Satires 2.3 (Fairclough)

DAMASIPPUS. So seldom do you write, that not four times in all the year do you call for the parchment, while you unweave the web of all you have written, and are angry with yourself because, while so generous of wine and of sleep, you turn out no poetry worth talking about. What will be the end? Why, you say, even in the Saturnalia you fled here for refuge. Well then, in your sober mood, tell something worthy of your promises. Begin. Nothing comes. In vain you blame the pen; and the innocent wall, begotten when gods and poets were angry, must suffer. Yet you had the look of one who threatened great and glorious things, if once you were care-free and your country cottage welcomed you under its warm roof. What was the use of packing Plato with Menander, and of taking out of town Eupolis and Archilochus, such weighty comrades? Think you to lay Envy low by deserting Virtue? You will earn contempt, poor wretch. You must shun the wicked Siren, Sloth, or be content to drop whatever honour you have gained in nobler hours.

Damasippus, for your sound advice—a barber! But how come you to know me so well?

DAM. Ever since the wreck of all my fortunes at the Central Arcade, I have looked after other people’s business, after being flung overboard from my own. There was a time when my hobby was to look out for the bronze in which shrewd old Sisyphus had washed his feet, and to see what work of art was crude in the carving, what was too rough in the casting. As an expert, I valued this or that statue at a hundred thousand. As to gardens and fine houses, I was the one man that knew how to buy them at a bargain; hence the crowded streets gave me the nickname of “Mercury’s pet.”

HOR. I know it, and am surprised to find you cured of that disorder.

DAM. Nay, what is surprising is that a new disorder drove out the old, as is the way when the pain of aching side or head passes into the stomach, or when the lethargic patient here turns boxer and pummels the doctor.

HOR. As long as you do nothing of that sort, be it as you please.

DAM. My good sir, don’t deceive yourself; you, too, are mad, and so, I may say, are all fools, if there is any truth in the preaching of Stertinius, from whom I took down these wondrous lessons that I learned, the very day that he consoled me, and bade me grow a wise man’s beard, and go home from the Fabrician bridge, no longer sad. For after my business failed, and I wanted to cover up my head and fling myself into the river, he stood at my right hand and said:

Beware of doing anything unworthy of yourself. ’Tis a false shame that tortures you, for among madmen you fear to be thought mad. For first of all I will ask, What is madness? If this is found in you alone, I will not add another word to save you from dying bravely.

Every man whom perverse folly, whom ignorance of the truth drives on in blindness, the Porch of Chrysippus and his flock pronounce insane. This definition takes in whole nations, this takes in mighty kings, all save only the sage.

Now learn why all, who have given you the name of madman, are quite as crazy as yourself. Just as in a forest, where some error drives men to wander to and fro from the proper path, and this one goes off to the left and that one to the right: both are under the same error, but are led astray in different ways: so believe yourself to be insane only so far that he who laughs at you drags a tail behind him, no whit the wiser man.

One class of fools fear where there is nothing at all to fear, crying out that fires, that rocks and rivers stop their course over an open plain. Another class, diverging from this, but no whit more wisely, would rush through the midst of fire and flood. Though a fond mother, a noble sister, father, wife and kindred, cry out: Here’s a broad ditch, here’s a huge rock, look out! they would no more give ear than once did drunken Fufius, as he over-slept the part of Ilione, while twelve hundred Catieni shouted, Mother, on thee I call! Like such folly is the madness of all the world, as I shall prove.

Damasippus is mad in buying old statues; the creditor of Damasippus, is he sound of mind? Be it so! But if I say to you, Take this sum which you need never return to me, will you be a madman if you take it? Or will you be more senseless if you spurn the booty which propitious Mercury offers? Write out ten bonds drawn up by Nerius. That’s not enough; add a hundred of the cunning Cicuta—add a thousand fetters! yet your scoundrelly Proteus will slip out from all these ties. When you drag him to court, he will laugh at your expense; he will turn into a boar, then into a bird, then into a stone, or, if he likes, a tree. If it be the mark of a madman to manage an estate badly, but of a sane man to manage well, then much more addled, believe me, is the brain of a Perellius, who dictates the bond, which you can never pay.

Now give heed, I bid you, arrange your robes, and whoever of you is pale with sordid ambition or avarice, whoever is feverish with extravagance or gloomy superstition, or some other mental disorder. Hither, come nearer to me, while I prove that you are mad, all of you from first to last.

To the covetous must we give far the largest dose of hellebore: wisdom, I rather think, would assign to them all Anticyra. The heirs of Staberius had to engrave upon his tomb the sum of his estate: should they fail to do so, they were bound to provide for the people a hundred pairs of gladiators with such a feast as Arrius would direct, and as much corn as Africa reaps. Whether I am right or wrong in willing this, he wrote, don’t play the uncle with me. That, I take it, is what Staberius in his wisdom foresaw. Well, you ask, what was his intent when he willed that his heirs should carve on stone the sum of his estate? All his life long he thought poverty a monstrous evil, and shunned nothing more earnestly, so that, if haply he had died less rich by a single penny, so far would he have thought himself the worse man. For all things—worth, repute, honour, things divine and human—are slaves to the beauty of wealth, and he who has made his pile will be famous, brave and just. And wise too? Yes, wise, and a king and anything else he pleases. His riches, as though won by worth, would bring him, he hoped, great renown.

What is the likeness between such a man and the Greek Aristippus, who in mid Libya bade his slaves throw away his gold, because, said he, freighted with the burden, they journeyed too slowly? Which of the two is the madder? Useless is an instance which solves puzzle by puzzle. If a man were to buy harps, and soon as bought were to pile them together, though feeling no interest in the harp or any Muse; if, though no cobbler, he did the same with shoe-knives and lasts; with ships’ sails, though set against a trader’s life—everyone would call him crazy and mad, and rightly too. How differs from these the man who hoards up silver and gold, though he knows not how to use his store, and fears to touch it as though hallowed?

If beside a huge corn-heap a man were to lie outstretched, keeping ceaseless watch with a big cudgel, yet never dare, hungry though he be and the owner of it all, to touch one grain thereof, but rather feed like a miser on bitter herbs; if, with a thousand jars—that’s nothing, say three hundred thousand—of Chian and old Falernian stored in his cellars, he were to drink sharp vinegar; nay if, when but a year short of eighty, he should lie on bed of straw, though rich coverlets, prey of moths and worms, lay mouldering in his chest; few, doubtless, would think him mad, because the mass of men toss about in the same kind of fever. Is it that a son or even a freedman heir may drink it up that you, you god-forsaken dotard, are guarding it? Is it that you fear want? Why, how tiny a sum will each day dock off, if you begin with better oil to dress your salad, as well as your head, foul with uncombed scurf? Why, if anything is enough for you, do you perjure, steal, plunder on every side? You sane!

If you were to take to pelting stones at the crowd, or at your own slaves, for whom you’ve paid in cash, all would hoot at you as mad, lads and lasses alike. When you strangle your wife and poison your mother, are you sound in head? Why not? You’re not doing this at Argos, nor killing a mother with a sword, as mad Orestes did. Or do you suppose he went mad after killing his parent, and was not spurned to frenzy by the wicked Furies before he warmed his sharp steel in his mother’s throat? Nay, from the moment that Orestes was held to be of unsafe mind, he did nothing whatever that you can condemn. He did not dare to attack with the sword Pylades or his sister Electra. He merely threw ill words at both, calling her a Fury, and him by some other name which his gleaming choler prompted.

Opimius, a poor man for all his gold and silver hoarded up within, would on holidays, from ladle of Campanian ware, drink wine of Veii, and on working days soured wine. Now once he fell into a lethargy so deep that already his heir was running in joy and triumph round about his keys and coffers. But his physician, a man of very quick wit and a loyal friend, revives him by this device. He has a table brought in and bags of coin poured out, and bids many draw near to count it. Thus he brings the man to, and adds, Unless you guard your wealth, your greedy heir will be off with it forthwith. What, while I’m alive? Well, if you mean to live, wake up. Come now! What would you have me do? You are weak, and your veins will fail you, unless food and strong support be given your sinking stomach. Do you hold back? Come now, take this drop of rice-gruel. What’s the cost? Oh, a trifle. How much, I say? Eight pence. Alack! what matters it, whether I die by sickness, or by theft and robbery?

Who, then, is sane? He who is no fool.

What of the covetous? He is fool and madman.

Well, if a man is not covetous, is he then and there sane? By no means. Why, good Stoic? I will tell you. This patient, suppose Craterus to have said, is no dyspeptic. He is well then and may get up? No, he will say, for his lungs or his kidneys are afflicted with acute disease. Here’s one who is no perjurer or miser. Let him slay a hog to the kind Lares. But he is ambitious and headstrong. Let him take ship for Anticyra. For what is the difference, whether you throw all you have into a pit, or never make use of your sayings?

There’s a story that Servius Oppidius, a rich man, as incomes once were, divided his two farms at Canusium between his two sons, and on his deathbed called them to him and said: Ever since I saw you, Aulus, carrying your taws and nuts in a loose toga, giving and gambling them away—and you, Tiberius, anxiously counting them and hiding them in holes, I have greatly feared that madness of different kinds might plague you—that you, my son, might follow after Nomentanus, and you after Cicuta. I therefore adjure you both, by our household gods, the one not to reduce, the other not to increase, what your father thinks enough, and what nature sets as a limit. Further, that ambition may not tickle your fancy, I shall bind you both by an oath: whichever of you becomes aedile or praetor, let him be outlawed and accursed. Would you waste your wealth on vetches, beans, and lupines, that you may play the swell and strut in the Circus, or be set up in bronze, though stripped of the lands, stripped, madman, of the money your father left: to the end, oh yes, that you may win the applause which Agrippa wins—a cunning fox mimicking the noble lion?

Son of Atreus, you forbid us to think of burying Ajax. Why is this?

I am king.

I, a common man, ask no more.

And my command is fair, but if anyone deems me unjust, I permit him to say freely what he thinks.

Mightiest of kings, may the gods grant you to take Troy and bring your fleet safe home! May I then ask questions and answer in turn? Pray, do.

Why does Ajax, a hero second only to Achilles, lie rotting, though so often he won glory by saving the Greeks? Is it that Priam and Priam’s people may exult in that man’s lacking burial, through whom so many of their sons were bereft of burial in their native land?

The madman slew a thousand sheep, crying that he was slaying famed Ulysses, Menelaus, and myself.

And you, when at Aulis you brought your sweet child to the altar in a heifer’s stead, and sprinkled her head with salt meal, O shameless one, did you keep your mind in its sound course? Why, what did the madman Ajax do, when he slew the flock with the sword? He withheld violence from wife and child. His curses on the Atridae were copious, but no harm did he do either to Teucer or even to Ulysses.

But I, in order to free the ships that clung to a hostile shore, purposely appeased the gods with blood.

Yes, with your own, maniac.

My own blood; but no maniac I.

He who conceives ideas that are other than true, and confused by the turmoil due to sin, will be held distraught and, whether he go astray from folly or from rage, it will not matter. Ajax, when he slays harmless lambs, is insane. When you purposely commit a crime for empty glory, are you sound of mind, and is your heart, when swollen with pride, free from fault? Suppose one chose to carry about in a litter a pretty lamb, and, treating it as a daughter, provided it with clothes, maids, gold, called it Goldie or Teenie, and planned to have it wed a gallant husband: the praetor by injunction would take from him all control, and the care of him would pass to his sane relations. Well, if a man offers up his daughter, as if she were a dumb lamb, is he sound of mind? Say not so. Thus, where there is perverse folly, there is the height of madness. The man who is criminal, will also be a maniac; he who is caught by the glitter of fame has about his head the thunder of Bellona, who delights in bloodshed.

Now, come, arraign with me extravagance and Nomentanus; for Reason will prove that spendthrifts are fools and madmen. This man, soon as he received his patrimony of a thousand talents, decreed, in praetor-fashion, that fishmonger, fruit-seller, fowler, perfumer, the Tuscan Street’s vile throng, cooks and parasites, the whole market and Velabrum, should come to him next morning. What next? They came in crowds. A pimp was spokesman. Whatever I have, whatever any of these have at home, believe me, is at your service. Send for it to-day or to-morrow. Hear the honest youth’s reply: Amid Lucanian snows you sleep well-booted, that I may have a boar for dinner. You sweep the stormy seas for fish. I am lazy and unworthy to possess so much. Away with it. You take a million—you, the same—and you, from whose house your wife comes running when called at midnight, thrice that sum.

The son of Aesopus took from Metella’s ear a wondrous pearl, and meaning, forsooth, to swallow a million at a gulp, steeped it in vinegar. How was he more sane than if he had flung that same thing into a running river or a sewer? The sons of Quintus Arrius, a famous pair of brothers, twins in wickedness, folly, and perverted fancies, used to breakfast on nightingales, bought up at vast cost. Into which list are they to go? Marked with chalk as sane, or with charcoal?

Building toy-houses, harnessing mice to a wee cart, playing odd and even, riding a long stick—if these things delighted a bearded man, lunacy would plague him. If reason prove that being in love is more childish than such ways, that it makes no difference whether you play at building in the sand, as you did when three years old, or whine in anxiety for love of a mistress, I ask you, will you do as once Polemon did, when converted? Will you lay aside the tokens of your malady, garters, elbow-cushion, neck-wrap, even as he, ’tis said, stealthily plucked the chaplets from his neck after a carouse, the moment he was arrested by the voice of his fasting master? When you offer apples to a sulky child, he refuses them. Take them, pet. He says, No. Were you not to offer them, he would crave them. How differs the lover who, when shut out, debates with himself whether to go or not to where, though not invited, he meant to return, and hangs about the hated doors? Shall I not go even now, when she invites me of her own accord? Or rather, shall I think of putting an end to my affliction? She shut me out. She calls me back. Shall I return? No—not if she implores me. Now listen to the slave, wiser by far of the two: My master, a thing that admits of neither method nor sense cannot be handled by rule and method. In love inhere these evils—first war, then peace: things almost as fickle as the weather, shifting about by blind chance, and if one were to try to reduce them to fixed rule for himself, he would no more set them right than if he aimed at going mad by fixed rule and method. Why, when you pick the pips from Picenian apples, and are glad if by chance you have hit the vaulted roof, are you master of yourself? Why, when on your old palate you strike out baby-talk, how are you wiser than the child that builds toy-houses? Add blood to folly, and stir the fire with a sword. The other day, for instance, when Marius killed Hellas and then flung himself headlong, was he crazy? Or will you acquit the man of a disordered mind and condemn him for crime, giving to things, as we often do, names of kindred meaning?

A freedman there was who in old age, fasting and with washed hands, would in early hours run to all street-shrines and pray: Save me, me alone (“Is it not a little boon?” he would add), save me alone from death. ’Tis an easy matter for the gods. The man was sound in both ears and eyes; but as to his mind, his master, if selling him, would not have vouched for that, unless bent on a lawsuit. All this crowd also Chrysippus will place in the prolific family of Menenius. O Jupiter, who givest and takest away sore afflictions, cries the mother of a child that for five long months has been ill abed, if the quartan chills leave my child, then on the morning of the day on which thou appointest a fast, he shall stand naked in the Tiber. Should chance or the doctor raise the sick lad up from his peril, his crazy mother will kill him by planting him on the cold bank and bringing back his fever. What is the malady that has stricken her mind? Fear of the gods.

Such were the weapons which my friend Stertinius, eighth of the wise men, put in my hands, that no one thereafter might call me names with impunity. Whoso dubs me madman shall hear as much in reply, and shall learn to look behind on what is hanging from his back, that is never noticed.

HORACE. Good Stoic—as I pray that after your losses you may sell all you have at a profit!—in what folly, since there are so many kinds, do you think my madness appears? For to myself I seem sane.

DAMASIPPUS. What? When Agave is carrying in her hands the head of her luckless son, which she has cut off, does she even then think herself mad?

HOR. I confess my folly—let me yield to the truth—and my madness too. This only unfold: from what mental failing do you think I suffer?

DAM. Listen. First, you are building, which means, you try to ape big men, though from top to toe your full height is but two feet; and yet you laugh at the strut and spirit of Turbo in his armour, as though they were too much for his body. How are you less foolish than he? Is it right that whatever Maecenas does, you also should do, so unlike him as you are and such a poor match for him?

A mother frog was away from home when her young brood were crushed under the foot of a calf. One only escaped to tell the tale to his mother, how a huge beast had dashed his brothers to death. “How big was it?” she asks; “as big as this?” puffing herself out. “Half as big again.” “Was it big like this?” as she swelled herself out more and more. “Though you burst yourself,” said he, “you’ll never be as large.” Not badly does this picture hit you off. Now throw in your verses—that is, throw oil on the fire. If any man ever wrote verses when sane, then you are sane in writing yours. I say nothing of your awful temper—

HOR. Stop now!

DAM. Your style beyond your means—

HOR. Mind your own business, Damasippus.

DAM. Your thousand passions for lads and lasses.

HOR. O greater one, spare, I pray, the lesser madman!