The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius. Sulpicia

sword and tortures, and mangles in one bloody mass both senators and knights. So potent is a mare's offspring! Such mighty ruin can one sorceress work!

      Women hate their husbands' spurious issue. No one would object to or forbid that. But now it is thought allowable to kill even their husbands' sons by a former marriage.

      Take my warning, ye that are under age and have a large estate, keep watch over your lives! trust not a single dish! The rich meats steam, livid with poison of your mother's mixing. Let some one take a bite before you of whatever she that bore you hands you; let your pedagogue, in terror of his life, be taster of your cups.

All this is our invention! and Satire is borrowing the tragic buskin, forsooth; and transgressing the limits prescribed by those who trod the path before us, we are wildly declaiming in the deep-mouthed tones of Sophocles[323] a strain of awful grandeur, unknown to the Rutulian hills and Latin sky. Would that it were but fable! But Pontia[324] with loud voice exclaims, "I did the deed. I avow it! and prepared for my own children the aconite, which bears palpable evidence against me. Still[325] the act was mine!" "What, cruelest of vipers! didst thou kill two at one meal! Two, didst thou slay?" "Ay, seven, had there haply been seven!"

      Then let us believe to be true all that tragedians say of the fierce Colchian or of Progne. I attempt not to gainsay it. Yet they perpetrated atrocities that were monstrous even in their days—but not for the sake of money. Less amazement is excited even by the greatest enormities, whenever rage incites this sex to crime, and with fury burning up their very liver, they are carried away headlong; like rocks torn away from cliffs, from which the mountain-height is reft away, and the side recedes from the impending mass.

I can not endure the woman that makes her calculations, and in cold blood perpetrates a heinous crime. They sit and see Alcestis[326] on the stage encountering death for her husband, and were a similar exchange allowed to them, would gladly purchase a lapdog's life by the sacrifice of their husband's! You will meet any morning with Danaides and Eriphylæ in plenty; not a street but will possess its Clytæmnestra. This is the only difference, that that famed daughter of Tyndarus grasped in both hands a bungling, senseless axe.[327] But now the business is dispatched with the insinuating venom of a toad. But yet with the steel too; if her Atrides has been cautious enough to fortify himself with the Pontic antidotes of the thrice-conquered[328] king.

      FOOTNOTES:

      [237] Cynthia is Propertius' mistress; the other is Lesbia, the mistress of Catullus. V. Catull., Carm. iii. "Lugete O Veneres," etc.

[238] Conventum. Three law terms. Conventum, "the first overture." Pactum, "the contract." Sponsalia, "the betrothing." Hence virgins were said to be speratæ; pactæ; sponsæ.

[239] Lex Julia, against adultery, recently revived by Domitian.

[240] Jubis. Mullets being a bearded fish. Plin., ix., 17.

[241] Testudineo. Cf. xi., 94. The allusion is to the story told by Pliny, vii., 12, of the consuls Lentulus and Metellus, who were observed by all present to be wonderfully like two gladiators then exhibiting before them. Cf. Val. Max., ix., 14.

[242] Lagi. Alexandria, the royal city of Ptolemy, son of Lagos, and his successors.

[243] Imperio Sexûs. Cf. xv., 138, Naturæ imperio.

[244] Ulmos. Elms, to which the vines were to be "wedded," therefore put for the vines themselves. Cf. Virg., Georg., i., 2, "Ulmisque adjungere vites." Cf. Sat. viii., 78, Stratus humi palmes viduas desiderat ulmos. Hence Platanus Cælebs evincet ulmos. Cf. Hor., Epod., i., 9.

[245] Casa. There is another fanciful interpretation of this passage. The casa candida is said to mean the "white booths" so erected as to hide the picture of the "Argonautic" expedition, at the time of the Sigillaria, a kind of fair following the Saturnalia, when gems, etc., were exposed for sale. Cf. Suet., Nero, 28.

[246] Crystallina are most probably vessels of pure white glass, which from the ignorance of the use of metallic oxydes were very rare among the Romans, though they possessed the art of coloring glass with many varieties of hue.

[247] Mustacea (the Greek σησαμῆ, Arist., Pax., 869), a mixture of meal and anise, moistened with new wine.

[248] Dacicus, i.e., gold coins of Domitian—the first from his Dacian, the second from his German wars. It was customary to present a plate full of these to the bride on the wedding night. Domitian assumed the title of Germanicus A.D. 84, and of Dacicus, A.D. 91.

[249]

      "She tells thee where to love and where to hate,

       Shuts out the ancient friend, whose beard thy gate

       Knew from its downy to its hoary state." Gifford.

[250] Cf. Æsch., Ag., 411, ἰὼ λέχος καὶ στίβοι φιλάνορες.

[251] Octo. Eight divorces were allowed by law.

[252]

      "They meet in private and prepare the bill,

       Draw up the instructions with a lawyer's skill." Gifford.

       "And teach the toothless lawyer how to bite." Dryden.

[253] Celsus. There were two famous lawyers of this name; A. Cornelius Celsus, the well-known physician in Tiberius' reign, who wrote seven books of Institutes, and P. Juventius Celsus, who lived under Trajan and Hadrian, and wrote Digests and Commentaries.

[254] Endromis. Cf. iii., 103. "A thick shaggy coat," to prevent cold after the violent exertions in the arena. Ceroma. Cf. iii., 68. The gladiator's ointment, made of oil, wax, and clay. "Nec injecto ceromate brachia tendis." Mart., vii., Ep. xxxii., 9.

[255] Palus; a wooden post or figure on which young recruits used to practice their sword exercise, armed with