Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/249

 lowest rabble you will find a Roman who has eloquence, one who will plead the cause of the unlettered noble; you must go to the toga-clad herd for a man to untie the knots and riddles of the law. From them will come the brave young soldier who marches to the Euphrates, or to the eagles that guard the conquered Batavians, while you are nothing but a Cecropid, the image of a limbless Hermes! For in no respect but one have you the advantage over him; his head is of marble, while yours is a living effigy!

Tell me, thou scion of the Trojans, who deems a dumb animal well-born unless it be strong? It is for this that we commend the swift horse whose speed sets every hand aglow, and fills the Circus with the hoarse shout of victory; that horse is noblest, on whatever pasture reared, whose rush outstrips the rest, and whose dust is foremost upon the plain. But the offspring of Coryphaeus or Hirpinus comes to the hammer if Victory light but seldom on his car; no respect is there paid to ancestors, no favour is shown to Shades! The slow of foot, that are fit only to turn a miller's wheel, pass, for a mere nothing, from one owner to another, and gall their necks against the collar. So, if I am to respect yourself, and not your belongings, give me something of your own to engrave among your titles, in addition to those honours which we pay, and have paid, to those to whom you owe your all.

Enough this for the youth whom report has handed down to us as proud and puffed up with his kinship to Nero; for in those high places regard for others is rarely to be found. But for you, Ponticus, I cannot wish that you should be, valued for the 163