Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/277

 is the worst part of a bad slave; and yet worse still is the plight of a man who cannot escape from the talk of those whom he supports with his own bread and money.

"Your advice is excellent, but it is vague. What do you advise me to do now, after all my lost time and disappointed hopes? for the short span of our poor unhappy life is hurrying swiftly on, like a flower, to its close; while we drink, and call for chaplets, for unguents, and for maidens, old age is creeping on us unperceived."

Be not afraid; so long as these seven hills of ours stand fast, pathic friends will never fail you; from every quarter, in carriages and in ships, those gentry who scratch their heads with one finger will flock in. And you have always a further and better ground of hope—if you fit your diet to your trade.

"Such maxims are for the fortunate; my Clotho and Lachesis are well pleased if I can fill my belly with my labours. O my own little Lares, whom I am wont to supplicate with a pinch of frankincense or corn, or with a tiny garland, when can I assure myself of what will keep my old days from the beggar's staff and mat? Twenty thousand sesterces, well secured; some vessels of plain silver—yet such as Censor Fabricius would have condemned—and a couple of stout Moesian porters on whose hired necks I may be taken comfortably to my place in the bawling circus. Let me have besides a stooping engraver, and a painter who will quickly dash off any number of likenesses. Enough this for a poor man like me. It is a pitiful prayer, and I have little hope even of that; 191