JUVENAL, SATIRE II
handed over in marriage to a man, and yet neither shakest thy helmet, nor smitest the earth with thy spear, nor yet protestest to thy Father? Away with thee then; begone from that broad Martial Plain[1] which thou hast forgotten!
132"I have a ceremony to attend," quoth one, "at dawn to-morrow, in the Quirinal valley." "What is the occasion?" "No need to ask; a friend is taking to himself a husband; quite a small affair." Yes, and if we only live long enough, we shall see these things done openly; people will wish to see them reported among the news of the day. Meanwhile these would-be brides have one great trouble; they can bear no children wherewith to keep the affection of their husbands; well has nature done in granting to their desires no power over their bodies. They die infertile; naught avails them the medicine-chest of the bloated Lyde, or to hold out their hands to the blows of the swift-footed Luperci![2]
143Greater still the portent when Gracchus, clad in a tunic, played the gladiator, and fled, trident in hand, across the arena—Gracchus, a man of nobler birth than the Capitolini, or the Marcelli, or the descendents of Catulus or Paulus, or the Fabii; nobler than all the spectators in the podium[3]; not excepting him who gave the show at which that net[4] was flung.
149That there are such things as Manes, and kingdoms below ground, and punt-poles, and Stygian pools black with frogs, and all those thousands crossing over in a single bark—these things not even
- ↑ i.e. the Campus Martius.
- ↑ The Luperci were a mysterious priesthood who on certain days ran round the pomoerium clad in goat-skins and struck at any woman they met with goat-skin thongs in order to produce fertility.
- ↑ The podium was a balustrade, or balcony, set all round the amphitheatre, from which the most distinguished of the spectators witnessed the performance.
- ↑ For the disgrace incurred by Gracchus in fighting as a retiarius against a secutor, see the fuller passage viii. 199–210 and note.
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