Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/435

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PERSIUS, SATIRE III

into the purple necks below,[1] than for a man to say to himself, "I am falling, falling to ruin," and to turn pale, poor wretch, for a misdeed which the wife of his bosom may not know?

44I used often, I remember, as a boy to smear my eyes with oil if I did not want to recite the noble speech of the dying Cato—a speech which would be much applauded by my idiot of a master, and that to which my father, sweating with delight, would have to listen with his invited friends. And very right too; for in those days it was my highest ambition to know how much the lucky sice[2] would bring me, how much the ruinous ace would carry off; not to be baffled by the narrow neck of the jar, and not to be outdone by anyone in whipping the boxwood top.

62But you have learnt how to distinguish the crooked from the straight;[3] you have studied the doctrines of the learned Porch, daubed over with trousered Medes;[4] those doctrines over which a sleepless and close-cropped youth, fed on beans and grand messes of porridge, nightly pores; and the letter which spreads out into Pythagorean branches has pointed out to you the steep path which rises on the right.[5] And are you snoring still? yawning off

  1. An obvious reminiscence of Horace, Od. III. i. 17-18.
  2. In playing with the tesserae, cubes like our dice, the highest throw (called "Venus," or jactus venereus) was the senio, when all the dice turned up sixes. The lowest throw was when all came out singles (uniones); that was called canis, or, as here, canicula.
  3. "Straight" and "crooked" (or"curved") are naturally applied to denote "good" and "bad" respectively. Similarly our word "right" is derived from rectus, and "depraved" from pravus, "crooked." cf. "the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain" (Isaiah xl. 4).
  4. Referring to the ποικίλη στοά, or Painted Portico, in which Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, taught. It was adorned with pictures, one of which represented the battle of Marathon, with Persians in their native dress.
  5. Pythagoras of Samos is said to have depicted the "Choice of Life" under the form of the Greek letter ϒ, which was originally written with a straight stem, Ϥ. The straight stem represents the period of indeterminate childhood; the branching ways represent the moment when the choice of life has to be made. The steep path to the right is the path of virtue; the sloping path to the left that of vice and pleasure.
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