BOOK IV. I. 145-150
old women and the old men, and saying, "I cannot do this; I am not allowed"? Why are you not allowed? Were you not just now arguing with me and claiming that you were free? "But Aprulla[1] has prevented me." Tell the truth, then, slave, and do not run away from your masters, nor make denial, nor dare to present your emancipator,[2] when you have so many proofs to convict you of slavery. And, indeed, when a man out of passionate love is under the compulsion to do something contrary to his opinion, all the time seeing the better thing but lacking the strength to follow, one might be all the more inclined to regard him as deserving pity, because he is in the grip of something violent, and, in a manner of speaking, divine. But who could endure you with your passion for old women and old men, wiping the noses and washing the faces of old women, corrupting them with presents, and all the while you are nursing them, like a slave, in some illness, praying for them to die, and asking the physicians if they are finally on their deathbed? Or again, when for the sake of these mighty and dignified offices and honours you kiss the hands of other men's slaves, so as to be the slave of men who are not even free? And then, God save the mark, you walk around in your dignity as a praetor or a consul! Don't I know how you came to be praetor, how you got your consulship, who gave it to you? 150As for me, I should not care even to live, if I had to owe my life to Felicio,[3] putting up with his insolence and slavish arrogance; for I know what a slave is, who is prosperous as the world goes, and puffed up with pride.[4]
- ↑ Obviously some rich old woman.
- ↑ See § 113 and note.
- ↑ A freedman of Nero's. See I. 17, 19, 20 and 21.
- ↑ A pretty clear reference to his experiences with his master, Epaphroditus, who had been a slave of Nero.
