Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/263

 wrote an Epic upon Troy! For of all the deeds of Nero's cruel and bloody tyranny, which was there that more deserved to be avenged by the arms of a Verginius, of a Vindex or a Galba? These were the deeds, these the graces of our high-born Prince, whose delight it was to prostitute himself by unseemly singing upon a foreign stage, and to earn a chaplet of Greek parsley! Let thy ancestral images be decked with the trophies of thy voice! Place thou at the feet of a Domitius the trailing robe of Thyestes or Antigone, or the mask of Melanippa, and hang up thy harp on a colossus of marble!

Where can be found, O Catiline, nobler ancestors than thine, or than thine, Cethegus? Yet you plot a night attack, you prepare to give our houses and temples to the flames as though you were the sons of trousered Gauls, or sprung from the Senones, daring deeds that deserved the shirt of torture. But our Consul is awake, and beats back your hosts. Born at Arpinum, of ignoble blood, a municipal knight new to Rome, he posts helmeted men at every point to guard the affrighted citizens, and is alert on every hill. Thus within the walls his toga won for him as much name and honour as Octavius 177