Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/175

JUVENAL, SATIRE VI

⁶⁰Can our arcades show you one woman worthy of your vows? Do all the tiers in all our theatres hold one whom you may love without misgiving, and pick out thence? When the soft Bathyllus dances the part of the gesticulating Leda, Tuccia cannot contain herself; your Apulian maiden heaves a sudden and longing cry of ecstasy, as though she were in a man's arms; the rustic Thymele is all attention, it is then that she learns her lesson.

⁶⁷Others again, when all the stage draperies have been put away; when the theatres are closed, and all is silent save in the courts, and the Megalesian games are far off from the Plebeian,^[1] ease their dullness by taking to the mask, the thyrsus and the tights of Accius. Urbicus, in an Atellane interlude, raises a laugh by the gestures of Autonoe; the penniless Aelia is in love with him. Other women pay great prices for the favours of a comedian; some will not allow Chrysogonus^[2] to sing. Hispulla has a fancy for tragedians; but do you suppose that any one will be found to love Quintilian?^[3] If you marry a wife, it will be that the lyrist Echion or Glaphyrus, or the flute player Ambrosius, may become a father. Then up with a long dais in the narrow street! Adorn your doors and doorposts with wreaths of laurel, that your highborn son, O Lentulus, may exhibit, in his tortoiseshell cradle,^[4] the lineaments of Euryalus^[5] or of a murmillo!^[6]

⁸²When Eppia, the senator's wife, ran off with a gladiator^[7] to Pharos and the Nile and the ill-famed

1. The Megalesian games began on the 4th of April and lasted for six days; the Plebeian games took place early in November.
2. A famous singer.
3. M. Fabius Quintilianus, the famous Roman rhetorician, A.D. 40-100. No grave and learned man like Quintilian will attract them.
4. The conopeum was properly a mosquito-net; here it seems to be used for a bassinette or cradle.
5. A gladiator.
6. A murmillo was equipped as a Gaulish warrior in heavy armour. He carried the image of a fish in his crest, whence the name μορμύρος or μορμύλος.
7. Ludus is properly a gladiatorial school, or a troop of gladiators.

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