Juvenal

“ For as every tree nowadays has to pay toll to the people, the Muses have been ejected, and the wood has to go a-begging. We go down to the Valley of Egeria, and into the caves so unlike to nature; how much more near to us would be the spirit of the fountain if its waters were fringed by a green border of grass, and there were no marble to outrage the native tufa! ”

“ This failing is universal here: we all live in a state of pretentious poverty. To put it shortly, nothing can be had in Rome for nothing. How much does it cost you to be able now and then to make your bow to Cossus? Or to be vouchsafed one glance, with lip firmly closed, from Veiento? One of these great men is cutting off his beard; another is dedicating the locks of a favourite; the house is full of cakes—which you will have to pay for. Take your cake, [21] and let this thought rankle in your heart; we clients are compelled to pay tribute and add to a sleek menial's perquisites. ”

“ Could any actor do better when he plays the part of Thais, or of a matron, or of a Greek slave-girl without her pallium? You would never think that it was an actor that was speaking, but a very woman, complete in all her parts. ”

“ When your house is shut, when bar and chain have made fast your shop, and all is silent, you will be robbed by a burglar; or perhaps a cut-throat will do for you quickly with cold steel. For whenever the Pontine marshes and the Gallinarian forest are secured by an armed guard, all that tribe flocks into Rome as into a fish-preserve. ”

“ Yet however reckless the fellow may be, however hot with wine and young blood, he gives a wide berth to one whose scarlet cloak and long retinue of attendants, with torches and brass lamps in their hands, bid him keep his distance. ”

“ No one who has imparted to you an innocent secret thinks he owes you anything, or will ever bestow on you a favour; the man whom Verres loves is the man who can impeach Verres at any moment that he chooses. Ah! Let not all the sands of the shaded Tagus, and the gold which it rolls into the sea, be so precious in your eyes that you should lose your sleep, and accept gifts, to your sorrow, which you must one day lay down, and be for ever a terror to your mighty friend! ”

“ What poor man ever gets a legacy, or is appointed assessor to an aedile? Romans without money should have marched out in a body long ago!
164"It is no easy matter, anywhere, for a man to rise when poverty stands in the way of his merits: but nowhere is the effort harder than in Rome, where vou must pay a big rent for a wretched lodging, a big sum to fill the bellies of your slaves, and buy a frugal dinner for yourself. ”

“ When the rich man has a call of social duty, the mob makes way for him as he is borne swiftly over their heads in a huge Liburnian car. He writes or reads or sleeps as he goes along, for the closed window of the litter induces slumber. ”

“ There's death in every open window as you pass along at night; you may well be deemed a fool, improvident of sudden accident, if you go out to dinner without having made your will. You can but hope, and put up a piteous prayer in your heart, that they may be content to pour down on you the contents of their slop-pails!
278"Your drunken bully who has by chance not slain his man passes a night of torture like that of Achilles when he bemoaned bis friend, lying now upon his face, and now upon his back; he will get no rest in any other way, since some men can only sleep after a brawl. ”

“ I am treated as a maimed and useless trunk that has lost the power of its hands. What man wins favour these days unless he be an accomplice—one whose soul seethes and burns with secrets that must never be disclosed? ”

“ I cannot, and will not, promise to a man his father's death; I have never examined the entrails of a frog; I must leave it to others to carry to a bride the presents and messages of a paramour. No man will get my help in robbery, and therefore no governor will take me on his staff ”

“ Nowhere is it so easy as at Rome to throw an old client overboard.
126"And besides, not to flatter ourselves, what, value is there in a poor man's serving here in Rome, even if he be at pains to hurry along in his toga before daylight, seeing that the praetor is bidding the lictor to go full speed lest his colleague should be the first to salute the childless ladies Albina and Modia, who have long ago been awake. Here in Rome the son of free-born parents has to give the wall to some rich man's slave ”

“ It is something, in whatever spot, however remote, to have become the possessor of a single lizard!
232"Most sick people here in Rome perish for want of sleep, the illness itself having been produced by food lying undigested on a fevered stomach. For what sleep is possible in a lodging? Who but the wealthy get sleep in Rome? There lies the root of the disorder. ”

“ Yet he will arrive before us; hurry as we may, we are blocked by a surging crowd in front, and by a dense mass of people pressing in on us from behind; one man digs an elbow into me, another a sedan-pole ”

“ Let Artorius live there, and Catulus; let those remain who turn black into white, to whom it comes easy to take contracts for temples, rivers or harbours, for cleansing drains or carrying corpses to the pyre, or to put up slaves for sale under the authority of the spear. ”

“ According to Duff, the client pays the slave, but is too indignant to take the cake. ↑ Lit. "a slender flute-player"; props were so called either from their resemblance to a flute, or to the position in which the flute was held in playing. ↑ Borrowed from Virgil, Aen. ii. 311, of the firing of Troy, iam proximus ardet=Vealegon. Juvenal's friend inhabits the third floor, and the fire has broken out on the ground floor. ↑ Celebrated Greek sculptors. ↑ i.e. vegetarians. ”