Satires 2.2 (Fairclough)

What and how great, my friends, is the virtue of frugal living—now this is no talk of mine, but is the teaching of Ofellus, a peasant, a philosopher unschooled and of rough mother-wit—learn, I say, not amid the tables’ shining dishes, when the eye is dazed by senseless splendour, and the mind, turning to vanities, rejects the better part; but here, before we dine, let us discuss the point together. “Why so?” I will tell you, if I can.

Every judge who has been bribed weighs truth badly. After hunting the hare or wearily dismounting from an unbroken horse, or else, if Roman army-exercises are fatiguing to one used to Greek ways, it may be the swift ball takes your fancy, where the excitement pleasantly beguiles the hard toil, or it may be the discus (by all means hurl the discus through the yielding air)—well, when toil has knocked the daintiness out of you; when you are thirsty and hungry, despise, if you can, plain food; refuse to drink any mead, unless the honey is from Hymettus, and the wine from Falernum. The butler is out; the sea, dark and stormy, protects its fish; bread and salt will suffice to appease your growling belly. Whence or how do you think this comes about? The chiefest pleasure lies, not in the costly savour, but in yourself. So earn your sauce with hard exercise. The man who is bloated and pale from excess will find no comfort in oysters or trout or foreign grouse.

Yet, if a peacock be served, I shall hardly root out your longing to tickle your palate with it rather than with a pullet. You are led astray by the vain appearance, because the rare bird costs gold and makes a brave show with the picture of its outspread tail—as though that had aught to do with the case! Do you eat the feathers you so admire? Does the bird look as fine when cooked? Yet, though in their meat they are on a par, to think that you crave the one rather than the other, duped by the difference in appearance! Very well. But what sense tells you whether this pike gasping here was caught in the Tiber or in the sea, whether in the eddies between the bridges or just at the mouth of the Tuscan river? You foolish fellow, you praise a three-pound mullet, which you must needs cut up into single portions. ’Tis the look, I see, that takes you. Why then detest a very long pike? It is, of course, because nature has made the pike large, and the mullet light of weight. Only a stomach that seldom feels hunger scorns things common.

“But a big fish on a big dish outstretched! That’s what I’d like to see!” cries a gullet worthy of the greedy Harpies. Nay, come in your might, ye southern gales, and taint these gluttons’ dainties! And yet they are already rank, yon boar and fresh turbot, since cloying plenty worries the jaded stomach, which, sated as it is, prefers radishes and tart pickles the while. Nor is the poor man’s fare yet wholly banished from the feasts of kings, for cheap eggs and black olives still have a place. ’Tis not so long ago that by reason of a sturgeon the table of Gallonius the auctioneer won ill repute. What? Was the sea less a home for turbots in those days? The turbot was safe, and safe was the nest of the stork, till a praetor’s sanction taught you the lesson. So now, should someone decree that roasted gulls are delicacies, our Roman youth, quick to learn ill ways, will obey.

A mean style of living will differ, so Ofellus thinks, from a simple one; for it will be idle for you to shun one fault, if you turn aside into another crooked path. Avidienus, to whom the nickname “Dog” quite rightly clings, eats his olives five years old with cornels from the wood, and is chary of drawing his wine till it has soured; as to his oil, you couldn’t bear its smell, yet even if in his whitened garb he keeps a wedding or birthday feast or some other holiday, he drops it on the salad from a two-pound horn with his own hands, though his old vinegar he does not stint. What style then will the wise man adopt, and which of these two will he copy? On the one side, as the saying is, a wolf attacks, on the other a dog. He will be neat, so far as not to shock us by meanness, and in his mode of living will be unhappy in neither direction. He will neither, like old Albucius, be cruel to his slaves, as he assigns their tasks, nor, like careless Naevius, will he offer greasy water to his guests: this too is a great blunder.

Now learn what and how great are the blessings that simple living brings in its train. First of all, good health. For how harmful to a man a variety of dishes is, you may realize, if you recall that plain fare which agreed with you in other days. But as soon as you mix boiled and roast, shell-fish and thrushes, the sweet will turn to bile, and the thick phlegm will cause intestine feud. Do you see how pale rises each guest from his “puzzle feast”? Nay more, clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags down with itself the mind as well, and fastens to earth a fragment of the divine spirit. The other, when after refreshment he has surrendered his limbs to sleep sooner than you can speak, rises up in vigour for his appointed tasks. Yet at times he will be able to pass over to better cheer, whether the revolving year brings some holiday, or he wants to renew a shrunken frame, and when, as time advances, the frailty of age looks for more indulgent treatment. But as for you, if ill-health come, or enfeebling age, what will you bring to add to that indulgence which, while young and hale, you thus forestall?

Our fathers used to praise a boar when high; not that they had no noses, but with this thought, I suppose, that a guest arriving behind time could more conveniently eat it when tainted than the greedy master, while still fresh. Oh, that the early world had given me birth among heroes such as those!

You set some store by good repute, which, sweeter than song, charms the human ear. Big turbots and dishes bring a big scandal and loss. Add the angry uncle, the angry neighbours, your hatred of self, your vain longing for death, when in your need you lack a penny to buy a halter with. “’Tis all right,” he answers, “for Trausius to be scolded in such language, but I have large revenues, and riches ample for three kings.” Well, is there no better object on which you can spend your surplus? Why is any worthy man in want, while you are rich? Why are the ancient temples of the gods in ruin? Why, shameless man, do you not measure out something from that great heap for your dear country? You alone, of course, will always find things go well. Oh, what a laughing-stock you will be some day for your friends! Which of the two, in face of changes and chances, will have more self-confidence—he who has accustomed a pampered mind and body to superfluities, or he who, content with little and fearful of the future, has in peace, like a wise man, provided for the needs of war?

That you may give more credit to such words, I will tell you how, when I was a little boy, this Ofellus, as I well know, used his full means on no larger scale than he does now, when they are cut down. You may see him on his little farm, now assigned to others, with his cattle and his sons, a sturdy tenant-farmer, and this is his story: “I was not the man to eat on a working day, without good reason, anything more than greens and the shank of a smoked ham, and if after long absence a friend came to see me, or if in rainy weather, when I could not work, a neighbour paid me a visit—a welcome guest—we fared well, not with fish sent for from town, but with a pullet or a kid; by and by raisins and nuts and split figs set off our dessert. Then we had a game of drinking, with a forfeit to rule the feast, and Ceres, to whom we made our prayer—“so might she rise on lofty stalk!”—smoothed out with wine the worries of a wrinkled brow. Let Fortune storm and stir fresh turmoils; how much will she take off from this? How much less sleek have I been, or you, my lads, since this new landlord came? Nature, in truth, makes neither him nor me nor anyone else lord of the soil as his own. He drove us out, and he will be driven out by villainy, or by ignorance of the quirks of the law, or in the last resort by an heir of longer life. To-day the land bears the name of Umbrenus; of late it had that of Ofellus; to no one will it belong for good, but for use it will pass, now to me and now to another. Live, then, as brave men, and with brave hearts confront the strokes of fate.