Juvenal

“ More time, more oil, is wasted here; regardless of all limit, the pages run up to thousands; the pile of paper is ever mounting to your ruin. So ordains the vast array of facts, and the rules of the craft. But what harvest will you gather, what fruit, from the tilling of your land? Who will give to an historian as much as he gives to the man who reads out the news? ”

“ But when his verses have brought down the house, poor Statius will starve if he does not sell his virgin Agave to Paris [14] ; for it is Paris who appoints men to military commands; it is Paris who puts the golden ring round the poet's finger after six months of service. [15] You can get from a stage-player what no great man will give you; why frequent the spacious antechambers of the Bareae or the Camerini? It is Pelopea [16] that appoints our Prefects, and Philomela [16] our Tribunes! Yet you need not begrudge the bard who gains his living from the play-house ”

“ Grant, O Gods, that the earth may lie soft and light upon the shades of our forefathers; may the sweet-scented crocus and a perpetual spring-time bloom over their ashes; who deemed that the teacher should hold the place of a revered parent! Achilles trembled for fear of the rod when already of full age, singing songs in his native hills ”

“ The first thing that a litigant looks to is, Have you eight slaves and a dozen retainers? Have you a litter to wait on you, and gowned citizens to walk before you? That is why Paulus used to hire a sardonyx ring; that is why he earned a higher fee than Gallus or Basilus. When is eloquence ever found beneath a shabby coat? When does Basilus get the chance of producing in court a weeping mother? Who would listen to him, however well he spoke? Better go to Gaul or to Africa, [28] that nursing mother of lawyers, if you would make a living by your tongue! ”

“ Then are their breasts be-slobbered! [20] and yet, if you want to discover their real gains, you may put on one side the fortunes of a hundred lawyers, on the other that of a single jockey of the Red! [21] The great men are seated; you rise, a pale-faced Ajax, [22] to declaim before a bumpkin judge in a case of contested liberty. Strain your lungs, poor fool, until they burst, that when exhausted by your labours some green palm-branches may be put up to adorn your garret. [23] What fee will your voice bring in? ”

“ And yet, small as the fee is—and it is smaller than the rhetor's wage—the pupil's unfeeling [46] attendant nibbles off a bit of it for himself; so too does the steward. But give in, Palaemon; suffer some diminution of your wage, like the hawker who sells rags and white Gallic blankets for winter wear, if only it do not go for nothing that you have sat from early dawn in a hole which no blacksmith would put up with, no workman who teaches how to card wool with slanting tool ”

“ That is how Pedo [27] becomes bankrupt, and how Matho [27] fails; and such will be the end of Tongilius, who frequents the baths with a huge oil-flask of rhinoceros horn, and disturbs the bathers with a mob of dirty retainers. His Maedian bearers are weighed down by the long poles of his litter as he passes through the Forum on his way to buy slaves or plate, agate vases or country houses; for that foreign robe of his, with its Tyrian purple, gains him credit. These gentlemen get profit out of this display; the purple or the violet robe brings practice to a lawyer ”

“ The Fates will give kingdoms to a slave, and triumphs to a captive! Nevertheless that fortunate man is rare—rarer than a white crow. Many have repented them of the Professor's vain and unprofitable chair ”

“ And cost the house what it may, there will come a man to arrange the courses skilfully, and the man who makes up the tasty dishes. Amidst expenditure such as this two thousand sesterces will be enough, and more than enough, for Quintilian; there is nothing on which a father will not spend more money than on his son. ”

“ They talk big enough, especially if a creditor [19] of their own happens to be listening; or if, more urgent still, they get poked in the ribs by one who has brought a huge ledger to claim a doubtful debt. ”

“ If you ask what fees Chrysogonus and Pollio [36] get for teaching music to the sons of our great men, you will tear up the Rhetoric of Theodorus. [37]
178Your great man will spend six hundred thousand sesterces upon his baths, and something more on the colonnade in which he is to drive on rainy days. What? Is he to wait for a clear sky, and bespatter his horses with fresh mud? How much better to drive where their hoofs will remain bright and spotless! Elsewhere let a banqueting hall arise, supported on lofty pillars of African marble, to catch the winter sun. ”