[389] Palæmon. Vid. ad vi., 451.
[390] Cadurci. Cf. vi., 537.
[391] Non pereat.
"Yes, suffer this! while something's left to pay
Your rising, hours before the dawn of day;
When e'en the lab'ring poor their slumbers take,
And not a weaver, not a smith's awake." Gifford.
[392] Cognitione Tribuni. Not a tribune of the people, but one of the Tribuni Ærarii, to whom the cognizance of such complaints belonged.
[393] Historias. Tiberius was exceedingly fond of propounding to grammarians, a class of men whom he particularly affected (quod genus hominum præcipuè appetebat), questions of this nature, to sound their "notitia historiæ usque ad ineptias atque derisum." Cf. Suet., Tib., 70, 57.
[394] Nutricem. The names of these two persons are said to have been Casperia and Tisiphone.
[395] Aurum. i. e., 5 aurei, the highest reward allowed to be given. The aureus, which varied in value, was at this time worth 25 denarii; a little more than 16 shillings English. Cf. Mart., x., Ep. lxxiv., 5.
SATIRE VIII.
What is the use of pedigrees?[396] What boots it, Ponticus, to be accounted of an ancient line, and to display the painted faces[397] of your ancestors, and the Æmiliani standing in their cars, and the Curii diminished to one half their bulk, and Corvinus deficient of a shoulder, and Galba that has lost his ears and nose[4]—what profit is it to vaunt in your capacious genealogy of Corvinus, and in many a collateral line[398] to trace dictators and masters of the horse begrimed with smoke, if before the very faces of the Lepidi you lead an evil life! To what purpose are the images of so many warriors, if the dice-box rattles all night long in the presence of the Numantini:[399] if you retire to rest at the rising of that star[400] at whose dawning those generals set their standards and camps in motion? Why does Fabius[401] plume himself on the Allobrogici and the "Great Altar," as one born in Hercules' own household, if he is covetous, empty-headed, and ever so much more effeminate than the soft lamb of Euganea.[402] If with tender limbs made sleek by the pumice[403] of Catana he shames his rugged sires, and, a purchaser of poison, disgraces his dishonored race by his image that ought to be broken up.[404]