Satire VI

Has winter yet brought thee, Bassus, to thy Sabine hearth? Are thy lyre and its strings still alive under thy sturdy quill? Thou that art so rare a craftsman in setting to numbers the beginnings of our ancient tongue, and bringing out the manly notes of the Latin lyre; then again a wonderful old man to ply the youthful jest, and sing in lighter but not indecorous strains. To me now the Ligurian coast, and my own winter sea, are giving all their warmth: here the cliffs form a mighty wall, with a deep valley running in from the shore. “’Tis worth your while, O citizens, to know the port of Luna”: so did Ennius speak his mind when he had given up dreaming that he was Maeon’s son, fifth in descent from the peacock of Pythagoras.

Here I live, heedless of the mob, or of what trouble the baleful Auster may be brewing for my herd, untroubled because that corner of my neighbour’s field is richer than my own — ay, and though men of baser birth than I were growing rich, I should still refuse, on that account, to be bent double and grow thin with vexation, or to dine without a savoury, or explore with my nose the seal of a bottle of vapid wine. Others may think differently: one horoscope will bring forth twins of diverse temperament. One man, on birthdays only, moistens his dry cabbage with a brine which, knowing dog that he is, he has bought in a cup, sprinkling the sacred pepper over the platter with his own hand; another is a lordly youth who runs through a whole estate in gormandising. Enjoy what I have, say I; being neither grand enough to feed my freedmen upon turbots, nor yet epicure enough to distinguish the fine flavour of a hen thrush.

Use up your crop, and grind out your granaries, as is right. Why need you be afraid? harrow again, and a second crop is in the blade. “But duty,” you say, “has a call on you: a poor shipwrecked friend is clutching hold of the rocks of Bruttium, all his goods and his unheeded prayers sunk in the Ionian Sea; he himself lies upon the shore, the great Gods from the ship’s poop beside him; the gulls are by this time flocking to the shattered timbers.” Well then, break off' a bit from your green turf, and bestow it on your needy friend, that he may not have to roam the country with his picture on a sea-green plank. But your heir, you say, will be wrathful that you have curtailed your property: he will stint the funeral feast, and will commit your bones unscented to the urn, not caring to enquire whether the cinnamon has lost its fragrance or the casia has been adulterated with cherry. “What?” he will say, “are you to squander your property, and not suffer for it?” And then Bestius has his fling at the Greek philosophers: “It’s always so; ever since this emasculated wisdom of ours entered the city along with dates and pepper, our haymakers have spoilt their porridge with thick oils!” — What? are you to be afraid of taunts like these on the other side of the grave? And as for you, my heir, whoever you may be, come away from the crowd for one moment and listen:—

Have you not heard the news, my good fellow? A laurelled despatch has arrived from Caesar because of a splendid victory over the Germans; the cold ashes are being raked out from the altars; Caesonia is contracting for arms to put up over the gates, with regal mantles, and yellow perukes for the prisoners, and chariots, and life-sized effigies of the Rhine. So in honour of the Gods and the Genius of our General, I am putting on a hundred pairs of gladiators to celebrate these grand doings. Who dares to say me nay? Woe to you if you don’t fall in with my humour! I am giving the mob a largess of oil and bread and meat. Do you forbid? Speak out plainly. “No, no,” you say, “that field there close by is not sufficiently cleared of stones.” Well then, if none of my paternal aunts survives, if I have no cousin on my father’s side, if my paternal uncle has left no great-grand daughters, if my maternal aunt has died without issue, and there is no living descendant of my grandmother, I go off to Bovillae and the hill of Virbius, and there I find in Manius an hen-ready to my hand! “What? the son of a clod?” you say. Well, just ask of me who is my great-great-grandfather: I could tell you that, though perhaps not in a moment; add one step more, and then again another, and by that time you come to a son of earth, so that by strict lineal ascent this Manius turns out to be a kind of great-great-uncle. Why do you, who are before me, ask for my torch while I am still running? I am for, you a Mercury, I come to you just as that God is represented in pictures. Do you reject the gift? Won’t you take what I leave you and be thankful? — “There is a shortage in the amount,” you say. Yes; I lessened it for my own use: but what remains, whatever it is, is all for you. Don’t ask where is the sum that Tadius left me long ago, and don’t serve up to me your paternal saws:— “Let interest accrue on your capital, and take your expenses out of that.” — “Yes, and what will be left?” “Left,” do you ask? Here, boy, drench the cabbage with oil, and d — n the expense! Am I to have my holiday dinner off nettles and a smoked pig’s cheek with his ear split through, in order that some day or other your young ne’er-do-weel may regale himself on a goose’s liver?... Am I to be reduced to a thread-paper while his belly is to wag with fat like that of a priest?

Go, sell your soul for gain; buy and sell; ransack cunningly every corner of the earth, let no one outstrip you in patting fat Cappadocian slaves in their pen; turn every coin into two. “Done already,” you say; “with a threefold, fourfold, ay, and a tenfold increase.” Mark the point at which I am to stop, and the finisher of your heap, Chrysippus, will have been found!