The Classic and the Beautiful from the Literature of Three Thousand Years

THE GREAT MAN'S BOARD.

FROM THE LATIN OF DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS (JUVENAL).

THE FIFTH SATIRE.

F, hardened by affronts and, | And say, "Sup with me," thou hast thy desire:
Be thankful, mortal, and no more require.

still the same,

Lost to all sense of honor Thus blest, must Trebius to his levees run
When the stars languish near the rising sun;
Break off sweet slumbers drowsy and un-

and of shame,

Thou yet canst love to haunt

the great man's board

And think no supper good

but with a lord,

and suffer more

dressed

To show his zeal and to prevent the rest;
Run to prevent the fawning, humble train,
If yet thou canst hold out While slow Boötes drives his frozen wain:
Perhaps the gen'rous entertainment may
For all the state and dear attendance pay.
For him is kept a liquor more divine:
You sponges must be drunk with lees of
wine-

Than lewd Sarmentus or
vile Galba bore,

Thy solemn oath ought to be set aside;
But, sure, the stomach's easily supplied.
Suppose what frugal nature would suffice;
Suppose that wanting-hunger is not nice-
Is no bridge vacant, no convenient seat,
Where thou mayst cringe and gnaw thy
gnaw thy
broken meat,

Drunk for your patron's pleasure and his jest.
Then, raving like a Corybas possessed,
Thou and the freedmen first begin to jar;
From mutual jeers, the prelude to the war,
Thou and thy fellow-parasites engage,

And, with a mat and crutch and tied-up And battle with a troop of servants wage.

Such bold Helvidius drank and Thrasea | The grim attendance he assighs t' affright Rather than wait; rogues who would scare

crowned

With garlands when the flowing bowl went round

On Brutus' birthday; and to raise delight, To please at once the taste and charm the sight,

He in bright amber drinks, or brighter gold,

And cups with shining beryls set doth hold. Thou art not suffered or to touch or taste; And if thou dar'st, a guard on thee is placed

To watch the gems. This may perhaps surprise,

by night

If met among the tombs, the ghastly slaves.
Look as if newly started from their graves.
Before himself the flower of Asia stands
To watch his looks and to receive com-
mands-

A boy of such a price as had undone
Old Roman kings and drained the treasure
of a crown.

If thou or any of thy tribe want wine, Look back and give thy Ganymedes the sign:

The lovely boy, and bought at such a rate,

But, sir, you'll pardon they are stones of Is much too handsome and too proud to

A cracked black pot's reserved for thee to Behold, there yet remains, which must be drain.

If his blood boil and th' adventitious fire Raised by high meats and higher wine require

To temper and allay the burning heat, Waters are brought which by decoction get New coolness such plain Nature does not

know;

Not ice so cool, nor Hyperborean snow.
Did I complain but now, and justly too,
That the same wine is not allowed to you?
Another water's reached you, when you call,
From hands of Moorish footmen lean and
tall:

borne,

Proud servants' more insufferable scorn.

With what disdain another gave thee bread!
The meanest wretches are with better fed:
Th' impenetrable crust thy teeth defies,
And, petrified with age, securely lies.
Hard, mouldy, black. If thou presume t' in-
vade

With sacrilegious hands thy patron's bread,
There stands a servant ready to chastise
Your insolence and teach you to be wise;
Will you, a bold intruder, never learn
To know your basket and your bread dis-

cern?

'Tis just, ye gods, and what I well deserve:
Why did I not more honorably starve?
Did I for this abandon wife and bed?
For this, alas! by vain ambition led,
Through cold Esquiliæ run so oft, and bear
The storms and fury of the vernal air,
And then with cloak wet through attend,

and dropping hair?

See! by the tallest servant borne on high,
A sturgeon fills the largest dish and eye.
With how much pomp he's placed upon the
board!

To his just growth: the provinces from far Furnish our kitchens and revenge our war. Baits for the rich and childless they supply: Aurelia thence must sell, and Lenus buy.

The largest lamprey which their seas afford
Is made a sacrifice to Virro's board.
When Auster to the Eolian caves retires
With dropping wings, and murmuring there
respires,

Rash, daring nets, in hope of such a prize,
Charybdis and the treacherous deep despise.
An eel for you remains, in Tiber bred,

With what a tail and breast salutes his With foulest mud and the rank ordure fed. lord!

With what expense and art how richly

dressed!

Garnished with 'sparagus, himself a feast. Thou art to one small dismal dish confinedA crab ill-dressed and of the vilest kind.

He on his own fish pours the noblest oil,
The product of Venatrum's happy soil;
That to your marcid dying herbs assigned
By the rank smell and taste betray its kind,
By Moors imported and for lamps alone de-
signed.

Discharged by common sewers from all the

town,

No secret passage was to him unknown;
In every noisome sink the serpent slept,
And through dark vaults oft to Suburra
crept.

One word to Virro now, if he can bear,
And 'tis a truth which he's not used to hear:
No man expects (for who so much a sot,
Who has the times he lives in so forgot?)
What Seneca, what Piso, used to send
To raise or to support a sinking friend.

Well rubbed with this, when Boccar comes Those godlike men, to wanting virtue kind,

Near him is placed the liver of a goose-
That part alone which luxury would choose;
A boar entire, and worthy of the sword
Of Meleager, smokes upon the board
Next mushrooms larger than when clouds.
descend

In fruitful showers and desired thunders rend The vernal air. "No more plough up the ground

Would any god, or godlike man below,
Four hundred thousand sesterces bestow,
How mightily would Trebius be improved,
How much a friend to Virro, how beloved!
Will Trebius eat of this? What sot at-
tends

My brother? Who carves to my best of friends?"

O sesterces, this honor's done to you:

Of Lybia, where such mushrooms can be You are his friends, and you his brethren

If thou dare murmur, if thou dare com- Till Agrippina kindly gave the last.

plain

With freedom like a Roman gentleman, Thou'rt seized immediately by his commands,

And dragged like Cacus by Herculean hands
Out from his presence.
When does haughty
he

To him are ordered, and those happy few Whom Fate has raised above contempt and

you,

Most fragrant fruits. Such in Pheacian gardens grew,

Where a perpetual autumn ever smiled
And golden apples loaded branches filled,

Descend to take a glass once touched by By such swift Atalanta was betrayed:

Thou takst all this as done to save expense? | On thy shaved slavish head. Meanwhile,

and sport. Thou thinkst thyself companion of the great

Art free and happy in thy own conceit; He thinks thou'rt tempted by th' attractive smell

Of his warm kitchen. And he judges well; For who so naked, in whose empty veins One single drop of noble blood remainsWhat free-born man, who, though of mongrel strain

attend,

Worthy of such a treat and such a friend.

JUVE

Translation of REV. WILLIAM BOWLES.

JUVENAL.

UVENALIS (Decius Junius) was a famous Roman satirist-perhaps the most distinguished satirist in the world's literature. In English he has been imitated, or even reproduced, by Dryden, Pope, Dr. Johnson and Byron. He was born, probably, at Aquinum, although of the place there are doubts, and, as he died in the year 80, at a good old age, he lived during the reigns of several emperors, among whom were Caligula, Domitian and Hadrian. Although of obscure ori

Would twice support the scorn and proud gin, he was from his boyhood an enthusiastic disdain

student, and early disclosed his poetical pow

With which those idols you adore, the ers. Very soon, too, he turned his attention

great,

Their wretched vassals and dependants treat? Oh, slaves most abject, you still gaping sit, Devouring with your eyes each pleasing bit, Now sure we parasites at last shall share That boar, and now that wildfowl or that hare.

Thus you expecting gaze with your teeth set, With your bread ready and your knives

well whet,

Demure and silent; but, alas! in vain :

He mocks your hunger and derides your pain.

to satire, for which the vile condition of Roman society gave him full argument and illustration. Honest himself, and inculcating a purity which he displayed in his own life, he lashed Roman vices with the severest rigor. He always handles vice with angry contempt and hatred. To the taste of the present age he is somewhat offensive, because he descends into the vile details of vicious living; he describes too exactly and curiously the sins he rebukes. He has left sixteen satires. One of them, launched against a pantomime-dancer-Paris, who had been a favorite of Do

If you can bear all this and think him mitian-offended Hadrian, who was under a kind,

similar influence, and who therefore sent the

You well deserve the treatment which you poet into honorable exile, into Egypt or Libya. find. The works of Juvenal present a remarkable delineation of the private life of the Romans in his age.

At last thou wilt beneath the burden bow,

And, glad, receive the manumitting blow

« Նախորդը Շարունակել »

Books

The Classic and the Beautiful from the Literature of Three Thousand ..., Հատոր 2