Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/476



winter taken you back, Caesius Bassus, to your Sabine home, with that manly lyre of yours that strikes every note so fitly, whether grave or gay? I am wintering in my own Luna, regardless of the multitude, without care of flocks, without envy of inferiors richer than myself (1–17). Others may think differently; there are some who meanly stint themselves on feast-days; others waste their substance in good living. Use what you have, say I; thrash out your harvest, and commit a new crop to the soil (18–26). O, but a friend needs help, you say, lying shipwrecked on the Bruttian shore; then break off a bit of your estate for him, that he may not want. "What? am I to incur the wrath of my heir, and tempt him to neglect my funeral rites?" Bestius does well in condemning all foreign notions (27–40). Come, my heir, let me have a quiet talk with you. Have you heard that there's grand news from the front? that the Germans have had a tremendous smashing, and that there are to be rejoicings on a grand scale? Woe to you if you don't join in! I am going to treat the multitude: do you dare stay my hand? (41–52). Well, if you refuse, and if I can find no legitimate heir of my own; if I can find no relation, male or female, sprung from ancestors of mine up to the fourth generation, I will go to Bovillae and find 390