Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/281

 Though you carry but few silver vessels with you in a night journey, you will be afraid of the sword and cudgel of a freebooter, you will tremble at the shadow of a reed shaking in the moonlight; but the empty-handed traveller will whistle in the robber's face.

The foremost of all petitions—the one best known to every temple—is for riches and their increase, that our money-chest may be the biggest in the Forum. But you will drink no aconite out of an earthenware cup; you may dread it when a jewelled cup is offered you, or when Setine wine sparkles in a golden bowl. Then will you not commend the two wise men, one of whom would laugh while the opposite sage would weep every time he set a foot outside the door? To condemn by a cutting laugh comes readily to us all; the wonder is how the other sage's eyes were supplied with all that water. The sides of Democritus shook with unceasing laughter, although in the cities of his day there were no purple-bordered or purple-striped robes, no fasces, no palanquins, no tribunals. What if he had seen the Praetor uplifted in his lofty car amid the dust of the Circus, attired in the tunic of Jove, hitching an embroidered Tyrian toga on to his shoulders, and carrying a crown so big that no neck could bear the weight of it? For a public slave is sweating under the burden; and that the Consul may not fancy himself overmuch, the slave rides in the same chariot with his master. Add to all this the bird that is perched on his ivory staff; on this side the horn-blowers, on that the duteous clients preceding him in long array, with white-robed Roman citizens, whose friendship 195