Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/91

 retire from public life and sleep his fill ; it is a foolish clemency when you jostle against poets at every corner, to spare paper that will be wasted anyhow. But if you can give me time, and will listen quietly to reason, I will tell you why I prefer to run in the same course over which the great nursling of Aurunca drove his steeds.

When a soft eunuch takes to matrimony, and Maevia, with spear in hand and breasts exposed, to pig-sticking; when a fellow under whose razor my stiff youthful beard used to grate challenges, with his single wealth, the whole nobility; when a gutter-snipe of the Nile like Crispinus —a slave-born denizen of Canopus —hitches a Tyrian cloak on to his shoulder, whilst on his sweating finger he airs a summer ring of gold, unable to endure the weight of a heavier gem—it is hard not to write satire. For who can be so tolerant of this monstrous city, who so iron of soul, as to contain himself when the brand-new litter of lawyer Matho comes along, filled with his huge self; after him one who has informed against his noble patron and will soon sweep away the remnant of our nobility already gnawed to the bone—one whom Massa dreads, whom Carus propitiates by a bribe, and to whom Thymele was sent as envoy by the terrified Latinus; when you are thrust on one side by men who earn legacies by nightly performances, and are raised to heaven by that now royal road to high preferment—the favours of an aged and wealthy woman? Each of the lovers will have 5