Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/293

 One globe is all too little for the youth of Pella; he chafes uneasily within the narrow limits of the world, as though he were cooped up within the rocks of Gyara or the diminutive Seriphos; but yet when once he shall have entered the city fortified by the potter's art, a sarcophagus will suffice him! Death alone proclaims how small are our poor human bodies! We have heard how ships once sailed through Mount Athos, and all the lying tales of Grecian history; how the sea was paved by those self-same ships, and gave solid support to chariot-wheels; how deep rivers failed, and whole streams were drunk dry when the Persian breakfasted, with all the fables of which Sostratus sings with reeking pinions. But in what plight did that king flee from Salamis? he that had been wont to inflict barbaric stripes upon the winds Corus and Eurus—never treated thus in their Aeolian prison-house—he who had bound the Earth-shaker himself with chains, deeming it clemency, forsooth, not to think him worthy of a branding also; what god, indeed, would be willing to serve such a master?—in what plight did he return? Why, in a single ship; on blood-stained waves, the prow slowly forcing her way through waters thick with corpses! Such was the penalty exacted for that long-desired glory!

Give me length of days, give me many years, O Jupiter! Such is your one and only prayer, in days of strength or of sickness; yet how great, how unceasing, are the miseries of old age! Look first at the misshapen and ungainly face, so unlike its former self: see the unsightly hide that serves for 207