Juvenal, Satires 14
Translated by John Delaware Lewis (1882)
Formatted by C. Chinn (2008)

	THERE are very many acts, Fuscinus, not only deserving a bad name, 
	but also fixing a lasting stain on things bright by nature, 
	which parents themselves show and teach to their boys. 
	If baneful gambling delight the old man, his heir, still wearing his bulla, 
5	plays too, and brandishes the same weapons in his little dice-box. 
	Nor will the youth permit any of his relatives to have better 
	hopes of him, who has learnt to peel truffles, 
	to season a mushroom, and to dip beccaficos swimming 
	in the same sauce—a profligate parent and his hoary gluttony 
10	showing the way. When his seventh year has 
	passed over the boy, ere all his teeth are born again, 
	though you introduce a thousand bearded masters from this quarter, 
	and as many from that, he will always want to dine in 
	grand style, and not to degenerate from a great cuisine. 
15	Does Rutilus preach a mild temper, and a disposition indulgent 
	to small faults? And does he think that the souls of slaves and their 
	bodies consist of the same material as ours, and of like elements? 
	or does he teach how to act cruelly, when he delights in the 
	harsh sound of stripes, and deems no Syren comparable 
20	with the whip, the Antiphates and Polyphemus of his trembling household—
	then, indeed, happy as often as the torturer is summoned, and some 
	one is branded with the burning iron on account of a couple of towels? 
	What does he inculcate on the youth who is pleased with the clanking of chains, 
	whom branded slaves and a country bridewell marvelously delight? 
25	Do you expect that the daughter of Larga will not be an 
	adulteress, who could never tell off her mother's lovers 
	so quickly, nor string them together at such a pace, as not to have 
	to take breath thirty times? When a girl, she was her mother's accomplice; 
	now, at the dictation of the latter, she fills up her own little tablets, 
30	and gives them to the same wretches to carry to her lover. 
	So nature orders ; more rapidly and easily are we corrupted 
	by examples of vices when they are in our homes, when they 
	steal into our minds with great authority. Perhaps youths—
	here and there one—whose hearts the Titan has fashioned 
35	with kindlier art and of a superior clay, may spurn these habits, 
	yet the rest are led on by the footprints of their fathers, which should 
	be shunned, and drawn into the track, which has long been exhibited 
	to them, of the old sin. You should abstain, then, from things to be condemned; 
	for there is, at any rate, one reason that enjoins this, that those born 
40	of us may not follow our crimes, since we are all of us 
	docile in imitating what is base and depraved, and 
	you may see a Catiline in any nation, under any sky; 
	but there will be no nowhere a Brutus or Brutus's uncle. 
	Let nothing which is foul to be spoken, or to be seen, touch this 
45	threshold inside which the boy is. Away from here, away from there, 
	panders, damsels, and songs of the parasite making a night of it. 
	The greatest respect is due to a boy. If you are contemplating 
	anything disgraceful, do not you despise the boy's years; 
	but let your infant son bo a check on the sin you are about to commit. 
50	For if, some day or other, he shall do anything to deserve the censor's 
	displeasure, and shall show himself like you, not in form merely, 
	or in face, but as being the offspring of your character, and one who 
	exaggerates all your sins as ha goes along your footprints, 
	no doubt you will find fault with him, and reprove him with 
55	bitter outcry, and thereupon prepare to alter your will! 
	Whence your front severe, and license of a parent, 
	when you, an old man, do worse things, and the windy cupping-glass 
	has long since been looking out for that brainless head of yours ? 
	
	When a guest is coming, none of your people will be idle. 
60	"Sweep the pavement, uncover the bright columns, 
	let the dry spider come down with all its web, let one polish 
	the plain silver, another the embossed vessels," 
	raves the voice of the master, urging them on and wielding his switch. 
	So then, poor man, you are frightened lest your hall, fouled by the 
65	ordure of a dog, offend the eyes of your friend when he comes; 
	lest your colonnade be splashed with mud; whereas a single little slave, 
	with a single half measure of sawdust, can set all right; 
	and yet you do not bestir yourself about this, that your son shall 
	behold a virtuous household without any taint and free from vice. 
70	It is a subject for thanks that you have given a citizen to your country and 
	to the people, if you take care that he shall be serviceable to the country, 
	useful to her lands, useful in transacting the affairs both of war and peace; 
	for it will make a very great difference by what methods and moral discipline 
	you train this same youth. The stork feeds her young 
75	on snakes and lizards found in sequestered fields; they, 
	when they have put on their feathers, go in quest of the same animals. 
	The vulture, quitting the cattie and dogs and crosses, 
	hastens to her brood and brings them a portion of the carcass. 
	This, consequently, is 1dso the food of the vulture when full-grown and 
80	feeding itself, and when it has begun to build a nest on a tree of its own. 
	But the noble birds, the attendants of Jove, hunt after the hare 
	or the kid in the forest; hence comes the prey which is served up 
	in their nest; from this cause, also, when their offspring, grown to maturity, 
	lifts himself on his wings, under the stimulus of hunger, he hastens to 
85	the same prey which he had first tasted on breaking the egg. 
	
	Cetronius was given to building, and at one time, on the 
	curved shore of Caieta, now on the highest summit of Tibur, 
	now on the hills of Praeneste, he reared the lofty roofs 
	of his villas with his marbles from Greece, and fetched 
90	from afar, surpassing the temples of Fortune and of Hercules 
	as much as the eunuch Posides surpassed our Capitols. 
	While, then, Cetronius housed himself in this way, he diminished 
	his property, he impaired his fortune; yet the amount of the portion left 
	was by no means small. His insane son squandered the whole 
95	of this, while he raised up new villas of still finer marble. 
	
	Some, whose lot it has been to have a father paying respect to sabbaths, 
	worship nothing except the clouds and the divinity of the sky, and think 
	the flesh of swine, from which their father abstained, does not differ 
	from that of human beings; before long they even undergo circumcision. 
100	Moreover, having been wont to despise the laws of Rome, 
	they make themselves masters of, and observe and respect, 
	the Jewish code, whatever Moses has taught in his mystic volume; 
	not to show the way except to one who practices the same rites; 
	to guide the circumcised alone to the sought-for well. 
105	But the father is to blame, to whom every seventh day was one 
	of idleness, and was connected with no part of the duties of life. 
	
	Still, of their own accord, youths imitate the other vices; 
	avarice alone they are bidden to practice, even against their will. 
	For this vice deceives by an appearance and shadow of virtue, 
110	inasmuch as it is subdued in bearing, severe in countenance and 
	attire, and the miser is praised unhesitatingly as a frugal person, 
	as an economical man, and a protector of his own property, 
	more sure than if the serpent of the Hesperides or that of Pontus 
	watched over these same possessions. Add that the people deem him 
115	of whom I am speaking an extraordinary master of the art 
	of acquiring; since patrimonies grow through such workmen as these—
	aye, they grow by all kinds of ways, and are made larger on an 
	unceasing anvil and in a forge that is always burning. 
	So, then, the father too considers misers to be happy in their disposition; 
120	he who admires wealth, who thinks there are no examples of 
	a poor man who is blessed. He exhorts his youths to continue 
	on that road, and to stick to the same school. 
	There are certain elements of the vices; with these he imbues them 
	at starting, and compels them to master the smallest meannesses; 
125	soon he teaches them the insatiable desire of acquiring. 
	He punishes the bellies of his slaves with short measure, 
	while he himself is hungry into the bargain; he can never, indeed, bear 
	to consume even the whole of the musty fragments of his mildewed loaf; 
	he is wont to keep yesterday's mincemeat in the middle 
130	of September, and to put off to another dinner-time 
	the summer beans, sealed up with a bit of sea- lizard 
	or half a putrid shad, and to shut in with them the shreds, 
	after they have been counted, of cut leeks. 
	A beggar from the bridge invited to such a meal would decline. 
135	But to what end riches heaped together through such tortures, 
	when the madness is indubitable, the insanity manifest, 
	of living the lot of the destitute that you may die wealthy? 
	In the meanwhile, when the small bag is swollen with its mouth full, 
	the love of money grows as much as the money itself has grown. 
140	The man who has none is less eager for it. So another 
	country-house must be procured for you, since one estate does not suffice, 
	and you like to extend your boundaries, and the neighboring corn-land 
	seems to you larger and better than your own; you buy this too, 
	and the plantations, and the hill which is white with the mass of olives; 
145	and if their owner will not yield to any offer, your lean oxen, 
	and famished cattle with weary necks, are turned into his 
	green sprouting corn by night, and do not go thence home 
	before the whole crop has found its way into their ravenous bellies, 
	so that one would think the work had been done with sickles. 
150	One can hardly tell how many people have to lament such losses, 
	or how many estates injurious treatment has caused to be offered for sale. 
	But what talk there will be! How foully the trumpet of rumor will blow! 
	"What harm does that do?" he says. "I would rather, for my part, 
	have a bean-shell than that the neighborhood in the whole district should 
155	praise me on condition of my reaping paltry crops off a small estate." 
	Of course, then, you will be exempt from diseases and infirmity, 
	and escape grief and care; and, after this, a long period 
	of life will be bestowed on you with a happier destiny, 
	provided you are the sole possessor of as much cultivated 
160	land as the Roman people used to plough under Tatius. 
	Afterwards, even to men broken by age, and who had been engaged in the 
	Punic wars, and against fierce Pyrrhus and the swords of the Molossians, 
	at the end, scarce two acres apiece were given in return for many 
	wounds. This, the price of their blood and their toils, never seemed to any 
165	of them less than their deserts, nor did their country seem ungratefully 
	wanting in its engagements. A little farm like this amply satisfied the father 
	himself and the troop in the cottage, where his wife was lying 
	pregnant and four children were playing, one a little 
	house-slave, three of them masters; while for the big brothers of these, 
170	on their return from the trench or the furrow, there was a second 
	larger supper and huge earthen jars smoking with porridge. 
	Nowadays this measure of land does not suffice for our garden. 
	Hence commonly the incentives to crimes; nor is there any vicious 
	propensity of the human mind which has mingled more poisons, 
175	or attacks more frequently with the poniard, than this f1erce longing 
	for an immoderate fortune; for he who wishes to become rich wishes 
	to become rich quickly too. But what respect for the laws, what apprehension 
	or sense of shame is there ever on the part of the miser in his haste? 
	"Live contented with these your cottages and hills, my lads," 
180	the Marsian and Hernican and Vestinian old man used to say 
	in days of yore." Let us seek with our ploughs bread 
	which suffices for our tables : this the rustic deities approve, 
	by whose aid and assistance, since the gift of the welcome 
	corn-blade, contempt for the old oak has come upon mankind. 
185	He will not wish to do anything forbidden who is not ashamed to wear 
	the high country boot through the winter, who elbows away the east winds 
	with skins turned inside out. This foreign purple, unknown 
	to us before, whatever it is, leads to crime and impiety." 
	Such were the precepts of the elders of those days to their juniors; but now, 
190	after the close of autumn, immediately upon midnight, the father, 
	with loud voice, calls up his reposing son. "Take your tablets, 
	write, boy, watch, plead causes, read over the red-lettered 
	laws of our ancestors, or ask for the centurion's switch in a petition. 
	But mind and let Laelius remark your head untouched by 
195	a comb, your hairy nostrils, and your stalwart shoulders. 
	Destroy the huts of the Moors, the forts of the Brigantes, 
	that your sixtieth year may bring you the lucrative 'eagle;' 
	or, if it is irksome to you to bear the protracted labors 
	of the camp, and the horns heard in company with the trumpets 
200	loosen your disturbed bowels, procure something to sell for more 
	than half as much again, and don't let disgust for any land of merchandise 
	that must be relegated to the other side of the Tiber enter your head, 
	nor deem that there is any distinction to be drawn between 
	perfumes and hide. The odor of lucre is good from anything 
205	you please. Let that sentiment, worthy of the gods and of 
	Jove himself as its poetical author, be always in your month: 
	“By what means you have become possessed, no one asks, but you need 
	to possess.” This, old dry-nurses teach to boys before they can 
	walk. This every girl learns before her Alpha and Beta. 
210	Any parent whatever urging such instructions as these, 
	I would address in this wise—Say, most senseless of men, who bids 
	you be in such a hurry? I warrant the disciple superior to his 
	master. Go your way, without fear; you will be beaten, just as 
	Ajax outstripped Telamon, just as Achilles beat Peleus. 
215	Young people should be spared. The evils of mature wickedness 
	have not yet permeated his marrow. When he has begun 
	to comb his beard, and to apply the long razor's edge, 
	he will be a false witness, he will sell his false oaths for 
	a trifle, while laying his hand on the altar and foot of Ceres. 
220	Consider your daughter- in-law as good as buried if she passes 
	your threshold with a death-bearing dowry. With what fingers will she 
	be throttled in her sleep! For that wealth which you think must 
	be acquired by land and sea a shorter way will confer upon him, 
	since there is no trouble in committing a great crime. "I never 
225	enjoined this," you will say some day, "nor counseled such things." 
	Nevertheless, the cause of this depravity of mind and its origin are 
	with you; for whosoever has inculcated the love of a large fortune, 
	and by his sinister counsel brings up his boys to be greedy for gain 
	[and who by fraud … to double their patrimonies], 
230	gives them their head, and abandons the whole reins to 
	the chariot: if you are for calling back the youth, he can't stop, and is 
	borne along in contempt of you, and leaving the goal behind him. 
	No one thinks it enough to transgress just as much as you permit him: 
	so surely do people indulge themselves more freely on their own account. 
235	When you tell a young man that he is a fool who gives to his friend, 
	who relieves and raises up the poverty of his kinsman, 
	you are likewise teaching him to rob, and to cheat, and to acquire 
	by every kind of crime those riches, the love of which in you is as 
	great as was that of their country in the breasts of the Decii, as great as 
240	was the love of Menoeceus, if Greece speak truth, for the Thebans, 
	in whose furrows legions are born with shields from the teeth 
	of the serpent, and engage in terrible war forthwith, just as if a 
	trumpeter into the bargain had sprung up at the same time with them: 
	so you will see the fire, the sparks of which you yourself have furnished, 
245	flaming widely and seizing on everything. 
	Nor will you, miserable wretch, be spared, and the lion you have reared 
	will carry off with a loud roar his trembling master in his cage. 
	Your nativity may be known to the astrologers ; but it is tiresome 
	to wait upon the tardy distaff: you will die before your thread is 
250	broken off. Already, as it is, you stand in the way, and delay his wishes. 
	Already your long and stag-like old age torments the young man. 
	Make haste, and look up Archigenes, and purchase what Mithridates 
	compounded, if you wish to pluck another fig, 
	or even to handle other roses. You must get the antidote, 
255	which a father as well as a king should imbibe before food.” 
	
	I can show you a surpassing amusement which you shall not be able to 
	match by any theatres or any stage-boards of the sumptuous Praetor, 
	if you only observe what a danger to life these additions to one's 
	fortune cost, this quantity of treasure in the brass-bound 
260	strong-box, and the moneys to be deposited with watchful Castor, 
	ever since Mars the Avenger lost even his helmet, and could not 
	take care of his own property. You may desert, then, 
	all the drop-scenes of Flora and Ceres and Cybele, 
	so much better plays are the doings of mankind. 
265	Can bodies projected from the petaurum, or he who is wont 
	to descend the tightrope, furnish the mind with more entertainment 
	than you who are always remaining on your Corycian ship 
	and dwelling, constantly to be tossed by Corus and by Auster, 
	the desperate and paltry salesman of a smelling bag of merchandise, 
270	who delight in importing rich raisin wine and wine-jars, 
	the compatriots of Jove, from the shore of ancient Crete? 
	But he who plants his steps with doubtful tread obtains 
	his living at this price, and avoids cold and hunger 
	by that rope of his. You are foolhardy, for the sake 
275	of a thousand talents and a hundred villas. Behold the ports 
	and the sea full of large ships! The greater part of mankind 
	are now on the main; a fleet will come whithersoever the hope 
	of gain invites, and will not only bound over the Carpathian 
	and Gaetulian seas, but, leaving Calpe far behind, 
280	will hear the sun hissing in the Herculean waters. 
	A grand equivalent for your labor it is that you be able to return home 
	thence with distended purse and proud, with your swollen money-bag, 
	to have beheld the monsters of the ocean and the youths of the sea. 
	Not one madness onty distracts men's minds. One, in his sister's 
285	arms, is terrified by the faces and the torches of the Eumenides; 
	another, when he has struck the bull, thinks it is Agamemnon or the 
	Ithacan that is roaring. Though he may spare his coats and his cloaks, 
	the man is in need of a guardian who fills his ship with merchandise 
	up to the very bulwarks, and is separated from the waves by a plank, 
290	when the incentive to such great misery and such danger 
	as this is silver cut up into inscriptions and miniatures. 
	Clouds and lightning oppose him. "Loosen the rope," 
	shouts the owner of the bought-up corn or pepper; 
	"this color of the sky, this black belt of cloud threatens nothing. 
295	It is only summer thunder." Unhappy wretch! perchance this very night 
	he will fall with his timbers shattered, and will be submerged and overwhelmed 
	by the billows, clutching his girdle with his left hand and his teeth. 
	Moreover, he to whose wishes but lately all the gold would not 
	have sufficed which Tagus rolls and Pactolus in its red sand, 
300	will have to be satisfied with the rags covering his cold loins 
	and scanty nourishment, while shipwrecked, his bark sunk, he begs 
	for a copper, and maintains himself by a painting of the storm. 
	
	What has been earned through such great hardships has to be guarded with 
	still greater solicitude and fear. The custody of a large fortune is a wretched business. 
305	The millionaire Licinus, after disposing his water-buckets, 
	orders a whole cohort of slaves to keep watch by night, in a wild fright 
	about his amber and his statues and columns of Phrygian marble, 
	and his ivory and broad tortoise-shell. The tub of the naked 
	cynic does not take fire. If you break it, another home will be 
310	made to-morrow, or the same one will remain, patched up with lead. 
	Alexander perceived, when he saw in that tub its 
	great inhabitant, how much happier he was who wished 
	for nothing, than he who demanded the whole world for himself, 
	destined to undergo perils equivalent to the exploits he achieved 
315	You have no divine power where prudence exists. It is we, 
	we who make a goddess of you, O Fortune! However, if any one asks 
	my opinion as to what measure of property is sufficient, I will tell you. 
	To the extent that thirst and hunger and cold demand; 
	as much as sufficed you in your small garden, Epicurus; 
320	as much as the home of Socrates contained before. 
	Nature never says one thing and philosophy another. 
	Do I seem to confine you by examples that are too severe? Throw in, 
	then, something from our manners; make up the sum which 
	the law of Otho regards as fitting for the Fourteen Rows. 
325	If this, too, produces a frown, and makes you pout your lip, 
	take two knights' fees—make it a third four hundred. 
	If I have not yet filled your lap, if it is spread out beyond this, 
	not even the fortune of Croesus nor the realms of Persia 
	will ever satisfy your inclinations, nor the riches of Narcissus, 
330	to whom Claudius Caesar gave up everything, 
	whose orders he obeyed when bidden to kill his wife.