JUVENAL, SATIRE VIII
glories of your race while doing nothing that shall bring you praise in the days to come. It is a poor thing to lean upon the fame of others, lest the pillars give way and the house fall down in ruin. The vine-shoot, trailing upon the ground, longs for the widowed elm. Be a stout soldier, a faithful guardian, and an incorruptible judge; if summoned to bear witness in some dubious and uncertain cause, though Phalaris[1] himself should bring up his bull and dictate to you a perjury, count it the greatest of all sins to prefer life to honour, and to lose, for the sake of living, all that makes life worth having. The man who merits death is already dead, though he dine off a hundred Lucrine[2] oysters, and bathe in a whole cauldron of Cosmus'[3] essences.
87When you enter your long-expected Province as its Governor, set a curb and a limit to your passion, as also to your greed; have compassion on the impoverished provincials, whose very bones have been sucked dry of marrow; have regard to what the law ordains, what the Senate enjoins; consider what honours await the good ruler, with what a just thunderstroke the Senate hurled down Capito and Numitor,[4] those plunderers[5] of the Cilicians. Yet what profit was there from their condemnation?[6] Look out for an auctioneer, Chaerippus,[7] to sell your chattels, seeing that Pansa has stripped you of all that Natta left. And hold your tongue about it; when all else is gone, it is madness to throw away your passage-money.[8]
- ↑ The famous tyrant of Agrigentum, who slowly roasted his victims in a brazen bull.
- ↑ Gaurus was a hill overlooking the Lucrine lake.
- ↑ A well-known perfumer.
- ↑ Condemned for extortion in Cilicia. See Tac Ann. xiii. 33.
- ↑ The word piratae is used because the Cilicians were notorious pirates.
- ↑ The native Cilicians reap no benefit from the condemnation of the governors.
- ↑ Chaerippus is a Cilician native who is advised to sell anything he has left. Pansa and Natta are fictitious names to denote the plundering governors.
- ↑ i.e. the fee to be given to Charon for the passage over the Styx. Some take it of the passage-money to Rome.
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