Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/113

 sleek; it needed a citizen of highest courage to ape the splendours of the Palace on the field of Bebriacum, and plaster his face with dough! Never did the quiver-bearing Samiramis the like in her Assyrian realm, nor the despairing Cleopatra on board her ship at Actium. No decency of language is there here; no regard for the manners of the table. You will hear all the foul talk and squeaking tones of Cybele; a grey-haired frenzied old man presides over the rites; he is a rare and notable master of the art of gluttony, and should be hired to teach it. But why wait any longer when it were time in Phrygian fashion to lop off the superfluous flesh?

Gracchus has presented to a cornet player—or perhaps it was a player on the straight horn—a dowry of four hundred thousand sesterces. The contract has been signed; the benedictions have been pronounced; the banqueters are seated, the new made bride is reclining on the bosom of her husband. O ye nobles of Rome! is it a soothsayer that we need, or a Censor? Would you be more aghast, would you deem it a greater portent, if a woman gave birth to a calf, or an ox to a lamb? The man who is now arraying himself in the flounces and train and veil of a bride once carried the quivering shields of Mars by the sacred thongs and sweated under the sacred burden!

O Father of our city, whence came such wickedness among thy Latin shepherds? How did such a lust possess thy grandchildren, O Gradivus? Behold! Here you have a man of high birth and wealth being 27