{"id":69,"date":"2017-06-24T20:36:23","date_gmt":"2017-06-24T20:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/chapter\/satires-i-ii\/"},"modified":"2017-06-24T20:36:23","modified_gmt":"2017-06-24T20:36:23","slug":"satires-i-ii","status":"web-only","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/chapter\/satires-i-ii\/","title":{"raw":"Satires I & II","rendered":"Satires I & II"},"content":{"raw":"Satire I: A Justification<\/strong> \u00a0 SatI:1-18 Unbearable Stuff!\n\n\u00a0\n\nMust I be a listener forever? Never reply,\n\nTortured so often by throaty Cordus\u2019s Theseus<\/em>?\n\nMust I let this fellow recite his Roman comedies,\n\nUnpunished, and that one his elegies? Unpunished,\n\nConsuming my whole day on some endless Telephus<\/em>,\n\nOr unfinished Orestes<\/em>, the cover full and the margins?\n\nA man knows his own house less well than I know\n\nThe grove of Mars or that cave of Vulcan\u2019s right by\n\nThe Aeolian cliffs; what the winds do, which shade\n\nAeacus torments, where he<\/em>\u2019s from, he with the golden\n\nStolen fleece, how big that ash tree Monychus hurled \u2013\n\nFronto\u2019s plane-trees, cracked marble, and columns\n\nFractured by non-stop readings, ring with this stuff.\n\nExpect the same, then, from this best and worst of poets.\n\nI too have snatched my hand out of reach of the cane,\n\nI too have given old Sulla \u2018good advice\u2019: get lost, enjoy\n\nA good rest. It\u2019s false mercy, when you trip over poets\n\nEverywhere, to spare the paper they\u2019re all ready to waste.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatI:19-44 Why Choose Satire?\n\n\u00a0\n\nWhy I still choose to go driving over the very plain\n\nWhere Lucilius the great, from Aurunca, steered his team,\n\nI\u2019ll explain, if you\u2019ve time to hear my reasons, quietly.\n\nWhen a tender eunuch takes him a wife; when Mevia\n\nFights a Tuscan boar, with bare breasts, gripping the spear;\n\nWhen a fellow can match all the aristocrats in wealth,\n\nWho made me cry with pain when he used to shave me;\n\nWhen a pleb from the Nile, when a slave from Canopus,\n\nOne Crispinus, hitching his Tyrian cloak on his shoulder,\n\nWafts the gold of summer about on his sweaty fingers,\n\nSimply unable to suffer the dreadful weight of a gem;\n\nIt\u2019s hard not to write satire! For who\u2019s so tolerant of Rome\u2019s\n\nIniquities, so made of steel they can contain themselves\n\nWhen along comes that lawyer Matho\u2019s brand new litter,\n\nFull of himself; behind, one who informed on a powerful\n\nFriend, ready to steal any scraps from the noble carcase,\n\nWhom Massa the stool-pigeon fears, and Carus sweetens\n\nWith gifts, like Thymele, in the farce, fed by fearful Latinus;\n\nWhen you\u2019re shoved by men who earn a place in the will\n\nBy night, men raised to the gods by the wide road now\n\nTo highest advancement, by a rich old woman\u2019s \u2018purse\u2019?\n\nTo Proculeius just one twelfth share, but to Gillo eleven,\n\nEach heir gets the portion that matches their performance.\n\nMay they turn truly pale as they snatch their blood-money,\n\nLike a man with bare feet who\u2019s stepped on a snake,\n\nOr the next loser to speak, at Caligula\u2019s altar in Lyon.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatI:45-80 It\u2019s a Litany of Crime\n\n\u00a0\n\nHow can I describe the fierce anger burning my fevered gut,\n\nWhen people are crushed by the herd behind some despoiler\n\nWho prostituted his ward, or one found guilty in a wasteful\n\nTrial? How could disgrace matter if the money\u2019s safe?\n\nMarius Priscus, in exile, drinks all afternoon, enjoying\n\nThe gods\u2019 displeasure, while you, the dutiful winner, weep.\n\nIsn\u2019t that worth shining a light on, one lit by old Horace?\n\nIsn\u2019t that my task? What better? No dull tales of Hercules,\n\nPlease, or Diomedes, or that bellowing in the labyrinth,\n\nOr the sea struck by the wing-wrecked son of a flying artisan,\n\nWhen a husband accepts a wife\u2019s lover\u2019s gifts, and no law\n\nAgainst her cheating: expert now at staring up at the ceiling,\n\nAn expert too at snoring over his cup through vigilant nose?\n\nWhen someone who\u2019s lavished his wealth on the horses, blown\n\nThe family fortune, thinks he\u2019s the right to expect a command,\n\nJust for racing his speeding chariot down the Flaminian Way,\n\nLike some puny Automedon? Yes, he was clutching the reins,\n\nHimself, while showing off to his girlfriend, her in the cloak.\n\nSurely I\u2019m allowed to fill a fat notebook at the crossroads\n\nWhen they carry past, on six shoulders, no less, some false\n\nSignatory, exhibited, this side and that, in his almost bare\n\nLitter, one, strongly resembling the effeminate Maecenas,\n\nWho\u2019s made himself distinguished and rich with the aid\n\nOf a brief roll of paper, and a moist signet ring?\n\nWhen a powerful lady is next, who mixes in dried toad\u2019s\n\nVenom, while offering her husband mellow Calenian wine,\n\nImproves on Lucusta, by teaching her simple neighbours\n\nHow to bury their skin-blotched husbands to public acclaim.\n\nIf you want to be someone, do something worthy of prison,\n\nExile on tiny Gyara \u2013 the honest are praised, but neglected.\n\nIt\u2019s crime brings the gardens, mansions, elaborate dinners,\n\nOld silver plate, and those drinking-cups carved with goats.\n\nWho can sleep, for seducers of greedy daughters-in-law,\n\nWho can sleep, for impure brides and teenage adulterers?\n\nIf talent is lacking, then indignation can fashion my verse,\n\nOf such kind as poets like me, or Cluvenius, produce.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatI:81-126 And All About Money\n\n\u00a0\n\nSince the days when a rainstorm raised the water-level,\n\nAnd Deucalion sailed mountains by boat, asked a sign,\n\nAnd the malleable stone was gradually warmed to life,\n\nAnd Pyrrha displayed newly-created girls to the men,\n\nWhat humankind does, its prayers, fears, angers, and pleasures,\n\nDelights and excursions, all that farrago\u2019s in my little book.\n\nAnd when was the flow of vice fuller? When did the palm\n\nOpen wider to greed? When did gambling arouse greater\n\nPassion? See, they don\u2019t flock to the gaming tables now\n\nWith their purses: they place the family treasure and play.\n\nWhat battles you\u2019ll see there, the croupier bringing forth\n\nWarriors! It\u2019s quite mad to go losing a hundred thousand,\n\nSurely, and yet to begrudge a shirt to a shivering slave?\n\nWho of our ancestors built such villas, dined in private\n\nOn seven courses? Now the paltry handout-basket sits\n\nOn the doorstep, snatched at by a toga-clad mob,\n\nAs the patron first takes a nervous look at the faces,\n\nLest they\u2019ve come to make false claim in another\u2019s name:\n\nKnown, and you\u2019re in. He even instructs the herald to call\n\nThe \u2018Trojan\u2019 elite, they too vex the threshold among us\n\nAll. \u2018Give first to the praetor, and then to the tribune.\u2019\n\nBut a freedman is first. \u2018I was the first, here.\u2019 he says.\n\n\u2018Why should I fear, why should I hesitate, though I was\n\nBorn by Euphrates? The effeminate holes in my ears\n\nWould proclaim it, if I denied it. Yet my five taverns\n\nBring in four hundred thousand, what more can the purple\n\nProvide? While some Corvinus herds his leased sheep\n\nThere, in Laurentine fields, I possess more than Pallas\n\nMore than Licinus?\u2019 Well, let the tribunes wait, then,\n\nLet cash be the conqueror; let the slave just arrived here,\n\nWith chalk-whitened feet, not yield to high office;\n\nAfter all, among us, the greatness of riches is sacred,\n\nThough fatal Pecunia (Cash) has no temple as yet\n\nTo dwell in, and as yet we\u2019ve set up no altars to money,\n\nAs we worship now, Peace, Loyalty, Victory, Virtue,\n\nOr Concord, with clatter of storks when we hail her.\n\nBut while the highest official reckons at year-end\n\nWhat the handouts brought in, how much added fat,\n\nWhat will his clients do for their togas and shoes,\n\nBread and fuel at home? Jam-packed the litters arrive\n\nFor their hundred pence, a wife who\u2019s pregnant or sick\n\nFollows a husband doing the rounds, a craftier man\n\nPlays the old trick, claims for his wife in her absence,\n\nPointing instead to an empty, close-curtained sedan,\n\n\u2018There\u2019s my Galla,\u2019 he cries, \u2018quick now, why the delay?\n\nShow your face, Galla.\u2019 \u2018No need, she might be asleep.\u2019\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatI:127-146 The Reward of Greed\n\n\u00a0\n\nThe very day is distinguished by splendid things:\n\nThe handout, then the Forum, Apollo expert in law,\n\nAnd the insignia, among which some customs-man\n\nOut of Egypt, a nobody, dares to display his titles,\n\nOn whose statue it\u2019s fine to take not merely a piss.\n\nAged and weary his clients abandon the forecourts,\n\nRelinquish their aims; since the hope of eating lasts\n\nLongest in man, they must buy firewood and greens.\n\nMeanwhile his lordship is dining on all of the best\n\nProduce of forest and sea, himself, amid empty couches.\n\nNow at their table, one of those lovely large round\n\nAntique ones, these people consume a whole fortune.\n\nSoon there\u2019ll be no parasites left. Who can bear\n\nSuch vulgar luxury? What a monstrous maw that feeds\n\nOn a whole wild boar, a creature that\u2019s fit for a banquet!\n\nThere\u2019s swift punishment though, when bloated you doff\n\nYour cloak, and go for a bath, with a part-digested peacock\n\nInside. Then for the old it\u2019s death, intestate and sudden.\n\nThe news is passed round at dinner, with never a tear;\n\nAnd the funeral\u2019s performed to the cheers of irate friends.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatI:147-171 The Dangers of Satire\n\n\u00a0\n\nPosterity will need to add nothing to how we behave,\n\nOur children will do and desire exactly the same;\n\nAll depravity stands at the edge of a chasm. Set sail,\n\nSpread all your canvas. Perhaps you\u2019ll say \u2018Where\n\nIs the power to match your subject? Where will you find\n\nThe frankness of those who wrote as they chose\n\nWith passionate spirit?\u2019 Well who do I dare not name?\n\nWhat matter if Mucius could never forgive my words?\n\n\u2018Well, try Tigellinus, and you\u2019ll be the flame to his torch\n\nThat scorches men upright, their bound throats smoking,\n\nAnd score a wide track with your corpse over the sand.\u2019\n\nDo I let him ride by, then, that man who\u2019s poisoned three\n\nOf his uncles, and despise us from his feather cushions?\n\n\u2018Yes, button your lip, instead, when he sallies by:\n\nIf you even say: \u2018that\u2019s him\u2019, you\u2019ll be marked, an informer.\n\nIt\u2019s fine to pit pious Aeneas against the fierce Rutulian,\n\nThere\u2019s no problem with old Achilles pierced by a shaft,\n\nOr a Hylas, chasing his pitcher, searched for by many:\n\nBut when fiery Lucilius roars as if waving his naked\n\nBlade, the hearer whose criminal mind is long-frozen,\n\nReddens and sweats, his conscience new-stricken by guilt.\n\nThen, there\u2019ll be anger and tears. So think about it first,\n\nBefore you go sounding your trumpet: too late to regret\n\nArming when you\u2019re at war.\u2019 Then I\u2019ll see what they can do\n\nTo me, whose ashes the Via Latina and Via Flaminia shroud.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatire II: <\/strong>Effeminate Rome<\/strong> \u00a0 SatII:1-35 Put no Trust in Appearances\n\nI\u2019d like to flee this place, go far beyond the Sarmatians and icy\n\nOcean, while those who pretend to the Curii\u2019s virtue, but live\n\nLike Bacchanals, have the gall to preach to us of morality.\n\nLesson one: they\u2019re ignorant, though their houses you\u2019ll find\n\nFilled with plaster busts of Chrysippus; for the most perfect\n\nIs he who\u2019s bought the most lifelike Aristotle, or Pittacus,\n\nAnd ordered an antique Cleanthes to watch over his bookcase.\n\nPut no trust in appearances; after all isn\u2019t every street packed\n\nWith sad-looking perverts? How can you castigate sin, when you\n\nYourself are the most notorious of all the Socratic sodomite holes?\n\nThough hairy members, and those stiff bristles all over your arms,\n\nPromise a rough approach, your arse turns out to be smooth enough\n\nWhen the smiling doctor lances away at your swollen piles.\n\nFew words and a marked urge for silence is what they possess,\n\nHair cut shorter than their eyebrows. Peribomius the pathic\u2019s\n\nMore open and honest than they; who admits his affliction\n\nIn his looks and his walk, all of which I attribute to fate.\n\nThe vulnerability of such is pitiful, and their passion itself\n\nDeserves our forgiveness; far worse, are those who attack them\n\nWith Herculean rectitude, and waggle their bottoms while\n\nTalking of virtue. \u2018How can I respect you, Sextus, when I see\n\nYou wiggling your arse:\u2019 cries notorious Varillus, \u2018who\u2019s better?\u2019\n\nThe upright should scorn to limp, and white counter the black.\n\nWhere\u2019s the sense in the Gracchi carping about revolution?\n\nHow could sky not be confounded with land, sea with sky,\n\nShould Verrus the thief object to stealing, or Milo to murder,\n\nShould Clodius condem adultery, Catiline his ally Cethegus,\n\nShould Sulla\u2019s Triumvirate, his disciples, jib at his death-list.\n\nThat\u2019s how Domitian, that recent adulterer, behaved, defiled\n\nBy a fatal union, he who revived such bitter laws in his day,\n\nTo terrify everyone, even the deities, even Venus and Mars,\n\nWhile Julia, his niece, ditched the contents of her ripe womb\n\nWith abortifacients, and shed lumps resembling her uncle.\n\nIs it not just then and right, when the extremes of depravity\n\nSneer at every false Scaurus, and bite back when castigated?\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatII:36-63 Hypocritical Adulterers\n\n\u00a0\n\nLaronia, the adulteress, couldn\u2019t abide that grim individual\n\nForever shouting: \u2018Whose bed now, you breaker of Julian law?\u2019\n\nGrimacing she said: \u2018O happy age, that set you on to carp at\n\nOur morals. Let Rome be ashamed now, a third Cato falls\n\nFrom\u00a0 the sky! But just as a matter of interest where did you buy\n\nThe essence of balsam that wafts from your hairy neck?\n\nDon\u2019t hesitate to tell us who owns the shop it came from.\n\nIf it\u2019s a matter of quoting neglected laws and statutes, cite\n\nThe Scantinian laws before all the rest, men and not women\n\nScrutinise first: they behave worse, but then they have safety\n\nIn numbers, united behind their phalanx of close-linked shields.\n\nGreat is the union of effeminates, nor will you find\n\nSo detestable an example set by any one of our sex.\n\nTedia never licks Cluvia, Flora is never all over Catulla,\n\nBut Hispo yields to young men and gets sick both ways.\n\nWe never plead cases, do we? Is it we who learn civil law?\n\nWhen do we disturb your courts by making an uproar?\n\nThere aren\u2019t many women wrestlers, girls on an athlete\u2019s diet.\n\nBut you men tease the wool, and draw back the finished fleece\n\nIn its basket, you tweak the spindle pregnant with finest thread\n\nMore deftly than ever Penelope did, more cleverly than Arachne,\n\nMore than any dishevelled mistress does, as she sits on the chest.\n\nWhy Hister had made provision for his freedman alone in his will,\n\nIs well-known, why he gifted his wife so much while he lived.\n\nShe who sleeps third in a bed will end up wealthy.\n\nMarry, and be quiet: secrets garner cylinder-seals.\n\nAnd after all that, do you dare sentence us as guilty?\n\nAcquit the ravens, and bring censure on the doves?\u2019\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatII:64-81 Hypocritical Aristocrats\n\n\u00a0\n\nAs she uttered a manifest truth the quivering Stoics\n\nFled; was there any one thing Laronia said that was false?\n\nBut what should women do when you dress in muslin,\n\nCreticus, while people stare at your clothes, as you rail\n\nAt Procula and Pellita? Let Fabulla be an adulteress,\n\nFind even Carfinia guilty if you like: guilty as she is,\n\nShe won\u2019t dress in a toga! \u2018But it\u2019s hot this July, I\u2019m\n\nBoiling.\u2019 Then go naked: even madness is far less vile.\n\nBehold what you wear, when citing laws and statutes,\n\nTo a victorious people, one with its wounds still raw,\n\nOr mountain folk who are just come from the plough!\n\nHow you would protest if you caught a judge wearing\n\nSuch clothes! I doubt muslin\u2019s decent even for witnesses.\n\nYou fierce indomitable champion of liberty, Creticus,\n\nYou\u2019re so transparent. This stain is contagious and so\n\nWill spread further, just as the whole herd of swine dies\n\nIn the field, because of the mange and scab on a single pig.\n\nJust as a grape becomes tainted by touching another grape.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatII:82-116 Those In the Closet\n\n\u00a0\n\nSome day you\u2019ll dare something worse than that clothing;\n\nNo one\u2019s wholly corrupted overnight. Little by little,\n\nYou\u2019ll be received by those who, at home, in private, wear\n\nWide bands on their brow, necks all decked out in jewellery,\n\nAnd placate the Good Goddess, like women, with a bowl of wine\n\nAnd a young sow\u2019s udder. But, in a change to the usual rule,\n\nWomen are challenged afar, and turned from the threshold,\n\nThe goddess\u2019s altar open to men alone. \u2018Hence, you profane ones,\u2019\n\nThey cry, \u2018no flute-playing girl with her mellow pipe here.\u2019\n\nSuch secret rites were performed to torchlight, the Baptae\n\nAccustomed to tiring the goddess, Cecropian Cotyto.\n\nOne man has blackened his eyebrows, moistened with soot,\n\nExtends them with slanting pencil, and flutters his eyelids,\n\nWhile applying the make-up; another drinks from a phallus-\n\nShaped glass, his bouffant hair filling a gilded hair-net,\n\nDressed in a chequered blue or a yellow-green satin,\n\nWhile the master\u2019s servant swears by the feminine Juno.\n\nOne holds a mirror, the pathic Otho\u2019s constant companion,\n\n\u2018The spoils of Auruncian Actor\u2019 (Virgil), in which he used\n\nTo admire himself armed, as he issued the order for battle.\n\nIt\u2019s worth noting in modern annals, and current histories:\n\nA mirror was essential equipment to raise civil war.\n\nIt\u2019s the mark of a supreme general, of course, to kill Galba\n\nWhile powdering your nose, the maximum self-possession\n\nShown on Bebriacum\u2019s field, to aspire to the Palatine throne\n\nWhile your fingers plaster your face with a mask of dough,\n\nWhat not even Semiramis, the archer, in her Assyrian city,\n\nTried, nor Cleopatra, in grief, in her flagship, at Actium.\n\nHere there\u2019s no shame in their language, or reverence at table,\n\nHere is Cybele\u2019s foulness, the freedom to speak in a woman\u2019s\n\nVoice, and an old fanatical white-haired man who\u2019s the priest\n\nOf the rites, a rare and memorable example, an enormous\n\nThroat, a gluttonous specimen, an expert well worth his hire.\n\nWhy are they waiting? Isn\u2019t it time already to use their knives,\n\nTo carve their superfluous flesh in the Phrygian manner?\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatII:117-148 And Those Out of It\n\n\u00a0\n\nGracchus has given a dowry of four thousand gold pieces\n\nFor a horn-player, or one perhaps who plays the straight pipe;\n\nThe contract\u2019s witnessed, \u2018felicitations!\u2019, a whole crowd\n\nAsked to the feast, the \u2018bride\u2019 reclines in the husband\u2019s lap.\n\nO, you princes, is it a censor we need, or a prophet of doom?\n\nWould you find it more terrible, think it more monstrous\n\nTruly, if a woman gave birth to a calf, or a cow to a lamb?\n\nHe\u2019s wearing brocade, the long full dress, and the veil,\n\nHe who bore the sacred objects tied to the mystic thong,\n\nSweating under the weight of shields. O, Romulus, Father\n\nOf Rome, why has this evil touched the shepherds of Latium?\n\nWhere is it from, this sting that hurts your descendants, Mars?\n\nCan you see a man noted for birth, wealth, wed to another man,\n\nAnd your spear not beat the ground, your helmet stay firm,\n\nAnd no complaint to the Father? Away then, forsake the stern\n\nCampus\u2019s acres, you neglect now. \u2018I\u2019ve a ceremony to attend\n\nAt dawn, tomorrow, down in the vale of Quirinus.\u2019 \u2018Why\u2019s that?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why? Oh, a friend of mine\u2019s marrying a male lover of his:\n\nHe\u2019s asked a few guests.\u2019 Live a while, and we\u2019ll see it happen,\n\nThey\u2019ll do it openly, want it reported as news in the daily gazette.\n\nMeanwhile there\u2019s one huge fact that torments these brides,\n\nThat they can\u2019t give birth, and by that hang on to their husbands.\n\nBut it\u2019s better that Nature grants their minds little power over\n\nTheir bodies: barren, they die; with her secret medicine chest,\n\nSwollen Lyde\u2019s no use, nor a blow from the agile Luperci.\n\nYet Gracchus beats even this outrage, in tunic, with trident,\n\nA gladiator, circling the sand, as he flits about the arena:\n\nHe\u2019s nobler in birth than the Marcelli, or the Capitolini,\n\nThan the scions of Catulus and Paulus, or the Fabii,\n\nThan all the front-row spectators, including Himself,\n\nThe one who staged that show with the nets and tridents.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatII:149-170 Rome\u2019s a Disgrace!\n\n\u00a0\n\nThat ghosts exist at all, or the realms of the Underworld,\n\nCocytus, and the whirl of black frogs in the Styx,\n\nOr all those thousands crossing the flood in one boat,\n\nNot even children believe, unless wet behind the ears.\n\nBut suppose it were true: what would the shade of Curius feel,\n\nWhat of the shades of the Scipios, of Fabricius or Camillus?\n\nWhat of the legion at Cremera, the young men ruined at Cannae,\n\nThe dead of all those wars, what would they feel when a ghost\n\nDescended from here? They\u2019d desire purification, if they had\n\nThere, the sulphur, the flaming torches, and the moist laurel.\n\nDown there, alas, we\u2019d be paraded in shame. We may have\n\nSent troops beyond Ireland\u2019s shores, and recently captured\n\nThe Orkneys, beaten the Britons familiar with midnight suns,\n\nBut the nations we\u2019ve defeated don\u2019t get up to what people\n\nGet up to now, in victorious Rome. \u2018Yet nevertheless one\n\nZalaces, they say, an Armenian lad, more effeminate than all\n\nThe rest of the boys, gave himself to a passionate tribune.\u2019\n\nLook what foreign trade yields: he came here as a hostage,\n\nWe make them men of the world, if such boys stay longer\n\nAdopting Roman ways, they\u2019ll never lack lovers, doffing\n\nTheir breeches, and little knives, their bridles and whips.\n\nThose are the teenage ways they\u2019ll take home to Armenia.","rendered":"

Satire I: A Justification<\/strong> \u00a0 SatI:1-18 Unbearable Stuff!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Must I be a listener forever? Never reply,<\/p>\n

Tortured so often by throaty Cordus\u2019s Theseus<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Must I let this fellow recite his Roman comedies,<\/p>\n

Unpunished, and that one his elegies? Unpunished,<\/p>\n

Consuming my whole day on some endless Telephus<\/em>,<\/p>\n

Or unfinished Orestes<\/em>, the cover full and the margins?<\/p>\n

A man knows his own house less well than I know<\/p>\n

The grove of Mars or that cave of Vulcan\u2019s right by<\/p>\n

The Aeolian cliffs; what the winds do, which shade<\/p>\n

Aeacus torments, where he<\/em>\u2019s from, he with the golden<\/p>\n

Stolen fleece, how big that ash tree Monychus hurled \u2013<\/p>\n

Fronto\u2019s plane-trees, cracked marble, and columns<\/p>\n

Fractured by non-stop readings, ring with this stuff.<\/p>\n

Expect the same, then, from this best and worst of poets.<\/p>\n

I too have snatched my hand out of reach of the cane,<\/p>\n

I too have given old Sulla \u2018good advice\u2019: get lost, enjoy<\/p>\n

A good rest. It\u2019s false mercy, when you trip over poets<\/p>\n

Everywhere, to spare the paper they\u2019re all ready to waste.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SatI:19-44 Why Choose Satire?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why I still choose to go driving over the very plain<\/p>\n

Where Lucilius the great, from Aurunca, steered his team,<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll explain, if you\u2019ve time to hear my reasons, quietly.<\/p>\n

When a tender eunuch takes him a wife; when Mevia<\/p>\n

Fights a Tuscan boar, with bare breasts, gripping the spear;<\/p>\n

When a fellow can match all the aristocrats in wealth,<\/p>\n

Who made me cry with pain when he used to shave me;<\/p>\n

When a pleb from the Nile, when a slave from Canopus,<\/p>\n

One Crispinus, hitching his Tyrian cloak on his shoulder,<\/p>\n

Wafts the gold of summer about on his sweaty fingers,<\/p>\n

Simply unable to suffer the dreadful weight of a gem;<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to write satire! For who\u2019s so tolerant of Rome\u2019s<\/p>\n

Iniquities, so made of steel they can contain themselves<\/p>\n

When along comes that lawyer Matho\u2019s brand new litter,<\/p>\n

Full of himself; behind, one who informed on a powerful<\/p>\n

Friend, ready to steal any scraps from the noble carcase,<\/p>\n

Whom Massa the stool-pigeon fears, and Carus sweetens<\/p>\n

With gifts, like Thymele, in the farce, fed by fearful Latinus;<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re shoved by men who earn a place in the will<\/p>\n

By night, men raised to the gods by the wide road now<\/p>\n

To highest advancement, by a rich old woman\u2019s \u2018purse\u2019?<\/p>\n

To Proculeius just one twelfth share, but to Gillo eleven,<\/p>\n

Each heir gets the portion that matches their performance.<\/p>\n

May they turn truly pale as they snatch their blood-money,<\/p>\n

Like a man with bare feet who\u2019s stepped on a snake,<\/p>\n

Or the next loser to speak, at Caligula\u2019s altar in Lyon.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SatI:45-80 It\u2019s a Litany of Crime<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

How can I describe the fierce anger burning my fevered gut,<\/p>\n

When people are crushed by the herd behind some despoiler<\/p>\n

Who prostituted his ward, or one found guilty in a wasteful<\/p>\n

Trial? How could disgrace matter if the money\u2019s safe?<\/p>\n

Marius Priscus, in exile, drinks all afternoon, enjoying<\/p>\n

The gods\u2019 displeasure, while you, the dutiful winner, weep.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t that worth shining a light on, one lit by old Horace?<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t that my task? What better? No dull tales of Hercules,<\/p>\n

Please, or Diomedes, or that bellowing in the labyrinth,<\/p>\n

Or the sea struck by the wing-wrecked son of a flying artisan,<\/p>\n

When a husband accepts a wife\u2019s lover\u2019s gifts, and no law<\/p>\n

Against her cheating: expert now at staring up at the ceiling,<\/p>\n

An expert too at snoring over his cup through vigilant nose?<\/p>\n

When someone who\u2019s lavished his wealth on the horses, blown<\/p>\n

The family fortune, thinks he\u2019s the right to expect a command,<\/p>\n

Just for racing his speeding chariot down the Flaminian Way,<\/p>\n

Like some puny Automedon? Yes, he was clutching the reins,<\/p>\n

Himself, while showing off to his girlfriend, her in the cloak.<\/p>\n

Surely I\u2019m allowed to fill a fat notebook at the crossroads<\/p>\n

When they carry past, on six shoulders, no less, some false<\/p>\n

Signatory, exhibited, this side and that, in his almost bare<\/p>\n

Litter, one, strongly resembling the effeminate Maecenas,<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s made himself distinguished and rich with the aid<\/p>\n

Of a brief roll of paper, and a moist signet ring?<\/p>\n

When a powerful lady is next, who mixes in dried toad\u2019s<\/p>\n

Venom, while offering her husband mellow Calenian wine,<\/p>\n

Improves on Lucusta, by teaching her simple neighbours<\/p>\n

How to bury their skin-blotched husbands to public acclaim.<\/p>\n

If you want to be someone, do something worthy of prison,<\/p>\n

Exile on tiny Gyara \u2013 the honest are praised, but neglected.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s crime brings the gardens, mansions, elaborate dinners,<\/p>\n

Old silver plate, and those drinking-cups carved with goats.<\/p>\n

Who can sleep, for seducers of greedy daughters-in-law,<\/p>\n

Who can sleep, for impure brides and teenage adulterers?<\/p>\n

If talent is lacking, then indignation can fashion my verse,<\/p>\n

Of such kind as poets like me, or Cluvenius, produce.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SatI:81-126 And All About Money<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since the days when a rainstorm raised the water-level,<\/p>\n

And Deucalion sailed mountains by boat, asked a sign,<\/p>\n

And the malleable stone was gradually warmed to life,<\/p>\n

And Pyrrha displayed newly-created girls to the men,<\/p>\n

What humankind does, its prayers, fears, angers, and pleasures,<\/p>\n

Delights and excursions, all that farrago\u2019s in my little book.<\/p>\n

And when was the flow of vice fuller? When did the palm<\/p>\n

Open wider to greed? When did gambling arouse greater<\/p>\n

Passion? See, they don\u2019t flock to the gaming tables now<\/p>\n

With their purses: they place the family treasure and play.<\/p>\n

What battles you\u2019ll see there, the croupier bringing forth<\/p>\n

Warriors! It\u2019s quite mad to go losing a hundred thousand,<\/p>\n

Surely, and yet to begrudge a shirt to a shivering slave?<\/p>\n

Who of our ancestors built such villas, dined in private<\/p>\n

On seven courses? Now the paltry handout-basket sits<\/p>\n

On the doorstep, snatched at by a toga-clad mob,<\/p>\n

As the patron first takes a nervous look at the faces,<\/p>\n

Lest they\u2019ve come to make false claim in another\u2019s name:<\/p>\n

Known, and you\u2019re in. He even instructs the herald to call<\/p>\n

The \u2018Trojan\u2019 elite, they too vex the threshold among us<\/p>\n

All. \u2018Give first to the praetor, and then to the tribune.\u2019<\/p>\n

But a freedman is first. \u2018I was the first, here.\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n

\u2018Why should I fear, why should I hesitate, though I was<\/p>\n

Born by Euphrates? The effeminate holes in my ears<\/p>\n

Would proclaim it, if I denied it. Yet my five taverns<\/p>\n

Bring in four hundred thousand, what more can the purple<\/p>\n

Provide? While some Corvinus herds his leased sheep<\/p>\n

There, in Laurentine fields, I possess more than Pallas<\/p>\n

More than Licinus?\u2019 Well, let the tribunes wait, then,<\/p>\n

Let cash be the conqueror; let the slave just arrived here,<\/p>\n

With chalk-whitened feet, not yield to high office;<\/p>\n

After all, among us, the greatness of riches is sacred,<\/p>\n

Though fatal Pecunia (Cash) has no temple as yet<\/p>\n

To dwell in, and as yet we\u2019ve set up no altars to money,<\/p>\n

As we worship now, Peace, Loyalty, Victory, Virtue,<\/p>\n

Or Concord, with clatter of storks when we hail her.<\/p>\n

But while the highest official reckons at year-end<\/p>\n

What the handouts brought in, how much added fat,<\/p>\n

What will his clients do for their togas and shoes,<\/p>\n

Bread and fuel at home? Jam-packed the litters arrive<\/p>\n

For their hundred pence, a wife who\u2019s pregnant or sick<\/p>\n

Follows a husband doing the rounds, a craftier man<\/p>\n

Plays the old trick, claims for his wife in her absence,<\/p>\n

Pointing instead to an empty, close-curtained sedan,<\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s my Galla,\u2019 he cries, \u2018quick now, why the delay?<\/p>\n

Show your face, Galla.\u2019 \u2018No need, she might be asleep.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SatI:127-146 The Reward of Greed<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The very day is distinguished by splendid things:<\/p>\n

The handout, then the Forum, Apollo expert in law,<\/p>\n

And the insignia, among which some customs-man<\/p>\n

Out of Egypt, a nobody, dares to display his titles,<\/p>\n

On whose statue it\u2019s fine to take not merely a piss.<\/p>\n

Aged and weary his clients abandon the forecourts,<\/p>\n

Relinquish their aims; since the hope of eating lasts<\/p>\n

Longest in man, they must buy firewood and greens.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile his lordship is dining on all of the best<\/p>\n

Produce of forest and sea, himself, amid empty couches.<\/p>\n

Now at their table, one of those lovely large round<\/p>\n

Antique ones, these people consume a whole fortune.<\/p>\n

Soon there\u2019ll be no parasites left. Who can bear<\/p>\n

Such vulgar luxury? What a monstrous maw that feeds<\/p>\n

On a whole wild boar, a creature that\u2019s fit for a banquet!<\/p>\n

There\u2019s swift punishment though, when bloated you doff<\/p>\n

Your cloak, and go for a bath, with a part-digested peacock<\/p>\n

Inside. Then for the old it\u2019s death, intestate and sudden.<\/p>\n

The news is passed round at dinner, with never a tear;<\/p>\n

And the funeral\u2019s performed to the cheers of irate friends.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SatI:147-171 The Dangers of Satire<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posterity will need to add nothing to how we behave,<\/p>\n

Our children will do and desire exactly the same;<\/p>\n

All depravity stands at the edge of a chasm. Set sail,<\/p>\n

Spread all your canvas. Perhaps you\u2019ll say \u2018Where<\/p>\n

Is the power to match your subject? Where will you find<\/p>\n

The frankness of those who wrote as they chose<\/p>\n

With passionate spirit?\u2019 Well who do I dare not name?<\/p>\n

What matter if Mucius could never forgive my words?<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, try Tigellinus, and you\u2019ll be the flame to his torch<\/p>\n

That scorches men upright, their bound throats smoking,<\/p>\n

And score a wide track with your corpse over the sand.\u2019<\/p>\n

Do I let him ride by, then, that man who\u2019s poisoned three<\/p>\n

Of his uncles, and despise us from his feather cushions?<\/p>\n

\u2018Yes, button your lip, instead, when he sallies by:<\/p>\n

If you even say: \u2018that\u2019s him\u2019, you\u2019ll be marked, an informer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fine to pit pious Aeneas against the fierce Rutulian,<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no problem with old Achilles pierced by a shaft,<\/p>\n

Or a Hylas, chasing his pitcher, searched for by many:<\/p>\n

But when fiery Lucilius roars as if waving his naked<\/p>\n

Blade, the hearer whose criminal mind is long-frozen,<\/p>\n

Reddens and sweats, his conscience new-stricken by guilt.<\/p>\n

Then, there\u2019ll be anger and tears. So think about it first,<\/p>\n

Before you go sounding your trumpet: too late to regret<\/p>\n

Arming when you\u2019re at war.\u2019 Then I\u2019ll see what they can do<\/p>\n

To me, whose ashes the Via Latina and Via Flaminia shroud.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Satire II: <\/strong>Effeminate Rome<\/strong> \u00a0 SatII:1-35 Put no Trust in Appearances<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to flee this place, go far beyond the Sarmatians and icy<\/p>\n

Ocean, while those who pretend to the Curii\u2019s virtue, but live<\/p>\n

Like Bacchanals, have the gall to preach to us of morality.<\/p>\n

Lesson one: they\u2019re ignorant, though their houses you\u2019ll find<\/p>\n

Filled with plaster busts of Chrysippus; for the most perfect<\/p>\n

Is he who\u2019s bought the most lifelike Aristotle, or Pittacus,<\/p>\n

And ordered an antique Cleanthes to watch over his bookcase.<\/p>\n

Put no trust in appearances; after all isn\u2019t every street packed<\/p>\n

With sad-looking perverts? How can you castigate sin, when you<\/p>\n

Yourself are the most notorious of all the Socratic sodomite holes?<\/p>\n

Though hairy members, and those stiff bristles all over your arms,<\/p>\n

Promise a rough approach, your arse turns out to be smooth enough<\/p>\n

When the smiling doctor lances away at your swollen piles.<\/p>\n

Few words and a marked urge for silence is what they possess,<\/p>\n

Hair cut shorter than their eyebrows. Peribomius the pathic\u2019s<\/p>\n

More open and honest than they; who admits his affliction<\/p>\n

In his looks and his walk, all of which I attribute to fate.<\/p>\n

The vulnerability of such is pitiful, and their passion itself<\/p>\n

Deserves our forgiveness; far worse, are those who attack them<\/p>\n

With Herculean rectitude, and waggle their bottoms while<\/p>\n

Talking of virtue. \u2018How can I respect you, Sextus, when I see<\/p>\n

You wiggling your arse:\u2019 cries notorious Varillus, \u2018who\u2019s better?\u2019<\/p>\n

The upright should scorn to limp, and white counter the black.<\/p>\n

Where\u2019s the sense in the Gracchi carping about revolution?<\/p>\n

How could sky not be confounded with land, sea with sky,<\/p>\n

Should Verrus the thief object to stealing, or Milo to murder,<\/p>\n

Should Clodius condem adultery, Catiline his ally Cethegus,<\/p>\n

Should Sulla\u2019s Triumvirate, his disciples, jib at his death-list.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Domitian, that recent adulterer, behaved, defiled<\/p>\n

By a fatal union, he who revived such bitter laws in his day,<\/p>\n

To terrify everyone, even the deities, even Venus and Mars,<\/p>\n

While Julia, his niece, ditched the contents of her ripe womb<\/p>\n

With abortifacients, and shed lumps resembling her uncle.<\/p>\n

Is it not just then and right, when the extremes of depravity<\/p>\n

Sneer at every false Scaurus, and bite back when castigated?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SatII:36-63 Hypocritical Adulterers<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Laronia, the adulteress, couldn\u2019t abide that grim individual<\/p>\n

Forever shouting: \u2018Whose bed now, you breaker of Julian law?\u2019<\/p>\n

Grimacing she said: \u2018O happy age, that set you on to carp at<\/p>\n

Our morals. Let Rome be ashamed now, a third Cato falls<\/p>\n

From\u00a0 the sky! But just as a matter of interest where did you buy<\/p>\n

The essence of balsam that wafts from your hairy neck?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t hesitate to tell us who owns the shop it came from.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s a matter of quoting neglected laws and statutes, cite<\/p>\n

The Scantinian laws before all the rest, men and not women<\/p>\n

Scrutinise first: they behave worse, but then they have safety<\/p>\n

In numbers, united behind their phalanx of close-linked shields.<\/p>\n

Great is the union of effeminates, nor will you find<\/p>\n

So detestable an example set by any one of our sex.<\/p>\n

Tedia never licks Cluvia, Flora is never all over Catulla,<\/p>\n

But Hispo yields to young men and gets sick both ways.<\/p>\n

We never plead cases, do we? Is it we who learn civil law?<\/p>\n

When do we disturb your courts by making an uproar?<\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t many women wrestlers, girls on an athlete\u2019s diet.<\/p>\n

But you men tease the wool, and draw back the finished fleece<\/p>\n

In its basket, you tweak the spindle pregnant with finest thread<\/p>\n

More deftly than ever Penelope did, more cleverly than Arachne,<\/p>\n

More than any dishevelled mistress does, as she sits on the chest.<\/p>\n

Why Hister had made provision for his freedman alone in his will,<\/p>\n

Is well-known, why he gifted his wife so much while he lived.<\/p>\n

She who sleeps third in a bed will end up wealthy.<\/p>\n

Marry, and be quiet: secrets garner cylinder-seals.<\/p>\n

And after all that, do you dare sentence us as guilty?<\/p>\n

Acquit the ravens, and bring censure on the doves?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SatII:64-81 Hypocritical Aristocrats<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As she uttered a manifest truth the quivering Stoics<\/p>\n

Fled; was there any one thing Laronia said that was false?<\/p>\n

But what should women do when you dress in muslin,<\/p>\n

Creticus, while people stare at your clothes, as you rail<\/p>\n

At Procula and Pellita? Let Fabulla be an adulteress,<\/p>\n

Find even Carfinia guilty if you like: guilty as she is,<\/p>\n

She won\u2019t dress in a toga! \u2018But it\u2019s hot this July, I\u2019m<\/p>\n

Boiling.\u2019 Then go naked: even madness is far less vile.<\/p>\n

Behold what you wear, when citing laws and statutes,<\/p>\n

To a victorious people, one with its wounds still raw,<\/p>\n

Or mountain folk who are just come from the plough!<\/p>\n

How you would protest if you caught a judge wearing<\/p>\n

Such clothes! I doubt muslin\u2019s decent even for witnesses.<\/p>\n

You fierce indomitable champion of liberty, Creticus,<\/p>\n

You\u2019re so transparent. This stain is contagious and so<\/p>\n

Will spread further, just as the whole herd of swine dies<\/p>\n

In the field, because of the mange and scab on a single pig.<\/p>\n

Just as a grape becomes tainted by touching another grape.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SatII:82-116 Those In the Closet<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some day you\u2019ll dare something worse than that clothing;<\/p>\n

No one\u2019s wholly corrupted overnight. Little by little,<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll be received by those who, at home, in private, wear<\/p>\n

Wide bands on their brow, necks all decked out in jewellery,<\/p>\n

And placate the Good Goddess, like women, with a bowl of wine<\/p>\n

And a young sow\u2019s udder. But, in a change to the usual rule,<\/p>\n

Women are challenged afar, and turned from the threshold,<\/p>\n

The goddess\u2019s altar open to men alone. \u2018Hence, you profane ones,\u2019<\/p>\n

They cry, \u2018no flute-playing girl with her mellow pipe here.\u2019<\/p>\n

Such secret rites were performed to torchlight, the Baptae<\/p>\n

Accustomed to tiring the goddess, Cecropian Cotyto.<\/p>\n

One man has blackened his eyebrows, moistened with soot,<\/p>\n

Extends them with slanting pencil, and flutters his eyelids,<\/p>\n

While applying the make-up; another drinks from a phallus-<\/p>\n

Shaped glass, his bouffant hair filling a gilded hair-net,<\/p>\n

Dressed in a chequered blue or a yellow-green satin,<\/p>\n

While the master\u2019s servant swears by the feminine Juno.<\/p>\n

One holds a mirror, the pathic Otho\u2019s constant companion,<\/p>\n

\u2018The spoils of Auruncian Actor\u2019 (Virgil), in which he used<\/p>\n

To admire himself armed, as he issued the order for battle.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting in modern annals, and current histories:<\/p>\n

A mirror was essential equipment to raise civil war.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the mark of a supreme general, of course, to kill Galba<\/p>\n

While powdering your nose, the maximum self-possession<\/p>\n

Shown on Bebriacum\u2019s field, to aspire to the Palatine throne<\/p>\n

While your fingers plaster your face with a mask of dough,<\/p>\n

What not even Semiramis, the archer, in her Assyrian city,<\/p>\n

Tried, nor Cleopatra, in grief, in her flagship, at Actium.<\/p>\n

Here there\u2019s no shame in their language, or reverence at table,<\/p>\n

Here is Cybele\u2019s foulness, the freedom to speak in a woman\u2019s<\/p>\n

Voice, and an old fanatical white-haired man who\u2019s the priest<\/p>\n

Of the rites, a rare and memorable example, an enormous<\/p>\n

Throat, a gluttonous specimen, an expert well worth his hire.<\/p>\n

Why are they waiting? Isn\u2019t it time already to use their knives,<\/p>\n

To carve their superfluous flesh in the Phrygian manner?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SatII:117-148 And Those Out of It<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gracchus has given a dowry of four thousand gold pieces<\/p>\n

For a horn-player, or one perhaps who plays the straight pipe;<\/p>\n

The contract\u2019s witnessed, \u2018felicitations!\u2019, a whole crowd<\/p>\n

Asked to the feast, the \u2018bride\u2019 reclines in the husband\u2019s lap.<\/p>\n

O, you princes, is it a censor we need, or a prophet of doom?<\/p>\n

Would you find it more terrible, think it more monstrous<\/p>\n

Truly, if a woman gave birth to a calf, or a cow to a lamb?<\/p>\n

He\u2019s wearing brocade, the long full dress, and the veil,<\/p>\n

He who bore the sacred objects tied to the mystic thong,<\/p>\n

Sweating under the weight of shields. O, Romulus, Father<\/p>\n

Of Rome, why has this evil touched the shepherds of Latium?<\/p>\n

Where is it from, this sting that hurts your descendants, Mars?<\/p>\n

Can you see a man noted for birth, wealth, wed to another man,<\/p>\n

And your spear not beat the ground, your helmet stay firm,<\/p>\n

And no complaint to the Father? Away then, forsake the stern<\/p>\n

Campus\u2019s acres, you neglect now. \u2018I\u2019ve a ceremony to attend<\/p>\n

At dawn, tomorrow, down in the vale of Quirinus.\u2019 \u2018Why\u2019s that?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Why? Oh, a friend of mine\u2019s marrying a male lover of his:<\/p>\n

He\u2019s asked a few guests.\u2019 Live a while, and we\u2019ll see it happen,<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll do it openly, want it reported as news in the daily gazette.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile there\u2019s one huge fact that torments these brides,<\/p>\n

That they can\u2019t give birth, and by that hang on to their husbands.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s better that Nature grants their minds little power over<\/p>\n

Their bodies: barren, they die; with her secret medicine chest,<\/p>\n

Swollen Lyde\u2019s no use, nor a blow from the agile Luperci.<\/p>\n

Yet Gracchus beats even this outrage, in tunic, with trident,<\/p>\n

A gladiator, circling the sand, as he flits about the arena:<\/p>\n

He\u2019s nobler in birth than the Marcelli, or the Capitolini,<\/p>\n

Than the scions of Catulus and Paulus, or the Fabii,<\/p>\n

Than all the front-row spectators, including Himself,<\/p>\n

The one who staged that show with the nets and tridents.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

SatII:149-170 Rome\u2019s a Disgrace!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That ghosts exist at all, or the realms of the Underworld,<\/p>\n

Cocytus, and the whirl of black frogs in the Styx,<\/p>\n

Or all those thousands crossing the flood in one boat,<\/p>\n

Not even children believe, unless wet behind the ears.<\/p>\n

But suppose it were true: what would the shade of Curius feel,<\/p>\n

What of the shades of the Scipios, of Fabricius or Camillus?<\/p>\n

What of the legion at Cremera, the young men ruined at Cannae,<\/p>\n

The dead of all those wars, what would they feel when a ghost<\/p>\n

Descended from here? They\u2019d desire purification, if they had<\/p>\n

There, the sulphur, the flaming torches, and the moist laurel.<\/p>\n

Down there, alas, we\u2019d be paraded in shame. We may have<\/p>\n

Sent troops beyond Ireland\u2019s shores, and recently captured<\/p>\n

The Orkneys, beaten the Britons familiar with midnight suns,<\/p>\n

But the nations we\u2019ve defeated don\u2019t get up to what people<\/p>\n

Get up to now, in victorious Rome. \u2018Yet nevertheless one<\/p>\n

Zalaces, they say, an Armenian lad, more effeminate than all<\/p>\n

The rest of the boys, gave himself to a passionate tribune.\u2019<\/p>\n

Look what foreign trade yields: he came here as a hostage,<\/p>\n

We make them men of the world, if such boys stay longer<\/p>\n

Adopting Roman ways, they\u2019ll never lack lovers, doffing<\/p>\n

Their breeches, and little knives, their bridles and whips.<\/p>\n

Those are the teenage ways they\u2019ll take home to Armenia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[]","CANDELA_OUTCOMES_GUID":"","pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-69","chapter","type-chapter","status-web-only","hentry"],"part":68,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/69\/revisions"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/68"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/69\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}