Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/353

 gentleness, and leniency to slight faults; does he hold that the bodies and souls of slaves are made of the same stuff and elements as our own; or is he inculcating cruelty, never happy until he has summoned a torturer, and he can brand some one with a hot iron for stealing a couple of towels? What counsel does the father give to his son when he revels in the clanking of a chain, and takes wondrous pleasure in branded slaves, in prisons and his country bridewell? Are you simple enough to suppose that Larga's daughter will remain virtuous when she cannot count over her mother's lovers so rapidly, or string their names together so quickly, as not to take breath full thirty times? She was her mother's confidante as a girl; at her dictation she now indites her own little love-notes, despatching them to her paramours by the hand of the self-same menials. So Nature ordains; no evil example corrupts us so soon and so rapidly as one that has been set at home, since it comes into the mind on high authority. Here and there perhaps a youth may decline to follow the bad example; one whose soul the Titan has fashioned with kindlier skill and of a finer clay; but the rest are led on by the parental steps which they should avoid, and are dragged into the old track of vice which has so long been pointed out to them.

Abstain therefore from things which you must condemn; for this there is at least one all-powerful motive, that our crimes be not copied by our children. For we are all of us teachable in what is base and wrong; you may find a Catiline among any people, and in any clime, but nowhere will you find a Brutus, or the uncle of a Brutus. Let no foul word or sight 267