Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/121

 Catulus; let those remain who turn black into white, to whom it comes easy to take contracts for temples, rivers or harbours, for cleansing drains or carrying corpses to the pyre, or to put up slaves for sale under the authority of the spear. These men once were horn-blowers, who went the round of every provincial show, and whose puffed-out cheeks were known in every village; to-day they hold shows ot their own, and win applause by slaying with a turn or the thumb whomsoever the mob bids them slay; from that they go back to contract for cesspools, and why not for any kind of thing, seeing that they are of the kind that Fortune raises from the gutter to the mighty places of earth whenever she wishes to enjoy a laugh?

"What can I do at Rome? I cannot lie; if a book is bad, I cannot praise it, and beg for a copy; I am ignorant of the movements of the stars; I cannot, and will not, promise to a man his father's death; I have never examined the entrails of a frog; I must leave it to others to carry to a bride the presents and messages of a paramour. No man will get my help in robbery, and therefore no governor will take me on his staff; I am treated as a maimed and useless trunk that has lost the power of its hands. What man wins favour these days unless he be an accomplice—one whose soul seethes and burns with secrets that must never be disclosed? No one who has imparted to you an innocent secret thinks he owes you anything, or will ever bestow on you a favour; the man whom Verres loves is the man who 35