Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/367

 outstrip his master. You may leave him with an easy mind; you will be outdone as surely as Telamon was beaten by Ajax, or Peleus by Achilles. Be gentle with the young; their bones are not yet filled up with the marrow of ripe wickedness. When the lad begins to comb a beard, and apply to its length the razor's edge, he will give false testimony, he will sell his perjuries for a trifling sum, touching the altar and the foot of Ceres all the time. If your daughter-in-law brings a deadly dowry into the house, you may count her as already dead and buried. What a grip of fingers will throttle her in her sleep! For the wealth which you think should be hunted for over land and sea, your son will acquire by a shorter road; great crimes demand no labour. Some day you will say, 'I never taught these things, I never advised them'; no, but you are yourself the cause and origin of your son's depravity; for whosoever teaches the love of wealth turns his sons into misers by his ill-omened instruction. When he shows him how to double his patrimony by fraud, he gives him his head, and throws a free rein over the car; try to call him back, and he cannot stop; he will pay no heed to you, he will rush on, leaving the turning-post far behind. No man is satisfied with sinning just as far as you permit; so much greater is the license which they allow themselves!

"When you tell a youth that a man is a fool who makes a present to a friend, or relieves and lightens the poverty of a kinsman, you teach him to plunder and to cheat and to commit any kind of crime for money's sake, the love of which is as great in you as was love of their country in the hearts of the Decii, or in that of Menoeceus, if Greece speaks true 281