{"id":71,"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-v-vi\/"},"modified":"2017-06-24T20:36:23","modified_gmt":"2017-06-24T20:36:23","slug":"satires-v-vi","status":"web-only","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/chapter\/satires-v-vi\/","title":{"raw":"Satires V &amp; VI","rendered":"Satires V &amp; VI"},"content":{"raw":"<strong>Satire V: Patron and Client<\/strong> \u00a0 SatV:1-24 Payment in Kind\n\n\u00a0\n\nIf you\u2019re not yet ashamed of the way you live, if you think\n\nThat the highest good is still to live off another\u2019s leavings,\n\nAnd can suffer the treatment Sarmentus or Gabba, the fool,\n\nEndured at Augustus\u2019s table, where not all men were equal,\n\nThough you swore on oath, I\u2019d still hesitate to trust you.\n\nI know nothing\u2019s nobler than the belly; yet, nonetheless,\n\nIf you lack whatever it takes to fill your empty stomach:\n\nIs there no beggar\u2019s pitch vacant? No archway or lesser\n\nHalf of a mat somewhere? Are insults for dinner worth it?\n\nAre you as famished as that? Wouldn\u2019t it be more honest\n\nTo shiver outside, and gnaw bread left behind by the dogs?\n\nIn the first place, understand that being invited to dinner\n\nWill be treated as payment in full for all your past service.\n\nGreat friendship\u2019s reward is food: and your lord will enter it\n\nIn the accounts, however infrequent the dinner. Each couple\n\nOf months, if he wishes, he\u2019ll invite a neglected client to eat,\n\nSo that the third cushion on some unfilled couch isn\u2019t vacant,\n\n\u2018Let\u2019s get together\u2019 he\u2019ll say. It\u2019s the height of your wishes.\n\nWhat more could you want? Now Trebius has reason to break\n\nHis rest, and take to his heels, anxious lest the whole crowd\n\nOf dawn visitors has already been round to greet the patron,\n\nWhile the stars are still fading in the sky or even at an hour\n\nWhen tardy Bootes\u2019 frosty wagon is still wheeling around.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatV:25-65 Dinner With The Patron \u2013 The Drink\n\n\u00a0\n\nAnd what a dinner! You\u2019ll get wine too dry for cotton-wool\n\nTo absorb: you\u2019ll watch the guests turn into wild Corybants.\n\nBrawls break out, but once you\u2019re hit you\u2019ll be hurling cups\n\nToo, and dabbing at your wounds with a reddened napkin,\n\nThat\u2019s what happens as the battle rages between the guests\n\nAnd the crowd of freedmen, with Spanish ware as missiles.\n\nThe patron meanwhile sips old wine, bottled when Consuls\n\nWore their hair long, and gets stewed on a vintage trodden\n\nDuring the Social Wars, yet denies his dyspeptic friend a drop.\n\nTomorrow he\u2019ll get himself drunk on something from Setian\n\nOr Alban hills, its name and vineyard erased by time, layers\n\nOf soot coating the ancient jar, a wine that Thrasea Paetus\n\nAnd Helvidius Priscus used to drink, wearing their garlands\n\nTo honour the birth of Cassius, Marcus Brutus, and his brother.\n\nVirro, the patron, himself, drinks from capacious goblets, tiled\n\nWith amber, encrusted with beryl. You\u2019re not allowed their gold,\n\nOr, if you are handed one, there\u2019s a servant guarding your place,\n\nCounting the gems, keeping his eye on your sharp fingernails.\n\nForgive the patron: the splendour of his jasper\u2019s widely praised.\n\nVirro, like many another, transfers from his fingers to the cups\n\nGemstones that might have decorated the front of the scabbard\n\nOf Aeneas, that youth who Dido loved more than jealous Iarbas.\n\nWhile you\u2019ll drain a Vatinian cup, its four nozzles like the nose\n\nOf that cobbler of Beneventum for which it was named, cracked\n\nAlready, its broken glass due to be traded for sulphur matches.\n\nIf the patron\u2019s stomach\u2019s heated by food and wine, then distilled\n\nWater cooler than frost in Thrace is ordered. Just now, was I\n\nComplaining you\u2019ll not be served from the same bottle of wine?\n\nWell, you\u2019ll drink different water too, your cup will be handed\n\nYou by some Gaetulian footman, or black bony Moroccan hand,\n\nBy one of those folk you\u2019d not like to encounter at midnight\n\nAs you\u2019re carried past those tombs on the hilly Via Latina.\n\nThe flower of Asia serve the patron, bought for a higher price\n\nThan all the wealth of those warrior kings Tullus and Ancus\n\nOr, to be brief, all the trinkets of the richest rulers of Rome.\n\nThat being so, when you\u2019re thirsty, you\u2019ll be required to catch\n\nThe eye of your African Ganymede. A boy bought for so many\n\nThousands hasn\u2019t the time to be mixing drinks for paupers,\n\nHis looks and youth justify his scorn. When will he get to you?\n\nWhen will the server of hot and cold water answer your plea?\n\nOf course he\u2019s annoyed at having to answer to some old client\n\nWho keeps asking for things, reclining there, while he stands.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatV:66-155 Dinner With The Patron \u2013 The Food\n\n\u00a0\n\nThe greatest houses are always full of arrogant slaves.\n\nBehold another, grumbling as he offers you scarcely\n\nBreakable bread, lumps of solid crust already mouldy,\n\nThat exercise your molars, while thwarting your bite.\n\nWhile that reserved for the patron is soft snowy-white\n\nKneaded from finest flour. Remember to stay your hand;\n\nThe baking-tray must be granted respect; if you show\n\nPresumption notwithstanding, a slave orders you to stop:\n\n\u2018Impertinent guest, please address the proper basket,\n\nHave you forgotten which bread\u2019s reserved for you?\u2019\n\n\u2018Was it for this, then, I left wife and home so often\n\nTo go scurrying up the Esquiline\u2019s freezing slope,\n\nWhile the spring-time skies hurled down savage hail,\n\nIn a cloak soaked through by the endless cloudbursts?\u2019\n\nLook at the size of that lobster they bring the patron,\n\nHow it adorns the dish, how it\u2019s hedged all round\n\nBy asparagus, how it\u2019s tail scorns the diners, on entry,\n\nCarried along, on high, in the hands of a tall attendant.\n\nWhile you\u2019re served crayfish cupped by half an egg,\n\nA morsel only fit for a funeral, on a miniscule plate.\n\nThe patron dips his seafood in Venafran olive oil, but the\n\nSallow cabbage they offer to poor you stinks of the lamp.\n\nThe oil provided for all your dishes is brought upstream\n\nIn one of those beak-nosed craft, of Numidian reeds,\n\nWhich is why the Romans won\u2019t bathe with Africans,\n\nSince their oil protects them from the black snakes too.\n\nThat mullet the patron eats comes from Corsica or from\n\nThe cliffs below Taormina, since our waters are already\n\nQuite fished-out, totally exhausted by raging gluttony;\n\nThe market-makers so continually raking the shallows\n\nWith their nets, that the fry are never allowed to mature.\n\nSo the provinces stock our kitchens, they\u2019re the source\n\nOf what Laenas the legacy-hunter buys, and Aemilia sells.\n\nVirro, our patron\u2019s served with a lamprey, the largest\n\nOut of Messina\u2019s straits; for when the south-wind rests\n\nAnd squats there in his cave, drying his dripping wings,\n\nThe nets defy Charybdis, the whirlpool, with temerity.\n\nBut what awaits you is an eel, the stringy snake\u2019s relative,\n\nOr a fish from the Tiber, covered with grey-green blotches,\n\nSlave of its shores like you, fed from the flowing sewer,\n\nAnd a denizen of that drain beneath the heart of Subura.\n\nI\u2019d like a word with the patron, if only he\u2019d lend a willing ear.\n\nNo one expects those gifts any more Seneca used to send\n\nTo his humble friends, that good Piso or Cotta Maximus\n\nWould dispense, for the honour of giving was once prized\n\nMore highly than the symbols and titles of public office:\n\nAll we ask is that you treat us courteously. Do that and be\n\nAs lavish with yourself as others, stingy with your friends.\n\nA huge goose-liver is set before the patron, a fat fowl\n\nAs big as a goose, and a frothing boar worthy of blond\n\nMeleager\u2019s spear. After that he\u2019ll eat truffles, if it\u2019s spring,\n\nWhen hoped-for thunderstorms swell them and the menu.\n\n\u2018You can keep your corn,\u2019 Alledius says, \u2018Libya, unyoke\n\nYour team, just as long as you keep sending these truffles.\u2019\n\nMeanwhile, not to spare your indignation, you can watch\n\nThe carver flourish his knife, and dance about, and mime,\n\nWhile he acts out every one of his master\u2019s instructions.\n\nAnd, no doubt, it\u2019s a matter of no little importance\n\nTo carve the hare or chicken with appropriate gestures.\n\nIf you\u2019re ever tempted to open your mouth, as if owning\n\nTo a free man\u2019s first, last and middle name, you\u2019ll be hauled\n\nOut feet first, and ejected, as Cacus was handled by Hercules.\n\nWhy should Virro accept a cup tainted by your lips, to drink\n\nYour health? Who\u2019s so mad or reckless he\u2019ll call out\n\n\u2018Cheers!\u2019 to a patron? There\u2019s many a thing a man won\u2019t\n\nDare to say, while he\u2019s wearing a coat that\u2019s full of holes.\n\nBut if some god, or godlike figure, kinder than fate, gave you\n\nFour thousand in gold, a knight\u2019s fortune, how swiftly then\n\nYou\u2019d turn from a nobody into one of Virro\u2019s dear friends!\n\n\u2018Serve Trebius, give Trebius some! Would you like a little\n\nOf this loin, brother?\u2019 Oh, Mammon, the honour\u2019s yours,\n\nIt\u2019s you who are his brother. And if you want to be a lord\n\nOr an overlord, don\u2019t cherish a little Aeneas playing about\n\nYour hall, or a little daughter even dearer to you than him.\n\nA barren wife will render you a nearer and sweeter friend.\n\nYet nowadays it\u2019s fine if your Mycale gives birth, and spills\n\nThree sons at a time into their father\u2019s lap, your patron will\n\nDelight in your noisy nest. He\u2019ll provide a chariot-team\n\nJersey, in green; the neatest of nuts; and pennies if asked,\n\nWhenever your infant parasite approaches him at dinner.\n\nLowly friends are served dubious fungi, while the master\n\nEats mushrooms, though of the type Claudius ate before\n\nThe kind his wife served, after which he ate nothing more.\n\nVirro will call for apples for himself and the other Virros,\n\nApples whose scent is a meal on its own, the kind of fruit\n\nThat the perpetual autumn of Homer\u2019s Phaeacia produced,\n\nStolen you might think from the Hesperides\u2019 golden bough:\n\nYour treat\u2019s a scabby apple, like one gnawed by that creature,\n\nThat monkey on the Embankment, in helm and shield, that fear\n\nOf the whip taught how to hurl spears, from a hairy goat\u2019s back.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatV:156-173 What Humiliation!\n\n\u00a0\n\nPerhaps you think Virro\u2019s intent on saving money. No,\n\nHe does it to grieve you; for what comedy, what mime\n\nIs better than a groaning stomach? So his whole aim,\n\nIf you\u2019d know, is to see you vent your anger in tears,\n\nAnd make sure you\u2019ll never stop gnashing your teeth.\n\nYou see yourself as a free man, as your lord\u2019s guest:\n\nWhile he thinks you\u2019re enslaved by the smell of food;\n\nAnd he\u2019s not wrong; for what free-born child that\u2019s worn\n\nThe gold Etruscan amulet, or the pauper\u2019s knotted thong,\n\nCould be so nakedly desperate as to endure him twice,\n\nUnless the hope of dining well ensnared them. \u2018Behold,\n\nNow he sends us half-eaten hare, or a bit of boar-haunch,\n\nNow a puny bird\u2019s on the way.\u2019 So you all wait in silence,\n\nClasping your untouched bread. Oh, he understands it all,\n\nHe who treats you like this. If you\u2019ll suffer it, then you\n\nDeserve it too. Soon, you\u2019ll be offering your head to be\n\nSlapped and shaved, and you won\u2019t be afraid to endure\n\nThe whip: that\u2019s the dinner and friend you\u2019re worthy of!\n<strong>Satire VI: Don\u2019t Marry<\/strong> \u00a0 SatVI:1-24 Chastity Has Vanished\n\n\u00a0\n\nI believe that Chastity lingered on earth in Saturn\u2019s reign,\n\nAnd long-endured, throughout that age when a chilly cave\n\nOffered a modest home, enclosed a fire, gods of the hearth,\n\nAnd the master and herd as well, in its communal gloom,\n\nWhen a wife from the hills made up a woodland bed\n\nWith leaves and straw, and the pelts of wild beasts, her\n\nNeighbours. She wasn\u2019t you, Cynthia, nor you, Lesbia\n\nYour bright eyes dimmed at the death of your sparrow,\n\nShe offered her breasts for her mighty infants to drain,\n\nAnd was often hairier than her acorn-belching husband.\n\nYou see, when the world was new, the heavens young,\n\nPeople lived differently, lacking parents as they did,\n\nBorn instead from cleft oak-trees, or shaped from mud.\n\nAnd perhaps some traces or other of Chastity survived\n\nUnder Jupiter too, though long before Jupiter had grown\n\nA beard, and the Greeks began to swear by other names;\n\nWhen no man feared his apples or greens would be stolen,\n\nAnd folk lived with their orchards and gardens un-walled.\n\nIt was later that with Justice, Astraea, her friend, she left\n\nFor the sky above, those two sisters flitting away together.\n\nIt\u2019s an ancient tradition, Postumus, to thrash an alien bed,\n\nAnd make light of the sacred spirit of the marriage-couch.\n\nEvery other crime came later, spawned by the age of iron:\n\nBut the silver age it was, that witnessed the first adulterers.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:25-59 You\u2019re Mad To Marry!\n\n\u00a0\n\nAre you, in this day and age, ready for an agreement,\n\nA contract, the wedding vows, having your hair done\n\nBy a master-barber, your finger already wearing the pledge?\n\nPostumus, you were sane once. Are you really taking a wife?\n\nWhich Tisiphone is it, with her snakes, driving you mad?\n\nYou surely don\u2019t have to endure it, with so much rope about,\n\nThose vertiginous windows open, the Aemilian bridge at hand?\n\nIf none of these multiple exits please you, wouldn\u2019t a boyfriend\n\nSuit you better, one who would share your bed, a boyfriend\n\nWho wouldn\u2019t quarrel all night; wouldn\u2019t demand from you\n\nAs he lies there, little gifts; and wouldn\u2019t complain that your\n\nBody was idle, that you weren\u2019t breathing hard, as ordered.\n\n\u2018But Ursidius is marrying, he approves of the Julian Law,\n\nHe intends to raise a sweet heir, and forgo his plump doves,\n\nHis bearded mullet, all his hunts through the meat market.\u2019\n\nWell nothing\u2019s impossible, then, if Ursidius is wedding\n\nSomeone! If he, who was once the most noted of seducers,\n\nHe, so often concealed in a chest, like Latinus in the farce,\n\nIs placing his foolish head in the marital halter! And that\u2019s\n\nNot all, you say, he seeks a wife with traditional virtues?\n\nO, good doctor, relieve the pressure on that swollen vein!\n\nWhat a fastidious man! Go prostrate yourself in worship\n\nAt the Tarpeian shrine, go sacrifice a gilded heifer to Juno,\n\nIf you should happen to find a woman whose life is chaste.\n\nThere are so few of them fit to touch Ceres\u2019 sacred ribbons,\n\nWhose kisses wouldn\u2019t appal their fathers. Fasten a garland\n\nTo your doorpost if you do, deck the lintel with marriage ivy.\n\nIs one man enough for Hiberina, then? She\u2019d sooner confess\n\nUnder torture to being happy with only one of her eyes.\n\n\u2018There\u2019s a girl on her father\u2019s estate in the country whose\n\nReputation is good.\u2019 Try her at Gabii, not in the country,\n\nTry her at Fidenae, then I\u2019ll grant you the father\u2019s farm.\n\nWho says she\u2019s not been carrying on in the caves or on\n\nThe hills? Have Jupiter and Mars gone into retirement?\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:60-81 Look At Them In The Theatre\n\n\u00a0\n\nCan you find any woman that\u2019s worthy of you, under\n\nOur porticoes? Does any seat at the theatre hold one\n\nYou could take from there, and love with confidence?\n\nWhen sinuous Bathyllus dances his pantomime Leda,\n\nTucia loses control of her bladder, and Apula yelps,\n\nAs if she were making love, with sharp tedious cries.\n\nThymele attends: naive Thymele learns something.\n\nBut the rest, when the stage-sets are packed away,\n\nWhen the theatre\u2019s locked, and the only sound\u2019s outside,\n\nWhen the People\u2019s Games and the Megalesian are done,\n\nClutch sadly at Accius\u2019 mask, his wand, or his tights.\n\nUrbicus, in the Atellan farce, in his role as Autonoe\n\nInvokes a laugh, and lo, penniless Aelia falls in love.\n\nThey\u2019ll pay a fortune to get an actor\u2019s clasp undone,\n\nThey\u2019ll halt Chrysogonus\u2019s singing. Hispulla\u2019s mad\n\nFor a tragedian: you think it\u2019s Quintilian they fall for?\n\nYou\u2019re marrying a woman who\u2019ll make Echion a father,\n\nGlaphyrus, the lyre-players, or Ambrosius with his pipe.\n\nLet\u2019s set up platforms stretching along the narrow streets,\n\nAnd decorate the doorposts and lintels with laurel boughs,\n\nSo your noble child, dear Lentulus, there in his tortoiseshell\n\nCradle, shall remind us of Euryalus, perhaps, the gladiator!\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:82-113 What About Eppia?\n\n\u00a0\n\nEppia, wife of a senator, ran off with the gladiators\n\nTo Pharos, to the Nile, and notorious Alexandria;\n\nEven decadent Canopus condemned immoral Rome;\n\nShe forgot her home, her husband, deserted her sister,\n\nShamelessly, left her country, her wailing children,\n\nAnd, amazingly, Paris her actor, and the Games.\n\nThough, as a child of a wealthy family, she once slept\n\nIn a richly decorated cradle on soft, downy pillows,\n\nThat sea voyage concerned her little; nor her reputation,\n\nWhich is ever the least of losses to such ladies of luxury.\n\nAnd, with a firm spirit, she endured Tyrrhenian waves,\n\nThe Ionian Sea\u2019s vast roar, though she was often hurled\n\nFrom one abyss to another. Though the reason be just\n\nAnd virtuous, for taking risks, women are still afraid,\n\nTheir hearts frozen with terror, trembling in every limb:\n\nYet they\u2019re courageous when daring shameful things.\n\nIf a husband demands it; then, boarding ship\u2019s a pain,\n\nThe bilge is sickening, sky spinning round and round.\n\nBut with a lover, her stomach\u2019s fine. A wife will vomit\n\nOver her husband, a mistress eat with the sailors, stride\n\nThe deck, and delight in handling the stubborn rigging.\n\nWas it good looks and youthfulness set Eppia on fire?\n\nWhat did she see in him to endure being classed with\n\nThe gladiators? After all, her Sergius had already begun\n\nTo smooth his throat, an injured arm presaged retirement;\n\nAnd his face was seriously disfigured, a furrow chafed\n\nBy his helmet, a huge lump on the bridge of his nose,\n\nAnd a nasty condition provoking a forever-weeping eye.\n\nHe was a gladiator, though. That makes them Hyacinthus;\n\nThat\u2019s why she preferred him to children and country,\n\nHusband and sister. They love the steel. That same Sergius\n\nOnce discharged, would have dwindled to poor Veiiento.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:114-135 Or Messalina?\n\n\u00a0\n\nAre you worried by Eppia\u2019s tricks, of a non-Imperial kind?\n\nTake a look at the rivals of the gods; hear how Claudius\n\nSuffered. When his wife, Messalina, knew he was asleep,\n\nShe would go about with no more than a maid for escort.\n\nThe Empress dared, at night, to wear the hood of a whore,\n\nAnd she preferred a mat to her bed in the Palatine Palace.\n\nDressed in that way, with a blonde wig hiding her natural\n\nHair, she\u2019d enter a brothel that stank of old soiled sheets,\n\nAnd make an empty cubicle, her own; then sell herself,\n\nHer nipples gilded, naked, taking She-Wolf for a name,\n\nDisplaying the belly you came from, noble Britannicus,\n\nShe\u2019d flatter her clients on entry, and take their money.\n\nThen lie there obligingly, delighting in every stroke.\n\nLater on, when the pimp dismissed his girls, she\u2019d leave\n\nReluctantly, waiting to quit her cubicle there, till the last\n\nPossible time, her taut sex still burning, inflamed with lust,\n\nThen she\u2019d leave, exhausted by man, but not yet sated,\n\nA disgusting creature with filthy face, soiled by the lamp\u2019s\n\nBlack, taking her brothel-stench back to the Emperor\u2019s bed.\n\nShall I speak of spells and love-potions too, poisons brewed,\n\nAnd stepsons murdered? The sex do worse things, driven on\n\nBy the urgings of power: their crimes of lust are the least of it.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:136-160 The Rich and Beautiful\n\n\u00a0\n\n\u2018Then why does Caesennia\u2019s husband swear she\u2019s the perfect wife?\u2019\n\nShe brought him ten thousand in gold, enough to call her chaste.\n\nHe\u2019s not been hit by Venus\u2019s arrows, or scorched by her torch:\n\nIt\u2019s the money he\u2019s aflame with, her dowry launched the darts.\n\nHer freedom\u2019s bought. She can flirt, wave her love-letters in his\n\nFace: she\u2019s a single woman still: a rich man marries for greed.\n\n\u2018Why then does Sertorius burn with love, for Bibula, his wife?\n\nIf you want the truth, it\u2019s the face he fell for, and not the bride.\n\nThe moment she\u2019s a wrinkle or two, her skin\u2019s dry and flabby,\n\nHer teeth become discoloured, her eyes like beads in her head,\n\n\u2018Pack your bags\u2019 she\u2019ll hear his freedman cry, \u2018Away with you.\n\nNothing but a nuisance now, always blowing your nose. Be off,\n\nMake it snappy. There\u2019s a dry nose coming to take your place.\u2019\n\nMeanwhile she\u2019s hot, she reigns, demanding of her husband\n\nCanusian sheep and shepherds, demanding Falernian vines \u2013\n\nSuch tiny requests! \u2013 his house-slaves, those in the prison gangs,\n\nWhatever her neighbour has, her house lacks, must be bought.\n\nThen from the Campus where the booths hide Jason in winter,\n\nHis Argonauts too, concealed, behind their whitened canvas,\n\nShe\u2019ll bear away crystal vases, huge, the largest pieces of agate,\n\nAnd some legendary diamond made the more precious by once\n\nGracing Berenice\u2019s finger, a gift to his incestuous sister from\n\nBarbarous Herod Agrippa, a present for her, in far-off\u00a0 Judaea,\n\nWhere barefoot kings observe their day of rest on the Sabbath,\n\nAnd their tradition grants merciful indulgence to elderly pigs.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:161-199 Who Could Stand A Perfect Wife?\n\n\u00a0\n\n\u2018Isn\u2019t there a single one worthy of you, in all that vast flock?\u2019\n\nLet her be lovely, gracious, rich, and fertile; let her exhibit her\n\nAncestors\u2019 faces round her porticos; be more virginal than the\n\nSabine women, with tangled hair, who ended war with Rome;\n\nA rare bird on this earth, in the very likeness of a black swan;\n\nWho could stand a wife who embodied all of that? I\u2019d rather,\n\nMuch rather, have Venustina than you, Cornelia, O Mother\n\nOf the Gracchi, if that proud expression has to accompany\n\nYour weighty virtues, if triumphs are part of your dowry.\n\nSpare us your father\u2019s defeat of Hannibal, please! Or Syphax,\n\nBeaten in camp: vanish, now, with all of Scipio\u2019s Carthage!\n\n\u2018Mercy, Apollo, we pray, and you, Goddess, drop your arrows;\n\nHer lads are innocent: Niobe, the mother\u2019s, the one to shoot!\u2019\n\nThough Amphion may shout that, Apollo still draws his bow.\n\nThat\u2019s how Niobe did for her flock of sons and the father too,\n\nBy thinking herself more noble than Latona\u2019s divine children,\n\nWhile proving more fertile than the white sow of Alba Longa.\n\nWhat\u2019s it worth, all the grace, the beauty, if you\u2019re evermore\n\nIn her debt? There\u2019s no pleasure in all those rare and exalted\n\nVirtues, if the woman, spoilt by pride, comes dripping with\n\nBitter aloes not honey. Who, however devoted, doesn\u2019t loathe\n\nThe wife he lavishes so much praise on? Who\u2019s so devoted he\n\nCan\u2019t hate her, too, for seven hours or so out of every twelve?\n\nSome faults may be minor, yet too much for husbands to take.\n\nWhat\u2019s more disgusting than this reality; no woman considers\n\nHerself a beauty, unless she\u2019s transformed herself from Tuscan\n\nTo Greek, abandoned Sulmo for Athens? Every sigh\u2019s in Greek:\n\nIt\u2019s far less attractive to them to show their ignorance in Latin.\n\nThey tell their fears, it\u2019s Greek, vent their angers, joys, cares,\n\nThe secrets of their souls, it\u2019s Greek. What else? When they\n\nMake love, it\u2019s Greek! Though you might grant it in some\n\nSlip of a girl, if you\u2019re knocking on eighty-six, should it still\n\nBe Greek? Such language is surely not decent for elderly\n\nWomen. Whenever that lascivious <em>\u03b6\u03c9\u03ae \u03ba\u03ac\u03af \u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u03ae<\/em> \u2018My life,\n\nMy soul\u2019 emerges, you\u2019re using words in public only ever\n\nTo be uttered under the sheets. What loins aren\u2019t warmed\n\nBy that seductive and idle phrase? It has legs. Yet, to ruffle\n\nYour fine feathers, though you articulate, more sweetly than\n\nHaemus or Carpophorus, your age is still visible on your face.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:200-230 The Way They Lord It Over You!\n\n\u00a0\n\nIf you\u2019re not going to love the woman betrothed and joined\n\nTo you by lawful contract, there\u2019d appear to be no reason for\n\nGetting married, nor for wasting time on a feast with its cakes\n\nFor bloated guests at the end, or for that first night gift, when\n\nDACIA, GERMANY, Trajan, in victory, gleam in gold on fine plate.\n\nBut if you\u2019re simply uxorious, if your heart\u2019s given to her alone,\n\nThen bow your head, prepare to place your neck under the yoke.\n\nYou\u2019ll not find any woman who\u2019ll spare a man who loves her.\n\nThough she\u2019s on fire, she\u2019ll still love to torture and fleece him;\n\nSo much the less suitable as wife, then, for a man who wishes\n\nTo be a good and desirable husband. And you\u2019ll never be able\n\nTo send a gift if your bride objects, you\u2019ll never be able to sell\n\nA thing if she happens to disagree, nor buy one if she says no.\n\nShe\u2019ll control your affections: the friend whose first beard your\n\nThreshold witnessed, older now: he\u2019ll be barred from the door.\n\nShe\u2019ll dictate your heirs, more than one will turn out to be your\n\nRival, though even pimps and trainers of charioteers are free,\n\nTo act as they wish, in a will; the arena enjoys the same right.\n\n\u2018Crucify that slave!\u2019 What\u2019s the crime of his that deserves it?\n\nWhere\u2019s the witness? Who accused him? Grant him a hearing.\n\nOne can never be over-cautious when a human life is at stake.\u2019\n\n\u2018You fool, is a slave human? Even though he\u2019s done nothing:\n\nI wish it, so I command it, let my will be sufficient reason.\u2019\n\nThat\u2019s how she orders her husband about. Yet she\u2019ll as soon\n\nAbdicate, change her home, re-use her bridal veil; then flit\n\nOff again, and return, to her imprint in the bed she rejected,\n\nForsaking the freshly-decked doorways, newly-hung drapes,\n\nThe branches, still green as yet, that decorate the threshold.\n\nThat\u2019s how the score increases, that\u2019s how she gets though eight\n\nHusbands in five autumns, a fitting epitaph to place on her grave.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:231-285 They Do As They Wish\n\n\u00a0\n\nDespair of any harmony if your mother-in-law\u2019s alive.\n\nShe\u2019ll teach a daughter how to strip her husband bare;\n\nShe\u2019ll teach her how to reply to letters seducers send,\n\nIn a manner neither simple nor uncultured; she\u2019ll outwit\n\nYour guardians; buy them. Though she\u2019s perfectly well,\n\nShe\u2019ll call Archigenes, tossing her heavy sheets around.\n\nMeanwhile, secretly, the lover lies there concealed,\n\nWaiting impatient and silent, and toying with his cock.\n\nYou don\u2019t really expect the mother, to pass on honest\n\nBehaviour, morals other than her own? Its appropriate\n\nThat a vile old woman begets an equally vile daughter.\n\nThere\u2019s rarely a lawsuit brought a woman didn\u2019t begin.\n\nManilia will accuse, unless she\u2019s maybe the defendant.\n\nThey\u2019ll even compose and construct the brief themselves,\n\nReady to dictate Celsus\u2019 headings and opening speech.\n\nWho doesn\u2019t know those sports-wraps of Tyrian purple;\n\nThe female wrestling ring; who hasn\u2019t seen the battered\n\nTraining-post, hacked by repeated sword-blows, scarred by\n\nHer shield. The girl\u2019s fully trained, totally qualified, ready\n\nFor the fanfare and fights at the Floralia, unless that is she\n\nPlans something more, practises now for the wider arena.\n\nHow can you call her decent, a helmeted woman who spurns\n\nHer very own gender? She loves a fight, even so she\u2019d not\n\nWish to be a man; the pleasure we get is so little, after all,!\n\nWhat a sight, if they auctioned off the wives\u2019 paraphernalia,\n\nThe sword-belts, arm-protectors, crests, and the half-size\n\nLeft-leg shin-guards! Or if it\u2019s a different fight she wages,\n\nHow happy you\u2019d be if she managed to sell off her greaves.\n\nYet these are the girls who sweat in the thinnest dress, whose\n\nDelicate skins are chafed by the smoothest wisps of silk.\n\nHear her cries as she drives home the thrusts she\u2019s learned,\n\nFeel how heavy the helmet is that she bows beneath, see the\n\nBreadth, the thickness, of those bandages round her knees,\n\nAnd laugh when she takes to a chamber-pot, fully armed!\n\nGrand-daughters of Lepidus, blind Metellus, and Fabius\n\nMaximus Gurges too, what gladiator\u2019s wife ever wore stuff\n\nLike this? When did Asylus\u2019s wife grunt at the training-post?\n\nThe bed that contains a bride is forever filled with quarrelling\n\nAnd mutual recrimination; there\u2019s not much sleep to be got.\n\nWhen she feels guilty about some secret misdeed then she\u2019s\n\nFoul to her man, far worse than a tigress who\u2019s lost her cubs,\n\nShe feigns anger, hating your slave-boy, complaining about\n\nSome fictitious mistress. She\u2019s a flood of tears at the ready,\n\nAlways at her command, just waiting for her to instruct them\n\nIn what manner of way to flow. And then you think it\u2019s love!\n\nYou\u2019re delighted, you worm, and start kissing away her tears.,\n\nBut the love-notes and letters that you\u2019ll find yourself reading,\n\nIf you ever fling open your jealous adulteress\u2019s writing-desk!\n\nSay she\u2019s found with a slave or knight, then it\u2019s: \u2018Speak,\n\nQuintilian, speak, give me a line of defence in this situation.\u2019\n\n\u2018I can\u2019t. Invent one yourself.\u2019 She\u2019ll try: \u2018Long ago we agreed\n\nthat you could do as you wished, and that I could indulge in\n\nWhatever I wanted. You can shout all you like, and turn life\n\nUpside down, I\u2019m only human.\u2019 Nothing is so audacious as\n\nA woman caught in the act: her guilt fuels anger and defiance.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:286-313 What Brought All This About?\n\n\u00a0\n\nWhat brought this monstrous behaviour about, what\u2019s its source\n\nYou ask? Their lowly status used to keep Latin women chaste,\n\nHard work kept the corruption of vice from their humble roofs,\n\nAnd lack of rest, and their hands, then, were chafed and hardened\n\nFrom handling Tuscan fleeces, when Hannibal neared Rome,\n\nWhen their husbands manned the towers at the Colline Gate.\n\nNow we suffer the ills of a long peace. Worse for us than war\n\nThis luxury\u2019s stifling us, taking its revenge for an empire won.\n\nNo single kind of crime or act of lust has been lacking, from\n\nThe moment we were no longer poor: all vice pours into Rome,\n\nFrom the Isthmus of Corinth, from Sybaris, Miletus and Rhodes\n\nFrom insolent Tarentum, garlanded, and sodden with wine.\n\nIt was filthy lucre at first that brought these alien morals here,\n\nEffete wealth that\u2019s corrupted the present age with revolting\n\nDecadence. Does Venus care about anything when she\u2019s drunk?\n\nShe no longer knows the difference between head and tail,\n\nShe who laps at giant oysters, long, long after midnight,\n\nWhen the foaming unguent\u2019s mixed with pure Falernian,\n\nWhen they drink from perfume dishes, when the ceiling\u2019s\n\nAlready whirling, and duplicated lamps dance on the table.\n\nGo on, ask yourself, why Tullia scornfully sniffs the air,\n\nWhat that infamous Maura\u2019s foster-sister says as Maura\n\nPasses by the ancient temple of Chastity in the Forum,\n\nHere\u2019s where they halt their litters at night, to make water,\n\nAnd drench the goddess\u2019s statue with flowing streams,\n\nAnd take it in turns to ride and squirm under the moon.\n\nThen it\u2019s off home they go: and when the daylight returns\n\nYou\u2019ll wade through your wife\u2019s urine to call on mighty friends.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:314-345 The Rites of Bona Dea\n\n\u00a0\n\nAll know the secret rites of the Good Goddess, when the pipe\n\nStirs the loins, and the maenads of Priapus, maddened they say\n\nBy wine and horns alike, go tossing their flowing hair about\n\nAnd howl. O how all their hearts are on fire for sexual pleasure\n\nHow they squeal then to the dance of desire, and how powerful\n\nThe torrent of undiluted lust that covers their drenched thighs!\n\nSaufeia doffs her garland, challenges the brothel-keeper\u2019s\n\nSlave-girls, then goes on to win the prize for shaking her arse,\n\nShe herself, in turn, admires Medullina\u2019s undulating wiggles:\n\nThe contest\u2019s between the ladies, their skill matches their birth.\n\nNothing is simulated in play, everything there is done for real,\n\nEnough to light a spark in Priam, Laomedon\u2019s son, grown cold\n\nWith furthest age, or even in old Nestor\u2019s ruptured scrotum.\n\nThen comes the restless itch of delay, then it\u2019s naked woman,\n\nAnd the shouts from the whole grotto echo there, in unison,\n\n\u2018Now\u2019s the moment, admit the men.\u2019 If by chance the lover\u2019s\n\nAsleep, she\u2019ll tell his son to don a hood and hurry to join them;\n\nIf that\u2019s no use, she\u2019ll summon a slave; if there\u2019s no prospect\n\nOf slaves, she\u2019ll hire the water-man; if he\u2019s nowhere to be found,\n\nAnd there\u2019s a lack of men, not a moment slips by, before she\u2019ll\n\nAccommodate her arse, freely, to a donkey\u2019s rude attentions.\n\nIf only our ancient rites, or our state ceremonies at least, might\n\nBe conducted free of such evils; but every India, every Moor\n\nKnows about Clodius Pulcher, dressed as a lute-girl, bringing\n\nA cock, one bigger than both of Caesar\u2019s Anti-Cato speeches\n\nPut together, into that place, from which even a male mouse flees\n\nConscious of its balls; that place where they\u2019ll command any picture\n\nTo be veiled that happens to portray the form of the opposite sex.\n\nIn the old days, what human being ever scorned the gods\u2019 powers,\n\nOr dared to laugh at Numa\u2019s earthenware libation-bowls, the black\n\nPots, and the little fragile plates found on the Vatican Hill?\n\nBut now does any sacred altar exist that lacks it\u2019s own Clodius?\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:Ox1-34 and 346-379 And Those Eunuchs!\n\n\u00a0\n\nIn all the houses where men live and entertain who embrace\n\nObscenity, and whose fidgeting right hands stop at nothing,\n\nYou\u2019ll find all there resemble a vile bevy of lewd dancers.\n\nThese creatures are allowed to soil the food, and stand beside\n\nThe sacred table, and cups are washed that should be smashed\n\nIf Colocyntha, or bearded Chelidon, have drunk from them.\n\nThus the gladiator-trainer\u2019s place is purer and better than their\n\nHearths, since in his troop the lightly-armed gladiators are kept\n\nAway from the heavy. And isn\u2019t it true that the net-men don\u2019t\n\nAssociate with the lowly amateurs, that the shoulder-guards\n\nAnd tridents of naked warriors are never kept in the amateur\u2019s\n\nEquipment locker? There\u2019s a lowest class for such people\n\nIn every school, and heavier fetters for them in every prison.\n\nYet your wife makes you share the goblet with such objects,\n\nWith whom a yellow-haired whore from a ruined tomb\n\nWould refuse to drink, despite the Alban or Surrentine wine.\n\nIt\u2019s on their advice that women suddenly marry or divorce.\n\nIt\u2019s with them they share life\u2019s boredoms and anxieties. It\u2019s\n\nFrom such teachers they learn how to wiggle their arse and hips,\n\nAnd whatever else the instructor knows. Yet he\u2019s not always\n\nTo be trusted: a hair-netted adulterer he\u2019ll paint his eyelids\n\nWith mascara, and strut around with his saffron gown undone.\n\nYou should be the more suspicious, the smoother his voice,\n\nThe more often his right hand lingers near his chubby loins.\n\nHe\u2019ll prove virile enough in bed; there he\u2019ll remove his mask,\n\nAn expert Triphallus, dancing the part of Alexander\u2019s Thais.\n\n\u2018Who do you think you\u2019re fooling? Keep that pantomime for\n\nOthers! I bet, you\u2019re every inch a man. I\u2019d swear it: confess!\n\nOr must we subject the female slaves to the torturer\u2019s rack?\n\nI know the warnings and advice that all my old friends offer:\n\n\u201cLock the door, and keep her close.\u201d But who is to guard the\n\nGuardians themselves, when they win a prize for secrecy re\n\nThe lewd girl\u2019s affairs?\u2019 In crime, complicity guarantees silence.\n\nThe skilful wife anticipates, and therefore begins with them.\n\nThere are women thrilled by effete eunuchs, with their kisses\n\nEver-gentle, and their hopeless never-to-be-fulfilled beards,\n\nThen, there\u2019s no need to use abortifacients. It\u2019s the very height\n\nOf pleasure for them, when loins already ripe with youth\u2019s hot\n\nBlood and its dark plectrum, are dragged away to the surgeons.\n\nThat\u2019s why the testicles are allowed to drop and develop first\n\nAnd afterwards when they\u2019ve achieved two pounds in weight,\n\nHeliodorus has them off, to the barber\u2019s loss but no one else\u2019s.\n\nIt\u2019s a truer, more wretched debility the slave-dealer\u2019s boys are\n\nSeared by, left shamed by the purse and chickpeas that remain,\n\nBut the man made a eunuch by his mistress is noticed by all,\n\nFrom afar, as he enters the baths, and there\u2019s no doubt he can\n\nChallenge Priapus, who\u2019s the guardian of vineyard and garden.\n\nHe may sleep with his mistress, Postumus, but don\u2019t entrust your\n\nBromius, once he\u2019s no longer smooth and hairless, to that eunuch.\n\nAnd women both high and low feel the same lust these days;\n\nThe woman who treads the dirty pavement in bare feet, she\u2019s\n\nNo better than one who\u2019s borne on the shoulders of tall Syrians.\n\nJust to watch the Games, Ogulnia is forced to hire a dress, forced\n\nTo hire attendants, a chair, the cushions, even the female friends,\n\nAnd a nurse, and a yellow-haired girl, whom she can order about,\n\nYet she chooses to give away whatever\u2019s left of the family silver,\n\nDown to the very last dish, as presents for smooth-skinned athletes.\n\nMany are short of things for the house, but none feel any shame\n\nAbout being poor, nor will they temper their habits to their means.\n\nTheir husbands sometimes look ahead, and feel forebodings of\n\nCold and hunger, learning at last that lesson taught by the ants:\n\nBut a spendthrift woman has no idea of diminishing resources.\n\nShe\u2019ll give not a thought to the cost of her pleasures, as if coins\n\nForever reborn keep burgeoning from an empty treasure chest,\n\nForever available to be gathered from a newly-replenished heap.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:380-397 There Are Those Who Fancy Musicians\n\n\u00a0\n\nIf she likes music, no one whom the praetors hire for his voice\n\nWill hang on to his clasp. Instruments are always in her hands,\n\nHer web of sardonyx rings ever-flickering over the tortoiseshell\n\nLyre, the strings struck rhythmically by the quivering plectrum,\n\nWhich tender Hedymeles performs with: this she clasps, it\u2019s her\n\nConsolation, and she lavishes kisses on that beloved implement.\n\nThere\u2019s even a woman of the Lamiae clan, with an Appian name,\n\nWho went so far as to offer wine and grain to Janus and Vesta,\n\nDemanding to know if her Pollio had any chance of winning\n\nThe Capitoline oak-leaf crown, and begging them to promote\n\nHis lyre. Could she have done more, if her husband had been ill,\n\nOr if the doctors had been pessimistic about her dear little boy?\n\nShe stood there, in front of the altar, considering it no disgrace\n\nTo veil her head on behalf of a lyre, recited the words prescribed\n\nIn the proper form, and duly paled on viewing the lamb\u2019s entrails.\n\nTell me, I\u2019m asking now, say, Father Janus, most ancient of gods,\n\nDo you answer requests from such as her? You must have plenty\n\nOf time in the sky: there\u2019s nothing I can see to occupy you there.\n\nOne consults you about comic actors, another wants to promote\n\nA tragedian: your diviner will get varicose veins from standing!\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:398-456 And There Are Worse\n\n\u00a0\n\nStill it\u2019s better for her to play an instrument, than go flying about\n\nThe City brazenly, eager to converse amidst gatherings of men,\n\nAnd speak to generals in their military cloaks, with her husband\n\nPresent, keeping a serious face herself, her nipples barely damp.\n\nShe knows every single thing that happens, throughout the world,\n\nWhat the Chinese, and Thracians are doing; secrets of stepmothers\n\nAnd of sons; who\u2019s in love, and which adulterer they\u2019re ravaging.\n\nShe\u2019ll tell you who got the widow pregnant, and in which month\n\nIt occurred, what words each woman uses in bed; which positions.\n\nShe\u2019s the first to locate a comet that threatens the kings of Parthia\n\nAnd Armenia; she picks up the latest rumours and gossip, down by\n\nThe City gates, and invents some too; the Niphates river has burst\n\nIts banks, endangering whole populations, while massive flooding\n\nHas drowned the fields, cities are crumbling, regions are subsiding;\n\nThat\u2019s what she\u2019ll tell whoever she meets at the next street corner.\n\nShe\u2019s no more intolerable though than the woman who grabs hold\n\nOf her humble neighbours and lays into them with a whip, cursing\n\nLoudly. If her sound sleep happens to be interrupted by the barking\n\nOf a dog, then she\u2019ll be shouting; \u2018Quick, and bring the cudgels!\u2019\n\nFirst she\u2019ll give orders for the owner to receive a thrashing and\n\nThen the dog: she\u2019s formidable to meet, with a truly repulsive face.\n\nShe goes to the baths at night, orders her staff with the perfume jars\n\nAround at night, all because she delights to sweat amidst the tumult.\n\nWhen her weary arms fall back after exercising with heavy weights,\n\nThe practised masseur will press his fingers into her crest, and will\n\nForce a cry from his mistress, as he strokes the surface of her thigh.\n\nMeanwhile her wretched dinner-guests are overcome by boredom\n\nAnd hunger. Eventually, she will arrive, her face hot and flushed,\n\nThirsting for a whole barrel of wine; so a full jar\u2019s brought and set\n\nAt her feet, from which she will down a pint or two before dinner,\n\nAnd thereby create a raging appetite, then she\u2019ll eat till she feels sick,\n\nAnd it all comes up again from her soaked innards, hitting the floor.\n\nRivulets flow over marble, and the gilded basin stinks of Falernian\n\nWine; and, just like that coiling snake that tumbled into a deep\n\nVat, she keeps drinking and spewing up. No wonder her husband\n\nFeels nauseous and closes his eyes to try and keep down his bile.\n\nThere\u2019s worse yet, the woman I mean who as soon as she\u2019s taken\n\nHer place at dinner, starts praising Virgil, forgives the failing Dido,\n\nPits the poets against each other, and compares them, weighing\n\nVirgil in one pan of the scales, depositing Homer in the other.\n\nThe literary men concede, the rhetoricians are beaten, the whole\n\nParty is silent, not even the lawyer speaks or the auctioneer,\n\nNot another woman. Such powerful utterance falls from her lips,\n\nYou might say it\u2019s like the sound of dishes being struck, or peals\n\nOf bells. No need for anyone to sound the trumpet, beat the gong:\n\nShe can come to the aid of the moon in labour, all on her own.\n\nEven wise men claim one can have too much of a good thing;\n\nSo let the lady reclining next to you, not indulge in her own style\n\nOf rhetoric, or revolve whole phrases before tangling you in some\n\nPerverse argument, or know every event that occurred in history.\n\nLet there be a few literary things she doesn\u2019t understand. I loathe\n\nA woman who thumbs, and recites from, Palaemon\u2019s <em>Grammar<\/em>,\n\nAlways observes the laws and rules of speech, a woman learned\n\nIn antiquities, who knows lines from the ancients unknown to me.\n\nDoes any man care? She should criticise the crude speech of her\n\nGirlfriends: husbands should be allowed the occasional solecism.\n\nIn fact, if she must appear so excessively learned and eloquent,\n\nShe may as well be a man, hitch her tunic knee-high, sacrifice\n\nA pig to Silvanus, and only be charged a farthing at the baths.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:457-507 Endless Beautification\n\n\u00a0\n\nOnce she\u2019s clasped an emerald necklace round her neck, once\n\nShe\u2019s stretched her earlobes and inserted a pair of giant pearls,\n\nThere\u2019s nothing she won\u2019t permit herself, nothing she thinks vile,\n\nNothing\u2019s more intolerable than the sight of wealthy women.\n\nMeanwhile her face is a hideous and quite ridiculous spectacle,\n\nCaked with layers of bread-paste, reeking of greasy Poppaean\n\nCreams, that stick to her wretched husband\u2019s lips. Eventually,\n\nShe\u2019ll uncover her face and remove the first few layers of stucco.\n\nShe begins to be recognisable, bathes like Poppaea in asses\u2019 milk,\n\nTo obtain which fluid she\u2019d take the asses along in her entourage,\n\nEven if she chanced to be banished to chill Hyperborean climes.\n\nShe\u2019ll arrive at her lover\u2019s with pristine skin. Why would she\n\nWish to look lovely at home? To please their lovers they find\n\nAromatic oils, they buy everything the graceful Indians send us.\n\nBut what\u2019s coated all over, revived, with all those concoctions\n\nOne on another, with those thick moist mounds of wheat-paste\n\nPlastered all over its surface, do you call that a face or a boil?\n\nIt\u2019s worth considering thoroughly, in fine detail, what they do\n\nAnd what they get up to during the day. If the husband\u2019s slept\n\nWith his back turned all night, her lady-secretary is in for it,\n\nThe wardrobe-master had best remove the clothes, the Liburnian\n\nLitter-slaves are told they\u2019re late, they must pay for their master\u2019s\n\nSlumbers. Sticks are broken on one slave, the whip and the strap\n\nScorch others; some women pay their torturers an annual wage.\n\nThey\u2019re lashed while she daubs, and listens to her girlfriends,\n\nOr inspects the broad gold stripe on some embroidered dress,\n\nThey\u2019re beaten, as she reads her long vertical scroll of accounts,\n\nAnd beaten, until the beaters are weary, and she cries: \u2018Away,\n\nWith them!\u2019 in a dreadful voice, once justice has been exacted.\n\nHer house regime is no less cruel than a Sicilian tyrant\u2019s court.\n\nIf she has an assignation and wants to be beautified to a higher\n\nStandard than usual, hurrying to make a rendezvous in the park,\n\nOr, more likely, at the sanctuary of that brothel-keeper Isis,\n\nUnlucky Psecas, the slave-girl, will be doing her mistress\u2019s hair,\n\nWith her own scalp torn, and her breasts and shoulders bared,\n\n\u2018Why\u2019s this curl sticking out?\u2019 and the bull-hide strap is ready\n\nTo exact a swift penalty for the foul crime of a twisted ringlet.\n\nWhy is it Psecas\u2019 fault? How can it be the slave-girl\u2019s fault if\n\nYour own nose displeases you? Meanwhile another slave on\n\nHer left, draws out and combs the hair, and coils it into a bun.\n\nShe\u2019ll seek the advice of a slave of her mother\u2019s promoted to\n\nSpinning wool, after long service at hairpins; it\u2019s her opinion\n\nThat\u2019s sought first, then her inferiors in age and skill will give\n\nTheir views, as if their mistress\u2019s reputation were at stake, as if\n\nLife itself were at stake: with so much anxiety, is beauty sought.\n\nHer head is weighed down with layer on layer, tier after tier,\n\nPiled high: it\u2019s an Andromache you\u2019ll see from the front, from\n\nBehind someone altogether shorter. See, if you will, if she\n\nHasn\u2019t been granted, sadly, hips and thighs of meagre extent,\n\nAnd, without high-heeled boots, is as short as a Pigmy maiden,\n\nSee is she hasn\u2019t to rise up on tiptoe to be able to plant a kiss.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:508-591 And They\u2019re So Superstitious\n\n\u00a0\n\nMeanwhile, she\u2019ll possess not a care or a single thought for her\n\nWronged husband. She lives her life like a next-door neighbour,\n\nMore intimate only in this respect that she loathes her husband\u2019s\n\nFriends, and slaves, and is hard on his pocket. Behold, here are\n\nThe acolytes of frenzied Bellona, and of Cybele, Mother of Gods,\n\nLed by a gross eunuch, with a form that perverted youth reveres,\n\nWho long ago, wielding a flint knife, cut off his tender genitals,\n\nBefore whom the raucous band and the plebeian drums fall silent,\n\nAnd whose cheeks are bisected by the straps of a Phrygian cap.\n\nIn a booming voice, he\u2019ll warn the woman to beware of windy\n\nSeptember\u2019s approach, against which she needs to purify herself\n\nWith a hundred eggs, and by gifting him her old russet dresses,\n\nSo that any sudden, serious danger is removed at a stroke along\n\nWith the clothes, atoning for the whole year in a single action.\n\nIn winter she\u2019ll break the ice, and submerge herself in the river,\n\nDipping herself three times in the Tiber at dawn, even plunging\n\nHer fearful head in the swirling waters, and, naked and shivering.\n\nShe\u2019ll crawl across our proud King Tarquin\u2019s Campus Martius,\n\nOn blood-stained knees; and then if white Io should command,\n\nShe\u2019ll journey to the far bounds of Egypt and bring back water\n\nFrom sweltering Meroe, to sprinkle around in the Temple of Isis,\n\nThat looms by the Campus polling-booths, the ancient sheepfold.\n\nIndeed, she believes she\u2019s ruled by the voice of the Lady herself,\n\nHers being the kind of mind and spirit the gods speak to at night!\n\nIt\u2019s Anubis, therefore, who receives the best and highest honour,\n\nRunning along, mocking the lamentations of the crowd for Osiris,\n\nSurrounded by his shaven-headed creatures, in their linen robes.\n\nHe\u2019s the one who petitions on your wife\u2019s behalf, when she fails\n\nTo refrain from sex on the holy days, owing a fine for violation\n\nOf the bed. After the silver asp has been seen to raise its head,\n\nIt\u2019s his tears and professional muttering that guarantees Osiris\n\nWon\u2019t refuse to pardon her transgression, provided, of course,\n\nHe\u2019s bribed, with a fat goose and a large slice of sacrificial cake.\n\nNo sooner does he give way, than a palsied Jewess will leave\n\nHer hay-lined begging-basket to mutter her requests in an ear.\n\nShe\u2019s the interpreter of the laws of Jerusalem, high-priestess\n\nOf the tree, and the faithful messenger of highest heaven.\n\nHer hand too is filled, but with less; since the Jews will sell\n\nYou whatever dreams you wish for the tiniest copper coin.\n\nWhile the soothsayer from Armenia or Commagene, having\n\nProbed the meaning of a dove\u2019s lungs, will promise a tender\n\nLover, or a vast inheritance from some childless millionaire;\n\nHe\u2019ll dig into chicken breasts, the guts of a puppy, and now\n\nAnd then a male child; himself reporting what he has done.\n\nBut even greater faith\u2019s placed in the Chaldeans: whatever\n\nThe astrologer claims, women will believe to have issued\n\nOut of Ammon\u2019s oasis, the Oracle at Delphi having fallen\n\nSilent, and the human race now blind as regards the future.\n\nYet the first of these astrologers is the one most often exiled.\n\nThey\u2019ll trust his skill, if his right hand\u2019s rattled the chains,\n\nHis left too, if he\u2019s languished in some distant military gaol.\n\nNo astrologer lacking a criminal record possesses any talent,\n\nOnly one who nearly perished, who managed to be banished\n\nTo a Cycladic island, languishing in the end on tiny Seriphus.\n\nYour very own Tanaquil, will consult him about the lingering\n\nDeath of her jaundiced mother (she\u2019s asked about yours already),\n\nWhen she\u2019ll bury sister and uncles, and whether her lover will\n\nOutlive her; what greater tidings could the gods bring her?\n\nAt least she\u2019s ignorant herself of the threats posed by gloomy\n\nSaturn, in which signs Venus shows herself as favourable,\n\nAnd which month means loss, which days will bring a profit.\n\nRemember always to avoid encountering the kind of woman\n\nWith a dog-eared almanac in her hands, as if it were an amber\n\nWorry-bead, who no longer seeks consultations but gives them,\n\nWho won\u2019t follow her husband to camp, or back home again,\n\nIf Thrasyllus the astrologer\u2019s calculations advise against it.\n\nWhen she wishes to take a ride to the first milestone, she\u2019ll find\n\nThe best time to travel in her book; if her eye-corner itches\n\nWhen rubbed, she checks her horoscope before seeking relief;\n\nIf she\u2019s lying in bed ill, the hour appropriate for taking food,\n\nIt seems, must be one prescribed by that Egyptian, Petosiris.\n\nIf she\u2019s middle-class she\u2019ll try the fortune-tellers at the Circus,\n\nSelect the cards, or offer her hand and brow to the prophet\n\nWho demands of her lots of clicking sounds with the tongue.\n\nRich women obtain their readings from Phrygian soothsayers,\n\nOr someone expert in star-signs and the cosmos, or the elder\n\nWho publicly purifies the places where lightning buries itself.\n\nPlebeian fates are decided in the Circus or on the Embankment,\n\nWhere those displaying a long gold chain hung on a bare neck,\n\nAsk advice at the foot of the Circus towers or the dolphin columns,\n\nAbout whether to leave the tradesman, and marry the inn-keeper.\n\n\u00a0\n\nSatVI:592-661 It\u2019s Tragic!\n\n\u00a0\n\nYet at least such women endure the dangers of childbirth, and all\n\nThe effort of nurturing their offspring their lot in life dictates.\n\nHardly any woman who sleeps in a gilded bed will lie there in labour,\n\nSuch is the power of the arts and drugs, of that woman who procures\n\nAbortions, and contracts to murder human embryos in the womb.\n\nBe grateful, you wretch, and offer your wife yourself whatever she has\n\nTo take, since if she had chosen to let vigorous boys vex and stretch\n\nHer belly, you might have been father to an Ethiopian! Your dark heir,\n\nBarely visible at dawn, would soon be seen everywhere in the will.\n\nI\u2019ll not dwell on adoption: the joys and vows so often proven false\n\nAt the foul latrine; the little Salian priests, the high-priests so often\n\nAcquired from there; to bear, illegitimately, the Scauri family name.\n\nShameless Fortune lingers there at night, smiling on naked infants:\n\nShe warms them at her breast, and clasps them in her embrace, then\n\nHands them over to the most exalted of houses, secretly readying\n\nA farce for her enjoyment; these are the ones she loves, these she\n\nShowers with attention, always promoting them, her foster-children.\n\nThis fellow offers magic incantations, that one Thessalian potions,\n\nWhich allow a wife to befuddle her husband\u2019s mind, then beat him\n\nOn the buttocks with her sandal. That\u2019s the reason for the confusion\n\nIn your head, and your total forgetfulness of things that you did only\n\nA moment ago. Still it\u2019s bearable, so long as you don\u2019t start raving,\n\nLike that uncle of Nero\u2019s, Caligula, after Caesonia dosed him with\n\nAn aphrodisiac made from the membrane from a newborn foal\u2019s brow.\n\nWhat woman isn\u2019t forever prepared to act like an Emperor\u2019s wife?\n\nThen everything was on fire, the whole fabric collapsing in ruins,\n\nExactly as if the goddess Juno had driven her husband Jupiter mad.\n\nAgrippina\u2019s mushroom, by comparison, turned out to be far less\n\nRuinous, since all it did was stop the beating heart of one old man,\n\nHe of the trembling head, and the lips dripping long strands of saliva,\n\nForced to \u2018descend\u2019 into the sky: Your wife\u2019s potion by contrast\n\nConjures up steel and fire, torments and tears the innards of knights\n\nAnd senators, causing indiscriminate pain. Such the high cost of a\n\nMare\u2019s afterbirth, such the high price of a single venomous sorceress.\n\nWives loath a mistress\u2019s bastards; and it\u2019s long been acceptable\n\nTo murder a stepson; no one opposes it now, no one even objects.\n\nYou wards, who are rather wealthy, and lacking fathers, beware:\n\nGuard your lives, and don\u2019t ever put your faith in a single dish:\n\nThose warm pastries are dark with a mother\u2019s livid venom.\n\nHave someone else taste first whatever the woman who bore you\n\nServes, get your terrified tutor to drink, before you, from the cup.\n\nI\u2019m inventing it all, am I? Placing satire in tragedy\u2019s shoes,\n\nExceeding the limits and rules set down my predecessors,\n\nOpening my gaping mouth, and ranting, in Sophoclean verse,\n\nOf things unknown to Rutulian hills, or the skies of Latium?\n\nIf only it were nonsense! Yet Pontia confesses: \u2018I\u2019m guilty, I\n\nAdmit it all, I prepared aconite, and gave it to my own boys;\n\nThe crime was discovered, revealed; I carried it out myself. \u2018\n\nYou did away with them both, and at the same meal, you viper?\n\nYou murdered both? \u2018Or seven, if there\u2019d chanced to be seven.\u2019\n\nSo we must believe what the tragedians say about cruel Medea\n\nFrom Colchis, or sad Procne; I\u2019ll not venture to contradict them.\n\nThose women too dared monstrous things, enormities even then,\n\nThough not for money. Those crowning monstrosities elicit less\n\nAmazement, when we realise it was anger that made the sex turn\n\nTo crime, when they were swept along, frenzy tearing their hearts,\n\nDashed about like rocks torn from the cliffs, when the mountain\n\nCollapses beneath, and the face of the overhanging slope is shorn.\n\nNo, the woman I detest is the calculating one, in complete control,\n\nWho betrays deep wickedness. Such as they, can watch Alcestis\n\nSuffer death on her husband\u2019s behalf, yet if a parallel choice is\n\nOn offer, would happily watch a husband die to save their pup.\n\nEvery day you meet many a murderous Danaid, many an Eriphyle;\n\nThere isn\u2019t a street that doesn\u2019t possess it\u2019s very own Clytemnestra.\n\nThe only difference is: that daughter of Tyndareus swung an absurd\n\nAnd unwieldy double-bladed axe, with both her hands, while these\n\nDays the thing is accomplished with the insignificant lungs of a toad.\n\nYet a woman now will use steel, as well, if her cautious Agamemnon\n\nHas downed one of the Pontic antidotes of thrice-conquered Mithridates.","rendered":"<p><strong>Satire V: Patron and Client<\/strong> \u00a0 SatV:1-24 Payment in Kind<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re not yet ashamed of the way you live, if you think<\/p>\n<p>That the highest good is still to live off another\u2019s leavings,<\/p>\n<p>And can suffer the treatment Sarmentus or Gabba, the fool,<\/p>\n<p>Endured at Augustus\u2019s table, where not all men were equal,<\/p>\n<p>Though you swore on oath, I\u2019d still hesitate to trust you.<\/p>\n<p>I know nothing\u2019s nobler than the belly; yet, nonetheless,<\/p>\n<p>If you lack whatever it takes to fill your empty stomach:<\/p>\n<p>Is there no beggar\u2019s pitch vacant? No archway or lesser<\/p>\n<p>Half of a mat somewhere? Are insults for dinner worth it?<\/p>\n<p>Are you as famished as that? Wouldn\u2019t it be more honest<\/p>\n<p>To shiver outside, and gnaw bread left behind by the dogs?<\/p>\n<p>In the first place, understand that being invited to dinner<\/p>\n<p>Will be treated as payment in full for all your past service.<\/p>\n<p>Great friendship\u2019s reward is food: and your lord will enter it<\/p>\n<p>In the accounts, however infrequent the dinner. Each couple<\/p>\n<p>Of months, if he wishes, he\u2019ll invite a neglected client to eat,<\/p>\n<p>So that the third cushion on some unfilled couch isn\u2019t vacant,<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Let\u2019s get together\u2019 he\u2019ll say. It\u2019s the height of your wishes.<\/p>\n<p>What more could you want? Now Trebius has reason to break<\/p>\n<p>His rest, and take to his heels, anxious lest the whole crowd<\/p>\n<p>Of dawn visitors has already been round to greet the patron,<\/p>\n<p>While the stars are still fading in the sky or even at an hour<\/p>\n<p>When tardy Bootes\u2019 frosty wagon is still wheeling around.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatV:25-65 Dinner With The Patron \u2013 The Drink<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And what a dinner! You\u2019ll get wine too dry for cotton-wool<\/p>\n<p>To absorb: you\u2019ll watch the guests turn into wild Corybants.<\/p>\n<p>Brawls break out, but once you\u2019re hit you\u2019ll be hurling cups<\/p>\n<p>Too, and dabbing at your wounds with a reddened napkin,<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what happens as the battle rages between the guests<\/p>\n<p>And the crowd of freedmen, with Spanish ware as missiles.<\/p>\n<p>The patron meanwhile sips old wine, bottled when Consuls<\/p>\n<p>Wore their hair long, and gets stewed on a vintage trodden<\/p>\n<p>During the Social Wars, yet denies his dyspeptic friend a drop.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow he\u2019ll get himself drunk on something from Setian<\/p>\n<p>Or Alban hills, its name and vineyard erased by time, layers<\/p>\n<p>Of soot coating the ancient jar, a wine that Thrasea Paetus<\/p>\n<p>And Helvidius Priscus used to drink, wearing their garlands<\/p>\n<p>To honour the birth of Cassius, Marcus Brutus, and his brother.<\/p>\n<p>Virro, the patron, himself, drinks from capacious goblets, tiled<\/p>\n<p>With amber, encrusted with beryl. You\u2019re not allowed their gold,<\/p>\n<p>Or, if you are handed one, there\u2019s a servant guarding your place,<\/p>\n<p>Counting the gems, keeping his eye on your sharp fingernails.<\/p>\n<p>Forgive the patron: the splendour of his jasper\u2019s widely praised.<\/p>\n<p>Virro, like many another, transfers from his fingers to the cups<\/p>\n<p>Gemstones that might have decorated the front of the scabbard<\/p>\n<p>Of Aeneas, that youth who Dido loved more than jealous Iarbas.<\/p>\n<p>While you\u2019ll drain a Vatinian cup, its four nozzles like the nose<\/p>\n<p>Of that cobbler of Beneventum for which it was named, cracked<\/p>\n<p>Already, its broken glass due to be traded for sulphur matches.<\/p>\n<p>If the patron\u2019s stomach\u2019s heated by food and wine, then distilled<\/p>\n<p>Water cooler than frost in Thrace is ordered. Just now, was I<\/p>\n<p>Complaining you\u2019ll not be served from the same bottle of wine?<\/p>\n<p>Well, you\u2019ll drink different water too, your cup will be handed<\/p>\n<p>You by some Gaetulian footman, or black bony Moroccan hand,<\/p>\n<p>By one of those folk you\u2019d not like to encounter at midnight<\/p>\n<p>As you\u2019re carried past those tombs on the hilly Via Latina.<\/p>\n<p>The flower of Asia serve the patron, bought for a higher price<\/p>\n<p>Than all the wealth of those warrior kings Tullus and Ancus<\/p>\n<p>Or, to be brief, all the trinkets of the richest rulers of Rome.<\/p>\n<p>That being so, when you\u2019re thirsty, you\u2019ll be required to catch<\/p>\n<p>The eye of your African Ganymede. A boy bought for so many<\/p>\n<p>Thousands hasn\u2019t the time to be mixing drinks for paupers,<\/p>\n<p>His looks and youth justify his scorn. When will he get to you?<\/p>\n<p>When will the server of hot and cold water answer your plea?<\/p>\n<p>Of course he\u2019s annoyed at having to answer to some old client<\/p>\n<p>Who keeps asking for things, reclining there, while he stands.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatV:66-155 Dinner With The Patron \u2013 The Food<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The greatest houses are always full of arrogant slaves.<\/p>\n<p>Behold another, grumbling as he offers you scarcely<\/p>\n<p>Breakable bread, lumps of solid crust already mouldy,<\/p>\n<p>That exercise your molars, while thwarting your bite.<\/p>\n<p>While that reserved for the patron is soft snowy-white<\/p>\n<p>Kneaded from finest flour. Remember to stay your hand;<\/p>\n<p>The baking-tray must be granted respect; if you show<\/p>\n<p>Presumption notwithstanding, a slave orders you to stop:<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Impertinent guest, please address the proper basket,<\/p>\n<p>Have you forgotten which bread\u2019s reserved for you?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Was it for this, then, I left wife and home so often<\/p>\n<p>To go scurrying up the Esquiline\u2019s freezing slope,<\/p>\n<p>While the spring-time skies hurled down savage hail,<\/p>\n<p>In a cloak soaked through by the endless cloudbursts?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Look at the size of that lobster they bring the patron,<\/p>\n<p>How it adorns the dish, how it\u2019s hedged all round<\/p>\n<p>By asparagus, how it\u2019s tail scorns the diners, on entry,<\/p>\n<p>Carried along, on high, in the hands of a tall attendant.<\/p>\n<p>While you\u2019re served crayfish cupped by half an egg,<\/p>\n<p>A morsel only fit for a funeral, on a miniscule plate.<\/p>\n<p>The patron dips his seafood in Venafran olive oil, but the<\/p>\n<p>Sallow cabbage they offer to poor you stinks of the lamp.<\/p>\n<p>The oil provided for all your dishes is brought upstream<\/p>\n<p>In one of those beak-nosed craft, of Numidian reeds,<\/p>\n<p>Which is why the Romans won\u2019t bathe with Africans,<\/p>\n<p>Since their oil protects them from the black snakes too.<\/p>\n<p>That mullet the patron eats comes from Corsica or from<\/p>\n<p>The cliffs below Taormina, since our waters are already<\/p>\n<p>Quite fished-out, totally exhausted by raging gluttony;<\/p>\n<p>The market-makers so continually raking the shallows<\/p>\n<p>With their nets, that the fry are never allowed to mature.<\/p>\n<p>So the provinces stock our kitchens, they\u2019re the source<\/p>\n<p>Of what Laenas the legacy-hunter buys, and Aemilia sells.<\/p>\n<p>Virro, our patron\u2019s served with a lamprey, the largest<\/p>\n<p>Out of Messina\u2019s straits; for when the south-wind rests<\/p>\n<p>And squats there in his cave, drying his dripping wings,<\/p>\n<p>The nets defy Charybdis, the whirlpool, with temerity.<\/p>\n<p>But what awaits you is an eel, the stringy snake\u2019s relative,<\/p>\n<p>Or a fish from the Tiber, covered with grey-green blotches,<\/p>\n<p>Slave of its shores like you, fed from the flowing sewer,<\/p>\n<p>And a denizen of that drain beneath the heart of Subura.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d like a word with the patron, if only he\u2019d lend a willing ear.<\/p>\n<p>No one expects those gifts any more Seneca used to send<\/p>\n<p>To his humble friends, that good Piso or Cotta Maximus<\/p>\n<p>Would dispense, for the honour of giving was once prized<\/p>\n<p>More highly than the symbols and titles of public office:<\/p>\n<p>All we ask is that you treat us courteously. Do that and be<\/p>\n<p>As lavish with yourself as others, stingy with your friends.<\/p>\n<p>A huge goose-liver is set before the patron, a fat fowl<\/p>\n<p>As big as a goose, and a frothing boar worthy of blond<\/p>\n<p>Meleager\u2019s spear. After that he\u2019ll eat truffles, if it\u2019s spring,<\/p>\n<p>When hoped-for thunderstorms swell them and the menu.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018You can keep your corn,\u2019 Alledius says, \u2018Libya, unyoke<\/p>\n<p>Your team, just as long as you keep sending these truffles.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, not to spare your indignation, you can watch<\/p>\n<p>The carver flourish his knife, and dance about, and mime,<\/p>\n<p>While he acts out every one of his master\u2019s instructions.<\/p>\n<p>And, no doubt, it\u2019s a matter of no little importance<\/p>\n<p>To carve the hare or chicken with appropriate gestures.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re ever tempted to open your mouth, as if owning<\/p>\n<p>To a free man\u2019s first, last and middle name, you\u2019ll be hauled<\/p>\n<p>Out feet first, and ejected, as Cacus was handled by Hercules.<\/p>\n<p>Why should Virro accept a cup tainted by your lips, to drink<\/p>\n<p>Your health? Who\u2019s so mad or reckless he\u2019ll call out<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Cheers!\u2019 to a patron? There\u2019s many a thing a man won\u2019t<\/p>\n<p>Dare to say, while he\u2019s wearing a coat that\u2019s full of holes.<\/p>\n<p>But if some god, or godlike figure, kinder than fate, gave you<\/p>\n<p>Four thousand in gold, a knight\u2019s fortune, how swiftly then<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019d turn from a nobody into one of Virro\u2019s dear friends!<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Serve Trebius, give Trebius some! Would you like a little<\/p>\n<p>Of this loin, brother?\u2019 Oh, Mammon, the honour\u2019s yours,<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s you who are his brother. And if you want to be a lord<\/p>\n<p>Or an overlord, don\u2019t cherish a little Aeneas playing about<\/p>\n<p>Your hall, or a little daughter even dearer to you than him.<\/p>\n<p>A barren wife will render you a nearer and sweeter friend.<\/p>\n<p>Yet nowadays it\u2019s fine if your Mycale gives birth, and spills<\/p>\n<p>Three sons at a time into their father\u2019s lap, your patron will<\/p>\n<p>Delight in your noisy nest. He\u2019ll provide a chariot-team<\/p>\n<p>Jersey, in green; the neatest of nuts; and pennies if asked,<\/p>\n<p>Whenever your infant parasite approaches him at dinner.<\/p>\n<p>Lowly friends are served dubious fungi, while the master<\/p>\n<p>Eats mushrooms, though of the type Claudius ate before<\/p>\n<p>The kind his wife served, after which he ate nothing more.<\/p>\n<p>Virro will call for apples for himself and the other Virros,<\/p>\n<p>Apples whose scent is a meal on its own, the kind of fruit<\/p>\n<p>That the perpetual autumn of Homer\u2019s Phaeacia produced,<\/p>\n<p>Stolen you might think from the Hesperides\u2019 golden bough:<\/p>\n<p>Your treat\u2019s a scabby apple, like one gnawed by that creature,<\/p>\n<p>That monkey on the Embankment, in helm and shield, that fear<\/p>\n<p>Of the whip taught how to hurl spears, from a hairy goat\u2019s back.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatV:156-173 What Humiliation!<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps you think Virro\u2019s intent on saving money. No,<\/p>\n<p>He does it to grieve you; for what comedy, what mime<\/p>\n<p>Is better than a groaning stomach? So his whole aim,<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019d know, is to see you vent your anger in tears,<\/p>\n<p>And make sure you\u2019ll never stop gnashing your teeth.<\/p>\n<p>You see yourself as a free man, as your lord\u2019s guest:<\/p>\n<p>While he thinks you\u2019re enslaved by the smell of food;<\/p>\n<p>And he\u2019s not wrong; for what free-born child that\u2019s worn<\/p>\n<p>The gold Etruscan amulet, or the pauper\u2019s knotted thong,<\/p>\n<p>Could be so nakedly desperate as to endure him twice,<\/p>\n<p>Unless the hope of dining well ensnared them. \u2018Behold,<\/p>\n<p>Now he sends us half-eaten hare, or a bit of boar-haunch,<\/p>\n<p>Now a puny bird\u2019s on the way.\u2019 So you all wait in silence,<\/p>\n<p>Clasping your untouched bread. Oh, he understands it all,<\/p>\n<p>He who treats you like this. If you\u2019ll suffer it, then you<\/p>\n<p>Deserve it too. Soon, you\u2019ll be offering your head to be<\/p>\n<p>Slapped and shaved, and you won\u2019t be afraid to endure<\/p>\n<p>The whip: that\u2019s the dinner and friend you\u2019re worthy of!<br \/>\n<strong>Satire VI: Don\u2019t Marry<\/strong> \u00a0 SatVI:1-24 Chastity Has Vanished<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I believe that Chastity lingered on earth in Saturn\u2019s reign,<\/p>\n<p>And long-endured, throughout that age when a chilly cave<\/p>\n<p>Offered a modest home, enclosed a fire, gods of the hearth,<\/p>\n<p>And the master and herd as well, in its communal gloom,<\/p>\n<p>When a wife from the hills made up a woodland bed<\/p>\n<p>With leaves and straw, and the pelts of wild beasts, her<\/p>\n<p>Neighbours. She wasn\u2019t you, Cynthia, nor you, Lesbia<\/p>\n<p>Your bright eyes dimmed at the death of your sparrow,<\/p>\n<p>She offered her breasts for her mighty infants to drain,<\/p>\n<p>And was often hairier than her acorn-belching husband.<\/p>\n<p>You see, when the world was new, the heavens young,<\/p>\n<p>People lived differently, lacking parents as they did,<\/p>\n<p>Born instead from cleft oak-trees, or shaped from mud.<\/p>\n<p>And perhaps some traces or other of Chastity survived<\/p>\n<p>Under Jupiter too, though long before Jupiter had grown<\/p>\n<p>A beard, and the Greeks began to swear by other names;<\/p>\n<p>When no man feared his apples or greens would be stolen,<\/p>\n<p>And folk lived with their orchards and gardens un-walled.<\/p>\n<p>It was later that with Justice, Astraea, her friend, she left<\/p>\n<p>For the sky above, those two sisters flitting away together.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an ancient tradition, Postumus, to thrash an alien bed,<\/p>\n<p>And make light of the sacred spirit of the marriage-couch.<\/p>\n<p>Every other crime came later, spawned by the age of iron:<\/p>\n<p>But the silver age it was, that witnessed the first adulterers.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:25-59 You\u2019re Mad To Marry!<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Are you, in this day and age, ready for an agreement,<\/p>\n<p>A contract, the wedding vows, having your hair done<\/p>\n<p>By a master-barber, your finger already wearing the pledge?<\/p>\n<p>Postumus, you were sane once. Are you really taking a wife?<\/p>\n<p>Which Tisiphone is it, with her snakes, driving you mad?<\/p>\n<p>You surely don\u2019t have to endure it, with so much rope about,<\/p>\n<p>Those vertiginous windows open, the Aemilian bridge at hand?<\/p>\n<p>If none of these multiple exits please you, wouldn\u2019t a boyfriend<\/p>\n<p>Suit you better, one who would share your bed, a boyfriend<\/p>\n<p>Who wouldn\u2019t quarrel all night; wouldn\u2019t demand from you<\/p>\n<p>As he lies there, little gifts; and wouldn\u2019t complain that your<\/p>\n<p>Body was idle, that you weren\u2019t breathing hard, as ordered.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018But Ursidius is marrying, he approves of the Julian Law,<\/p>\n<p>He intends to raise a sweet heir, and forgo his plump doves,<\/p>\n<p>His bearded mullet, all his hunts through the meat market.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Well nothing\u2019s impossible, then, if Ursidius is wedding<\/p>\n<p>Someone! If he, who was once the most noted of seducers,<\/p>\n<p>He, so often concealed in a chest, like Latinus in the farce,<\/p>\n<p>Is placing his foolish head in the marital halter! And that\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>Not all, you say, he seeks a wife with traditional virtues?<\/p>\n<p>O, good doctor, relieve the pressure on that swollen vein!<\/p>\n<p>What a fastidious man! Go prostrate yourself in worship<\/p>\n<p>At the Tarpeian shrine, go sacrifice a gilded heifer to Juno,<\/p>\n<p>If you should happen to find a woman whose life is chaste.<\/p>\n<p>There are so few of them fit to touch Ceres\u2019 sacred ribbons,<\/p>\n<p>Whose kisses wouldn\u2019t appal their fathers. Fasten a garland<\/p>\n<p>To your doorpost if you do, deck the lintel with marriage ivy.<\/p>\n<p>Is one man enough for Hiberina, then? She\u2019d sooner confess<\/p>\n<p>Under torture to being happy with only one of her eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018There\u2019s a girl on her father\u2019s estate in the country whose<\/p>\n<p>Reputation is good.\u2019 Try her at Gabii, not in the country,<\/p>\n<p>Try her at Fidenae, then I\u2019ll grant you the father\u2019s farm.<\/p>\n<p>Who says she\u2019s not been carrying on in the caves or on<\/p>\n<p>The hills? Have Jupiter and Mars gone into retirement?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:60-81 Look At Them In The Theatre<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Can you find any woman that\u2019s worthy of you, under<\/p>\n<p>Our porticoes? Does any seat at the theatre hold one<\/p>\n<p>You could take from there, and love with confidence?<\/p>\n<p>When sinuous Bathyllus dances his pantomime Leda,<\/p>\n<p>Tucia loses control of her bladder, and Apula yelps,<\/p>\n<p>As if she were making love, with sharp tedious cries.<\/p>\n<p>Thymele attends: naive Thymele learns something.<\/p>\n<p>But the rest, when the stage-sets are packed away,<\/p>\n<p>When the theatre\u2019s locked, and the only sound\u2019s outside,<\/p>\n<p>When the People\u2019s Games and the Megalesian are done,<\/p>\n<p>Clutch sadly at Accius\u2019 mask, his wand, or his tights.<\/p>\n<p>Urbicus, in the Atellan farce, in his role as Autonoe<\/p>\n<p>Invokes a laugh, and lo, penniless Aelia falls in love.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019ll pay a fortune to get an actor\u2019s clasp undone,<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019ll halt Chrysogonus\u2019s singing. Hispulla\u2019s mad<\/p>\n<p>For a tragedian: you think it\u2019s Quintilian they fall for?<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re marrying a woman who\u2019ll make Echion a father,<\/p>\n<p>Glaphyrus, the lyre-players, or Ambrosius with his pipe.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s set up platforms stretching along the narrow streets,<\/p>\n<p>And decorate the doorposts and lintels with laurel boughs,<\/p>\n<p>So your noble child, dear Lentulus, there in his tortoiseshell<\/p>\n<p>Cradle, shall remind us of Euryalus, perhaps, the gladiator!<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:82-113 What About Eppia?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Eppia, wife of a senator, ran off with the gladiators<\/p>\n<p>To Pharos, to the Nile, and notorious Alexandria;<\/p>\n<p>Even decadent Canopus condemned immoral Rome;<\/p>\n<p>She forgot her home, her husband, deserted her sister,<\/p>\n<p>Shamelessly, left her country, her wailing children,<\/p>\n<p>And, amazingly, Paris her actor, and the Games.<\/p>\n<p>Though, as a child of a wealthy family, she once slept<\/p>\n<p>In a richly decorated cradle on soft, downy pillows,<\/p>\n<p>That sea voyage concerned her little; nor her reputation,<\/p>\n<p>Which is ever the least of losses to such ladies of luxury.<\/p>\n<p>And, with a firm spirit, she endured Tyrrhenian waves,<\/p>\n<p>The Ionian Sea\u2019s vast roar, though she was often hurled<\/p>\n<p>From one abyss to another. Though the reason be just<\/p>\n<p>And virtuous, for taking risks, women are still afraid,<\/p>\n<p>Their hearts frozen with terror, trembling in every limb:<\/p>\n<p>Yet they\u2019re courageous when daring shameful things.<\/p>\n<p>If a husband demands it; then, boarding ship\u2019s a pain,<\/p>\n<p>The bilge is sickening, sky spinning round and round.<\/p>\n<p>But with a lover, her stomach\u2019s fine. A wife will vomit<\/p>\n<p>Over her husband, a mistress eat with the sailors, stride<\/p>\n<p>The deck, and delight in handling the stubborn rigging.<\/p>\n<p>Was it good looks and youthfulness set Eppia on fire?<\/p>\n<p>What did she see in him to endure being classed with<\/p>\n<p>The gladiators? After all, her Sergius had already begun<\/p>\n<p>To smooth his throat, an injured arm presaged retirement;<\/p>\n<p>And his face was seriously disfigured, a furrow chafed<\/p>\n<p>By his helmet, a huge lump on the bridge of his nose,<\/p>\n<p>And a nasty condition provoking a forever-weeping eye.<\/p>\n<p>He was a gladiator, though. That makes them Hyacinthus;<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why she preferred him to children and country,<\/p>\n<p>Husband and sister. They love the steel. That same Sergius<\/p>\n<p>Once discharged, would have dwindled to poor Veiiento.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:114-135 Or Messalina?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Are you worried by Eppia\u2019s tricks, of a non-Imperial kind?<\/p>\n<p>Take a look at the rivals of the gods; hear how Claudius<\/p>\n<p>Suffered. When his wife, Messalina, knew he was asleep,<\/p>\n<p>She would go about with no more than a maid for escort.<\/p>\n<p>The Empress dared, at night, to wear the hood of a whore,<\/p>\n<p>And she preferred a mat to her bed in the Palatine Palace.<\/p>\n<p>Dressed in that way, with a blonde wig hiding her natural<\/p>\n<p>Hair, she\u2019d enter a brothel that stank of old soiled sheets,<\/p>\n<p>And make an empty cubicle, her own; then sell herself,<\/p>\n<p>Her nipples gilded, naked, taking She-Wolf for a name,<\/p>\n<p>Displaying the belly you came from, noble Britannicus,<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019d flatter her clients on entry, and take their money.<\/p>\n<p>Then lie there obligingly, delighting in every stroke.<\/p>\n<p>Later on, when the pimp dismissed his girls, she\u2019d leave<\/p>\n<p>Reluctantly, waiting to quit her cubicle there, till the last<\/p>\n<p>Possible time, her taut sex still burning, inflamed with lust,<\/p>\n<p>Then she\u2019d leave, exhausted by man, but not yet sated,<\/p>\n<p>A disgusting creature with filthy face, soiled by the lamp\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>Black, taking her brothel-stench back to the Emperor\u2019s bed.<\/p>\n<p>Shall I speak of spells and love-potions too, poisons brewed,<\/p>\n<p>And stepsons murdered? The sex do worse things, driven on<\/p>\n<p>By the urgings of power: their crimes of lust are the least of it.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:136-160 The Rich and Beautiful<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Then why does Caesennia\u2019s husband swear she\u2019s the perfect wife?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>She brought him ten thousand in gold, enough to call her chaste.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s not been hit by Venus\u2019s arrows, or scorched by her torch:<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the money he\u2019s aflame with, her dowry launched the darts.<\/p>\n<p>Her freedom\u2019s bought. She can flirt, wave her love-letters in his<\/p>\n<p>Face: she\u2019s a single woman still: a rich man marries for greed.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Why then does Sertorius burn with love, for Bibula, his wife?<\/p>\n<p>If you want the truth, it\u2019s the face he fell for, and not the bride.<\/p>\n<p>The moment she\u2019s a wrinkle or two, her skin\u2019s dry and flabby,<\/p>\n<p>Her teeth become discoloured, her eyes like beads in her head,<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Pack your bags\u2019 she\u2019ll hear his freedman cry, \u2018Away with you.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing but a nuisance now, always blowing your nose. Be off,<\/p>\n<p>Make it snappy. There\u2019s a dry nose coming to take your place.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile she\u2019s hot, she reigns, demanding of her husband<\/p>\n<p>Canusian sheep and shepherds, demanding Falernian vines \u2013<\/p>\n<p>Such tiny requests! \u2013 his house-slaves, those in the prison gangs,<\/p>\n<p>Whatever her neighbour has, her house lacks, must be bought.<\/p>\n<p>Then from the Campus where the booths hide Jason in winter,<\/p>\n<p>His Argonauts too, concealed, behind their whitened canvas,<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll bear away crystal vases, huge, the largest pieces of agate,<\/p>\n<p>And some legendary diamond made the more precious by once<\/p>\n<p>Gracing Berenice\u2019s finger, a gift to his incestuous sister from<\/p>\n<p>Barbarous Herod Agrippa, a present for her, in far-off\u00a0 Judaea,<\/p>\n<p>Where barefoot kings observe their day of rest on the Sabbath,<\/p>\n<p>And their tradition grants merciful indulgence to elderly pigs.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:161-199 Who Could Stand A Perfect Wife?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Isn\u2019t there a single one worthy of you, in all that vast flock?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Let her be lovely, gracious, rich, and fertile; let her exhibit her<\/p>\n<p>Ancestors\u2019 faces round her porticos; be more virginal than the<\/p>\n<p>Sabine women, with tangled hair, who ended war with Rome;<\/p>\n<p>A rare bird on this earth, in the very likeness of a black swan;<\/p>\n<p>Who could stand a wife who embodied all of that? I\u2019d rather,<\/p>\n<p>Much rather, have Venustina than you, Cornelia, O Mother<\/p>\n<p>Of the Gracchi, if that proud expression has to accompany<\/p>\n<p>Your weighty virtues, if triumphs are part of your dowry.<\/p>\n<p>Spare us your father\u2019s defeat of Hannibal, please! Or Syphax,<\/p>\n<p>Beaten in camp: vanish, now, with all of Scipio\u2019s Carthage!<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Mercy, Apollo, we pray, and you, Goddess, drop your arrows;<\/p>\n<p>Her lads are innocent: Niobe, the mother\u2019s, the one to shoot!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Though Amphion may shout that, Apollo still draws his bow.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s how Niobe did for her flock of sons and the father too,<\/p>\n<p>By thinking herself more noble than Latona\u2019s divine children,<\/p>\n<p>While proving more fertile than the white sow of Alba Longa.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s it worth, all the grace, the beauty, if you\u2019re evermore<\/p>\n<p>In her debt? There\u2019s no pleasure in all those rare and exalted<\/p>\n<p>Virtues, if the woman, spoilt by pride, comes dripping with<\/p>\n<p>Bitter aloes not honey. Who, however devoted, doesn\u2019t loathe<\/p>\n<p>The wife he lavishes so much praise on? Who\u2019s so devoted he<\/p>\n<p>Can\u2019t hate her, too, for seven hours or so out of every twelve?<\/p>\n<p>Some faults may be minor, yet too much for husbands to take.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more disgusting than this reality; no woman considers<\/p>\n<p>Herself a beauty, unless she\u2019s transformed herself from Tuscan<\/p>\n<p>To Greek, abandoned Sulmo for Athens? Every sigh\u2019s in Greek:<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s far less attractive to them to show their ignorance in Latin.<\/p>\n<p>They tell their fears, it\u2019s Greek, vent their angers, joys, cares,<\/p>\n<p>The secrets of their souls, it\u2019s Greek. What else? When they<\/p>\n<p>Make love, it\u2019s Greek! Though you might grant it in some<\/p>\n<p>Slip of a girl, if you\u2019re knocking on eighty-six, should it still<\/p>\n<p>Be Greek? Such language is surely not decent for elderly<\/p>\n<p>Women. Whenever that lascivious <em>\u03b6\u03c9\u03ae \u03ba\u03ac\u03af \u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u03ae<\/em> \u2018My life,<\/p>\n<p>My soul\u2019 emerges, you\u2019re using words in public only ever<\/p>\n<p>To be uttered under the sheets. What loins aren\u2019t warmed<\/p>\n<p>By that seductive and idle phrase? It has legs. Yet, to ruffle<\/p>\n<p>Your fine feathers, though you articulate, more sweetly than<\/p>\n<p>Haemus or Carpophorus, your age is still visible on your face.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:200-230 The Way They Lord It Over You!<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re not going to love the woman betrothed and joined<\/p>\n<p>To you by lawful contract, there\u2019d appear to be no reason for<\/p>\n<p>Getting married, nor for wasting time on a feast with its cakes<\/p>\n<p>For bloated guests at the end, or for that first night gift, when<\/p>\n<p>DACIA, GERMANY, Trajan, in victory, gleam in gold on fine plate.<\/p>\n<p>But if you\u2019re simply uxorious, if your heart\u2019s given to her alone,<\/p>\n<p>Then bow your head, prepare to place your neck under the yoke.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ll not find any woman who\u2019ll spare a man who loves her.<\/p>\n<p>Though she\u2019s on fire, she\u2019ll still love to torture and fleece him;<\/p>\n<p>So much the less suitable as wife, then, for a man who wishes<\/p>\n<p>To be a good and desirable husband. And you\u2019ll never be able<\/p>\n<p>To send a gift if your bride objects, you\u2019ll never be able to sell<\/p>\n<p>A thing if she happens to disagree, nor buy one if she says no.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll control your affections: the friend whose first beard your<\/p>\n<p>Threshold witnessed, older now: he\u2019ll be barred from the door.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll dictate your heirs, more than one will turn out to be your<\/p>\n<p>Rival, though even pimps and trainers of charioteers are free,<\/p>\n<p>To act as they wish, in a will; the arena enjoys the same right.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Crucify that slave!\u2019 What\u2019s the crime of his that deserves it?<\/p>\n<p>Where\u2019s the witness? Who accused him? Grant him a hearing.<\/p>\n<p>One can never be over-cautious when a human life is at stake.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018You fool, is a slave human? Even though he\u2019s done nothing:<\/p>\n<p>I wish it, so I command it, let my will be sufficient reason.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s how she orders her husband about. Yet she\u2019ll as soon<\/p>\n<p>Abdicate, change her home, re-use her bridal veil; then flit<\/p>\n<p>Off again, and return, to her imprint in the bed she rejected,<\/p>\n<p>Forsaking the freshly-decked doorways, newly-hung drapes,<\/p>\n<p>The branches, still green as yet, that decorate the threshold.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s how the score increases, that\u2019s how she gets though eight<\/p>\n<p>Husbands in five autumns, a fitting epitaph to place on her grave.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:231-285 They Do As They Wish<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Despair of any harmony if your mother-in-law\u2019s alive.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll teach a daughter how to strip her husband bare;<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll teach her how to reply to letters seducers send,<\/p>\n<p>In a manner neither simple nor uncultured; she\u2019ll outwit<\/p>\n<p>Your guardians; buy them. Though she\u2019s perfectly well,<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll call Archigenes, tossing her heavy sheets around.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, secretly, the lover lies there concealed,<\/p>\n<p>Waiting impatient and silent, and toying with his cock.<\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t really expect the mother, to pass on honest<\/p>\n<p>Behaviour, morals other than her own? Its appropriate<\/p>\n<p>That a vile old woman begets an equally vile daughter.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s rarely a lawsuit brought a woman didn\u2019t begin.<\/p>\n<p>Manilia will accuse, unless she\u2019s maybe the defendant.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019ll even compose and construct the brief themselves,<\/p>\n<p>Ready to dictate Celsus\u2019 headings and opening speech.<\/p>\n<p>Who doesn\u2019t know those sports-wraps of Tyrian purple;<\/p>\n<p>The female wrestling ring; who hasn\u2019t seen the battered<\/p>\n<p>Training-post, hacked by repeated sword-blows, scarred by<\/p>\n<p>Her shield. The girl\u2019s fully trained, totally qualified, ready<\/p>\n<p>For the fanfare and fights at the Floralia, unless that is she<\/p>\n<p>Plans something more, practises now for the wider arena.<\/p>\n<p>How can you call her decent, a helmeted woman who spurns<\/p>\n<p>Her very own gender? She loves a fight, even so she\u2019d not<\/p>\n<p>Wish to be a man; the pleasure we get is so little, after all,!<\/p>\n<p>What a sight, if they auctioned off the wives\u2019 paraphernalia,<\/p>\n<p>The sword-belts, arm-protectors, crests, and the half-size<\/p>\n<p>Left-leg shin-guards! Or if it\u2019s a different fight she wages,<\/p>\n<p>How happy you\u2019d be if she managed to sell off her greaves.<\/p>\n<p>Yet these are the girls who sweat in the thinnest dress, whose<\/p>\n<p>Delicate skins are chafed by the smoothest wisps of silk.<\/p>\n<p>Hear her cries as she drives home the thrusts she\u2019s learned,<\/p>\n<p>Feel how heavy the helmet is that she bows beneath, see the<\/p>\n<p>Breadth, the thickness, of those bandages round her knees,<\/p>\n<p>And laugh when she takes to a chamber-pot, fully armed!<\/p>\n<p>Grand-daughters of Lepidus, blind Metellus, and Fabius<\/p>\n<p>Maximus Gurges too, what gladiator\u2019s wife ever wore stuff<\/p>\n<p>Like this? When did Asylus\u2019s wife grunt at the training-post?<\/p>\n<p>The bed that contains a bride is forever filled with quarrelling<\/p>\n<p>And mutual recrimination; there\u2019s not much sleep to be got.<\/p>\n<p>When she feels guilty about some secret misdeed then she\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>Foul to her man, far worse than a tigress who\u2019s lost her cubs,<\/p>\n<p>She feigns anger, hating your slave-boy, complaining about<\/p>\n<p>Some fictitious mistress. She\u2019s a flood of tears at the ready,<\/p>\n<p>Always at her command, just waiting for her to instruct them<\/p>\n<p>In what manner of way to flow. And then you think it\u2019s love!<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re delighted, you worm, and start kissing away her tears.,<\/p>\n<p>But the love-notes and letters that you\u2019ll find yourself reading,<\/p>\n<p>If you ever fling open your jealous adulteress\u2019s writing-desk!<\/p>\n<p>Say she\u2019s found with a slave or knight, then it\u2019s: \u2018Speak,<\/p>\n<p>Quintilian, speak, give me a line of defence in this situation.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I can\u2019t. Invent one yourself.\u2019 She\u2019ll try: \u2018Long ago we agreed<\/p>\n<p>that you could do as you wished, and that I could indulge in<\/p>\n<p>Whatever I wanted. You can shout all you like, and turn life<\/p>\n<p>Upside down, I\u2019m only human.\u2019 Nothing is so audacious as<\/p>\n<p>A woman caught in the act: her guilt fuels anger and defiance.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:286-313 What Brought All This About?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What brought this monstrous behaviour about, what\u2019s its source<\/p>\n<p>You ask? Their lowly status used to keep Latin women chaste,<\/p>\n<p>Hard work kept the corruption of vice from their humble roofs,<\/p>\n<p>And lack of rest, and their hands, then, were chafed and hardened<\/p>\n<p>From handling Tuscan fleeces, when Hannibal neared Rome,<\/p>\n<p>When their husbands manned the towers at the Colline Gate.<\/p>\n<p>Now we suffer the ills of a long peace. Worse for us than war<\/p>\n<p>This luxury\u2019s stifling us, taking its revenge for an empire won.<\/p>\n<p>No single kind of crime or act of lust has been lacking, from<\/p>\n<p>The moment we were no longer poor: all vice pours into Rome,<\/p>\n<p>From the Isthmus of Corinth, from Sybaris, Miletus and Rhodes<\/p>\n<p>From insolent Tarentum, garlanded, and sodden with wine.<\/p>\n<p>It was filthy lucre at first that brought these alien morals here,<\/p>\n<p>Effete wealth that\u2019s corrupted the present age with revolting<\/p>\n<p>Decadence. Does Venus care about anything when she\u2019s drunk?<\/p>\n<p>She no longer knows the difference between head and tail,<\/p>\n<p>She who laps at giant oysters, long, long after midnight,<\/p>\n<p>When the foaming unguent\u2019s mixed with pure Falernian,<\/p>\n<p>When they drink from perfume dishes, when the ceiling\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>Already whirling, and duplicated lamps dance on the table.<\/p>\n<p>Go on, ask yourself, why Tullia scornfully sniffs the air,<\/p>\n<p>What that infamous Maura\u2019s foster-sister says as Maura<\/p>\n<p>Passes by the ancient temple of Chastity in the Forum,<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s where they halt their litters at night, to make water,<\/p>\n<p>And drench the goddess\u2019s statue with flowing streams,<\/p>\n<p>And take it in turns to ride and squirm under the moon.<\/p>\n<p>Then it\u2019s off home they go: and when the daylight returns<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ll wade through your wife\u2019s urine to call on mighty friends.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:314-345 The Rites of Bona Dea<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>All know the secret rites of the Good Goddess, when the pipe<\/p>\n<p>Stirs the loins, and the maenads of Priapus, maddened they say<\/p>\n<p>By wine and horns alike, go tossing their flowing hair about<\/p>\n<p>And howl. O how all their hearts are on fire for sexual pleasure<\/p>\n<p>How they squeal then to the dance of desire, and how powerful<\/p>\n<p>The torrent of undiluted lust that covers their drenched thighs!<\/p>\n<p>Saufeia doffs her garland, challenges the brothel-keeper\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>Slave-girls, then goes on to win the prize for shaking her arse,<\/p>\n<p>She herself, in turn, admires Medullina\u2019s undulating wiggles:<\/p>\n<p>The contest\u2019s between the ladies, their skill matches their birth.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing is simulated in play, everything there is done for real,<\/p>\n<p>Enough to light a spark in Priam, Laomedon\u2019s son, grown cold<\/p>\n<p>With furthest age, or even in old Nestor\u2019s ruptured scrotum.<\/p>\n<p>Then comes the restless itch of delay, then it\u2019s naked woman,<\/p>\n<p>And the shouts from the whole grotto echo there, in unison,<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Now\u2019s the moment, admit the men.\u2019 If by chance the lover\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>Asleep, she\u2019ll tell his son to don a hood and hurry to join them;<\/p>\n<p>If that\u2019s no use, she\u2019ll summon a slave; if there\u2019s no prospect<\/p>\n<p>Of slaves, she\u2019ll hire the water-man; if he\u2019s nowhere to be found,<\/p>\n<p>And there\u2019s a lack of men, not a moment slips by, before she\u2019ll<\/p>\n<p>Accommodate her arse, freely, to a donkey\u2019s rude attentions.<\/p>\n<p>If only our ancient rites, or our state ceremonies at least, might<\/p>\n<p>Be conducted free of such evils; but every India, every Moor<\/p>\n<p>Knows about Clodius Pulcher, dressed as a lute-girl, bringing<\/p>\n<p>A cock, one bigger than both of Caesar\u2019s Anti-Cato speeches<\/p>\n<p>Put together, into that place, from which even a male mouse flees<\/p>\n<p>Conscious of its balls; that place where they\u2019ll command any picture<\/p>\n<p>To be veiled that happens to portray the form of the opposite sex.<\/p>\n<p>In the old days, what human being ever scorned the gods\u2019 powers,<\/p>\n<p>Or dared to laugh at Numa\u2019s earthenware libation-bowls, the black<\/p>\n<p>Pots, and the little fragile plates found on the Vatican Hill?<\/p>\n<p>But now does any sacred altar exist that lacks it\u2019s own Clodius?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:Ox1-34 and 346-379 And Those Eunuchs!<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In all the houses where men live and entertain who embrace<\/p>\n<p>Obscenity, and whose fidgeting right hands stop at nothing,<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ll find all there resemble a vile bevy of lewd dancers.<\/p>\n<p>These creatures are allowed to soil the food, and stand beside<\/p>\n<p>The sacred table, and cups are washed that should be smashed<\/p>\n<p>If Colocyntha, or bearded Chelidon, have drunk from them.<\/p>\n<p>Thus the gladiator-trainer\u2019s place is purer and better than their<\/p>\n<p>Hearths, since in his troop the lightly-armed gladiators are kept<\/p>\n<p>Away from the heavy. And isn\u2019t it true that the net-men don\u2019t<\/p>\n<p>Associate with the lowly amateurs, that the shoulder-guards<\/p>\n<p>And tridents of naked warriors are never kept in the amateur\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>Equipment locker? There\u2019s a lowest class for such people<\/p>\n<p>In every school, and heavier fetters for them in every prison.<\/p>\n<p>Yet your wife makes you share the goblet with such objects,<\/p>\n<p>With whom a yellow-haired whore from a ruined tomb<\/p>\n<p>Would refuse to drink, despite the Alban or Surrentine wine.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s on their advice that women suddenly marry or divorce.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s with them they share life\u2019s boredoms and anxieties. It\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>From such teachers they learn how to wiggle their arse and hips,<\/p>\n<p>And whatever else the instructor knows. Yet he\u2019s not always<\/p>\n<p>To be trusted: a hair-netted adulterer he\u2019ll paint his eyelids<\/p>\n<p>With mascara, and strut around with his saffron gown undone.<\/p>\n<p>You should be the more suspicious, the smoother his voice,<\/p>\n<p>The more often his right hand lingers near his chubby loins.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019ll prove virile enough in bed; there he\u2019ll remove his mask,<\/p>\n<p>An expert Triphallus, dancing the part of Alexander\u2019s Thais.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Who do you think you\u2019re fooling? Keep that pantomime for<\/p>\n<p>Others! I bet, you\u2019re every inch a man. I\u2019d swear it: confess!<\/p>\n<p>Or must we subject the female slaves to the torturer\u2019s rack?<\/p>\n<p>I know the warnings and advice that all my old friends offer:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLock the door, and keep her close.\u201d But who is to guard the<\/p>\n<p>Guardians themselves, when they win a prize for secrecy re<\/p>\n<p>The lewd girl\u2019s affairs?\u2019 In crime, complicity guarantees silence.<\/p>\n<p>The skilful wife anticipates, and therefore begins with them.<\/p>\n<p>There are women thrilled by effete eunuchs, with their kisses<\/p>\n<p>Ever-gentle, and their hopeless never-to-be-fulfilled beards,<\/p>\n<p>Then, there\u2019s no need to use abortifacients. It\u2019s the very height<\/p>\n<p>Of pleasure for them, when loins already ripe with youth\u2019s hot<\/p>\n<p>Blood and its dark plectrum, are dragged away to the surgeons.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why the testicles are allowed to drop and develop first<\/p>\n<p>And afterwards when they\u2019ve achieved two pounds in weight,<\/p>\n<p>Heliodorus has them off, to the barber\u2019s loss but no one else\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a truer, more wretched debility the slave-dealer\u2019s boys are<\/p>\n<p>Seared by, left shamed by the purse and chickpeas that remain,<\/p>\n<p>But the man made a eunuch by his mistress is noticed by all,<\/p>\n<p>From afar, as he enters the baths, and there\u2019s no doubt he can<\/p>\n<p>Challenge Priapus, who\u2019s the guardian of vineyard and garden.<\/p>\n<p>He may sleep with his mistress, Postumus, but don\u2019t entrust your<\/p>\n<p>Bromius, once he\u2019s no longer smooth and hairless, to that eunuch.<\/p>\n<p>And women both high and low feel the same lust these days;<\/p>\n<p>The woman who treads the dirty pavement in bare feet, she\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>No better than one who\u2019s borne on the shoulders of tall Syrians.<\/p>\n<p>Just to watch the Games, Ogulnia is forced to hire a dress, forced<\/p>\n<p>To hire attendants, a chair, the cushions, even the female friends,<\/p>\n<p>And a nurse, and a yellow-haired girl, whom she can order about,<\/p>\n<p>Yet she chooses to give away whatever\u2019s left of the family silver,<\/p>\n<p>Down to the very last dish, as presents for smooth-skinned athletes.<\/p>\n<p>Many are short of things for the house, but none feel any shame<\/p>\n<p>About being poor, nor will they temper their habits to their means.<\/p>\n<p>Their husbands sometimes look ahead, and feel forebodings of<\/p>\n<p>Cold and hunger, learning at last that lesson taught by the ants:<\/p>\n<p>But a spendthrift woman has no idea of diminishing resources.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll give not a thought to the cost of her pleasures, as if coins<\/p>\n<p>Forever reborn keep burgeoning from an empty treasure chest,<\/p>\n<p>Forever available to be gathered from a newly-replenished heap.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:380-397 There Are Those Who Fancy Musicians<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If she likes music, no one whom the praetors hire for his voice<\/p>\n<p>Will hang on to his clasp. Instruments are always in her hands,<\/p>\n<p>Her web of sardonyx rings ever-flickering over the tortoiseshell<\/p>\n<p>Lyre, the strings struck rhythmically by the quivering plectrum,<\/p>\n<p>Which tender Hedymeles performs with: this she clasps, it\u2019s her<\/p>\n<p>Consolation, and she lavishes kisses on that beloved implement.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s even a woman of the Lamiae clan, with an Appian name,<\/p>\n<p>Who went so far as to offer wine and grain to Janus and Vesta,<\/p>\n<p>Demanding to know if her Pollio had any chance of winning<\/p>\n<p>The Capitoline oak-leaf crown, and begging them to promote<\/p>\n<p>His lyre. Could she have done more, if her husband had been ill,<\/p>\n<p>Or if the doctors had been pessimistic about her dear little boy?<\/p>\n<p>She stood there, in front of the altar, considering it no disgrace<\/p>\n<p>To veil her head on behalf of a lyre, recited the words prescribed<\/p>\n<p>In the proper form, and duly paled on viewing the lamb\u2019s entrails.<\/p>\n<p>Tell me, I\u2019m asking now, say, Father Janus, most ancient of gods,<\/p>\n<p>Do you answer requests from such as her? You must have plenty<\/p>\n<p>Of time in the sky: there\u2019s nothing I can see to occupy you there.<\/p>\n<p>One consults you about comic actors, another wants to promote<\/p>\n<p>A tragedian: your diviner will get varicose veins from standing!<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:398-456 And There Are Worse<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Still it\u2019s better for her to play an instrument, than go flying about<\/p>\n<p>The City brazenly, eager to converse amidst gatherings of men,<\/p>\n<p>And speak to generals in their military cloaks, with her husband<\/p>\n<p>Present, keeping a serious face herself, her nipples barely damp.<\/p>\n<p>She knows every single thing that happens, throughout the world,<\/p>\n<p>What the Chinese, and Thracians are doing; secrets of stepmothers<\/p>\n<p>And of sons; who\u2019s in love, and which adulterer they\u2019re ravaging.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll tell you who got the widow pregnant, and in which month<\/p>\n<p>It occurred, what words each woman uses in bed; which positions.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s the first to locate a comet that threatens the kings of Parthia<\/p>\n<p>And Armenia; she picks up the latest rumours and gossip, down by<\/p>\n<p>The City gates, and invents some too; the Niphates river has burst<\/p>\n<p>Its banks, endangering whole populations, while massive flooding<\/p>\n<p>Has drowned the fields, cities are crumbling, regions are subsiding;<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what she\u2019ll tell whoever she meets at the next street corner.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s no more intolerable though than the woman who grabs hold<\/p>\n<p>Of her humble neighbours and lays into them with a whip, cursing<\/p>\n<p>Loudly. If her sound sleep happens to be interrupted by the barking<\/p>\n<p>Of a dog, then she\u2019ll be shouting; \u2018Quick, and bring the cudgels!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>First she\u2019ll give orders for the owner to receive a thrashing and<\/p>\n<p>Then the dog: she\u2019s formidable to meet, with a truly repulsive face.<\/p>\n<p>She goes to the baths at night, orders her staff with the perfume jars<\/p>\n<p>Around at night, all because she delights to sweat amidst the tumult.<\/p>\n<p>When her weary arms fall back after exercising with heavy weights,<\/p>\n<p>The practised masseur will press his fingers into her crest, and will<\/p>\n<p>Force a cry from his mistress, as he strokes the surface of her thigh.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile her wretched dinner-guests are overcome by boredom<\/p>\n<p>And hunger. Eventually, she will arrive, her face hot and flushed,<\/p>\n<p>Thirsting for a whole barrel of wine; so a full jar\u2019s brought and set<\/p>\n<p>At her feet, from which she will down a pint or two before dinner,<\/p>\n<p>And thereby create a raging appetite, then she\u2019ll eat till she feels sick,<\/p>\n<p>And it all comes up again from her soaked innards, hitting the floor.<\/p>\n<p>Rivulets flow over marble, and the gilded basin stinks of Falernian<\/p>\n<p>Wine; and, just like that coiling snake that tumbled into a deep<\/p>\n<p>Vat, she keeps drinking and spewing up. No wonder her husband<\/p>\n<p>Feels nauseous and closes his eyes to try and keep down his bile.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s worse yet, the woman I mean who as soon as she\u2019s taken<\/p>\n<p>Her place at dinner, starts praising Virgil, forgives the failing Dido,<\/p>\n<p>Pits the poets against each other, and compares them, weighing<\/p>\n<p>Virgil in one pan of the scales, depositing Homer in the other.<\/p>\n<p>The literary men concede, the rhetoricians are beaten, the whole<\/p>\n<p>Party is silent, not even the lawyer speaks or the auctioneer,<\/p>\n<p>Not another woman. Such powerful utterance falls from her lips,<\/p>\n<p>You might say it\u2019s like the sound of dishes being struck, or peals<\/p>\n<p>Of bells. No need for anyone to sound the trumpet, beat the gong:<\/p>\n<p>She can come to the aid of the moon in labour, all on her own.<\/p>\n<p>Even wise men claim one can have too much of a good thing;<\/p>\n<p>So let the lady reclining next to you, not indulge in her own style<\/p>\n<p>Of rhetoric, or revolve whole phrases before tangling you in some<\/p>\n<p>Perverse argument, or know every event that occurred in history.<\/p>\n<p>Let there be a few literary things she doesn\u2019t understand. I loathe<\/p>\n<p>A woman who thumbs, and recites from, Palaemon\u2019s <em>Grammar<\/em>,<\/p>\n<p>Always observes the laws and rules of speech, a woman learned<\/p>\n<p>In antiquities, who knows lines from the ancients unknown to me.<\/p>\n<p>Does any man care? She should criticise the crude speech of her<\/p>\n<p>Girlfriends: husbands should be allowed the occasional solecism.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, if she must appear so excessively learned and eloquent,<\/p>\n<p>She may as well be a man, hitch her tunic knee-high, sacrifice<\/p>\n<p>A pig to Silvanus, and only be charged a farthing at the baths.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:457-507 Endless Beautification<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Once she\u2019s clasped an emerald necklace round her neck, once<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s stretched her earlobes and inserted a pair of giant pearls,<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s nothing she won\u2019t permit herself, nothing she thinks vile,<\/p>\n<p>Nothing\u2019s more intolerable than the sight of wealthy women.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile her face is a hideous and quite ridiculous spectacle,<\/p>\n<p>Caked with layers of bread-paste, reeking of greasy Poppaean<\/p>\n<p>Creams, that stick to her wretched husband\u2019s lips. Eventually,<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll uncover her face and remove the first few layers of stucco.<\/p>\n<p>She begins to be recognisable, bathes like Poppaea in asses\u2019 milk,<\/p>\n<p>To obtain which fluid she\u2019d take the asses along in her entourage,<\/p>\n<p>Even if she chanced to be banished to chill Hyperborean climes.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll arrive at her lover\u2019s with pristine skin. Why would she<\/p>\n<p>Wish to look lovely at home? To please their lovers they find<\/p>\n<p>Aromatic oils, they buy everything the graceful Indians send us.<\/p>\n<p>But what\u2019s coated all over, revived, with all those concoctions<\/p>\n<p>One on another, with those thick moist mounds of wheat-paste<\/p>\n<p>Plastered all over its surface, do you call that a face or a boil?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s worth considering thoroughly, in fine detail, what they do<\/p>\n<p>And what they get up to during the day. If the husband\u2019s slept<\/p>\n<p>With his back turned all night, her lady-secretary is in for it,<\/p>\n<p>The wardrobe-master had best remove the clothes, the Liburnian<\/p>\n<p>Litter-slaves are told they\u2019re late, they must pay for their master\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>Slumbers. Sticks are broken on one slave, the whip and the strap<\/p>\n<p>Scorch others; some women pay their torturers an annual wage.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re lashed while she daubs, and listens to her girlfriends,<\/p>\n<p>Or inspects the broad gold stripe on some embroidered dress,<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re beaten, as she reads her long vertical scroll of accounts,<\/p>\n<p>And beaten, until the beaters are weary, and she cries: \u2018Away,<\/p>\n<p>With them!\u2019 in a dreadful voice, once justice has been exacted.<\/p>\n<p>Her house regime is no less cruel than a Sicilian tyrant\u2019s court.<\/p>\n<p>If she has an assignation and wants to be beautified to a higher<\/p>\n<p>Standard than usual, hurrying to make a rendezvous in the park,<\/p>\n<p>Or, more likely, at the sanctuary of that brothel-keeper Isis,<\/p>\n<p>Unlucky Psecas, the slave-girl, will be doing her mistress\u2019s hair,<\/p>\n<p>With her own scalp torn, and her breasts and shoulders bared,<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Why\u2019s this curl sticking out?\u2019 and the bull-hide strap is ready<\/p>\n<p>To exact a swift penalty for the foul crime of a twisted ringlet.<\/p>\n<p>Why is it Psecas\u2019 fault? How can it be the slave-girl\u2019s fault if<\/p>\n<p>Your own nose displeases you? Meanwhile another slave on<\/p>\n<p>Her left, draws out and combs the hair, and coils it into a bun.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll seek the advice of a slave of her mother\u2019s promoted to<\/p>\n<p>Spinning wool, after long service at hairpins; it\u2019s her opinion<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s sought first, then her inferiors in age and skill will give<\/p>\n<p>Their views, as if their mistress\u2019s reputation were at stake, as if<\/p>\n<p>Life itself were at stake: with so much anxiety, is beauty sought.<\/p>\n<p>Her head is weighed down with layer on layer, tier after tier,<\/p>\n<p>Piled high: it\u2019s an Andromache you\u2019ll see from the front, from<\/p>\n<p>Behind someone altogether shorter. See, if you will, if she<\/p>\n<p>Hasn\u2019t been granted, sadly, hips and thighs of meagre extent,<\/p>\n<p>And, without high-heeled boots, is as short as a Pigmy maiden,<\/p>\n<p>See is she hasn\u2019t to rise up on tiptoe to be able to plant a kiss.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:508-591 And They\u2019re So Superstitious<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, she\u2019ll possess not a care or a single thought for her<\/p>\n<p>Wronged husband. She lives her life like a next-door neighbour,<\/p>\n<p>More intimate only in this respect that she loathes her husband\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>Friends, and slaves, and is hard on his pocket. Behold, here are<\/p>\n<p>The acolytes of frenzied Bellona, and of Cybele, Mother of Gods,<\/p>\n<p>Led by a gross eunuch, with a form that perverted youth reveres,<\/p>\n<p>Who long ago, wielding a flint knife, cut off his tender genitals,<\/p>\n<p>Before whom the raucous band and the plebeian drums fall silent,<\/p>\n<p>And whose cheeks are bisected by the straps of a Phrygian cap.<\/p>\n<p>In a booming voice, he\u2019ll warn the woman to beware of windy<\/p>\n<p>September\u2019s approach, against which she needs to purify herself<\/p>\n<p>With a hundred eggs, and by gifting him her old russet dresses,<\/p>\n<p>So that any sudden, serious danger is removed at a stroke along<\/p>\n<p>With the clothes, atoning for the whole year in a single action.<\/p>\n<p>In winter she\u2019ll break the ice, and submerge herself in the river,<\/p>\n<p>Dipping herself three times in the Tiber at dawn, even plunging<\/p>\n<p>Her fearful head in the swirling waters, and, naked and shivering.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll crawl across our proud King Tarquin\u2019s Campus Martius,<\/p>\n<p>On blood-stained knees; and then if white Io should command,<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019ll journey to the far bounds of Egypt and bring back water<\/p>\n<p>From sweltering Meroe, to sprinkle around in the Temple of Isis,<\/p>\n<p>That looms by the Campus polling-booths, the ancient sheepfold.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, she believes she\u2019s ruled by the voice of the Lady herself,<\/p>\n<p>Hers being the kind of mind and spirit the gods speak to at night!<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s Anubis, therefore, who receives the best and highest honour,<\/p>\n<p>Running along, mocking the lamentations of the crowd for Osiris,<\/p>\n<p>Surrounded by his shaven-headed creatures, in their linen robes.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s the one who petitions on your wife\u2019s behalf, when she fails<\/p>\n<p>To refrain from sex on the holy days, owing a fine for violation<\/p>\n<p>Of the bed. After the silver asp has been seen to raise its head,<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s his tears and professional muttering that guarantees Osiris<\/p>\n<p>Won\u2019t refuse to pardon her transgression, provided, of course,<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s bribed, with a fat goose and a large slice of sacrificial cake.<\/p>\n<p>No sooner does he give way, than a palsied Jewess will leave<\/p>\n<p>Her hay-lined begging-basket to mutter her requests in an ear.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s the interpreter of the laws of Jerusalem, high-priestess<\/p>\n<p>Of the tree, and the faithful messenger of highest heaven.<\/p>\n<p>Her hand too is filled, but with less; since the Jews will sell<\/p>\n<p>You whatever dreams you wish for the tiniest copper coin.<\/p>\n<p>While the soothsayer from Armenia or Commagene, having<\/p>\n<p>Probed the meaning of a dove\u2019s lungs, will promise a tender<\/p>\n<p>Lover, or a vast inheritance from some childless millionaire;<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019ll dig into chicken breasts, the guts of a puppy, and now<\/p>\n<p>And then a male child; himself reporting what he has done.<\/p>\n<p>But even greater faith\u2019s placed in the Chaldeans: whatever<\/p>\n<p>The astrologer claims, women will believe to have issued<\/p>\n<p>Out of Ammon\u2019s oasis, the Oracle at Delphi having fallen<\/p>\n<p>Silent, and the human race now blind as regards the future.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the first of these astrologers is the one most often exiled.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019ll trust his skill, if his right hand\u2019s rattled the chains,<\/p>\n<p>His left too, if he\u2019s languished in some distant military gaol.<\/p>\n<p>No astrologer lacking a criminal record possesses any talent,<\/p>\n<p>Only one who nearly perished, who managed to be banished<\/p>\n<p>To a Cycladic island, languishing in the end on tiny Seriphus.<\/p>\n<p>Your very own Tanaquil, will consult him about the lingering<\/p>\n<p>Death of her jaundiced mother (she\u2019s asked about yours already),<\/p>\n<p>When she\u2019ll bury sister and uncles, and whether her lover will<\/p>\n<p>Outlive her; what greater tidings could the gods bring her?<\/p>\n<p>At least she\u2019s ignorant herself of the threats posed by gloomy<\/p>\n<p>Saturn, in which signs Venus shows herself as favourable,<\/p>\n<p>And which month means loss, which days will bring a profit.<\/p>\n<p>Remember always to avoid encountering the kind of woman<\/p>\n<p>With a dog-eared almanac in her hands, as if it were an amber<\/p>\n<p>Worry-bead, who no longer seeks consultations but gives them,<\/p>\n<p>Who won\u2019t follow her husband to camp, or back home again,<\/p>\n<p>If Thrasyllus the astrologer\u2019s calculations advise against it.<\/p>\n<p>When she wishes to take a ride to the first milestone, she\u2019ll find<\/p>\n<p>The best time to travel in her book; if her eye-corner itches<\/p>\n<p>When rubbed, she checks her horoscope before seeking relief;<\/p>\n<p>If she\u2019s lying in bed ill, the hour appropriate for taking food,<\/p>\n<p>It seems, must be one prescribed by that Egyptian, Petosiris.<\/p>\n<p>If she\u2019s middle-class she\u2019ll try the fortune-tellers at the Circus,<\/p>\n<p>Select the cards, or offer her hand and brow to the prophet<\/p>\n<p>Who demands of her lots of clicking sounds with the tongue.<\/p>\n<p>Rich women obtain their readings from Phrygian soothsayers,<\/p>\n<p>Or someone expert in star-signs and the cosmos, or the elder<\/p>\n<p>Who publicly purifies the places where lightning buries itself.<\/p>\n<p>Plebeian fates are decided in the Circus or on the Embankment,<\/p>\n<p>Where those displaying a long gold chain hung on a bare neck,<\/p>\n<p>Ask advice at the foot of the Circus towers or the dolphin columns,<\/p>\n<p>About whether to leave the tradesman, and marry the inn-keeper.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SatVI:592-661 It\u2019s Tragic!<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Yet at least such women endure the dangers of childbirth, and all<\/p>\n<p>The effort of nurturing their offspring their lot in life dictates.<\/p>\n<p>Hardly any woman who sleeps in a gilded bed will lie there in labour,<\/p>\n<p>Such is the power of the arts and drugs, of that woman who procures<\/p>\n<p>Abortions, and contracts to murder human embryos in the womb.<\/p>\n<p>Be grateful, you wretch, and offer your wife yourself whatever she has<\/p>\n<p>To take, since if she had chosen to let vigorous boys vex and stretch<\/p>\n<p>Her belly, you might have been father to an Ethiopian! Your dark heir,<\/p>\n<p>Barely visible at dawn, would soon be seen everywhere in the will.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll not dwell on adoption: the joys and vows so often proven false<\/p>\n<p>At the foul latrine; the little Salian priests, the high-priests so often<\/p>\n<p>Acquired from there; to bear, illegitimately, the Scauri family name.<\/p>\n<p>Shameless Fortune lingers there at night, smiling on naked infants:<\/p>\n<p>She warms them at her breast, and clasps them in her embrace, then<\/p>\n<p>Hands them over to the most exalted of houses, secretly readying<\/p>\n<p>A farce for her enjoyment; these are the ones she loves, these she<\/p>\n<p>Showers with attention, always promoting them, her foster-children.<\/p>\n<p>This fellow offers magic incantations, that one Thessalian potions,<\/p>\n<p>Which allow a wife to befuddle her husband\u2019s mind, then beat him<\/p>\n<p>On the buttocks with her sandal. That\u2019s the reason for the confusion<\/p>\n<p>In your head, and your total forgetfulness of things that you did only<\/p>\n<p>A moment ago. Still it\u2019s bearable, so long as you don\u2019t start raving,<\/p>\n<p>Like that uncle of Nero\u2019s, Caligula, after Caesonia dosed him with<\/p>\n<p>An aphrodisiac made from the membrane from a newborn foal\u2019s brow.<\/p>\n<p>What woman isn\u2019t forever prepared to act like an Emperor\u2019s wife?<\/p>\n<p>Then everything was on fire, the whole fabric collapsing in ruins,<\/p>\n<p>Exactly as if the goddess Juno had driven her husband Jupiter mad.<\/p>\n<p>Agrippina\u2019s mushroom, by comparison, turned out to be far less<\/p>\n<p>Ruinous, since all it did was stop the beating heart of one old man,<\/p>\n<p>He of the trembling head, and the lips dripping long strands of saliva,<\/p>\n<p>Forced to \u2018descend\u2019 into the sky: Your wife\u2019s potion by contrast<\/p>\n<p>Conjures up steel and fire, torments and tears the innards of knights<\/p>\n<p>And senators, causing indiscriminate pain. Such the high cost of a<\/p>\n<p>Mare\u2019s afterbirth, such the high price of a single venomous sorceress.<\/p>\n<p>Wives loath a mistress\u2019s bastards; and it\u2019s long been acceptable<\/p>\n<p>To murder a stepson; no one opposes it now, no one even objects.<\/p>\n<p>You wards, who are rather wealthy, and lacking fathers, beware:<\/p>\n<p>Guard your lives, and don\u2019t ever put your faith in a single dish:<\/p>\n<p>Those warm pastries are dark with a mother\u2019s livid venom.<\/p>\n<p>Have someone else taste first whatever the woman who bore you<\/p>\n<p>Serves, get your terrified tutor to drink, before you, from the cup.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m inventing it all, am I? Placing satire in tragedy\u2019s shoes,<\/p>\n<p>Exceeding the limits and rules set down my predecessors,<\/p>\n<p>Opening my gaping mouth, and ranting, in Sophoclean verse,<\/p>\n<p>Of things unknown to Rutulian hills, or the skies of Latium?<\/p>\n<p>If only it were nonsense! Yet Pontia confesses: \u2018I\u2019m guilty, I<\/p>\n<p>Admit it all, I prepared aconite, and gave it to my own boys;<\/p>\n<p>The crime was discovered, revealed; I carried it out myself. \u2018<\/p>\n<p>You did away with them both, and at the same meal, you viper?<\/p>\n<p>You murdered both? \u2018Or seven, if there\u2019d chanced to be seven.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>So we must believe what the tragedians say about cruel Medea<\/p>\n<p>From Colchis, or sad Procne; I\u2019ll not venture to contradict them.<\/p>\n<p>Those women too dared monstrous things, enormities even then,<\/p>\n<p>Though not for money. Those crowning monstrosities elicit less<\/p>\n<p>Amazement, when we realise it was anger that made the sex turn<\/p>\n<p>To crime, when they were swept along, frenzy tearing their hearts,<\/p>\n<p>Dashed about like rocks torn from the cliffs, when the mountain<\/p>\n<p>Collapses beneath, and the face of the overhanging slope is shorn.<\/p>\n<p>No, the woman I detest is the calculating one, in complete control,<\/p>\n<p>Who betrays deep wickedness. Such as they, can watch Alcestis<\/p>\n<p>Suffer death on her husband\u2019s behalf, yet if a parallel choice is<\/p>\n<p>On offer, would happily watch a husband die to save their pup.<\/p>\n<p>Every day you meet many a murderous Danaid, many an Eriphyle;<\/p>\n<p>There isn\u2019t a street that doesn\u2019t possess it\u2019s very own Clytemnestra.<\/p>\n<p>The only difference is: that daughter of Tyndareus swung an absurd<\/p>\n<p>And unwieldy double-bladed axe, with both her hands, while these<\/p>\n<p>Days the thing is accomplished with the insignificant lungs of a toad.<\/p>\n<p>Yet a woman now will use steel, as well, if her cautious Agamemnon<\/p>\n<p>Has downed one of the Pontic antidotes of thrice-conquered Mithridates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"menu_order":3,"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-71","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\/71","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\/71\/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\/71\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-humanities1-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}