Is that flatterer[1498] his own master, whom white-robed Ambition[1499] leads gaping with open mouth? "Be on the watch, and heap vetches[1500] bountifully upon the squabbling mob, that old men,[1501] as they sun themselves, may remember our Floralia.—What could be more splendid?"
But when Herod's[1502] day is come, and the lamps arranged on the greasy window-sill have disgorged their unctuous smoke, bearing violets, and the thunny's tail floats, hugging the red dish,[1503] and the white pitcher foams with wine: then in silent prayer you move your lips, and grow pale at the sabbaths of the circumcised. Then are the black goblins![1504] and the perils arising from breaking an egg.[1505] Then the huge Galli,[1506] and the one-eyed priestess with her sistrum,[1507] threaten you with the gods inflating your body, unless, you have eaten the prescribed head of garlic[1508] three times of a morning.
Were you to say all this among the brawny centurions, huge Pulfenius[1509] would immediately raise his coarse laugh, and hold a hundred Greek philosophers dear at a clipped centussis.[1510]
FOOTNOTES:
[1409] Centum voces. Homer is content with ten. Il., ii., 484, Οὐδ εἴ μοι δέκα μὲν γλῶσσαι δέκα δέ στόματ' εἶεν. Virgil squares the number. Georg., ii., 43, "Non mihi si linguæ centum sint, oraque centum, Ferrea vox." Æn., vi., 625. Sil., iv., 527, "Non mihi Mæoniæ redeat si gloria linguæ, Centenasque pater det Phœbus fundere voces, Tot cædes proferre queam." Ov., Met., viii., 532, "Non mihi si centum Deus ora sonantia linguis." Fast., ii., 119.
[1410] In carmina. "That their style and language may be amplified and extended adequately to the greatness and variety of their subjects."
[1411] Hianda. Juv., vi., 636, "Grande Sophocleo carmen bacchamur hiatu;" alluding to the wide mouths of the tragic masks (οἱ ὑποκριταὶ μέγα κεχηνότες, Luc., Nigrin., i., p. 28, Ben.), or to the "ampullæ et sesquipedalia verba" of the tragedy itself. Hor., A. P., 96.
[1412] Mæsto. Hor., A. P., 105, "Tristia mæstum vultum verba decent."
[1413] Vulnera, i. e., "Or whether it be an epic poem on the Parthian war," which was carried on under Nero. The genitive Parthi may be either subjective or objective, probably the former, in spite of Hor., ii., Sat. i., 15, "Aut labentis equo describat vulnera Parthi."
[1414] Ab inguine. This may either mean, "drawing out the weapon from the wound he has received from the Roman," or may describe the manner in which the Parthian ("versis animosus equis," Hor., i., Od. xix., 11) draws his bow in his retrograde course. ("Miles sagittas et celerem fugam Parthi timet," ii., Od. iii., 17.) Casaubon describes, from Eustathius, three other ways of drawing the bow, παρὰ μαζον, παρ' ὦμον, and παρὰ τὸ δεξιὸν ὠτίον, "from the ear," like our English archers. So Propertius, lib. iv., says of the Gauls, "Virgatis jaculantis ab inguine braccis." El., x., 43.