Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/359

 to circumcision. Having been wont to flout the laws of Rome, they learn and practise and revere the Jewish law, and all that Moses committed to his secret tome, forbidding to point out the way to any not worshipping the same rites, and conducting none but the circumcised to the desired fountain. For all which the father was to blame, who gave up every seventh day to idleness, keeping it apart from all the concerns of life.

All vices but one the young imitate of their own free will; avarice alone is enjoined on them against the grain. For that vice has a deceptive appearance and semblance of virtue, being gloomy of mien, severe in face and garb. The miser is openly commended for his thrift, being deemed a saving man, who will be a surer guardian of his own wealth than if it were watched by the dragons of the Hesperides or of Colchis. Moreover, such a one is thought to be skilled in the art of money-getting; for it is under workers such as he that fortunes grow. And they grow bigger by every kind of means; the anvil is ever working, and the forge never ceases to glow.

Thus the father deems the miser to be fortunate; and when he worships wealth, believing that no poor man was ever happy, he urges his sons to follow in the same path and to attach themselves to the same school. There are certain rudiments in vice; in these he imbues them from the beginning, compelling them to study its pettiest meannesses; after a while he instructs them in the inappeasable lust of money-getting. He pinches the bellies of his slaves with 273