Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/The Saturnalia
THE SATURNALIA.
Through our great gate at Pompeii, at the third hour of the day,
The slaves run, leaping, dancing, in frolicsome array,
Some playing flutes, some shaking wands, or clicking horny thumbs,
Because at last the winter feast, the reign of Saturn comes.
Sole relic of that golden age when Saturn had the sway,
And children by the wild wolf’s den lay down to bask and play,
When acorns were the royal food, and wine was all unknown,
And without sword or golden crown the king sat on his throne.
The tavern slave to-day will scorn the amphora to brim,
Even the butcher’s Spartan boy to-day will have his whim;
The baker’s corn will lie unground,—no boat will out to sea,—
At Saturnalia time all slaves are for a few hours free.
The whip is still, the cell is bare, the chains hang on the wall,
No masters shout, or storm, or curse, in bath-room or in hall;
This day the tables are unspread, the fires are smouldering low,
The curtain o’er the inner court is flapping to and fro.
Labrax a costly myrrhine vase has brimm’d with wrestler’s oil.
And chafes his brawny sable limbs with a luxurious toil,
Then throws the purple o’er his back with an imperial air,
Binding a gilded myrtle wreath around his woolly hair.
And in the atrium Geta sits and plays at tossing wine,
Calling for golden drinking-cups; making the pavement shine,
Long before dusk, with rows of lamps; while the flute-players sit,
Piping their Lydian measures, only for such slaves fit.
Brown Blephargo a biga drives at an Olympic speed,
’Tween vineyard walls and olive-groves, where the poor lepers feed,
And grins with horse-teeth, white and large, at every one he meets,
Racing back home at Cœna-time through the snow-sprinkled streets.
Sly Lycus to the theatre goes in senatorial gown,
And Paradisca by him sits, so fat and oily brown,
Stares at the tragic actor’s mask and mocks at Ino’s grief,
And coughs and yawns, or bites the string that ties his garland leaf.
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Smart Hanno with Falernian wine at citron table sits,
His miser master standing there, he mocks at and he twits.
Calling for tongues of nightingales and peacocks’ costly brains,
Or singing songs of piebald Greek to wanton Syrian strains.
And all the time that miser old kneels drudging at the fire,
Or sweeps the floor with palm-tree brooms, praying to heaven’s great sire,
To send to-morrow sooner, with scourges and the tree,
For that beast-slave, already drunk with his short liberty.
Syphax is lolling in the bath, a beaker by his side,
Strigils and napkins, oil and sponge, ready for his brute pride;
While cringing at his glistening feet his tyrant master stands,
Rubbing the rich Arabian nard between his fat white hands.
There’s Gripus smiting on the lyre with his chapp’d horny fist,
While mimes, with open-eyed grimace, are bidding all men list,
And in long purple-margin’d gowns, aping the strut and stalk
Of those proud senators at noon who in the Forum walk.
The gladiators rude and fierce throw cestuses away,
And, tossing swords and nets in heaps, with bare fists smite and play,
And to the empty benches shout, and to the Prætor’s chair
They wave their spears, and clash their shields, and stab and hew the air.
The ugliest of the band is throned high in the Emperor’s seat,
His pummell’d head with roses bound, a cushion for his feet;
He bids them bring him crocodiles to fight with Indian snakes,
And as he speaks his dusty robes with his hoarse laughter shakes.
The potter’s slave disdains to mould the rich man’s funeral urn,
The poor serf of the Pontifex the bull to slay and burn;
The Emperor’s charioteer neglects to tend his steeds to-day;
Even Poppæa’s handmaid stays to loiter and to play.
To-morrow, at the cruel dawn, the wheel will roll again,
The actors change, the swift scenes shift, and end King Saturn’s reign;
To-morrow come the stinging whip, the fetter, and the goad,
The mill-horse chain, the miner’s toil, the heavy faggot load.
W. T.