JUVENAL, SATIRE I
his share; Proculeius a twelfth part, Gillo eleven parts, each in proportion to the magnitude of his services. Let each take the price of his own blood, and turn as pale as a man who has trodden upon a snake bare-footed, or of one who awaits his turn to orate before the altar at Lugdunum.[1]
45Why tell how my heart burns hot with rage when I see the people hustled by a mob of retainers attending on one who has defrauded and debauched his ward, or on another who has been condemned by a futile verdict—for what matters infamy if the cash be kept? The exiled Marius[2] carouses from the eighth hour of the day and revels in the wrath of Heaven, while you, poor Province, win your cause and weep!
51Must I not deem these things worthy of the Venusian's[3] lamp? Must I not have my fling at them? Should I do better to tell tales about Hercules, or Diomede, or the bellowing in the Labyrinth, or about the flying carpenter[4] and the lad[5] who splashed into the sea; and that in an age when the compliant husband, if his wife may not lawfully inherit,[6] takes money from her paramour, being well trained to keep his eyes upon the ceiling, or to snore with wakeful nose over his cups; an age when one who has squandered his family fortunes upon horse flesh thinks it right and proper to look for the command of a cohort? See him dashing at break-neck speed, like a very Automedon,[7] along the Flaminian way, holding the reins himself, while he shows himself off to his great-coated mistress!
- ↑ Alluding to a rhetorical contest instituted at Lyons by Caligula (Suet. Cal. 20). Severe and humiliating punishments were inflicted on those defeated in these contests.
- ↑ Condemned for extortion in Africa in A.D. 100.
- ↑ Horace was born at Venusia B.C. 65.
- ↑ Daedalus.
- ↑ Icarus.
- ↑ i.e. be legally incapacitated from taking an inheritance.
- ↑ The charioteer of Achilles.
