Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/303

 trust can be placed in money! No misshapen youth was ever unsexed by cruel tyrant in his castle; never did Nero have a bandy-legged or scrofulous favourite, or one that was hump-backed or pot-bellied!

Go to now, you that revel in your son's beauty; think of the deadly perils that lie before him. He will become a promiscuous gallant, and have to fear all the vengeance due to outraged husbands; no luckier than Mars, he will not fail to fall into the net. And so sometimes the husband's wrath exacts greater penalties than any law allows; one lover is slain by the sword, another bleeds under the lash; some undergo the punishment of the mullet. Your dear Endymion will become the gallant of some matron whom he loves; but before long, when Servilia has taken him into her pay, he will serve one also whom he loves not, and will strip her of all her ornaments; for what can any woman, be she an Oppia or a Catulla, deny to the man who serves her passion? It is on her passion that a bad woman's whole nature centres, "But how does beauty hurt the chaste?" you ask. Well, what availed Hippolytus or Bellerophon their firm resolve? The Cretan lady flared up as though repelled with scorn; no less furious was Stheneboea. Both dames lashed themselves into fury; for never is woman so savage as when her hatred is goaded on by shame.

And now tell me what counsel you think should be given to him whom Caesar's wife is minded to wed. Best and fairest of a patrician house, the 217