Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/235

 of himself, seated on a gallant charger, brandishing from afar a bending spear, and practising for battle with one eye closed. That is how Pedo becomes bankrupt, and how Matho fails; and such will be the end of Tongilius, who frequents the baths with a huge oil-flask of rhinoceros horn, and disturbs the bathers with a mob of dirty retainers. His Maedian bearers are weighed down by the long poles of his litter as he passes through the Forum on his way to buy slaves or plate, agate vases or country houses; for that foreign robe of his, with its Tyrian purple, gains him credit. These gentlemen get profit out of this display; the purple or the violet robe brings practice to a lawyer; it pays him to live with a racket and an appearance beyond his means, and wasteful Rome sets no limits to extravagance.

Trust in eloquence, indeed? Why, no one would give Cicero himself two hundred pence nowadays unless a huge ring were blazing on his finger. The first thing that a litigant looks to is, Have you eight slaves and a dozen retainers? Have you a litter to wait on you, and gowned citizens to walk before you? That is why Paulus used to hire a sardonyx ring; that is why he earned a higher fee than Gallus or Basilus. When is eloquence ever found beneath a shabby coat? When does Basilus get the chance of producing in court a weeping mother? Who would listen to him, however well he spoke? Better go to Gaul or to Africa, that nursing mother of lawyers, if you would make a living by your tongue!

Or do you teach rhetoric? O Vettius! what iron bowels must you have when your troop of scholars slays the cruel tyrant; when each in turn 149