shall he get up? No, he will forbid that: be cause his side or his reins are vexed with an acute disease. In like manner, such a man is not perjured nor sordid. Let him then sacrifice a hog to his propitious household Gods. But he is ambi

tious and assuming. Let him therefore make a voyage to Anticyra. For what is the difference, whether you squander whatever you have upon a scoundrel, or make no use of your acquisitions?

Servius Oppidius, rich in the possession of an ancient estate, is reported, when dying, to have divided two farms at Canusium betwixt his two sons, and to have addressed the boys called to his bedside in this manner: When I saw you, Aulus, carry your playthings and nuts carelessly in your bosom, and to give them and game them away: you, Tiberius, to count them, and anxious hide them in holes; I was afraid lest a madness of a different nature should possess you both; lest you, Aulus, should follow the example of Nomentanus, and you, Tiberius, that of Cicuta. Wherefore each of you, entreated by your household Gods, do you take care, lest you lessen; you, lest you make that greater, which your father thinks, and the purposes of nature determine to be sufficient. Furthermore, lest glory should entice you, I will bind each of you by an oath; whichever of you shail be an ædile or a prætor, let him be excommunicated and accursed. Would you destroy your effects in largesses of peas, beans, and lupines, that you may stalk in the circus at large, or stand represented in a statue of brass; a madman, stripped of your paternal estate, stripped of your

*

* Usually given to the populace by candidates for these posts of honour.

money? To the end, forsooth, that you may gain those applauses which Agrippa gains, a cunning fox imitating a generous lion?

Being a

"And I

O Agamemnon, why do you prohibit any one from burying Ajax? I am a king." plebeian, I make no further inquiry. command a justifiable thing: But if I seem unjust to any one, I permit him to speak his sentiments with impunity." Greatest of kings, may the Gods grant, that, after the taking of Troy, you may conduct your fleet safe home: may I then have the liberty to ask questions, and reply in

my turn? "Ask." Why does Ajax, a hero, second only to Achilles, rot above ground, so aften rendered glorious for having saved the Grecians, that Priam and Priam's people may exult in his being unburied, by whose means so many youths have been deprived of their country rites of sepulchre ? "In his madness he killed a thousand sheep, crying out, at the same time, that he was destroying the famous Ulysses and Menelaus. together with me." When you, at Aulis, substituted your sweet daughter in the place of a heifer before the altar, and, impious! sprinkled her head with the salt cake, did you preserve soundness of mind? 66 Why not?" What then did the mad Ajax do when he slew the flock with his sword? he abstained from any violence on his wife or child; though he imprecated many curses on the sons of Atreus he neither hurt Tuecer, nor even Ulysses himself. "But I, out of prudence, appeased the Gods with the blood of my daughter,. that I might loose the ships that were detained on an adverse shore.' What, madman! with your own blood? "With my own, but yet I was not

mad." Whoever shall form images foreign from truth, and confused in the tumult of impiety, will always be reckoned disturbed in mind; and it will not matter whether he do a wrong thing through folly or rage. Is Ajax delirious, while he kills the harmless lambs? Are you right in your head when you carefully commit a crime for empty titles? and is your heart pure, while it is swollen with the vice of ambition? If any person should take a delight to carry about with him in his sedan a pretty lambkin; and should provide clothes, should provide maids, and gold for it, as for a daughter; should call it child, or little baby, and should destine it a wife for some stout husband; the prætor would take power from him, being interdicted, and the management of him would devolve to his relations that were in their senses. What? if a man devotes his daughter instead of a dumb lambkin, is he of right mind? Never say it. Therefore, where there is a foolish depravity, there will be the height of madness; he who is wicked will be frantic too: Bellona, who delights in bloodshed, has thundered about his head, whom precarious fame has captivated.

Now, come on, arraign with me luxury and Nomentanus: for reason will evince that foolish spendthrifts are mad. This fellow, as soon as he received a thousand talents of patrimony, issues an order that the fishmonger, the fruiterer, the poulterer, the perfumer, and the impious gang of the Tuscan alley, prompters and buffoons, the whole shambles, together with all Velabrum,* should come to his house in the morning. What was the

* A place in Rome where oil was sold.

consequence? why, they came in crowds. The pander makes a speech: "Whatever I, or whatever each of these, has at home, believe it to be entirely yours; and give your order for it either directly or to-morrow." Now hear what reply the considerate youth made. "You sleep with your boots on in Lucanian snow, that I may feast on a boar: you sweep the wintry seas for fish; I am indolent, and unworthy to possess so much. Here, away with it; do you take for your share ten hundred thousand sesterces; you as much; you thrice the sum, from whose house your spouse runs, when called for, at midnight." The son of Æsopus, the actor, that he might forsooth swallow a million of sesterces at a draught, dissolved a precious pearl, which he had taken from the ear of Metella, in vinegar; how much wiser was he in doing this, than if he had thrown the same into a rapid river or the common sewer? The progeny of Quintus Arrius, an illustrious pair of brothers, true twins in wickedness and trifling, and the love of depravity, used to dine upon nightingales, bought at a vast expense; how do these turn out to be in their senses? Are they to be marked with chalk or charcoal ?*

If an aged person with a long beard should take a delight to build baby-houses, to yoke mice to a go-cart, to play at odd and even, and to ride upon a long cane, madness must be his motive. If reason shall evince that to be in love is a more childish thing than these: and that there is no difference whether you play the same games in the

*A proverbial expression for being either acquitted or condemned.

dust, as when three years old, or anxious whine for the love of a harlot: I beg to know if you will act as the reformed Polemon* did of old; will you lay aside those ensigns of your disease, your rollers, your mantle, your mufflers? as he in his cups is said to have privately torn the chaplet from his neck, after he was corrected by the speech of his fasting master. When you offer apples to a cross boy he refuses them : here, take them, you little dog; he denies you; if you give them not, he wants them. In what does an excluded lover differ from such a boy, when he argues with himself whether he should go, or not, to that very place he was returning to, without being sent for, and cleaves to the hated door? “What, shall I not go to her now when she invites me of her own accord? or shall I rather think of putting an end to my pains? She has excluded me; she recalls me : shall I return? No, not if she should beseech me." Observe the servant not a little wiser: "O master, that which has neither moderation nor conduct cannot be guided by reason or method. In love these evils are inherent; war one while, then peace again. If any one should endeavour to ascertain these things, that are various as the weather, and fluctuating by blind chance, he will make no more of it, than if he should set about raving by right reason and rule." What! when picking the pippins from the Picenian apples you rejoice if haply you have struck the vaulted roof; are you yourself? What! when you strike out faltering accents from your

66

*Polemon, a notorious rake, that went drunk into the school of Xenocrates, by whom he was reformed, and afterwards became his disciple.