Some are brought to ruin through their great power, subject itself to envy just as great; they are wrecked by their long and brilliant roll of honors; down from the pedestals come their statues, and now the stroke of the axe shatters the very wheels of the triumphal cars. Hark! now the fires are hissing, now, by dint of bellows and forge, that head, the people's idol, is aglow; and the great Sejanus is a crackling! And soon from the face, second to one only in the whole world, they are making pipkins, and basins, and a pan—ay, and even meaner vessels!... What laid low a Crassus, and a Pompey, and that leader who broke the proud Romans' spirit and brought them under his lash? Why, it was just the unscrupulous struggling for the highest place, and the prayer of ambition, heard but too well by the malicious gods. It is but seldom that a king does not take a murderous crowd with him down to Ceres' son-in-law; seldom that a despot dies without blood-letting.... Just weigh Hannibal. How many pounds' weight will you find in that greatest of leaders? This is the man for whom Africa is too small—Africa, lashed by the Moorish main, and stretching thence to the tepid Nile; and, on another side again, to the Ethiopian tribes with their towering elephants! He adds Spain to his empire; he bounds over the Pyrenees; Nature barred his path with her Alp and her snow; he rives the rocks and bursts the mountain with vinegar. Now he holds Italy, yet he still strains forward. "Nothing," cries he, "is gained unless we storm the city gates with our Punic soldiery, and this hand plants my standard in the very heart of Rome!" Oh, what a sight! oh, what a subject for a caricature—the one-eyed general bestriding the Gætulian monster! What, then, is his end? Fie, glory! Why, he in his turn is conquered, and flies headlong into exile; and there he sits, that august dependent—a gazing stock at a king's gates—until it may please His Majesty of Bithynia to awake. The soul which once turned the world upside down shall be quelled, not by a sword, not by a stone, no, nor by a javelin; but by that Nemesis of Cannæ, the avenger of all that blood—just a ring.[E] Off with you, madman! Scour the bleak Alps, that so you may—catch the fancy of schoolboys, and become a theme for declamation!
[E] Hannibal always carried with him, concealed in a ring, a dose of poison, with which, at last, he took his own life, to escape capture by the Romans.
If any are disposed to pray for long life and length of days, Juvenal's dark and repulsive picture of old age would effectually banish that desire. One by one the physical and mental powers fail and the man is left but a pitiful wreck of his former self.
But suppose his faculties be sound, yet still he must conduct his sons to their burial; must gaze at the pyre of his beloved wife, and of his brother, and on urns filled with what was once his sisters. This is the forfeit laid upon longevity, to pass to old age amid bereavement after bereavement, thick-coming griefs, and one weary round of lamentations, with the garb of the mourner never laid aside.
But age brings not alone loss of friends, but in many instances personal suffering and disaster from which one would be mercifully delivered by a more timely death. This, Caius Marius, the great Roman general, found to his cost:
That banishment, that jail, Minturnæ's swamps, and the bread of beggary in conquered Carthage, all had their origin in a long life. What happier being in the world than that Roman could nature, could Rome ever have produced, if, after leading round the train of captives amid all the circumstance of war, he had breathed out his soul in glory, when just stepping down from his Teutonic car?
As for beauty, foolish indeed is that mother who prays for her son or her daughter that he or she may possess this; for it is the most fatal possession of all. Not even the most rugged training of the old Sabine school of morality can shield the possessor of great beauty from the poisonous, insidious temptations, if not actual violence, of the wicked world. What then?
Shall men then pray for nothing? If you will take my advice, you will allow the gods themselves to determine what is meet for us, and suited to our lot; for the gods will give us—not what is pleasant, but what is most befitting in each case. Man is dearer to them than to himself. Urged on by impulse, by blind and violent desires, we pray for a wife, and for offspring; but only they (the gods) know what the children will be, and of what character the wife. Still, if you must make your petition, and must vow a meat offering at the shrine, then pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body; pray for a brave spirit free from the fear of death—a spirit that regards life's close as one of nature's boons, that can endure any toil, that is innocent of anger and free from desire, and that looks on the sufferings of Hercules and his cruel labors as more blessed than all the wantoning, and reveling, and down-couches of a Sardanapalus.
Perhaps the appeal of Juvenal that comes most powerfully to the present generation, and contains the most solemn lesson for us, is his warning to fathers and mothers that all unconsciously to them their sons and daughters are following in their footsteps, bound to copy them, and reproduce their faults in later life. The presence of a child is as sacred as a temple shrine, and should be as carefully guarded from every profaning influence. It is surely notable to find this wholesome teaching springing like a lily out of the mire of that degenerate age. It smacks neither of fervid rhetoric nor of cold and formal philosophy, but rings true and natural as childhood itself.
Let no foul word or sight come nigh the threshold where dwells the father of a family. You owe your boy the profoundest respect. If meditating aught that is base, despise not your boy's tender years; but let the image of your infant son arrest you on the verge of sin. For should he some day do a deed to earn the censor's wrath, and show himself not only your counterpart in face and figure, but heir of your character as well—one to follow in your steps, and sin every sin in worse degree—you will chide and scold him, no doubt, with loud reproaches, and then proceed to change your will. But whence that boldness, whence those parental rights, when you do worse, despite your age? If company is coming, none of your people will have any rest. Sweep the pavement! Let me see the pillars glistening! Down with the shriveled spider and all her web! Ho! you polish the plain silver, and you the figured cups! So the master storms at the top of his voice, urging them on, with rod in hand. Poor wretch! are you in such a fidget lest the hall may offend your friend's eye, when he comes, and lest the vestibule be splashed with mud—all of which one little page with one half-peck of sawdust puts to rights—but yet bestow no thought on this, that your son's eye shall rest upon a household unsullied, stainless, innocent of vice? We thank you that you gave a citizen to your country and your people, if you make him worthy of that country, helpful to its soil, helpful in public work, in peace and war; for it will matter much in what lessons and principles you train him.