Juvenal, Satire 12 Translated by John Delaware Lewis (1882) Formatted by C. Chinn (2008) SWEETER to me than my own birthday, Corvinus, is this day on which the festal turf awaits the animals promised to the gods. We are leading to the sacrifice a snow-white lamb for the Queen of heaven; a like fleece will be given to her who fights armed with the Mauritanian Gorgon; 5 but the victim reserved for Tarpeian Jove shakes in his wantonness the outstretched rope and tosses his head — a wild steer, in truth, ripe for the temple and the altar, and fit to be sprinkled with wine, who is already ashamed to drain the teats of his mother, who butts the oaks with his rising horn. 10 If my personal means were ample, and equal to my affections, a bull fatter than Hispulla should be dragged along, one slow from his very bulk, and fed on no neighboring herbage, but, giving evidence of the rich pastures of Clitumnus, the high-bred should go, with a neck that would have to be struck by a burly sacrilicer, 15 on account of the return of my friend still trembling, and who has just endured horrors, and who wonders at finding himself alive. For besides the dangers of the sea, he escaped even the stroke of lightning. Thick darkness concealed the heavens in one cloud, and the sudden fire fell upon the yards; 20 when every one thought himself struck by it, and thereupon, in a panic, deemed that no shipwreck could be comparable to burning sails. Everything takes place in the same way, and just as disagreeably, whenever a storm arises in poetry. Behold another kind of danger; listen 25 and pity him again, though what follows belongs to the same ill luck a portion dreadful indeed, but known to many, and which a multitude of temples bear witness to with, their votive tablets. Who does not know that there are painters who gain their living by Isis? And a similar fortune befell our Catullus. 30 When the hold was full of water up to the middle, and, now that the waves were heaving up each side alternately of the stern of the crazy log, the skill of the hoary helmsman could render no aid; he began to compound with the winds by throwing overboard the cargo in imitation of the beaver, who, by his own act, makes 35 himself a eunuch, hoping to escape by the sacrifice of his testicles, so well does he understand the medicinal properties of his parts. “Throw out everything that belongs to me," Catullus kept saying, wishing to hurl overboard the very choicest objects, a purple robe fitted even for effeminate Maecenases, 40 and others whose wool the nature of the generous pasture has tinged, but also the exquisite springs by their hidden properties and the air of Baetica contribute. He did not hesitate to throw overboard even his plate — platters made by Parthenius, a bowl holding three gallons, 45 and worthy of Pholus when athirst, or even the wife of Fuscus; add bascaudae into the bargain, and a thousand meat-dishes, a quantity of chased cups, out of which the cunning purchaser of Olynthus had drunk. But who else nowadays, in any part of the world, who ventures to prefer his life to his plate, and his safety to his property ? 50 [Some men do not make fortunes for the sake of living, but, blinded by a vice of nature, live for the sake of making fortunes.] The greatest part of his necessaries is thrown overboard, but not even do these sacrifices lighten the ship. Then, under the pressure of danger, it came to this, that ho submitted his mast to the axe, and he extricates 55 himself, though crippled. It must be the extremity of danger when we apply remedies which will take away part of the ship! Go now and commit your life to the winds, trusting to a hewn plank, removed four inches from death, or seven if the deal be of the thickest; 60 and then, together with your wallets and bread and bulging flagon, see to providing hatchets to be used in case of a storm. But after the sea fell into a calm, after a lucky time had come for the passengers, and Fate was mightier than Eurus and the deep, after the Parcae were spinning kindlier piecework 65 with benign hand, blithe, and working their wool with white threads, and the wind presented itself not much stronger than a moderate breeze, the prow drifted on pitiably with powerless shifts, with clothes outspread and its foresail, which alone remained. And now that the south wind was subsiding, 70 hope of life returns with the sunshine; then the lofty peak is caught sight of, beloved of lulus, and preferred by him as a home to his stepmother's Lavinium; the peak to which the white sow gave its name, an udder that excited the wonder of the rejoicing Phrygians, remarkable for what had never been seen before, thirty nipples. 75 At length he reaches the moles built through the waters enclosed between them and the Tuscan Pharos, and the arms stretching back again, which run into the midst of the sea and leave Italy far behind;— you would not, in fine, admire so much ports of Nature's making;—but with his disabled ship the skipper 80 makes for the inner still water of the safe basin, which a skiff from Baiae could cross, where, with shaven crowns, the sailors, freed from anxiety, delight in garrulous recitals of their perils. Go then, lads, keeping watch over your tongues and thoughts, and place garlands on the shrines and meal on the knives, 85 and adorn the soft hearths and the green turf altar. I will follow anon, and the sacrifice, which has the precedence, having been duly performed, will thence return home where the little images glistening with fragile wax receive their slender chaplets. Here I will propitiate my own Jove, and will offer frankincense 90 to my paternal Lares, and will strew all the colors of the violet. Everything is bright; my festive door has put forth long boughs, and is performing its part in the rite with early morning lamps. Nor let these things seem suspicious to you, Corvinus. Catullus, for whose return I erect so many altars, 95 has three little heirs. I should like to see who would lay out a sick hen, just closing her eyes, on so unprofitable a friend. But of a truth this would be too great an outlay; not even a quail will ever be sacrificed for one who is a father. If rich Gallita has begun to be sensible of fever, or Paccius—people who have no children— 100 the whole portico is clothed with votive tablets affixed in the acknowledged way. There are people who start up and promise a hetacomb of oxen, since here there are no elephants even for sale, nor indeed is such a huge beast generated in Latium or anywhere under our sky; but procured from a swarthy nation, 105 it grazes in the Rutulian forests and the pastures of Turnus, the herd of Caesar, prepared to serve no private individual, seeing that their ancestors were wont to obey Tyrian Hannibal and our generals and the Molossian king, and to bear on their backs cohorts,—no trifling 110 part of the fight,—and a tower that went into battles. It is no fault of Novius, then, no fault of Hister Pacuvius, that that ivory is not led to the altars to fall a victim before the Lares of Gallita, the only one worthy of such great gods and those that court their favors. 115 Another of these fellows, indeed, if you will consent to his making the sacrifice, will devote the tallest and handsomest persons out of the flock of his slaves, and will place sacrificial fillets on his slave-boys and the brows of his maid-servants; and if by chance he has a marriageable Iphigenia at home, he will give her to the altars, although he does not 120 expect the furtive substitution of the hind of the tragedians. I praise my fellow-citizen, nor do I compare a thousand ships to a will; for if the sick man escapes from Libitina, he will cancel his will, caught in the grasp of the snare, after a service so truly wonderful, and will perhaps summarily bestow 125 his all on Pacuvius as sole heir. The latter will strut proudly over his defeated rivals. You see, then, what a great return for his trouble the slaughter of the Mycenian maid may bring him. May Pacuvius live, I pray, even to the full age of a Nestor; may he possess as much as Nero plundered; may he pile his gold 130 to the height of mountains—and love no one, and be loved by none!