Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/115

 handed over in marriage to a man, and yet neither shakest thy helmet, nor smitest the earth with thy spear, nor yet protestest to thy Father? Away with thee then; begone from that broad Martial Plain which thou hast forgotten!

"I have a ceremony to attend," quoth one, "at dawn to-morrow, in the Quirinal valley." "What is the occasion?" "No need to ask; a friend is taking to himself a husband; quite a small affair." Yes, and if we only live long enough, we shall see these things done openly; people will wish to see them reported among the news of the day. Meanwhile these would-be brides have one great trouble; they can bear no children wherewith to keep the affection of their husbands; well has nature done in granting to their desires no power over their bodies. They die infertile; naught avails them the medicine-chest of the bloated Lyde, or to hold out their hands to the blows of the swift-footed Luperci!

Greater still the portent when Gracchus, clad in a tunic, played the gladiator, and fled, trident in hand, across the arena—Gracchus, a man of nobler birth than the Capitolini, or the Marcelli, or the descendents of Catulus or Paulus, or the Fabii; nobler than all the spectators in the podium ; not excepting him who gave the show at which that net was flung.

That there are such things as Manes, and kingdoms below ground, and punt-poles, and Stygian pools black with frogs, and all those thousands crossing over in a single bark—these things not even 29