[A] Hail.
The fourth satire, says an ancient scholiast, was an attack upon luxury and the vices of the rich. The following passage might well have been the opening lines of this satire, representing Lælius as exclaiming in praise of a vegetable diet and against gluttony:
"O sorrel, how praiseworthy art thou,
And yet how little art thou really known!"
over his mess of sorrel Lælius the wise used to cry out, chiding one by one the gluttons of our day.
And that he did not hesitate to call the glutton and spendthrift by name is shown by this fragment, which is evidently a continuation of the same diatribe:
"O Publius Gallonius, thou spendthrift," said he, "thou art a wretched fellow. Never in all thy life hast thou dined well, though all thy wealth on that lobster and that sturgeon thou consumest."
The last selection which we shall present from Lucilius is the longest extant fragment. The passage is a somewhat elaborate definition of virtue as the old Roman understood it. We use the translation of Sellar.
Virtue, Albinus, consists in being able to give their true worth to the things on which we are engaged, among which we live. The virtue of a man is to understand the real meaning of each thing: to understand what is right, useful, honorable for him; what things are good, what bad, what is unprofitable, base, dishonorable; to know the due limit and measure in making money; to give its proper worth to wealth; to assign what is really due to office; to be a foe and enemy of bad men and bad principles; to extol the good, to wish them well, to be their friend through life. Lastly, it is true worth to look on our country's weal as the chief good; next to that the weal of our parents; third and last, our own weal.