Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/259

 runaway slaves, beside hangmen and coffin-makers, or of some eunuch priest lying drunk with idle timbrels. Here is Liberty Hall! One cup serves for everybody; no one has a bed to himself, nor a table apart from the rest. What would you do, friend Ponticus, if you chanced upon a slave like this? You would send him to your Lucanian or Tuscan bridewell. But you gentlemen of Trojan blood find excuses for yourselves; what would disgrace a huckster sits gracefully on a Volesus or a Brutus!

What if I can never cite any example so foul and shameful that there is not something worse behind? Your means exhausted, Damasippus, you hired out your voice to the stage, taking the part of the Clamorous Ghost of Catullus. The nimble Lentulus acted famously the part of Laureolus ; deserving, in my judgment, to be really and truly crucified. Nor can the spectators themselves be forgiven; the populace that with brazen front sits and beholds the triple buffooneries of our patricians, that can listen to a bare-footed Fabius, and laugh to see the Mamerci cuffing each other. What matters it at what price they sell their deaths? No Nero compels them to sell; yet they hesitate not to sell themselves at the games of the exalted Praetor. And yet suppose that on one side of you were placed a sword, on the other the stage; which were the better choice? Was ever any man so afraid of death that he would choose to be the jealous husband of a Thymele, or the colleague of the clown Corinthus? Yet when an Emperor 173