Satires 1.3 (Fairclough)

All singers have this fault: if asked to sing among their friends they are never so inclined; if unasked, they never leave off. That son of Sardinia, Tigellius, was of this sort. If Caesar, who might have forced him to comply, should beg him by his father’s friendship and his own, he could make no headway. If the man took the fancy, then from the egg-course to the fruit he would keep chanting “Io Bacche!” now with highest voice and now with one responding in lowest pitch to the tetrachord. There was nothing consistent in the fellow. Often he would run as if fleeing from a foe; very often he would stalk as slowly as some bearer of Juno’s holy offerings. Often he would keep two hundred slaves, often only ten. Now he would talk of kings and tetrarchs, everything grand, and now he’d say, “Give me a three-legged table, a shell of clean salt, and a coat that, however coarse, can keep out the cold.” Suppose you had given a million to this thrifty gentleman, contented with so little; in a week there was nothing in his pockets. All night, till dawn, he would stay awake; all day would snore. Never was a creature so inconsistent.

Now someone may say to me: “What about yourself? Have you no faults?” Why yes, but not the same, and perhaps lesser ones. When Maenius once was carping at Novius behind his back, “Look out, sir,” said someone, “do you not know yourself? Or do you think you impose on us, as one we do not know?” “I take no note of myself,” said Maenius. Such self-love is foolish and shameless, and deserves to be censured.

When you look over your own sins, your eyes are rheumy and daubed with ointment; why, when you view the failings of your friends, are you as keen of sight as an eagle or as a serpent of Epidaurus? But, on the other hand, the result for you is that they, too, in turn peer into your faults.

He is a little too hasty in temper, ill-suited to the keen noses of folk nowadays. He might awake a smile because his hair is cut in country style, his toga sits ill, and his loose shoe will hardly stay on his foot. But he’s a good man, none better; but he’s your friend; but under that uncouth frame are hidden great gifts. In a word, give yourself a shaking and see whether nature, or haply some bad habit, has not at some time sown in you the seeds of folly; for in neglected fields there springs up bracken, which you must burn.

Let us turn first to this fact, that the lover, in his blindness, fails to see his lady’s unsightly blemishes, nay is even charmed with them, as was Balbinus with Hagna’s wen. I could wish that we made the like mistake in friendship and that to such an error our ethics had given an honourable name. At any rate, we should deal with a friend as a father with his child, and not be disgusted at some blemish. If a boy squints, his father calls him “Blinky”; if his son is sadly puny, like misbegotten Sisyphus of former days, he styles him “Chickabiddy.” One with crooked legs he fondly calls “Cruikshank,” and one that can hardly stand on twisted ankles, “Curly-legs.” Is a friend somewhat close? Let us call him thrifty. Does another fail in tact and show off a bit too much? He wants his friends to think him agreeable. Or is he somewhat bluff and too outspoken? Let him pass for frank and fearless. Hot-headed is he? Let him be counted a man of spirit. This, I take it, is how to make friends, and to keep them when made. But we turn virtues themselves upside down, and want to soil a clean vessel. Does there live among us an honest soul, a truly modest fellow? We nickname him slow and stupid. Does another shun every snare and offer no exposed side to malice, seeing that we live in that kind of a world where keen envy and slanders are so rife? Instead of his good sense and prudence we speak of his craftiness and insincerity. Is one somewhat simple and such as often I have freely shown myself to you, Maecenas, interrupting you perhaps while reading or thinking with some annoying chatter? “He is quite devoid of social tact,” we say. Ah, how lightly do we set up an unjust law to our own harm! For no living wight is without faults: the best is he who is burdened with the least. My kindly friend must, as is fair, weigh my virtues against my faults, if he wishes to gain my love, and must turn the scales in their favour as being the more numerous—if only my virtues are the more numerous. On that condition he shall be weighed in the same scale. One who expects his friend not to be offended by his own warts will pardon the other’s pimples. It is but fair that one who craves indulgence for failings should grant it in return.

In fine, since the fault of anger, and all the other faults that cleave to fools cannot be wholly cut away, why does not Reason use her own weights and measures, and visit offences with punishment suited to each? If one were to crucify a slave who, when bidden to take away a dish, has greedily licked up the half-eaten fish and its sauce, now cold, sane men would call him more insane than Labeo. How much madder and grosser a sin is this: a friend has committed a slight offence, which you would be thought ungracious not to pardon; you hate him bitterly and shun him, as Ruso is shunned by his debtor, who, poor wretch, if at the coming of the sad Kalends he cannot scrape up from some quarter either interest or principal, must offer his throat like a prisoner of war and listen to his captor’s dreary histories! What if in his cups my friend has wet the couch or knocked off the table a bowl once fingered by Evander, is he for such offence, or because when hungry he snatched up first a pullet served on my side of the dish, to be less pleasing in my eyes? What shall I do if he commits a theft, or betrays a trust, or disowns his bond? Those whose creed is that all sins are much on a par are at a loss when they come to face facts. Feelings and customs rebel, and so does Expedience herself, the mother, we may say, of justice and right.

When living creatures crawled forth upon primeval earth, dumb, shapeless beasts, they fought for their acorns and lairs with nails and fists, then with clubs, and so on step by step with the weapons which need had later forged, until they found words and names wherewith to give meaning to their cries and feelings. Thenceforth they began to cease from war, to build towns, and to frame laws that none should thieve or rob or commit adultery. For before Helen’s day a wench was the most dreadful cause of war, but deaths unknown to fame were theirs whom, snatching fickle love in wild-beast fashion, a man stronger in might struck down, like the bull in a herd. If you will but turn over the annals and records of the world, you must needs confess that justice was born of the fear of injustice. Between right and wrong Nature can draw no such distinction as between things gainful and harmful, what is to be sought and what is to be shunned; nor will Reason ever prove this, that the sin is one and the same to cut young cabbages in a neighbour’s garden and to steal by night the sacred emblems of the gods. Let us have a rule to assign just penalties to offences, lest you flay with the terrible scourge what calls for the strap. For as to your striking with the rod one who deserves sterner measures, I am not afraid of that, when you say that theft is on a par with highway robbery, and when you threaten to prune away all crimes, great and small, with the same hook, if men would but give you royal power.

If the wise man is rich, and a good cobbler, and alone handsome and a king, why crave what you already have? “You do not know,” he answers, “what our father Chrysippus means. The wise man has never made himself shoes or sandals; yet the wise man is a cobbler.” How so? “As Hermogenes, however silent, is still the best of singers and musicians; as shrewd Alfenus, after tossing aside every tool of his art and closing his shop, was a barber; so the wise man—he alone—is the best workman of every craft, so is he king.” Mischievous boys pluck at your beard, and unless you keep them off with your staff, you are jostled by the crowd that surrounds you, while you, poor wretch, snarl and burst with rage, O mightiest of mighty kings! In short, while you, a king, go to your penny bath, and no escort attends you except crazy Crispinus, my kindly friends will pardon me if I, your foolish man, commit some offence, and in turn I shall gladly put up with their shortcomings, and in my private station shall live more happily than Your Majesty.