SATIRE VI.
I believe that while Saturn still was king, chastity lingered upon earth, and was long seen there: when a chill cavern furnished a scanty dwelling, and inclosed in one common shade the fire and household gods, the cattle, and their owners. When a wife, bred on the mountains, prepared a rustic bed with leaves and straw and the skins of the wild beasts their neighbors; not like thee, Cynthia[237]—or thee whose beaming eyes the death of a sparrow dimmed with tears—but bearing breasts from which her huge infants might drink, not suck, and often more uncivilized even than her acorn-belching husband. Since men lived very differently then, when the world was new, and the sky but freshly created, who, born out of the riven oak, or moulded out of clay, had no parents.
Many traces of primæval chastity, perhaps, or some few at least, may have existed, even under Jove; but then it was before Jove's beard was grown; before the Greeks were yet ready to swear by another's head; when no one feared a thief for his cabbages or apples, but lived with garden uninclosed. Then by degrees Astræa retired to the realms above, with chastity for her companion, and the two sisters fled together.
To violate the marriage-bed, and laugh to scorn the genius that presides over the nuptial couch, is an ancient and a hackneyed vice, Postumus. Every other species of iniquity the age of iron soon produced. The silver age witnessed the first adulterers.
And yet are you preparing your marriage covenant, and the settlement,[238] and betrothal, in our days, and are already under the hands of the master barber, and perhaps have already given the pledge for her finger! Well! you used to be sane, at all events! You, Postumus, going to marry! Say, what Tisiphone, what snakes are driving you mad? Can you submit to be the slave of any woman, while so many halters are to be had? so long as high and dizzy windows are open for you, and the Æmilian bridge presents itself so near at hand? Or if, out of so many ways of quitting life, none pleases you, do you not think your present plan better, of having a stripling to sleep with you, who lying there, reads you no curtain lectures, exacts no little presents from you, and never complains that you are too sparing in your efforts to please him?
But Ursidius is delighted with the Julian law[239]—he thinks of bringing up a darling heir, nor cares to lose the fine turtledove and bearded mullets,[240] and all the baits for legacies in the dainties of the market. What will you believe to be impossible, if Ursidius takes a wife? If he, of yore the most notorious of adulterers, whom the chest of Latinus in peril of his life has so often concealed, is now going to insert his idiot head in the nuptial halter; nay, and more than this, is looking out for a wife possessed of the virtues of ancient days! Haste, physicians, bore through the middle vein! What a nice man! Fall prostrate at the threshold of Tarpeian Jove, and sacrifice to Juno a heifer with gilded horns, if you have the rare good fortune to find a matron with unsullied chastity. So few are there worthy to handle the fillets of Ceres; so few, whose kisses their own fathers might not dread. Wreathe chaplets for the door-posts, stretch thick clusters of ivy over the threshold. Is one husband enough for Iberina? Sooner will you prevail on her to be content with one eye. "Yet there is a great talk of a certain damsel, living at her father's country-house!" Let her live at Gabii as she lived in the country, or even at Fidenæ, and I grant what you say of the influence of the paternal country-seat. Yet who will dare assert that nothing has been achieved on mountains or in caves? Are Jupiter and Mars grown so old. In all the public walks can a woman be pointed out to you, that is worthy of your wish. On all their benches do the public shows hold one that you could love without misgivings; or one you could pick out from the rest? While the effeminate Bathyllus is acting Leda in the ballet, Tuccia can not contain herself, Appula whines as in the feat of love, Thymele is all attention to the quick, the gentler, and the slow; and so Thymele, rustic as she was before, becomes a proficient in the art. But others, whenever the stage ornaments, packed away, get a respite, and the courts alone are vocal (since the theatres are closed and empty, and the Megalesian games come a long time after the plebeian), in their melancholy handle the mask and thyrsus and drawers of Accius. Urbicus provokes a laugh by his personification of Autonoe in the Atellan farce. Ælia, being poor, is in love with him. For others, the fibula of the comic actor is unbuckled for a large sum. Some women prevent Chrysogonus from having voice to sing. Hispulla delights in a tragic actor. Do you expect then that the worthy Quintilianus will be the object of their love? You take a wife by whom Echion the harper, or Glaphyrus, or Ambrosius the choral flute-player, will become a father. Let us erect long lines of scaffolding along the narrow streets. Let the door-posts and the gate be decorated with a huge bay, that beneath the canopy inlaid with tortoise-shell,[241] thy infant, Lentulus, supposed to be sprung from a noble sire, may be the counterpart of the Mirmillo Euryalus.
Hippia, though wife to a senator, accompanied a gladiator to Pharos and the Nile, and the infamous walls of Lagos.[242] Even Canopus itself reprobated the immorality of the imperial city. She, forgetful of her home, her husband, and her sister, showed no concern for her native land, or, vile wretch as she was, her weeping children, and, to amaze you even more, quitted the shows and Paris. But though when a babe she had been pillowed in great luxury, in the down of her father's mansion, and a cradle of richest workmanship, she despised the perils of the sea. Her good name she had long before despised—the loss of which, among the soft cushions of ladies, is very cheaply held. Therefore with undaunted breast she faced the Tuscan waves and wide-resounding Ionian Sea, though the sea was so often to be changed. If the cause of the peril be reasonable and creditable, then they are alarmed—their coward hearts are chilled with icy fear—they can not support themselves on their trembling feet. They show a dauntless spirit in those things which they basely dare. If it is their husband that bids them, it is a great hardship to go on board ship. Then the bilgewater is insufferable! the skies spin round them! She that follows her adulterer has no qualms. The one is sick all over her husband. The other dines among the sailors and walks the quarter-deck, and delights in handling the hard ropes. And yet what was the beauty that inflamed, what the prime of life that captivated Hippia? What was it she saw in him to compensate her for being nicknamed the fencer's whore? For the darling Sergius had now begun to shave his throat; and badly wounded in the arm to anticipate his discharge. Besides, he had many things to disfigure his face, as for instance—he was galled with his helmet, and had a huge wen between his nostrils, and acrid rheum forever trickling from his eye. But then he was a gladiator! It is this that makes them beautiful as Hyacinthus! It was this she preferred to her children and her native land, her sister and her husband. It is the steel they are enamored of. This very same Sergius, if discharged from the arena, would begin to be Veiento in her eyes.
Do you feel an interest in a private house, in a Hippia's acts? Turn your eyes to the rivals of the gods! Hear what Claudius had to endure. As soon as his wife perceived he was asleep, this imperial harlot, that dared prefer a coarse mattress to the royal bed, took her hood she wore by nights, quitted the palace with but a single attendant, but with a yellow tire concealing her black hair; entered the brothel warm with the old patchwork quilt, and the cell vacant and appropriated to herself. Then took her stand with naked breasts and gilded nipples, assuming the name of Lycisca, and displayed the person of the mother of the princely Britannicus, received all comers with caresses and asked her compliment, and submitted to often-repeated embraces. Then when the owner dismissed his denizens, sadly she took her leave, and (all she could do) lingered to the last before she closed her cell; and still raging with unsatisfied desire, tired with the toil but yet unsated, she retired with sullied cheeks defiled, and, foul from the smoke of lamps, bore back the odor of the stews to the pillow of the emperor.
Shall I speak of the love-philters, the incantations, the poison mingled with the food and given to the step-son? The acts which they commit, to which they are impelled by the imperative suggestions of their sex,[243] are still more atrocious: those they commit through lust are the least of their crimes. "Then, how can it be that even by her husband's showing Cesennia is the best of wives?" She brought him a thousand sestertia! that is the price at which he calls her chaste. It is not with Venus' quiver that he grows thin, or with her torch he burns; it is from that his fires are fed; from her dowry that the arrows emanate. She has purchased her liberty: therefore, even in her husband's presence, she may exchange signals, and answer her love-letters. A rich wife, with a covetous husband, has all a widow's privileges. "Why then does Sertorius burn with passion for Bibula?" If you sift the truth, it is not the wife he is in love with, but the face. Let a wrinkle or two make their appearance, and the shriveled skin grow flaccid, her teeth get black, or her eyes smaller—"Pack up your baggage," the freedman will say, "and march. You are become offensive. You blow your nose too frequently. March! and be quick about it! Another is coming whose nose is not so moist." Meanwhile she is hot and imperious, and demands of her husband shepherds and sheep from Canusium, and elms[244] from Falernum. What a trifle is this? Then every boy she fancies, whole droves of slaves, and whatever she has not in her house, and her neighbor has, must be bought.
Nay, in the mid-winter month, when now the merchant Jason is shut up, and the cottage[245] white with hoar frost detains the sailors all equipped for their voyage, she takes huge crystalline vases,[246] and then again myrrhine of immense size; then an adamant whose history is well known, and whose value is enhanced by having been on Berenice's finger. This in days of yore a barbarian king gave his incestuous love—Agrippa to his own sister! where barefoot kings observe festal sabbaths, and a long-established clemency grants long life to pigs.
"Is there not one, then, out of such large herds of women, that seems to you a worthy match?" Let her be beautiful, graceful, rich, fruitful; marshal along her porticoes her rows of ancestral statues; let her be more chaste than any single Sabine that, with hair disheveled, brought the war to a close; be a very phœnix upon earth, rare as a black swan; who could tolerate a wife in whom all excellencies are concentrated! I would rather, far rather, have a country maiden from Venusia, than you, O Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, if along with your exalted virtues you bring as portion of your dower a haughty and disdainful brow, and reckon as part of your fortune the triumphs of your house! Away, I beg, with your Hannibal and Syphax conquered in his camp, and tramp with all your Carthage!
"Spare, I pray thee, Pæan! and thou, O goddess, lay down thine arrows! The children are innocent. Transfix the mother herself!" So prays Amphion. Yet Pæan bends his bow. Therefore she had to bury her herds of children, together with their sire, while Niobe seems to herself to be more noble than Latona's race, and moreover more fruitful even than the white sow. What dignity of deportment, what beauty, can compensate for your wife's always throwing her own worth in your teeth? For all the satisfaction of this rare and chief good is destroyed, if, entirely spoilt by haughtiness of soul, it entails more bitter than sweet. But who is so devotedly uxorious, as not to feel a dread of her whom he praises to the skies, and hate her seven hours out of every twelve? There are some things, trifling indeed, and yet such as no husband can tolerate. For what can be more sickening than the fact that no one woman considers herself beautiful, unless instead of Tuscan she has become a little Greek—metamorphosed from a maid of Sulmo to a "maid of Athens." Every thing is in Greek. (While surely it is more disgraceful for our countrywomen not to know their mother tongue.) In this language they give vent to their fears, their anger, their joys and cares, and all the inmost workings of their soul. Nay more, they kiss à la Grecque! This in young girls you may excuse. But must thou, forsooth, speak Greek, that hast had the wear and tear of six and eighty years? In an old woman this language becomes immodest, when interspersed with the wanton Ζωὴ καὶ ψυχή. You are employing in public, expressions one might think you had just used under the counterpane. For whose passion would not be excited by these enticing and wanton words? It has all the force of actual touching. Yet though you pronounce them all in more insinuating tones than even Hæmus or Carpophorus, your face, the tell-tale of your years, makes all the feathers droop.
If you are not likely to love her that is contracted and united to you in lawful wedlock, there seems no single reason why you should marry, nor why you should waste the wedding dinner and bride cakes[247] which you must dispense, when their complimentary attendance is over, to your bridal guests already well crammed; nor the present given for the first nuptial night, when, in the well-stored dish, Dacicus[248] and Germanicus glitters with its golden legend. If you are possessed of such simplicity of character as to be enamored of your wife, and your whole soul is devoted to her alone, then bow your head with neck prepared to bear the yoke. You will find none that will spare a man that loves her. Though she be enamored herself, she delights in tormenting and fleecing her lover. Consequently a wife is far more disastrous to him that is likely to prove a kind and eligible husband. You will never be allowed to make a present without your wife's consent. If she opposes it, you must not sell a single thing, or buy one, against her will. She will give away your affections. That good old friend of many long years will be shut out from that gate that saw his first sprouting beard.[249] While pimps and trainers have free liberty to make their own wills, and even gladiators enjoy the same amount of privilege, you will have your will dictated to you, and find more than one rival named as your heirs.
"Crucify that slave." "What is the charge, to call for such a punishment? What witness can you produce? Who gave the information? Listen! Where man's life is at stake no deliberation can be too long." "Idiot! so a slave is a man then! Granted he has done nothing. I will it, I insist on it! Let my will stand instead of reason!"
Therefore she lords it over her husband:—but soon she quits these realms, and seeks new empires and wears out her bridal veil. Then she flies back, and seeks again the traces of the bed she scorned.[250] She leaves the doors so recently adorned, the tapestry still hanging on the house, and the branches still green upon the threshold. Thus the number grows: thus she has her eight[251] husbands in five years. A notable fact to record upon her tomb!
All chance of domestic happiness is hopeless while your wife's mother is alive. She bids her exult in despoiling her husband to the utmost. She teaches her how to write back nothing savoring of discourtesy or inexperience to the missives of the seducer. She either balks or bribes your spies; then, though your daughter is in rude health, calls in Archigenes, and tosses off the bedclothes as too oppressive. Meanwhile the adulterer, concealed apart, stands trembling with impatient expectation. Do you expect, forsooth, that the mother will inculcate virtuous principles, or other than she cherishes herself? It is right profitable too for a depraved old hag to train her daughter to the same depravity.
There is scarcely a single cause in which a woman is not engaged in some way in fomenting the suit. If Manilia is not defendant, she will be plaintiff. They draw up and frame bills of indictment unassisted,[252] quite prepared to dictate even to Celsus[253] the exordium and topics he should use.
The Tyrian Endromides[254] and the Ceroma for women who is ignorant of? Or who has not seen the wounds of the Plastron,[255] which she dints with unwearied foil, and attacks with her shield, and goes with precision through her exercise? A matron most pre-eminently worthy of the trumpet of the Floralia. Unless indeed in that breast of hers she is plotting something deeper, and training in real earnest for the amphitheatre.[256] What modesty can a woman show that wears a helmet, and eschews her sex, and delights in feats of strength? And yet, in spite of all, this virago would not wish to become a man. For how small is our pleasure compared to theirs! Yet what a goodly array would there be, if there were an auction of your wife's goods: belt and gauntlets[257] and crest, and the half-armor for the left leg! Or if she shall engage in a different way of fighting,[258] you will be lucky indeed when your young wife sells her greaves. Yet these very same women perspire even in their muslin; whose delicate frames even a slip of sarcenet oppresses. See! with what a noise she makes the home-thrusts taught her by the trainer, and what a weight of helmet bows her down, how firmly she plants herself on her haunches, in what a thick mass is the roll of clothes. Then smile when, laying aside her arms, she takes her oblong vessel. Tell me, ye granddaughters of Lepidus or blind Metellus, or Fabius Gurges, what actress ever wore a dress like this? When would Asylus' wife cry Hah! at the Plastron?
The bed in which a wife lies is the constant scene of quarrels and mutual recriminations. There is little chance of sleep there. Then is she indeed bitter toward her husband, fiercer than tigress robbed of her whelps; when, conscious of her secret guilt, she counterfeits groans, or hates the servants, or upbraids you with some rival of her own creation, with tears ever fruitful, ever ready at their post, and only waiting her command in what way to flow. You believe it genuine love. You, poor hedge-sparrow, plume yourself, and kiss off the tears! Ah! what amorous lays, what letters would you read, if you were but to examine the writing-case of that adulteress that counterfeits jealousy so well!
But suppose her actually caught in the arms of a slave or knight. "Pray suggest in this case some colorable excuse, Quintilian!" "We are at fault! Let the lady herself speak!" "It was formerly agreed," she says, "that you should do what you pleased, and that I also might have full power to gratify myself. In spite of your outcry and confounding heaven and sea, I am mortal." Nothing is more audacious than these women when detected. They affect resentment, and borrow courage from their very guilt itself.
Yet should you ask whence are these unnatural prodigies, or from what source they spring; it was their humble fortune that made the Latin women chaste in days of yore, nor did hard toil and short nights' rest, and hands galled and hardened[259] with the Tuscan fleece, and Hannibal close to the city, and their husbands mounting guard at the Colline tower, suffer their lowly roofs to be contaminated by vice. Now we are suffering all the evils of long-continued peace. Luxury, more ruthless than war, broods over Rome, and exacts vengeance for a conquered world. No guilt or deed of lust is wanting, since Roman poverty has disappeared. This was the source whence Sybaris flowed to these seven hills, and Rhodes too, and Miletus, and Tarentum crowned with garlands, insolent and flushed with wine!
Money, the nurse of debauchery, was the first that introduced foreign manners, and enervating riches sapped the sinews of the age with foul luxury. For what cares Venus in her cups? All difference of head or tail is alike to her who at very midnight devours huge oysters, when unguents mixed with neat Falernian foam, when she drains the conch,[260] when from her dizziness the roof seems to reel, and the table to rise up with the lights doubled in number.[261] Go then, and knowing all this, doubt, if you can, with what a snort of scorn Tullia snuffs up the air when she passes the ancient altar of Chastity; or what Collatia says to her accomplice Maura. Here they set down their litters at night, and bedew the very image of the goddess with copious irrigations, while the chaste moon witnesses their abominations,[262] over which, when morn returns, you pass on your way to visit your great friends.
The secrets of Bona Dea are well known. When the pipe excites them, and inflamed alike with the horn and wine, these Mænads of Priapus rush wildly round, and whirl their locks and howl! Then, as their passions rise, how burning is their lust, how frantic their words, when all power of restraining their desires is lost! A prize is proposed, and Saufeia[263] challenges the vilest of her sex, and bears off the prize. In these games nothing is counterfeit, all is acted to the life; so that even the aged Priam, effete from years, or Nestor himself, might be inflamed at the sight. Then their lust admits of no delay. Then the woman appears in all her native depravity; and by all alike is the shout re-echoed from the whole den—"Now is the proper time. Let in the men!" But the adulterer still sleeps; so she bids the youth put on a female hood, and speed to the spot. If none can be found, they have recourse to slaves. If there is no hope of slaves, they will hire some water-carrier to come. If this fails too, and no men can be found, she would not hesitate to descend still lower in the scale of creation. Oh, would that our ancient rites and public worship could at least be celebrated, uncontaminated by such pollutions as these! But even the Moors and Indians know what singing wench produced his wares equal in bulk to Cæsar's two Anticatos, in a place whence even a mouse, conscious of his sex, would flee, and every picture is veiled over that represents the other sex. Yet, even in those days, what man despised the deity? or who had dared to ridicule Numa's earthen bowl and black dish, and the brittle vessels from Mount Vatican. But now what altars are there that a Clodius does not assail?
I hear the advice that my good friends of ancient days would give—"Put on a lock! keep her in confinement!" But who is to guard the guards themselves? Your wife is as cunning as you, and begins with them. And, in our days, the highest and the lowest are fired with the same lust. Nor is she that wears out the black pavement with her feet, better than she who is borne on the shoulders of her tall Syrian slaves.
Ogulnia, in order that she may go in due state to the games, hires a dress, and attendants, and a sedan, and pillow, and female friends; and a nurse, and yellow-haired girl[264] to whom she may issue her commands. Yet all that remains of her family plate, and even the very last remnants of it,[265] she gives to well-oiled Athletes. Many women are in straitened circumstances at home; yet none of them has the modest selfrestraint that should accompany poverty, or limits herself within that measure which her poverty has allotted and assigned to her. Yet men do sometimes look forward to what may be to their interest hereafter, and, with the ant for their instructress, some have at last felt a dread of cold and hunger. Yet woman, in her prodigality, perceives not that her fortune is fast coming to naught; and as though money, with vegetative power, would bloom afresh[266] from the drained chest, and the heap from which she takes would be ever full, she never reflects how great a sum her pleasures cost her. Some women ever take delight in unwarlike eunuchs, and soft kisses, and the loss of all hope of beard, that precludes the necessity of abortives. Yet the summit of their pleasure is when this operation has been performed in the heat and prime of manhood, and the only loss sustained is that the surgeon Heliodorus cheats the barber of his fees. Such is his mistress' will: and, conspicuous from afar, and attracting the eyes of all, he enters the baths, and vies even with the god that guards our vines and gardens. Let him sleep with his mistress! But, Postumus, suffer not the youthful Bromius to enter the lists with him.
If she takes delight in singing, the fibula of none of these fellows that sells his voice to the prætor holds out: the instruments are forever in her hands; the whole lyre sparkles with the jewels thickly set. She runs over the strings with the vibrating quill,[267] with which the soft Hedymeles performed: this she holds in her hands; with this she consoles herself, and lavishes kisses on the plectrum, dear for its owner's sake. One of the clan of the Lamiæ,[268] a lady of lofty rank, inquired with meal-cake and wine of Janus and Vesta, whether Pollio might venture to hope for the oaken crown at the Capitoline games,[269] and promise it to his lyre. What more could she do were her husband sick? What, if the physicians had despaired of her infant son? She stood before the altar, and thought no shame to veil her head for a harper: and went through in due form the words prescribed,[270] and grew pale as the lamb was opened. Tell me now, I pray, tell me, thou ancientest of gods, father Janus! dost thou return answer to these? Great must be indeed the leisure[271] of heaven! There can be no business there, as far as I see, stirring among you. One woman consults you about comic actors; another would fain commend a tragedian to your notice: the soothsayer will become varicose.[272]
But let her rather be musical than fly through the whole city, with bold bearing; and encounter the assemblies of men, and in her husband's presence herself converse with generals in their scarlet cloaks,[273] with unabashed face and breasts exposed. She too knows all that is going on in the whole world—what the Seres[274] or Thracians are engaged in—the secrets of the step-mother and her son—what adulterer is in love, or is in great request. She will tell you who made the widow pregnant—in what month it was—in what language and manner each act of love takes place. She is the first[275] to see the comet that menaces the Armenian and Parthian king; and she intercepts[276] at the gates the reports and freshest news. Some she invents as well. That Niphates[277] has overwhelmed whole nations, and that the whole country is there laid under water by a great deluge; that cities are tottering, the earth sinking down—this she tells in every place of resort to every one she meets.
And yet that vice is not more intolerable, than that, though earnestly entreated,[278] she will seize upon her poor neighbors, and have them cut in two with lashes. For if her sound slumbers are disturbed by the barking of a dog, "Bring the clubs[279] here at once!" she cries: and orders the owner first to be beaten with them, and then the dog. Terrible to encounter, most awful in visage, she enters the baths by night—by night she orders her bathing vessels and camp to be set in motion. She delights in perspiring with great tumult; when her arms have sunk down wearied with the heavy dumb-bells; and the sly anointer has omitted to rub down no part of her body. Her poor wretches of guests meanwhile are overcome with drowsiness and hunger. At last the lady comes; flushed, and thirsty enough for a whole flagon,[280] which is placed at her feet and filled from a huge pitcher: of which a second pint is drained before she tastes food, to make her appetite[281] quite ravenous. Then having rinsed out her stomach, the wine returns in a cascade on the floor—rivers gush over the marble pavement,[282] or the broad vessel reeks of Falernian—for thus, just as when a long snake has glided into a deep cask, she drinks and vomits. Therefore her husband turns sick; and with eyes closed smothers his rising bile.
And yet that woman is more offensive still, who, as soon as she has taken her place at table, praises Virgil, and excuses the suicide of Dido: matches and compares poets together: in one scale weighs Maro in the balance, and Homer in the other. The grammarians yield; rhetoricians are confuted; the whole company is silenced; neither lawyer nor crier[283] can put in a word, nor even another woman. Such a torrent of words pours forth, you would say so many basins or bells were all being struck at once. Henceforth let no one trouble trumpets or brazen vessels; she will be able singly to relieve the moon when suffering[284] an eclipse. The philosopher sets a limit even to those things which are good in themselves. For she that desires to appear too learned and eloquent, ought to wear a tunic reaching only to the middle of the leg, to sacrifice a pig to Sylvanus,[285] and bathe for a quadrans. Let not the matron that shares your marriage-bed possess a set style of eloquence, or hurl in well-rounded sentence the enthymeme curtailed[286] of its premiss; nor be acquainted with all histories. But let there be some things in books which she does not understand. I hate her who is forever poring over and studying Palæmon's[287] treatise; who never violates the rules and principles of grammar; and skilled in antiquarian lore, quotes verses I never knew; and corrects the phrases of her friend as old-fashioned,[288] which men would never heed. A husband should have the privilege of committing a solecism.
There is nothing a woman will not allow herself, nothing she holds disgraceful, when she has encircled her neck with emeralds, and inserted earrings of great size in her ears, stretched with their weight. Nothing is more unbearable than a rich woman!
Meanwhile her face, shocking to look at, or ridiculous from the large poultice, is all swollen; or is redolent of rich Poppæan unguents,[289] with which the lips of her wretched husband are glued up. She will present herself to her adulterer with skin washed clean. When does she choose to appear beautiful at home? It is for the adulterers her perfumes are prepared. It is for these she purchases all that the slender Indians send us. At length she uncases her face and removes the first layer. She begins to be herself again; and bathes in that milk,[290] for which she carries in her train she-asses, even if sent an exile to Hyperborean climes. But that which is overlaid and fomented with so many and oft-changed cosmetics, and receives poultices of boiled and damp flour, shall we call it a face,[291] or a sore?
It is worth while to find out exactly what their occupations and pursuits are through the livelong day. If her husband has gone to sleep with his back toward her, the housekeeper is half killed—the tire-women are stripped to be whipped—the Liburnian slave is accused of having come behind his time, and is forced to pay the penalty of another's sleep; one has rods broken[292] about him, another bleeds from the whips, a third from the cowhide. Some women pay a regular salary to their torturers. While he lashes she is employed in enameling her face. She listens to her friend's chat, or examines the broad gold of an embroidered robe. Still he lashes. She pores over the items in her long diary.[293] Still he lashes. Until at length, when the torturers are exhausted, "Begone!" she thunders out in awful voice, the inquisition being now complete.
The government of her house is no more merciful than the court of a Sicilian tyrant. For if she has made an assignation, and is anxious to be dressed out more becomingly than usual, and is in a hurry, and has been some time already waited for in the gardens, or rather near the chapels of the Isiac[294] procuress; poor Psecas arranges her hair, herself with disheveled locks and naked shoulders and naked breasts. "Why is this curl too high?" Instantly the cowhide avenges the heinous crime of the misplacing of a hair. What has poor Psecas done? What crime is it of the poor girl's if your own nose has displeased you?
Another, on the left hand, draws out and combs her curls and rolls them into a band. The aged matron assists at the council, who, having served her due period[295] at the needle, now presides over weighing out the tasks of wool. Her opinion will be first taken. Then those who are her inferiors in years and skill will vote in order, as though their mistress's good name or life were at stake. So great is the anxiety of getting beauty! Into so many tiers she forms her curls, so many stages high she builds[296] her head; in front you will look upon an Andromache, behind she is a dwarf—you would imagine her another person. Excuse her, pray, if nature has assigned her but a short back, and if, without the aid of high-heeled buskins, she looks shorter than a Pigmy[297] maiden; and must spring lightly up on tip-toe for a kiss. No thought meanwhile about her husband! not a word of her ruinous expenditure! She lives as though she were merely a neighbor[298] of her husband's, and in this respect alone is nearer to him—that she hates her husband's friends and slaves, and makes grievous inroads on his purse.
But see! the chorus of the maddened Bellona and the mother of the gods enters the house! and the huge eunuch (a face to be revered by his obscene inferior) who long ago emasculated himself with a broken shell; to whom his hoarse troop and the plebeian drummers give place, and whose cheek is covered with his Phrygian tiara. With voice grandiloquent he bids her dread the approach of September and the autumn blasts, unless she purifies herself with a hecatomb of eggs, and makes a present to him of her cast-off murrey-colored[299] robes: that whatever unforeseen or mighty peril may be impending over her may pass into the tunics, and at once expiate the whole year. She will break the ice and plunge into the river in the depth of winter, or dip three times in Tiber at early dawn, and bathe her timid head in its very eddies, and thence emerging will crawl on bleeding knees, naked and shivering, over the whole field of the haughty king.[300] If white Io command, she will go to the extremity of Egypt, and bring back water fetched from scorching Meroë, to sprinkle on the temple of Isis, that rears itself hard by the ancient sheepfold.[301] For she believes that the warning is given her by the voice of the goddess herself. And this, forsooth, is a fit soul and mind[302] for the gods to hold converse with by night! He therefore gains the chief and highest honor, who, surrounded by his linen-robed flock,[303] and a bald-headed throng of people uttering lamentations, runs to and fro personating the grinning Anubis. He it is that supplicates for pardon whenever the wife does not refrain from nuptial joys on days to be observed as sacred, and a heavy penalty is incurred from the violation of the snowy sheeting. And the silver serpent was seen to nod his head! His are the tears, and his the studied mumblings, that prevail on Osiris not to withhold pardon for her fault, when bribed by a fat goose and a thin cake. When he has withdrawn, some trembling Jewess, having quitted her basket and hay, begs in her secret ear, the interpretess of the laws of Solyma, the potent priestess of the tree—the trusty go-between from highest heaven![304] And she crosses her hand with money, but sparingly enough: for Jews will sell you any dreams you please for the minutest coin. The soothsayer of Armenia or Commagene,[305] handling the liver of the dove still reeking, engages that her lover shall be devoted, or promises the rich inheritance of some childless rich man; he pries into the breasts of chickens and the entrails of a puppy; sometimes too even of a child—he does acts of which he will himself turn informer![306]
But their confidence in Chaldæans will be greater still: whatever the astrologer tells them, they will believe reported straight from the fountain of Ammon; since at Delphi the oracles are dumb, and darkness as to the future is the punishment of the human race. However, of these he is in the highest repute who has been often banished; by whose friendship and venal[307] tablets it came to pass that a citizen of high rank[308] died, and one dreaded by Otho. Hence arises confidence in his art, if both his hands have clanked with chains, and he has been long an inmate of the camp-prison. No astrologer that has never been condemned will have any reputation for genius; but he that has hardly escaped with his life, and scarcely had good fortune enough to be sent to one of the Cyclades,[309] and at length to be set free from the confined Seriphos, he it is whom your Tanaquil[310] consults about the death of her jaundiced mother, for which she has been long impatient; but first, about yourself! when she may hope to follow to the grave her sister and her uncles; whether her adulterer will survive her, for what greater boon than this have the gods in their power to bestow?
And yet she is ignorant what the ill-omened planet of Saturn forebodes; with what star Venus presents herself in fortunate conjunction; what is the month for ill-luck; what seasons are assigned to profit.
Remember to shun even a casual meeting with her in whose hands you see, like the unctuous amber,[311] their calendars well thumbed; who instead of consulting others is now herself consulted; who when her husband is going to join his camp or revisit his home, will refuse to accompany him if restrained by the calculations of Thrasyllus.[312] When it is her fancy to ride as far as the first mile-stone, the lucky hour is taken from her book; if the corner of her eye itches when she rubs it, she calls for ointment after a due inspection of her horoscope: though she lies sick in bed no hour appears suited to taking food, save that which Petosiris[313] has directed. If she be of moderate means, she will traverse the space on both sides of the pillars of the circus, and draw lots, and present her forehead and her hand to the fortune-teller that asks for the frequent palming. The rich will obtain answers from some soothsayer of Phrygia or India hired for the purpose, from some one skilled in the stars and heavens, or one advanced in years who expiates the public places which the lightning[314] has struck. The destiny of the plebeians is learnt in the circus, and at Tarquin's rampart.[315] She that has no long necklace of gold to display, inquires in front of the obelisks and the dolphin-columns,[316] whether she shall jilt the tapster and marry the old-clothes man.
Yet these, when circumstances so require, are ready to encounter the perils of childbirth, and endure all the irksome toils of nursing. But rarely does a gilded bed contain a woman lying-in: so potent are the arts and drugs of her that can insure barrenness, and for bribes kill men while yet unborn. Yet grieve not at this, poor wretch! and with thine own hand give thy wife the potion, whatever it be: for did she choose to bear her leaping children in her womb, thou wouldst perchance become the sire of an Æthiop; a blackamoor would soon be your sole heir, one whom you would not see of a morning.[317]
I say nothing of supposititious children, and all a husband's joys and fond hopes baffled at the dirty pools;[318] and the Pontifices and Salii selected thence, who are to bear in their counterfeit persons the noble name of Scauri. Fortune, that delights in mischief, takes her stand by night and smiles upon the naked babes. All these she cherishes and fosters in her bosom: then proffers them to the houses of the great, and prepares in secret a rich sport for herself. These she dotes on:[319] on these she forces her favors; and smiling, leads them on to advancement as her own foster-children.
One fellow offers a wife magical incantations. Another sells her love potions from Thessaly, to give her power to disturb her husband's intellects, and punish him with the indignity of the slipper. To these it is owing that you are reduced to dotage: hence comes that dizziness of brain, that strange forgetfulness of things that you have but just now done. Yet even this is endurable, if you do not go raving mad as well, like that uncle of Nero for whom his Cæsonia infused the whole forehead of a foal new dropped. Who will not follow where the empress leads? All things were wrapped in flames and with joints disruptured were tottering to their fall, exactly as if Juno had driven her spouse to madness. Therefore the mushroom[320] of Agrippina had far less of guilt: since that stopped the breath but of a single old man, and bade his trembling head descend to heaven,[321] and his lips that slavered with dribbling saliva. Whereas this potion of Cæsonia[322] calls aloud for fire and 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.