"O fortunate Rome, whose natal day may date from me as consul!" He might have scorned the swords of Antony,[603] had all he uttered been such trash as this. I had rather write poems that excite only ridicule, than thee, divine Philippic of distinguished fame! that art unrolled next to the first! Cruel was the end that carried him off also whom Athens used to admire as his words flowed from his lips in a torrent[604] of eloquence, and he swayed at will the passions of the crowded theatre. With adverse gods and inauspicious fate was he born, whom his father, blear-eyed with the grime of the glowing mass, sent from the coal, and pincers,[605] and the sword-forging anvil, and sooty Vulcan,[606] to the rhetorician's school!
The spoils of war, the cuirass fastened to the truncated[607] trophy, the cheek-piece hanging from the battered helm, the car shorn of its pole, the streamer of the captured galley,[608] and the sad captive on the triumphal arch-top,[609] are held to be goods exceeding all human blessings. For these each general, Roman, or Greek, or Barbarian, strains as his prize! Full compensation for his dangers and his toils he sees in these! So much greater is the thirst after fame than virtue. For who would embrace[610] virtue herself, if you took away the rewards of virtue? And yet, ere now, the glory of a few has been the ruin of their native land; that longing for renown, and those inscriptions that are to live on the marble that guards their ashes; and yet to burst asunder this, the mischievous strength of the barren fig-tree has power enough. Since even to sepulchres[611] themselves are fates assigned. Weigh[612] the remains of Hannibal! How many pounds will you find in that most consummate general! This is the man whom not even Africa, lashed by the Mauritanian ocean, and stretching even to the steaming Nile, and then again to the races of the Æthiopes and their tall[613] elephants, can contain! Spain is annexed to Carthage's domain. He bounds across the Pyrenees. Nature opposed in vain the Alps with all their snows; he cleaves the rocks and rives the mountains with vinegar.[614] Now he is lord of Italy! Yet still he presses on. "Naught is achieved,"[615] he says, "unless we burst through the gates of Rome with the soldiery of Carthage, and I plant my standard in the heart of the Suburra!" Oh what a face![616] and worthy what a picture! when the huge Gætulian beast bore on his back the one-eyed[617] general! What then was the issue? Oh glory! This self-made man is conquered, and flees with headlong haste to exile, and there, a great and much-to-be-admired client, sits at the palace of the king, until his Bithynian majesty[618] be pleased to wake! To that soul, that once shook the very world's base, it is not sword, nor stone, nor javelin, that shall give the final stroke; but, that which atoned for Cannæ, and avenged such mighty carnage,[619] a ring! Go then, madman, and hurry over the rugged Alps, that you may be the delight of boys, and furnish subjects for declamations![620]
One[621] world is not enough for the youth of Pella! He chafes within the narrow limits of the universe, poor soul, as though confined in Gyarus'[622] small rock, or scanty Seriphös. Yet when he shall have entered the city that the brickmakers[623] fortified, he will be content with a sarcophagus![624] Death alone discloses how very small are the puny bodies of men! Men do believe that Athos was sailed through of yore; and all the bold assertions that lying Greeks hazard in history—that the sea was bridged over by the same fleets, and formed into a solid pavement for the transit of wheels. We believe that deep rivers failed, and streams were drunk dry[625] when the Persian dined; and all the flights of Sostratus'[626] song, when his wings are moistened by the god of wine. And yet, in what guise did he return after quitting Salamis, who, like a true barbarian as he was, used to vent his rage in scourges on Corus and Eurus, that had never suffered in this sort in Æolus' prison; and bound in gyves Ennosigæus[627] himself. It was, in fact, an act of clemency that he did not think he deserved branding[628] also. Would any of the gods choose to serve[629] such a man as this? But how did he return? Why, in a single ship; through waves dyed with blood, and with his galley retarded[630] by the shoals of corpses. Such was the penalty that glory, for which he had so often prayed, exacted.
"Grant length of life, great Jove, and many years!" This is your only prayer in health and sickness. But with what unremitting and grievous ills is old age crowded! First of all, its face is hideous, loathsome, and altered from its former self; instead of skin a hideous hide and flaccid cheeks; and see! such wrinkles, as, where Tabraca[631] extends her shady dells, the antiquated ape[632] scratches on her wizened jowl! There are many points of difference in the young: this youth is handsomer than that; and he again than a third: one is far sturdier than another. Old mens faces are all alike—limbs tottering and voice feeble,[633] a smooth bald pate, and the second childhood of a driveling nose; the poor wretch must mumble his bread with toothless gums; so loathsome to his wife, his children, and even to himself, that he would excite the disgust even of the legacy-hunter Cossus! His palate[634] is grown dull; his relish for his food and wine[635] no more the same; the joys of love are long ago forgotten; and in spite of all efforts to reinvigorate them, all manly energies are hopelessly extinct. Has this depraved and hoary lechery aught else to hope? Do we not look with just suspicion on the lust that covets the sin but lacks the power?[636]
Now turn your eyes to the loss of another sense. For what pleasure has he in a singer, however eminent a harper it may be; nay, even Seleucus himself; or those whose habit it is to glitter in a cloak of gold?[637] What matters it in what part of the wide theatre he sits, who can scarcely hear the horn-blowers, and the general clang of trumpets? You must bawl out loud before his ear can distinguish who it is his slave says has called, or tells him what o'clock it is.[638] Besides, the scanty blood that flows in his chill[639] body is warmed by fever only. Diseases of every kind dance round him in full choir. If you were to ask their names, I could sooner tell you how many lovers Hippia had; how many patients Themison[640] killed in one autumn; how many allies Basilus plundered; how many wards Hirrus defrauded; how many lovers long Maura received in the day; how many pupils Hamillus corrupts. I could sooner run through the list of villas owned by him now, beneath whose razor[641] my stiff beard resounded when I was in my prime. One is weak in the shoulder; another in the loins; another in the hip. Another has lost both eyes, and envies the one-eyed. Another's bloodless lips receive their food from others' fingers. He that was wont to relax his features to a smile at the sight of his dinner, now only gapes[642] like the young swallow to whom the parent bird, herself fasting,[643] flies with full beak. But worse than all debility of limb is that idiocy which recollects neither the names of his slaves nor the face of the friend with whom he supped the evening before; not even those whom he begot and brought up! For by a heartless will he disinherits them; and all his property is made over to Phiale:[644]—such power has the breath of her artificial mouth, that stood for hire so many years in the brothel's dungeon.
Even though the powers of intellect retain their vigor, yet he must lead forth the funerals of his children; must gaze upon the pyre of a beloved wife, and the urns filled with all that remains of his brother and sisters. This is the penalty imposed on the long-lived, that they must grow old with the death-blow in their house forever falling fresh—in oft-recurring sorrow—in unremitting mourning, and a suit of black.[645] The king of Pylos,[646] if you put any faith in great Homer, was an instance of life inferior in duration only to the crow's.[647] Happy, no doubt! was he who for so many years put off his hour of death; and now begins to count his years on his right hand,[648] and has drunk so often of the new-made wine. I pray you, lend me your ear a little space; and hear how sadly he himself complains of the decrees of fate, and too great powers of life, when he watches the blazing beard of Antilochus[649] in his bloom, and asks of every friend that stands near, why it is he lingers on to this day; what crime he has committed to deserve so long a life! Such, too, is Peleus' strain, when he mourns for Achilles prematurely snatched from him: and that other, whose lot it was to grieve for the shipwrecked[650] Ithacensian.
Priam would have joined the shade of Assaracus with Troy still standing, with high solemnities, with Hector and his brothers supporting his bier on their shoulders, amid the weeping Troades, so that Cassandra would lead off the wail, and Polyxena[651] with mantle rent, had he but died at any time but that, after that Paris had begun to build his audacious ships. What then did length of days confer on him? He saw his all o'erthrown: Asia laid low by flame and sword. Then the poor tottering warrior[652] laid down his diadem and donned his arms, and fell before the altar of supreme Jove; like some old ox[653] that yields his attenuated and miserable neck to his owner's knife, long ago scorned[654] by the ungrateful plow.
That was at all events the death of a human being: but his wife who survived him barked fiercely from the jaws of a bitch.[655]