Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/219

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JUVENAL, SATIRE VI

does a gilded bed contain a woman that is lying in? So great is the skill, so powerful the drugs, of the abortionist, paid to murder mankind within the womb. Rejoice, poor wretch; give her the stuff to drink whatever it be, with your own hand; for were she willing to get big and trouble her womb with bouncing babes, you might perhaps find yourself the father of an Ethiopian; and some day a coloured heir, whom you would rather not meet by daylight, would fill all the places in your will.

602I say nothing of supposititious children, of the hopes and prayers so often cheated at those filthy pools[1] from which are supplied Priests and Salii,[2] with bodies that will falsely bear the name of Scauri. There Fortune shamelessly takes her stand by night, smiling on the naked babes; she fondles them all and folds them in her bosom, and then, to provide herself with a secret comedy, she sends them forth to the houses of the great. These are the children that she loves, on these she lavishes herself, and with a laugh brings them always forward as her own.

610One man supplies magical spells; another sells Thessalian[3] charms by which a wife may upset her husband's mind, and lather his buttocks with a slipper; thence come loss of reason, and darkness of soul, and blank forgetfulness of all that you did but yesterday. Yet even that can be endured, if only you become not raving mad like that uncle[4] of Nero's into whose drink Caesonia poured the whole brow of a weakly foal[5]; and what

  1. These were pools or reservoirs in which infants were exposed. Fortune delights in spiriting these foundlings into the houses of the great.
  2. The priests of Mars, recruited from noble families.
  3. Thessaly was famous for witches and the magic art. The husband here is made mad by a love-potion.
  4. The emperor Caligula. His wife Caesonia was said to have made him mad by a love-philtre.
  5. Alluding to the hippomanes, an excrescence on the head of a young foal, which was used in love-potions.
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