Persius, Satire 3 Translated by Lewis Evans (1889) Formatted by C. Chinn (2008) “WHAT! always thus! Already the bright morning is entering the windows, and extending the narrow chinks with fight. We are snoring as much as would suffice to work off the potent Falernian, while the index is touched by the fifth shadow of the gnomon. 5 See! What are you about? The raging Dog-star is long since ripening the parched harvest, and all the flock is under the wide-spreading elm.” One of the fellow-students-says,” Is it really so? Come hither, some one, quickly. Is nobody coming!” His vitreous bile is swelling. He is bursting with rage: so that you would fancy whole herds of Arcadia were braying. 10 Now his book, and the two-colored parchment cleared of the hair, and paper, and the knotty reed is taken in hand. Then he complains that the ink, grown thick, clogs in his pen; then that the black sepia vanishes altogether, if water is poured into it; then that the reed makes blots with the drops being diluted. 15 “O wretch! and every day still more a wretch! Are we come to such a pitch? Why do you not rather, like the tender ring-dove, or the sons of kings, call for minced pap, and fractiously refuse your nurse’s lullaby!—Can I work with such a pen as this, then? Whom are you deceiving? Why reiterate these pal 20 try shifts? The stake is your own! You are leaking away, idiot! You will become an object of contempt. The ill-baked jar of half-prepared clay betrays by its ring its defect, and gives back n cracked sound. You are now clay, moist and pliant: even now you ought to be hastily molded and fashioned unintermittingly by the rapid wheel. But, you will say, you have a 25 fair competence from your hereditary estate; a pure and stainless salt-cellar. Why should you fear? And you have a paten free from care, since it worships your household deities. And is this enough? Is it then fitting you should puff out your lungs to bursting because you trace the thousandth in descent from a Tuscan stock; or because robed in your trabea you salute the Censor, your own kinsman? 30 Thy trappings to the people! I know thee intimately, inside and out! Are you not ashamed to live after the manner of the dissolute Natta? But he is besotted by vicious indulgence; the gross fat is incrusted round his heart: he is free from moral guilt; for he knows not what he is losing; and sunk in the very depth of vice, will never rise again to the surface of the wave. 35 Mighty father of the gods! when once fell lust, imbued with raging venom, has fired their spirits, vouchsafe to punish fierce tyrants in no other way than this. Let them see Virtue, and pine away at having forsaken her! Did the brass of the Sicilian bull give a deeper groan, or the sword 40 suspended from the gilded ceiling over the purple-clad neck strike deeper terror, than if one should say to himself, “We are sinking, sinking headlong down,” and in his inmost soul, poor wretch, grow pale at what even the wife of his bosom must not know? I remember when I was young I often used to touch my eyes with oil, 45 if I was unwilling to learn the noble words of the dying Cato; that would win great applause from my senseless master, and which my father, sweating with anxiety, would listen to with the friends he had brought to hear me. And naturally enough. For the summit of my wishes was to know what the lucky sice would gain; how much the ruinous ace would 50 sweep off; not to miss the neck of the narrow jar; and that none more skillfully than I should lash the top with a whip. Whereas you are not inexperienced in detecting the obliquity of moral deflections, and all that the philosophic porch, painted over with trousered Medes, teaches; over which the sleepless and 55 close-shorn youth lucubrates, fed on husks and fattening polenta. To thee, besides, the letter that divides the Samian branches, has pointed out the path that rises steeply on the right-hand track. And are you snoring still and does your drooping head, with muscles all relaxed, and jaws ready to split with gaping, nod off your yesterday’s debauch? 60 Is there indeed an object at which you aim, at which you bend your bow? Or are you following the crows, with potsherd and mud, careless whither your steps lead you, and living only for the moment? When once the diseased skin begins to swell, you will see men asking in vain for hellebore. Meet the disease on its way to attack you. 65 Of what avail is it to promise mountains of gold to Craterus? Learn, wretched men, and investigate the causes of things; what we are—what course of life we are born to run—what rank is assigned to us—how delicate the turning round the goal, and whence the starting-point— what limit must be set to money—what it is right to wish for—what uses 70 the rough coin possesses—how much you ought to bestow on your country and dear relations—what man the Deity destined you to be, and in what portion of the human commonwealth your station is assigned. Learn: and be not envious because full many a jar grows rancid in his well-stored larder, for defending the fat Umbrians, 75 and pepper, and hams, the remembrances of his Marsian client; or because the pilchard has not yet failed from the first jars. Here some one of the rank brood of centurions may say, “I have philosophy enough to satisfy me. I care not to be what Arcesilas was, and woe-begone Solons, 80 with head awry and eyes fastened on the ground, while they mumble suppressed mutterings, or idiotic silence, or balance words on their lip pouting out, pondering over the dreams of some palsied dotard, that nothing can be generated from nothing; nothing can return to nothing.’— 85 Is it this over which you grow pale? Is it this for which one should go without his dinner?” At this the people laugh, and with wrinkling nose the brawny youth loudly re-echo the hearty peals of laughter. “Examine me! My breast palpitates unusually; and my breath heaves oppressedly from my fevered jaws: examine me, pray!” 90 He that speaks thus to his physician, being ordered to keep quiet, when the third night has seen his veins flow with steady pulse, begs from some wealthier mansion some mellow Surrentine, in a flagon of moderate capacity, as he is about to bathe. “Ho! my good fellow, you look pale!” “It is nothing!” “But have 95 an eye to it, whatever it is! Your sallow skin is insensibly rising.” “Well, you look pale too! worse than I! Don’t play the guardian to me! I buried him long ago—you remain.” “Go on! I will hold my peace!” So, bloated with feasting and with livid stomach he takes his bath, while his throat slowly exhales sulphureous malaria. 100 But shivering comes on over his cups, and shakes the steaming beaker from his hands; his teeth, grinning, rattle in his head; then the rich dainties dribble from his flaccid lips. Next follow the trumpets and funeral-torches; and at last this votary of pleasure, laid out on a lofty bier, and plastered over with thick 105 unguents, stretches out his rigid heels to the door. Then, with head covered, the Quirites of yesterday support his bier. “Feel my pulse, you wretch! put your hand on my breast. There is no heat here! touch the extremities of my feet and hands. They are not cold!” If money has haply met your eye, 110 or the fair maiden of your neighbor has smiled sweetly on you, does your heart beat steadily? If hard cabbage has been served up to you in a cold dish, or flour shaken through the people’s sieve, let me examine your jaws. A putrid ulcer lurks in your tender mouth, which it would not be right to grate against with vulgar beet. 115 You grow cold, when pallid fear has roused the bristles on your limbs. Now, when a torch is placed beneath, your blood begins to boil, and your eyes sparkle with anger; and you say and do what even Orestes himself, in his hour of madness, would swear to be proofs of madness.