Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/465

 "What? When on leaving the Praetor's presence I had been made my own master by his rod, why am I not free to do everything that I want to do, excepting only what the red-titled Law of Masurius forbids? "

Just listen then, and drop that wrath and those curling sneers from off your nose, while I pluck your old wife's notions out of your head. It was no part of the Praetor's business to impart to fools a delicate sense of duty, or empower them to make a right use of our fleeting life; it would be more easy to fit a hulking clodhopper with a harp. Reason forbids, and whispers privately into the ear that no man be allowed to do what he will spoil in the doing of it. The public law of man and Nature herself lay down this rule, that ignorance and imbecility should hold action to be forbidden them. If you would compound hellebore when you do not know at what point to steady the tongue of the steel-yard, the principles of the healing art forbid; if a hobnailed countryman, who knows nothing of the morning star, were to ask for the command of a ship, Melicerta would declare that modesty had perished from off the earth.

Has Philosophy taught you how to live rightly? Are you skilled in discerning the appearance of truth, that there be no false ring of copper underneath the 379