Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/63

 time; he is only a little nearer to her than a next-door neighbour; she heeds not what she costs him. (474–511.)

Another is the prey of every superstition. In come the noisy crew of the frantic Bellona and the Good Goddess, clanging their cymbals; they pay reverence to the huge emasculated priest; to avert his prophecies of evil, she presents him with a hundred eggs, and some cast-off clothing; these carry off the threatened peril and purify her for the entire year. In winter-time she breaks the ice for a plunge into the Tiber, and then crawls with bleeding knees over the Campus Martius. At Io's bidding—for she believes that the Goddess herself holds commune with her—she would go on a pilgrimage to Egypt to bring water from Lake Meroe with which to besprinkle the shrine of Isis. She pays reverence to the dog-headed Anubis, with his close-cropped and linen-clad followers; a fat goose and a thin cake will obtain absolution for all her peccadilloes from Osiris. (511–541.)

Next comes a Jewish hag, leaving her basket and her hay, who whispers secrets into her ear, expounding the holy laws of her tribe; she interprets or invents dreams for the smallest of coins. An Armenian or Syrian soothsayer, manipulating a pigeon's liver, promises her a youthful lover, or the inheritance of some rich and childless man. He probes the entrails of a dog, sometimes even of a lix