The whole house suffers for the master's crime,
And he himself is warned to wake another time.
She hires tormentors by the year; she treats
Her visitors, and talks, but still she beats;
Beats while she paints her face, surveys her gown,
Casts up the day's account, and still beats on:
Tired out, at length, with an outrageous tone,
She bids them in the devil's name be gone.
Compared with such a proud, insulting dame,
Sicilian tyrants[127] may renounce their name.
For, if she hastes abroad to take the air,
Or goes to Isis' church, (the bawdy house of prayer,)
She hurries all her handmaids to the task;
Her head, alone, will twenty dressers ask.
Psecas, the chief, with breast and shoulders bare,
Trembling, considers every sacred hair;
If any straggler from his rank be found,
A pinch must for the mortal sin compound.
Psecas is not in fault; but in the glass,
The dame's offended at her own ill face.
That maid is banished; and another girl,
More dexterous, manages the comb and curl.
The rest are summoned on a point so nice,
And, first, the grave old woman gives advice;
The next is called, and so the turn goes round,
As each for age, or wisdom, is renowned:
Such counsel, such deliberate care they take,
As if her life and honour lay at stake:
With curls on curls, they build her head before,
And mount it with a formidable tower.
A giantess she seems; but look behind,
And then she dwindles to the pigmy kind.
Duck-legged, short-waisted, such a dwarf she is,
That she must rise on tip-toes for a kiss.
Meanwhile, her husband's whole estate is spent!
He may go bare, while she receives his rent.
She minds him not; she lives not as a wife,
But, like a bawling neighbour, full of strife:
Near him in this alone, that she extends
Her hate to all his servants and his friends.
Bellona's priests,[128] an eunuch at their head,
About the streets a mad procession lead;
The venerable gelding, large, and high,
O'erlooks the herd of his inferior fry.
His aukward clergymen about him prance,
And beat the timbrels to their mystic dance;
Guiltless of testicles, they tear their throats,
And squeak, in treble, their unmanly notes.
Meanwhile, his cheeks the mitred prophet swells,
And dire presages of the year foretels;
Unless with eggs (his priestly hire) they haste
To expiate, and avert the autumnal blast;
And add beside a murrey-coloured vest,[129]
Which, in their places, may receive the pest,
And, thrown into the flood, their crimes may bear,
To purge the unlucky omens of the year.
The astonished matrons pay, before the rest;
That sex is still obnoxious to the priest.
Through ye they beat, and plunge into the stream,
If so the God has warned them in a dream.
Weak in their limbs, but in devotion strong, }
On their bare hands and feet they crawl along }
A whole field's length, the laughter of the throng. }
Should Io (Io's priest, I mean) command
A pilgrimage to Meroe's burning sand,
Through deserts they would seek the secret spring,
And holy water for lustration bring.
How can they pay their priests too much respect,
Who trade with heaven, and earthly gains neglect!
With him domestic gods discourse by night;
By day, attended by his choir in white,
The bald pate tribe runs madding through the street,
And smile to see with how much ease they cheat.
The ghostly sire forgives the wife's delights,
Who sins, through frailty, on forbidden nights,
And tempts her husband in the holy time,
When carnal pleasure is a mortal crime.
The sweating image shakes his head, but he,
With mumbled prayers, atones the deity.
The pious priesthood the fat goose receive,
And, they once bribed, the godhead must forgive.
No sooner these remove, but full of fear,
A gipsey Jewess whispers in your ear,
And begs an alms; an high-priest's daughter she, }
Versed in their Talmud, and divinity, }
And prophesies beneath a shady tree. }
Her goods a basket, and old hay her bed,
She strolls, and, telling fortunes, gains her bread:
Farthings, and some small monies, are her fees;
Yet she interprets all your dreams for these,
Foretels the estate, when the rich uncle dies,
And sees a sweetheart in the sacrifice.
Such toys, a pigeon's entrails can disclose,
Which yet the Armenian augur far outgoes;
In dogs, a victim more obscene, he rakes;
And murdered infants for inspection takes:
For gain his impious practice he pursues;
For gain will his accomplices accuse.
More credit yet is to Chaldeans[130] given;
What they foretel, is deemed the voice of heaven.
Their answers, as from Hammon's altar, come;
Since now the Delphian oracles are dumb,
And mankind, ignorant of future fate,
Believes what fond astrologers relate.
Of these the most in vogue is he, who, sent
Beyond seas, is returned from banishment;
His art who to aspiring Otho[131] sold,
And sure succession to the crown foretold;
For his esteem is in his exile placed;
The more believed, the more he was disgraced.
No astrologic wizard honour gains,
Who has not oft been banished, or in chains.
He gets renown, who, to the halter near,
But narrowly escapes, and buys it dear.
From him your wife enquires the planets' will,
When the black jaundice shall her mother kill;
Her sister's and her uncle's end would know,
But, first, consults his art, when you shall go;
And,--what's the greatest gift that heaven can give,--
If after her the adulterer shall live.
She neither knows, nor cares to know, the rest,
If Mars and Saturn[132] shall the world infest;
Or Jove and Venus, with their friendly rays,
Will interpose, and bring us better days.
Beware the woman too, and shun her sight,
Who in these studies does herself delight,
By whom a greasy almanack is born,
With often handling, like chaft amber worn:
Not now consulting, but consulted, she
Of the twelve houses, and their lords, is free.
She, if the scheme a fatal journey show,
Stays safe at home, but lets her husband go.
If but a mile she travel out of town,
The planetary hour must first be known,
And lucky moment; if her eye but aches,
Or itches, its decumbiture she takes;
No nourishment receives in her disease,
But what the stars and Ptolemy[133] shall please.
The middle sort, who have not much to spare, }
To chiromancers' cheaper art repair, }
Who clap the pretty palm, to make the lines more fair. }
But the rich matron, who has more to give,
Her answers from the Brachman[134] will receive;
Skilled in the globe and sphere, he gravely stands,
And, with his compass, measures seas and lands.
The poorest of the sex have still an itch
To know their fortunes, equal to the rich.
The dairy-maid enquires, if she shall take
The trusty tailor, and the cook forsake.
Yet these, though poor, the pain of childbed bear,
And without nurses their own infants rear:
You seldom hear of the rich mantle spread
For the babe, born in the great lady's bed.
Such is the power of herbs, such arts they use
To make them barren, or their fruit to lose.
But thou, whatever slops she will have bought,
Be thankful, and supply the deadly draught;
Help her to make man-slaughter; let her bleed,
And never want for savin at her need.
For, if she holds till her nine months be run,
Thou may'st be father to an Ethiop's son;[135]
A boy, who, ready gotten to thy hands,
By law is to inherit all thy lands;
One of that hue, that, should he cross the way,
His omen would discolour all the day.[136]
I pass the foundling by, a race unknown,
At doors exposed, whom matrons make their own;
And into noble families advance
A nameless issue, the blind work of chance.
Indulgent fortune does her care employ,
And, smiling, broods upon the naked boy:
Her garment spreads, and laps him in the fold,
And covers with her wings from nightly cold:
Gives him her blessing, puts him in a way,
Sets up the farce, and laughs at her own play.
Him she promotes; she favours him alone,
And makes provision for him as her own.
The craving wife the force of magic tries,
And filters for the unable husband buys;
The potion works not on the part designed,
But turns his brains, and stupifies his mind.
The sotted moon-calf gapes, and, staring on,
Sees his own business by another done:
A long oblivion, a benumbing frost,
Constrains his head, and yesterday is lost.
Some nimbler juice would make him foam and rave,
Like that Cæsonia[137] to her Caius gave,
Who, plucking from the forehead of the foal
His mother's love,[138] infused it in the bowl;
The boiling blood ran hissing in his veins,
Till the mad vapour mounted to his brains.
The Thunderer was not half so much on fire,
When Juno's girdle kindled his desire.
What woman will not use the poisoning trade,
When Cæsar's wife the precedent has made?
Let Agrippina's mushroom[139] be forgot,
Given to a slavering, old, unuseful sot;
That only closed the driv'ling dotard's eyes,
And sent his godhead downward to the skies;
But this fierce potion calls for fire and sword,
Nor spares the commons, when it strikes the lord.
So many mischiefs were in one combined;
So much one single poisoner cost mankind.
If step-dames seek their sons-in-law to kill,
'Tis venial trespass--let them have their will;
But let the child, entrusted to the care
Of his own mother, of her bread beware;
Beware the food she reaches with her hand,--
The morsel is intended for thy land.
Thy tutor be thy taster, ere thou eat;
There's poison in thy drink and in thy meat.
You think this feigned; the satire, in a rage,
Struts in the buskins of the tragic stage;
Forgets his business is to laugh and bite,
And will of deaths and dire revenges write.
Would it were all a fable that you read!
But Drymon's wife[140] pleads guilty to the deed.
I, she confesses, in the fact was caught,
Two sons dispatching at one deadly draught.
What, two! two sons, thou viper, in one day!
Yes, seven, she cries, if seven were in my way.
Medea's legend is no more a lie,
Our age adds credit to antiquity.
Great ills, we grant, in former times did reign,
And murders then were done, but not for gain.
Less admiration to great crimes is due,
Which they through wrath, or through revenge pursue;
For, weak of reason, impotent of will,
The sex is hurried headlong into ill;
And like a cliff, from its foundations torn
By raging earthquakes, into seas is borne.
But those are fiends, who crimes from thought begin,
And, cool in mischief, meditate the sin.
They read the example of a pious wife,
Redeeming, with her own, her husband's life;
Yet if the laws did that exchange afford,
Would save their lap-dog sooner than their lord.
Where'er you walk the Belides[141] you meet,
And Clytemnestras grow in every street;
But here's the difference,--Agamemnon's wife
Was a gross butcher with a bloody knife;
But murder now is to perfection grown,
And subtle poisons are employed alone;
Unless some antidote prevents their arts,
And lines with balsam all the nobler parts.
In such a case, reserved for such a need,
Rather than fail, the dagger does the deed.
FOOTNOTES:
[107] When Jove had driven his father into banishment, the Silver Age
began, according to the poets.
[108] The poet makes Justice and Chastity sisters; and says, that they
fled to heaven together, and left earth for ever.
[109] When the Roman women were forbidden to bed with their husbands.
[110] She fled to Egypt, which wondered at the enormity of her crime.
[111] He tells the famous story of Messalina, wife to the Emperor
Claudius.
[112] His meaning is, that a wife, who brings a large dowry, may do
what she pleases, and has all the privileges of a widow.
[113] A ring of great price, which Herod Agrippa gave to his sister
Berenice. He was king of the Jews, but tributary to the Romans.
[114] Cornelia was mother to the Gracchi, of the family of the
Cornelii, from whence Scipio the African was descended, who triumphed
over Hannibal.
[115] He alludes to the known fable of Niobe, in Ovid. Amphion was her
husband. Pæan was Apollo; who with his arrows killed her children,
because she boasted that she was more fruitful than Latona, Apollo's
mother.
[116] He alludes to the white sow in Virgil, who farrowed thirty pigs.
[117] Women then learned Greek, as ours speak French.
[118] All the Romans, even the most inferior, and most infamous sort of
them, had the power of making wills.
[119] The _Bona Dea_, or Good Goddess, at whose feasts no men were to
be present.
[120] He alludes to the story of P. Clodius, who, disguised in the
habit of a singing woman, went into the house of Cæsar, where the feast
of the Good Goddess was celebrated, to find an opportunity with Cæsar's
wife, Pompeia.
[121] A famous singing boy.
[122] That such an actor, whom they love, might obtain the prize.
[123] He who inspects the entrails of the sacrifice, and from thence
foretels the success of the prayer.
[124] The ancients endeavoured to help the moon, during an eclipse, by
sounding trumpets.
[125] A woman-grammarian, who corrects her husband for speaking false
Latin, which is called breaking Priscian's head.
[126] _i. e._ of the milk asses.
[127] Sicilian tyrants were grown to a proverb, in Latin, for their
cruelty.
[128] Bellona's priests were a sort of fortune-tellers; and their high
priest an eunuch.
[129] A garment was given to the priest, which he threw, or was
supposed to throw, into the river; and that, they thought, bore all the
sins of the people, which were drowned with it.
[130] Chaldeans are thought to have been the first astrologers.
[131] Otho succeeded Galba in the empire, which was foretold him by an
astrologer.
[132] Mars and Saturn are the two unfortunate planets; Jupiter and
Venus the two fortunate.
[133] A famous astrologer; an Egyptian.
[134] The Brachmans are Indian philosophers, who remain to this day;
and hold, after Pythagoras, the translation of souls from one body to
another.
[135] Juvenal's meaning is, help her to any kind of slops which may
cause her to miscarry, for fear she may be brought to bed of a black
Moor, which thou, being her husband, art bound to father; and that
bastard may, by law, inherit thy estate.
[136] The Romans thought it ominous to see a black Moor in the morning,
if he were the first man they met.
[137] Cæsonia, wife to Caius Caligula, the great tyrant. It is said she
gave him a love-potion, which, flying up into his head, distracted him,
and was the occasion of his committing so many acts of cruelty.
[138] The hippomanes, a fleshy excrescence, which the ancients supposed
grew in the forehead of a foal, and which the mare bites off when it is
born. It was supposed to be a sovereign ingredient in philtres. EDITOR.
[139] Agrippina was the mother of the tyrant Nero, who poisoned her
husband Claudius, that Nero might succeed, who was her son, and not
Britannicus, who was the son of Claudius, by a former wife.
[140] The widow of Drymon poisoned her sons, that she might succeed to
their estate: This was done in the poet's time, or just before it.
[141] The Belides were fifty sisters, married to fifty young men, their
cousin-germans; and killed them all on their wedding-night, excepting
Hipermnestra, who saved her husband Linus.
THE
TENTH SATIRE
OF
JUVENAL.
THE ARGUMENT.
_The Poet's design, in this divine Satire, is, to represent the
various wishes and desires of mankind, and to set out the
folly of them. He runs through all the several heads, of
riches, honours, eloquence, fame for martial achievements,
long life, and beauty; and gives instances in each, how
frequently they have proved the ruin of those that owned
them. He concludes, therefore, that, since we generally
choose so ill for ourselves, we should do better to leave it
to the gods to make the choice for us. All we can safely
ask of heaven, lies within a very small compass--it is
but health of body and mind; and if we have these, it is
not much matter what we want besides; for we have already
enough to make us happy._