Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/381

 struck Aeneas on the hip, but such as may be cast by hands unlike to theirs, and born in these days of ours. For even in Homer's day the race of man was on the wane; earth now produces none but weak and wicked men that provoke such Gods as see them to laughter and to loathing.

To come back from our digression; the one side, reinforced, boldly draws the sword and renews the fight with showers of arrows; the dwellers in the shady palm-groves of neighbouring Tentyra turn their backs in headlong flight before the Ombite charge. Hereupon one of them, over-afraid and hurrying, tripped and was caught; the conquering host cut up his body into a multitude of scraps and morsels, that one dead man might suffice for everyone, and devoured it bones and all. There was no stewing of it in boiling pots, no roasting upon spits; so slow and tedious they thought it to wait for a fire, that they contented themselves with the corpse uncooked!

One may here rejoice that no outrage was done to the flame that Prometheus stole from the highest heavens, and gifted to the earth. I felicitate the element, and doubt not that you are pleased; but never was flesh so relished as by those who endured to put that carcase between their teeth. For in that act of gross wickedness, do not doubt or ask whether it was only the first gullet that enjoyed its meal; for when the whole body had been consumed, those who stood furthest away actually dragged their fingers along the ground and so got some smack of the blood.

The Vascones, fame tells us, once prolonged their lives by such food as this; but their case was 295