Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/371

 trafficker in stinking wares, finding your joy in importing sweet wine from the shores of ancient Crete, or flagons that were fellow-citizens of Jove? Yet the man who plants his steps with balanced foot gains his livelihood thereby; that rope keeps him from cold and hunger; while you run the risk for the sake of a thousand talents or a hundred mansions. Look at our ports, our seas, crowded with big ships! The men at sea now outnumber those on shore. Whithersoever hope of gain shall call, thither fleets will come; not content with bounding over the Carpathian and Gaetulian seas, they will leave Calpe far behind, and hear the sun hissing in the Herculean main. It is well worth while, no doubt, to have beheld the monsters of the deep and the young mermen of the Ocean that you may return home with tight-stuffed purse, and exult in your swollen money-bags!

Not all men are possessed with one form of madness. One madman in his sister's arms is terrified by the faces and fire of the Furies; another, when he strikes down an ox, believes that it is Agamemnon or the Ithacan that is bellowing. The man who loads his ship up to the gunwale with goods, with only a plank between him and the deep, is in need of a keeper, though he keep his hands off his shirt and his cloak, seeing that he endures all that misery and all that danger for the sake of bits of silver cut up into little images and inscriptions! Should clouds and thunder threaten, "Let go!" cries the merchant who has bought up corn or pepper, "that black sky, this dark wrack, are nought—it is 285