When once the diseased skin begins to swell, you will see men asking in vain for hellebore. Meet the disease on its way to attack you. Of what avail is it to promise mountains of gold to Craterus?[1368] Learn, wretched men, and investigate the causes of things; what we are—what course of life we are born to run—what rank is assigned to us—how delicate the turning round[1369] the goal, and whence the starting-point—what limit must be set to money—what it is right to wish for—what uses the rough coin[1370] possesses—how much you ought to bestow on your country and dear relations—what man the Deity destined you to be, and in what portion of the human commonwealth your station is assigned.
Learn: and be not envious because full many a jar grows rancid in his well-stored larder, for defending the fat Umbrians,[1371] and pepper, and hams, the remembrances of his Marsian client; or because the pilchard has not yet failed from the first jar.[1372]
Here some one of the rank brood of centurions may say, "I have philosophy enough to satisfy me. I care not to be what Arcesilas[1373] was, and woe-begone Solons, with head awry[1374] and eyes fastened on the ground, while they mumble suppressed mutterings, or idiotic silence, or balance words on their lip pouting out, pondering over the dreams of some palsied dotard, 'that nothing can be generated from nothing; nothing can return to nothing.'—Is it this over which you grow pale? Is it this for which one should go without his dinner?" At this the people laugh, and with wrinkling nose the brawny[1375] youth loudly re-echo the hearty peals of laughter.
"Examine me! My breast palpitates unusually; and my breath heaves oppressedly from my fevered jaws: examine me, pray!" He that speaks thus to his physician, being ordered to keep quiet, when the third night has seen his veins flow with steady pulse, begs from some wealthier mansion some mellow Surrentine,[1376] in a flagon of moderate capacity, as he is about to bathe. "Ho! my good fellow, you look pale!" "It is nothing!" "But have an eye to it, whatever it is! Your sallow skin is insensibly rising." "Well, you look pale too! worse than I! Don't play the guardian to me! I buried him long ago—you remain." "Go on! I will hold my peace!" So, bloated with feasting and with livid stomach he takes his bath, while his throat slowly exhales sulphureous malaria. But shivering[1377] comes on over his cups, and shakes the steaming beaker[1378] from his hands; his teeth, grinning, rattle in his head; then the rich dainties dribble from his flaccid lips.
Next follow the trumpets and funeral-torches; and at last this votary of pleasure, laid out on a lofty bier, and plastered over with thick unguents,[1379] stretches out his rigid heels[1380] to the door. Then, with head covered, the Quirites of yesterday[1381] support his bier.
"Feel my pulse, you wretch! put your hand on my breast. There is no heat here! touch the extremities of my feet and hands. They are not cold!"
If money has haply met your eye,[1382] or the fair maiden of your neighbor has smiled sweetly on you, does your heart beat steadily? If hard cabbage has been served up to you in a cold dish, or flour shaken through the people's sieve,[1383] let me examine your jaws. A putrid ulcer lurks in your tender mouth, which it would not be right to grate against with vulgar beet.[1384] You grow cold, when pallid fear has roused the bristles on your limbs. Now, when a torch is placed beneath, your blood begins to boil, and your eyes sparkle with anger; and you say and do what even Orestes[1385] himself, in his hour of madness, would swear to be proofs of madness.
FOOTNOTES:
[1336] Nempe hæc. A passage in Gellius exactly describes the opening scene of this Satire. "Nunc videre est philosophos ultrò currere ut doceant, ad foras juvenum divitûm, eosque ibi sedere atque operiri prope ad meridiem, donec discipuli nocturnum omne vinum edormiant." x., 6.