Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue.
How void of reason are our hopes and fears!
What in the conduct of our life appears
So well designed, so luckily begun,
But when we have our wish, we wish undone?
Whole houses, of their whole desires possest,
Are often ruined at their own request.
In wars and peace things hurtful we require,
When made obnoxious to our own desire.
With laurels some have fatally been crowned; }
Some, who the depths of eloquence have found, }
In that unnavigable stream were drowned. }
The brawny fool, who did his vigour boast;
In that presuming confidence was lost;[142]
But more have been by avarice opprest,
And heaps of money crowded in the chest:
Unwieldy sums of wealth, which higher mount
Than files of marshalled figures can account;
To which the stores of Croesus, in the scale, }
Would look like little dolphins, when they sail }
In the vast shadow of the British whale. }
For this, in Nero's arbitrary time,
When virtue was a guilt, and wealth a crime,
A troop of cut-throat guards were sent to seize
The rich men's goods, and gut their palaces:
The mob, commissioned by the government,
Are seldom to an empty garret sent.
The fearful passenger, who travels late,
Charged with the carriage of a paltry plate,
Shakes at the moonshine shadow of a rush,
And sees a red-coat rise from every bush;
The beggar sings, even when he sees the place
Beset with thieves, and never mends his pace.
Of all the vows, the first and chief request
Of each, is--to be richer than the rest:
And yet no doubts the poor man's draught controul,
He dreads no poison in his homely bowl;
Then fear the deadly drug, when gems divine
Enchase the cup, and sparkle in the wine.
Will you not now the pair of sages praise,
Who the same end pursued by several ways?
One pitied, one contemned, the woeful times;
One laughed at follies, one lamented crimes.
Laughter is easy; but the wonder lies,
What stores of brine supplied the weeper's eyes.
Democritus could feed his spleen, and shake
His sides and shoulders, till he felt them ache;
Though in his country town no lictors were,
Nor rods, nor axe, nor tribune, did appear;
Nor all the foppish gravity of show,
Which cunning magistrates on crowds bestow.
What had he done, had he beheld on high
Our prætor seated in mock majesty;
His chariot rolling o'er the dusty place,
While, with dumb pride, and a set formal face,
He moves, in the dull ceremonial track,
With Jove's embroidered coat upon his back!
A suit of hangings had not more opprest
His shoulders, than that long laborious vest;
A heavy gewgaw, called a crown, that spread
About his temples, drowned his narrow head,
And would have crushed it with the massy freight,
But that a sweating slave sustained the weight;
A slave, in the same chariot seen to ride,
To mortify the mighty madman's pride.
Add now the imperial eagle, raised on high,
With golden beak, the mark of majesty;
Trumpets before, and on the left and right
A cavalcade of nobles, all in white;
In their own natures false and flattering tribes,
But made his friends by places and by bribes.
In his own age, Democritus could find
Sufficient cause to laugh at human kind:
Learn from so great a wit; a land of bogs,
With ditches fenced, a heaven fat with fogs,
May form a spirit fit to sway the state,
And make the neighbouring monarchs fear their fate.
He laughs at all the vulgar cares and fears;
At their vain triumphs, and their vainer tears:
An equal temper in his mind he found,
When fortune flattered him, and when she frowned.
'Tis plain, from hence, that what our vows request
Are hurtful things, or useless at the best.
Some ask for envied power; which public hate
Pursues, and hurries headlong to their fate:
Down go the titles; and the statue crowned,
Is by base hands in the next river drowned.
The guiltless horses, and the chariot wheel,
The same effects of vulgar fury feel:
The smith prepares his hammer for the stroke,
While the lung'd bellows hissing fire provoke.
Sejanus, almost first of Roman names,[143]
The great Sejanus crackles in the flames:
Formed in the forge, the pliant brass is laid }
On anvils; and of head and limbs are made, }
Pans, cans, and piss-pots, a whole kitchen trade. }
Adorn your doors with laurels; and a bull,
Milk white, and large, lead to the Capitol;
Sejanus with a rope is dragged along,
The sport and laughter of the giddy throng!
Good Lord! they cry, what Ethiop lips he has;
How foul a snout, and what a hanging face!
By heaven, I never could endure his sight!
But say, how came his monstrous crimes to light?
What is the charge, and who the evidence,
(The saviour of the nation and the prince?)
Nothing of this; but our old Cæsar sent
A noisy letter to his parliament.
Nay, sirs, if Cæsar writ, I ask no more;
He's guilty, and the question's out of door.
How goes the mob? (for that's a mighty thing,)
When the king's trump, the mob are for the king:
They follow fortune, and the common cry
Is still against the rogue condemned to die.
But the same very mob, that rascal crowd,
Had cried Sejanus, with a shout as loud,
Had his designs (by fortune's favour blest)
Succeeded, and the prince's age opprest.
But long, long since, the times have changed their face,
The people grown degenerate and base;
Not suffered now the freedom of their choice
To make their magistrates, and sell their voice.
Our wise forefathers, great by sea and land,
Had once the power and absolute command;
All offices of trust themselves disposed;
Raised whom they pleased, and whom they pleased deposed:
But we, who give our native rights away,
And our enslaved posterity betray,
Are now reduced to beg an alms, and go
On holidays to see a puppet-show.
There was a damned design, cries one, no doubt,
For warrants are already issued out:
I met Brutidius in a mortal fright,
He's dipt for certain, and plays least in sight;
I fear the rage of our offended prince,
Who thinks the senate slack in his defence.
Come, let us haste, our loyal zeal to show,
And spurn the wretched corpse of Cæsar's foe:
But let our slaves be present there; lest they
Accuse their masters, and for gain betray.--
Such were the whispers of those jealous times,
About Sejanus' punishment and crimes.
Now, tell me truly, wouldst thou change thy fate,
To be, like him, first minister of state?
To have thy levees crowded with resort,
Of a depending, gaping, servile court;
Dispose all honours of the sword and gown,
Grace with a nod, and ruin with a frown;
To hold thy prince in pupillage, and sway
That monarch, whom the mastered world obey?
While he, intent on secret lusts alone,
Lives to himself, abandoning the throne;
Cooped in a narrow isle,[144] observing dreams
With flattering wizards, and erecting schemes!
I well believe thou wouldst be great as he,
For every man's a fool to that degree:
All wish the dire prerogative to kill;
Even they would have the power, who want the will:
But wouldst thou have thy wishes understood,
To take the bad together with the good?
Wouldst thou not rather choose a small renown,
To be the mayor of some poor paltry town;
Bigly to look, and barbarously to speak;
To pound false weights, and scanty measures break?
Then, grant we that Sejanus went astray
In every wish, and knew not how to pray;
For he, who grasped the world's exhausted store,
Yet never had enough, but wished for more,
Raised a top-heavy tower, of monstrous height,
Which, mouldering, crushed him underneath the weight.
What did the mighty Pompey's fall beget,
And ruined him, who, greater than the Great,[145]
The stubborn pride of Roman nobles broke,
And bent their haughty necks beneath his yoke:
What else but his immoderate lust of power,
Prayers made and granted in a luckless hour?
For few usurpers to the shades descend
By a dry death, or with a quiet end.
The boy, who scarce has paid his entrance down
To his proud pedant, or declined a noun,
(So small an elf, that, when the days are foul,
He and his satchel must be borne to school,)
Yet prays, and hopes, and aims at nothing less,
To prove a Tully, or Demosthenes:
But both those orators, so much renowned,
In their own depths of eloquence were drowned:[146]
The hand and head were never lost of those
Who dealt in doggrel, or who punned in prose.
"Fortune foretuned the dying notes of Rome,
Till I, thy consul sole, consoled thy doom."[147]
His fate had crept below the lifted swords,
Had all his malice been to murder words.
I rather would be Mævius, thrash for rhymes
Like his, the scorn and scandal of the times,
Than that Philippic[148], fatally divine,
Which is inscribed the second, should be mine.
Nor he, the wonder of the Grecian throng,
Who drove them with the torrent of his tongue,
Who shook the theatres, and swayed the state
Of Athens, found a more propitious fate.
Whom, born beneath a boding horoscope,
His sire, the blear-eyed Vulcan of a shop,
From Mars his forge, sent to Minerva's schools,
To learn the unlucky art of wheedling fools.
With itch of honour, and opinion vain,
All things beyond their native worth we strain;
The spoils of war, brought to Feretrian Jove,
An empty coat of armour hung above
The conqueror's chariot and in triumph borne,
A streamer from a boarded galley torn,
A chap-fallen beaver loosely hanging by
The cloven helm, an arch of victory;
On whose high convex sits a captive foe,
And, sighing, casts a mournful look below;[149]--
Of every nation each illustrious name,
Such toys as these have cheated into fame;
Exchanging solid quiet, to obtain
The windy satisfaction of the brain.
So much the thirst of honour fires the blood;
So many would be great, so few be good:
For who would Virtue for herself regard,
Or wed, without the portion of reward?
Yet this mad chace of fame, by few pursued,
Has drawn destruction on the multitude;
This avarice of praise in times to come,
Those long inscriptions crowded on the tomb;
Should some wild fig-tree take her native bent,
And heave below the gaudy monument,
Would crack the marble titles, and disperse
The characters of all the lying verse.
For sepulchres themselves must crumbling fall
In time's abyss, the common grave of all.
Great Hannibal within the balance lay,
And tell how many pounds his ashes weigh;
Whom Afric was not able to contain,
Whose length runs level with the Atlantic main,
And wearies fruitful Nilus, to convey
His sun-beat waters by so long a way;
Which Ethiopia's double clime divides,
And elephants in other mountains hides.
Spain first he won, the Pyreneans past,
And steepy Alps, the mounds that nature cast;
And with corroding juices, as he went,
A passage through the living rocks he rent:
Then, like a torrent rolling from on high,
He pours his headlong rage on Italy,
In three victorious battles over-run;
Yet, still uneasy, cries,--There's nothing done,
Till level with the ground their gates are laid,
And Punic flags on Roman towers displayed.
Ask what a face belonged to this high fame,
His picture scarcely would deserve a frame:
A sign-post dauber would disdain to paint
The one-eyed hero on his elephant.
Now, what's his end, O charming Glory! say,
What rare fifth act to crown this huffing play?
In one deciding battle overcome,
He flies, is banished from his native home;
Begs refuge in a foreign court, and there
Attends, his mean petition to prefer;
Repulsed by surly grooms, who wait before
The sleeping tyrant's interdicted door.
What wonderous sort of death has heaven designed, }
Distinguished from the herd of human kind, }
For so untamed, so turbulent a mind? }
Nor swords at hand, nor hissing darts afar,
Are doomed to avenge the tedious bloody war;
But poison, drawn through a ring's hollow plate,
Must finish him--a sucking infant's fate.
Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool,
To please the boys, and be a theme at school.
One world sufficed not Alexander's mind;
Cooped up, he seemed in earth and seas confined,
And, struggling, stretched his restless limbs about
The narrow globe, to find a passage out:
Yet entered in the brick-built town,[150] he tried
The tomb, and found the strait dimensions wide.
Death only this mysterious truth unfolds,
The mighty soul how small a body holds.
Old Greece a tale of Athos would make out,[151]
Cut from the continent, and sailed about;
Seas hid with navies, chariots passing o'er
The channel, on a bridge from shore to shore:
Rivers, whose depth no sharp beholder sees,
Drunk at an army's dinner to the lees;
With a long legend of romantic things,
Which in his cups the bowsy poet sings.
But how did he return, this haughty brave,
Who whipt the winds, and made the sea his slave?
(Though Neptune took unkindly to be bound, }
And Eurus never such hard usage found }
In his Æolian prison under ground;) }
What god so mean, even he who points the way,[152]
So merciless a tyrant to obey!
But how returned he, let us ask again? }
In a poor skiff he passed the bloody main, }
Choked with the slaughtered bodies of his train. }
For fame he prayed, but let the event declare
He had no mighty penn'worth of his prayer.
Jove, grant me length of life, and years good store
Heap on my bending back! I ask no more.--
Both sick and healthful, old and young, conspire
In this one silly mischievous desire.
Mistaken blessing, which old age they call,
'Tis a long, nasty, darksome hospital:
A ropy chain of rheums; a visage rough,
Deformed, unfeatured, and a skin of buff;
A stitch-fallen cheek, that hangs below the jaw;
Such wrinkles as a skilful hand would draw
For an old grandame ape, when, with a grace,
She sits at squat, and scrubs her leathern face.
In youth, distinctions infinite abound;
No shape, or feature, just alike are found;
The fair, the black, the feeble, and the strong: }
But the same foulness does to age belong. }
The self-same palsy, both in limbs and tongue; }
The skull and forehead one bald barren plain,
And gums unarmed to mumble meat in vain;
Besides, the eternal drivel, that supplies
The dropping beard, from nostrils, mouth, and eyes.
His wife and children lothe him, and, what's worse,
Himself does his offensive carrion curse!
Flatterers forsake him too; for who would kill
Himself, to be remembered in a will?
His taste not only pall'd to wine and meat,
But to the relish of a nobler treat.
The limber nerve, in vain provoked to rise,
Inglorious from the field of battle flies;
Poor feeble dotard! how could he advance
With his blue head-piece, and his broken lance?
Add, that, endeavouring still, without effect,
A lust more sordid justly we suspect.
Those senses lost, behold a new defeat,
The soul dislodging from another seat.
What music, or enchanting voice, can cheer
A stupid, old, impenetrable ear?
No matter in what place, or what degree
Of the full theatre he sits to see;
Cornets and trumpets cannot reach his ear;
Under an actor's nose he's never near.
His boy must bawl, to make him understand
The hour o'the day, or such a lord's at hand;
The little blood that creeps within his veins,
Is but just warmed in a hot fever's pains.
In fine, he wears no limb about him sound,
With sores and sicknesses beleaguered round
Ask me their names, I sooner could relate
How many drudges on salt Hippia wait;
What crowds of patients the town doctor kills,
Or how, last fall, he raised the weekly bills;
What provinces by Basilus were spoiled;
What herds of heirs by guardians are beguiled;
How many bouts a-day that bitch has tried;
How many boys that pedagogue can ride;
What lands and lordships for their owner know
My quondam barber, but his worship now.
This dotard of his broken back complains;
One his legs fail, and one his shoulder pains:
Another is of both his eyes bereft,
And envies who has one for aiming left;
A fifth, with trembling lips expecting stands
As in his childhood, crammed by others hands;
One, who at sight of supper opened wide }
His jaws before, and whetted grinders tried, }
Now only yawns, and waits to be supplied; }
Like a young swallow, when, with weary wings,
Expected food her fasting mother brings.
His loss of members is a heavy curse,
But all his faculties decayed, a worse.
His servants' names he has forgotten quite;
Knows not his friend who supped with him last night:
Not even the children he begot and bred;
Or his will knows them not; for, in their stead,
In form of law, a common hackney jade,
Sole heir, for secret services, is made:
So lewd, and such a battered brothel whore,
That she defies all comers at her door.
Well, yet suppose his senses are his own,
He lives to be chief mourner for his son:
Before his face, his wife and brother burns;
He numbers all his kindred in their urns.
These are the fines he pays for living long,
And dragging tedious age in his own wrong;
Griefs always green, a household still in tears, }
Sad pomps, a threshold thronged with daily biers, }
And liveries of black for length of years. }
Next to the raven's age, the Pylian king[153]
Was longest lived of any two-legged thing.
Blest, to defraud the grave so long, to mount
His numbered years, and on his right hand count![154]
Three hundred seasons, guzzling must of wine!--
But hold a while, and hear himself repine
At fate's unequal laws, and at the clue
Which, merciless in length, the midmost sister drew.[155]
When his brave son upon the funeral pyre
He saw extended, and his beard on fire,
He turned, and, weeping, asked his friends, what crime
Had cursed his age to this unhappy time?
Thus mourned old Peleus for Achilles slain,
And thus Ulysses' father did complain.
How fortunate an end had Priam made,
Among his ancestors a mighty shade,
While Troy yet stood; when Hector, with the race
Of royal bastards, might his funeral grace;
Amidst the tears of Trojan dames inurned,
And by his loyal daughters truly mourned!
Had heaven so blest him, he had died before
The fatal fleet to Sparta Paris bore:
But mark what age produced,--he lived to see
His town in flames, his falling monarchy.
In fine, the feeble sire, reduced by fate,
To change his sceptre for a sword, too late,
His last effort before Jove's altar tries,
A soldier half, and half a sacrifice:
Falls like an ox that waits the coming blow,
Old and unprofitable to the plough.[156]
At least he died a man; his queen survived,
To howl, and in a barking body lived.[157]
I hasten to our own; nor will relate
Great Mithridates,[158] and rich Croesus' fate;[159]
Whom Solon wisely counselled to attend
The name of happy, till he knew his end.
That Marius was an exile, that he fled,
Was ta'en, in ruined Carthage begged his bread;
All these were owing to a life too long:
For whom had Rome beheld so happy, young?
High in his chariot, and with laurel crowned,
When he had led the Cimbrian captives round
The Roman streets, descending from his state,
In that blest hour he should have begged his fate;
Then, then, he might have died of all admired,
And his triumphant soul with shouts expired.
Campania, Fortune's malice to prevent,
To Pompey an indulgent fever sent;
But public prayers imposed on heaven to give
Their much loved leader an unkind reprieve;
The city's fate and his conspired to save
The head reserved for an Egyptian slave.[160]
Cethegus, though a traitor to the state,
And tortured, 'scaped this ignominious fate;[161]
And Sergius, who a bad cause bravely tried,
All of a piece, and undiminished, died.[162]
To Venus, the fond mother makes a prayer,
That all her sons and daughters may be fair:
True, for the boys a mumbling vow she sends,
But for the girls the vaulted temple rends:
They must be finished pieces; 'tis allowed
Diana's beauty made Latona proud,
And pleased to see the wondering people pray
To the new-rising sister of the day.
And yet Lucretia's fate would bar that vow;
And fair Virginia[163] would her fate bestow
On Rutila, and change her faultless make
For the foul rumple of her camel back.
But, for his mother's boy, the beau, what frights
His parents have by day, what anxious nights!
Form joined with virtue is a sight too rare;
Chaste is no epithet to suit with fair.
Suppose the same traditionary strain
Of rigid manners in the house remain;
Inveterate truth, an old plain Sabine's heart;
Suppose that nature too has done her part,
Infused into his soul a sober grace,
And blushed a modest blood into his face,
(For nature is a better guardian far
Than saucy pedants, or dull tutors are;)
Yet still the youth must ne'er arrive at man,
(So much almighty bribes and presents can;)
Even with a parent, where persuasions fail,
Money is impudent, and will prevail.
We never read of such a tyrant king,
Who gelt a boy deformed, to hear him sing;
Nor Nero, in his more luxurious rage,
E'er made a mistress of an ugly page:
Sporus, his spouse, nor crooked was, nor lame, }
With mountain back, and belly, from the game }
Cross-barred; but both his sexes well became. }
Go, boast your Springal, by his beauty curst
To ills, nor think I have declared the worst;
His form procures him journey-work; a strife
Betwixt town-madams, and the merchant's wife:
Guess, when he undertakes this public war,
What furious beasts offended cuckolds are.
Adulterers are with dangers round beset;
Born under Mars, they cannot 'scape the net;
And, from revengeful husbands, oft have tried
Worse handling than severest laws provide:
One stabs, one slashes, one, with cruel art,
Makes colon suffer for the peccant part.
But your Endymion, your smooth smock-faced boy,
Unrivalled, shall a beauteous dame enjoy.
Not so: one more salacious, rich, and old,
Outbids, and buys her pleasure for her gold:
Now, he must moil, and drudge, for one he lothes;
She keeps him high in equipage and clothes;
She pawns her jewels, and her rich attire,
And thinks the workman worthy of his hire.
In all things else immoral, stingy, mean,
But, in her lusts, a conscionable quean.
She may be handsome, yet be chaste, you say;--
Good observator, not so fast away;
Did it not cost the modest youth his life,
Who shunned the embraces of his father's wife?[164]
And was not t'other stripling forced to fly, }
Who coldly did his patron's queen deny, }
And pleaded laws of hospitality?[165] }
The ladies charged them home, and turned the tale;
With shame they reddened, and with spite grew pale.
'Tis dangerous to deny the longing dame;
She loses pity, who has lost her shame.
Now Silius wants thy counsel, give advice;
Wed Cæsar's wife, or die--the choice is nice.[166]
Her comet-eyes she darts on every grace,
And takes a fatal liking to his face.
Adorned with bridal pomp, she sits in state;
The public notaries and Aruspex wait;
The genial bed is in the garden dressed, }
The portion paid, and every rite expressed, }
Which in a Roman marriage is professed. }
'Tis no stolen wedding this; rejecting awe,
She scorns to marry, but in form of law:
In this moot case, your judgment to refuse
Is present death, besides the night you lose:
If you consent, 'tis hardly worth your pain,
A day or two of anxious life you gain;
Till loud reports through all the town have past,
And reach the prince--for cuckolds hear the last.
Indulge thy pleasure, youth, and take thy swing,
For not to take is but the self-same thing;
Inevitable death before thee lies,
But looks more kindly through a lady's eyes.
What then remains? are we deprived of will;
Must we not wish, for fear of wishing ill?
Receive my counsel, and securely move;--
Intrust thy fortune to the powers above;
Leave them to manage for thee, and to grant
What their unerring wisdom sees thee want:
In goodness, as in greatness, they excel;
Ah, that we loved ourselves but half so well!
We, blindly by our head-strong passions led,
Are hot for action, and desire to wed;
Then wish for heirs; but to the gods alone }
Our future offspring, and our wives, are known; }
The audacious strumpet, and ungracious son. }
Yet, not to rob the priests of pious gain,
That altars be not wholly built in vain,
Forgive the gods the rest, and stand confined
To health of body, and content of mind;
A soul, that can securely death defy,
And count it nature's privilege to die;
Serene and manly, hardened to sustain
The load of life, and exercised in pain;
Guiltless of hate, and proof against desire,
That all things weighs, and nothing can admire;
That dares prefer the toils of Hercules,
To dalliance, banquet, and ignoble ease.
The path to peace is virtue: what I show,
Thyself may freely on thyself bestow;
Fortune was never worshipped by the wise,
But, set aloft by fools, usurps the skies.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] Milo, of Crotona; who, for a trial of his strength, going to rend
an oak, perished in the attempt; for his arms were caught in the trunk
of it, and he was devoured by wild beasts.
[143] Sejanus was Tiberius's first favourite; and, while he continued
so, had the highest marks of honour bestowed on him. Statues and
triumphal chariots were every where erected to him. But, as soon as
he fell into disgrace with the emperor, these were all immediately
dismounted; and the senate and common people insulted over him as
meanly as they had fawned on him before.
[144] The island of Caprea, which lies about a league out at sea
from the Campanian shore, was the scene of Tiberius's pleasures in
the latter part of his reign. There he lived, for some years, with
diviners, soothsayers, and worse company; and from thence dispatched
all his orders to the senate.
[145] Julius Cæsar, who got the better of Pompey, that was styled, The
Great.
[146] Demosthenes and Tully both died for their oratory; Demosthenes
gave himself poison, to avoid being carried to Antipater, one of
Alexander's captains, who had then made himself master of Athens. Tully
was murdered by M. Antony's order, in return for those invectives he
made against him.
[147] The Latin of this couplet is a famous verse of Tully's, in which
he sets out the happiness of his own consulship, famous for the vanity
and the ill poetry of it; for Tully, as he had a good deal of the one,
so he had no great share of the other.
[148] The orations of Tully against M. Antony were styled by him
"Philippics," in imitation of Demosthenes; who had given that name
before to those he made against Philip of Macedon.
[149] This is a mock account of a Roman triumph.
[150] Babylon, where Alexander died.
[151] Xerxes is represented in history after a very romantic manner:
affecting fame beyond measure, and doing the most extravagant things to
compass it. Mount Athos made a prodigious promontory in the Ægean Sea;
he is said to have cut a channel through it, and to have sailed round
it. He made a bridge of boats over the Hellespont, where it was three
miles broad; and ordered a whipping for the winds and seas, because
they had once crossed his designs; as we have a very solemn account of
it in Herodotus. But, after all these vain boasts, he was shamefully
beaten by Themistocles at Salamis; and returned home, leaving most of
his fleet behind him.
[152] Mercury, who was a god of the lowest size, and employed always in
errands between heaven and hell, and mortals used him accordingly; for
his statues were anciently placed where roads met, with directions on
the fingers of them, pointing out the several ways to travellers.
[153] Nestor, king of Pylus; who was three hundred years old, according
to Homer's account; at least as he is understood by his expositors.
[154] The ancients counted by their fingers; their left hands served
them till they came up to an hundred; after that they used their right,
to express all greater numbers.
[155] The Fates were three sisters, who had all some peculiar business
assigned them by the poets, in relation to the lives of men. The first
held the distaff, the second spun the thread, and the third cut it.
[156] Whilst Troy was sacked by the Greeks, old king Priam is said to
have buckled on his armour to oppose them; which he had no sooner done,
but he was met by Pyrrhus, and slain before the altar of Jupiter, in
his own palace; as we have the story finely told in Virgil's second
Æneid.
[157] Hecuba, his queen, escaped the swords of the Grecians, and
outlived him. It seems, she behaved herself so fiercely and uneasily to
her husband's murderers, while she lived, that the poets thought fit to
turn her into a bitch when she died.
[158] Mithridates, after he had disputed the empire of the world for
forty years together, with the Romans, was at last deprived of life and
empire by Pompey the Great.
[159] Croesus, in the midst of his prosperity, making his boast to
Solon, how happy he was, received this answer from the wise man,--that
no one could pronounce himself happy, till he saw what his end should
be. The truth of this Croesus found, when he was put in chains by
Cyrus, and condemned to die.
[160] Pompey, in the midst of his glory, fell into a dangerous fit of
sickness, at Naples. A great many cities then made public supplications
for him. He recovered; was beaten at Pharsalia; fled to Ptolemy, king
of Egypt; and, instead of receiving protection at his court, had his
head struck off by his order, to please Cæsar.
[161] Cethegus was one that conspired with Catiline, and was put to
death by the senate.
[162] Sergius Catiline died fighting.
[163] Virginia was killed by her own father, to prevent her being
exposed to the lust of Appius Claudius, who had ill designs upon her.
The story at large is in Livy's third book; and it is a remarkable one,
as it gave occasion to the putting down the power of the Decemviri, of
whom Appius was one.
[164] Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, was loved by his mother-in-law,
Phædria; but he not complying with her, she procured his death.
[165] Bellerophon, the son of King Glaucus, residing some time at the
court of Pætus, king of the Argives, the queen, Sthenobæa, fell in love
with him; but he refusing her, she turned the accusation upon him, and
he narrowly escaped Pætus's vengeance.
[166] Messalina, wife to the emperor Claudius, infamous for her
lewdness. She set her eyes upon C. Silius, a fine youth; forced him
to quit his own wife, and marry her, with all the formalities of a
wedding, whilst Claudius Cæsar was sacrificing at Hostia. Upon his
return, he put both Silius and her to death.
THE
SIXTEENTH SATIRE
OF
JUVENAL.
THE ARGUMENT.
_The Poet in this satire proves, that the condition of a
soldier is much better than that of a countryman; first,
because a countryman, however affronted, provoked, and
struck himself, dares not strike a soldier, who is only
to be judged by a court-martial; and, by the law of
Camillus, which obliges him not to quarrel without the
trenches, he is also assured to have a speedy hearing,
and quick dispatch; whereas, the townsman, or peasant, is
delayed in his suit by frivolous pretences, and not sure
of justice when he is heard in the court. The soldier
is also privileged to make a will, and to give away his
estate, which he got in war, to whom he pleases, without
consideration of parentage, or relations, which is denied
to all other Romans. This satire was written by Juvenal,
when he was a commander in Egypt: it is certainly his,
though I think it not finished. And if it be well observed,
you will find he intended an invective against a standing
army._