Satires 2.7 (Fairclough)

DAVUS. I’ve been listening some time, and wishing to say a word to you, but as a slave I dare not.

HORACE. Is that Davus?

DAV. Yes, Davus, a slave loyal to his master, and fairly honest—that is, so that you need not think him too good to live.

HOR. Come, use the licence December allows, since our fathers willed it so. Have your say.

DAV. Some men persist in their love of vice and stick to their purpose; the greater number waver, now aiming at the right, at times giving way to evil. Thus Priscus, who often attracted notice by wearing three rings, but once in a while by wearing none, was so fickle in his life, that he would change his stripe every hour. Passing from a stately mansion, he would bury himself in a den, from which a decent freedman could scarcely emerge without shame. Now he would choose to live in Rome as a rake, now as a sage in Athens—a man born when every single Vertumnus was out of sorts. Volanerius, the jester, when the gout he had earned crippled his finger-joints, kept a man, hired at a daily wage, to pick up the dice for him and put them in the box. As he was the more persistent in his vices, so he was the less unhappy and the better man, than the one who, with rope now taut, now loose, is in distress.

HOR. Are you to take all day, you scape-gallows, in telling me the point of such rot?

DAV. ’Tis you, I say.

HOR. How so, villain?

DAV. You praise the fortune and manners of the men of old; and yet, if on a sudden some god were for taking you back to those days, you would refuse every time; either because you don’t really think that what you are ranting is sounder, or because you are wobbly in defending the right, and, though vainly longing to pull your foot from the filth, yet stick fast in it. At Rome you long for the country; in the country, you extol to the stars the distant town, you fickle one! If so it be that you are asked out nowhere to supper, you praise your quiet dish of herbs, and, as though you were in chains when you do go anywhere, you call yourself lucky, and hug yourself, because you have not to go out for some carousal. Let but Maecenas bid you at a late hour come to him as a guest, just at lamp-lighting time: “Won’t someone bring me oil this instant? Does nobody hear me?” So you scream and bawl, then tear off. Mulvius and his fellow-jesters sneak off with curses for you that I cannot repeat. “Yes,” he would say, “’tis true that I’m a fickle creature, led by my stomach. I curl up my nose for a savoury smell. I am weak, lazy, and, if you like to add, a toper. But you, since you are just the same and maybe worse, would you presume to assail me, as though you were a better man, and would you throw over your own vices a cloak of seemly words?” What if you are found to be a greater fool than even I, who cost you five hundred drachmas? Don’t try to scare me by your looks. Hold back your hand and temper, while I set forth the lessons taught me by the porter of Crispinus.

You are the slave of another man’s wife; Davus of a poor harlot. Which of us commits a sin more deserving of the cross? When vehement nature drives me, she who satisfies my passion sends me away neither disgraced nor anxious lest some richer or more handsome man possess her. You, when you have cast aside your badges, the ring of knighthood and your Roman dress, and step forth, no longer a judge, but a low Dama, with a cape hiding your perfumed head, are you not what you pretend to be? Full of fear, you are let into the house, and you tremble with a terror that clashes with your passions. What matters it, whether you go off in bondage, to be scourged and slain with the sword, or whether, shut up in a shameful chest, where the maid, conscious of her mistress’s sin, has stowed you away, you touch your crouching head with your knees? Has not the husband of the erring matron a just power over both? Over the seducer a still juster? Yet she does not change either garb or position, and she is not the chief sinner, since she is in dread of you and does not trust her lover. You with eyes open will pass under the yoke, and hand over to a furious master your fortune, your life, your person and repute.

Suppose you have escaped: then, I take it, you will be afraid and cautious after your lesson. No, you will seek occasion so as again to be in terror, again to face ruin, O you slave many times over! But what beast, having once burst its bonds and escaped, perversely returns to them again? “I am no adulterer,” you say. And, in faith, I am no thief either, when I wisely pass by your silver plate. Take away the risk, set aside restraint, and Nature will spring forward, to roam at will. Are you my master, you, a slave to the dominion of so many men and things—you, whom the praetor’s rod, though placed on your head three or four times over, never frees from base terror? And over and above what I have said, add something of no less weight: whether one who obeys a slave is an underslave, as the custom of your class names him, or a fellow-slave, what am I in respect of you? Why, you, who lord it over me, are the wretched slave of another master, and you are moved like a wooden puppet by wires that others pull.

Who then is free? The wise man, who is lord over himself, whom neither poverty nor death nor bonds affright, who bravely defies his passions, and scorns ambition, who in himself is a whole, smoothed and rounded, so that nothing from outside can rest on the polished surface, and against whom Fortune in her onset is ever maimed.

Of these traits can you recognize any one as your own? A woman asks of you five talents, worries you, shuts her door in your face, drenches you in cold water, then—calls you back. Rescue your neck from the yoke of shame; come, say, “I am free, am free.” You cannot; for you have a master, and no gentle one, plaguing your soul, pricking your weary side with the sharp spur, and driving you on against your will.

Or when, madman, you stand dazed before a picture of Pausias, how do you offend less than I, when I marvel at the contests of Fulvius, Rutuba, or Pacideianus, with their straining legs, drawn in red chalk or charcoal, just as lifelike as if the heroes were really waving their weapons, and fighting, striking, and parrying? Davus is a “rascal and dawdler,” but you are called a “fine and expert critic of antiques.”

If I’m tempted by a smoking pasty, I’m a good for naught: but you—does your heroic virtue and spirit defy rich suppers? Why is it more ruinous for me to obey the stomach’s call? My back, to be sure, pays for it. But how do you escape punishment more than I, when you hanker for those dainties which cannot be bought at small cost? Why, that feasting, endlessly indulged, turns to gall, and the feet you’ve duped refuse to bear up your sickly body. Is the slave guilty, who at fall of night swaps for grapes the flesh-brush he has stolen? Is there nothing of the slave about one who sells his estates at his belly’s bidding? And again, you cannot yourself bear to be in your own company, you cannot employ your leisure aright, you shun yourself, a runaway and vagabond, seeking now with wine, and now with sleep, to baffle Care. In vain: that black consort dogs and follows your flight.