Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/461

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PERSIUS, SATIRE V

⁵²Men are of a thousand kinds,^[1] and diverse are the colours of their lives. Each has his own desires; no two men offer the same prayers. One under an Eastern sun barters Italian wares for shrivelled pepper, or for the blanching cumin-seed; another grows fat with good cheer and balmy slumbers. A third is all for field games; a fourth loses his all over the dice box; a fifth ruins himself by love; but when once the knotty gout has broken up their joints till they are like the boughs of an old beech tree, they lament that their days have been passed in grossness, that their light has been that of a mist, and bemoan too late the life which they have left behind them.^[2]

⁶²But your delight has been to grow pale over nightly study, to till the minds of the young, and to sow the seed of Cleanthes^[3] in their well-cleansed ears. Seek thence all of you, young men and old alike, a sure aim for your desires, and provisions for the sorrows of old age! "So I will, to-morrow," you say; but to-morrow you will say the same as to-day.^[4] "What?" you ask, "do you think it a great thing to present me with a single day?"—No, but when to-morrow comes, yesterday's morrow will have been already spent; and lo! a fresh morrow will be for ever making away with our years, each just beyond our grasp. For though the tire is close to you, and revolves under the self-same pole, you

↑ See Hor. Sat. II. i. 17: Quot capitum vivunt totidem studiorum Millia.
↑ i.e. the life of virtue which they have abandoned. Professor Housman takes this somewhat differently: "they mourn that life is a thing which they have left untouched (l.c. p. 21). For the general meaning, cf. m. 38: virtutem videaut intabe scant que relicta.
↑ Cleanthes (born at Assos about B.C. 300) was a pupil of Zeno, the founder of the Stoical school, and had Chrysippus for his pupil.
↑ i.e. "it will be the same story again to-morrow"; "you will then again say 'to-morrow.'" Professor Housman reads fiat, following AB, and explains; "The new life shall begin to-morrow," says the sluggard. "No, no, let the old life continue to-morrow," answers Persius; "the day after to-morrow will be soon enough to begin the new."

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[1] See Hor. Sat. II. i. 17: Quot capitum vivunt totidem studiorum Millia.

[2] i.e. the life of virtue which they have abandoned. Professor Housman takes this somewhat differently: "they mourn that life is a thing which they have left untouched (l.c. p. 21). For the general meaning, cf. m. 38: virtutem videaut intabe scant que relicta.

[3] Cleanthes (born at Assos about B.C. 300) was a pupil of Zeno, the founder of the Stoical school, and had Chrysippus for his pupil.

[4] i.e. "it will be the same story again to-morrow"; "you will then again say 'to-morrow.'" Professor Housman reads fiat, following AB, and explains; "The new life shall begin to-morrow," says the sluggard. "No, no, let the old life continue to-morrow," answers Persius; "the day after to-morrow will be soon enough to begin the new."

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