Satire V

It is the fashion of poets to call for a hundred voices, a hundred mouths and a hundred tongues for their lays, whether their theme be a play to be gaped out by a lugubrious tragedian, or a wounded Parthian plucking an arrow from his groin.

“What are you driving at? What are these big lumps of solid poetry that you would cram down the throat so as to need a hundred throat-power to grapple with them? Let those who meditate lofty themes gather vapours on Mount Helicon, if there be any who propose to set a-boiling the pot of Procne or of Thyestes, whereby that dullard Glyco may be provided with his nightly supper. But you are not one that squeezes the wind like the bellows of a forge when ore is a-smelting, nor are you one who croaks to himself some solemn nonsense with hoarse mutterings like a crow; nor do you swell out your cheeks till they burst with an explosive Pop! No; your language is that of every-day life; skilled in clever phrasing, rounded but not full-mouthed, you know well how to chide vicious ways, how to hit off men’s foibles with well mannered pleasantry. Let these be the sources from which you draw: leave to Mycenae her banquets, her heads and extremities, and make acquaintance with the dinners of common folk.”

Nay, indeed, it is no aim of mine that my page should swell with pretentious trifles, fit only to give solidity to smoke. To yourself alone, Cornutus, do I speak; I now shake out my heart to you at the bidding of the Muse; it is a joy to me to show you, beloved friend, how large a portion of my soul is yours. Strike it and note carefully what part of it rings true, what is but paint and plaster of the tongue. It is for this that I would ask for a hundred voices: that I may with clear voice proclaim how deeply I have planted you in the recesses of my heart, and that my words may render up all the love that lies deep and unutterable in my inmost soul.

When first as a timid youth I lost the guardianship of the purple, and hung up my bulla as an offering to the short-girt household gods; in the days when comradeship was sweet, and my gown, now white, permitted me freely to cast my eyes over the whole Subura — at the age when the path of life is doubtful, and wanderings, ignorant of life, parted my trembling soul into the branching cross-ways —I placed myself in your hands, Cornutus; you took up my tender years in your Socratic bosom. Your rule, applied with unseen skill, straightened out the crooked ways; my soul, struggling to be mastered, was moulded by your reason, and took on its features under your plastic thumb. With you, I remember, did I pass long days, with you pluck for feasting the early hours of night. We two were one in our work; we were one in our hours of rest, and unbent together over the modest board. Of this I would not have you doubt, that there is some firm bond of concord between our lives, and that both are drawn from a single star. Either a truth-abiding Fate hangs our destinies on the even-balanced Scales, or if the hour which dawned upon the faithful pair distributes between the Twins the accordant destinies of us twain, and a kindly Jupiter has vanquished for us the malignancy of Saturn, some star assuredly there is which links your lot with mine.

Men are of a thousand kinds, and diverse are the colours of their lives. Each has his own desires; no two men offer the same prayers. One under an Eastern sun barters Italian wares for shrivelled pepper, or for the blanching cumin-seed; another grows fat with good cheer and balmy slumbers. A third is all for field games; a fourth loses his all over the dice-box; a fifth ruins himself by love: but when once the knotty gout has broken up their joints till they are like the boughs of an old beech tree, they lament that their days have been passed in grossness, that their light has been that of a mist, and bemoan too late the life which they have left behind them.

But your delight has been to grow pale over nightly study, to till the minds of the young, and to sow the seed of Cleanthes in their well-cleansed ears. Seek thence all of you, young men and old alike, a sure aim for your desires, and provisions for the sorrows of old age! "So I will, to-morrow,” you say: but to-morrow you will say the same as today. "What?” you ask, “do you think it a great thing to present me with a single day?”— No, but when to-morrow comes, yesterday’s morrow will have been already spent: and lo! a fresh morrow will be for ever making away with our years, each just beyond our grasp. For though the tire is close to you, and revolves under the self-same pole, you will in vain pursue it, seeing that your wheel is the hind wheel, and that your axle is the second, not the first.

What we want is true liberty; not by that kind is it that any Publius enrolled in the Veline tribe becomes the possessor of a ticket for a ration of mangy corn. O souls barren of truth, you who think that one twirl of the thumb can make a Roman citizen! Look at Dama here: an under-strapper not worth three groats; blear-eyed from drink; a man who would tell a lie about a half-feed of corn: his master gives him one spin, when lo and behold! in the turning of a top, he comes forth as Marcus Dama! — “What? Do you hesitate to lend money when Marcus is the surety? — Are you uneasy with Marcus for a judge? “Marcus has said it, it must be so!” — “Pray, Marcus, put your signature to these deeds.”- — This, indeed, is liberty undefiled! This is the kind we get from our caps of liberty!

“And pray how otherwise would you describe a free man than as one who is free to live as he chooses? I am free to live as I choose: am I not more free than Brutus?” — “Your logic is at fault,” says my Stoical friend, whose ears have been well washed with pungent vinegar: “I accept the rest; but you must strike out the words ‘you are free’ and ‘as you choose.’”

“What? When on leaving the Praetor’s presence I had been made my own master by his rod, why am I not free to do everything that I want to do, excepting only what the red-titled Law of Masurius forbids?”

Just listen then, and drop that wrath and those curling sneers from off your nose, while I pluck your old wife’s notions out of your head. It was no part of the Praetor’s business to impart to fools a delicate sense of duty, or empower them to make a right use of our fleeting life: it would be more easy to fit a hulking clodhopper with a harp. Reason forbids, and whispers privately into the ear that no man be allowed to do what he will spoil in the doing of it. The public law of man and Nature herself lay down this rule, that ignorance and imbecility should hold action to be forbidden them. If you would compound hellebore when you do not know at what point to steady the tongue of the steel-yard, the principles of the healing art forbid; if a hobnailed countryman, who knows nothing of the morning star, were to ask for the command of a ship, Melicerta would declare that modesty had perished from off the earth.

Has Philosophy taught you how to live rightly? Are you skilled in discerning the appearance of truth, that there be no false ring of copper underneath the gold? Have you marked off the things to be aimed at, and those again to be avoided — the former with a white stone, the latter with a black? Are you moderate in your desires, modest in your establishment, and kindly to your friends? Can you now close your granaries, and now again throw them open? Can you pass by a coin sticking in the mud, without gulping down your saliva in your greed for treasure? When you can truly say, “Yes, all these things are mine,” I will call you a free and a wise man, under the favour of praetors and of Jove; but if, after having been but a little ago of the same stuff as ourselves, you hold to your old skin, and though your brow be smooth, still keep a crafty fox in that vapid heart of yours, I take back what I have just granted you and pull in my rope. Not one point has reason granted you; put out your finger (and what can be a slighter thing than that?) and you go wrong: not all the incense in the world will win leave from the Gods that one short half-ounce of wisdom may find lodgment in the head of a fool! To mingle the two things is sacrilege; if you are a clown in all else, you cannot dance as much as three steps of the Satyr of Bathyllus. ‘Yet for all that I am free,” you say. And what is your ground of confidence, you that are a slave to so many masters? Do you know of no master but the one from whom the praetor’s rod sets you Tree? If somebody sharply bids you take Crispinus’ scrapers to the bath, and then abuses you as a lazy scoundrel, no strict bond of slavery, certainly, bids you stir, no force from without comes in to move your muscles; but if masters grow up within, in that sickly bosom of yours, how do you get oil scot-free any more than the man who was sent off to fetch the scrapers by the terror of his master’s whip?

You are snoring lazily in the morning: “Up you get,” says Avarice; “come, up with you!” — You do not budge: “Up, up with you!” she cries again.— “O, I can’t!” you say. — “Rise, rise, I tell you!” — “O dear, what for?” — “What for? Why, to fetch salt fish from Pontus, beaver oil, tow, ebony, frankincense and glossy Coan fabrics; be the first to take the fresh pepper off the camel’s back before he has had his drink; do some bartering, and then forswear yourself.” — “O, but Jupiter will hear!” — “Whew! if you mean to live on terms with Jupiter, you must just go on as you are, content to be a simpleton scraping and scraping away with your thumb at the salt-cellar which you have so often tasted.”

And now you are all ready, piling packing-cases and wine-jars' on to your slaves. “Quick aboard!” you cry; there’s nothing now to stop you from scudding over the Aegean in a big ship, were it not that crafty Luxury takes you aside for a word of remonstrance: “Where are you off to now, you madman? What do you want? What masterful humour is that swelling in your fevered heart so that a whole gallon of hemlock cannot assuage it? What? You to go skipping over the sea? You to take your dinner on a bench, with a coiled cable for a cushion, while a dumpy pot exhales for you the fumes of some reddish Veientine wine that has been spoilt because of the pitch going bad? What would you be at? Is it that the money which you have been nursing at a modest five per cent. I shall go on until it sweats out an exorbitant eleven? No, no; give your Genius a chance! Let us gather our sweets! Our life is our own to-day, to-morrow you will be dust, a shade, and a tale that is told. Live mindful of death; the hour flies; the word that I speak is so much taken from it.”

What are you to do? Two hooks are pulling you in different ways; are you to follow this one or that? With wavering allegiance you must needs submit to each master by turns, and by turns break away from him. Nor if you have once made a stand, and refused the imperious command, can you say, “Now I have broken my chain”; for though even a dog may struggle against his chain and break it, yet as he runs away a good length of it will be trailing from his neck. “Here, Davus, quick! I am in real earnest; I mean to bring my past follies to an end.” So says Chaerestratus, biting his nails to the quick. “What? Am I to be a stumbling block and a scandal to my excellent relations? Am I to lose alike my patrimony and my character by singing drunken songs, with my torch put out, before my mistress’s dripping door?” “Bravo! my young sir. Show your good sense, and slay a lamb to the Protecting Deities!” “But do you think, Davus, that she will cry if I leave her?” “You’re just playing the fool! And won’t you be catching it, my boy, with her red slipper, just to teach you not to jib or to gnaw at the tight-drawn meshes! At one moment you’re all bluster and indignation; next moment, if she call you back, you’ll be saying, ‘What am I to do? Am I not to go to her even now, when she sends for me, and actually implores me to return?’ No, no, say I, not even now, if once you have got away from her entire and heart-whole.” Here, here is the freedom we are looking for, not in the stick brandished by that nincompoop of a lictor. And that white-robed wheedler there, dragged open-mouthed by his thirst for office — is he his own master? Up with you before dawn, and deal out showers of vetches for the people to scramble for, that old men sunning themselves in their old age may tell of the splendour of our Floralia! How grand! But when Herod’s birthday comes round, when the lamps wreathed with violets and ranged round the greasy window-sills have spat forth their thick clouds of smoke, when the floppy tunnies’ tails are curled round the dishes of red ware, and the white jars are swollen out with wine, you silently twitch your lips, turning pale at the sabbath of the circumcised. Then, again, there are the black spectres and the perils of the broken egg; there are the huge priests of Ceres, and the one-eyed priestess with her rattle, who drive demons into you that make your bodies swell if you do not swallow the prescribed morning dose of three heads of garlic. If you talk in this fashion among your varicose Centurions, the hulking Pulfennius straightway bursts into a huge guffaw, and bids a clipped hundred-penny piece for a lot of a hundred Greeks.