Juvenal, Satires 13
Translated by John Delaware Lewis (1882)
Formatted by C. Chinn (2008)

	WHATEVER act is perpetrated which serves as a bad example, 
	is displeasing to its very author. This is his first punishment—
	that by his own verdict no offender is acquitted, though 
	corrupt favor may win in the Praetor's lying urn. 
5	What do you suppose is the feeling of every one, Calvinus, respecting 
	this recent act of villainy and crime of violated confidence? Besides, 
	neither is the fortune you are favored with so slender that the weight 
	of a small loss should sink you, nor do we witness but seldom what you 
	are suffering. This kind of mischance is familiar to many, and commonplace 
10	by this time, and drawn from the mid-heap of the accidents of fortune. 
	Let us lay aside excessive laments; the grief of a man should not be 
	more vehement than is reasonable, nor greater than the wound received. 
	You are scarce able to bear the smallest and most trifling particle 
	of ills, however light, raging with your vitals in a foam, 
15	because your friend does not restore to you a deposit 
	that was sacred. Can one be amazed at such things who has already 
	left sixty years behind his back, born in the consulship of Fonteius? 
	or do you profit nothing by so great an experience of the world? 
	Great, indeed, is philosophy, the conqueror of fortune, 
20	which sets forth its precepts in sacred books; but we 
	deem those happy, too, who have learned to bear the incommodities 
	of life, and not to toss the yoke, with life itself for their teacher. 
	What day so holy that it fails to bring forth a thief, 
	perfidy, frauds, and profit obtained from every sort of crime, 
25	and money acquired by the sword or the poison-box? 
	For rare, indeed, are the good; in number they are scarcely 
	as many as the gates of Thebes, or the mouths of the rich Nile. 
	It is the ninth age that we are passing through—times worse 
	than the period of iron, for whose wickedness Nature herself 
30	does not find a name, and has given one from no metal. 
	We are invoking the aid of men and gods, with a clamour loud 
	as that with which his vocal hangers-on applaud Faesidius when 
	he is pleading! Tell me, old man, most worthy of the child's boss, know 
	you not what charms are possessed by another's money? know you not 
35	what a laugh your simplicity will excite in the herd, when 
	you require of any one that he should not perjure himself, and should 
	deem that there is some divinity in any temples or on blood-red altar? 
	Once upon a time the aborigines used to live in this fashion, before 
	Saturn in his flight took up the rustic sickle, after laying down 
40	his diadem ; in the days when Juno was a little maiden, 
	and Jupiter still a private individual in the caves of Ida, 
	when there were no banquets of the celestials above the clouds, 
	no Trojan boy, nor beautiful wife of Hercules at the cups, 
	with Vulcan, after draining the nectar, wiping his 
45	arms black from his Liparaean workshop. Each god 
	used to dine by himself, nor was the crowd of gods such as 
	it is nowadays; and the heavens, contented with few 
	divinities, pressed upon poor Atlas with less 
	weight. No one as yet had allotted to him the gloomy empire 
50	of the deep, nor was there a grim Pluto, with his Sicilian wife, 
	nor the wheel, nor the Furies, nor the rock, nor the punishment 
	of the black vulture; but merry shades without infernal kings. 
	Improbity was a marvel in that age. They thought it 
	a great impiety, and one to be expiated by death, 
55	if a young man had not risen up before an old man, or a boy 
	before any one that had got a beard, although he himself might see 
	more wild strawberries in his home, and larger piles of acorns. 
	Such a claim to veneration was it to be senior by four years; 
	to such an extent was the first down on a par with sacred old age. 
60	Nowadays, if a friend do not repudiate a deposit, 
	if he restore the old purse with all its rusty contents, 
	his good faith is a matter of prodigy, worthy of the Etruscan books, 
	and such as ought to be expiated by the sacr1fice of a garlanded lamb. 
	If I see a man above the herd, of true probity, I compare such a 
65	monster to a boy, half man, half beast, or fish found under 
	the astonished plough, or a pregnant mule; as much 
	alarmed as though a rain-cloud had poured forth stones, 
	or a swarm of bees had settled in a long cluster on the 
	summit of a temple; as though a river had flowed into the sea 
70	with unnatural eddies, and rushing on with a whirlpool of milk. 
	
	You complain that ten sestertia have been wrested from you by an 
	impious fraud? What if another man has lost two hundred, privately deposited, 
	in the same way? a third a still larger sum than that, which 
	the corner of his broad strong-box would scarcely hold? 
75	So easy and natural is it to despise the witnesses on high, 
	if no mortal be acquainted with the matter. See with what a loud 
	voice he denies it, what the assurance of his made- up countenance. 
	He swears by the sun's rays, and the Tarpeian thunderbolts, 
	and the lance of Mars, and the darts of the seer- god of Cirrha, 
80	by the arrows and the quiver of the Huntress-Virgin, 
	and by your trident, Neptune, father of the Aegaean. 
	He adds the bow of Hercules too, and the spear of Minerva, 
	all the weapons that the armories of heaven contain! 
	If indeed he be a father as well, "I will eat up," he says, "the wretched 
85	head of my son, boiled and reeking with vinegar from Pharos, if I lie." 
	
	There are those who range all things among the accidents of fortune, 
	and believe the universe to be moving on with no power to guide it, 
	Nature evolving the changes both of days and years; 
	and so, without a tremor, they lay their hands on any altar. 
90	There is another who fears that punishment will follow his offence; 
	this man believes that there are gods, and yet he commits perjury, 
	and reasons thus with himself—"Let Isis decree what she pleases 
	about my body, and strike my eyes with her angry sistrum, so long 
	as I can hold possession, even with the loss of sight, of the moneys which 
95	I deny having received. Even consumption and putrid abscesses and a shriveled 
	leg are worth the price. Let Ladas himself, if poor, not hesitate to pray 
	for the rich man's gout, if he does not stand in need of Anticyra 
	or Archigenes. For what indeed does the glory of the swift 
	foot bring him in, or the hungry branch of the olive of Pisa? 
100	And after all, though the wrath of the gods be great, assuredly it is slow. 
	If, then, they make it their business to punish all the guilty, 
	when will they come to me? Aye, and I may perchance find that 
	the divinity is not inexorable; he is wont to forgive these kinds of things. 
	Many men commit the same crimes with different destinies. 
105	One receives crucifixion as the price of his villainy, another a diadem." 
	Thus they harden their souls, trembling with the fright caused by their dread 
	offence. Then, when you summon him to the sacred shrine, he goes there 
	before you, aye, even ready of his own accord to drag you along and harass 
	you; for when great impudence comes to the aid of a bad cause, 
110	it is taken by many for honest confidence. He is acting just 
	such a farce as the runaway slave in witty Catullus. 
	You, poor man, cry out with a voice to beat a Stentor, 
	or rather as loud as the Gradivus of Homer, "Do you hear this, 
	Jupiter, and don't even move your lips when you ought to have 
115	spoken out, though you had been of marble or bronze? Or why 
	on your altar-fire do we place the incense of piety from the opened 
	paper, and the sliced liver of a calf, and the white entrails 
	of a pig? As far as I see, there is no distinction to be made 
	between your images and the statue of Vagellius." 
	
120	Hear now what consolations on the other side even he may have it 
	in his power to bring, who has read neither the Cynics nor the dogmas 
	of the Stoics, differing from those of the Cynics by a tunic only, who 
	does not look up to Epicurus delighting in the plants of his tiny garden. 
	Let patients in a ticklish state be attended by greater physicians: 
125	do you trust your vein even to an apprentice of Philippus. 
	If you can show no other such detestable deed in the world, 
	I hold my tongue, nor do I forbid you to strike your breast 
	with your fists, nor to beat your face with flattened palm, 
	since your doors must be closed, if you have sustained a real loss, 
130	and money is bewailed with a greater lamentation of the household 
	and greater tumult than deaths. Nobody feigns grief in such a 
	contingency as this, nor is content to tear the top only 
	of his garment nor to torment his eyes with forced moisture. 
	The loss of money is deplored with real tears. 
135	But if you see all the courts full of like complaints, 
	if, after their bonds have been read over half a score of times from 
	the opposite side, people declare their notes-of-hand to be void and 
	the tablets worthless, when their own writing and their own seal, the 
	choicest of sardonyxes, which is kept in an ivory purse, convict them—
140	do you, after this, my fine fellow, think that you are to be placed 
	outside the common lot? How is it that you are the offspring of 
	a white hen, and we, vile chicks born from unlucky eggs? 
	You are suffering a small matter and one to be borne with moderate choler, 
	if you will turn your eyes towards greater crimes. Compare 
145	the hired bandit, fires commenced with the stealthy 
	sulfur when the house-door concentrates the first flames; 
	compare those, too, who carry off from the ancient temples 
	huge cups of venerable rustiness, and the gifts of nations, 
	or crowns deposited by some king of old. 
150	If no such things are there, there starts up a sacrilegious wretch 
	on a smaller scale, who will scrape the thigh of a gilded Hercules 
	and the very face of Neptune, who will strip a thin leaf of gold from Castor. 
	Could he hesitate who is wont to melt down the Thunderer entire? 
	Compare, too, the compounders and purchasers of poison, and the 
155	man who deserving to be launched into the sea in a bull's-hide, the man 
	with whom an innocent ape has the evil fortune to be shut up. 
	How small a portion these of the crimes which Gallicus, the guardian of 
	the city, listens to continuously from the rising of Lucifer till the sun sets! 
	If you wish to know the habits of the human race, 
160	a single house is enough. Spend a few days there, and dare 
	to call yourself miserable after you have come thence! 
	Who marvels at goître in the Alps? Who, in Meroe, 
	at the breast bigger than the coarse baby? 
	Who is astounded at the blue eyes of the German, at his yellow 
165	hair, at his twisting its tufts into a moistened curl? 
	Because, to be sure, this natural appearance is common to all of them. 
	The Pigmy warrior runs in his small panoply to the suddenly 
	appearing birds of Thrace and the resounding cloud of cranes; 
	before long no match for his foe, and snatched away through the air 
170	by its curved talons, he is carried off by the savage crane. If you saw this 
	among our people you would shake with laughter; but there, 
	though combats of the same kind are continually being looked at, 
	no one laughs, since the whole cohort is not more than a foot high. 
	
	"Shall there be no punishment, then, for the perjured man and the 
175	impious fraud?" Suppose him to be dragged off in the heaviest chains 
	forthwith and put to death (what more can rage desire?) at our 
	discretion, yet still that loss remains, nor will your deposit be 
	ever restored to you; and a very little blood from a headless 
	corpse will give you but an odious consolation. 
180	"But revenge is a blessing more enjoyable than life itself!" 
	Of course the ignorant say so, whose breasts you see 
	inflamed sometimes by small causes, or none at all. 
	However trifling the occasion be, it suff1ces for their ire. 
	Chrysippus will not say the same, nor the gentle-souled Thales, 
185	nor the old man who lived near sweet Hymettus, 
	who would not have given his accuser a portion of the hemlock which 
	he received in his cruel bonds. Happy philosophy by degrees 
	strips us of most of our natural defects and all our errors of judgment; 
	she first teaches what is right; for surely vengeance is ever 
190	the pleasure of a stunted aud feeble and petty mind. 
	You may infer this at once from the fact that no one delights in 
	vengeance more than a woman. Yet why should you deem those 
	to have escaped, whom their mind, conscious of a dreadful deed, 
	holds awestruck, and strikes with noiseless lash, 
195	while their tormenting soul brandishes the hidden scourge? 
	Aye, it is a sharp punishment, and far more cruel than those 
	which dread Caedicius and Rhadamanthus invent, 
	to carry about in one's bosom by night and by day one's own witness. 
	The Pythian priestess gave answer to a certain Spartan 
200	that he should not in time to come go unpunished for hesitating 
	in the matter of retaining a deposit and backing his fraud 
	by an oath; for he was asking what was the mind of the deity, 
	and whether Apollo counselled him this bad deed. 
	He made restoration, then, through fear, not through principle; 
205	and yet he furnished proof that every word from the shrine was worthy of 
	the temple and true, by being exterminated, together with all his children 
	and house and his relatives, from however remote a common stock derived. 
	Such penalties does the mere wish to sin suffer; for he who meditates 
	any secret wickedness within himself incurs the guilt 
210	of the deed. Say, what if he has accomplished his endeavors? 
	His perpetual anxiety does not cease even at meal times, 
	when his jaws are dry as in a fever, and the unwelcome food swells 
	between his grinders; yet the wretch spits out wines; 
	old Alban of costly age is distasteful to him; show him still 
215	better, yet a crowd of wrinkles is forced upon 
	his brow, as though produced by sour Falernian. 
	By night, if haply care has indulged him with a brief torpor, 
	and his limbs tossed over the whole bed at last repose, 
	forthwith he sees the temple and the altars of the insulted deity, 
220	and, what presses on his mind with special terrors, he sees you 
	in his dreams! Your image, supernatural and greater than 
	human, disturbs tho frightened wretch, and forces him to confess. 
	These are they who tremble and turn pale at every flash of lightning; 
	when it thunders, frightened out of their wits at the very first grumblings of 
225	the sky, as though not by chance, nor through the violence of the winds, 
	but in anger, the fire were falling on the earth and judging them. 
	If that one has storm is feared with graver anxiety, 
	as though but deferred by this lull. Moreover, if they have 
	begun to suffer from pain in the side with watchful fever, 
230	they believe the disease to be sent to their bodies by 
	an angry deity; they think these things the stones and 
	missiles of the gods. They dare not vow a bleating 
	sheep to the shrine, nor promise a cock's-comb to 
	their Lares; for what can the guilty sick be permitted to 
235	hope for? or what victim is not more worthy of life? 
	Changeable and varying is commonly the nature of bad men. 
	When they commit a wicked act, they have resolution to back them up; 
	what is right and wrong they begin to perceive too late, when their 
	crimes have been completed. Yet Nature runs back to her reprobate habits, 
240	fixed and incapable of change. For who has prescribed 
	for himself a limit to sinning? or ever got back 
	the sense of shame once ejected from the hardened brow? 
	Who among men is there whom you have seen contented with 
	a single crime? Our rogue will put his feet in the snare, 
245	and will endure the hook of the dark prison, 
	or a rock of the Aegaean Sea, and the crags swarming 
	with great exiles. You will delight iu the bitter punishment 
	of the hated man, and will at last joyfully confess 
	that none of the gods is either deaf or a Tiresias.