SATIRE III.
ARGUMENT.
In this Satire, perhaps more than in any other, we detect Persius' predilection for the doctrines of the Stoics. With them the summum bonum was "the sound mind in the sound body." To attain which, man must apply himself to the cultivation of virtue, that is, to the study of philosophy. He that does not can aspire to neither. Though unknown to himself, he is laboring under a mortal disease, and though he fancies he possesses a healthy intellect, he is the victim of as deep-seated and dangerous a delusion as the recognized maniac. The object of the Satire is to reclaim the idle and profligate young nobles of his day from their enervating and pernicious habits, by the illustration of these principles.
The opening scene of the Satire presents us with the bedchamber where one of these young noblemen, accompanied by some other youths probably of inferior birth and station, is indulging in sleep many hours after the sun has risen upon the earth. The entrance of the tutor, who is a professor of the Stoical philosophy, disturbs their slumbers, and the confusion consequent upon his rebuke, and the thin disguise of their ill-assumed zeal, is graphically described. After a passionate outburst of contempt at their paltry excuses, the tutor points out the irretrievable evils that will result from their allowing the golden hours of youth to pass by unimproved: overthrows all objections which are raised as to their position in life, and competency of means rendering such vigorous application superfluous; and in a passage of solemn warning full of majesty and power, describes the unavailing remorse which will assuredly hereafter visit those who have so far quitted the rugged path that leads to virtue's heights, that all return is hopeless. He then proceeds to describe the defects of his own education; and the vices he fell into in consequence of these defects—vices however which were venial in himself, as those principles which would have taught him their folly were never inculcated in him. Whereas those whom he addresses, from the greater care that has been bestowed on their early training, are without apology for their neglect of these palpable duties. Then with great force and vigor, he briefly describes the proper pursuits of well-regulated minds; and looks down with contemptuous scorn on the sneers with which vulgar ignorance would deride these truths, too transcendent for their gross comprehension to appreciate. The Satire concludes very happily with the lively apologue of a glutton; who, in despite of all warning and friendly advice, perseveres even when his health is failing, in such vicious and unrestrained indulgence, that he falls at length a victim to his intemperance. The application of the moral is simple. The mind that is destitute of philosophical culture is hopelessly diseased, and the precepts of philosophy can alone effect a cure. He that despises these, in vain pronounces himself to be of sound mind. On the approach of any thing that can kindle the spark, his passions burst into flame; and in spite of his boasted sanity, urge him on to acts that would call forth the reprobation even of the maniac himself. The whole Satire and its moral, as Gifford says, may be fitly summed up in the solemn injunction of a wiser man than the schools ever produced: "Wisdom is the principal thing: therefore get Wisdom."
What! always thus![1336] Already the bright morning is entering the windows,[1337] and extending[1338] the narrow chinks with light. We are snoring[1339] as much as would suffice to work off the potent Falernian,[1340] while the index[1341] is touched by the fifth shadow of the gnomon. See! What are you about? The raging Dog-star[1342] is long since ripening the parched harvest, and all the flock is under the wide-spreading elm. One of the fellow-students[1343] says, "Is it really so? Come hither, some one, quickly. Is nobody coming!" His vitreous bile[1344] is swelling. He is bursting with rage: so that you would fancy whole herds of Arcadia[1345] were braying. Now his book, and the two-colored[1346] parchment cleared of the hair, and paper, and the knotty reed is taken in hand. Then he complains that the ink, grown thick, clogs in his pen; then that the black sepia[1347] vanishes altogether, if water is poured into it; then that the reed makes blots with the drops being diluted. O wretch! and every day still more a wretch! Are we come to such a pitch? Why do you not rather, like the tender ring-dove,[1348] or the sons of kings, call for minced pap, and fractiously refuse your nurse's lullaby!—Can I work with such a pen as this, then?
Whom are you deceiving? Why reiterate these paltry shifts? The stake is your own! You are leaking away,[1349] idiot! You will become an object of contempt. The ill-baked jar of half-prepared clay betrays by its ring its defect, and gives back a cracked sound. You are now clay, moist and pliant:[1350] even now you ought to be hastily moulded and fashioned unintermittingly by the rapid wheel.[1351] But, you will say, you have a fair competence from your hereditary estate; a pure and stainless salt-cellar.[1352] Why should you fear? And you have a paten free from care, since it worships your household deities.[1353] And is this enough? Is it then fitting you should puff out your lungs to bursting because you trace the thousandth in descent from a Tuscan stock;[1354] or because robed in your trabea you salute the Censor, your own kinsman? Thy trappings to the people! I know thee intimately, inside and out! Are you not ashamed to live after the manner of the dissolute Natta?[1355]
But he is besotted by vicious indulgence; the gross fat[1356] is incrusted round his heart: he is free from moral guilt; for he knows not what he is losing; and sunk in the very depth of vice, will never rise again to the surface of the wave.
O mighty father of the gods! when once fell lust, imbued with raging venom, has fired their spirits, vouchsafe to punish fierce tyrants in no other way than this. Let them see Virtue,[1357] and pine away at[1358] having forsaken her! Did the brass of the Sicilian[1359] bull give a deeper groan, or the sword[1360] suspended from the gilded ceiling over the purple-clad neck strike deeper terror, than if one should say to himself, "We are sinking, sinking headlong down," and in his inmost soul, poor wretch, grow pale at what even the wife of his bosom must not know? I remember when I was young I often used to touch[1361] my eyes with oil, if I was unwilling to learn the noble words of the dying Cato;[1362] that would win great applause from my senseless master, and which my father, sweating with anxiety, would listen to with the friends he had brought to hear me. And naturally enough. For the summit of my wishes was to know what the lucky sice would gain; how much the ruinous ace[1363] would sweep off; not to miss the neck of the narrow jar;[1364] and that none more skillfully than I should lash the top[1365] with a whip.
Whereas you are not inexperienced in detecting the obliquity of moral deflections, and all that the philosophic porch,[1366] painted over with trowsered Medes, teaches; over which the sleepless and close-shorn youth lucubrates, fed on husks and fattening polenta. To thee, besides, the letter that divides the Samian branches,[1367] has pointed out the path that rises steeply on the right-hand track.
And are you snoring still? and does your drooping head, with muscles all relaxed, and jaws ready to split with gaping, nod off your yesterday's debauch? Is there indeed an object at which you aim, at which you bend your bow? Or are you following the crows, with potsherd and mud, careless whither your steps lead you, and living only for the moment?
When once the diseased skin begins to swell, you will see men asking in vain for hellebore. Meet the disease on its way to attack you. Of what avail is it to promise mountains of gold to Craterus?[1368] Learn, wretched men, and investigate the causes of things; what we are—what course of life we are born to run—what rank is assigned to us—how delicate the turning round[1369] the goal, and whence the starting-point—what limit must be set to money—what it is right to wish for—what uses the rough coin[1370] possesses—how much you ought to bestow on your country and dear relations—what man the Deity destined you to be, and in what portion of the human commonwealth your station is assigned.
Learn: and be not envious because full many a jar grows rancid in his well-stored larder, for defending the fat Umbrians,[1371] and pepper, and hams, the remembrances of his Marsian client; or because the pilchard has not yet failed from the first jar.[1372]
Here some one of the rank brood of centurions may say, "I have philosophy enough to satisfy me. I care not to be what Arcesilas[1373] was, and woe-begone Solons, with head awry[1374] and eyes fastened on the ground, while they mumble suppressed mutterings, or idiotic silence, or balance words on their lip pouting out, pondering over the dreams of some palsied dotard, 'that nothing can be generated from nothing; nothing can return to nothing.'—Is it this over which you grow pale? Is it this for which one should go without his dinner?" At this the people laugh, and with wrinkling nose the brawny[1375] youth loudly re-echo the hearty peals of laughter.
"Examine me! My breast palpitates unusually; and my breath heaves oppressedly from my fevered jaws: examine me, pray!" He that speaks thus to his physician, being ordered to keep quiet, when the third night has seen his veins flow with steady pulse, begs from some wealthier mansion some mellow Surrentine,[1376] in a flagon of moderate capacity, as he is about to bathe. "Ho! my good fellow, you look pale!" "It is nothing!" "But have an eye to it, whatever it is! Your sallow skin is insensibly rising." "Well, you look pale too! worse than I! Don't play the guardian to me! I buried him long ago—you remain." "Go on! I will hold my peace!" So, bloated with feasting and with livid stomach he takes his bath, while his throat slowly exhales sulphureous malaria. But shivering[1377] comes on over his cups, and shakes the steaming beaker[1378] from his hands; his teeth, grinning, rattle in his head; then the rich dainties dribble from his flaccid lips.
Next follow the trumpets and funeral-torches; and at last this votary of pleasure, laid out on a lofty bier, and plastered over with thick unguents,[1379] stretches out his rigid heels[1380] to the door. Then, with head covered, the Quirites of yesterday[1381] support his bier.
"Feel my pulse, you wretch! put your hand on my breast. There is no heat here! touch the extremities of my feet and hands. They are not cold!"
If money has haply met your eye,[1382] or the fair maiden of your neighbor has smiled sweetly on you, does your heart beat steadily? If hard cabbage has been served up to you in a cold dish, or flour shaken through the people's sieve,[1383] let me examine your jaws. A putrid ulcer lurks in your tender mouth, which it would not be right to grate against with vulgar beet.[1384] You grow cold, when pallid fear has roused the bristles on your limbs. Now, when a torch is placed beneath, your blood begins to boil, and your eyes sparkle with anger; and you say and do what even Orestes[1385] himself, in his hour of madness, would swear to be proofs of madness.