They dare not vow the bleating sheep to the shrine, or promise even a cock's[914] comb to their Lares. For what hope is vouchsafed to the guilty sick?[915] or what victim is not more worthy of life? The character of bad men is for the most part fickle and variable.[916] While they are engaged in the guilty act they have resolution enough, and to spare. When their foul deeds are perpetrated, then at length they begin to feel what is right and wrong.
Yet Nature[917] ever reverts to her depraved courses, fixed and immutable. For who ever prescribed to himself a limit to his sins? or ever recovered the blush[918] of ingenuous shame once banished from his brow now hardened? What mortal man is there whom you ever saw contented with a single crime? This false friend of ours will get his foot entangled in the noose, and endure the hook of the gloomy dungeon; or some crag[919] in the Ægean Sea, or the rocks that swarm with exiles of rank. You will exult in the bitter punishment of the hated name; and at length with joy confess[920] that no one of the gods is either deaf or a Tiresias.[921]
FOOTNOTES:
[817] Displicet.
"To none their crime the wished-for pleasure yields:
'Tis the first scourge that angry justice wields." Badham.
[818] Ultio.
"Avenging conscience first the sword shall draw,
And self-conviction baffle quibbling law." Hodgson.
[819] Urna. From the "Judices Selecti" (a kind of jurymen chosen annually for the purpose), the Prætor Urbanus, who sat as chief judge, chose by lot about fifty to act as his assessors. To each of these were given three tablets: one inscribed with the letter A. for "absolvo," one with the letter C. for "condemno," and the third with the letters N. L. for "non liquet," i. e., "not proven." After the case had been heard and the judices had consulted together privately, they returned into court, and each judex dropped one of these tablets into an urn provided for the purpose, which was afterward brought to the prætor, who counted the number and gave sentence according to the majority of votes. In all these various steps, there was plenty of opportunity for the "gratia" of a corrupt prætor to influence the "fallax urna."
[820] Calvinus. Martial mentions an indifferent poet of the name of Calvinus Umber, vii., Ep. 90.
[821] Acervo.