I mentioned a couple of texts in the latest recording, the first is a satire by the Stoic philosopher Seneca, The Pumpkinification of Claudius and the second a later satire by Juvenal. I am providing a link to the text of the first, and here is a translation of the text of the second. This second text is the one about which I mentioned the possibility of an extra-credit assignment in the recorded lecture.
Satire 10. The
Vanity of Human Wishes [Translated by G. G. Ramsay]
In
all the lands that stretch from Gades to the Ganges and the Morn, there are but
few who can distinguish true blessings from their opposites, putting aside the
mists of error. For when does Reason direct our desires or our fears? What
project do we form so auspiciously that we do not repent us of our effort and
of the granted wish? Whole households have been destroyed by the compliant Gods
in answer to the masters' prayers; in camp and city alike we ask for things
that will be our ruin. Many a man has met death from the rushing flood of his own
eloquence; others from the strength and wondrous thews in which they have
trusted. More still have been ruined by money too carefully amassed, and by
fortunes that surpass all patrimonies by as much as the British whale exceeds
the dolphin. It was for this that in the dire days Nero ordered Longinus and
the great gardens of the over-wealthy Seneca to be put under siege; for this
was it that the noble Palace of the Laterani was beset by an entire cohort; it
is but seldom that soldiers find their way into a garret!
Though
you carry but few silver vessels with you in a night journey, you will be
afraid of the sword and cudgel of a freebooter, you will tremble at the shadow
of a reed shaking in the moonlight; but the empty-handed traveller will whistle
in the robber's face.
The
foremost of all petitions--the one best known to every temple--is for riches
and their increase, that our money-chest may be the biggest in the Forum. But
you will drink no aconite out of an earthenware cup; you may dread it when a
jewelled cup is offered you, or when Setine wine sparkles in a golden bowl.
Then will you not commend the two wise men, one of whom would laugh while the
opposite sage would weep every time he set a foot outside the door? To condemn
by a cutting laugh comes readily to us all; the wonder is how the other sage's
eyes were supplied with all that water. The sides of Democritus shook with
unceasing laughter, although in the cities of his day there were no
purple-bordered or purple-striped robes, no fasces, no palanquins, no
tribunals. What if he had seen the Praetor uplifted in his lofty car amid the
dust of the Circus, attired in the tunic of Jove, hitching an embroidered
Tyrian toga on to his shoulders, and carrying a crown so big that no neck could
bear the weight of it? For a public slave is sweating under the burden; and
that the Consul may not fancy himself overmuch, the slave rides in the same
chariot with his master. Add to all this the bird that is perched on his ivory
staff; on this side the horn-blowers, on that the duteous clients preceding him
in long array, with white-robed Roman citizens, whose friendship has been
gained by the dinner-dole snugly lying in their purses, marching at his
bridle-rein. Even then the philosopher found food for laughter at every meeting
with his kind: his wisdom shows us that men of high distinction and destined to
set great examples may be born in a dullard air, and in the land of
mutton-heads. He laughed at the troubles, ay and at the pleasures, of the
crowd, sometimes too at their tears, while for himself he would bid frowning
fortune go hang, and point at her the finger of derision.
Thus
it is that the things for which we pray, and for which it is right and proper
to load the knees of the Gods with wax, are either profitless or pernicious!
Some men are hurled headlong by over-great power and the envy to which it
exposes them; they are wrecked by the long and illustrious roll of their
honours: down come their statues, obedient to the rope; the axe hews in pieces
their chariot wheels and the legs of the unoffending horses. And now the flames
are hissing, and amid the roar of furnace and of bellows the head of the mighty
Sejanus, the darling of the mob, is burning and crackling, and from that face,
which was but lately second in the entire world, are being fashioned pipkins,
pitchers, frying-pans and slop-pails! Up with the laurel-wreaths over your
doors! Lead forth a grand chalked bull to the Capitol! Sejanus is being dragged
along by a hook, as a show and joy to all! "What a lip the fellow had!
What a face!"--"Believe me, I never liked the man!"--"But
on what charge was he condemned? Who informed against him? What was the
evidence, who the witnesses, who made good the case?"--"Nothing of
the sort; a great and wordy letter came from Capri."--"Good; I ask no
more."
And
what does the mob of Remus say? It follows fortune, as it always does, and
rails against the condemned. That same rabble, if Nortia had smiled upon the
Etruscan, if the aged Emperor had been struck down unawares, would in that very
hour have conferred upon Sejanus the title of Augustus. Now that no one buys
our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once
bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and
longs eagerly for just two things--Bread and Games!
"I
hear that many are to perish."--"No doubt of it; there is a big
furnace ready."--"My friend Brutidius looked a trifle pale when I met
him at the Altar of Mars. I tremble lest the defeated Ajax should take vengeance
for having been so ill-defended."--"Let us rush headlong and trample
on Caesar's enemy, while he lies upon the bank!"--"Ay, and let our
slaves see us, that none bear witness against us, and drag their trembling
master into court with a halter round his neck."
Such
was the talk at the moment about Sejanus; such were the mutterings of the
crowd. And would you like to be courted like Sejanus? To be as rich as he was?
To bestow on one man the ivory chairs of office, appoint another to the command
of armies, and be counted guardian of a Prince seated on the narrow ledge of
Capri with his herd of Chaldaean astrologers? You would like, no doubt, to have
Centurions, Cohorts, and Illustrious Knights at your call, and to possess a
camp of your own? Why should you not? Even those who don't want to kill anybody
would like to have the power to do it. But what grandeur, what high fortune,
are worth the having if the joy is overbalanced by the calamities they bring
with them? Would you rather choose to wear the bordered robe of the man now
being dragged along the streets, or to be a magnate at Fidenae or Gabii,
adjudicating upon weights, or smashing vessels of short measure, as a
thread-bare Aedile at deserted Ulubrae? You admit, then, that Sejanus did not
know what things were to be desired; for in coveting excessive honours, and
seeking excessive wealth, he was but building up the many stories of a lofty
tower whence the fall would be the greater, and the crash of headlong ruin more
terrific. What was it that overthrew the Crassi, and the Pompeii, and him who
brought the conquered Quirites under his lash? What but lust for the highest
place pursued by every kind of means? What but ambitious prayers granted by
unkindly Gods? Few indeed are the kings who go down to Ceres' son-in-law save
by sword and slaughter--few the tyrants that perish by a bloodless death!
Every
schoolboy who worships Minerva with a modest penny fee, attended by a slave to
guard his little satchel, prays all through his holidays for eloquence, for the
fame of a Cicero or a Demosthenes. Yet it was eloquence that brought both
orators to their death; each perished by the copious and overflowing torrent of
his own genius. It was his genius that cut off the hand, and severed the neck,
of Cicero; never yet did futile pleader stain the rostra with his blood!
"O happy Fate for the Roman State
Was the date of my great
Consulate!"
Had
Cicero always spoken thus, he might have laughed at the swords of Antony.
Better verses meet only for contempt than thou, O famous and divine Philippic,
that comest out second on the roll! Terrible, too, was the death of him whom
Athens loved to hear sweeping along and holding in check the crowded theatre.
Unfriendly were the Gods, and evil the star, under whom was born the man whom
his father, blear-eyed with the soot of glowing ore, sent away from the coal,
the pincers and the sword-fashioning anvil of grimy Vulcan, to study the art of
the rhetorician!
The
spoils of war and trophies fastened upon stumps--a breast-plate, a cheek-strap
hanging from a broken helmet, a yoke shorn of its pole, the flagstaff of a
captured galley, or a captive sorrowing on a triumphal arch--such things are
deemed glories too great for man; these are the prizes for which every General
strives, be he Greek, Roman, or barbarian; it is for these that he endures toil
and peril: so much greater is the thirst for glory than for virtue! For who
would embrace virtue herself if you stripped her of her rewards? Yet full oft
has a land been destroyed by the vainglory of a few, by the lust for honour and
for a title that shall cling to the stones that guard their ashes--stones which
may be rent asunder by the rude strength of the barren fig-tree, seeing that
even sepulchres have their doom assigned to them!
Put
Hannibal into the scales; how many pounds' weight will you find in that
greatest of commanders? This is the man for whom Africa was all too small--a
land beaten by the Moorish sea and stretching to the steaming Nile, and then,
again, to the tribes of Aethiopia and a new race of Elephants! Spain is added
to his dominions: he overleaps the Pyrenees; Nature throws in his way Alps and
snow: he splits the rocks asunder, and breaks up the mountain-side with
vinegar! And now Italy is in his grasp, but still on he presses: "Nought
is accomplished," he cries, "until my Punic host breaks down the city
gates, and I plant my standard in the midst of the Subura!" O what a sight
was that! What a picture it would make, the one-eyed General riding on the
Gaetulian monster! What then was his end? Alas for glory! A conquered man, he
flees headlong into exile, and there he sits, a mighty and marvellous
suppliant, in the King's antechamber, until it please his Bithynian Majesty to
awake! No sword, no stone, no javelin shall end the life which once wrought
havoc throughout the world: that little ring shall avenge Cannae and all those
seas of blood. On! on! thou madman, and race over the wintry Alps, that thou
mayest be the delight of schoolboys and supply declaimers with a theme!
One
globe is all too little for the youth of Pella; he chafes uneasily within the
narrow limits of the world, as though he were cooped up within the rocks of
Gyara or the diminutive Seriphos; but yet when once he shall have entered the
city fortified by the potter's art, a sarcophagus will suffice him! Death alone
proclaims how small are our poor human bodies! We have heard how ships once
sailed through Mount Athos, and all the lying tales of Grecian history; how the
sea was paved by those self-same ships, and gave solid support to
chariot-wheels; how deep rivers failed, and whole streams were drunk dry when
the Persian breakfasted, with all the fables of which Sostratus sings with
reeking pinions. But in what plight did that king flee from Salamis? he that
had been wont to inflict barbaric stripes upon the winds Corus and Eurus--never
treated thus in their Aeolian prison-house--he who had bound the Earth-shaker
himself with chains, deeming it clemency, forsooth, not to think him worthy of
a branding also: what god, indeed, would be willing to serve such a master?--in
what plight did he return? Why, in a single ship; on blood-stained waves, the
prow slowly forcing her way through waters thick with corpses! Such was the
penalty exacted for that long-desired glory!
Give
me length of days, give me many years, O Jupiter! Such is your one and only
prayer, in days of strength or of sickness; yet how great, how unceasing, are
the miseries of old age! Look first at the misshapen and ungainly face, so
unlike its former self; see the unsightly hide that serves for skin; see the
pendulous cheeks and the wrinkles like those which a matron baboon carves upon
her aged jaws in the shaded glades of Thabraca. The young men differ in various
ways: this man is handsomer than that, and he than another; one is stronger
than another: but old men all look alike. Their voices are as shaky as their
limbs, their heads without hair, their noses drivelling as in childhood. Their
bread, poor wretches, has to be munched by toothless gums; so offensive do they
become to their wives, their children and themselves, that even the
legacy-hunter, Cossus, turns from them in disgust. Their sluggish palate takes
joy in wine or food no longer, and all pleasures of the flesh have been long
ago forgotten....
And
now consider the loss of another sense: what joy has the old man in song,
however famous be the singer? what joy in the harping of Seleucus himself, or
of those who shine resplendent in gold-embroidered robes? What matters it in
what part of the great theatre he sits when he can scarce hear the horns and
trumpets when they all blow together? The slave who announces a visitor, or
tells the time of day, must needs shout in his ear if he is to be heard.
Besides
all this, the little blood in his now chilly frame is never warm except with
fever; diseases of every kind dance around him in a body; if you ask of me
their names, I could more readily tell you the number of Oppia's paramours, how
many patients Themison killed in one season, how many partners were defrauded
by Basilus, how many wards corrupted by Hirrus, how many lovers tall Maura
wears out in a single season; I could sooner run over the number of villas now
belonging to the barber under whose razor my stiff youthful beard used to
grate. One suffers in the shoulder, another in the loins, a third in the hip;
another has lost both eyes, and envies those who have one; another takes food
into his pallid lips from someone else's fingers, while he whose jaws used to
fly open at the sight of his dinner, now only gapes like the young of a swallow
whose fasting mother flies to him with well-laden beak. But worse than any loss
of limb is the failing mind which forgets the names of slaves, and cannot
recognise the face of the old friend who dined with him last night, nor those
of the children whom he has begotten and brought up. For by a cruel will he
cuts off his own flesh and blood and leaves all his estate to Phiale--so potent
was the breath of that alluring mouth which had plied its trade for so many years
in her narrow archway.
And
though the powers of his mind be strong as ever, yet must he carry forth his
sons to burial; he must behold the funeral pyres of his beloved wife and his
brothers, and urns filled with the ashes of his sisters. Such are the penalties
of the long liver: he sees calamity after calamity befall his house, he lives
in a world of sorrow, he grows old amid continual lamentation and in the garb
of woe. If we can believe mighty Homer, the King of Pylos was an example of
long life second only to the crow; happy forsooth in this that he had put off
death for so many generations, and had so often quaffed the new-made wine,
counting now his years upon his right hand. But mark for a moment, I beg, how
he bewails the decrees of fate and his too-long thread of life, when he beholds
the beard of his brave Antilochus in the flames, and asks of every friend
around him why he has lived so long, what crime he has committed to deserve
such length of days. Thus did Peleus also mourn when he lost Achilles; and so
that other father who had to bewail the sea-roving Ithacan. Had Priam perished
at some other time, before Paris began to build his audacious ships, he would
have gone down to the shade of Assaracus when Troy was still standing, and with
regal pomp; his body would have been borne on the shoulders ot Hector and his
brothers amid the tears of Ilion's daughters, and the rending of Polyxena's
garments: Cassandra would have led the cries of woe. What boon did length of
days bring to him? He saw everything in ruins, and Asia perishing by fire and
the sword. Laying aside his tiara, and arming himself, he fell, a trembling
soldier, before the altar of Almighty Jove, like an aged ox discarded by the
thankless plough who offers his poor lean neck to his master's knife. Priam's
death was at least that of a human being; but his wife lived on to open her
mouth with the savage barking of a dog.
I
hasten to our own countrymen, passing by the king of Pontus and Croesus, who
was bidden by the wise and eloquent Solon to look to the last lap of a long
life. It was this that brought Marius to exile and to prison, it took him to
the swamps of Minturnae and made him beg his bread in the Carthage that he had
conquered. What could Nature ever in all the world have produced more glorious
than him, if after parading his troops of captives with all the pomp of war he
had breathed forth his soul in glory as he was about to step down from his
Teutonic car? 38 Kindly Campania gave to Pompey a fever, which he might have
prayed for as a boon; but the public prayers of all those cities gained the
day; so his own fortune and that of Rome preserved him to be vanquished and to
lose his head. No such cruel thing befell Lentulus; Cethegus escaped such
punishment and fell whole; and Catiline's corpse lay unviolated.
When
the loving mother passes the temple of Venus, she prays in whispered breath for
her boys--more loudly, and entering into the most trifling particulars, for her
daughters--that they may have beauty. "And why should I not?" she
asks; "did not Latona rejoice in Diana's beauty?" Yes: but Lucretia
forbids us to pray for a face like her own; and Verginia would gladly take
Rutila's hump and give her own fair form to Rutila. A handsome son keeps his
parents in constant fear and misery; so rarely do modesty and good looks go
together. For though his home be strict, and have taught him ways as pure as
those of the ancient Sabines, and though Nature besides with kindly hand have
lavishly gifted him with a pure mind and a cheek mantling with modest
blood--and what better thing can Nature, more careful, more potent than any
guardian, bestow upon a youth?--he will not be allowed to become a man. The
lavish wickedness of some seducer will tempt the boy's own parents: such trust
can be placed in money! No misshapen youth was ever unsexed by cruel tyrant in
his castle; never did Nero have a bandy-legged or scrofulous favourite, or one
that was hump-backed or pot-bellied!
Go to
now, you that revel in your son's beauty; think of the deadly perils that lie
before him. He will become a promiscuous gallant, and have to fear all the
vengeance due to outraged husbands; no luckier than Mars, he will not fail to
fall into the net. And sometimes the husband's wrath exacts greater penalties
than any law allows: one lover is slain by the sword, another bleeds under the
lash; some undergo the punishment of the mullet. Your dear Endymion will become
the gallant of some matron whom he loves; but before long, when Servilia has
taken him into her pay, he will serve one also whom he loves not, and will
strip her of all her ornaments; for what can any woman, be she an Oppia or a
Catulla, deny to the man who serves her passion? It is on her passion that a
bad woman's whole nature centres. "But how does beauty hurt the
chaste?" you ask. Well, what availed Hippolytus or Bellerophon their firm
resolve? The Cretan lady flared up as though repelled with scorn; no less
furious was Stheneboea. Both dames lashed themselves into fury; for never is
woman so savage as when her hatred is goaded on by shame.
And
now tell me what counsel you think should be given to him whom Caesar's wife is
minded to wed. Best and fairest of a patrician house, the unhappy youth is
dragged to destruction by Messalina's eyes. She has long been seated; her
bridal veil is ready; the Tyrian nuptial couch is being spread openly in the
gardens; a dowry of one million sesterces will be given after the ancient
fashion, the soothsayer and the witnesses will be there. And you thought these
things were secret, did you, known only to a few? But the lady will not wed
save with all the due forms. Say what is your resolve: if you say nay to her,
you will have to perish before the lighting of the lamps; if you perpetrate the
crime, you will have a brief respite until the affair, known already to the
city and the people, shall come to the Prince's ears; he will be the last to
know of the dishonour of his house. Meanwhile, if you value a few days of life
so highly, obey your orders: whatever you may deem the easier and the better
way, that fair white neck of yours will have to be offered to the sword.
Is
there nothing then for which men shall pray? If you ask my counsel, you will
leave it to the gods themselves to provide what is good for us, and what will
be serviceable for our state; for, in place of what is pleasing, they will give
us what is best. Man is dearer to them than he is to himself. Impelled by
strong and blind desire, we ask for wife and offspring; but the gods know ot
what sort the sons, of what sort the wife, will be. Nevertheless that you may
have something to pray for, and be able to offer to the shrines entrails and
presaging sausages from a white porker, you should pray for a sound mind in a
sound body; for a stout heart that has no fear of death, and deems length of
days the least of Nature's gifts; that can endure any kind of toil; that knows
neither wrath nor desire, and thinks that the woes and hard labours of Hercules
are better than the loves and the banquets and the down cushions of
Sardanapalus. What I commend to you, you can give to yourself; for it is
assuredly through virtue that lies the one and only road to a life of peace.
Thou wouldst have no divinity, O Fortune, if we had but wisdom; it is we that
make a goddess of thee, and place thee in the skies.
