Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/347

 our mistakes; it is she that first teaches us the right. For vengeance is always the delight of a little, weak, and petty mind; of which you may straightway draw proof from this—that no one so rejoices in vengeance as a woman.

But why should you suppose that a man escapes punishment whose mind is ever kept in terror by the consciousness of an evil deed which lashes him with unheard blows, his own soul ever shaking over him the unseen whip of torture? It is a grievous punishment, more cruel far than any devised by the stern Caedicius or by Rhadamanthus, to carry in one's breast by night and by day one's own accusing witness. The Pythian prophetess once made answer to a Spartan that it would not pass unpunished in after time that he had thought of keeping back a sum entrusted to him supporting the wrong by perjury; for he asked what was the mind of the Deity, and whether Apollo counselled him to do the deed. He therefore restored the money, through fear, and not from honesty; nevertheless he found all the words of the Oracle to be true and worthy of the shrine, being destroyed with his whole race and family and relations, however far removed. Such are the penalties endured by the mere wish to sin; for he who secretly meditates a crime within his breast has all the guiltiness of the deed.

What then if the purposed deed be done? His disquiet never ceases, not even at the festal board; his throat is as dry as in a fever; he can scarcely take his food, it swells between his teeth; he spits out the wine, poor wretch; he cannot abide the choicest old Albanian, and if you bring out something finer still, wrinkles gather upon his brow as 261