JUVENAL, SATIRE II
or bids his shelves preserve an original portrait of Cleanthes.[1] Men's faces are not to be trusted; does not every street abound in gloomy-visaged debauchees? And do you rebuke foul practices, when you are yourself the most notorious of the Socratic reprobates? A hairy body, and arms stiff with bristles, give promise of a manly soul; but the doctor grins when he cuts into the growths on your sleek buttocks. Men of your kidney talk little; they glory in taciturnity, and cut their hair shorter than their eyebrows. Peribomius[2] himself is more open and more honest; his face, his walk, betray his distemper, and I charge Destiny with his failings. Such men excite your pity by their frankness; the very fury of their passions wins them pardon. Far worse are those who denounce evil ways in the language of a Hercules; and after discoursing upon virtue, prepare to practise vice. "Am I to respect you, Sextus," quoth the ill-famed Varillus, "when you do as I do? How am I worse than yourself?" Let the straight-legged man laugh at the club-footed, the white man at the blackamoor: but who could endure the Gracchi railing at sedition? Who will not confound heaven with earth, and sea with sky, if Verres denounce thieves, or Milo[3] cut-throats? If Clodius condemn adulterers, or Catiline upbraid Cethegus[4]; or if Sulla's three disciples[5] inveigh against proscriptions? Such a man was that adulterer[6] who, after lately defiling himself by a union of the tragic style, revived the stern laws that were to be a terror to all men—ay,
- ↑ Pupil and successor of Zeno, founder of the Stoic School, from about B.C. 300 to 220. Famous for his poverty and iron will.
- ↑ Some villainous character of the day.
- ↑ Alluding to the faction fights between Clodius and Milo, B.C. 52. Clodius violated the rites of the Bona Dea; see vi. 314-341.
- ↑ A partner in the Catilinarian conspiracy, B.C. 63.
- ↑ i.e. the second triumvirate (Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus) who followed the example of Sulla's proscriptions.
- ↑ The emperor Domitian. Domitian was a lover of his niece Julia, daughter of his brother Titus.
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