Que de vouloir jurer qu’on ne le sera pas.”
Martial is in the right in answering the inquiry of Priscus, how would he live if he became rich and great all at once, with another query, Who can say beforehand what his future conduct will be? Quemquam posse putas mores narrare futuros? If Priscus were to become a lion, what sort of one would he turn out to be? Perhaps like Hazael, a dog.
In sight of a corpse suspended to a tree, the “miserable remnant of a wretch that was hanged there for murder,” Robert, in one of Tobin’s dramas, protests to his mother that, robber though he be, he is no murderer; she replies:—
“You are a robber;
And he who robs, by sharp resistance pressed,
Will end the deed in blood: ’twas so with him;
He once possessed a soul quick as your own
To mercy, and would quake, as you do now,
At the bare apprehension of the act
That has consigned him to yon blasted tree.”