physician, magician, ropedancer, palmist, painter, fall guy.
When hungry, our Greekie knows everything. Just tell him to fly,
He'll do it. After all, that man who spread wings on the breeze
Wasn't Moorish, Turkish, or Russian, but born in the heart of Greece.

"Shouldn't I flee these purple-garbed fops? Is he to sign
His name before me and upon a better couch recline
At the table who was brought to Rome by the Orient wind,
Imported with sundried figs and prunes? Does it count, in the end;
For nothing at all that as a baby I drank in the air
Of the Aventine Hill and was nourished on Sabine olives there?

 "In the school of base flattery, these creatures are Ph.D.'s:
They praise the talk of,: a fool, the charm of a face that would freeze; 
And compare the turkey neck of a milksop to Hercules' girth
Of shoulders, lifting Antaeus to death high over the earth;
And admire a squawking voice no sweeter than that of a cock
When pecking the hen he chose to service from all the flock.
We can praise the same things they do, but only they are believed.
Could any actor play Thais better, could one have conceived
The role of a wife with finer art, or a sea nymph naked
As a worm? You'd never think a made-up man could fake it
So well a woman above and beneath the belly-and show,
Instead of a bulge at the crotch, a feminine crease below.
Yet back at home, Antiochus won't be noticed a factor
That all these players face: that nation's a troupe of actors!
Grin and a Greek laughs with you; he splits his sides. He'll sob
If he sees his patron tearful-but not in grief; it's his job.
If you ask for a tiny fire in winter, he'll scurry and get
His cloak to keep himself warm. Just say, `I'm hot,' he'll sweat.
So there's no match between us. He's always got the best odds,
Ready both day and night to reflect the mood of such clods,
To throw up his hands in wonder and give his friend bravos
If he but belches deeply or, without wetting his clothes,
He pisses straight or, turning his golden bowl bottoms up,
He gurgles in one great gulp the whole contents of the cup.

"In addition, he thinks no one too sacred to honor his penis
The mother, the virgin daughter, her fiance who at eighteen is
Unshaven still, nor the son whom sex has yet to touch.
If these aren't handy, he'll rape his friend's grandma. Inasmuch
As he wants to learn the family secrets, he's someone to fear.
And now that I'm talking of Greeks, consider their schools and hear
Of crime in a doctor's cap and gown: the old Stoic Egnatius,
Who by informing on him murdered Barea, his gracious
Disciple and friend, was whelped on the banks where Pegasus dropped
One feather beside the river. When Rome can so proudly adopt
This flotsam of Greeks, there's no place for a Roman in town,
Where some Protogenes, Diphilus, or Hermarchus lays down
The law and, true to his racial faults, never shares a friend,
But keeps him all to himself. For once he has sneaked 'a blend
Of his own and his country's poison into an indulgent ear,
I'm shown the door, and my long years of service all disappear
In thin air. Nowhere is a client more lightly tossed overboard.

"And anyway, what does a poor man's service in Rome afford
Not to flatter ourselves-though he trouble to put on his toga well 
Before dawn and hurry along to forestall the praetor who tells
His guards to go full speed to prevent his opposite number
From being the first to greet the childless, long waked from slumber 
Albina and Modia? Here sons of natives yield right-of-way
To a rich man's slave, for he squanders as much as a colonel's pay
To quiver once in a while on top, of Calvina or Perhaps Catiena. 
But you, if you have a yearning for
Some bedizened harlot whose face you like, you just don't dare, 
Being short on funds, to ask her to leave her high sedan chair. 
Bring a witness to court in Rome, as trusty and undepraved
As Scipio who harbored the goddess of Ida, Metellus who saved
The frightened Minerva from the fire in her shrine, or bring out
Even Numa himself, the first question they ask will be about
His wealth, the last about his character. `How many slaves,
Does he keep?' 'How much farmland does he own?' 
'How many engraved Dessert plates does he eat from? How big are they?' 
A man's word Is believed just to the extent of the wealth in his coffers stored. 
Though he swear on all the altars from here to Samothrace, 
A poor man isn't believed - he has nothing to lose in case
The gods dart lightning, and they forgive him with good grace.

"Anyway, a poor man's the butt of jokes if his cloak has a rip 
Or is dirty, if his toga is slightly soiled, if a strip
Of leather is split in his shoes and gapes, if coarse thread shows 
New stitches patching not one but many holes. Of the woes
Of unhappy, poverty, none is more difficult to bear
Than that it heaps men with ridicule. Says an usher, `How dare
You sit there? Get out of the rows reserved for knights to share,
All of you whose means aren't enough under law! 
And let sons of pimps, Born in brothels take seats; let an  auctioneer's son, well primped, 
Applaud with a gladiator's dapper sons and the Ivy League sons
Of a gym trainer. This distinction of rich and poor was begun
By that idiot Otho. What son-in-law here was approved on merits
If his money was less than the girl's? What poor man ever inherits
A fortune or gets appointed as clerk to a magistrate?
Long ago the penniless Romans ought to have staged a great
Mass walkout. It's no easy job for a man to advance '
When his talents are balked by his impoverished circumstance,
But in Rome it's harder than elsewhere: high rent for tenements,
Fat budgets to feed your slaves' lean, bellies, and equal expense
For your own potluck. You're ashamed to eat off earthenware;
But you wouldn't feel so if suddenly set to country fare
Far off, where you'd love to wear a coarse cape of Venetian blue.

"In most Italian regions - we both must admit it's true
No man wears'a toga until he's dead. And even on days
Of festival, when green turf makes a good theater for plays,
And a comedy hit is revived, and a rustic babe at the breast
Is scared by slits in the ashen masks, you'll see them dressed
Alike in front rows or rear-white tonics are noble enough
For high magistrates' great office. But here, in splendid stuff,
Beyond, our means, we dress; and we buy it on the cuff,
We buy too much, to impress. It's a common fault hereabout – 
We all live in pretentious poverty. Why not speak out? 
Everything in Rome has a price. "How much does it cost you to bow 
To Cossus once in a while, or to get one glance somehow
From shut-mouth Veiento? The former's busy having a shave,
The latter is dedicating a lock from his favorite slave
At the altar. The house is full of feast cakes-at a price. 
Take your cake or not, you'll take a slow burn, because to bribe 
A tycoon we're forced to pay bribes to his whole fat menial tribe.

"In cool Praeneste or the verdant hills of Volsinii, who
Has ever feared his house would collapse as we all do
Or in simple Gabii or Tivoli's craggy heights? But here
We live in a city held up for the greater part by mere
Toothpicks, for thus the janitor props the tottering beams
And patches up the old walls at cracks, and gaping seams,
And tells the tenants to rest in peace - well said, 'R.I.P.,'
With rafters ready to cave in on their heads! Not for me!
I must live where there are no fires and no alarms in the night.
Below, some Ucalegon already is shouting in fright
For water and moving his stuff. From your attic room, smoke pours,
But you don't know it; for. if the fire starts on the lower floors,
The last one to burn will, be the man with nothing to keep.
Him from the rain but the roof tiles, beneath which, in a heap, .
The soft rock-doves lay eggs. The one bed that Codrus owned
Was too small for a dwarf, his cupboard boasted six mugs, a lone
Pitcher, a Chiron reclining, made of the same soft stone,
With an old chest of Greek books, whose lovely poems were chewed
By illiterate mice. Poor Codrus had nothing-isn't it true?
But still he lost the whole nothing. The straw on the camel's back
Is this: although he's stripped of all and begging a snack,
No one will give him a paltry handout, no one a bed,
Or even offer him shelter, a roof above his head.

 "But let the-great house of Asturicus catch and burn,
The matrons mourn, the nobles wear black, the courts adjourn.
Oh, then bewail the city's' disasters and hate its fires)
The palace is still in flames and someone runs up and desires
To give him marble or building funds, another is pleased
To offer shining nude statues, another a masterpiece
Of Euphranor or Polyclitus or figures of bronze from nooks
In ancient Asian temples. And others will give him books,
Bookshelves, a bust of Minerva, or silver in coin or plate.
This is how Persicus, most refined and most fortunate
Of the childless, restores his loss with more and richer things.
No wonder that he's suspected of arson look what it brings!

"If you can be torn from the games, you can buy a fine house and stay
In Sora, Frusino, or anywhere else for what you now pay
In Rome to rent a dark hole one year. You'll have a small lawn,
A garden, a shallow well from which water is easily drawn,
With no need of ropes, to wet your tender plants. Live in peace
With a hoe as companion there, grow a truck garden fit to feast
A Vegetarian convention. Remote though your farm may be,
It's something to be the lord of one green lizard-and free.

"Here most of the sick die off because they get no sleep
(But the sickness is brought on by the undigested heap
Of sour food in their burning stomachs), for what rented flat
Allows you to sleep? Only rich men in this city have that.
There lies the root of the illness carts rumbling in narrow streets 
And cursing drivers stalled in a traffic jam-it defeats
All hope of rest. Even Drusus and sea cows are kept awake.
When a rich man has a business appointment, the crowd will make
A path for him to be carried above their heads in a rich
Liburnian litter. He reads or scribbles, no matter which,
As he goes along, or into the downy; pillows he sinks,
With the litter's curtains closed, and snatches forty winks.
But he gets there before us. Though we hurry, we merely crawl;
We're blocked by a surging mass ahead, a pushing wall
Of people behind. A man jabs me, elbowing through, one socks
A chair pole against me, one cracks my skull with a beam, one knocks 
A wine cask against my ear. My legs are caked with splashing, 
Mud, from all sides the weight of enormous feet comes smashing 
On mine, and a soldier stamps his hobnails through to my sole.

"Look at that cloud of clients scrambling to grab the dole -
A hundred guests with portable kitchens! Even Steve Reeves
Couldn't lift the weight of the brazier the little slave boy heaves
To his head, with casseroles hot on top, and carries with steady
Balance while running to fan the flames. Tunics, already
Newly mended, are ripped again. A huge fir log sways
On the wagon hauling it along; and next the drays
Of pine trees, towering, tottering, threaten all in their road
With death. For suppose an axle breaks beneath that load
Of Ligurian marble and lets a whole quarried mountain slide
Down on the crowd; what's left of their bodies? Who can divide
The limbs, the bones, of one from the rest? 
The pedestrian's crushed Cadaver vanishes utterly, like his soul. And just
As his household, meanwhile, all unawares is washing bowls
And platters, clattering greasy strigils, puffing the coals,
Refilling oil cruets, and laying out towels, and while unwitting
Slave boys scurry about, their master already is sitting
Beside the Styx, a newcomer, scared of the foul ferryman.
The poor wretch has in his mouth no penny to pay him, and 
Therefore, no hope of a passage over that murky stream.

"Now look at the other and varied perils of night: What extreme
Height to the lofty roofs from which a piece of a pot
Falls down on my head, how often a broken vessel is shot
From the upper windows, with what a force it strikes and dints
The cobblestones! If you go out to
dinner without long since
Having made a will, you'll be thought a fool, reckless of fate
And sudden disaster; for as many sure deaths are lying in wait
In the night as the open windows you pass beneath on the street.
So you hope and plaintively pray they may be content to treat
You to showers of no more than what's in their full slop jars..

"The besotted bully, denied his chance in the shabby bars
Of killing somebody, suffers torments, itching to fight.
Like Achilles bemoaning his friend, he tosses about all night, 
Now flat on his face, now on his back-there's no way at all
He can rest, for some men can't sleep till after a bloody brawl.
But however rash and hot with youth and flushed with wine,
He avoids the noble whose crimson cloak and long double line
Of guards with brass lamps and torches show they're too much to handle. 
But for me, whom the moon escorts, or the feeble light of a candle 
Whose wick I husband and trim - he has no respect for me.
Now hear how the pitiful fight begins if a fight it be,
When he delivers the punches and I am beaten to pulp:
He blocks my way and tells me to stop. I stop, with a gulp
What else can you do when a madman stronger than you attacks?
'Where you from?' he roars. `Whose dago red and beans have packed 
Your bloated belly? What cobbler fed you sheep jowls and chopped' leeks? 
No answer? Talk, or I'll kick your behind! All right now, speak! 
Where's your beat for begging? Tell me from what synagogue you came?' 
You can try to speak or escape in silence, it's all the same
He'll beat you up anyhow, then in rage he'll sue for assault.
This is the poor man's freedom: having been soundly mauled
And cut to pieces by fists, he begs and prays, half dead,
To be allowed to go home with a few teeth still in his head. 

`But these aren't your only terrors. For you can never restrain
The criminal element. Lock up your house, put bolt and chain
On your shop, but when all's quiet, someone will rob you or he'll 
Be a, cutthroat perhaps and do you in quickly with cold steel.
For as long as the Pontine swamps and the Gallinarian woods
Are guarded by armed police, their denizens, killers and hoods,
All rush here as into a game preserve. What furnace in town,
What anvil isn't forging their heavy chains? That's how
Most of our iron is used-in fetters! Well may you fear
That none will be left for plowshares, hoes, or spades in a year.
You'd call our forefathers' ancestors happy, and happy besides 
Those times that long ago, under kings and tribunes, in pride 
Saw Rome with only a single jail well satisfied.

"I could add to this many other reasons, but I must go.
My wagon and team have started, the sun is slanting low,
My muleteer keeps waving his whip for me to come. So good-bye;
Don't forget me. And if some day you need a vacation and fly
From Rome to your own Aquinum, summon me too from my nest
In Cumae to your Diana and Helvine Ceres. Dressed
In jerkin and boots, I'll come to the cold land of your sires,
An audience of one, if deserving the honor, for your satires."

IV

A Council Of State – What To Do With A Fish

Look here, once again Crispinus! I'll often have to call
Him onto my stage, this monster of evil without one small
Redeeming virtue, this low debauchee, diseased and dread,
Strong only in lust that scorns no one except the unwed.
What does it matter, then, how big are the colonnades
That tire his horses, how broad the woods where he drives in shade,
How many lots near the forum, how many mansions, he's bought?
No bad man is happy, least of all a seducer who's brought
To incest, with whom a filleted priestess lately has lain, 
To be, for that, interred while blood still pulsed in her veins.

But to lighter matters. Although if another had done the, same,
 He'd' fall in the censor's grasp; for what would be called a shame
In Tom, Dick, or Harry became in Crispinus simply a grace.
What can you do when any charge you can bring him to face
'Is less dreadful and foul than the man himself? He bought a mullet 
For three hundred dollars – something like fifty a pound, as they would put it 
Who want to exaggerate and make up, a real fish tale.
I'd praise the cunning of his schemes if he prevailed
By any such costly gift upon a childless old man
To name him first in his will, or for better reasons, planned 
To send it to some fine doxy who shuns the public glance 
Behind shades of a litter with picture windows. 
Not a chance: He bought it all for himself. We see a lot of things done .
Today that the frugal glutton Apicius would have shunned. 
Crispinus, did you, who formerly wore a G-string supplied
By your native papyrus, pay that price for a fish? You might
Have purchased the fisherman himself perhaps for less
Than the fish; and for the same amount
you could possess A farm in the provinces or a bigger estate like those
Down in Apulia. What sort of feasts must we suppose
The emperor himself gobbled up when by a parasite duke
In purple of palace pomp those hundreds of bucks were puked
A mere appetizer, that fish hors.-d'oeuvre in a modest feast.
This man's now chief of the knights, who once was only too pleased 
To sell his Egyptian brothers, yelling, "Mudcats for sale!"

Begin, Calliope! Here's no lyric for song; a tale That's true is to be the subject.
Now let's take our seats. Pierian maidens, recount the story.
And in that I treat You to the name of maiden, may I be profited.

When the. last of the Flavians was flaying a world half dead,
And Rome was slave to a baldheaded Nero, there appeared
In a net in the Adriatic, before the shrine that's reared
TO Venus. high over Greek Ancona, a; turbot whose size
Was gigantic. It bulged at the meshes---a fish as much a prize 
As those the Sea of Azov hides under ice till the sun
Cracks, open the crust, and sluggish but fat from cold, they run 
To the rushing Black Sea's mouth. The skipper means this whale 
Of a fish for the chief pontiff-for who'd dare put on sale
Or buy so big a fish when even the beaches were thick
With informers? Customs men, Inspecting seaweed, would be quick
To dash off and charge the helpless fisher, with no qualms 
At swearing the fish long fattened in Caesar's ponds, therefrom 
Escaped, and must be returned to its former lord. If we come
To believe what's held by Armillatus or Palfurius,
Everything that swims, is delicious, rare, or curious,
In any ocean whatever, belongs to the royal purse.
So, lest it go to waste, it shall be a gift he confers.

 By now unwholesome autumn was yielding to frost at last,
Malarial, patients hoped for relief, and cold winter's blast. 
Kept the fish quite fresh. And yet he hurried as if the hot
South Wind were dogging his heels. And when he'd gone somewhat
Past the lake where Alba, though ruined, tends the Trojan flame
And prays in the smaller temple of Vesta, a crowd that came
In wonder blocked his passage a while; and as it withdrew,
The gates on easy hinges swung out; and the senators who
Were excluded stared at the fish that got in. And it was sped
To this son of Atreus. Then the man of Picenum said:
"Accept a fish far too big for a mortal's kitchen. Declare
This a festival day. Make haste to vomit all that rich fare
In your stomach and. eat a turbot preserved for your own reign. 
The fish itself desired to be caught." What could be more inane,
More barefaced? And yet King Rooster's comb began to rise
With delight; when his power's praised as equal to that in the skies, 
There's nothing a godlike emperor can't believe of himself.
But no dish big enough for the fish could be found on any shelf!

So the chief advisers were called into council-men he hated,
Upon whose faces was spread the ashen fear created
By his great and dangerous friendship. The first to rush
At the steward's, call, "Hurry up, he's waiting!" was Pegasus,
Pulling on a snatched-up robe; for recently he'd been
Appointed as bailiff over the stunned city. Back then,
What else would a prefect be? But he was the best of the lot,
The most just interpreter of the law, although he thought,
In even those vicious times, that justice should not be dealt
By swords. Then came delightful old Crispus, whose unexcelled
And gentle spirit was equalled by his eloquent speech.
What better adviser for the monarch of the whole reach
Of oceans, lands, and nations if only he had been free,
Under that scourge and plague; to condemn his brutality
And give good moral advice? But what's more dangerous to men
Than the ear of a tyrant, upon whose whim the fate of a friend
Who spoke of showers, the heat, the rainy spring, depends?
So he never swam against the tide, nor was he such
A citizen as could utter the freeborn thoughts that touched
His heart, or risk his life for truth. He lived in this way
Through many winters and on to his eightieth birthday,
Protected in even that court by weapons like these from harm.

 Behind him hurried Acilius, a man the same age, at his arm
The son who did not deserve the cruel death in store, 
So quickly rushed upon him by his ruler's swords.
But to be both old and noble has become long since
The same as being a prodigy; it follows, hence,
That I'd rather be a clod, baby brother of giants, than those.
It was no help, therefore, to his wretched son that in close
Combat, as a naked huntsman, he speared Numidian bears
In the Alban arena. For who would not nowadays be aware
Of patrician tricks? Who'd think that old-fashioned ruse you achieved,
Brutus, was wonderful? Kings wearing beards are easily deceived.

With no happier face, though of ignoble bloodlines, Rubrius came
Condemned long ago of crime no, one mentions, yet deeper in shame 
Than a satire-writing pervert:. Then appeared the gluttonous belly 
Of Montanus, and slightly later Montanus himself.; and smelly 
Crispinus, exuding at early daybreak enough strong scent
To outsmell two funerals. More vicious than he, next went 
Pompeius, who had a tender whisper that slit men's throats;
And Fuscus, who, planning wars in his marble halls, would devote
His guts to Romanian vultures. Cautious Veiento in turn
Arrived with lethal Catullus, who with passion burned
For a girl he'd never seen in even our times a great
And notable marvel, a blind sycophant, a dread courtier straight
From the beggars' bridges, worthy to beg at chariot wheels
And blow soft kisses to those descending the Arician hill.
No, one was more amazed at the fish, for he said a, great deal 
About it, turning left. - But, the creature lay to his, right.
In the same way, he'd praise a Ciician gladiator's fight
Or the hoist that snatches boy actors up into the flies.
But Veiento will not be outdone. Like a seer who prophesies
When nipped, O Bellona, by your gadfly, in frenzy he cries:
"An omen divine you have here, of a brilliant, great victory!
You'll capture some barbarous king, '' or Prince Arviragus will be 
Knocked out of his British car and die. This beast, I opine;
Is of foreign birth. For see you not along, the spine
Those spearlike fins?" 
There was nothing left for Fabricius, then, 
Except to mention the turbot's age and its origin.

 "Then what's your advice?" the emperor asked. "Cut it in two?"
"Heaven forfend," said Montanus; "such indignity will not do!
Command a deep vessel to be molded, of size so immense
Its thin walls can: fitly embrace his gigantic circumference.
For the dish a great and instant Prometheus must come! 
Make haste with clay, with wheel! But henceforth, 
O Caesar, let some Good potters always attend your camp."
This proposal, suited Well to the man, won out. The old dissipations rooted
Deep in the royal court he knew, and Nero's soirees
That lasted beyond midnight, till a second hunger was raised
Inside them, when the blood by Falernian wine was heated.
No one in my time had greater knowledge of eating than he did.
He knew at the first bite if an oyster was born on a bed
In the Lucrine Bay, on Campania's rocks, or had been sped
From Kent; a glance revealed the coast where a sea urchin was bred.

The session's adjourned and the councillors are sent outside
Whom the mighty; monarch had dragged post-haste and terrified
To his Alban palace as though he'd , give them news of fierce
Germanic tribes on the warpath, or there had come to his ears,
With the speed of carrier pigeons flown from the faraway
Outposts of the empire, some quite alarming communique.

Even so, if only he had devoted to trifling nonsense
Like this all those days of cruelty and violence
When he robbed the city of its most noble and brilliant souls 
Unpunished, with none to avenge! But once he began to hold 
Great terror for men in the lower classes, he was killed,
Soaked in the noble Lamian blood that he had spilled.

5
Dinner With A Patron

If you're not yet ashamed of your purpose and your mind
Is unchanged in thinking the greatest good is being dined
At another's board, if you can suffer things that neither
Sarmentus nor cheap Gabba would have endured at Caesar's
Table, I'd be afraid to trust you on the stand
As witness, even on oath. I know nothing with simpler demands 
Than the belly; but even supposing you lack the fare
To fill your empty stomach, can't you find somewhere
A corner, abridge, a. pier, and be a panhandler there?
Is a free meal worth the insults, your hunger so acute
That it wouldn't be more dignified, shivering and destitute,
To choke down molded scraps the dogs leave in garbage-cans?

First of all, don't ever forget: when asked to dinner, a man's
Being paid in full for every service he gave long before.
A meal is the harvest of great friendship; the nabob scores
A debit against. your account; and though you get but few,
Each dinner is charged anyway. So after a month or two, 
If he wants to invite his client, neglected and long denied,
Lest the bottom place at the bottom table be unoccupied,
He says, - "Let's, get together.", The height of bliss! What more
Can you want? Now Trebius gets the reward for which he bore
The need to cut sleep short and run with shoestrings untied,
For fear the whole mob of fawners already has gone inside,
At an hour when all the stars are fading in the sky.
Or Bootes cold oxcart is slowly wheeling by.

And what a dinner, after all! You're given a wine
That even a poultice would not take and then you'll find
The guests turned into Corybants. They start with vile names,
And soon the cups are flying, a battle roars and flames
Between you and a band of freedmen, crockery cracks your head,
You swab your wounds with napkins, quickly turning blood red.
But your host drinks vintage wine, bottled when consuls wore
Long hair and beards. He holds a glass of this juice, before
The Social Wars pressed out, but not a sip would he think,
To send to a friend who suffers heartburn. Tomorrow he'll drink
An Alban or Setian wine, whose date, district, and chateau
Are hidden by a thick mold that time has allowed to grow
On the aged jars. Thrasea and Helvidius used to raise
Such wine and drink "in their leafy crowns" on all birthdays
Of Cassius and the Bruti.	 The cup- that Virro displays
Is a golden one, thick studded with beryl, a goblet encrusted
With sun-drenched amber and gems. To you no gold is entrusted;
Or if perhaps it is, then a steward is placed on guard
To count the jewels and keep a sharp eye upon your sharp
Fingernails. But pardon his qualms that splendid jasper is much
Admired. For Virro, like others, transfers from his fingers such
Fine gems as. Aeneas, preferred to jealous larbas, used
To jewel the hilt of his sword, and in new cups has them fused.
But you you'll drain a cracked, four-nozzled cup that bears
A drunk cobbler's name, whose glass . needs sulfur for repairs.
If his lordship's stomach burns from food and wine, they place 
Before him water, boiled but cold as frost in Thrace.
Was I complaining just now that you weren't served the same wine? 
You hangers-on don't even drink the same water! 
Some fine Gaetulian stableboy will set a cup at your seat,
Or the rawboned hand of a Moor you'd much prefer not to meet
At midnight passing the tombs on the hilly Latin Way.
Your host is served by the flower of Asia, a youth you'd say
Was bought for a bigger sum than all the wealth those kings,
The warrior Tullus and Ancus, had; in short, he'd bring
A price not all the estates of Roman kings would exceed.
This being the case, when thirsty, look for your black Ganyrnede.
That boy who cost those thousands can't mix a drink for a plain
Poor man. But his youth, his beauty, justify his disdain.
When will he come near you? When does he hear you ask
For water, hot or cold? Indeed, to do any task,
For old clients is beneath him; he's injured that you demand 
Anything of him and that you recline while he must stand.
But all great houses have plenty of haughty slaves on hand.

And look with what a growl another one holds out bread lump
You can scarcely break, a hard of dough already spread
With mold, impervious to teeth and sure to crack your jaws. 
A loaf made out of fine flour, snow-white and soft as gauze,
Is served your host. But remember to keep your hands away;
Keep respect for the bread tray alive! But imagine that you may 
Be slightly wicked, there'll still be someone there to make
You drop it. "Will you please, you insolent guest, just take
From your proper tray and learn the color of your own bread?"
"No doubt," you think, "it was for this that I have fled
So often away from my wife and hurried up to the head
Of the chilly Esquiline Hill when spring skies rattled and broke
With savage hail and rain poured down in streams from my cloak?"

 Look now at that mammoth lobster, with garnish of asparagus,
Being served your host its breast, so plump and glorious
And bulging over the platter, borne high over you and your peers 
By the tallest butler; look at that waving tail that sneers,
Down on you guests: For you a shrimp is served in state
One shrimp afloat on one half of one egg on a tiny plate
An adequate meal for a graveyard ghost. He sloshes his fish
With Venafran olive oil; but that wilted salad, the dish
That's given you, poor thing, will smell of lamp oil, for what
Is poured on your plates was brought here by a sharp-prowed boat 
From Numidia - such vile stuff that no one in Rome would dare 
To go into the baths if an African king were there
It will even keep you safe from snakebites anywhere.

Virro will get a mullet, one shipped from Corsican Shores
Or Taormina's rocks, for our own sea has been drained by scores
Of mad gluttons; the fishmarket nets keep seining our coast and let
No Tyrrhenian fish mature. And so our kitchens get
Supplies from the provinces; from them comes the fish as well
That Laenas, the legacy hunter, buys and Aurelia resells.

A lamprey is served to Virro, the best the Sicilian Straits
Can present; for while South Wind confines himself and waits
In his prison home to dry his dripping wings, the vortex
Of Charybdis holds for rash fishnets no fear of wrecks.
For you an eel is waiting, some cousin of water snakes,
Or -a pike. speckled-with ice-spots, a son of the Tiber that makes  
Its way to the heart of Rome, as is its wont, by tours
Of underground vaults, and fattens on filth in the pouring sewers.

I'd like, a word with our host if he'll lend a willing ear: 
"Nobody's asking such gifts as Seneca would volunteer
To his humble friends, or good, Piso or Cotta used to bestow;
For the honor of giving was valued greater, long ago,
Than office or title. We only ask that at dinner you show
You are free and equal. Do this, and be like many men 
Today - be rich just for yourself and poor to your friends."

 Before him the liver of a huge goose,  a capon as great
As a goose, are set; and a boar, well worthy to feel the blade
Of blond Meleager, steams there. Then truffles will come, if spring
Be here and the hoped-for rain and thunderstorms may bring ,
This extra course. As the gourmet said: "Keep all your wheat,
O Libya; unyoke your. oxen! Just send us truffles to eat!"

 While that goes on, lest any cause for offense be missing,
You may watch the carver caper and posture, with knife whizzing 
Around, till he performs the whole dance his master prepared.
For it makes a mammoth difference with what gestures a hare 
Or a hen is carved! But dare to speak one word at such meals, 
As though you had three names, and you'll be dragged by the heels, 
Like Cacus trounced by Hercules, and thrown out the door.
And when does Virro drink from one cup with you or, what's more, 
Take one your lips have touched? Which of you is so reckless, so 
Without shame, as to suggest to your host, "Let's drink"? 
Oh, no, There are many things a man in a worn-out cloak daren't say.
 But if some god or a godlike man, more kindly than fate, 
Should give you the four hundred thousand of a knight, how great, 
From being a nothing, how close a friend of Virro you'd be!
"Give Trebius this, serve Trebius that. Would you like for me 
To cut you the loin;' dear brother?" O money! To you he pays 
This honor; you are his brother. Nevertheless, in case
You wish to be a great lord and prince of great lords, let
No little Aeneas play in your halls or, sweeter yet
Than he, no daughter; nothing will make your friend more dear 
And delightful to you than a, barren wife. But as it is here,

Though your Mycale should bear and all at once should pour
Three boys on their father's lap, Virro will be charmed and adore
The squalling brood and, when these infant parasites
Come to his table, will order little green smocks brought right
Away, and peanuts and pennies if, are what they request.
Suspicious toadstools will be served to the lowly guests;"
To the master, a mushroom such as Claudius ate before
That one his wife, prepared, after which he ate nothing more.
Virro will order to be brought in to himself and to
The other Virros, fruits whose scent alone would do
For a feast - such as in unending Phaeacian autumns, grew,
Or which you'd think were robbed from the Hesperides. But you
Get a rotten apple like those gnawed by a monkey, equipped
With shield and helmet, who learns in fear of being whipped
To hurl, from the, back of a shaggy goat, a tiny spear.

 You may perhaps think Virro begrudges the cost. Never fear!
He does this to make you suffer. For what mime play is more fun,
What comedy, than a grumbling belly? So all this is done,
In case you don't know it, to compel you to pour out tears
Of rage and grind your squeaking teeth too long. You appear
To yourself as a free man, a tycoon's guest; he thinks you
Not bad guesswork - a slave to his kitchen's odor. For who
Could be so destitute as to suffer this patron twice
If as a boy he had worn the free man's golden device,
Or even the leather boss, the badge poor folk would wear?
The hope to dine well deceives you: "Look, that half-eaten hare
He'll give us now, or from the haunch of boar some bits;
We'll get what's left of the capon soon." So all of you sit
In silence, ready, with bread held tight, untasted, and wait.
It's a wise man who treats you thus. If you can tolerate
All this, you deserve it. Some day you'll offer, with shaven pate,
Your head to be slapped and won't be afraid of being skinned
By keen whips, worthy at last of such feasts and such a friend.

V1

WHY MARRY - A GALLERY OF WOMEN

In Saturn's time, I believe that Chastity lingered still
On earth, and could be seen for a while, when only chill
Caves offered meager homes and enclosed beneath one broad
And common shelter the fire, the herds, the household gods,
And all the family; when the hill-bred wife would spread
A mattress of boughs with leaves and straw. and cover the bed
With skins of animals caught nearby not a bit like you,
O Cynthia,, nor like you who with tears clouded up your two 
Bright eyes at the death of a sparrow, but a woman who bore
Her breasts to suckle burly babes and often was more
Unkempt than her husband, belching from acorn diets. 
Back then, When the globe of earth was young and
skies were new, the men Who, born of splintered oaks or
fashioned out of clay, Had no real parents, lived otherwise. 
Perhaps in the day Of Jupiter many traces of ancient Modesty
Survived - at least a few - but Jupiter couldn't see
His beard as yet, the Greeks as yet weren't ready to swear
By another's head, and no one feared that a thief would dare
To steal his greens or fruit, and he lived without a wall
Around his garden. Then, by slow degrees, from us all.
Astrea withdrew to heaven, with Chastity at her side
As comrade, and the two sisters together took their flight.

An ancient, long-practiced custom, Postumus, is making the bed
Of another man, shake and scorning the spirit at the head 
Of the consecrated couch. In time every other sin
Was brought forth by the Age of Iron; but it was in
The Silver Age that the first adulterers were seen.
And yet, in times like.ours, you're seeking a license and mean
To contract a marriage; already, a master barber you bring
To dress your hair and perhaps you've already bought the ring. ,
You once had your wits about you, Postumus; but now you think
Of taking a wife? What Fury, what serpents are driving you mad?
Can you let a termagant boss you when rope is so easily had
And so many windows open on dizzy leaps and the height
Of the Aemilian bridge so handy? If none of these modes of flight
Is to your taste, don't you think it might be better to take
Some boy as bedmate who'd never quarrel all night, or make
You promise gifts as you twine, or complain if you resist
His pleas and sleep, instead of panting, and leave him unkissed?

But Ursidius likes the Julian law of, marriage, intends
To bring up a sweet little heir and thereby miss being sent
Fat squabs and bearded mullets and all that the markets purvey
To legacy hunters. What can you call impossible today
If any woman would marry our Ursidius? If he - 
For so long our most notorious man of adultery, .
So often hidden, to save his skin, in a closet-sticks out 
His silly head for the marriage yoke? And what about – 
His seeking a wife with old-time morals! O doctors, come lance – 
His too full-blooded veins!, What a card!- If ever you chance ;
To find a modest woman, prostrate yourself at the door
Of Jupiter's shrine, sacrifice a gilt-horned heifer before
Juno. So very few are the wives who are worthy to touch
The fillets of Ceres, few whose fathers are not very much 
Afraid of their kisses. Weave a garland that will span
Your threshold, hang ivy thick on the door! But will one man
Be enough for Hiberina! You'll sooner force her to be 
Content with just one eye! And yet you're telling me
Of the good repute of a girl who lives on her father's farm:
Well, let her live in Gabii, in Fidenae, without harm
As she lived in the country, and I'll believe your farmyard tale. 
But who will assert that nothing happened in mountain vales
Or deep in caves? Have Jove and Mars now grown so old?

Do our colonnades show you one woman worthy to be told
Your vows? Do all the rows of all our theaters hold
One girl you could single out and love with confidence?
When girlish Bathyllus dances and in mime presents
The gestures of Leda, Tuccia can't hold back her bladder;
Apula suddenly whinnies with passion, as though a man had her
In his arms; and rustic Thymele watches and learns what's what.
But when stage sets are stored, the theaters empty and shut 
And only courtrooms resound and it's empty months before
The Megalesian Games, other people who are bored:
Find relief in amateur plays, the thyrsus, mask, and tights
Of Accius. Urbicus, in an Atellane farce, excites
A laugh by Autonoe's gestures and Aelia, who hasn't a cent,
Loves him! Some women pay high prices to open the vent
At an actor's crotch, while other won't let Chrysogonus sing,
And Hispulla simply adores tragedians; but do you think
That any would love Quintilian? You take a wife, and take
A long chance the harpist Echion or Glaphyrus won't make
You a father - even Ambrosius, the flute player. Array
The bleachers along your narrow street, hang wreaths of bay
On doors and gates, that your noble heir, Lentulus, may
In his tortoise cradle exhibit far less resemblance to eater.
Than to husky Euryalus or some other gladiator.

When Eppia, a senator's wife, ran off  with such an athlete
To Pharos, the Nile, and the infamous walls of Lagus, that seat
Of vice, Canopus, condemned the monstrous way of our city.
Forgetful of home, of husband and sister, devoid of pity,
She thought not of her country and left, unmoved by shame,
Her weeping children and even - more to amaze you - the games
And that actor Paris. Though born to wealth, though she had slept,
As a baby on paternal goose down in a cradle swept
With lace, she scoffed at the sea just as she long had scoffed
At a good reputation, the loss of which is the least of our soft
Chair-riding ladies' concern. And so with good heart and no loss
Of courage she bore the roaring Tyrrhenian Sea, the toss
Of Ionian and all the other seas she had to cross.
A woman, if faced with danger for just and honest cause,
Is afraid, her breast with terror freezes, her legs are straws,
Trembling, and won't support her. But if she's doing a bold
And wicked thing, her courage never fails. To be told
By her husband to board a ship is cruelty; she gets sick.
From the smell of bilge and rocking skies. But firm as a brick
Is her stomach if she's eloping with a lecher. She'd vomit
All over her husband if he were there, but now, far from it,
She eats with the crew, strides down the deck, and even enjoys
Hauling and coiling rough wet ropes with the sailor boys.
Then what youth captivated Eppia, what beauty set her aflame?
What did she see in him to make her endure the name
Of "Madame Gladiator"? For it wasn't just yesterday
Dear Sergius began to shave or, with an arm wounded, say
He hoped to retire. And further, many blemishes showed
On his face, like welts from helmets, a huge wart on his nose
At the tip, and a foul rheum always seeping from his eyes.
All the same, a gladiator - a name that transforms those guys 
Into Hyacinthuses! She put such a creature above
Her children, country, sister, and husband. What they love
Is the sword! And this same Sergius, when his release occurred, 
Would have begun to seem like some Veiento to her.

But do you care what a private household did, or what
This Eppia did? Then look at the rivals of the gods -
And hear what Claudius bore: When his wife knew he was asleep,
This imperial harlot, without a trace of shame, would creep
From the marriage bed in the palace to seek the pallet of lust
That she preferred. Clad in a night cloak, she left with just
One maid, and with black hair disguised by a blond wig, served
In a brothel where an empty crib was always reserved
For her, with sheets still reeking from the last encounter.
There she stood in the door, waiting for men to mount her,
Naked, with nipples gold-tipped, and Lycisca as business name,
And flaunted the womb whence you, O noble Britannicus, came.
She welcomed all comers warmly, and always demanded her pay.
At dawn, when the bawd dismissed his girls, she chose to stay,
The last to close her stall; and still with fire in her womb,
Erect like a man in her heat, she sadly left the room.
Exhausted by dozens of men but still not satisfied,
With sweaty cheeks, begrimed with the smoke of lamps, now dried,
She brought to the palace bed a perfect whorehouse stench.
Why talk of love potions, spells, or poisons brewed to quench
A stepson's life? These sex-mad, sex-driven women don't wince
At doing the foulest crimes; and lust is the least of their sins.

"But why is Censennia the best of wives, as her husband swears?"
Her dowry was in the millions; at a price so right, he declares
Her chaste. He never lost weight from Venus's darts, nor burned
From her torch: that dowry lit his fire, shot the, arrows. In turn,
For her it bought liberty. She may flirt before his eyes
And write love letters; the wealthy wife of a man who sighs
For nothing but money is really unmarried in any case.

"Why does Sertorius burn with love for Bibula?" Chase
The truth down and you'll find it's not the wife but the face 
He loves. Let just three wrinkles appear, or let her skin
Get dry and flabby, her teeth turn dark, her eyes begin
To lose their luster, his freedman will say, "Pack up your clothes
And go! You're now a nuisance, always blowing your nose.
Get out, in a hurry! Anther's' coming whose nose doesn't run. 
Till then she's queen, all afire, beseeching her husband at once 
For shepherds, Canusian sheep, Falernian vineyards - mere 
Trifles to start with - then all his slave boys and entire
Prison gangs. And what a neighbor has that she doesn't own,
He must buy. In the winter months, when the merchant 
Jason, shown In a picture, is hidden and his armed sailors on the walls 
Of the market are shut off during the fair by canvas stalls,
She brings home big crystal vases, bigger ones carved of myrrh,
And at last a famous diamond, made more precious to her
By the finger of Berenice. Long ago the barbarian king 
Agrippa gave to his incestuous sister this ring ;
In that land where kings go barefoot on the Sabbath to hold
The rites, and pigs by ancient mercy are left to grow old:

"Not one from all these crowds strike; you as worthy to wed?"
Let her be beautiful, gracious, wealth; fertile, and spread
Noble ancestors through her halls, let her be more chaste by far
Than any disheveled Sabine maid who stopped the war,
Indeed a rare bird on this earth, as rare as is a black swan.
But who could endure a wife who had all the virtues known?
I'd much rather have a wife used to rural ways, than you, 
Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, if with your true
Great virtues you bring a haughty pride and count with these,
As part of your dowry, your father's triumphs. I beg you, please, 
Spare me your Hannibal, spare me your Syphax who fell
In his own camp - may all of Carthage and you go to hell!

Have mercy, Apollo, I pray! O Goddess, pray lay aside
Your arrows! My children did nothing! Shoot their mother!" cried
Amphion. But Apollo drew his bow. So Niobe doomed
Her troop of offspring, even their father, when she presumed 
To be nobler than Latona in progeny and to be
More prolific than the white sow of Alba. What dignity,
What beauty, in a wife are worth the price if she's
Forever reckoning up her virtues to you? For these
Supreme and rarest qualities lose their charm and pall
When spoiled by a pride formed less of honey than of gall.
And who is so deeply in love he never shrinks at all
From the very woman he praises to the skies - what's more,
Hates her at least sixteen hours out of the twenty-four?

 Some faults are small indeed, yet more than husbands can bear.
What's more disgusting than. to find no woman. will dare -
Believe she's lovely unless converted from Tuscan to Greek,
From a girl of Sulmo to Maid of Athens? They can't even speak
Good Latin, more's the disgrace, and yet they talk a blue streak
All day long in Greek. They pour out their troubles, anger, fear,
Joys, and soul secrets in this lingo. What more would you hear?
All right - they're sleeping with men in Greek! You might permit 
This in young girls; but when you're pushing eighty-six,
Must you still babble Greek? This tongue's not decent when heard 
From an aged woman. When you utter such wanton words
As Zoe kai Psyche for "Life and Soul," you're using speech
In public that should' be under bedclothes. For how they beseech
And rouse the organs of lust - those soft wicked words! They caress!
Though you say them more sweetly than Haemus or Carpophorus,
You'll make all his ardent feathers fall, nevertheless
Your age is computed by the wrinkles upon your face.

If you don't intend to love the woman you embrace
And marry in legal form, there seems no reason for you
To marry, no reason why you should waste the supper and new 
Wedding cakes that must be given to well-stuffed guests who leave 
When the party's over, or waste the gift of the bridal eve,
The rich tray gleaming with coins engraved with victories
In Dacia and Germany. If you simply must appease
Yourself with a wife and are devoted to one, incline
Your head, submit your neck to the marriage yoke. You'll find
No woman who spares the man. who loves her. Though she glow
With passion, she, loves to torment. and plunder her lover. So,
The more he's good and desirable as a husband,, the less 
Beneficial by far will be his wife. You'll never address
A gift if she says no, never, sell things if she objects,
Never buy anything unless she consents. And she will select
Your friends for, you and turn your now aged friend from the door
That saw his beard first sprouting. Although the entire corps
Of pimps and trainers are free to draw up wills as they please,
And gladiators have the same right, your help-meet sees
That you list as heirs more than one rival of your own.

 "Crucify that slave!" "For what crime does he deserve to atone 
By death? What witness is there? Who accused him? Let him make 
A defense. No delay's too long when a man's life is at stake." 
"You idiot, you call a slave a man? He did nothing - agreed! 
But. this is my will, my command. Let my will justify the deed." 
Thus is she lord of her lord. But before long she abdicates
Her throne, and flies from bed to bed, and at this rate
Wears out her bridal veil; then she runs back to the bed
She scorned and seeks her imprint on it. The house she just fled
Is newly adorned, with bridal wreaths still green on the wall.
So grows her score in husbands; the limit of eight is her haul
In five autumns - a thing that merits a tribute on her tomb!

You'll have to despair of knowing, any peace at home
If your mother-in-law's alive. She teaches your wife to delight
In stripping you of wealth, she teaches her how to write
Replies, in a style not crude or naive, to the billets-doux
Of seducers, and she eludes or bribes your retinue
Of guards. She summons Dr. Archigenes, although
Your wife is well, and throws off the heavy covers so
The lover, meanwhile hid in. a closet, may see but must wait
In silence, impatient at the delay, and masturbate.
But really, do you expect that a mother would hand down
To her daughter honest ways, which are opposite to her own?
Of course not - a vile old whore continues to profit by proxy
In rearing her darling daughter to be an expert doxy.

There's hardly a case in court that a woman's fuss didn't start.
If Manilla's not the defendant, she's, the plaintiff: She'll chart 
The suit herself, write briefs, answer charges, be ready to teach.  
Even Celsus to argue his case and strengthen his jury speech.

Who doesn't know women who use the athlete's rubdown oils
And wear fine purple sweatcoats? Who hasn't seen one with foils,
Stabbing away at a post, lunging with shields and shrieks,
And piercing it to the heart, all with proper techniques?
She's well qualified to blow a trumpet in Flora's games,
Unless in her heart she considers something beyond and trains
For the real arena. What modesty can a woman show
Who wears- a helmet and disowns her sex? She loves to go
Into manly pursuits; but even she wouldn't choose to be male,
For how paltry are the pleasures of us men! At a sale,
What honor a husband feels with his wife's athletic gear,
Sword belts, gauntlets, shinguards, put up by an auctioneer!
Or if she leans to a different sort of battle; you'll see
Lucky you! your young wife selling a whole fighting armory.

These are the girls who sweat in the thinnest of gauzy gowns,
Whose delicate flesh burns even in silk. But notice her sounds
Of grunts and roars as she thrusts a sword, see how she bends .
At a helmet's weight, how, coarse and thick the pads that defend
Her thighs! But, when at last she drops her armor, then
You can laugh, for there is one male weapon she hasn't got
No use in her standing up, she has to squat on the pot.
O daughters of ancient statesmen, of Lepidus, of the blind
Metellus or Fabius Gurges, what gladiator's wife could you find
Who ever wore such equipment or panted to vanquish a post? -

The bed where; a wife lies never is free of complaints and a host.
Of quarrels back and forth. There'll be little sleep in that bed.
There she assails her husband, worse than a tigress is said
To beat-the loss of her cubs. Aware of her own secret deeds,
She pretends to grieve, denounces the boys he's known, and weeps 
At some feigned mistress, always with floods of tears at hand
Ever ready at their station, waiting for her command
On how they should flow. You think, poor worm,, it's love they show,
Are pleased and kiss them away. What notes, what love letters, though, 
There'd be to read if you opened the desk of your jealous whore!
Just catch her in the arms of a slave or knight, she'll implore,
"Tell me, tell me, Quintilian, the best words for my defense',
"Beats me," he says; "think of some yourself." She says, "Long hence
 It was agreed between us that you'd go your way and I'd
Go mine. You can deafen heaven and earth with bellows of pride
I'm a human being." There's nothing bolder than women caught
Red-handed; out of their guilt their rage and courage are drawn.

Where do these monsters come from, you ask; what's their source?
Long ago the humble state of the wives of Latium forced
Them to be chaste. Long hours of toil, short hours of sleep,
Hands chafed and calloused by Tuscan wool, the closer sweep
Of Hannibal toward the city, husbands on guard for Rome
On the Colline tower, kept vice from polluting the modest home.
Now we suffer the woes of long peace. Luxury, more savage
Than war, has smothered us, avenging the world we ravage.
From the day when Roman poverty vanished, we've lacked no crime,
No deed of lust. And so, to our Seven Hills from that time
The men of Sybaris, Rhodes, and Miletus have flowed, and among
The lot, the men of Tarentum garlanded, wanton, and drunk.
Foreign ways were first brought in by filthy lucre, the health 
Of the ages was sapped, with vile indulgence by soft wealth.
For what does Venus care, when she's drunk? She doesn't know
Her head from her tail, at midnight slurps huge oysters, throws
Into her, straight Falernian wine - a frothing perfume,
And drinks it from a shell until the walls of the room. 
Spin dizzily, tables swim, and each light looks like a pair.

Come now, you wonder why Tullia with puckered face sniffs the air, 
What Maura says in her vile Moorish foster sister's ear
When they pass the ancient shrine of Chastity? It's here. 
They stop their litters at night and piss on the goddess' form,
Squirting like siphons, and ride each other like horses, warm
And excited, with only the moon as witness. Then home they fly. 
And you, setting out to greet fine friends with dawn in the sky, 
Will tread on the traces of your wife's urine as you go by.

The secret rites of the Good Goddess are pretty well known,
When, a flute stirs their loins and, the Maenads of Priapus groan 
And howl in frenzy from music and wine and toss their hair.
Oh how they burn for intercourse, what cries declare
Their throbbing lust, how wet their legs with streaming juices! 
Saufeia challenges the pimps' slave girls and produces
Such bouncing hips she wins the prize, but in turn must yield; 
Medullina's copious flow is sure to carry the field.
The women share honors: technique's as good as breeding at this. 
They're not pretending, as in a game, and each caress
Is genuine, such as would heat a Priam's cold blood and fire
A Nestor's testicles. Then impatient with chafing desire,
They're females without veneer, and around the ritual den
Rings a cry from every comer: "We're ready! Bring in the men! 
And if the stud is sleeping, the young man's ordered to wrap 
Himself in a robe and hurry over. If he's not on tap,
A raid is made on the slaves; remove the hope of a slave,
 They'll hire a water carrier. If they can't find a man, to save 
The day they'll get a donkey to straddle their itchy behinds. 
Oh, would that our ancient rites, at least in public shrines, 
Were purged of these filthy acts! But every Hindu and Moor
Knows who that lady lute player was who, so cocksure,
Took a penis bigger than both the scrolls that Caesar wrote
Against Cato, into a place that boy mice, taking note
Of their own testicles, flee; where every picture of males,
That opposite sex, is; ordered covered well with veils.

Back then, who held the gods in contempt? Who would have dared 
To laugh at Numa's wood bowls, black plates, and the brittle ware
Made out of Vatican clay? But now, what altar is there
Without its Clodius? Females, high or low, have the same lust,
And she whose feet pound the black cobblestones is no better at best . 
Than she whose litter the shoulders of sturdy Syrians bear.
Ogulnia, in order to see the games, rents clothes, hires a chair
And porters, cushions, girl friends, a nurse, and a flaxen maid
To run errands. Yet what's left of the family silver plate,
Down to the last little mug, she gives to smooth athletes.
Many women have narrow means, but none is modest or meets
The fact of her poverty or limits herself to the budget
It allows and requires. But men look ahead sometimes and judge it.
Wise to be thrifty; some at last have learned from the ant
To fear cold and hunger. But when a woman's extravagant,
She can't see that her funds are dwindling. As though money grew
On trees to fill her empty coffers and she well knew
A plentiful heap lay there, which she could not exhaust,
 She never gives a thought to what her pleasures cost:

 In any home where there lives and disports a man avowed
To obscene affairs, his tremulous fingers are endowed.
With promise of everything. You'll find they're all reprobate
And just the same as queers. But folks let them desecrate
Their food and sit at their Sacred board, and when at last
Some Colocyntha or bearded Chelidon ends his repast,
They order the dishes taken out to be washed instead
Of having them smashed to pieces. So even the lowborn head
Of a school for gladiators runs a more decent house
Than yours; he keeps the foul and the clean apart, allows
Not even net casters to mix with men whose robes show dirt;
And armored fighters don't strip in the same room with experts
At the trident, who always battle naked. He never fails
To allot these guys the remotest quarters, and even jails
Do the same. And yet your wife makes you share the cup they use,
With whom a whore, decayed and brown as a corpse, would refuse 
To drink the finest of wines. By their advice, on a whim
Impulsive women marry and get divorced with them
They lighten boredom, and business matters; from them they learn 
To twitch their buttocks and thighs and whatever other turn
The teacher knows. But you must never trust him at all:
He mascaras his eyes, and decked in a yellow frock, net shawl 
Tied round his hair, he aims at adultery. Don't fall
For his trick; the more he lisps, the more often his hands are spread 
On his prissy hips, suspect him. He'll be a he-man in bed.
There he drops the mask of soft Thais and proves in fact
A three-pronged threat. "Whom are you fooling? Try your act 
On other folks, not me. I'll make you a bet. I contend
You're. a genuine man. Do you admit it? Or must I depend
On the tortured girls in brothels to tell?" I know, the course,
Old friends, that you advise: "Put a lock on, keep her indoors."
But who's to guard the guards themselves? For pay in kind,
Their lips are sealed on the wanton's intrigues. As partners in crime,
They're silent. A smart wife sees to this and begins with them.'

Those timorous eunuchs without one hope of a beard to trim
Delight' some women with luscious kisses, and there's no need
For abortives. The acme of bliss for such a woman, indeed,
Is one who was still a lusty youth, his private parts
Mature in a nest of hair, when remodeled by surgical arts. 
Anyway, what's left grows bigger and soon weighs a goodly amount;
What the surgeon cut out makes a loss to only the barber's account. 
But slave dealers' boys bum with a real and wretched disease 
Of impotence, ashamed of the pouch and its lost chick-peas. 
And when he goes to the baths – the other one caught in youth –
All eyes in admiration observe him, for in plain truth
He rivals Priapus, though his mistress had him castrated.
Let him sleep with her; but keep this eunuch well separated,
Postumus, from sturdy Bromius, who's barely ready to shave!

If your wife loves music, no professional singer can save
Himself from her summons. She's always handling instruments;
Her sardonyxes sparkle all over the lyre as she invents ,
A group of chords with a vibrating plectrum formerly used
By tender Hedymeles. This trophy she fondles, and suffused
With delight, she washes his pick with kisses and teary brine.
A certain lady, of Lamian and Appian blood, with wine
And cakes asked Janus and Vesta if Pollio might aspire
To the Capitoline oak wreath and promise it to his lyre.
What more could she have done if her husband were ill, her son 
Despaired of by the doctors? She stood at the shrine and not one
Vestige of shame did she feel to veil her head and pray
For a harpist, spoke the prescribed words in the proper way,
And paled when the lamb was opened. Tell me, I ask; you now,
Most ancient of gods, O Father Janus, do you allow
Such women answers? You've time on your hands in heaven; for you, 
You gods, so far as I can see, there's nothing to do.
One lady consults you about a comic actor; again,
Another wants to commend a tragedian. Soon, for their pains
In serving so much, soothsayers will all have varicose veins.

But better that she should sing than boldly rush around
The whole city, intrude on the councils of men, and talk down, 
Straight-faced, dry-bosomed, the leaders in military clothes,
In front of her husband. This same woman knows what goes
On all around the world-what the Russians and Chinese propose 
To do, down to what wife did what with her stepson and where.
She knows who loves whom, what wolf's the rage, what widow will bear 
A babe, who did it and when. She'll tell you what women cry
To lovers in bed, and how they do it. She's first to spy
The comet threatening kings of Armenia and Parthia, first
To pick up the latest rumors at the gates, and well versed 
At inventing them. So she tells everyone on every comer: 
Earthquakes have leveled, distantcities, the great Matterhorn or 
Gibraltar has burst its banks, is flooding the land, the blight
Spreads miles all around, whole regions are sinking from sight!

This fault is bad, but no worse to bear than a woman who
Always grabs up poor neighbors and, though for mercy they sue, 
Cuts them with whips. If her sleep is ruined by a barking dog,
She cries, "Get the canes! Be quick!" and gives an order to flog 
The owner first and then the dog.Unpleasant to meet,
A most horrible face! She goes to the baths at night, when streets
Are dark, sends over her oil flasks and whatever's required.
She loves to sweat in the swarming crowd, and when she's tired
From swinging dumbbells, the cunning masseur must rub her with oil.
His fingers stray deeper into her brush until her loins boil
To a climax amid her cries. And meanwhile, back at her house, 
Poor guests, half dead with fatigue and hunger, start to drowse. 
At last she arrives, all red in the face and with a thirst
That could drain the whole wine basket set at her feet. But first
She tosses down a couple of pints from it before
Her dinner, to rouse a huge appetite, and then she pours
It out, to slosh what's washed from her stomach onto the floor.
The flood runs over the marble pavement, the gold basin stinks
Of Falernian, for like a big snake trapped in a vat, she drinks 
And vomits and drinks. With this her husband grows meanwhile 
Nauseated, and by shutting his eyes, holds down his bile.
But worse is the woman who, no sooner than she sits
At dinner, praises Vergil, forgives dying Dido, pits
The poets against each other, and weighs Vergil on the scale

With Homer. Grammarians yield, rhetoricians are beaten, turn tail, 
And the whole assemblage is silent. No lawyer, no auctioneer,
Can get a word in, nor even another woman. To hear
Such a pounding force of words, you'd think so many bells
And basins were being crashed together. It's just as well
That now no one should strain the trumpets and cymbals-one
Woman alone will be able to cure an eclipse of the moon.
The philosopheress sets rules and expounds on moral sense;
But she who yearns too much to seem wise, full of eloquence,
Should tuck her skirts up to her knees like a man, sacrifice
A pig to Silvanus, and go to cheap baths at a scholar's price.
Don't let the wife who shares your bed know polemical speech,
Don't let her badger you with twisted words and preach
In slyly distorted syllogisms And let her not know
All the histories, but read some things in books, although
She doesn't. understand them. I hate one who always
Consults and goes through Palaemon's grammar, in every phrase 
Observing rules and usage of speech and who, in effect
An antiquary, quotes verses unknown to me and corrects
In her rustic girl friends errors no man need worry to make.
Let a husband at least be allowed his "grammatical" mistakes.'

A woman stops at nothing, for nothing's shameful, she thinks,
When she rings her neck with emeralds and hangs to her ears gold links
With pearls big enough to stretch them. Nothing's so hard to endure
As a wealthy woman. Before that, her face is foul, each contour
Grotesquely puffed by beauty packs, and she reeks and drips
With thick Poppaean creams, which stick to her poor husband's lips.
A lover she greets with skin washed clean. But when will she care,
To look attractive at home? For lovers, spikenard's, kept there;
For them she buys all that you slender Hindus in commerce
Send us. At last she opens her face, strips off the first
Of the plasters, and begins to look recognizable; then
She's laved in asses' milk, from a herd of females, which in
Her train would be led if she were banished to the North Pole.
But when she's daubed and treated with all those creams and mole
Removers and wrinkle smoothers of hot, wet dough, the results are
Questionable: What shall we call it a face or an ulcer?

It's worthwhile to learn exactly what they do all day
And how they keep themselves occupied. If a husband lay
Backed up to his wife at night, the housekeeper gets it, maids
Are stripped for the lash, the Liburnian chair-man she upbraids
For coming late, and he has to pay for the sleepy head ,
Of her husband. Canes are broken on one, another turns red
With blood from thongs, a third from whips. Some women hire 
Their torturers by the year. The flogging starts, and while
It goes on, she daubs her face, or listens to her girl friends,
Or inspects the wide gold thread of embroidered robes. Again 
The whip falls-she reads the Daily Gazette; again the whip scores, 
Until at last, with the floggers themselves exhausted, she roars
A horrendous "Get out" and her court of justice is adjourned.

'Her government of her own household is just as stern
As that of Sicilian tyrants. For if she's made a date
And wants to be prettier dressed than usual, and is late
And hurried to meet whoever waits for her in the park,
Or more likely the bawdy temple of Isis, then she'll bark
At the girl who does her hair - unhappy Psecas, with hair,
In tangles, herself, with shoulders naked and bosom bare:
"Why is this curl much higher?" And so the bullhide thong 
Chastises her for the fault of a curl. What did Psecas do wrong? 
Is the girl to blame if you don't like the shape of your nose?
On the left, another maid combs her hair and coils it in rows:
A maid of her mother's, too old for sewing but now in charge
Of spinning, joins the council; she's the first to enlarge
On her views, and after her the younger, less skilled, will state
Their opinions, all as though honor or life were in debate:
So serious is the business of being. beautified,
So many tiers she piles up, so many stories besides
She builds high on her head. An Andromache you'll see 
In front; behind she's shorter; you wouldn't think it could be
The same woman. Well, maybe nature made her so short that she
Looks like a Pygmy maiden without the help of high heels,
And has to rise up lightly on tiptoe in order to steal
A kiss. Meanwhile, she gives no thought, much less any care, 
To husband or what she costs. She acts, though living there,
As if she were his neighbor-closer only through hate
Of his friends, his slaves, and her wasting of his wealth.

In the gate The priests of mad Bellona and Cybele come, led through
By a huge half-man, a form that his obscene minor crew
Must revere, who cut off his tender genitals long ago
With a broken shell. To him the noisy crowds bow low,
To him the drummers yield; a Phrygian turban adorns
His plebeian features. The lady in solemn tones he warns
Of September hurricanes coming, unless she will purify
Herself with a gift of a hundred eggs, and add a supply
Of old dark-red clothes, so that into them any sudden, severe
Forthcoming danger may pass and at once expiate the whole year.
On a winter morning she'll go to the river, break the ice,
Plunge into the Tiber, and dip her timorous head in it thrice.
In the eddies themselves; then, naked and shivering, crawl right
Across the whole Field of Mars on bleeding knees. If the white
Io commands it, she'll go to the ends of Egypt and fetch
From the Nile at tropic Meroe the sought-for water with which
To sprinkle Isis' temple that stands near the old sheepfolds.
For she thinks, the .voice of the goddess herself gave the word: what a soul,
What a mind, for the gods to be conversing with in the night!

Therefore the chief and highest honor is given by right
To Anubis who, surrounded by a linen-clad troop
And priests with shaven heads, runs along deriding the group
Of people bewailing Osiris. It's he who for pardon prays
Each time a wife won't abstain from copulation. on days
That must be observed as holy, and huge penalties he takes
Whenever her sheets have been defiled, and the silver snake
Has been seen to nod its head. His tears and studied singsong
Make sure that Osiris won't deny pardon for the wrong,
Bribed, of course, by a thin holy cake and a big fat goose.

When he has taken his leave, a  trembling Jewess, whose
Reed basket and hay are left behind, is begging her,
Whispering in her ear-this one's an interpreter
Of the laws of Jerusalem, high priestess with a tree
As temple, a trusty go-between of high heaven. And she
Fills her palm, but much less full, for at bargain prices a Jew
Sells you the answer to any dream you'd like to come true.
An Armenian or Commagenian soothsayer next, who has picked
About in the lungs of a still-warm pigeon and now predicts
A youthful lover or a huge bequest from a man who's rich
And childless. He'll poke into chickens' hearts, the guts of a bitch, 
Sometimes of babies. What he'd inform on, himself, he'll do.

 But she'll trust Chaldeans more. What astrologers construe,
They believe comes right from Ammon's mouth, for Delphi of late
Has no oracles and is mute, and man is condemned to wait 
In darkness as to the future. Foremost among these was he,
So often exiled, through whose friendship and suborned augury
The great citizen, feared by Otho, died. Subsequently,
His art was trusted only if both hands had clanked with chains
And he in the prison house of a distant camp had lain:
No unconvicted astrologer has power - only he
Who, all but executed, contrived just in time to be
Exiled to the Cyclades and at last from Seriphos set free.

Your Tanaquil consults them about the much delayed death
Of her jaundiced mother - earlier, though, about your last breath – 
And when she'll bury her sister and uncles, and if she'll go
Before her lecher: what sweeter boon could the gods bestow?
But still she can't understand those gloomy, dreadful threats .
Of the planet Saturn, or under what constellation she gets
The propitious influence of Venus, or which month is for gains, 
Which month for losses. But remember the type take pains
To avoid a woman who clutches a horoscope, well thumbed
In her hands, like a smooth amber ball, one who consults with none 
But now herself is consulted, one who when her husband withdraws
To camp or returns to his home- won't go with him because
The signs in Thrasyllus call her back. If she wants to ride 
To the, first milestone, the right hour is for her book to decide. 
If the comer of an eye she rubbed should itch, she calls
For salve; only after checking her horoscope; though she falls
Abed ill, no hour appears more proper for taking food
Than that which Petosiris has prescribed. as good.
If she be of modest means, she'll shop around in each shed
Between the circus endposts, draw lots, let her palm be read,
Or have a phrenologist interpret her brow and head,
While asking many clucks of approval.  Rich women get answers
From the highly paid Phrygian or Indian necromancers,
So skilled in stars and spheres, or some old priest whose role 
Is to purge things hit by lightning. Plebeian fortunes are told
In the Circus or on the Servian ramparts. The woman who wears
A long chain of gold around her naked neck inquires
Before the pillars and dolphin columns if she should plan
On leaving the tavern keeper and wedding the old-clothes man.

And yet, these impoverished women suffer the dangers and pains
Of childbirth and troubles 'of nursing, which their poor lot ordains. 
But how few gilded beds contain a female sweating in labor!
It shows how fatal the skill, how potent the drugs, on babe or
Mother, when an abortionist gets high prices to kill
Mankind in the womb. Rejoice, poor husband; give her the pill 
Or the dose yourself. For if she were willing to swell up and bother 
Her womb with kicking babies, perhaps you'd be the father
Of an Ethiopian - and this dusky heir, whom you would hate
To meet before noon, would soon inherit your whole estate.

I skip, the substitute children, frauds that answer but cheat
Fond hopes and prayers. Abandoned beside cesspools; they meet 
Our need for pontiffs and priests with bodies that falsely bear 
The name of Scauri. Shameless Fortune always lurks there
In the night, smiling upon the naked babies; these
She fondles and wraps in her bosom; then, herself to please,
She prepares her private farce and sends them into the homes 
Of the mighty. These she loves, to these her favors are shown; 
She always brings them forth as nurslings of her own.
One-man hawks magic charms for ladies, another sells
Love potions from Thessaly, which harass the mind with spells, 
When a wife can spank her husband's rump with a shoe. They set 

You to acting a fool, sow darkness in your mind - you forget 
What you did last night. Yet all of that can be borne, if you 
Just don't begin to rave like that uncle of Nero's into
Whose drink Caesonia poured the whole afterbirth of a mare. 
When an empress sets a style, what woman won't follow? Everywhere 
The world was then in flames and falling, divided, to doom,
As if Juno had driven her husband mad. Agrippina's mushroom,
Therefore, was a lesser evil since that choked off the breath

Of just one old man and sent his doddering head in death 
With slavering lips to descend to heaven; this other potion
Cried out for slaughter and fire, bred torture, mixed in an ocean
Of blood mutilated knights and senators. Such were
The costs of one mare's offspring and one female poisoner.

They hate the children of their husbands' concubines.
Let none resent it, none forbid, now at last it's defined
As proper to kill a stepson. You orphan boys, whose wealth
Is in your own name, I warn - keep a close watch on your health, 
Your life - don't trust one single dish. The meat pies are hot; 
But also hot with a mother's poison. No matter what
The woman who bore you offers, let someone first take a taste;
Let your fearful 'tutor' sip first from the cup set at your place.

I'm inventing all this; - my satire of course I have enlaced
In Tragedy's buskin? I've stepped out of bounds, broken the rules
Of those before me, drunkenly ranting, as if from the school
Of Sophocles, a dark theme our Roman mountains and skies
Never knew? I wish I were wrong! But here is Pontia who cries:
"I confess. I did it poisoned my sons. My crime, laid bare,
Is known to all. With my own two hands I did it - so there!" 
"You didn't, you fiendish viper, murder two at one meal? 
Not two?" "Or seven, if seven by chance had been there to kill!"

Let us believe what Tragedy says of Procne and grim
Medea; I've no rebuttal. Those women dared in their time
Great monstrous deeds, but not on account of money; much less
Amazement is due the highest crimes when wrathfulness
Incites this sex to guilty acts, and blazing inside
With fury, they're swept headlong like rocks from ridges pried
When a mountain erodes and beetling crags crumble and split.
I can't bear a woman who plans and in cold blood commits
A terrible crime. Our wives watch Alcestis undergo
The fate of, her husband; but if the gods on them should bestow
A similar chance of exchange, they'd let their husbands die
To save the life of a poodle dog. Each day you'll pass by
Granddaughters of Belus, many Eriphyles, and you can't miss
Clytemnestras in every street. The only difference is this:
That daughter of Tyndarus had to use both hands to swing
A clumsy two-headed ax, whereas nowadays the thing
Is done with toad poison. And yet, if Atrides, practicing
Precaution, has drunk beforehand the, antidotes that healed
The thrice-conquered king of Pontus, it still is done with steel.

VII

THE PLIGHT OF THE CREATIVE MAN

All hopes and incentives of learned men lie in Caesar alone.
For in our time only he has regarded the Muses who moan
And grieve while famous poets must manage small baths in a place
Like Gabii, or bakeshops in Rome, and others have shown no trace
Of shame to become town criers; while starving Clio forsook
The valleys of Aganippe and came to town to look
For work. For if you see no chance to earn a cent
In the Muses' grove, you'd better decide to be content
With Machaera's name and profits, and sell what the auction match 
Sells the crowd-wine jars, tripods, bookcases, chests, and a batch 
Of Paccius Alcithoe and Faustus Tereus and Thebes. This tack
Is better than if you swore before a judge "I saw"
What you didn't see, though Asian knights may say this in law,
And knights of Bithynia and Cappadocia, too, and a breed
Like those whom Galatia brought across to us with bare feet.

But henceforth no man who weaves our eloquence into song
With musical meters and has bitten the laurel will long
Be forced to do labor beneath his talents. To work, young men!
Your emperor's looking around, urging you on that your pen
May produce a work he'll favor. But if you expect to find
A patron anywhere else, Telesinus, if with that in mind
You're scribbling reams of yellow paper, you'd better call
For firewood right now and sacrifice to Vulcan all
You write, or stop and let bookworms eat your book where it lies.
Break your pen in two, destroy the battles that kept your eyes
From sleep, poor fool, who go on writing verses sublime
In a tiny garret, expecting that you may merit in time
A scrawny bust with an ivy crown. There is no hope
Beyond that: our wealthy miser today has learned to cope
Just admire, just praise the eloquent, like boys before	`
Juno's peacock. But that time of life, that could have borne .
The sea or helmet or spade flows by; then fatigue imbues

The soul, and talented, paupered old age damns itself and its Muse.

Now hear the arts that spare him from spending anything
On you - that patron you're courting, after abandoning
The temples of, the Muses and Apollo. He writes
Poems himself, and yields to Homer alone the heights
Of verse because of his thousand-year lead. And if you're ablaze
To recite, for the sweets of fame, he lends a moldering place
To you; this house in the suburbs is at your service, with doors 
Of iron, like city gates repelling invaders. With scores
Of freedmen he fills the back rows and spreads his clients about 
The room to cheer and applaud. But no rich man will put out
So much as the rent for benches, rostrum, steps, and chairs
In front, which have to be returned after these affairs.
But still we poets keep working and scratch our furrows now
In shallow dust and turn the sands with a profitless plow.
For if you'd stop, the incurable itch for writing holds
You in ambition's snare and in your sick heart grows old.

But a genuine poet, who has a personal lyric streak,
Who writes no hackneyed lines, whose  verse is not, so to speak,
Coined in a common mint - this man, whom I cannot show
And only sense, is produced by a mind free of care, bearing no 
Rancor, devoted to the forests, and worthy to drink
At the Muses' spring. For gloomy Poverty cannot think
Of singing in the Pierian cave, a thyrsus held tight
In hand, while having no money, which both day and night
The body needs. When Horace was singing, "Be merry," he kept 
His belly well_ filled. Where can genius find a home except
In a heat moved only by song, to no other care inclined,
And urged by the lords of poetry and wine? An exalted mind
Not one that quails at a blanket's cost - is needed to catch
A vision of chariots, horses, faces of gods, and to match
In verse what confounded Turnus - the sight of Alecto's face.
For if Vergil had lacked a; slave and a decent dwelling place,
All of the snakes would have fallen out of her hair, no dire
Blast would have roared from her silent trumpet. Do we require 
That Rubrenus Lappa be no less great - than ancient playwrights,
When his Atreus lies in pawn for dishes and clothes? And quite
Unhappy Numitor has not a thing he can give a friend,
But enough for gifts to Quintilla, and some left over to spend
For a tame lion that must eat whole sides of beef. It costs less,
No doubt, to feed lions; poets have bigger bellies, I guess.

Lucan, content with fame, may rest  among statues that grace
His gardens, but how will the greatest praise, if only praise,
Help Serranus or starving Saleius? Everyone flocks to hear
His lovely voice read their favorite Theban epic when dear
Statius has made the city happy by naming a day:
For so does he capture their hearts with music, so does he sway
The crowd to listen with rapture. But when his verses have brought
The house down, he'll starve unless he lets his Agave be bought,
Still virgin, by that actor, Paris. For he's the man
Who bestows many army commands, and rings with the golden band
Of a knight a poet's finger after six months. You'll get
From an actor more than princes give. Why haunt the rich set
Of the Camerini, of Barea, and the spacious halls
Of nobles? Pelopea chooses prefects, Philomela installs
Tribunes. But you really shouldn't I begrudge the poet who
Earns a living from the stage. Who'll be a Maecenas to you?
Who'll be. nowadays Proculeius or Fabius, who'll be
A second Cotta or. Lentulus? Back then, ability
Was matched with reward, then it was worth it to many to try
To be pale and through December's revels let wine go by.

You historians, do you perhaps from all your work earn more?
You surely waste more time and more lamp oil on your chore. 
Forgetting, reason, your pages run into thousands - the cost.
Of paper alone - must ruin you! To this you're forced by the vast 
Profusion of acts and by the laws of your craft. But what yield, 
What harvest is got from it, what fruit from clearing your field? 
Who'll give to any historian as high a rate of pay
As he will give the man who announces the news each day?

 "They're a lazy bunch," you say, "that love just lying around
In the shade." Then what does a lawyer get, who in court expounds
His cases, loaded with bundles of briefs? He makes a big show,
Especially if his own creditors hear; indeed he will grow.
Even louder if nudged by a man who's brought huge ledgers to claim
A dubious debt. His enormous bellows then pant as they frame
A big lie about his opponents, and all over his breast
He slobbers spit. And yet, if you really put to the test
His income, you'll balance a hundred lawyers' fees with what
A single redcoated jockey who races horses has, got.
The judges are seated; you stand up, pallid as Ajax, to sue
In a case of contested freedom before some nincompoop who
Was made chief justice. Rant till you burst your lungs, poor fool, 
And win for your pains, green palms to adorn the vestibule
Of your attic home. And what's the fee for your speech? A butt 
Of dry ham, a tin of sardines, five bottles of wine - rotgut
That came down the Tiber - or maybe a month's supply (for a Moor) 
Of mildewed onions. If you've pled four times and procure 
A gold piece, most of it, by your compact, goes to your clerks. 
Aemilius will get top fees, though we did the better work.
But then, a chariot with four fine steeds in bronze appears 
In his patio, and his own image, astride a fierce
Warhorse, is brandishing a slanted spear at a wide
Remove, and the statue practices for battle, squint-eyed.
For such things Pedo is bankrupt, Matho's broke, and the fate 
Of Tongilius will be the same, he goes to the baths with a great
Oil flask of rhinoceros horn and irks everyone with his crowd 
Of dirty slaves. He rides through the forum, with bearers bowed 
By a king-sized litter, window shopping for slaves or vases 
Of agate, silver or villas. His imported mantle places
Him high in the credit rating - it's Tyrian purple. Even so, 
These people profit by this, for violet or purple robes throw
A lawyer more practice. To him it's worth it to live in a buzz
Of commotion and put on a show of having more than he does.
For prodigal Rome sets no limit on how much you squander, or how.

 Do we trust in eloquence? No one today would ever allow
Cicero himself the smallest fee unless, he could show
A big blazing ring. The first thing a litigant has to know,
Is: Have you eight slaves, ten flunkies, a litter; have you friends 
In togas to walk before you? That's why Paulus used to rent
A sardonyx ring for his pleas in court, and why he earned
Higher fees than Gallus or Basilus. Seldom do people discern. 
Eloquence under a threadbare cloak. For when do they let 
Basilus bring forth in court a . weeping mother, or yet
Even listen, no matter how well he speaks? Much better to get
Out to Gaul or Africa, wet nurse of lawyers, if you are stung
With the thought of bringing in a living by use of your tongue.

But maybe you teach rhetoric? What an iron constitution
You must have, Vettius, to hear your full class plot executions
Of cruel tyrants! Whatever each pupil has read at his seat,
He'll stand to recite, and drone the very same lines that repeat
What others have said. This same warmed-over cabbage kills
The wretched teachers. What approach should be made, what bill
Of particulars for a case, what's the crucial point, and what
Will the main objections be, all wish to know, but wish not
To pay for. "Pay my tuition? But what did I learn?" It's the fault
Of the teacher, of course, that some Arcadian ass can't exalt
His feelings and harps on terrible Hannibal till my poor brain
By the weekend is numb with whatever it is he hopes to explain:
Whether to push toward Rome from the. battle of Cannae, or whether
In caution, after the thunderstorms and threatening weather,
To wheel his troops, drenched from the rain. "Just name any sum
You please; you'll get it if you can make their fathers come
And hear them as often as I!" cry dozens of teachers as one,
Filing lawsuits for their pay, with real claims to argue-none 
On "The Rapist, "The Poisoner," or the others left behind -
With "The Bad Ungrateful Husband" and "Miracle Drugs for the Blind."

So if you want my advice, you men who come down-from the shade
Of fictitious rhetoric to wage. real battles in court to be paid
Your fees - worth a pauper's dole, but the best you'll ever receive
To you I say, get out, give yourself walking papers, leave
For some other job. If only you knew how Chrysogonus clips
The upper crust for teaching their sons to sing, you'd rip
Your Essentials of Rhetoric by Theodorus right in two.

A great man will spend ten thousand to build his baths, a few
More than that for a long colonnade to ride in on rainy days 
Must he wait for clear skies, or splash fresh mud on his team of bays?
Much better to drive where their hooves will stay unmuddied and bright! 
Elsewhere let a banquet pavilion rise on pillars of white
Numidian marble and catch the winter sunlight. No matter
The cost of the house-he still can afford a slave for each platter,
To serve it with proper skill, and cooks to make tasty food:
Among such expenditures, two thousand is surely a good
Deal more than enough for Quintilian: There's nothing-a father will spend 
Less money on than his son. You ask, "How is it, then, -
That Quintilian has so many estates?" Pass over the cases
Of unusual, fortune; the lucky man is full of graces
He's handsome, brave, and wise, highborn and noble; he sews
On his black shoes the Senate's half-moon; a great orator, too, he throws
The javelin for records, and even with a cold sings like a bird 
For it makes a big difference which stars welcome you when first 
You start to utter squalls, still red from your mother's womb. 
If Fortune chooses, you'll rise to consular post from classroom; 
If she feels otherwise, you'll fall from consul to rhetor. For what 
Was it that favored Ventidius? And Cicero? Was it aught
But the stars and the wondrous might of mysterious fate? 
They'll bestow Kingdoms on slaves and triumphs on captives. Yet also,
That fortunate man is rare-more rare than a pure white crow.
Many men have regretted holding the vain, unrewarding chair 
Of professor, as the end of Thrasymachus declares,
And of Secundus Carrinas; and him whom you saw low
In poverty, O Athens, on whom you dared bestow
No better thing than a cup of cold hemlock. Grant, O gods,
That earth lie soft on our forefathers' shades and through the clods
Eternal spring and the fragrant crocus bloom over their bones:
They honored a teacher as substitute parent. Even full grown,
Achilles, fearing the rod, used to sing in his native hills,
And the tail of the centaur, his music teacher, did not fill
Him then with laughter. But Rufus and other teachers today
Are beaten up by their own teenagers - Rufus, whom they
Have nicknamed "Cicero 'from the sticks', so often before.
Into the laps of Celadus or learned Palaemon, who pours
As much reward as their works of grammar deserve? And yet
From this, whatever it be - and it's less than rhetors get
The pupil's pigheaded guardian takes his bite, and a cut
Must go to the steward. Accept it, Palaemon, and suffer somewhat
Of a loss in fees, like a peddler in winter with bedspreads of white
Gallic linen, if only it go not to waste that from midnight
You've sat in a place where no blacksmith would stay, which no man
Who teaches how to card wool with crooked irons would stand;
If only it go not to waste that you have smelled the fumes
Of as many lamps as there were boys, with a Horace begloomed
With stains and a Vergil black and sooty from sticky thumbs.

Yet rare is the fee that needs no order of court to see
That it's paid. But parents impose strict rules on teacher that he
Must break no laws of grammar, must read all histories, know 
Every classic author as well as his every finger and toe;
And if caught by chance on his way, to the baths or Phoebus' snot,
Must answer a quiz, such as Who was Anchises' nurse? And What
Was Anchemolus' stepmother's name? Where was she born?' 
Of what line? How long did Acestes live? And how many barrels of wine
From Sicily did he give the Trojans? Require him to form
The tender minds as if with a thumb, like someone who warms
And shapes a face out of wax; require him to be to the whole 
Classroom a father, lest they play nasty games and take hold 
Of each other. It's no easy job to keep the hands and the bright, 
Slyly winking eyes of so many boys always in sight.
"Take care of all this," they say, "and at the end of the year
Get the gold piece the crowd demands for a winning charioteer."

VIII

What's the use or a pedigree?

What's the use of a pedigree? What good is it being esteemed
For ancient bloodlines, Ponticus, flaunting statues that gleamed 
In new paint once: your ancestors Aemilianus, let's say,
Erect in his chariot; Curius, though he's half crumbled away; 
Corvinus, whose shoulder is missing; or Galba, whose ears and nose 
Are shattered? What point in boasting that all this splendor grows
On your rich family tree and makes you kin through many offshoots 
To dictators and lords in the dusty past if your own pursuits
Under Lepidus' nose are foul? What do so many effigies mean,
These warriors who fought at Numantia, if you pursue a routine
Of shooting dice all night before their eyes, then fall
Into bed at dawn, just when those old leaders were moving all	
Their standards and camps? Why should  Fabius, born of Hercules' line, 
Take pride in the name Allobrogicus and in his shrine,
The Great Altar; if he is greedy and stupid and more of a fluff
Than a Euganean lamb, if his tender loins, well buffed
And smooth with Catanian pumice, his hairy forebears disgrace?
Or if, as a buyer of poison, he defiles his unhappy race
With a statue that must be broken? Although you decorate
Your whole front hall on both sides with waxen masks of great 
Ancestors, true nobility lies in virtue alone.
Have the character that in Paulus, Cossus, or Drusus was shown, 
Rank them above your ancestral statues, let them precede
Your emblem itself when you are  consul. You owe to me
First of all, the virtues of the soul. Do you deserve
To be accounted blameless, stanch for justice, unswerved
In word and deed? I acknowledge you a lord. 
Hail to you, Gaetulicus or Silanus,;or you of whatever new 
Bloodline, if to a rejoicing country you stand out
As a rare and excellent citizen, we're glad to shout
What Egypt shouts on finding Osiris. For who would call
A man noble who shames his race and has no distinction at all
But his famous name? We call someone's dwarf an "Atlas," a churl
From Africa "Snow-White," a twisted, hunchback girl
"Europa"; and lazy mongrels, hairless from chronic mange
And licking the mouths of empty oil flasks, men easily change
Into "Tiger," "Lion," "Panther," or anything else on earth
That roars more savagely.' So be careful, and fear such mirth,
Lest you get the name of Creticus or Camerinus too.

And whom do I lecture thus? Rubellius Blandus, it's you
I'm talking to. You're puffed with pride at your high pedigree
From the Drusi; as though you yourself had done something that we 
Should think makes you noble; and at the knowledge that you got
Conceived by a. girl ashine with Iulian blood, and not
By one who weaves for hire by the windswept walls. 
"You're dirt," You sneer, "the worst scum of our rabble, and none of you can assert 
Which is the country your father was  born in. But I am one
Of the Cecropidae." Well, viva! Long may you enjoy the renown 
Of your origin! And yet, you'll find in the lowest riffraff
Some eloquent Roman who knows how to plead lawsuits on behalf 
Of illiterate lords. The men who solve the riddles and split
The knots of the law come out of the common herd. From, it Comes forth the youthful soldier,
earnest in duty, to march Off to the Euphrates or to our eagle
standards that guard The vanquished Batavians. All the while you are nothing more 
Than a Cecropid, exactly like a Hermes with four
Limbs missing. You've got only one advantage in this regard – 
His head is of marble and yours is, alive-but just as hard.

You descendant of Trojans, tell me, who considers a dumb
Tame beast well-sired unless it's strong? From this must come
Our praise of the fastest horse- whose speed makes every hand burn
With applause and the Circus shout itself hoarse at the victory earned.
The noblest horse, in whatever pasture bred, is the kind
Whose dust rises: first on the track, whose flight leaves the: rest behind.
But Derby winners' offspring on the auction block are thrown
If Victory seldom, rides their cars. No respect is shown
To their ancestors, their spirits receive no sacrifice.
These descendants are made to shift, and for a niggling price,
From one to another master-clodhoppers that only are fit
To turn mill wheels, with chafing - necks they pull the bit
And the traces. So if I'm to honor you, not your goods, provide
Me with something special to you to inscribe with your titles besides
The honors we gave and still give those to whom you owe your all.

So much for the young man whom reports to us have recalled
As proud and puffed up with his kinship to Nero; for great 
Concern for others is usually rare in such a high estate.
But Ponticus, I'd not want you esteemed for praise of your race 
So much that you yourself do nothing to merit praise
In the future. It's a pitiful thing to rest on the fame
Of others; the pillars may go and the roof collapse on the frame. 
A vine shoot flung to earth wants the elm of which it's bereft.
So be a good soldier, true to your wards and honest when left
To decide an issue. If called in court to the witness stand,
For some vague and dubious suit, though Phalaris himself command 
You to lie and bring his bull-shaped furnace to force you by threat – 
Into perjury, still believe it the greatest of sins to set
Your life above honor, and for the sake of your life to lose
The reason for living. A man who deserves to die, though he chews 
A hundred Lucrine oysters at dinner and is drenched from head
To foot in whole cauldrons of Cosmus' perfumes, is already dead.
When at length in that long-expected province you accede
As governor, curb your anger, restrain it and your greed;
Pity our bankrupt allies, whose very bones are sucked dry
Of marrow. Respect what the law requires, respect and comply
With orders the Senate gives, consider the honors that lie
In store for good rulers, the lightning bolts the Senate can fire at
The bad ones, such as Capito and Numitor - each one a pirate
Of pirates of the Cilicians. And yet what good did it do
To condemn them? Now that Pansa has stripped off what few
Things Natta left you, Chaerippus, look for a junkman somewhere
To buy your rags. But keep it hushed up. With nothing to spare
But the penny for Charon's ferry, it's madness to lose even that.

Long ago our allies, newly, conquered but flourishing, had
A different, complaint, and the wound from losses was not the same. 
Then all their houses were well supplied and they could claim
Great piles of cash and Spartan, cloaks and purple gowns
From Cos; with Parrhasius' paintings and Myron's statues around,
The ivory figures of Phidias lived and everywhere
Many works of Polyclitus; few tables lacked silverware
By Mentor. But later' there was Dolabella, and next 
Antonius, then sacrilegious Verres to load the decks
Of huge freighters with smuggled spoils - more trophies of peace 
Than of war. Today, you may grab from our allies if you seize 
A little farm, a few yoke of oxen, a small drove of mares
And the stud of the herd; or the household gods themselves, if there's 
Some notable statue, or even a single god, left still
In the shrine: for these, indeed, are your best bet, these fill
The bill nowadays as the finest things. You despise, perhaps,
The non-warring men of Rhodes and Corinth's perfumed young chaps
And rightly: what could the depilated youths or the smooth
Legs of the entire nation do to you? But uncouth
And rugged Spain you must avoid, and the land of Gaul
And Dalmatia's shores. And leave alone those farmers who haul
Supplies to feed a city, which has no time for more
Than the Circus and plays: anyway, how great a gain would you score
From them by such dire crimes when Marius lately has shorn
The Africans to their' skin? Above all, take care that no harm
Is done to men who are defeated but without fear.
Though you take all their gold and silver, you'll leave their spears
Swords, shields, and helmets; despoiled, they'll have weapons still

What I've just proposed is no mere opinion, it's truth; you will 
Believe I'm reading to you from a leaf the Sibyl prepared.
If your retinue is above corruption, if no long-haired
Favorite sells your decisions,, if your wife's without stain 
And isn't prepared, like a Harpy circling through all your domains 
And towns with crooked claws, to grab all the cash in sight,
You may trace to King Picus your line; or if grander names delight 
Your heart, you may count among your ancestors the whole congeries
Of the Titans and Prometheus himself, and after these
May choose for yourself an ancestor from any myth you please. 
But if you're driven headlong by ambition and lust, if you break 
Your rods on the bleeding backs of our allies, if you take
Delight in seeing your axes blunted on so many heads
That the headsman himself is worn out, then that nobility bred 
In your own parents begins to rise up against you and shed
A glaring light on your shameful deeds. The greater the name
Of the sinner, the more conspicuous his sin, the greater his blame. 
If you are given to signing forged wills, what is it to me
If you do it in temples your grandfather built, or if it be
At your father's triumphal statue? What do I care if you hide 
In a hood and sneak out at night for adultery on the side?

 Obese Lateranus flies past his ancestors' ashes and bones
In a speeding car and with his own hands this mule driver, known
To you as Consul, puts on the brakes. To be sure, it's night;
But the moon looks on and stars strain their eyes for the sight.
Lateranus will carry his whip in broad daylight when the end
Of his term in office comes, never shrink from meeting a friend,
Now old, but be the first to wave his whip; he'll unbind
The bales of hay and pour oats for his weary beasts. Meantime,
Though he slays, in Numa's fashion, lambs and russet steers,
He swears before. Jove's high altar by none but his revered
Goddess of horses, and images daubed on the stinking stalls.
And when he wants to renew, in the all-night taverns, his calls,
A Syro-Phoenician, drenched in, persistent perfume, runs out
To meet him - a Syro-Phoenician who lives somewhere about 
The Idumean gate-and affecting the part of a host, he hails
Him as lord. and king; and at his heels, Cyane trails,
With shirts tucked up and with a bottle of wine to sell.

An apologist for his faults will tell me: "We, as well,
Did all that as boys. Perhaps; but you stopped, of course, and fled from 
Your dissolute ways. Let your days of wild oats be brief; let some
Of your vices be shorn with your first ceremonial shave. To boys
We may give a pardon; but Lateranus pursued the joys
Of those steaming dives with printed awnings when fully mature, 
Fit to guard in arms Armenian and Syrian streams, hold secure
The Rhine and the Danube, old enough to act as bodyguard
To Nero. Send to Ostia, Caesar, send there, but charge
Your envoy to search in a big saloon; you'll find him there, 
Stretched out right next to some cutthroat, mixed in somewhere 
With sailors, thieves, and runaway slaves, among hangmen and makers 
Of coffins and eunuch priests passed out on their now unshaken 
Tambourines. Here it's free and equal - one cup for all,
No separate bed for anyone, and no table to call
Your own, apart from the others. What would you do if you, 
Ponticus, had a slave like this? You'd send him right to
Your Tuscan or Lucanian penal farm, would you not?
But you, -  you scions of Troy, excuse yourselves; and what
Would shame a cobbler, in a Volesus or Brutus is grace.

 What if I can never mention examples so shameful, so base, 
That something worse is not left out? When you'd gone through
Your wealth, Damasippus, you hired your voice to the stage and you 
Took the role of the Noisy Ghost in Catullus' mime play. Then, too, 
Lightfooted Lentulus acted Laureolus with such conviction
That in my view he deserved the bandit's real crucifixion.
But you can't forgive the. Audience itself - the herd that sits 
Stonefaced and watches patricians clowning, hears the low wit
Of a Fabius with bare feet and laughs at the slapstick games
Of the noble Mamerci. Who cares how cheaply they sell their names? 
No Nero compels them, and yet they don't hesitate to sell 
Themselves for a great producer's shows. But suppose I tell
You: Here are swords for death, and there a place on the stage. 
Which choice is more noble? Has any man in any age
So feare'd to die that he'd be Thymele's cuckold in plays
Or stooge to Corinthus, the clown? Yet, when an emperor's craze 
Is fiddling, it's not so strange if the nobles start to act.
Beyond this, what will be left but the games? And there in fact – 
You have the shame of our city: Gracchus fighting, unarmed 
Even as a murmillo, without shield or scimitar,
For gear, like this he refuses, quite refuses and hates,
And he doesn't hide his face in a helmet. Look what he shakes – 
A trident! And after he has cast with a shaky right hand
His trailing net to no purpose, he raises to the grandstand
His bare face for all to recognize and runs all around
The arena. We know that tunic, with gold trim stretching down
From his throat and braid hung from the cap with a lofty crown.
And so the fighter ordered to battle Gracchus endured
More grievous shame than any wound would have procured.

If free suffrage were given the people, who'd be so mad as not
To choose Seneca over Nero, for whose punishment there ought
To have been prepared not just one sack with one ape and one
Adder? His crime was like that of Agamemnon's son,
But the motive, makes it a different matter indeed, ordained
By the gods' command, Orestes avenged his father, slain
In his cups. He never slit Electra's throat, nor stained
Himself with the blood of his Spartan wife, nor mixed aconite
For his kin; he never sang on, the stage, nor did he write
An epic of Troy! For which of Nero's acts in his fierce
And bloody tyranny was more deserving to be avenged
By the arms of Verginius, Vindex, or Galba? These were the :arts;
The works of our noble prince: prostituting himself to play parts
On a foreign stage with godawful singing, but loving it
And winning a Greek parsley crown! Let your forbears' statues sit
With the trophies won by your voice, and lay at Domitius' feet
The long robe of Antigone or Thyestes, the mask and attire
Of Melanippa, and hang on a marble colossus your lyre!

 Where can nobler ancestors be found than yours, Catiline,
Or yours, Cethegus? Yet you plotted night raids, with design
To burn our homes and temples, as though you were sons of Gauls 
In trousers or of the Senones, daring deeds that call 
For pitch-lined torture shirts. But our consul on watch has stood 
And repelled your troops. Born in Arpinum, of common blood,
 A knight from the provinces, new to, Rome, he posts armed guards 
Everywhere to protect the frightened people and labors hard
On every hill. Thus within the walls his toga obtained
For him renown and honor as great as Octavius gained
By the battle at Actium or by his sword, dripping steadily
From constant slaughter out on the plains of Thessaly.
But Rome was still free when she hailed Cicero as parent and sire
Of his country! Another man from Arpinum used to hire
Himself as a tenant farmer on Volscian hill-farms and tire
His limbs at another's plow; after that, enlisted, he'd know
The crack of a knotty club on his head if his spade was slow
And lazy in piling walls for the camp. Yet this man braves
The Teutonic invaders and utmost perils, alone he saves
The terrified city. And so, after vultures, who never had met
Bigger corpses, flew down on, the slaughtered Cimbri, the nobly bred
Colleague of Marius was adorned with the second bay.

Plebeian the souls of the Decii, plebeian their names, but they 
Were good enough for the gods of the underworld and, too,
For Mother Earth in lieu of all the legions, in lieu
Of all the allies and youth of Latium, for the two
Decii were more worthwhile than those who were saved by them.
Born of a slave girl was he who won the robe, diadem,
And emblems of Quirinus - the last of our good kings.
The sons of the consul himself, however, were ready to spring
The locks on the city gates in treason, admitting the tyrants
From their exile, when they would better have been aspirants
To some great deed for threatened freedom –some act to command 
Admiration from Mucius. or Horatius or the girl who swam
Across the Tiber,. the boundary of our domain. A slave,
Who should be mourned by our matrons, was the, one who gave
Their secret plot to the Senate. But they got their just deserts
From scourges and the ax, then under the law-used first. 
I'd rather Thersites were your father, if only you
Were like Aeacus' grandson, able to take unto
Yourself the armor of Vulcan, than that Achilles begot
You, and you be like Thersites. And yet, no matter to what 
Far time you trace your name, no matter how long your race, 
In the end you derive your family from an infamous place
Of refuge: Your first ancestor, whatever you may claim,
Was either a shepherd or else - something I'd rather not name.

IX

THE WOES OF A MALE HUSTLER

I'd like to know why so often, Naevolus, when we meet
You're gloomy, with face screwed up like Marsyas in defeat.
Why should you look like Ravola, caught at his diving trick,
With beard sopping wet, in Rhodope's cranny? If slaves take a lick
At sweetmeats, we give them a whipping. You look more desolate
Than Crepereius Pollio, who offers three times the rate
Of interest all over town and can't find a sucker. Why so
Many wrinkles suddenly? You used to be well contented, I know, 
A society playboy of sorts, with caustic jibes and a flow
Of cocktail-party jokes. Now it's changed; you look-down in 
The mouth, your hair an unkempt, unpomaded thatch, your skin 
 With no sheen such as hot packs of birdlime gave it your limbs 
Untidy and grizzled with sprouting hair. What makes you as grim
And thin as a constantly sick old roué in whom there burns.
A quartan fever long since completely at home? One discerns
In an ailing body the hidden torments, as well as delights,
Of the soul: the face shows the mood of either. You seem to have quite 
Changed your way of life, therefore to be doing a turnabout .
On your past. A short while back, I recall, you used to hang out 
At the temple of Isis, the Ganymede in the shrine of Peace, - 
And the secret courts of that Imported Mother and of Ceres – 
For in what temple do women not sell themselves? To all these
You were a more scandalous lecher than Aufidius, and what
You fail to tell, you'd as soon take on their husbands as not.

By this kind of life many- men are rich, but I haven't made
Very much from it to show for my labors. Sometimes I'm paid -
With a greasy-cloak to protect my toga, dyed a dull
And ugly-color and crudely woven from uncombed wool
In Gaul, or a silver trinket - not sterling. But destiny rules
All mankind, even those parts we hide. For the greatest of tools,
Of inconceivable size, won't help if your stars are averse,
Though Virro with drooling lips looks on you naked - and stirs
You with many tempting letters constantly. What can you do?
As the Greeks have put it Men are attracted to queers. But who
In the world is a more insufferable ass than a stingy fairy?
`I paid you well,' - he says, `not once but twice. And not very.
Long since, you got much more.' He adds in his head and enjoys
His fondling of me. Let's check the, records, call in the boys
Who keep your expense accounts. It comes to two hundred, all told.
Then count the service I've given: You think it's easy to hold
An erection and push it in till it meets your last night's meal?
The poor slave who plows your fields is better off in this deal
Than I who plow his master. Indeed, - you used to think
You were thin, boyish, handsome, and worthy to bear Jove's drink.
But will you creatures, unwilling to pay for your foul escapades,
Ever show gratitude to poor old chums or pieces of trade?
Just look at you! What a beauty, to hope for presents at all!
Yet on birthdays I send, big amber balls or a green parasol;
Or when rainy spring begins and on a chaise-longue you loll
To handle your secret presents, something for Mother's Day.

"Now tell me, old goat, for whom do you keep so, great an array
Of hills and Apulian farms - all those pastures that weary the hawks?
Your Campanian vineyards load you with rich produce from their stalks, 
And slopes overlooking Cumae and empty Gaurus do likewise
For who has more sealed barrels of wine more sure of time
To mature? How, much would you notice the loss if you gave a few 
Of those acres to a client whose loins were exhausted on you? 
Now wouldn't it make more sense if you willed that country lad,
His, mother, the house, his playmate pup, to me instead
Of to some friend who beats the cymbals? `You're in bad taste
When you beg,' he says. But my rent cries out to me, Beg! And I'm-faced 
With pleas of my lone slave-boy – lone as Polyphemus' great eye,
Which helped the crafty Ulysses escape. I'll have to buy
A second boy, for this one's not enough, and feed
Them both. What am I to do when winter blows? 
What, indeed, Shall I say to the shoulders and feet
of my slaves when the north wind numbs In December? 
`Stiff upper lip - wait till the grasshoppers come'?

"And though you ignore or slight my other services, what
Fair price would you put on this one favor - that if I were not
Your devoted, loyal client, your wife would be virgin right now?
You know how often you asked me; and by what means, and your vow
To reward me well'. Many times I've caught the girl and twined -
Her in my embrace as she fled your home with divorce in mind, -
A genuine husband in view. Working hard all night in your stead,
I scarcely paid your debt, while you sniffled outside. The bed
Is my witness, and you yourself who could hear the squeak of springs
And your wife's own voice. Many a shaky marriage, where things
Were falling apart, the union all but dissolved, has been
By some adulterer saved. Canyou think of an out? Which, then,
Of my services do you account the greatest, which the least?
Do I get no credit, treacherous ingrate, for having increased
Your family, siring a little son or daughter for you?
For you are bringing them up, and you love to put on view
In the records proof of your manhood. Hang garlands on your doors
You're now a father! I've given you something you can oppose
To gossip. You have the rights of a parent; thanks to me,
You're written down as the heir, you receive the whole legacy,
Not to mention a nice windfall to boot. Besides, there'll be
Many more advantages added to such a bequest if I raise
The count of your children to the full three.
You have a just case, Naevolus, for your complaint. 
But what does he say in defense? "
He shrugs it off and looks for another two-legged, dense 
Jackass like me. But remember to hide what I have confessed
To you alone, and keep my complaints hushed up in your breast.
For it's courting death to have a foe who smoothes his skin
With pumice. The man who not long ago had let me in
On a secret now bums with rage and hates me, as if I've betrayed 
Whatever I know. He won't hesitate to use a blade,
To split my head with a club, or set fire to my house. Nor can
You ignore or. dismiss the fact that for so wealthy a man
The cost of poison is never high. So keep well hid
My secrets, as well as the Council of Mars in Athens did.."

O Corydon, Corydon! Do you suppose that a rich man keeps
Any secrets? Though his slaves may hold their tongues, his beasts
Of burden, his dog, the gateposts; and marble columns will talk.
He may shut the windows, cover cracks with curtains, lock
The doors, douse the light, make everyone leave, let no one sleep
Near at hand: but before the dawn the neighborhood barkeep
Will know, what he was doing at second cock crow, will hear
Also what his chief cooks and carvers invented. For what smear, 
What crime do-they hesitate to lay on their masters so long
As their floggings are avenged by slander? Nor will you be wrong
In thinking some tippler looks for you in the streets to pour
In your wretched ear, willynilly, his drunken tale. Therefore,
Ask them what you begged of me just now, let them hush up.
Why, they'd rather blurt out a secret than drink as many cups
Of stolen wine as Saufeia, when making a sacrifice
For the people, used to guzzle. One should lead a clean life,
For many reasons, but chiefly for this one: You may despise
The gossip of slaves. For a tongue's the worst part of bad slaves.
And yet worse still is the man who won't get rid of the knaves
Whose rumors and bellies feed on his money and food supplies.
"A fine sermon you've given, but a cliche. What do you advise 
Me now to do, with time wasted, hopes crushed? 
For like a flower The brief span, of our poor unhappy
life to its final hour Is hastening on and while we drink
and call for gay wreaths, Perfumes, and young girls, old age
creeps upon us, unperceived." Oh, don't be afraid. So long as our
Seven Hills stand there, You'll never lack queer. friends.
They flock in from everywhere In wagons and on ships - all, that
breed who scratch their heads With just one finger. Another better
prospect is spread Before you now-only take your doses of Spanish fly.

"Fine talk for fortunate men! But my Fates rejoice if I
By my prick's hard labor can fill my belly. -  Lares, O my
Little household gods, whom I entreat always with some grains '
Of incense or meal or a tiny garland, when shall I obtain
Anything like enough to keep me safe, when I am old,
From a beggar's stick and rags? A few thousand at interest controlled
By sound investment is all I need - and some dishes of good
Plain silver,, but not so plain the censor Fabricius would
Not have condemned them, and two sturdy men from Serbian tribes
To carry my chair on their shoulders so I at ease may ride
To my place in the roaring circus. And let me have, besides,
A stooped engraver, and someone else who'll paint with a sure,
Quick brush many portraits of me. That's enough, since I'll be poor.
Such pitiful prayers, not even a hope for them, I fear.
For when I pray to Fortune for help, she plugs up her ears
With beeswax fetched from the same ship that brought Ulysses through
The Sicilian sirens' trap when that wax had deafened his crew.

X

THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES

In all the lands that spread from Cadiz to the Ganges and on 
To the East, few can distinguish true blessings from ills, free from 
The cloud of error. For what do we covet or fear by force
Of reason? What plan do you set on such a propitious course.
That you don't repent of your effort and your answered prayer? 
The softhearted gods have wrecked whole families, granting their 
Own wishes. In martial gear or togas we pray for what - 
Will bring our rum upon us. And many a man has begot
His death by the babbling flood of his eloquence, and one
By trusting strength and musclebound arms; but more have been done 
To death by money they cared too much to accumulate
And by incomes that exceeded all paternal estates.
As much as, the British whale exceeds the dolphin's weight.
That's why Longinus and super-rich Seneca's huge private park
Were blockaded by soldiers on Nero's orders in those dark
And terrible times, and the excellent Lateran palace thrown
Under siege by a full battalion: soldiers rarely go
Into garrets. Although but few plain silver bowls, you take
On a trip by night, you'll fear for clubs and knives and quake
At the shadow of a reed that in the moonlight sways.
A man who has nothing can whistle in a robber's face.

Almost the first prayer, best known in every temple, calls
For wealth, that riches increase, that our coffer be biggest in all – 
The forum. But no aconite is drunk from earthenware cups;
Beware the time when you lift a jeweled goblet up
And Setine wine sparkles red in the golden bowl. Therefore,
Will you not praise those two wise men, one of whom used to roar 
With laughter, the other burst into tears, every time they set
One foot beyond the door and stepped outside? And yet
The censure of hooting laughter is easy for anyone;
What's wondrous is where the other found enough water to run 
From his eyes. Democritus' sides with constant laughter ached,
Though in his cities there were no robes such as we make, 
Purple-edged and striped, no fasces, no tribunals or litters.
Suppose he'd seen a praetor, perched in a chariot's glitter
Above dust clouds of the circus, the palm-embroidered cloak 
Of Jupiter on his shoulders and trailing-about to choke
At its weight-a gold-braided Tyrian cloak hung at his throat, 
Flaunting a crown so huge no head could support it? But note
The sweating slave who must hold the crown and also ride
In the chariot with his master to temper the consul's pride!
Then, add the bird spreading wings from his ivory scepter, a band 
Of trumpeters flanking files of clients who show on command, 
And white-robed citizens, marching in front with reins in hand – 
Friends won by a tiny dole stuck in their purses. Even then
The sage found topics for laughter, each time he met fellowmen: 
His wisdom. shows that distinguished men, who will set us clear
And great examples, may still be born in the dense atmosphere
Of Numbskull Land. He laughed at the troubles and indeed
The joys of the common folk, sometimes at their tears, while he'd 
Himself tell Fortune, if she were threatening him, just to
Go hang, and poke his middle finger out-Screw you!
Thus what we pray for, things for which it's proper and right 
To load the knees of the gods with wax, are either quite 
Unprofitable or pernicious. Great power, which incites
Great envy, hurls some men to destruction; they are drowned 
In a long, splendid stream of honors. Their statues fall to the ground, 
Pulled down by ropes, then axblows break even chariot wheels
And the legs of innocent horses. And now the blazes leap
And roar, with bellows in the forges; the head, by the crowd
Adored, is burning, and mighty Sejanus cracks; then out
Of that face, once next to chief of all the world, are shaped 
Pitchers, skillets, basins, and chamber pots. Then drape
Bay leaves on your door! Lead a big chalky bull to the Capitol 
To offer. Sejanus is dragged by a hook to be seen; by all,
And all rejoice. "What lip, what a look on his face, he had! 
Believe me, truly I never liked that man. But how bad
Was the charge that finished him? Who informed? What, evidence, 
What witness, proved the case?" "It wasn't like that. An immense 
Long-winded letter was sent from Capri"All right,'I've got 
Your meaning. That's all I need to know."
But tell me, what Of Remus' spawn? As always, it
follows fortune and hates Condemned men. This same mob - if
Nortia, goddess of fate, Had favored her Tuscan, if the emperor
had been struck down. In safe old age-would have named
Sejanus in that same hour Augustus. The public, now for a
long time, ever since there Was no one to whom to sell our votes,
has flung off its. cares; For the people, who once bestowed
authority, army commands,, Consulships, and everything else,
today keep their hands To themselves and for just two things
do they eagerly yearn: Bread and the games.

"I hear that many are scheduled to burn."
"No doubt about it. A big furnace is going." "My friend
Bruttidius, when we met at the altar of Mars, looked then
Rather pale. What I fear is that our Ajax, in defeat,
Will exact revenge for poor defense." "Let's run full speed
To the river and kick our Caesar's enemy while he lies
On the bank. `But let our slaves see, so that none testifies
Against us and drags-his master, trembling, into a court
With a halter round his neck."

This was the talk they report As common back then on 
Sejanus – this the underground voice Of the mob. 
Wouldn't you have loved to be Sejanus, rejoice
In his popularity, have as much wealth, bestow every prize
Of high office, name generals of armies, be in all eyes
The proxy of that emperor, perched on a ledge in steep
Capri, with flocks of Chaldean soothsayers around like sheep? 
Of course you'd like the soldiers, cavalry squadrons, the fine 
Private guard in your barracks! Why shouldn't you? 
Even those who decline - To kill would like the power to kill.
But what bright fame Or great fortune is worth it if your
enjoyment; incurs the same Degree of sorrows to come? Would
you rather wear the rich gown Of this man who's dragged in the
streets or be mayor of some small town Like Podunk, or maybe a ragged
inspector in dull Endsville, Checking weights and measures,
smashing a quart pot or a gill If it's short? Then Sejanus didn't
know, you'll admit, what ought To be wished. 
For he who craved too many honors and sought, 
Too much wealth was building, story by story, the lofty tower
From which his fall would be greater, his headlong crash from power
To ruin the more enormous. What was - it that overthrew
The Crassi and the Pompeii, and him, that Caesar who drew
The subdued Romans under his scourge? What else but desire
For highest rank, pursued by fair means or foul, and the ire
Of the spiteful gods who made ambitious prayers come true?
Few kings descend to Ceres' son-in-law except through
Deep wounds or murder, few tyrants through a bloodless death.

The schoolboy prays through his holidays in each second breath
For Demosthenes' or Cicero's eloquence and renown,
When he's had his first dollar's worth of wisdom, escorted through town 
By a slave to guard his thin book satchel. Yet this very
Eloquence brought both orators death. The extraordinary,
Full, overflowing springs of genius in each one led -
To death. His own genius cut off - Cicero's hands and head; 
Never yet has a petty lawyer's blood on the rostra been shed.
"O fortunate, when made consul was I, was Rome," he wrote.
If Cicero always had spoken thus, he might have shown
Contempt for Antony's swords, I’ll settle for verse designed
To be, laughed at, rather than-you, O notably famous, divine 
Philippic that rolls out after.. the first! And terrible, too,
Was the death that snatched off, Demosthenes, an orator who
Thrilled Athens with sweeping speech and held in rein the filled
Theater. Under an evil star and under ill will
Of the gods this man was born, he whom his father, blear-eyed 
With soot from, glowing ore, sent away from the forge's side, 
From the coals, the tongs, the anvil that to swords imparts
A temper, from grimy Vulcan, to study rhetorical art.

The spoils of war, displayed on the trophy tree-breast plate, 
Broken helmet, dangling visor, chariot yoke snapped straight 
From the shaft, the ensign of captured warships-and; a woebegone
 Prisoner perched on an arch of triumph, they look upon
As glories greater than human good. For these the Greek,
The Roman, and all the outlandish generals always seek;
For these they endure; great toil and danger-the thirst for fame 
Is so much greater than for virtue! For who would embrace 
Virtue herself if you stripped away her rewards? And yet
In the pasta country has. often with its destruction, met

By the vainglory, of a few, by their lust for praise, to own
A title to cling, to the stones that guard their ashes-stones 
That the ruinous strength of a barren fig tree can undermine 
And split,, since even to sepulchers doom is also assigned.

Put Hannibal on the scales. What will you find he weighs
That supreme commander? This is the man who felt Africa's space 
Too cramped, though spread from crashing Moorish seas to sands 
Of the tepid Nile, from Ethiop tribes to new elephant lands!
He adds to his empire Spain, he vaults the Pyrenees
Then Nature blocks his march with Alps and snow:, but these 
He conquers, shatters boulders with vinegar, blasts cliffsides, 
And there lies, Italy in his hand! Still onward he rides,
Crying, "Nothing's finished till Punic soldiers break apart
The gates of Rome and I plant my flag in the city's heart!
Oh, what a sight it was, how worthy, significant,
For a painting-this one-eyed general riding an elephant!
So how did he, end? Oh, dreams of glory! Defeated, he fled
As fast as he could into exile,. And sat, a discredited	
But impressive and mighty suppliant in a king's anteroom

Till it pleased his Bithynian highness to rise. The final doom
Of him who once threw the world into havoc came not by sword 
Nor spear nor stone, but by what - would avenge Cannae's horde 
Of dead in their oceans of blood – a poisoned ring. So run, You madman, run over wild,
frozen Alps to become just one Of those delights of schoolboys, a  subject for declamations!

One world was not enough for young Alexander - his patience 
Wore thin; he fretted at earth's narrow limits, as though confined 
On Gyara's rocks or Seriphos; yet after he'd gone inside
The city walled by brick makers, the width of a grave was enough. 
Only death reveals what a nothing the body of man is. Such stuff
As ships once sailing through Mount Athos, and all the tales
Greek histories lie about how those same ships under sail
Paved the sea and made a solid road for chariot wheels;
How deep rivers shrank and brooks were drunk dry at the Persians' meals; 
To say nothing of all those flights of song, on wine-sodden wing
That Sostratus warbled - we've heard it all! But how did that king
Return from Salamis - that barbarian, wont in his rage
To flog Corns and Eurus (who never inside the prison cage
Of Aeolus suffered such a thing), he who had chained Earthshaking- 
Poseidon himself, in this, indeed, quite restrained
For thinking him not worth branding too: What god would serve 
Such a man? How did he return? In a single ship, of course,
On blood-red waves, his slow prow nudging through a thick tide 
Of corpses. This price he paid for glory so long desired!

"Give me long life, O Jupiter, life to last many years!"
You pray for only this, whether sick or well. Yet how fierce, 
How unceasing the miseries that protracted old age sustains! 
First of all, the face, distorted, hideous, not the same
As it used to be rough hide instead of skin, and cheeks
Sagging in wattles, wrinkles as carved as those that streak
A she-baboon's face where; the shady glades of Thabraea stand.
In many ways young men differ-this one is handsomer than
That one, and he than another; one's muscular, one slim.
Old men look alike, with voices shaking like their limbs, 
Heads now gone bald, childhood's runny noses, toothless gums 
With which their bread has to be munched, poor things. 
They become So revolting to themselves, wives, children, and family

That even Cossus, a legacy hunter, in loathing would flee.
Not the same, with palate, grown dull, the joys of wine and food
And as for fucking, it's long, forgotten, or if you should
Undertake to do it, your penis lies there shriveled, and though 
You jerk all night, it still lies limp. Is this hoary old
Feeble member something to wish for? Why shouldn't: lust be suspect,. 
With good cause, that pretends to fornication with nothing erect?

Now observe the loss of another sense: What joy; can he know
In a singer, be he the best, or Seleucus' harping or those
Whose custom it is to shine in gold-embroidered robes?
What does it matter where in the huge theater his chair
May be when he is scarcely able to hear the blare
Of horns or trumpets in chorus? The slave, to make him hear
The name of a guest or the time of day, must shout in his ear.

Besides, the thin blood left in his chilly body grows warm
With nothing but fever. All sorts of diseases, in the form
Of troops on the march, parade around him. Ask me their names
And I could reveal more quickly the lovers Oppia claimed,
The patients Themison killed in one autumn, the partners done in 
By Basilus, the orphans defrauded by Hirrus or how many men 
Long-legged Maura wears out in one day, how many boys
The teacher Hamillus defiles. I could sooner run through an invoice 
Of villas now owned by the barber whose razor used to scrape 
My tough beard when I was young. One man has pains in his nape, 
One in the loins, a third in the hips; one's lost both eyes
And envies the one-eyed, man; another with pale lips tries
To eat from a nurse's fingers; and this one who used, to spread
His jaws wide open at the mere sight of dinner instead
Now gapes, like a baby swallow whose fasting mother flies back
With a beak full of food. But worse than any physical lack
Is a failing mind, which forgets the names of slaves, the face 
Of a friend with whom he dined last night, or those of his race, 
The children he has fathered and reared. For by his scrawl, 
On a cruel will he strips his own heirs, and Phiale gets all
His estate-so great is the power of her expert lips, 
Which had worked for many years with a brothel membership.
Though mental powers be strong, he still must bear his sons
To their funerals and must look on pyres of beloved ones
His wife, his brothers and urns filled with his sisters' ashes.
This is the punishment of those who live long: death slashes
One after another in their homes, and woes untold
Abound, and they, inconstant grief and black weeds, grow old.
The king of Pylos, if in great Homer you put any trust,
Was an instance of life almost as long as the crow. He must 
Have been happy, of course, that he had put off death for so
Many generations, now counting on his fingers his score
Of years, and had drunk new wine so often. I beg you, please,
For a moment, note how he complains, of the Fates' decrees
And his too-long thread of life when in the flames he sees
His brave Antilochus' beard and asks of all his friends
Why he has lived to this day and in what deed he has sinned 
To deserve such long old age. Of the same thing Peleus complains 
When he mourns his lost Achilles; also that other. whose fate 
It was to grieve sea-roving Ulysses.With Troy unscathed, 
King Priam might have gone: down to Assaracus' shade
In royal, solemn pomp while Hector and all his brothers 
Bore the corpse on their' shoulders , through weeping Trojan mothers,
And Cassandra gave-her first wail of woe and Polyxena tore
Her clothes,. if he only had died at a different time, before
His Paris had started to construct audacious ships.
What joy, then,, did long life bring him? He saw the eclipse 
Of his world, all in ruins, Asia dying by fire .and the sword. 
Then laying aside his crown, he armed himself, an age-scored, 
Quavering soldier, and fell before great Jupiter's shrine
Like an old ox, now despised by the thankless plow, who inclines
A poor, thin neck to his conqueror's knife. At least he died
The death of a human being.. But that to his wife was denied, 
Who lived after him to bark with a savage dog's open mouth.

I hasten to treat of our own countrymen and so leave out 
Mithridates, king of Pontus, and Croesus, warned in advance 
By wise Solon's eloquent words to think on the last expanse
Off a long lifetime. To Marius this brought prison and led
To the swamps of Minturnae, to exile, to begging his bread 
In conquered Carthage. What could Nature, what could Rome,
Have ever produced in the world more blest with glory than
That citizen if he had breathed his great soul out as he,
After marching captive troops in the full pomp of victory;
Was about to step from his German chariot? That kindly land
Campania gave Pompey a fever, he should have wanted; but bands 
Of cities, with public prayers, won out. So his own good luck.
And Rome's saved him to face defeat and get his head struck 
From his body. Lentulus missed this disgrace; 
Cethegus died With body intact; no insult on Catiline's corpse was tried.

On seeing the temple. of Venus, an anxious mother will pray. .
In a whisper, O may her: sons be handsome; then louder, O may
Her daughters be lovely beyond her fondest dreams. "But why
Should I be blamed?" she asks; "Latona's delighted by
Her fair Diana." But Lucretia forbids us to pray for a face
As lovely as her own; Verginia would gladly place
Rutilia's hump on herself and give,. Rutilia her grace.
Moreover, a son with handsome features always gives
His parents distress and fear so rarely does beauty live
At peace with chastity. Though his austere home handed down
To him pure. morals, like those in the ancient Sabines found,
And generous Nature, besides, with bountiful hand bestowed
A pure disposition and cheeks that with blushes modestly glow 
(What better can Nature, more potent and careful than any guard, 
Confer on a youth?) even so, he still will find it hard
To be a man. For the prodigal vice of a pervert will dare
To tempt even parents themselves. Trust money to soothe any care! 
No tyrant has ever castrated ugly boys behind doors
Of his terrible castle; Nero ravished no youth with sores
Or a clubfoot, nor one with a, potbelly or a hump on his back.

Go on, enjoy your son's good looks; he'll find no lack
Of great dangers ahead. He'll become a well-known male whore 
And fear whatever revenge angry cuckolds may have in store
He'll have no better luck than Mars, and surely he'll fall
In the net. But sometimes anguish exacts more than any law 
Allows: by the sword one adulterer dies, from cutting hides
Another bleeds, and some get a mullet shoved inside.
But your sweet Endymion will be the stud of just that single
Matron he loves? Not for long: Servilia next gives a jingle
Of coins and he's hers; and he, who loves her not, will strip
Every jewel from her. For what can any female, ladyship
On down to trollop, deny to those wet organs? Therein
Lie all the morals of an inferior woman. "But then,
How, does beauty hurt the chaste?" Well, how did a solemn oath
Help Hippolytus or Bellerophon? As though she were loathed
And rejected, Phaedra of course flared up; and in her own way,
No less than the Cretan, Stheneboea burned; and they
Both whipped themselves, into fury. For woman is never so fierce
As when her hatred is goaded by shame: Well, then, what appears
To you to be sound advice for the lad that Caesar's wife
Has decided to marry? The wretched youth can see his life
Is being dragged to its doom by Queen Messalina's eyes,
For he's the handsomest of a patrician house - the prize.
She sits a long time, with bridal veil ready; the nuptial bed
Of Tyrian stuffs is, publicly spread in the gardens; he'll get
A dowry of thousands - an ancient rite to which she clings:
Soothsayer and witnesses will be there: You thought these things
Were secret and known to only a few? But she will not,
Except: in a legal process, marry. So tell me, what
Do you choose?-Say no, you'll have to die before lamps are lit;
Commit the bigamous crime, you'll have a reprieve for a bit,
Till the tale, already spread through the city, reaches the ear
Of the Emperor Claudius. He'll be the last of all to hear
Of dishonor to his own house. Meanwhile, if a few more days
Of life are worth it, obey her commands. Whatever way
You may decide is the easier one or the better course,
You'll have to give that fair white neck of yours to the sword.

Then men should pray for nothing?	 If you want my advice,
You'll let the gods themselves bestow what may suffice
For your good and be most useful to your affairs. For in place
Of what we enjoy, they'll give what best befits our case:
Man is more precious to them than to himself. We're spurred
By a wish in our hearts, by urgent, blind desire we're stirred – 
We pray for a wife and issue. But only the gods can foresee
What kind of wife and children we'll get. Still, so there'll be 
Something left to pray for, some reason to offer at a shrine
Those entrails and white pig sausages that are called divine,
You should pray for this: A sound mind in a sound body. Pray
For courageous spirit that's not afraid of death and can say
Long life is the least of nature's gifts; that can endure
Any troubles, harbors no wrath, covets nothing, and feels sure
That Hercules' toils and grueling, labors are better to bear
Than Sardanapalus' orgies and banquets and cushioned chair.
I'm pointing out simply what you can give yourself. For the one
True path to peaceful life must surely through virtue run.
0 Fortune, you'd have no divine attributes if we were wise:
It's we who make you a goddess and set you high in the skies!

XI

A SIMPLE DINNER AT HOME

If Atticus dines on sumptuous meals, he's thought refined;
If Rutilus does it, he's crazy. For what's the public inclined 
To greet with louder, horselaughs than some Apicius, flat broke? 
Every theater, tavern, bath, dinner party must hear its joke About 
Rutilus. For, though young, with stalwart form, truly bred
For an army helmet, though hot-blooded still, he rushes ahead
In luxury so that he'll have to sign-not forced to this plight, 
Not forbidden by any officials, either and learn how to fight 
Under royal decrees and mandates in some gladiatorial school. 
You see lots of his type, awaited by much-put-off creditors who'll 
Be lurking at the fish-market gate to catch them. Such men 
Have only one aim in life – their palates. The worse pinch he's in 
The more lavish, delicious his dinner. These wrecks, beginning, to crack 
Like ruins already, must quickly topple. Meanwhile they ransack
Every element, seeking new delicacies and a wildly high price
Never hinders them in their wishes. And if you look at it twice, 
The more it costs, the more it's enjoyed. Oh well, it's not hard 
To raise cash to squander thus if they're willing to pawn a scarred, 
Cracked bust of Mom, and the silver plate. With what they get,
They dine on luscious dainties, but served on an earthenware set, 
Before they're reduced at last to gladiators' hash.
The point is, who gives the banquet?  If Rutilus, then it's rash 
Extravagance; but if Ventidius, then it's a laudable night
He's got the means to afford such fame! I'm sure I'm right
In despising a man who knows how much higher Mount Atlas rises
Than all the hills in Libya and yet, in comparing the sizes
Of wallets to money chests, can't see they're different.
Know Thyself is a heaven-sent maxim, which all on the heart should imprint
And keep well in mind, whether you seek a wife or a seat
In the sacred Senate. Not even Thersites asked to compete
For Achilles' armor, in which Ulysses made such a fool
Of himself. If you're planning to defend an important suit
Of doubtful merits, take a look at yourself and avow 
What you are - a convincing lawyer or just a big loudmouth 
Like Curtius or Matho? A man must know his true limitation 
And observe it in big and little affairs, even in relation 
To buying fish, so he won't drool for mullet when his purse 
Can only afford sardines. For what end will you meet, with a curse 
Of shrinking funds and a swelling gullet upon you, when all 
Your inherited money and goods are sunk in a gut that can hold 
Your capital, solid silver, cattle, and real estate? 
The last thing, after all else, from which such men separate 
Is the ring and Pollio begs with fingers bare.  
What they've to fear, the luxury lovers, is not the untimely grave 
Nor the bitter pyre but, more fearful to them than death, old age.

The usual pattern is this: borrow money in Rome, engage
In squandering it before the lender's eyes, and then,
While a little who knows how much is left and the lender begins
To grow pale, skip out and run to Baiae for the oyster season.
For today it's thought no worse to leave Rome for this reason
Than move from stifling midtown rooms to the Esquiline Hill.
But one affliction, one sacrifice, makes the exiles ill
For one whole season they'll have to miss the circus games!
Not a drop of blood is left in their cheeks for blushes; Shame
Flees the city in ridicule and few would ask her, to stay. 

Today, dear Persicus, you will learn whether I obey
The excellent maxims that I preach, both in my deeds
And in my ways of living; or if while praising beans
I'm a secret gourmand and loudly order my slave: "Prepare
My hominy grits," but whisper "Scuffle" in his ear. You'll swear
That I'm an Evander, now that you've promised to be my guest,
And you're Hercules or Aeneas, not so great or so blest, 
Though both had the blood of gods and were carried, one by fire, 
One by water, to heaven. Well, here's the menu, with nothing acquired
In any marketplace, From my Tivoli farm you'll get 
A fat kid,. the tenderest of the flock, that doesn't know yet
What grass is, never has dared to nibble harsh willow twigs,
And contains more milk than blood; asparagus my foreman's wife digs,
In the mountains after work at the loom; big eggs warm within
The twisted straw, feathers sticking, and with them the hens
That laid them. Next will be grapes, in storage for months but still
As plump as though on the vines; two kinds of pears, and to fill
The baskets, apples that smell newly ripe and rival those
Of Picenum. You needn't fear them now that winter's cold
Has removed their autumn dryness and dangers of green juice.

Such was the meal our Senate, already extravagant, used
To eat long ago when Curius gathered with his own hands
Fresh greens from his little garden and cooked them on the brands
In his small fireplace - a dish that today is scorned at a glance
By a dirty ditchdigger in fetters, who remembers the taste
Of chitterlings in a reeking cookshop. Holidays were graced
In old times by a side of salt pork that hung in open racks;
Or they served a bacon flitch on family birthdays, with snacks
Of fresh meat added if a sacrificed beast should provide it.
A relation, already thrice hailed as consul, who once presided
As dictator of Rome and commanded armies, would shoulder, the spade
With which he was taming mountainsides by habit he stayed
Much later at work - and hurry home for a feast like that.
But when people quaked at the Fabii and stern Cato, or at
A Fabricius or Scaurus, when even rigid censors: might fear
Their colleagues' harsh reproof, none thought it of any severe
Concern or a serious matter, what kind of tortoiseshell
Was swimming in ocean abysses that could be used very well
On a fine, noble couch for Trojan-descended lords. Our beds
Never used to be oversized with inlaid frames; and the heads 
Were simple - a bronze donkey face with garlands around the brows, 
Beside which lusty farmboys were playing. Thus. the, house
Along with the furniture and the food were all of a piece.

The rough soldier then hadn't learned to admire the arts of Greece, 
And when, after cities were conquered, he got from the loot of wars
His share, he broke the cups of great artists so that his horse
Might rejoice in trappings, and his helmet, embossed, might show
A dying enemy scenes of the wolf mother, ordered to grow
Tame for the empire's future, the twin Quirini beneath -
A ledge and naked Mars swooping down with spear and shield.
So their mush was served on clay plates; whatever silver they owned 
Shone nowhere except on armor. All this, if you were prone
To the slightest envy, you'd envy. Also, the majesty
Of temples was closer around us then;and a voice could be
Heard in the midst of the city around midnight to say
The Gauls were marching from the seashore; and in this way 
The gods took on themselves the office of prophecy.
Thus Jupiter warned us-such care for Latin affairs was he. 
Accustomed to bestow when his image in days of old
Was made out of clay and not defiled by any gold.

Those days saw us with tables homemade from our own trees;
The wood was at hand for this purpose if a storm from the east
By chance had toppled an old walnut. But today a rich man
Can't enjoy a dinner - venison, turbot, are tasteless, bland;
Perfumes and roses seem rancid - unless his broad table is laid
On a big solid-ivory leopard, with jaws wide open, made
Of tusks imported from Aswan's gates or lightfooted Moors
Or darker Hindus, or of those that mammoths shed in obscure
Arabian woods when too big and heavy for heads to sustain. -
That's the secret of good appetite and digestion: For a plain
Table leg of silver to such as these is as bad as a brass
Ring on the finger. So I say to hell with this elegant class
Of society that would sniff in comparing its opulence
With my humble state. I haven't my first ounce of ivory since
My dice and draughts aren't made of it; and even my knives
Have handles of bone. Yet my lack taints nothing, never deprives
Any food of savor, nor makes it harder to cut the fowl.
But there'll be no carver to whom the whole school has to bow,
No student of Dr.Trypherus, who instructs in the art
Of carving with blunted knives and wooden models a smart,
Fine feast of sows' udders, hares, antelopes, flamingoes, boars, 
Gaetulian gazelles, and pheasants until the whole outdoors
Is clattering with the elmwood banquet. My slave boy, a real 
Novice and ignorant all his life, hasn't learned to steal
A slab of venison or a guinea hen's wing - he's had
No practice except in filching little scraps. A rough lad,
Well clothed to keep off the cold, will hand around plain cups, 
Bought at the dime store. No Phrygian or Lycian boys, none bought up 
At high prices from dealers will you find; if you should care
For something, ask in Latin! My boys dress alike; their hair,
Close cropped, has never been curled, and only today was combed
Because company's coming. One is a sturdy shepherd's: son,
The other a cattle herder's; he sighs, for the mother whom
He hasn't seen for so long, and is homesick, touched by gloom, 
For the hut and the young goats he used to know - a boy who's got 
An honest face and an artless modesty, just what
All those who are dressed in shining purple ought to be.
He doesn't have his armpits shaved and doesn't, when he
Is in the baths, like a juvenile delinquent, invite
Attention to his balls; he has, nothing more to hide
His heavy private parts than an oil flask. He'll serve you wines
From the very hills where he was born, beneath whose pines
He played - for wine and server come from the same fatherland.

Perhaps you expect some Spanish damsels who get a hand
For indecent songs and dances sinking down to the floor
In a split with bottoms writhing.- such things as brides adore
To see when sitting beside their husbands, but it would shame 
Anyone to tell in their presence: the spur to lust, the same 
Sharp sting that stirs the limber tools of rich men, brings forth 

Even greater pleasure in the opposite sex: the more 
It's prolonged, seducing eyes and ears, the sooner you'll wet
Yourself. My humble -house offers no such nonsense. Let
Him listen to the clattering of castanets and words,
A whore standing naked in her reeking crib would spurn,
Let him enjoy obscene cries and all, of lechery's ways
Him who slicks up his Lacedaemonian marble inlays
With wine spit out on the floor: for this in the rich we condone. 
With middle-class people, adultery and gambling are known
As scandalous matters. But let those others do these same things 
And we write them up in gossip columns - our playboy kings!
My feast today will provide a different pastime. We'll hear 
The Iliad chanted, and Vergil's sublime epic poem, so near 
Perfection it challenges the palm crown on Homer's head.
What does it matter with whose voice lines like these are read?

So now forget business worries, don't talk shop, and take
A welcome day off. Enjoy doing nothing all day. And make
No mention of interest due, nor your wife, if she's the sort
To provoke your stifled anger by sneaking out to cavort
At dawn, returning at night with her fine gown wrinkled and wet 
From lust, her hair disordered, her cheeks and ears burning yet.
Leave all your troubles before my threshold, cast off concern
For your house and slaves and things they lose or break or burn.
And above all, put aside all thoughts of thankless friends.

Right now the Megalesian games are here to attend
Those solemn rites for Cybele - and in triumphal state
The praetor sits, the prey of horses he'll decimate,
And (if I may say it without offense to that vast crowd)
All Rome today is slave to the Circus., My ears with a loud
Uproar are struck, which tells me the emperor's team, the Green Sox,
Has won. For if it had lost, you'd, see this city as shocked
And mournful as when our consuls fell in Cannae's dust. 
Let young men watch who are better suited to shout and trust
Wild bets and sit with a smart girl there; let my shriveled skin
Drink the springtime sun and get out of my toga. Now, even when
It's an hour or more till noon, you may go to the baths - no disgrace
In being ahead of the crowd. You couldn't do this for five days
In a row because even such a life would, become a bore:
When put to rarer use, our pleasures are prized much more.

XII

THANKSGIVING FOR A SHIPWRECKED FRIEND

This day, Corvinus, is sweeter to me than my own birthday, 
When altars of heaped green turf, await the victims I'll slay, 
As vowed to the gods. I'll offer a lamb with snow-white wool
To Queen Juno; one just as white to Minerva, in her full
Armor with Gorgons embossed; but for Jove this sacrifice,
A boisterous creature, bucking at the long halter, with eyes
Rolling around and head thrashing for this is a fierce bull calf,
Ripe for temple and altar and sprinkling with wine. By now he's half 
Weaned from his mother, ashamed to suck, and ready to scratch 
The oaks with budding horns. If my means were great and could match 
My desires, I'd haul up a bull much fatter than Hispulla, slow 
From his very bulk. Not fed on neighboring pastures, he'd show
His pedigree from the finest stock of Clitumnus, would stride
Along to give his neck to a great priest's knife, and provide
The best offering for the, return of my friend, still quaking, aghast 
At the terrors lately endured and amazed to be safe at last. 

For besides the perils the ocean holds, he escaped a stroke 
Of lightning: a solid cloud, as thick and black as smoke,
Blotted out the sky, and a flashing fire struck, suddenly down
On the yardarms. Each sailor imagined he was hit and soon
In horror thought that no shipwreck could ever compare
With a burning vessel. Everything happened exactly there, 
And as frighteningly, as when a tempest arises in A poem. 
But look, another kind of danger begins,  Just hear, and pity again,
though the rest be the same as shown Elsewhere - a terrible fate, indeed,
but to many known And one attested by votive tablets in many shrines.
Who doesn't know that Isis feeds these painters of signs?

My friend Catullus was hit by disaster just like these.
The hold was half full of water, the hull was. pitched by high seas 
From side to side, the gray-haired captain could bring no skill 
To save the straining mast. And then - as a beaver will,
To save his life, castrate himself and part with those glands
He knows are sought for medicinal oil - Catullus began
To settle by jettison with the winds. "Heave all overboard,
All my cargo!" he cried,' inclined to throw even his finest stores , 
To the sea, purple clothes just right for our spoiled Maecenases, too, 
And others, which - on the sheep's own backs were dyed their hue 
By the nature of their excellent pastures, though it's clear 
The secret virtues of water and air by the Guadalquivir
Do a lot to help. And when it came to the silver plate
Salvers Parthenius made, three-gallon wine bowls fit to sate
The thirst of the centaur Pholus or Fuscus' wife-then he
Didn't hesitate: it was dumped, and with it went basketry,
And thousands of dishes, a whole set of goblets, highly wrought, 
From which the cunning Philip of Macedon, who bought
Olynthus, had drunk. What other man now, anywhere on earth,
Would dare value his life above silver, safety above cash worth?
Some men make money not for the sake of living, but ache
In the blindness of greed and live just for their fortune's sake.

Now most of the cargo is overboard, but even this lack 
Of weight is no help. So, faced with emergency, he fell back
On chopping down the mast to escape his perilous straits -
A poor last resort indeed when his only hope dictates,
Reducing the ship! Go ahead, entrust to the winds your life,
To hewn planks that keep you three inches of pine - or maybe five, 
If the ship is large - from death. Remember, next time take along, 
In addition to your breadbasket, provisions, and that throng
 Of potbellied flagons, some axes also to help in a storm!

When at last the sea calmed down, the sailors could perform
Their duties in better conditions. Destiny showed its command
Over winds and waves; and the joyful Fates, with kindly hand,
Spun a better thread of white wool. A wind, not much more strong
Than a gentle breeze, arose, and the lame ship sailed along
By only the makeshift device of clothes stretched out as sails
And a single canvas left at the prow. Soon the force of the gales
Abated, and hope of life, with the sun, returned. Into view
Then came the towering height - so dear to Iulus, who
Preferred it to his stepmother's town, Lavinum; as home
Mount Alba, named for that white sow whose wondrous womb
Cheered up the Trojan band with a sight never seen by it
Before: thirty piglets at thirty now world-famous tits! 

At length the ship goes inside the moles erected to make
A harbor, past the Tyrrhenian lighthouse, the arms that break
The ocean's force, reaching out from Italy into the sea
A port more wonderful, then, than any of nature's could be!
But the captain pilots his crippled ship to a berth inside,
A tranquil basin on which pleasure boats of Baiae may ride
Without danger. There the crew, with shaved heads now, but secure, 
Enjoy recounting garrulous tales of perils endured.

Away with you, then, my boys - no talking, please; be pure
In heart. Garland the shrines, spread meal on the knives, adorn 
The soft grass altars. I'll follow soon and when I've performed
The sacred rites which are: principal here, I'll be homeward bound,
Where my little images, shining in fragile wax, will be crowned
With tiny wreaths. Here I'll appease great Jove, and light
Incense for my household gods and scatter pansies, bright
With, all colors. Everything's shining! Because of this feast, my gate
Grows long laurel boughs and early-lit lanterns to celebrate!

But don't suspect my motives in this, Corvinus. For he,
Catullus, for whose return I build all these altars, has three
Small heirs of his own. You'll have to wait a rather long time
To find anybody who'd give a sickly hen, past her prime
And ready to close her eyes, for a friend so sure to fail
In making him rich. Why; a hen's too expensive! Not even a quail;
Not even that tiniest bird, will die for a man with an heir
But if old Gallitta or Pacius, a rich and childless pair,
Begin to have fever, every foot, of their porches will bloom
With tablets duly hung; there are some who'll vow hecatombs
For recovery, but merely of oxen - there's not a chance
Of finding on sale hereabouts a hundred young elephants,
Since nowhere in our Latin land has the creature bred,
But it's brought to us from the dusky nations and is fed
In the fields of Turnus and the Rutulian wood: Caesar's herd,
Trained to serve no commoner, since their ancestors were inured
To obey Tyrian Hannibal; our generals, and the king
Of Molossia and carry troops on their backs, no little thing
In war tactics, those armored towers lurching into the fray! -
So Novius would not falter, nor would Pacuvius delay
T o lead that huge walking ivory to the altar and slay 
It for Gallitta's household gods: there's no victim bigger, 
So none's more worthy of such gods and such gold diggers!
For the latter, if allowed, would vow to slay at a shrine
His tallest, handsomest slaves; on the girls' brows he would twine 
Sacrificial bands - even on the boys. And if there should live
In his home a daughter ripe for marriage, then he would give 
To the altar this Iphigenia – though hopeless beyond dispute
That a deer, dear to poets, would appear as a secret substitute.

This fellow townsman I praise, and I don't compare a fleet
Of a thousand ships to a will. For if the patient cheat
The goddess of death, he'll be caught tight in a trap, destroy
His will, and rewarding truly marvelous service, employ
A few words to leave all, perhaps, to Pacuvius to enjoy,
Who then before his bested rivals may proudly strut.
You see, therefore, how well worthwhile a girl's throat cut
At Mycenae is! Long live Pacuvius long enough to be
As old as Nestor, I pray! May he own such a quantity
Of riches as Nero stole. May he pile up gold by the ton
To mountainous heights. May he love no one and be loved by none!

	

XIII

DEFRAUDERS AND A GUILTY CONSCIENCE

Anything a man does setting a bad example displeases
The doer himself. This is the first punishment that seizes
Upon him - no guilty man is acquitted if the judge
Is himself, although he may have won in court with a nudge
And a bribe to a venal justice who juggled the jury's votes.
What do you, Calvinus, think everyone is feeling about
This recent rooking you've had and your charge of breach of trust? 
Yet you're not so poor this tiny hole in your income must
Drag you down to premature ruin; nor is it such a rare case.
Many men have had this misfortune; it's really a commonplace – 
Just something that Fortune digs up from her ragbag. So quit
Your inordinate wailing. One's wrath shouldn't blaze; more than is fit
And shouldn't exceed the loss. But you're hardly able to bear

The slightest touch of a small mishap and your guts now tear
And boil because your friend won't return the cash you consigned 
To him on his sacred oath. And this you're surprised to find 
A man like you, even you, who'll never see sixty again,
Born when Fonteius was consul? You mean it was all in vain
From all those years of experience you didn't learn one bit?

Indeed philosophy's great. It provides in its holy writ
The maxims to raise us over fortune. Still, we take the view
That they're happy too who learned, in the school of life to make do 
With all the discomforts and yet not chafe and fret at the yoke. 
What day is so festal it fails to reveal some theft, some stroke
Of a master swindler or some embezzler all manner of crime
For profit, and money got by poison or swords? It's a time
When honest men are scarce - hardly as many by count
As gates to Thebes or mouths of the fertile Nile. We live now
In a Ninth Age, more corrupt than the Age of Iron, and one
For whose vice even Nature can find no suitable name, for none
Of her metals is base enough. So we summon heaven and earth
To witness, as noisy as claques that give his money's worth
To Faesidius, cheering a speech. Tell me, you, old man, who're
Most deserving of childhood's emblem, don't .you know what allure
Other people's money has? Don't you know what a laugh you hand
To the rabble with your simplicity now when you demand
That anyone not break his oath, and believe that gods reside 
In temples or bloody altars? Primitive people have tried
Living thus in the past, before Saturn laid down his crown and fled
To take up a farmer's scythe, in the days when Juno led
The life of a maiden, and Jupiter still was a private, man
In the caves of Mount Ida. Back then, no banquets ever were planned
In the sky for the gods - no Hebe; no Ganymede with wine bowls;
No Vulcan present, wiping his arms, begrimed by the coals
Of his island forge, and tossing off nectar. Each god used to dine
At home; there was not such a mongrel galaxy of the divine
Powers as we have today. The stars were content with a few
Divinities, thus with a lighter burden they didn't overdo
The load on poor Atlas. The lots, hadn't yet been drawn to bestow
The dark underworld on a king. There was no stark, grim Pluto
With a wife from Sicily, no inexorable tortures, no wheel,
No rock, no Furies, no vultures; and the shades used to feel
Quite happy without a ruler below. In that bygone time,
Dishonesty was incredible. It was looked on as a crime,.
Grievous, deserving death if a youth didn't rise from his seat
In the presence of elders, or if a boy didn't jump to his feet
Before any youth sprouting whiskers, though he himself might observe
In his own richer family home higher mounds of acorns served
And more strawberries. Four years' seniority was so revered,
And hallowed old age so equal the first thin fuzz of beard. 

Today if a friend won't renege on money left in his trust
And returns, the old purse with its rusty coins, his honesty's just
A marvel and worthy of the Etruscan scriptures, to be
Expiated by ewe lambs decked in garlands. If ever I see
An excellent, upright man - a freak, like a child that's born
Half beast, like pregnant mules or fishes dug up in the corn 
By some astonished farmer's plow - I'm just as unnerved
As if it had rained down stones, or, a swarm of bees had swerved 
To settle upon the roof of a temple, or wondrous floods
Of milk were disgorged by a river to mix with the ocean's mud.

You complain that five hundred dollars or so were taken from you
In an infamous fraud. What if someone else has lost from two
To ten thousand by this, same underhand deal, and a third a sum 
Still bigger, which in his huge strongbox could barely find room? 
So simple and easy is it to scorn the witnessing gods
If no mortal man knows what was done. Just look with what
A loud voice he denies it and what an injured, innocent air
Lies on his treacherous face! By the rays of the sun, he swears,
By Jove's thunderbolts, the spear of Mars, the darts of the seer
Of Cirrha, the quiver and shafts of the virgin huntress, and then
By your own trident, O Neptune, lord of the Aegean's expanse;
He throws in Hercules' bow as well, and Minerva's lance,
And whatever weapons heaven's arsenals may supply.
In fact, if a father, he tearfully says: "May I, if I lie,
Eat my son's head boiled and served with Egyptian vinegar sauce!"

Some men believe, all things are ordained by the random toss 
Of Fortune's dice, and the world is by no ruler controlled, 
That changes of season, day and night, are by Nature unrolled; 
And fearless, therefore, they'll touch altars anywhere, any time.
Another, although afraid that punishment follows a crime, 
Though believing gods exist, will, perjure himself just the same.. 
"Let Isis," he reasons, "do as she will with my body and claim 
My sight with her vengeful sistrum so long as I keep the cash, 
I deny having stolen.” It's worth being cursed with a putrid, rash, 
Tuberculosis, or cancer or losing a leg from gangrene,
If poor Ladas,, the sprinter, didn't need a doctor to clean 
Cobwebs from his brain by hellebore treatments, he'd, never pause 
At choosing gout and its riches. For what's the use of applause, 
Or Olympian .olive wreaths for fast running? They're not, good to eat! 
Though the gods' wrath may be great, it's surely slow. If they mete
A penance to all guilty men, when on earth will they get to me?
But perhaps I may find the lenient god; he usually
Forgives these things. Men commit the same crime; fate smiles or frowns 
To reward their wickedness - one gets a cross, another a crown,

That's the way, they reassure, their minds when terrified
By a guilty conscience. Then, call them to meet and swear inside
Some holy temple, they'll be there first - indeed, they're all set
To drag you there themselves and dare, you to prove their debt.
For when a man shows a bold face to  support a bad situation,
Many think he shows good faith. It's a fine acting job, a creation
 Like that of the runaway clown in witty Catullus' play.
Poor fool, you may yell so loud that Stentor would yield the day,
Or as loudly as Homer's Mars: "Do you hear this, Jupiter, and not
Move your lips when you, whether, made of bronze or marble, ought
To have spoken out? Else why do I, on your altar fires,
Put my opened pack of holy incense, a calf's liver slice,
Or cauls of pure white pigs? So far as I see, it's just -
A tossup between your statues and shyster Vagellius' bust!"
Hear what consolations in rebuttal a man may convey
Who hasn't adopted the Cynics or Stoics doctrines - they
Have only their shirts to keep them apart - who has low regard 
For Epicurus, so pleased with the sprouts in his kitchen yard. 
Diseases of doubtful prognosis should be healed by the best
Of specialists; but entrust your throbbing pulse to the test 
Of a mere disciple of old Dr. Quack. If you can produce
In the whole wide world no crime so - detestable as your abuse,
I'll hush and not forbid you to smite your breast with your fist
Or to slap your face since after so great a loss as this
You must close your doors, for a household mourns with greater distress
And louder wails the. loss of money than loss by death.
In such an event no one's grief is feigned, no one is content
With rending only the hem of his clothes and squeezing a hint
Of tears from the corners of his eyes. For when a man hears
His money's lost, he doesn't pretend, he weeps genuine tears.

But if you see all courts overrun with complaints like yours,
If a bond, studied ten times by the claimant whom it insures,
Is called wastepaper and false, in spite of the signatures, 
Handwriting, and seal on the ring the finest sardonyx, cased
In an ivory box - do you imagine that you should be placed,
Dear fellow, beyond the common lot as though you were hatched 
By a white hen, while we others are common chickens that scratched 
Our way out of unlucky eggs? Your loss is a modest concern,
To be borne with modest amounts of spleen if only you turn
Your eyes upon worse crimes. Compare it with robbers for hire,
Or sulfur lighted by a device and your threshold afire
With bursting flames. Think also of those who steal from old
Temples the splendid cups whose very rust we should hold
In reverence, nations' gifts, or crowns ancient kings bestowed.
If these aren't there, a second-rate sacrilegious thief
Turns up to scrape from the thigh of Hercules the gold leaf,
Or shave even Neptune's, face, or peel off Castor's gold.
And why should he hesitate who usually melts down a whole
Jupiter, lightning and all? ,'Think ... also about the men.
Who mix and sell black poisons, the parricide sewn in the skin
Of an ox and cast in the ocean, with him, through adverse fate,
An ape that harmed no one. What a fraction, these, of the spate
Of crimes the, city's prefect, Gallicus, hears from the day's 
First light till it fades! If you'd, know the ways of the human race,
That one courthouse. will be enough. Spend a few days there,
And when you come out,-call yourself, unfortunate if you dare!
Who's ever surprised at goiters in the Alps, or breasts
On a woman in Meroe. bigger than her fat babe? Who suggests
It's amazing to see yellow-haired blue-eyed Germans who wind,,
Their pomaded locks into horns? No one; for that's the kind .
Of creatures, they are. To fight off attacks of Thracian cranes
That suddenly swoop, in a clamorous cloud, the pygmy campaigns
With his tiny weapons; but soon, unevenly matched with his foes, 
He's caught by the savage bird and carried in crooked claws
Through the air. If you saw this here among our people, you'd shake
With laughter; but there, though these same fights are constantly faced,
No one laughs where the whole army isn't more than one foot high.

"Will this perjured man and infamous fraud not be punished by
The law?" Suppose he were rushed off in heavy shackles and.
At our pleasure slain; what more could your anger demand?
But still you've lost your money; you'll never hold in your hand
The deposit you gave him. The tiniest drop, of blood that falls
From his headless body will bring, with its solace, hatred and gall.
"But revenge is good, sweeter than life itself!" To be sure,
The stupid think so; you'll see their hearts blaze up for obscure
And paltry reasons, often for none, at all indeed,
No matter how small the occasion be, it's all they need
For anger. Chrysippus won't say the same, nor gentle Thales,
Nor the old man: who lived near honeyed Hymettus, Socrates,
Who would give to his accuser no portion of the contents
Of the hemlock cup brought during his cruel imprisonment.
Sweet Wisdom gradually strips from us most vices, all error, 
First teaching what's right. For revenge is always the joy of narrow, 
Sick, and petty minds. Take as proof, right off, what this shows: 
No one so dotes on revenge as a woman. But why suppose
Such men have gone scot-free whose minds are constantly gripped
By terror, fully aware of their evil deeds, who are whipped
By blows unheard, whose consciences brandish over their heads
An unseen scourge of torture? Moreover, it is a dread
Punishment, far more cruel than those contrived by severe
Caedicius or Rhadamanthus, both day and night to bear
In your breast your own accuser. The Pythian priestess replied
To a Spartan once that in time to come, he could never hide
From punishment, seeing that he. had thought to keep as his
A sum in his, trust and defend the fraud by perjury - this
Because he was asking; what the deity's mind might be
And whether Apollo would advise him to do this deed.
Therefore he restored the money, but out of fear, not through
His honesty. Still he found all the oracle's words were true

And worthy of the shrine; for he, his family, and kin,
However distant, were all destroyed. The mere wish to sin
Incurs such penalties. For he who secretly plots
In his heart any crime is guilty of the deed. Then what 
If he does what he planned? His anxiety never ends; it intrudes 
Even on his meals; his throat is dry as if fevered; his food
Is stubborn, swelling between his teeth; but the poor wretch spits  
The wine out, can't bear the choicest old Alban vintage, and sits; 
If you bring something finer, with deep wrinkles gathering on his brow, 
As though puckered up at some Falernian wine gone sour.
At night, if his worries by chance allow him to sleep for an hour, 
And his limbs, after tossing about on the bed, are now at ease, 
At once the temple, the altar, the god he outraged, he sees,
And what racks his mind with special pangs, sees you in nightmares:
Your awesome figure, larger than life, alarms him and scares
A confession from him. These are the men who shake and turn pale 
At each lightning flash; at the first dim rumble from heaven they quail, 
When it thunders they faint - as though storms weren't accidental or bred
By raging winds, but a flame of wrath flung down on the head
Of man in judgment. If one storm pass without harm, they dread
The next one more ,anxiously, as though this calm would gain
Them only a short reprieve. Further, if they suffer a pain
In the side with fever allowing no sleep, they think the disease 
Was sent on their flesh by an angry deity; they think these
Are stones and spears of the gods. Bleating lambs they dare not vow 
To a shrine, nor crested cocks to the Lares. For what hope is allowed 
Sick, guilty men? Or what victim is not more worthy than they
To live? The nature of wicked men is almost always,
Fickle and shifty. When they're committing a crime, they teem 
With courage; only after it's done do they start to feel
What's right and wrong. Yet nature, firm and unable to change,
Returns to its old condemned ways. For who has ever placed
A limit to his misdeeds? When have blushes, once put, aside, 
Returned to a vice-hardened facet What man who was satisfied 
With a single crime have you seen? Our con man will get his feet 
In a trap and suffer the hook in a murky jail or a seat
On a rock isle in the Aegean Sea, whose crags are packed
Already with famous exiles. Then you will rejoice in the fact
That a hated name is bitterly punished, and happily find
At last that the gods aren't deaf nor, like Tiresias, blind.

XIV

EVIL PRECEDENTS SET BY PARENTS

Many things have sinister reputations, Fuscinus - such things
As stain the brightest promise with evil darkness that clings
Through life - which parents themselves reveal and pass on to sons.
If old daddy likes ruinous gambling, his heir also has begun
In his teens and rattles the same weapons in his junior dicebox.
Nor need his kin hope for better of any stripling who shocks
Them all by peeling his truffles, spicing mushrooms, and next
By sousing ortolans with rich sauce - all learned from the text
Of a gluttonous throat his spendthrift father taught. By the time
He's seven, with baby teeth still in his jaws, you may call the prime,
Bearded tutors, a thousand on this side, as many on that, - but still
He'll always crave fine dinners with sumptuous menus and will
Not let gourmet standards degenerate in his haute cuisine.
Is Rutilus teaching the ways of a gentle spirit, serene
In temper, kind to small faults? Does he think that slaves have bone 
And flesh and souls created of substance as good as our own? 
Or is he teaching cruelty, with his delight in the sound
Of a savage flogging - a music that holds him more spellbound
Than that of the Sirens? Tyrant and giant, Antiphates rolled
Into one with Polyphemus, to browbeat his trembling household, 
He can only be happy when the torturer comes in to brand 
Someone with hot irons for two missing napkins. In what does a man 
Instruct his son when he thrills at clanking chains and warms 
With excessive pleasure at branded slaves and prison farms
And dungeon cells? Are you such a simpleton you think
The daughter of Larga will not become an adulterous minx,
Who never could count so quickly her mother's lovers' names
Or reel them all off with so much speed that it wasn't a strain 
To finish before she took thirty breaths?' Her mother's games 
Were known to the child, who now inscribes, as Mommy dictates, 
Her own little love notes and sends them to her chosen bedmates 
By the same fairy messengers. Thus Nature ordains; Home-grown
Examples of evil corrupt us more quickly since they set a known 
And revered authority over our minds. Perhaps one or two
Young men may resist whose souls Prometheus formed with more-true, 
Loving care and a finer clay. But the rest are led on to follow 
Their fathers' stops, which should be shunned, and dragged down to wallow 
Along that worn path of vice so often portrayed to them.

Therefore avoid all things that you know you must condemn.
There's at least one urgent reason for this - that our children not
Imitate our crimes. For we're all quite ready to be taught what
Is wicked and wrong. You can turn up a Catiline here or there
In any tribe, but you won't find a Brutus or Cato anywhere.
Where a father lives, no filthy word or sight should cross
The threshold. Away, away with you all, you girls who are bossed
By a pimp, and you parasites who sing, the whole night through!
If you plan some vile affair, your deepest reverence is due
Your son; and don't make light of his age let your infant son
Prevent you from the intended sin.	For if he, should run
Up against the censor's ire some day for something he's done,
And turns out to be like you, not only in figure and face
But a chip off the old block in vice, who followed you pace by pace 
Into viler sins than your own, of course you'll upbraid him and rant 
And rage, and later plan to change your will. But you can't 
Assume the scowl and the rights of a parent, can you, when you 
In old age are doing worse things, and for a long time, too, 
The windy cupping glass at your brainless head has probed?

With a guest expected, none in your house is idle. "Sweep the floor,
Clean the columns, wipe down that dried-up spider and all
The web! Here, shine the plain silver; you there, the embossed bowls!"
The master blusters, urging them on and gripping a lash.
So you fear, poor fool, a pile of dog dung in the hall or a splash
Of mud on the porch may offend the eyes of your coming friend.
And yet with a pail of sawdust one slave boy cleans what offends.
But do you not trouble yourself that your son may set his eyes
On a virtuous home without any stain and free from vice?
It's fine that you've added a citizen to our population
And country, if you rear him to be worthwhile to the nation,
Of use to farms and what we in war and peace undertake.
For the morals and habits in which you bring him up will make
The greatest difference. Storks feed their babies on the snakes.
And lizards found in remote wild fields; and when they succeed
On their wings, the young hunt those, same animals. Vultures speed
From dead cattle and dogs and corpses on gibbets to bring a piece
Of carrion to their young, so this is the food, of these,
Now grown-up vultures, feeding themselves as they build their nests
In trees of their own. And the noble birds that await the behest
Of Jove hunt hares or kids in the forest and bring this prey
To their eyries; so when the mature offspring can fly away,
Their hunger moves them to swoop on that same prey as well
That they had tasted first after pecking out of their shells.

Cretonius loved construction; and now on the crooked strand
Of Gaeta, now on Tivoli's highest peaks,, now on land
In Praenestine hills, he used to build his high-roofed grand
Mansions, with marble brought from Greece and farther, to tower
Above the temples of Fortune or Hercules, just as our
Own Capitol House was outdone by Posides, the eunuch. Thanks,
Therefore, to living in that fashion, Cretonius shrank
His estate and hurt his fortune still, it wasn't a small
Amount he. left. His demented son then squandered it all
To build new mansions of even more costly marble blocks.

Some men who chance to be born of a father who's orthodox
In keeping the Sabbath worship nothing but clouds and a kind
Of unseen God in the heavens. No difference to their minds
In pig flesh, from which the father abstained, and human; then 
They're soon circumcised.  But accustomed to scorn  
Roman laws, they begin  To study and practice and revere Jewish law and also 
What Moses handed down in his secret Book - not to show 
The road to any who worships rites that are not the same;
To lead only bobtailed men to the longed-for fountain. But blame 
Falls on the father to whom each seventh day was a day
Of sloth and had no concern with life in any way.

However, the young, imitate most vices of their own
Accord; they're forced against their will to avarice alone.
For here's a vice that seems and looks like virtue; it deceives
Because it has a gloomy demeanor and unrelieved
Severity of expression and dress. The miser is praised,
Without doubt, as thrifty, a man who saves for rainy days,
Who'll keep safer guard on his wealth than would - if they policed
The same - the dragons of Colchis or the Hesperides.
In addition, this man I speak of is thought shrewd in the art
Of making money, for through these coinsmiths, fortunes start
To grow, but they grow by devious means and always increase: 
The anvil's always clanking; fires in the forge never cease.

 From this the father judges that misers are happy as kings;
And so, if he worships wealth, believing there's no such thing
As a poor but contented man, he exhorts his sons to embark
Upon that course and study in that same school. There are
Certain rudiments in vice; he imbues them from the start
In these and compels them to learn the pettiest stingy arts; 
At length he teaches insatiable lust for acquiring wealth.
He shrinks slaves' bellies with short rations, and he himself
Goes hungry too, for he never can bear to eat all the stale bread,
Now blue with mold. In midsummer's heat, he'll save up a shred
Of yesterday's hash and store for tomorrow's dinner some beans
Left over, a mackerel head or half a stinking sardine
With slices of leek, which he counts before he lets them go. 
Ask a beggar on any bridge to a meal - like that, he'll say no!
But why: do you suffer torments like these to pile up a mass
Of wealth, when obviously it's crazy - sheer madness - to pass
Your life in poverty just so you'll be rich when you die?
Meanwhile, as your coffers fill, overflow, and multiply,
Your love of wealth grows as great as the wealth itself has grown.
For the man who has none covets it least. The one, house you own
Out of town isn't good enough-you buy another. Next-door 
The cornfields seem bigger and better than yours; then you deplore .
Your cramped, domain. You buy them too, and others with these
Woods, vineyards, and hills thick with gray-bloomed olive trees.
If the owner won't budge, regardless of your price, you might
Send a herd of lean, starving oxen,. with weary necks,, by night
Into his sprouting. corn, and they won't return to the stall
Till the whole new crop is in their ravenous bellies. You'd call
It a clean sweep by a sickle. The number can hardly be told
Of those bewailing such wrongs, or of fields this outrage has sold.

But what talk, what horn blasts of evil gossip there will be! 
"What's the harm in that? Much better I rake in the lettuce," says he,
 "Than the praise of the whole countryside for reaping the meager yield 
Of a tiny farm." Of course! And you'll be immune to disease
And old age, you'll have no troubles; no sorrow; and you'll rate
A much longer span of life and henceforth a rosier fate
If only you only possess all the acres of farmland plowed
By the Romans when Tatius reigned! In later times we allowed
Our veterans, broken with age and the trials of Punic wars
Or dread Pyrrhus and his Molossian swords, for all their scars
And wounds a bonus at last of hardly two acres of ground.
None ever thought this reward too small for service that bound 
Them to toil and blood, or shabby thanks from a stingy homeland. 
Such a farm was ample to feed the father himself and his band 
Of young at the house, where his wife lay big with child and four
Small children played - three his own and one slave-born. What's more, 
For their big brothers, back from work in the fields, a hot
Second, heartier meal of porridge steaming in a huge pot
Would be ready. Today we couldn't imagine such a small plot 
Of ground as really sufficient to make a garden for us!
Therein lies the cause of most crime: No vice is a stimulus
To mixing more poisoned bowls or plunging so often the sword 
As the fierce desire for unbounded wealth. For he who would hoard 
Great wealth would do it quickly. But what respect for law, 
What fear or shame does a hurrying miser ever know?
"Live content with these small homes and hills of yours, my sons,"
The Marsian, Hernican, and Vestinian fathers once
Said long ago. "Let us get our, food by the plow and the spade 
Enough for our tables. Our rustic gods approve it; their aid
And kindness brought us the welcome gift of grain and made
Man loathe his ancient acorn diet. The man who is not 
Ashamed to wear high boots in the, snow, who keeps off the onslaught 
Of the cold East Wind by skins with the fur inside, will never 
Wish to commit a forbidden act. Purple cloth, whatever
It be - foreign and unknown to us - leads to vice and crime."

Such counsel these ancients gave their children. But in our time,
After autumn a father rouses his sleeping son with a shout
In the midnight hours: "Wake up, - my boy, get to work, write out 
Your notes, draw up your briefs, read all the red-lettered laws

Of our sires, or request a centurion's post. But see that you cause
Commander Laelius to notice your uncombed head, also your. -
Hairy nostrils, and admire your bulging arms. Raid the Moors'
Small huts and Brigantes' forts so that at sixty you'll get
The eagle emblem-and riches! Or if you can't stand the sweat	
And hard work of camps, if the sound of bugle and trumpet compel 
Your bowels to move, start trading buy something you can sell	-
At fifty per cent pure profit. Don't be too snobbish to enter
A trade that has to be banished away from the city's center -
And over the Tiber. Don't try to sniff out distinctions between
A perfume shop and a tannery; the smell of profit is clean
And sweet, whatever the source. Let this maxim always be
On your lips-one worthy of the gods and even, if he
Were a poet, of Jupiter himself: "Nobody asks where
You get it, but money you have to have." This is what spare, 
Old, shriveled nurses teach little boys still crawling; these
Are the things that every girl learns before her. ABC's.

To the father eager to teach such precepts, no matter who,
I'd say this: "Tell me, you stupid ass, who orders you
To hurry? The, pupil, I'll bet, will excel the master. So quit
And don't worry. You'll be surpassed, as Telamon had to submit .
To Ajax, his son, as Peleus was by Achilles outdone. .
Be patient with young people; their bones haven't yet begun
To fill with the marrow of full-fledged evil. When he starts to feel
A fuzz on his cheeks and shave with a razor's edge, then he'll 
Give false testimony and sell his perjuries for a small sum
While touching Ceres' altar and, foot. If there should come
A daughter-in-law with a fatal dowry through your door,
Consider her buried already. What fingers will squeeze her throat 
While she's fast asleep! For all the riches that you expect
To be gained by trade on land and sea, your son will collect 
By a shorter route; indeed, great crimes take no effort. 
Some day You'll say, `I never taught these things, nor advised such ways.' 
And yet the cause, the origin, of his wrongdoings lies
In you. For whoever teaches the love of wealth, by sly
And sinister lessons turns his sons, into misers; and he 
Who gives a son. freedom to double bequests by fraud, gives free 
Rein to his impetus. Call him back, he can't stop or turn round, 
And despising you, hurries on, stampeding out of bounds.

Nobody's satisfied with sinning just so much as you
Allow - so much broader the self indulgence they pursue!

 "When you tell a youth, a man's a fool who gives to a friend 
Or helps relieve the impoverished state of one of his kin,
You teach him to plunder, to cheat, by any crime to acquire
More riches, the love of which stirs you with as great a fire
As the love of country did the hearts of the Decii, as deep
If we can believe those Greeks-as that of Menoeceus for Thebes, 
That land whose furrows, sown with dragons' teeth, sprang to life
With legions of men in arms, who fell into horrible strife
At once, as though a bugler tootling alarms had been raised
Also from the earth with them. Therefore, you will see the blaze
Whose sparks you kindled yourself now raging far and wide
And sweeping all before it. And don't think your own wretched hide 
Will be spared! Your pupil, the lion cub, with hideous roars
Will gobble his trembling master in his den. Of course,
Astrologers. know your horoscope; but it s tiresome to wait
For a slow-turning spindle, and you'll die with your thread of fate 
Not yet snapped. Already you stand in his way and thus postpone

His ambitions, and your long and staglike old age has thrown
The boy into torment. Get Dr. Archigenes quickly and buy
The draft Mithridates compounded. And if you expect to try
Another fig or to pick another rose, you should drink
Before meals the antidote of a man who's both father and king."

I'll show you now the choicest of entertainments, one that
No theater, no games put on by a praetor, however rich,
Can match if you'll observe at what risk to life men attain 
Increase of wealth, much money in brassbound chests, or coins 
That must go for deposit with vigilant Castor now that Mars 
The Avenger was robbed of even his helmet and couldn't guard
His own treasure. And so you may give up all the curtains of shows
That honor Cybele, Flora, and Ceres; the games that expose
Real people's affairs are so much better. Is there more the mind 
Can enjoy in tumblers, trapeze artists, men sliding down inclined 
Tightropes--or in you, whose whole life is spent being tossed
On a merchant vessel by winds from north or south, quite lost
To common sense, a low trader in smelly cargo and sweet,
Thick wine you love to import from the shores of ancient Crete,
With flagons made in love's birthplace fellow-citizens, say?
But the man who dares set foot on a rope and on it can stay
In balance derives a living thereby; he's safe against cold
And hunger. But you walk a tightrope, hoping for millions in gold – 
And a hundred villas. Look at our ports, our seas packed close 
With massive ships: more men now work on the ocean than those 
On shore. A fleet will appear to take you wherever a chance 
Of profit beckons, not only will cross the broad expanse
Of Carpathian and Gaetulian waters, but will advance,
Leaving Calpe far behind, through the Pillars of Hercules, 
To hear the-setting sun hissing in western seas.
It's well worth your pains that you, having faced the half-grown mermen 
And monsters of the deep, return home safe to determine
The wealth in your bulging purse and exult in fat moneybags!

There's more than just one kind of, madness, Orestes sags
In his sister's arms, is terrified by the look, and the flames
Of the Furies; Ajax, killing a ox, believes that famed
Agamemnon or Ulysses bellows. The man who has stored
His ship to the gunwales with goods, with only a width of board
Between him and the water, needs a keeper - not that he rips
His cloak and tunic apart, but because he bears such hardships
And danger for bits of silver incised with little faces
And titles. It clouds up and thunders - the trader who bought up cases
Of pepper or grain cries, "Weigh anchor! A sky that color, that wall
Of black clouds, are nothing to be feared. Heat lightning, that's all!"
Perhaps the poor fool on this very night will be washed overboard,
As the hull breaks up, be engulfed by waves, and clutch his adored
Moneybelt in one hand or in his teeth. Yesterday all the gold
The Tagus and yellow Pactolus roll in their sands wouldn't hold
His desires in check; but today he's glad of some rags to cheat
The cold at his naked loins, and some scraps of food to eat,
While he, shipwrecked, begs pennies, and with the painted storm
.That sank his vessel hung on his breast, looks to it for support.

Anything got by such woes is preserved by still greater care
And fear to guard a great fortune is irksome. The millionaire
Licinus orders a troop of slaves to stand watch all night
With fire buckets ready, as he fears for his amber, his white
Statues and Phrygian' marbles, ivory and tortoiseshell plaques.
The tub of the naked Cynic doesn't get burned. If you crack
And break it, he'll make a new home next day, or, patch it with nails.
Alexander, when he beheld this tub's great host, didn't fail
To sense how much happier this man, was, who had no desires,
Than he who must possess for himself the world entire
And go on to suffer dangers as great as his enterprise._
O Fortune, you'd have no divine attributes if we were wise
It's we who make you a goddess! But if anyone asks me 
What amount of wealth is enough,  I'll answer: As much as may be 
Required by thirst and hunger and cold; as much as sufficed For you, 
Epicurus, in your small garden; as much as comprised
The needs of the house of Socrates in an earlier day.
Nature never says one thing, Wisdom another. You say
I seem to restrict you with examples too harsh and grim?
Then add something from our modern ways; get enough to swim
Up to the rank that Otho's law declared worth a seat
In the fourteen rows. If that too makes you frown and pout, compete
For two knighthoods, even three- thrice twenty thousand dollars!
If I haven't yet filled your lap, if it still has gaping hollows,
Not the wealth of Croesus or Persian kings can ever presume
To sate your greed, nor even the wealth of Narcissus, on whom
Claudius Caesar lavished every fortune and whose will
He obeyed when, though it was his wife, ordered to kill.

XV

EGYPTIAN CANNIBALS

Who doesn't know, Volusius, friend from Bithynia, the kinds
Of monsters the mad Egyptians worship? One district enshrines
The crocodile, another reveres the ibis that fills
Its belly with snakes, and where the magical music trills
From broken Memnon, and ancient Thebes with its hundred gates 
Lies ruined, the gold idol of a sacred longtailed ape
Is shining. In one place, cats, in another catfish, and whole 
Cities pray to a dog, but no one to Diana. They hold
It a sin to injure onions and leeks by taking a bite.
What a pious race, for whom these gods are brought forth right 
In their gardens! No woolbearing beast may be served at any meal, 
It's unlawful there to slaughter a she-goat's kid--but to feed 
On the flesh of a man is allowed! When Ulysses told of a deed 
Like this to amazed Alcinous at a banquet, he stirred
Some to rage., or laughter perhaps, as a vagrant liar. "Absurd!
Is none of us going to throw this fellow into the sea,
Who deserves a fierce and real Charybdis, seeing that he
Invented monstrous Laestrygones and Cyclopes? For I
Would sooner believe in Scylla, the clashing rocks that lie
In the Bosporus, skins full, of storms, or that Elpenor and his
Shipmates, when touched by Circe's thin wand, became grunting pigs.
Did he think us Phaeacians so empty-headed and asinine?"
So someone might justly have spoken who only a little wine
Had taken from the Corcyraean pitcher and wasn't yet drunk.
For Ulysses had none to swear his tales were not pure bunk.

Now I will tell of wonderful strange events that all
Took place just lately, when Juncus was consul, beyond the walls 
Of tropical Coptus - a crime of the common people and worse 
Than any found in tragedies; for though you search every verse 
Of the drama from Pyrrha's time till today, you'll find no crime 
Committed by a whole people. But listen to what a prime
Example horrible savagery in our day has produced.
An ancient, long-nourished feud, an undying hatred no truce
Can resolve, and wounds that can't be healed, are burning between
The neighboring towns of Ombi and Tentyra. Each side is seen
Swelling up with fury because each one has always hated
Its neighbor's gods and believed that none should be venerated
As gods but its own. So when a festival time came around,
The leaders and chiefs of the enemy cult thought they had found
A good chance that shouldn't be missed to keep the other town
From enjoying a glad and happy day - great feasts in squares,
And temples on the tables, and sofas that got constant wear
From lollers day and night, till the sun for the seventh time rose
To surprise them. Egypt is, no doubt, uncouth; but in those
Debaucheries practiced today, from what I myself have seen,
Its barbaric mob yields nothing to ill-famed Canopus. They dream
That defeat of babbling, staggering drunks would not be hard.
Over there men dancing to a black piper, with nard or lard
Or heaven knows what and flowers and chaplets on their heads;
Over here, a ravening hate. But they start, with noise widespread,
Their first insults - war; war trumpets to passions burning to fight..
Then shouts back and forth, they clash, and bare hands rage to smite
Instead of weapons. Few jaws and chins escape being gashed,
Few noses, or none, come out of the fracas unbloodied, unsmashed.
 Throughout the ranks can be seen broken faces, looking: like none 
That's human, bones gaping; through torn cheeks, and fists that run 
With blood from eyes. Yet they think themselves at play, in a game 
Of waging war, like boys, for no corpses are trampled in shame. 
And indeed, to what end does a mob of so many thousands brawl 
If everyone lives? So the fight grows fiercer, and now they fall
To throwing stones-the usual weapon in riots - which they, 
Stooping down, search for on the ground: and not such stones as weigh 
Like those which Turnus or Ajax threw, or Diomedes
Struck on the hip of Aeneas, but such as right hands like these 
We have-today, so different from theirs, may be able. to cast. 
For even when Homer lived, this race was declining fast.
The earth now brings forth weak, wicked men; and therefore, after 
Some god has seen them, he's moved to only loathing and laughter.

But enough of digressions; back to my tale! At last one side
Gets armed reinforcements and boldly draws its swords and strides 
With barrages of deadly arrows to start the battle again.
The men who live on nearby Tentyra's palm-shaded plain
Turn their backs in fearful panic before the Ombite attack.
Now one, too scared and rushing, trips up and is caught. They hacked
His body to thousands of bits and pieces so that one gob
Of the dead man might go to each man in the conquering mob.
And they ate him up, bones and all, not waiting to stew up a pot
Or roast him on spits. It took so long to get a fire hot,
They felt - so boring to wait! They ate the corpse raw and still warm!

We may take some joy at least that sacred fire, which the arm
Of Prometheus stole from highest heaven and gave the nations
Of earth, was not defiled there. I offer congratulations
To that element, and think you rejoice. But never was flesh
So gladly devoured as by him who could bear to chew that fresh 
Cadaver. But do not doubt, don't even ask, in an act
Of such horror, if only the first throat felt delight. For in fact, 
With the corpse now wholly eaten, the last to come up stood .
Smearing fingers over the ground to get a taste of the blood.

The Vascones, it is said, once prolonged their lives by eating
Such food; but that was a different case. They'd taken a beating
In war, and adverse fortune brought, on the final distress
Of famine imposed by an endless siege. The wretchedness
Of the people just named, in having to turn to such food, should call
Forth our pity, for not till every green leaf, every animal,
And anything else that the pangs of empty bellies condemn
Men to eat, so that even their enemies pitied their wizened limbs,
Their pallor and gauntness - not until then did they, in complete 
Starvation - tear the limbs of others, when ready to eat
Even their own. For what manor what god would refuse to grant
A pardon to bellies that suffered such horrid, inhuman demands,
When even the souls of the dead might forgive those who were brought
To eating their bodies. Much better by Zeno are we taught:
For some things must be done to preserve our lives,, he thought,
Though indeed not everything. But how could Spaniards be Stoics,
Especially in times of ancient Metellus? Today a heroic
Athens may still be in Greece, but there's one in Rome as well,
And all over the world. Those eloquent Gauls have begun to sell
Instructions to British lawyers, and Iceland has plans now aimed 
At hiring a rhetorician. And yet these people I've named
Were noble; and those of Saguntum, their equals in loyalty
And courage but more than equal in slaughter, make the same plea 
For excuse. But Egypt's more savage than the dread altar found
On the Sea of Azov; for if you think what old poets hand down 
Is trustworthy, the Tauric Diana who founded the grim rite slays 
Only strangers; the victim has nothing further, no disgrace
Worse than the knife, to fear. But what distress drove this race
Of Egyptians? What raging famine or armies besieging the walls
Forced them to dare so horrid and monstrous a thing? If all
The lands of Memphis were parched and dry, could they devise
Any other outrage to the Nile for being unwilling to rise?
No wild Cimbrians or Britons, no savage Scythians or dread 
Agathyrsians ever so rabidly raged as this rabble, afraid
Of war and useless, that hoists baby sails on crockery fleets 
And rows painted pottery boats with puny oars! You can mete 
Out no penalty proper for such a crime, no punishment frame
For people in whose minds anger and hunger are one and the same.
Nature, in giving tears to man, confessed that he
Had a tender heart; this is our, noblest quality.
Therefore she makes us weep for the anguish of friends arraigned
For trial, pleading their cause; or award whose sex isn't plain
From tear-streaming cheeks and girlish hair who summons to high
Court a defrauder. At Nature's behest we grieve and sigh
When the bier of a maiden, full-grown and never wed, goes by, 
Or when earth closes over a babe too young for the funeral pyre.
For what good man, one worthy to hold up the mystic fire
Of Ceres' torch, one such as her priest would want him to be,
Believes he's untouched by any other's adversity?
Compassion distinguishes us from dumb brutes; so we alone,
Who have been endowed with a nature deserving respect, who own
The genius for godlike deeds, are fit to cultivate
And use the arts, have drawn from highest heaven those traits
Of donated feeling denied to lowly beasts with gaze bowed
To the ground. At the world's beginning our common creator allowed
Only life to them. But to us he gave soul as well, that love
For each other might stir us to ask or offer aid; to move
From ancient forests and groves where our forefathers lived; to draw
The scattered cave-dwellers together and form a nation in law;
To build homes and join others to our own, so neighboring doors,
From trust born of our union, might bring safe sleep; with force,
Of arms to protect a fellow-citizen when he falls
Or reels from a huge and grievous wound; to sound battle calls
On one common trumpet, with our common defense to be
The same city walls, behind gates locked by a single key.

But today there's more fellowship among snakes than among mankind.
Wild beasts spare those with similar, markings. When can you find
The stronger lion killing the weaker? In what wood has a boar
Ever died by the tusks of a bigger boar? The tigers that roar
In India live in continual peace together; the rough
Wild bear gets along with other wild bears. But it isn't enough
For man to have forged on unholy anvils our deadly blades.
The first blacksmiths, accustomed to forge only rakes and spades
And exhaust themselves making hoes and plowshares, never knew
How to beat out swords. We now see a people whose fury is too
Poorly sated, by killing someone, who think they have to gnaw
A man's breast and limbs and face for a kind of food. If he saw
These horrors of modern times, what then would Pythagoras say,
Where wouldn't he flee to escape them - he who abstained each day
From all live creatures as though they were human, and by no means 
Would allow inside his, belly every kind of bean?

XVI

THE FORTUNATE SOLDIER
.Who, Gallius, can count the benefits of serving a term
In the fortunate army? If I could enter a camp of affirmed
Prosperity under a lucky star, I myself would enlist
As a trembling recruit. For an hour of generous fate will assist
You more than a letter of recommendation to Mars from the hands
Of Venus, or his mother, who delights in the Samian sands.

 Let's first consider advantages all our soldiers now share.
Not the least of these is this, that no civilian would dare
To beat you up. If he gets beaten, he'd better not breathe
A word or run to the praetor, showing his knocked-out teeth,
His swollen face, black and blue, and the one eye left, so mangled 
The doctor-despairs of saving it. If he'd sue, he's entangled
With rough courts martial, a judge in hobnailed infantry boots
And a jury of brawny legs called up to hear the dispute
At the solemn bench, according to old army rules and the law
Of Camillus, forbidding that any soldier should be brought
To court outside the camp and away from his battle corps.
"Quite proper and just," you say, "that the army take on the chore
Of sentencing soldiers. If just complaints are deposed in my suit,
I won't miss my revenge." But the whole battalion will be in cahoots
Against you, each squad to a man will agree to give you a cure
That will make your damages won in, court far worse to endure
Than those you complained of. You have two legs, but nevertheless
You must have the brains of a jackass, such as are possessed
By that public speaker, Vagellius, to rouse the vindictiveness
Of all those boots, those thousand hobnails. Who'd go, besides,
So far from the city, be such a Pylades as to ride
Along; with you through the camp's high ramparts? You'd better dry
Your tears right now, and not solicit friends, who will lie
And dig up excuses. "Call in your witnesses," says the judge;
And if any man, whoever he be, has the courage to budge
And say "I saw the assault," I'll claim he deserves the hair
And virtuous beard our ancestors wore. You'll find anywhere
A false witness against a civilian more quickly than one who attests
The truth against a soldier's honor and rich interests.

Now let's note some other rewards, and perquisites of the pledge 
To serve in the army. Should some conniving neighbor allege
That a vale or field of my forebears' estate is his and dig out 
The sacred boundary stone at, mid-point, to which my devout 
Respects I've paid each year with a gift of cakes and meal;
Should a debtor refuse to repay his loan and claim the seal
Is faked, the signatures forged, the documents null and void
I must wait for the regular session of court, to be annoyed
By everyone else with lawsuits on the docket and, face
Even then a thousand tiresome postponements, a thousand delays. 
This happens so often - the benches have been arranged. in a row, 
Smooth-tongued Caedicius is taking his cloak off, but Fuscus must go 
To piss, and though all's ready, the hearing's adjourned. In the slow, 
Dragging sands of the legal arena we spar and fight that way.
But those privileged fellows with buckled belts and a fine array 
Of weapons get their cases scheduled whenever they please,
And their funds aren't erased by endless chains of legalities.
Moreover, only a soldier is given the right to make
A will while his father lives; for whatever a soldier may take 
As pay for his army service is held under law not to be
Part of the estate that the father controls. Therefore you see 
Coranus, who follows the flag and earns army pay, fawned upon 
By decrepit old Papa, who hopes to be his son's heir. The son 
Is promoted for duty well done and reaps rewards well earned 
By his noble service. The general surely should be concerned 
That his bravest soldiers should be the most prosperous, too,
That all be made happy with, medals and trappings of gold, all who

what we now have of the satire ends at this line. Scholars have conjectured that the complete poem would have run to some three hundred lines, on the basis of comparisons of structure and on the assumption that the manuscripts from which the extant copies were made had already lost the last quire.

GLOSSARY

This glossary relates only to my version of the satires and does not include the names of persons
about whom nothing, is known beyond the indications of the text. Some of these names may be
cover names for actual people of Juvenal's day, but there is little evidence to support most of the
parallels. Geographical names that should be clear to the reader or are listed in the dictionary, personifications (Shame, Virtue, Nature, etc.), and deities representing certain abstractions (Fortune, Honor, Chastity, etc.) here not included unless there is an occasion, in doing so, for giving information relevant to the text. In most cases the dates for kings and rulers given below refer to the terms of their rule.

ACESTES. Mythical king of Sicily (Aeneid, V, 61 ff.).
ACHILLES. Legendary Greek hero of the Iliad, son of Peleus and Thetis. His charioteer, whom Juvenal names in I,.. was Automedon. His great friend, killed in the Trojan War, was Patroclus.
He was instructed in music and other arts by the centaur Chiron. After his death Ajax and Ulysses contended for his armor (Ovid, Meta
morphoses, XIII, 2 if.) .
ACILIUS. M. Acilius Glabrio, he senator. His son, of the same name, was murdered by Domitian after his triumph in the arena where the emperor j had ordered him to fight.
ACTIUM. The naval battle, 31 B.C., in which Cleopatra and Mark Antonym were defeated by Agrippa and Octavius. In VIII Juvenal says "Leeches," which is an island many miles offshore.
ACTOR. A leader of the Aerenchens, defeated by Turnus, who used ' his spear to fight against Aeneas (Aeneid, XII, 94). Juvenal quotes from Vergil in this passage.
AEACUS. One of the judges in Hades. His grandson was Achilles.
AEMILIAN BRIDGE. A bridge, over the Tiber built by Aemilius Scaurus.
AENEAS. Son of Venus and Anchises, who after the fall of Troy settled in Latium; hero of Vergil's Aeneid.
AEOLUS. God of the winds, who kept them in bags of skin or in caves of the Aeolian (Lipari) islands. (Aeneid I, 52ff.)
AFRICA. Specifically, the Roman province of Africa, though other countries making up , the then known continent might be included in the thought of he particular passage. Africa was the main source of grain for Rome; and, with Gaul, was notable for its orators, lawyers, and interest in eloquence.
AFRICAN KING. In V Juvenal names Bocchar, a king of Maureretania during the Second Punic War.
AGAMEMNON. Father of Orestes and one of the Greek heroes before Troy. His wife, Clytemnesta, took a lover in his absence at the war and Orestes killed both his own mother and her lover to avenge his father's honor.
AGANIPPE. A spring on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, sacred to the Muses.
AGATHYRSIANS. A Scythihen people who lived on the Marls River and were tattooed blue.
AGAVE. A play by Statius.
AGRIPPA. Agrippa II, of the Herod family of Judea.
AGRIPPINA. Wife of the Emperor Claudius, who poisoned him with mushrooms. See Satire V, 147.
AJAX. Son of Telamon, king of Salamis, who committed suicide after failing in the contest with Ulysses for Achilles armor. The passage in VII is a reference to Ovid's Metamorphoses, XIII. In X, "our Ajax"-seems to refer to Tiberius. In XIV, Ajax in his `madness slew a herd of cattle, thinking he was killing: Agamemnon and Ulysses.
ALABANDA. A town in Caria near the Maeander River.
ALBA (Alban). Alba Long a, the oldest Latin town, founded by the Trojan Ascanius, son of Aeneas. It was destroyed by  Tullus Hostilius, though he left unharmed the temple of Vesta and' its. fire,' which Aeneas had brought from Troy. Domitian went to Alba each year for the Quinquatria honoring Minerva (Suetonius,' Domitian, 4). On the omen of the white sow with a litter of thirty pigs, see Aeneid, III. 389-93, and VIII, 42-48.
ALCATRAZ:' The U.S. prison island; Juvenal says "narrow Gyara," a small island in the Aegean Sea to which exiles were sent:
ALCESTIS. Wife of Admetus, king of Pherae in Thessaly. When the oracle said that Admetus would die unless a friend offered to die for him, she offered herself.
ALCINOUS. King of the Phaecians, a mythical people on the island of Scheria.
ALCITHOE, TEREUS, THEBES. In VII, names of unknown literary': works.
ALECTO. One of the Furies.
ALEXANDER. Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia (356-323 B, c. ), conqueror of the Greek city-states and the Persian Empire from Egypt, and Asia Minor to India. He died at Babylon, whose city was were famous for being made. of bricks.
ALLOBROGICUS. Surname of Q. Fabius Maximus, consul in 121 B.C., who conquered the Allobroges, a Gallic people.
ALPS. A high mountain system in southwest Europe. Hannibal's army blasted the cliffs by pouring vine
gar into ;cracks so that it would freeze overnight, with a resulting explosion of the rocks (Livy,XXI, 37).
AMMON. A Libyan, god, whose temple and oracle were in, the oasis of Siwa. He was worshiped by the Romans as Jupiter. Ammon.
AMPHION. King of Thebes and husband of Niobe.
AMYDON. A city in Macedonia.
ANCHEMOLUS. A warrior slain by Pallas (Aeneid, X, 389). The scholiasts say his stepmother was Caspiria.
ANCHISES. Father of Aeneas. The name of his nurse is not, known, but the nurse of Aeneas was Caieta. A secondary effect of this passage is similar to that of the gossipy woman in VI who doesn't know by name a mountain from a river.
ANCONA. A town near the middle coast of the Adriatic in Italy, founded by Greeks, 392 B.C.
ANCUS. Ancus Martius (640-616 B.C.), the fourth king of Rome.
ANDROMACHE. Wife of Hector, described as tall and of heroic proportions.
ANDROS. An island of the Cyclades in the Aegean.
ANTAEUS. A giant, son of Poseidon and Gea (goddess of earth), who could not be overcome so long as he could touch the earth. Hercules lifted him up above the ground with one hand and dashed out his brains with the other.
ANTIGONE. Daughter of Oedipus- and a subject of dramas. The reference in VIII is to -the role of this princess in a play.
ANTILOCHUS. Son of Nestor. He was killed by-Memnon while defending his father at the. siege of Troy.
ANTIOCHUS. A Greek actor. In this passage Juvenal also lists Stratocles,, Demetrius, and "delicate Haemus."
ANTIPHATES. King of , the Laestrygones, who were cannibals (Odyssey, X, 81-132).
ANTONIUS. C. Antonius, uncle of Mark Antony, was expelled from the Senate ,for extortion, 70 B.C.
ANTONY. Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), c. 83-30 B.C., Roman general, friend of Caesar, lover of Cleopatra. He was one of the second triumvirate with Octavius - and Lepidus., Angered by the Philippics of Cicero against him, he had the orator put to death and exhibited the head and hands of the dead man on the rostra in the forum. ,
ANUBIS. Egyptian god, conductor of the dead to the other world.
APICIUS. M. Gabius Apicius, a- famous epicure of the time of Tiberius and Augustus, who wrote a cook book that has come down to the present, though in degenerate form., There were two other gluttons named Apicius.
APOLLO. Son of Jupiter and Latona, brother of Diana. He was god of music, poetry, prophecy, and the sun. In VI the "goddess" in line 172 is Diana.
APOLLO'S- COURT. In the Forum of Augustus was a statue of Apollo, where lawsuits were tried, near Apollo's temple and a library of law books.
APPIAN. Of an old noble family; related to Appius Claudius.
APPIAN WAY. The oldest Roman road, built in 312 B.C. by the censor Appius Claudius. It ran from Rome to Capua (near Naples) and later was -extended to Brundisium.
APULIA. A region in southern Italy. 
AQUINuM. A town in Latium, birthplace of Juvenal. A temple to Diana and one to Ceres were located there.
ARABIA. A country in Asia. In XI, Juvenal, perhaps misled; by the origins of ivory traders, was mistaken in suggesting that elephants lived in Arabia.
ARACHNE. A girl of Lydia who, forced to yield a spinning contest to Minerva, hanged herself and , was changed by the goddess into a spider (Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, 5 ff.).
ARCADIAN. Of a region of the Peloponnesus.
ARCTIC SEA. Juvenal says "frozen ocean."
ARICIAN, HILL. Aricia was a hill town on the Appian Way near Rome.
ARISTOTLE. Greek philosopher (384-322 B.C.), a pupil, of Plato and the tutor of Alexander.
ARMENIA. A country in, : Asia. In A.D. 115 a great comet was the omen of the fall of its king.
ARPINUM. Birthplace of Cicero (106 B.C.), who sup- . pressed the conspiracy of Catiline in 63 B.C. The "other man from Arpinum, following this passage, is C. Marius.
ARTAxATA. Capital of Armenia.
ARVIRAGUS. A British prince; he appears in Shakespeare's Cymbeline.
ASIAN KNIGHTS. In VII, the reference is to the fact that Oriental slaves often accumulated enough money (400,000 sesterces) to become knights.
ASSARACUS. Son of Tros, king of Troy and kinsman of Priam.
ASTREA. Goddess of justice, daughter of Zeus and Themis. She was the last of the deities to leave the earth (in the Iron Age, following the Silver Age) and was placed among the stars as Virgo.
ASWAN. A town on the Nile in Egypt. Juvenal calls it Syene, which was a customs station on the Roman frontier.
ATELLANE. From Atella, an ancient city of Campania. The Atellane farce was a type that was very popular in Rome.
ATHOS. A mountain at the end of the peninsula of Chalcidice in northeastern Greece. The references in this passage are to Xerxes, king of Persia, who had a canal cut across the isthmus and who crossed the Hellespont on a pontoon bridge. The "Greek histories" are probably those of Herodotus, who recounts these exploits of Xerxes.
ATLAS. Mythical king of Mauretania, of giant size, who was changed into Mount Atlas, on which the sky was supposed to rest.
ATREUS. Father of Agamemnon and Menelaus. "Son of Atreus as an epithet for Domitian in IV is, of course, derisive. In VII, Atreus is the.- title of a drama.
ATRIDES. Son of Atreus. In VI, it means Agamemnon, as a symbol of the husband who lives in fear of being murdered by his wife.
AUGUSTUS. The name, granted to Octavius when he became emperor in. 27 B.C. It was later applied to all subsequent Roman emperors.
AURUNCA. A town in Campania, birthplace of Lucilius whom Juvenal calls "great nursling of Aurunca" in I.
AUTONOE. Daughter of Caddis, mother of Actaeon. With her sisters Agave and Ino, she tore Pentheus to pieces in a frenzy, which may be the allusion in VI.
AVENTINE HILL. One of the Seven Hills of Rome. 
AZOV, SEA OF. A sea northeast of the Black Sea, to which it connects. The Romans called it Lake Maeotis.
BABYLON. The chief city of Babylonia, on the Euphrates. Its walls were celebrated for being made of bricks rather than stones.
BACCHANTES. Votaries , of Bacchus, god of wine; proverbial figures of revelry.
BAIAE. A favorite resort of the Romans on the coast of Campania near Naples.
BAPTAE. Worshipers of the goddess Cotytto.
BAREA. Barea Soranus, proconsul of Asia, executed by Nero (Tacitus, Annals, XVI, 21, 23,. 33),
BATAVIANS; Inhabitants of Batavia (now Holland). BATHYLLUS. An actor of women's roles (Tacitus, Annals, I, 54).
BEBRIACUM. The battle in which Vitellius' forces: defeated Otho, A.D. 69.
BELLEROPHON. Son of Glaucus of Corinth. He, was loved by Stheneboea, wife of Protues, King of Argos.. When he scorned her love, she slandered him to her ,husband.
BELLONA. Usually the goddess of war, sister of Mars; but in Juvenal she is clearly the other Bellona, a goddess of Cappadocian origin whose priests behaved like, those of Cybele, with self-mutilation, noisy music, and prophesying.
BELUS. Mythical founder of Babylon. His granddaughters, the Danaides (daughters of Danaus), numbered fifty and all except one murdered their husbands . (the fifty sons of Aegyptus) on their wedding night.
BERENICE. Wife :of her uncle Herod, king of Chalcis. She lived, after his death, (A.D. 48), with her brother Agrippa II. See Acts, 23.
BITHYNIA. A country. in northwest Asia Minor.
BITHYNIAN HIGHNESS. Prusias I of Bithynia.
BOOTES. The constellation known. as "the ox driver."
BOSPORUS. The straits between -Thrace and Asia Minor. :The "clashing rocks" are the two Cyaneae (as Juvenal calls them) at the mouth of the straits. The, "skins full of storms" following this reference are those of Aeolus, keeper of the winds.
BRIGANTES. A powerful British tribe that held most of Britain north of the Humber River.
BRITANNICUS, Son of Claudius and Messalina, born A.D. 41 and killed by Nero in 55.
BRITTONES. A warlike Germanic tribe.
BRUTI. Marcus Junius Brutus (nephew of Cato the Younger) and Decimus Junius Brutus, who conspired in the murder of Julius Caesar.
BRUTIDIUS. Brutidius Niger, , a public officer involved in the fall of Sejanus .,(Tacitus, Annals, III, 66).. ,
BRUTUS. Lucius Junius Brutus, who saved his. life in the reign of Tarquin the Proud (died c;' 510 B.C.) by pretending to be mad. He, later took the cognomen Brutus (senseless). In VIII, the reference is simply to one of such a great family.
CACUS. Son of Vulcan. He was a giant and a cattle thief and was killed by Hercules when he tried to
steal the oxen of Geryon (Aeneid, VIII, 193 ff.).
CAESAR. In VI, concerning the scrolls against Cato, Julius Caesar, who wrote them to denigrate Cato the Elder. The reference is to Clodius, who in female disguise' attended the rites of the; Good Goddess in Caesar's house, 62 B.C. Caesar, at the beginning of VII, is thought by many to, be Hadrian.
CAESONIA. Wife of the Emperor Caligula; who is said to have driven him mad with an infusion of hippomanes (Suetonius, Caligula; 50). ' 
CALLIOPE. The muse of epic poetry. Juvenal's invocation' of her in IV announces `his parody of epic.
CALPE. One of the Pillars of Hercules, now' Gibraltar. .
cAMERINUS (Camerini). A 'man (or men) of Cameria, a town in Latium. In VIII, since the application of Camerinus is derisive, perhaps it suggests "conqueror of Cameria."
CAMILLUS. M. Furius Camillus (died 365 B.C.) was one of the heroes of the republic. Having conquered Veii and freed Rome from the Gauls, he was made dictator five times.
CAMPANIA. At district of central Italy.
CANNAE. The small town in Apulia where Hannibal defeated the Romans (216 B.c.) and-slaughtered some 40,000 of their finest men.
CANOPUS. A city on the delta of the Nile famed for its depravity.
CANUSIAN. Of the town Canusium,' in Apulia, which was famous for its wool.
CAPITO. - Cossutianus Capito, condemned for extortion of his province, Cilicia, A.D. 58 - (Tacitus,
Annals, XIII, 33).
CAPITOL. The temple of Jupiter on the Tarpeian Rock in Rome.
CAPITOLINE. One of the Seven Hills of Rome. In VI, the games in honor of Jupiter Capitolinus, in stituted by Domitian to be observed every fifth year.
CAPPADOCIA. A district of Asia Minor, north of Cilicia.
CAPRI. A small island off- the coast of Campania where Tiberius spent his last ten years and from which he sent his letter to the. Senate., concerning Sejanus.
CARPATHIAN SEA. The waters between Rhodes and Egypt, so called from the island Carpathus (now Scarpanto).
CARTHAGE. A city in North Africa destroyed by the Romans in 146 B.C.
CARUS. Carus Metius, a notorious informer under Domitian (Tacitus, Agricola, 45). In this passage of I, Juvenal names the actor and his wife: Latinus and Thymele.
CASSANDRA. Daughter of Priam, given the power of prophecy by Apollo.
CASSIUS. C. Cassius Longinus, one of the conspirators against and murderers of Julius Caesar.
CASTOR. Son of Tyndarus and Leda and twin brother of Pollux. In XIV the allusion is to the use of Castor's temple as a depository for private funds, since the usual one, that of Mars, had been robbed.
CATANIAN. From Catana, near Mount Aetna.
CATILINE. L. Sergius Catilina, Roman noble who with Cethegus headed a conspiracy against the state in 63 B.C., which was discovered by Cicero. He died in battle, 62 B.C.
CATO M. Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.), who was a censor famed for his. austerity and stem discipline;, and M. Porcius Cato Uticensis (95-46 B.C.), who was a Stoic.
CATULLUS. In IV, Catullus Messalinus, an informer under Domitian; in VIII and, XIII, a playwright; in XII, an unknown friend of Juvenal who was a merchant.
CATULUS.  C. Lutatius Catulus, of this illustrious family, was consul in 242 B.C. and ended the First Punic War with his victory at the Aegates islands. The man in III is unknown.
CECROPID (Cecropidae). One (or more) of the descendants of Cecrops, mythical first king of Athens.
CENSOR. Originally :a Roman official appointed every four or five years to draw up the "census - names of citizens and assessment of their property.- In later times the censors were given powers to supervise conduct of all sorts. The office had disappeared by the time of the empire.
CENTAUR. An imaginary monster of Thessaly, half man and half horse.
CERES. Goddess of agriculture. It is uncertain why she is called "Helvine" in III, unless it be that her temple was special to a family in Aquinum known as the Helvii or Elvii. Her temple in Rome was "apparently a meeting place for men and women with adultery in mind. Her son-in-law was Pluto, god of the underworld, who had married her daughter, Proserpina.
CETHEGUS. C. Cornelius Cethegus, co-conspirator with Catiline in 63 B.C. He was put to death by Cicero in that year.
CHALDEANS. A people of Assyria, famous as astron omers and. astrologers.
CHARON. The ferryman who took souls over the river Styx to the - underworld. The fare for the crossing was a coin.
CHARYBDIS. A dangerous whirlpool in the straits of Messina, opposite the rock Scylla.
CHIEF PONTIFF. In IV, Domitian.
CHARON. Son of Saturn and Philyra. He was the centaur who taught Achilles, as well as Aesculapius
and Jason.
CHRYSIPPUS. A philosopher (280-207 B.C.) of the Stoic school, pupil of Cleanthes.
CHRYSOGONUS. A famous singer. In the sentence in VI, the phrase "open the vent" is a makeshift rendering of the real situation, which concerns removing a ring (fibula) set into the prepuce of singers to prevent intercourse, which was thought detrimental to the voice. This singer is also mentioned in VII, along-with Pollio, as a teacher of music.
CICERO. M. Tullius Cicero, statesman, author, and orator (106-43 B.C.), born at Arpinum -and murdered by order of Antony. He discovered the Catilinarian conspiracy and stamped it out. After his death, his head and hands were cut off and presented to Antony. The line of his poetry quoted in X is a famous example of bad verse. Perhaps the best rendering, in terms of Roman aesthetics, is that of G. G. Ramsay in the Loeb Classical Library: "O happy Fate for the Roman State - Was the date of my great Consulate"
CILICIA (Cilician).. A region in Asia Minor whose people were notorious as pirates. .
CIMBRI. The Cimbrians, a Germanic tribe who with the Teutons invaded Italy and were defeated by C. Marius and Q. Lutatius Catulus.
CIRCE. An enchantress, daughter of the Sun and. Perse, who lived on Aeaea. She changed the sailors of Ulysses into swine (Odyssey, X, 203 f.).
CIRCUS. An oval course for races and games encircled by tiers of seats. The Circus Maximus held 100,000 spectators; others, were the Circus Flaminius and the Circus Maritimus. A low wall on which were various ornaments, among them statues of dolphins and eggs, divided the center of the racing area, with three pillars at each end, around which the. competitors raced. Under the arcades of the outer supporting arches of the seating structure, prostitutes and other merchants had stalls.
CIRRHA. A city of Phocis, near Delphi, and sacred to Apollo, who is the "seer" in XIII. In this passage, the huntress is Diana.
CLAUDIUS. The emperor (10 B.C. A.D. 54). He died of a poison mushroom given him by his wife (also his niece), Agrippina (Tacitus, Annals, XII, 67 Suetonius, Claudius, 44). In VI his wife (the third) is Valeria Messalina, whom he executed in A.D. 48.
CLEANTHES. A Greek philosopher (c.331-c.232 B.C.), pupil of Zeno (who founded the Stoic school), and his successor as leader of the school.
CLEOPATRA. (c.69-30 B.C.) Queen of Egypt, daughter of Ptolemy Auletes and mistress of Mark Antony.
CLIO. Muse of history.
CLITUMNUS. A river in Umbria famed for its white cattle, which were especially desired as sacrifices to the highest gods:
CLODIUS. Publius Clodius Pulcher, a tribune. The reference in II is to his murder by his enemy, Milo, in 52 B.C. In H and VI the reference. is to his Violation, in the disguise of a woman, of the all-female rites of the Good Goddess, 62 B.C.
CLUVIENUS. Unknown; this may be a cover name for some other low-grade poet of the time. See Highet, Juvenal the Satirist, note 5 pp. 289-94, for a discussion of cover names in the satires, relating to many of the names not listed in this glossary.
CLYTEMNESTRA. Daughter of Tyndarus and wife of Agamemnon, whom she and her lover, Aegisthus, murdered. Orestes and Electra were her children.
COLCHIS. A country on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, home of Medea. Here, in the grove of Mars (Ares), a dragon guarded the Golden Fleece.
COLLINE TOWER. A gate to Rome located near ,the Quirinal hill.
COMMAGENIAN. Of a province in the north of Syria. COPUTS. A city. On. the Nile in Egypt.
CORCYRA (Corcyraean). An island in the Ionian Sea, now Corfu.
CORINTH. A city in Greece.'
CORNELIA. Daughter of Scipio African's, who conqered Hannibal and Syphax; wife Of Titus Sempronius Gracchus and mother of the Gracchi.
CORUS.. The northwest wind.
CORYBANTS. Priests of Cybele, who indulged in orgies.
CORYDON. A shepherd. This is a quotation from Vergil's Eclogue, II, 2.
COs. An island in the Aegean famous for wine and fine fabrics.
COTTA. Aurelius Cotta, an orator, consul in 75 B.C.
COTYTTO. A goddess of Thrace whose festival, marked by debaucheries, was introduced at Athens. Juvenal calls her "Cecropian Cotytto," from Cecrops, the first king of Athens.
COUNCIL OF MARS. The Areopagus at Athens. It was a capital crime to reveal the votes of the members.
CRASSI. A family in the Laciness line. M. Licinus Crassus, a triumvir, was killed at Carrhae, 53 B.C.
CREMERA. A river in Etruria where 300 members of the Fabii were slain in battle, 477 B.C.
CRETE. ' A large island in the Mediterranean, birthplace of Jupiter (hence the allusion to "fellow citizens" - flagons - in XIV).
CRETICUS. Surname meaning "conqueror of Crete," as Q. Metellus Creticus, who did conquer, Crete. In II, an unknown judge; in VIII, a derisive name.
CRISPINUS. A rich parvenu of Egyptian origin. The name might be rendered "Kinkyhead."
CRISPUS. Vibius Crispus (Suetonius, Domitian,; 3; Tacitus, Histories,- II, 10).
CROESUS. King of Lydia (560-546 B.C.), famed for his wealth.
CUMAE. An ancient city (founded c. 750 B.C.) on the. coast of Campania, home of the Sibyl.
CURII. An early family of Rome famous for its temperance.
CURIUS. M. Curius Dentatus, consul in 290 and 275 B.C., conqueror of the Sabines, the Samnites, and Pyrrhus. Famous for his frugal nature.
CYBELE. Phrygian goddess identified with the Asiatic Great Mother. The worship of her rites was characterized by orgiastic actions and self-mutilation. In III Juvenal speaks of her as the "Idaean divinity" to recall Mount Ida in Phrygia.
CYCLADES. A group of small islands in the Aegean.
CYCLOPES. Members of a gigantic race of one-eyed men. The most. famous was Polyphemus.
CYNIC, THE NAKED. Diogenes. See Plutach, Alexander, for this incident.
CYNICS. Members of a school of philosophy deriving from Antisthenes of Athens (born c. 445 B.C.), a friend of Socrates. His teachings ,held that virtue was necessary for happiness and consisted of freedom from wants by avoiding pleasure and desire. Socrates was the teacher of Antisthenes.
CYNTHIA. The beloved of Propertius, who addressed his poems to her, using this cover name. In this passage of VI, the girl who wept at the sparrow's death is Catullus Lesbia (see Catullus, Carmina, III).
DACIA. A country on the lower Danube whose conquest was commemorated in a coin.
DAEDALUS. A mythological Greek architect of Athens who built the Minotaur's labyrinth and fashioned wings on which he and his son, Icarus, flew from Crete. Icarus fell into the sea when the wax in his wings melted, and Daedalus landed at Cumae.
DAILY GAZETTE. This was the acta diurna, published daily in Rome from 59 B.C. and giving reports of political and social events.
DALMATIA. A country on the eastern side of the Adriatic. -
DECII. P. Decius Mus and his son of the same name, of low origins, who pledged their lives to save their country, the former in the Latin War, 340 B.C., and the latter in the battle of. Sentinum, 295 B.C.
DELPHI. A small. town in Phocis, famous for its oracle of Apollo. The Delphic oracle was finally abolished by emperor Theodosius in A.D. 390.
DEMOCRITUS. The "laughing philosopher" of Abdera in north Thrace (c. 460-c. 370 B.C.). In this passage, the philosopher who wept was Heraclitus of Ephesus (ft. c. 510 B.C.).
DEMOSTHENES. Famous Athenian orator (384-322 B.C.). His father was a blacksmith, or armorer.
DERBY WINNERS. Juvenal here names two famous horses, Coryphaeus and Hirpinus.
DEUCALION. Son of Prometheus, king of Phthia in Thessaly, married to Pyrrha. On the passage in I,
see Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 318 ff.
DIANA. The virgin goddess of the moon and of hunting, daughter of Latona and sister of Apollo.
DIDO. Daughter of Belus of Tyre, sister of Pygmalion and queen of Carthage, who loved Aeneas
and killed herself when he abandoned her (Aeneid, I-IV).
DIOGENES. A Greek Cynic philosopher (c. 412-323 B.C.).
DIOMEDES. Legendary Greek hero, son of Tydeus (Juvenal calls him Tydides). He was second in strength to Achilles at the siege of Troy and threw a stone bigger than two men could lift, hitting Aeneas (Iliad, V, 302 ff. ).
DOLABELLA. Cornelius Dolabella, who was condemned for extortion in Cilicia in 78 B.C.
DOMITIUS, Not Domitian, the emperor, but an earlier, nobler member of the family, such as Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul in 122 B.C., who conquered the Allobrogians, or L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul in 54 B.C.
DRUSI. The family descending from Livia, whose son by; Augustus was named Drusus.
DRUSUS. In III probably a reference to the emperor Claudius, whose cognomen was Drusus and who was "sleepy"; in VIII, a reference to the ancient family of Livia.
EGERIA. A water nymph who instructed Numa Pornpilius (Livy, I,19) .
EGNATIUS. Publius Egnatius Celer, who accused. and caused the execution of Barea. Soranus (Tacitus, Annals, XVI, 32; Histories, IV, 10).
EGYPTIAN. In I, 130, Juvenal says "Arabarch" (an Egyptian magistrate), which may allude to Tiberius Julius Alexander, a Jew who was prefect of Egypt in A.D. 67-70. The point of this passage turns on the law against defiling the statues of great men.
ELECTRA. Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, sister of Orestes.
ELPENOR. One Of Ulysses crew, who were changed into pigs by Circe (Odyssey, X, 552-63). 
ENDSVILLE. Contemporary term for an undesirable town. Juvenal names Ulubrae.
ENDYMION. A beautiful youth loved by the moon goddess.
EPICURUS. Athenian philosopher (342-270 B.C.), founder of the Epicurean school.
ERIPHYLE. Wife of Amphiaraus, whom she persuaded,, bribed by a gold necklace from Polynices, to join the war of the Seven Against Thebes, although by his powers of foresight he knew he would be killed.
ESQUILINE HILL. One of the Seven Hills of Rome, presumably cooler and more favored by the, rich for homes.
ETHIOP, ETHIOPIAN. Of the region in Africa south of Egypt.
ETRUSCAN. Of Etruria, a district in northwest Italy (Tuscany).
EUGANEAN. Of Eugania, a country in northern' Italy. 
EUPHRANOR. Famous Greek sculptor (fl. 336 B C.). EUPHRATES. A river flowing through Syria and Babylon to join the Tigris. The reference in I is to the fact that so many slaves were from the Orient,
where their earlobes were punctured with holes for rings.
EUROPA. Beautiful daughter of Agenor, `king of the Phoenicians. Jupiter, in the form of a bull, carried her away to Crete.
EURUS. The southeast wind.
EVANDER. Son of Carmenta, from Arcadia. He founded Pallateum at the base of the Palatine Hill. On his entertainment of Hercules, see Aeneid, VIII, 359-65.
FABII, FABIUS. An illustrious family claiming descent from Hercules, many of whose members were historians, warriors, consuls, etc.
FABIUS. In VII, Paulus Fabius Maximus, patron of Ovid. Often, elsewhere, a prototype of degenerate nobility.
FABIUS GURGES. Son of Q. Fabius, the censor.
FABRICIUS. C. Fabricius Luscious, consul in 282 and 278' B.C., who conquered the Samnites and fought against Pyrrhus. Censor in 275 B.C., he was noted for his severity against the increasing luxury of the Romans.
FALERNIAN WINE. A fine wine from a region in Campania.
FATES. Clotho, who spins; Lachesis, who measures; and Atropos, who cuts the thread. In IX, 135-36, Juvenal names the first two.
FIDENAE. A town near Rome.
FIELD._ The Field of Mars, Campus Martius, adjacent to the Tiber.
FLAMINIAN WAY. A road built by C. Flaminius Nepos, leading north from Rome. In I, the Latin Road is also named.
FLAVIANS, FLAVII. Members of an, old Roman family. In IV, the "last Flavian is Domitian, whom Juvenal calls "a baldheaded Nero."
FLOOD. The story of a, cataclysmic flood is not confined to the Bible. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 253 ff.
FLORA. In II, an unknown woman.; Elsewhere, the goddess of flowers and spring. The Floralian games were held from April 28-May 3 and were marked by indecent female behavior.
FONTEIUS. C. Fonteius Capito, consul in A.D. 67. FORTUNE.. Goddess of Fortune, whose temple at Praeneste was enormous.
FORUM. An open square, or marketplace. In most usages here, a center of commercial, political,
and judicial affairs.
FRUSINO. A town in Latium. In III, in this passage, Juvenal also lists Fabrateria, another town.
FURY, FURIES. Avenging deities with snakes in their hair. The names of the three were Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. In VI Juvenal specifies only the last one.
FUSCUS. Cornelius Fuscus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard. He was killed in Domitian s wars: in Dacia (Romania), A.D. 86-88. In XII and XVI, unknown.
GABII "An ancient town near Rome.
GAETA. A seacoast town on the borders of Latium and Campania.
GA ETULIA (Gaetulian). A country in northwest Africa. The Gaetulian sea would be off its coast.
GALATIA. "New Gaul," a country in Asia Minor settled by Celtic people.
GALBA. Sergius Sulpicius Galba, emperor A.D. 68-69.
GALLICUS. Rutilius Gallicus, prefect of the city under Domitian.
GALLINARIAN WOODS. A forest south of Rome, a haunt-of criminals.'
GAMES. All forms of sports, pageants, parades, shows, and plays, usually in honor of a deity. They were performed in the circuses, forums, amphitheaters, temples, or theaters and were a major part of the life and artistic sustenance of Romans in the first and second centuries. The drama, in fact, degenerated into, mime plays (or ballets); and cruelty, combined with sexuality, seemed the order of the day. The major games were the Roman, Plebeian, Megalesian, Floralian, and Cerealian.
GANYMEDE. Son of the Trojan king Tros. His beauty was so great that Jove sent an eagle to kidnap him so he could be his cupbearer on Olympus. His statue in the temple of Peace was a place of rendezvous.
GAUL. In general, present-day France. Here, as in Africa and Spain, were great schools of eloquence for orators and lawyers. The inhabitants of Gaul wore trousers, in contrast to the togas and tunics of Romans.
GAURUS. A mountain in Campania.
GERMAN (Germany). In IV the tribes named are the Chatti and the Sycambri. In VI the reference is to coins commemorating victories over the Germans. In X the "German chariot refers to the war trophy in which C. Marius' rode at his triumph after victory over the German tribe of Teutons.
GIANTS. The giants were thought to have been born of lumps of earth. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.
GOLDEN FLEECE. The skin of a ram with fleece of gold given to Phrixus and Helle to aid their escape from a hated stepmother. Helle fell into the sea from the flying ram and Phrixus sacrificed the animal to Zeuswhen safe in Colchis, giving the fleece to the king, Aeetes, who put it in a tree with a dragon to guard it. Jason stole the fleece to return it, as a condition of his inheriting his share of the kingdom of his uncle Pelias.
GOOD GODDESS. Bona Dea; the name of Fauna, wife (or daughter) of Faunus, god of fertility. The celebration of her rites, which were forbidden' to men, degenerated into an orgy.
GORGONS. The three daughters of Phorcus Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale. The principal Gorgon was Medusa, who had snakes for hair and whose look turned a person to stone.
GRACCHI. Tiberius Gracchus (died 133 B.C.) and Gaius Gracchus (died 121 B.c.), tribunes of the people, whose agitation for reforms fomented riots; both were murdered while engaged in such activities.
GRACCHUS. In II, probably a cover name a reference to the noble Gracchi family rather than a specific person, but meant to typify, the degenerate nobility. He is here shown as one of the Salii, priests of Mars.
GREAT ALTAR. The altar of Hercules, the care of which was traditionally that of the Fabian family.
GREEN SOx. A substitution (in modem baseball terms) for one of, the. racing factions - White, Red, Blue and Green. The emperors usually favored the Greens.
GUADALQUIVIR. A river in Spain;, Juvenal says "Baetica," a province named for the Baetis river (now the Guadalquivir), which was famous for the naturally gold-colored wool of its sheep.
GYARA. An island of the Cyclades in the Aegean.
HAEMUS, CARPOPHORUS. Actors, "matinee idols."
HANNIBAL. Son of Hamilcar Barca and leader of the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War. He was defeated by Scipio Africanus at Zama (201 B.C.). Before this he had invaded Spain and Gaul, crossed the, Alps, and threatened Rome. See Livy, XXVI, 10, for the passage on the Colline gate in VI. He committed suicide with a poison ring (c. 183 B.C.).
HARPY. A ravenous monster of Greek mythology, with a woman's head and a- bird's., body. Juvenal names one of them:, Celaeno.
HERE. Daughter of Jupiter and cupbearer of the gods.
HECTOR. Son ot King Priam of Troy, bravest of the Trojans. He was. killed by Achilles.
HECUBA. Wife of Priam, king of Troy.
HELVIDIUS. Helvidius Priscus, son-in-law of Thrasea, who was banished byNero (Tacitus, Annals, XVI, 28-35) and executed by Vespasian (Suetonius Vespasian, 15).
OLA
HERCULES. Greek mythological hero of great strength and courage, famous for his "twelve labors.
HERMES. Greek god, identified with Mercury.
HERMICAN. Relating to the Hermici, an ancient people of Latium.
HESPERIDES. Daughters of Hesperus, the evening star, who lived in the extreme westt of the world and kept a garden of golden apples, the entrance to, which was guarded by a dragon..
HIPPLYTUS. Son of Theseus. He was accused by his stepmother, Phaedra, after he rejected her advanes, of attacking her.
HISPO. Perhaps Eppuleius Proculus Hispo, consul in. A.D. 101. See Highet, Juvenal the Satirist, note 5, pp. 291-92.
HOMER. Greek epic poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
HORACE. Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8, B.C.), son of a freedman of the Horatian family. He was one of Rome's greatest poets. In I Juvenal calls his predecessor in satire "the Venusian because he was bom at Venusia.
HORATIUS. Horatius Cocles, who held the Sublician bridge against Porsena's army (c. 510 B.C.). The "girl who swam" the Tiber was Cloelia, a hostage (Livy, II, 9, ff.).
HYACINTHUS. A beautiful Spartan youth, beloved of Apollo, who accidentally killed 'him and caused the flower bearing his name to spring from his blood.
HYLAS. A youth beloved of Hercules, drowned by the water nymphs, naiads.
HYMETTUS. A mountain near. Athens, famous for honey and marble.
IARBAS. King of Gaetulia and a suitor of Dido (Aeneid, IV, 36). On the jeweled sword," see Aeneid, IV, 261-62. In this passage the "drunk cobbler" was Vatinius ' of Beneventum, whose long nose probably caused these vessels with long spouts to be called Vatinian cups.
ICARUS. Greek mythological son of Daedalus, who made wings for their escape flight from Crete. Icarus flew too near the sun, and the wax of his wings melted, causing him to fall into the sea.
ICELAND. An island in the North Atlantic. Juvenal says "Thule," which may be Iceland or one of the Shetland islands.
IDA. In III, a mountain in Phrygia, near Troy; associated with Cybele; in XIII, a mountain in Crete where Jupiter grew up. .
IDUMEAN GATE. A gate presumably associated with Jews and with Syrian perfumers.
ILIAD. Homer's epic of the siege of Troy.
IMPORTED MOTHER. Cybele, because her worship had been brought to Rome from Phrygia in 204' B.C.
lO. Daughter of King Inachus and the beloved of 'Jupiter, who changed her into a white cow, and in it’s shape she wandered to Egypt, where she became identified with Isis (Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 588 ff.).
IONIAN SEA. The sea between Italy and Greece, - named for - Io, who swam across it.
IPHIGENIA. Daughter of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, who sacrificed her to assure safety for the Greek ships sailing to Troy. In later tradition,, a deer was substituted as the actual victim.
ISAEUS. A rhetorician of Assyria (not the Greek orator of the same name)
ISIS. Egyptian goddess whose worship had been brought into Rome near the end of the Republic and whose temple was the scene of lewd behavior and a meeting place for pimps and whores. The park in VI is probably the Lucullan gardens, another favorite spot for assignations. In XII the reference to Isis as a nourisher of painters is due to the fact that her temple was cluttered with votive tablets of shipwrecked sailors.
IULUS, (luian). Ascanius, the son -of Aeneas,, who brought the Trojans to Latium..
JANUS. An old Italian deity, with two faces, looking forward and backward (hence, January).
JASON. Son of Aeson, king of Thessaly, who, led the Argonauts to steal the Golden Fleece. A painting of the Argonauts adorned the walls of the Portico of Agrippa, but in winter the canvas stalls of the market shut out the view - thus, Jason is called. "merchant because of his picture in the market.
JERUSALEM. A chief city in Judea, which the, called Solyma, its ancient name. In this passage, "priestess with a tree as temple" refers to the provision that Jews should camp outside the city walls under trees.
JEWS. There had long been a large Jewish colony .in Rome. Judea had been conquered by Pompey the Great years before the. birth of Christ. By A.D. 1.9 the Jews in Rome were so numerous and troublesome that Tiberius could transport 4,000 of them to Sardinia (Tacitus, Annals, II, 85; Suetonius, Tiberius, 36). The first Christians filtered into Rome through the already established colony. Juvenal, though more than skeptical of the Roman gods, did not like the Jews and confused their religion with that of the Christianized Jews. The basket of hay was apparently used by custom for keeping already cooked food warm for the Sabbath, when no cooking (or other work) was to be done. At the time of writing III, Juvenal looked upon Jews as beggars or fortune-tellers. For a Roman's view of Jewish history, citing Moses as leader and lawgiver, see Tacitus, Histories, V, 1-13.
JOVE. Jupiter, famous for his adulteries in disguise. In XIV the "noble birds" are eagles, which carried his thunderbolts. and did his bidding.
JULIA. Daughter of the Emperor Titus, guilty of incest with her uncle Domitian, who caused her Corduba in Spain, who wrote the Pharsalia and was executed by Nero.
LUCANIAN. Of Lucania, a country in southern Italy.
LUCILIUS. The first Roman satirist (c. 180-103 B.C.). In I Juvenal names him by epithet as the "great nursling of Aurunca, that town in Campania having been his birthplace.
LUCRETIA. A beautiful Roman lady whose suicide after being raped by Sextus Tarquinius in 510 B.C. led to the expulsion of the Tarquin kings and the beginning of the Republic (Livy, I, 58).
LUCRINE BAY. Near Baiae, and celebrated for its oysters.
LUCUSTA. A notorious poisoner of Nero's time. See Tacitus, Annals, XII, 66, 67; Suetonius, Nero, 33.
LUPERCAN PRIESTS. These men officiated at the festival of the Lupercalia, wearing skins, and struck women with thongs made of sacrificed animals to produce fertility.
LYCIAN. Of Lycia, a country in Asia Minor.
LYCISCA. The name used by the empress Messalina when she spent nights in brothels.
LYONS. Formerly Lugdunum, in Gaul, where Caligula set up a rhetorical contest with severe penalties for the losers (Suetonius, Caligula, 20).
MAECENAS. Gaius Cilnius Maecenas (c. 70-8 B.C.), a statesman. and rich patron of the arts, especially of Vergil and Horace.
MAENADS. Votaries of Bacchus, or in VI, the maddened votaries of Priapus.
MAMERCI. Descendants of Aemilius Mamercus, one of the first quaestors to be appointed at the start of the Republic. Tacitus often refers to Mamercus Aemilius Scaurus, senator and' consul under Tiberius, and calls him aristocratic, eloquent, but dissolute.
MARCELLUS, MARCELLI. An ancient family of Rome. M. Claudius Marcellus defeated Hannibal at Nola.
MARIUS. In I and VIII, Marius Priscus, proconsul of Africa, who, though tried and exiled for extortion in his province in A.D. 100, was not forced to give up his plunder. In X, Caius Marius (15786 B.C.), born near Arpinum, who defeated the Teutons. near Vercelli in 102 B.C., while his colleague, Q. Lutatius Catulus, defeated the Cimbri in 101 B.C. Catulus shared in the triumph of Marius. Defeated in the civil war - by Sulla, he hid in the Minturnan swamps, was imprisoned, but escaped and fled to Carthage.
MARS. God of war, son of Juno and Jupiter. The "grove of Mars" in I was the birthplace of his sons, Romulus and Remus. In II the "rugged plain" is the Campus Martius, the Field of Mars. For the loud voice Of "Homer's Mars" in XIII, see Iliad, V, 859-63. In X the reference is to his being trapped in a net with Venus while making love.
MARSIAN, Relating to the Marsi, an ancient tribe of Latium.
MARSYAS. A Phrygian satyr who challenged Apollo to a musical contest. When the Muses gave the prize to Apollo, he had Marsyas bound and flayed alive, (Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, 382 ff.).
MASSA. Babius Massa, a dreaded informer under Domitian (Tacitus, Agricola, 45).
MATTERHORN. The mountain in Switzerland. Juvenal names Niphates, a mountain in Armenia, which most translators and commentators say "is meant for a river."
MEDEA. Daughter of Aeites, king of Colchis. She was famous for her magical arts. When she eloped with Jason and her father, pursued, she cut her brother to pieces and cast him out to delay her father; when Jason wants to leave her, later, and marry the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth, she murders their two sons as well as Creon and his daughter.
MEGALESIAN GAMES. These games in honor of Cybele began on April 4, about five months; after the plebeian games in November, which are named by Juvenal to define the period when there were no games to attend. '
MELANIPPA. Sister of Antiope, queen of the Amazons a role played by Nero.
MELEAGER. Son of Oeneus, king of Calydon. A great boar was sent to Calydon by Diana and was slain by Meleager.
MEMNON. The colossal statue of Memnon at Thebes in Egypt, which though broken gave. out musical sounds when the rays of the sun struck it at daybreak.
MEMPHIS. An ancient city in Egypt.
MENOECEUS. Son of Creon, king of Thebes, who sacrificed his life when an oracle said this act would save his country.
MENTOR. Famous artist in metals, especially silver (II.before 356 B.C.).
MEROE. An island in the Nile.
MESSALINA. Wife of the Emperor Claudius. In X, the handsome youth she intends to wed is Gaius Silius (Tacitus, Annals, XI, 12, 26 ff..).
METELLUS. In III and VI, L., Caecilius Metellus, who lost his eyesight when he saved the image of Minerva from, her burning temple (241 B.C.). In XV, Q. Caecilius Metellus, who warred against Sertorius in 79-72 B.C.
MILETUS. A town in Asia Minor.
MILO. T. Annius Milo Papianus, who killed his enemy, Clodius, in 52 B.C.
MINERVA. Daughter of Jupiter, goddess of wisdom, patroness of all arts and sciences. The head of the Gorgon Medusa was set in her shield.
MINOTAUR. A monster, half bull and half man, imprisoned in a labyrinth on Crete. He was killed by Theseus.
MINTURNAE. A town in Latium, near marshes on the Liris River.
MITHRIDATES. King of Pontus (120-36 B.C.) who invented an antidote for poisons.
MOLOSSIA' (Molossians). A district of Epirus, whose king was Pyrrhus.
MONYCHUS. A centaur (half man, half horse); the reference is to the battle of the centaurs and the Lapithae.
MOTHER EARTH. Juvenal says "Terra," the earth as a goddess.
MUCIUS. P. Mucius Scaevola, presumably, who was consul in 133 B.C. The quotation in I is apparently from Lucilius. In VIII the reference is to his burning off his right hand in a fire for failure to kill the right enemy of his people (Livy, 2).
MUSES. The nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who were goddesses of poetry, song, drama, dancing, astronomy, etc.: Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania.
MYCENAE. A city in Argolis, whose king was Agamemnon.
MYRON. Famous Greek sculptor (c. 430 B.C.) of statues such as the Discobolus and Marsyas.
NARCISSUS. The powerful and very wealthy freedman of the Emperor Claudius. For his part in the death- of Messalina, see Tacitus, Annals, XI, 33-37.
NEPTUNE. God of the oceans.
NERO. C. Claudius Nero, emperor (A.D. 54-68), noted for his debaucheries. On his acting, see Suetonius, Nero, 21, and Tacitus, Annals, XIV, 15. The "bald Nero" in IV is Domitian. The uncle of Nero in VI is Caligula. Nero killed, among many others, his wife and his sister. In VIII, 213, the punishment is that of a parricide, which was to be enclosed in a sack with a dog, an ape, a snake, and a cock and then thrown into the sea.
NESTOR. King of Pylos, oldest of the Greeks besieging Troy, and father of Antilochus.
NILE. The river in Egypt that in season flooded or dwindled. There were seven mouths in its delta.
NIOBE. Wife of Amphion, by whom she had seven sons and seven daughters. When she prided herself above Latona in bearing children, Latona's son and daughter took revenge, with Apollo slaying the sons and Diana the daughters (Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI, 146 ff.).
NORTIA. The Etruscan goddess of fortune and fate.
NUMA. Numa Pompilius (715-672 B.C.), second king of Rome following Romulus. He was instructed by night in civil and religious government by the nymph Egeria (Livy, I, 19).
NUMANTIA. A town in Spain, destroyed by Scipio the Younger in 134 B.C.
NUMBSKULL LAND. Juvenal says "land of muttonheads,"' referring to Abdera, which was reputed to be a breeding place of blockheads, but produced the philosopher Democritus. 
NUMIDIA. A country in North Africa. The oil exported to Rome had an unpleasant odor.
OCTAVIUS. C. Octavianus, the Emperor Augustus (63 B. C.A.D. 14). With Antony and Lepidus, he made up the second triumvirate and was victor in battles at Actium and Philippi.
OLYMPIAN. Of Mount Olympus, the home of the gods. The Olympian games were held in honor of Zeus at Olympia, and the winner received a wreath of wild olive.
OLYNTHUS. A town in Thrace, Chalcidice, on the borders of Macedonia.
OMBI. A town in upper Egypt.
ORESTES. In I, an imaginary tragedy based on Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. He killed his mother and her lover, and was tormented by the Furies for his crime. His sister was Electra, his wife Hermione, daughter of Menelaus. ,
ORKNEYS. Juvenal says-, "Oreades," which are the Orkney and Shetland islands off the north coast of Scotland, conquered during the reign of Claudius.
ORONTES. The principal' river of Syria.
OSIER HEIGHTS. The Viminal Hill, which Juvenal calls "the hill. named for the osier."
OSIRIS. One of the chief Egyptian gods, brother and husband of Isis. At first a nature god who died and was reborn, in the spring, he later became a god of the dead and was associated with Anubis, the conductor of the dead to the other world. Osiris was thought to inhabit a bull, Apis, that was periodically sacrificed. When a new Apis was found, the people cried, "We have found him! Let us rejoice together!"
OSTIA. The harbor and port_ of Rome, at the mouth of the Tiber.
OTHO. M. Salvius Otho (A.D. 32-69), Roman emperor: for three months, notorious in youth for his vices, often- in companionship with Nero. He committed suicide after his defeat at Bebriacum. In VI the "great citizen feared by Otho" is the emperor Galba, whose death he caused. Also, in XIV, L. Roscius Otho (see Otho's law)
OTHO'S LAW. The law that L. Roscius Otho drew up giving special seats in the theater to knightsmen whose wealth amounted to 400,000 sesterces or more.
PACTOLUS. A river in Lydia, said to bring down golden sands.
PALAEMON. Q. Remmius Palaemon (first century A.D.), who wrote an important work on grammar.
PARIS. A famous dancer-actor; there were two of these Parises, one a favorite of Nero, who had him executed as a rival in A.D. 67; the other a favorite of Domitian, who had him executed in A.D. 87. In X, of course, it is the legendary Paris, son of Priam, whose "rape of Helen set off the Trojan War.
PARRHASIUS. A famous Greek painter of Ephesus, fl. c. 400 B.C.
PARTHIA. A country in Asia southeast of the Caspian Sea.
PAULUS. L. Aemilius Paulus, who was one of the commanders at the battle of Cannae, 216 B.C., and was killed there. In VII, unknown; in VIII, a branch of the ancient Aemilian family.
PEGASUS. In IV, a magistrate and member of Domitian's council. See Highet, Juvenal the Satirist,. note 14,. pp. 259-61, for a discussion of the men on Domitian's council as listed in IV. Elsewhere, 
PEGASUS, the winged horse (associated with the :Muses) that sprang from the blood of Medusa, one of, the Gorgons. Juvenal speaks of him as the "Gorgonian steed." Tarsus, on the river Cydnus in Cilicia, is the place where the feather dropped from his wing.
PELEUS., King of Thessaly and father of Achilles.
PELOPEA. "Daughter of Pelops," a pantomime play in which the title role was acted by Paris. 
PENELOPE. Wife of Ulysses who° ' wove during his absence at the Trojan War.
PETOSIRIS. An ancient Egyptian astrologer. 
PHAEACIAN. Relating to a mythical people of the is land of Scheria, where autumn was perpetual.
PHAEDRA. Daughter of Minos, king of, Crete; wife of Theseus; and stepmother of Hippolytus, whose death she caused by her slander to his father. Juvenal calls her the "Cretan lady."
PHALARIS. A tyrant of Agrigentum (c. 570-554 B.C.), in Sicily, who roasted his victims' alive in a brass bull.
PHAROS. An island off Alexandria where a great lighthouse stood.
PHARSALUS, BATTLE OF. Fought near a town in Thessaly; Pompey was defeated by Caesar, 48
B.C.
PHIDIAS. A famous sculptor of Athens in the time of Pericles. His, statues of Athena in the Parthe-. non and of Zeus at Olympia were made of ivory and gold.
PHILIP OF MACEDON. In 348 B.C. he arranged to bribe Lasthenes, the governor of Olynthus, a  town in Chalcidice so as to betray it into his hands.
PHILIPPI, BATTLE OF Octavius and Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius in this battle in Macedonia, , 41B .C. Juvenal says "Thessaly," which would indicate the battle of Pharsalus, 48 B.C. it seems that Roman poets confounded the two battles.
PHILIPPIC. In X, the, second of fourteen attacks by Cicero on Mark Antony, for which reason, among others, Antony had the orator put to death.
PHILOMELA. A pantomime play, based on the sister of Procne, in which Paris played the title role.
PHOEBUS SPOT. No reference to Phoebus Apollo. The Phoebus in VII apparently ran a bathhouse of some sort.
PHOLUS. One of the centaurs, who were famed for their drinking capacity.
PHRYGIA (Phrygian). A country in Asia Minor. In II the reference is to the self-castration of the priests of Cybele, the Phrygian goddess.
PICENUM. A district in central Italy on the Adriatic, in which Anconawas situated; it was famous for its apples.
PICUS. A mythical Latin king who was the son of Saturn and father of Faunus.
PIERIAN CAVE. A place sacred to the Muses, who are called Pierian maidens.
PISO. C. Calpurnius Piso, one of the leaders of the conspiracy against Nero, A.D. 65 (Tacitus; Annals, XV, 48 and elsewhere).
PITTACUS. One of the Seven Sages of Greece (seventh century B.CJ.
PLUTO. King of the underworld, whose wife was Proserpina (daughter of Ceres) of Sicily. In XIII, the wheel, the rock, the vultures, are the punishments inflicted on Ixion, Sisyphus, and Tityus in, the underworld.
PODUNK  Humorous name for any insignificant village, Juvenal names Fidenae and Gabii.
POLLIO. A well-known harp player. In XI, unknown.
POLYCLITUS. A famous Greek sculptor, fl. 452-405 B.C.
POLYPHEMUS. One of the Cyclopes, giants of Sicily who had only one eye. Ulysses blinded Polyphemus in order too escape from him (Odyssey; IX, 166;f.):
POLYXENA. Daughter of Priam and Hecuba of Troy.
POMPEII. The family of Pompeius. In, X, Pompey the Great (106-48 B,.C.), triumvir with Caesar and Crassus, conqueror of Mithridates,  and defeated by Caesar (Julius) at Pharsalus; and his son, Sextus Pompeius Magnus, defeated at sea by Augustus.
POMPEIUS. An informer for Domitian.
POMPEY. Gnaeus Pompey,, the Great. In 50 B.C. he was seriously ill in Naples. Two years later he was murdered at Alexandria.
PONTIA. Wife of Drymis, who poisoned her husband and two children., (See Martial, VI, 75.)
PONTINE SWAMPS. A marshy region on the Appian Way

PONTUS, KING OF Mithridates (120-63 B.C.) who invented an antidote for poisons. He had been conquered by Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey.
POPPAEAN CREAMS. Cosmetics named after Poppaea, wife of Nero.
POSEIDON The Greek god of the seas (corresponding to Roman Neptune). In very early times he was perhaps : more powerful than Zeus. The epithet "earthshaking" (or_earthshaker) is from Homer.
POSIDE. A favorite freedman of Claudius (Suetonius, Claudius, 28).
PRAENESTE. A town in. the mountains near Rome. 
PRAETOR A magistrate of Rome, an officer.
PRIAM. The last king of Troy, slain at a great age by Pyrrhus in the siege of Troy.
PRIAPUS. God of gardens, vineyards, and fertility. He was represented : either as a phallus or as a herm with a phallus.
PROCNE.' Daughter of King Pandion of Athens, who in revenge. for the infidelity of her husband, Tereus, served him a dinner of his son, Itys.
PROCUI EIUS In I, unknown. In VII, a Roman knight with generous instincts (Horace, Odes, II, ii).
PROMETHEUS. Father of Deucalion. He stole fire from heaven and used it in making man from clay. One of the Titans, he was called "the Titan in XIV by Juvenal.
PUNIC. Carthaginian. There were three Punic Wars, 264-241, 218-201, and 149-146 B.C.
PYGMY A race of dwarfs living in Africa. On their battles with cranes, see Iliad, III, 3-6.
PYLADES. The faithful friend of Orestes.
PYLOS, KING OF. Nestor. In X the reference is to Iliad, I, 247-252. The comparison with the crow comes from the belief that the crow lived many times longer than man.
PYRRHA. Wife of Deucalion and daughter of Epimetheus. With her husband she regenerated human life after the flood.
PYRRHUS. King of Epirus (c. 318-272 B.c.) and as such ruler of the Molossi.
PYTHAGORAs. A Greek philosopher of Samos (c. 540 B.C.) who settled in southern Italy and founded the school named after him. Probably as a result of his journey to, India, he believed in the transmigration of souls and would eat no flesh, but only vegetables.
PYTHIAN. Relating to Pytho, the old name for Delphi, and to Apollo, god of prophecy. He had killed the Python, a huge snake, near Delphi.
QUACK, DR. Juvenal names Philippus, an unknown, inferior doctor.
QUINTILIAN. M. Fabius Quintilianus'(A.D. 40-100), a great rhetorician and a rich man.
QUIRINAL. Quirinus was the name given Romulus at his apotheosis. ' The Quirinal Hill is one of the seven in Rome.
QUIRINI. Romulus and Remus.
QUIRINUS. The name, of Romulus at his apotheosis. In, this passage in VIII the "last of our good kings" is Servius Tullius, born of a slave, Ocrisia, who was, says Livy, a princess before her capture; the "sons of the consul" are Titus, and Tiberius, sons of L. Junius Brutus; the "tyrants," Tarquin the Proud and his party; "a slave," Vindicius (Livy, I, 58).
REEVES, STEVE. Juvenal names Corbulo, a general under Claudius and Nero who had unusual strength.
REMUS. Twin brother of Romulus, who killed him in a quarrel at the founding of Rome (Livy, I, 3 ff.). "Remus'  spawn" is the Roman people Juvenal says "the mob of Remus."
RHADAMANTHUS. Son of Jupiter and a judge in the underworld.
ROME. The capital of Latium and the Roman Empire, founded April 21, 753 - B.C., according to legend, by descendants of the Trojans, who had come with Aeneas after the fall of Troy and ,settled at Alba. Its population in Juvenal's time was about half a million people. Where I have used such terms as "midtown Rome" or "the heart of Rome, Juvenal has generally used Subura, the name, of the noisiest and busiest section of the city.
ROMULUS. Son of Mars and Rhea Silvia, twin of Remus, and founder of Rome. In II Juvenal calls him "Father of our city." Because Rhea Silvia was a Vestal Virgin, her father., Numitor, ordered the babies drowned, but the basket holding them was washed, aground and a she-wolf nursed them. In XI Juvenal calls the wolf "the Romulean beast." (Livy, I,;3 ff.)
ROSTRUM. The speaker's platform, or tribune, in the forum.
RUBELLIUS BLANDUS: C. Rubellius. Blandus or C. Rubellius Plautus, members of a good family connected by marriage with the Julian line (Tacitus, Annals, XIII, 19-22 XIV, 22, 57-59; XVI, 10,30).
RUBRIUS. Unknown, perhaps a cover name. The allusion in "satire-writing : pervert", is to Nero's satire on Quintinianus (Tacitus,, Annals, XV, 49).
RUTULIAN: Of the Rutuli, an ancient people of Latium, whose king was Turnus. In XII the reference is to the herd of elephants that the emperors kept near Laurentum.
SABBATH. The Jewish Sabbath, ' the seventh day of the week, Saturday, which, like the Christian Sabbath (Sunday), was a day of rest and religious observance. The Romans observed no such interruption of daily affairs. (See Tacitus, Histories, V, 4.
SABINE. Referring to one of the ancient peoples of Italy, famous for sober morals and chastity. The war caused by the rape of the Sabine women was ended by all the women going into mourning and disheveling their hair (Livy, I, 13).
SAGUNTUM. A town in Spain (Juvenal calls it Zacynthos) that was loyal to Rome and was captured by Hannibal in 218 B.C. (Livy, XXI, 5-15).
SALAMIS. Great naval battle in which the Greeks defeated Xerxes and the Persians, ;480 B.C.
SAMoS, An' island off the coast of Asia Minor,, famous for its earthenware. It was a center for worship of Juno, as indicated in XVI.
SAMOTHRACE. An island in the north Aegean famous for mystic rites of the Cabiri.
SARDANAPALUS.-Ashurbanipal (c. 668-626 B.C.), king of Assyria devoted to luxury.
SATURN. A mythical king; of Latium, god of agriculture and civilization (identified with the Greek Kronos) and the father of Jupiter. His reign was the Golden Age. He was driven from power by his son, Jupiter, whose reign was; the Silver Age. As a planet, Saturn was unlucky.
SCANTINIAN LAW. A law against sexual perversions.
SCAURI, SCAURUS. A famous family. M. Aemilius Scaurus was censor in 109 B. C.
SCIPIO. P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus the Elder (236-164 B.C:), who conquered. Hannibal; and Scipio Africanus the Younger (c. 185-129 B.C.), son of L. Aemilius Paulus and the destroyer of Carthage. The elder Scipio received the idol of Cybele when it was brought from Phrygia in 204 B.C.
SCYLLA. A rock in the Straits of Messina, opposite Charybdis.
SCYTHIANS. A general name for all nomadic tribes north of the Black and the Caspian seas.
SECUNDUS CARRINAS. An Athenian rhetorician who taught in Rome and was banished by Caligula. In the passage in VII, the man whom Athens "saw low in poverty" was of course Socrates.
SEJANUS. L. Aelius Sejanus, son of Seius Strabo and a favorite of Tiberius. In, the absence of the emperor, Sejanus, as praetorian prefect, assumed more and more power, but a letter that Tiberius sent from Capri, A.D. 29, advised the Senate to take action. Sejanus was executed, and his body was thrown into the Tiber. (See Tacitus, Annals, for the early actions of Sejanus; the account of his death would be in the lost books of the Annals) Sejanus was a native of Volsinii, an Etruscan (Tuscan) town.
SEMIRAMIS. Wife of Ninus, king of Assyria, who after his death ruled and led the armies.
SENATOR. One of the highest positions in Rome. Augustus limited the Senate to 600.members who must have minimum property qualifications of a million sesterces. In I, 108-09, Juvenal names a senator, Corvinus, and two rich freedmen, Pallas and Licinus.
SENECA. L.. Annaeus Seneca (5 B.C.-A.D. 65), who was a Stoic philosopher and writer, tutor of Nero, and a rich man, who gave generously to , his poorer friends. He committed suicide by opening his, veins, on Nero's order (Tacitus, Annals, XV, 60-63).
SENONES. The Gauls who defeated the Romans in the battle of Allia, 390 B.C,
SERBIAN: Juvenal says "Moesian," referring to a tribe between Thrace and the Danube.
SERIPHOS. An island of the Cyclades in the Aegean, a favorite spot of exile.
SERVIAN RAMPARTS. The great defense work built by Servius Tullius.
SERVIUS TULLIUS.: The sixth king of Rome (578534 B.C.).
SETIA (Setine). A town in Campania whose wine was excellent.
SEVEN HILLS. The Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal, and Viminal hills, on and around which, Rome was built.
SIBERIA. Juvenal - says "Sarmatia," which is actually the south of Russia.
SIBYL. In III, the Cumaean Sibyl, or priestess, of Apollo, who gave prophecies; in VIII, possibly the Sibyl who wrote the Sibylline Books, kept in the Capitol and consulted in time of danger.
SICILIAN STRAITS. The straits of Messina between Sicily and Italy, which were, only 2.5 miles wide and always rough, but especially: so when the south wind blew. The whirlpool of Charybdis and the rock of Scylla. were in the straits. 
SICILIAN TYRANTS. An allusion to Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigentum, notorious for his cruelty (see VIII, 81)
SICYON. A city in northeastern Peloponnesus.
SILANUS. Unidentified, though Tacitus includes a number of members of a prominent family under the name of Junius Silanus.
SILVANUS. The Latin god of the woods; women were not allowed to attend his rites.
SIRENS. Nymphs living on the coast of southern Italy, near Sicily, whose singing lured sailors, to destruction.
SOCIAL WARS. The wars waged between. 91 and 88 B.C., which gained the Roman franchise for the people of Italy.
SOCRATES (Socratic). Athenian philosopher (c. 469 -399 B.C.). Accused of undermining religion and corrupting youth, he was ordered to end his life with a cup of hemlock.
SOLON. An Athenian legislator, one of the Seven Sages of Greece (c. 639-c. 560 B.C.).
SOPHOCLES. Greek tragic poet (c. 496-406 B.C.).
SOKA. A town in Latium on the Liris River.
SOUTH WIND. Auster, one of the winds, usually bringing rain. It was controlled by Aeolus and imprisoned in his cliff at times.
SPANISH FLY. Cantharides, a powerful aphrodisiac made from powdered Spanish flies (Lytta vesicatoria). Juvenal names -"euca," which was rocket salad (Eruca sativa Fr. roquette) or any of the coleworts such as kale, rape, mustard, etc. It was thought to have powers of sexual stimulation and invigoration. Ovid, in Remedia amoris, 1. 799, mentions erucas salaces lust-stirring rockets.
SPARTAN. Of Sparta, capital of Laconia, now in Greece.
STATIUS. P. Pampinius Statius (c. A.D. 45-96), author of Silvae, Thebais, and other works. 
STENTOR. A Greek herald with a loud voice (Iliad, V, 785-86).
STHENEBOEA. Wife of Proetus of Argos, who slandered Bellerophon when he rejected her love and moved her husband to plot his death.
STOICS. Followers of the philosophy of Zeno, which called' for a severe morality, bordering at times on asceticism.
STYX (Stygian). The river Styx in the underworld across which souls of the dead were carried by Charon, the ferryman. The dead must have in their mouths a coin to pay their passage.
SULLA L. Cornelius Sulla (138-78''B.c.), general and dictator. The reference in I is to a favorite topic for student oratory, as to whether he should have retired from public affairs in 79 B.C. His proscriptions were continued by the second triumvirate of Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus.
SULMO. A town in the Sabine region.
SYBARIS.. A town in Lucania, famous for luxury (hence, sybarite).
SYPHAX. King of Numidia during the Second Punic War, defeated by Scipio Africanus the Elder, who was Cornelius father.
TAGUS. A river in Portugal and Spain whose sands were supposed to be filled with gold.
TARENTUM. A wealthy town on the coast of Magna Graecia.
TATIUS. King of the Sabines, later coregent with Romulus.
TAURIC. Of the Taurians, Scythian people on the Sea of Azov in Crimea.
TELAMON. Father of Ajax. He helped his brother Peleus murder their half brother,: Phocus.
TELEPHUS. An imaginary tragedy based on Telephus, king of Mysia.
TENTYRA. A ,town in Egypt, now called Dendyra, or Dendra.
TEUTONS (Teutonic). A German tribe.
THABRACA. A town in Numidia.
THAIS. A female role in a play, the prototype of a courtesan. In the passage in VI, Juvenal calls the man Triphallus (man with three phalli).
THALES. A philosopher of Miletus, c. 636-546 B.C.
THEBAIS. An epic by Statius in twelve books.
THEBES (in Egypt). An ancient city in upper Egypt, famous for its hundred gates.
THEBES (in Greece). A city in Boeotia, founded by Cadmus. It had seven gates.
THEODORUS. A rhetorician from Rhodes who taught at Rome. 
THERSITES. One of the Greeks before Troy, noted for ugliness and a scurrilous tongue (Iliad, 3I, 212 ff.).
THESEID. An imaginary, epic based on Theseus.
THESSALY. A region in, the north of Greece, famous. for magic potions:, In VIII, referring to Octavius
triumphs, Juvenal means the battle of Philippi, often confused with the battle of Pharsalus, fought in Thessaly.
THRACE (Thracian). A region in the eastern part of the Balkan peninsula, between the 'Black Sea and the Aegean Sea.
THRASEA. P. Paetus Thrasea, put to death by Nero for defense of his freedom. Helvidius- Priscus was his son-in-law. (Tacitus, Annals, XVI, 2135.)
THRASYLLUS. The astrologer of the Emperor Tiberius (Tacitus, Annals, VI, 20, 21; Suetonius, Tiberius, 14).
THRASYMACHUS. A rhetorician, born in Carthage, but practicing at Athens, who hanged himself. 
THYESTES. Son of Pelops, brother of Atreus. In VIII, a role in a drama.
TIGELLINUS. Gains Ofonius Tigellinus, a favorite of Nero (Tacitus, Annals, XIV-XVI). For the burning of men at the stake a method of killing Christians-see Tacitus, Annals, XV, 44. 
TIRESIAS. A blind soothsayer of. Thebes.
TITANS. The sons of Uranus (heaven) and Gea (earth), who were defeated by Jupiter and cast into Tartarus.
TRALLES. A town in western Asia Minor.
TRIBUNE. One of several kinds of officers, civil and military; the Tribune of the People was sacrosanct.
TROJAN. In general, the descendants of Troy- in Rome, whose ancestors had come with Aeneas and founded a colony in Italy, according to legend, in 1184 B.C.
TROY An ancient city in. northwest Asia Minor, whose king was Priam. After the abduction of Helen, wife of Menelaus, by Priam's son, Paris, the city was besieged by the. combined Greek leaders for ten years.
TULLIUS. Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome (578-534 B.c.). He was one of the "good kings," followed by the Tarquin, who were eventually driven from Rome (510. B.C.), after which a republic was formed.
TULLUS. Tullus Hostilius, the third king of Rome (672-640 B.C.), who sacked and destroyed Alba Longa.
TURKISH. Juvenal says "Thracian."
TURNUS. King of the Rutulians, an ancient people in Latium; he was killed by Aeneas. In I Juvenal
calls him "the fierce Rutulian " For Tumus and the Fury in VII see Aeneid, VII, 445 ff.; for the stone he threw in XV, see Aeneid, XII, 896902.
TYNDARUS. Father of Clytemnestra, whose mother was Leda.
TYRE (Tyrian). A city on the coast of Phoenicia that produced fine and expensive purple fabrics dyed by a fluid secreted by the murex. Dido, who founded Carthage, was born here, and so Hannibal, in XII, is called "Tyrian."
TYRRHENIAN SEA. That part of the Mediterranean bordering Italy between: Corsica and 'Sardinia on the north and Sicily on the south.
UCALEGON. A Trojan mentioned in Vergil's description of the burning of Troy '(Aeneid, II, 310-12).
ULYSSES. Son of Laertes, prince of Ithaca, and the hero of the Odyssey. For, his banquet with Alcinous, in XV, see Odyssey, VIII, 62 ff.
VASCONES. A tribe in Spain (ancestors of the contemporary Basques), north of the Ebro. The event referred to is the siege of their capital, Calagurris, by Afranius in 72 B.C.
VATICAN. One of the hills in Rome, which seems to have had large deposits of clay.
VEGETARIAN Juvenal calls them Pythagoreans, who did not eat any sort of flesh. See the end of XV.
VEIENTO. Unknown in III and VI unless he is the same as Fabricius Veiento in IV, who was an informer under Domitian.
VENAFRAN: From Venafrum, an old town in Campania famous for its olive oil.
VENTIDIUS. P. Ventidius Bassus, son of  a slave woman, who rose to be consul, 43 B.C. In XI, unknown.
VENUS. Goddess of love. In TI the reference is to her being trapped in a net, while making love with Mars, by her legendary husband, Vulcan.
VERGIL. P. Vergilius Maro (70-19 B.C.), author of the Aeneid and other works.
VERGINIA.. The beautiful daughter of L. Verginius, who stabbed her in the forum (449 B.C.) to save her from the lust of the decemvir, Appius Claudius (Livy, II).
VERGINIUS. Verginius Rufus, legate of: Upper Germany, who defeated Vindex in his revolt against Nero, A.D. 68, and refused to be named emperor after Galba's death.
VERRES. Gains Verres, praetor in Sicily (73-70 B.C.), who was tried for plundering the province. See Cicero's Verrine orations.
VESTA. Daughter of Saturn and Ops, goddess of the hearth and family life. Her temple in Alba was smaller than the great temple in Rome.
VESTINIAN. Relating to the Vestini, an ancient people of central Italy.
VINDEX. C. Julius Vindex, propraetor of the province of Lugdunensis in Gaul, who revolted against Nero, A.D. 68, and was defeated by Verginius Rufus.
VOLESUS. Meant to indicate. in general the descendants, of ancient nobility.
VOLSCIAN. Of a people in Latium on the banks of the Liris River. Arpinum was one of their towns.
VOLSINII. A town in Etruria.
VULCAN. God of fire, husband of: Venus, son of Jupiter and Juno. He forged weapons,. thunderbolts  etc., for the gods. His cave was in the (Aeolian) Lipari islands.
XERXES. King, of Persia (c. 519-465 B.C.), son of Darius I and Atossa.
ZENO. Greek philosopher of Cyprus, founder of the Stoic school (c. 336-c. 264 B.C.).