Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/219

 does a gilded bed contain a woman that is lying in? So great is the skill, so powerful the drugs, of the abortionist, paid to murder mankind within the womb. Rejoice, poor wretch; give her the stuff to drink whatever it be, with your own hand; for were she willing to get big and trouble her womb with bouncing babes, you might perhaps find yourself the father of an Ethiopian; and some day a coloured heir, whom you would rather not meet by daylight, would fill all the places in your will.

I say nothing of supposititious children, of the hopes and prayers so often cheated at those filthy pools from which are supplied Priests and Salii, with bodies that will falsely bear the name of Scauri. There Fortune shamelessly takes her stand by night, smiling on the naked babes; she fondles them all and folds them in her bosom, and then, to provide herself with a secret comedy, she sends them forth to the houses of the great. These are the children that she loves, on these she lavishes herself, and with a laugh brings them always forward as her own.

One man supplies magical spells; another sells Thessalian charms by which a wife may upset her husband's mind, and lather his buttocks with a slipper; thence come loss of reason, and darkness of soul, and blank forgetfulness of all that you did but yesterday. Yet even that can be endured, if only you become not raving mad like that uncle of Nero's into whose drink Caesonia poured the whole brow of a weakly foal ; and what 133