PERSIUS, SATIRE III
devils of Solons[1] who go about with their heads bent down, pinning their eyes to the ground, champing and muttering to themselves like mad dogs, balancing their words on protruded lip, and pondering over the dreams of some sickly grey-beard that nothing can come out of nothing, and that nothing can into nothing return.[2] Is it over stuff like this that you grow pale? is it worth while for this to go without your dinner?" Such jests move the mob to mirth; peal after peal of laughter comes rippling forth from the curled nostrils of our brawny youth.
88"Examine me," says a patient to his doctor; "I have a strange fluttering at the heart; my throat is sore, and the breath coming from it is bad." The doctor orders rest; but when the third night finds the man's veins flowing quietly along, he sends a good-sized flagon to a wealthy friend, and asks for some old Surrentine wine to take before his bath. "You're a bit pale," says the friend. "O that's nothing," says the other. "But you had better look to it, whatever it is; your skin is yellow and is beginning to swell." "You're paler yourself: don't come the guardian[3] over me; I buried mine long ago;[4] only you are left." "As you please, I say no more." So, gorged with a good dinner, and pale in the belly, he takes his bath, slowly pouring forth sulphurous vapours from his throat. But as he drinks his wine a shivering fit comes on and knocks the hot tumbler out of his hand; his teeth are laid bare and chatter; the savoury morsels drop out of his relaxed lips. Then follow the trumpet and the torch, and at last the poor departed, laid out on a high
- ↑ The early sage and legislator of Athens of the seventh century; the most famous of the Seven Wise Men of Greece.
- ↑ The fundamental principle of the Epicurean philosophy.
- ↑ cf. Hor. Sat. II. iii. 88; ne sis patruus mihi.
- ↑ From Horace again, Sat. i. ix. 28: "Omnes composui; Felices! nunc ego resto."
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