Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 1 Haines 1919.djvu/157

 shall be this, in regard to which, if you say that I have taken up an easier theme in accusing sleep than you who have praised it—for who, say you, cannot easily bring an indictment against sleep?—I will counter thus: what is easy to indict is hard to praise; what is hard to praise can serve no useful purpose.

2. But I let that pass. For the nonce, as we are staying at Baiae in this interminable labyrinth of Ulysses, I will take from Ulysses a few things which bear on my subject. For he surely would not have taken twenty years his fatherland to reach, nor have wandered so long about that pool, nor gone through all the other adventures which make up the Odyssey, had not then sweet sleep seized his weary limbs. Yet on the tenth day his native soil appeared —but what did sleep do?

The evil counsel of my crew prevailed: The bag they opened, and forth rushed the winds; The fierce gale caught and swept them to the sea, Weeping with sorrow, from their native shore?

What again took place at the island of Trinacria?

Nor winds sweet sleep upon mine eyelids shed: Eurylochus his crew ill counsel gave.

Afterwards, when the Sungod's oxen and fat flocks they slew and flayed  and burnt the thighs and ate the flesh, what then Ulysses when awaked?

Wailing I cried to all the Gods on high, Who ruthless to my ruin made me sleep. 93