Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/333



deed that sets an example of evil brings joy to the doer of it. The first punishment is this; that no guilty man is acquitted at the bar of his own conscience, though he have won his cause by a juggling urn, and the corrupt favour of the judge. What do you suppose, Calvinus, that people are now thinking about the recent villainy and the charge of trust betrayed? Your means are not so small that the weight of a slight loss will weigh you down; nor is your misfortune rare. Such a mishap has been known to many; it is one of the common kind, plucked at random out of Fortune's heap. Away with undue lamentations! a man's wrath should not be hotter than is fit, nor greater than the loss sustained. You are scarce able to bear the very smallest particle of misfortune; your bowels foam hot within you because your friend will not give up to you the sacred trust committed to him; does this amaze one who was born in the Consulship of Fonteius, and has left sixty years behind him? Have you gained nothing from all your experience?

Great indeed is Philosophy, the conqueror of Fortune, and sacred are her precepts; but they too are to be deemed happy who have learnt under the schooling of life to endure its ills without fretting against the yoke. What day is there, however festal, which fails to disclose theft, treachery and fraud; gain made out of every kind of crime, and money won by the dagger or the bowl? For honest men 247