And what chance have you, without attendants, against a street rough? Then there is the burglar; and the criminal classes are regularly increased in town whenever the authorities grow active enough to clear the main Italian roads of bandits.
The forge in fetters only is employed; Our iron-mines exhausted and destroyed In shackles; for these villains scarce allow Goads for our teams or ploughshares for the plough. Oh, happy ages of our ancestors, Beneath the kings and tribunician powers! One jail did all the criminals restrain, Whom now the walls of Rome can scarce contain.
III.—A Satire on the Vanity of Human Wishes
Look round the habitable world; how few Know their own good; or, knowing it, pursue. To headlong ruin see whole houses driven, Cursed with their prayers, by too indulgent heaven.
The several passions and aspirations of mankind, successively examined in the light of legend and history, prove how hollow, if not pernicious, are the principal objects of pursuit. Wealth is one of the commonest aims.
But avarice spreads her deadly snare, And hoards amassed with too successful care. For wealth, in the black days, at Nero's word, The ruffian bands unsheathed the murderous sword. Cut-throats commissioned by the government Are seldom to an empty garret sent. The traveller freighted with a little wealth, Sets forth at night, and wins his way by stealth: Even then he fears the bludgeon and the blade— Starts in the moonlight at a rush's shade, While, void of care, the beggar trips along, And to the robber's face will troll his song.
What would the "weeping" and the "laughing" sages of ancient Greece have thought of the pageants of modern Rome? Consider the vanity of ambition. It is illustrated by the downfall of the powerful minister Sejanus. On his overthrow, the fickle mob turned savagely upon his statues.
What think the people? They! They follow fortune, as of old, and hate With all their soul the victim of the state. Yet in this very hour that self-same crowd Had hailed Sejanus with a shout as loud, If his designs (by fortune's favour blessed) Had prospered, and the aged prince oppressed; For since our votes have been no longer bought, All public care has vanished from our thought. Romans, who once with unresisted sway, Gave armies, empire, everything, away, For two poor claims have long renounced the whole And only ask—the circus and a dole.
Would you rather be an instance of fallen greatness, or enjoy some safe post in an obscure Italian town? What ruined a Crassus? Or a Pompey? Or a victorious Cæsar? Why, the realisation of their own soaring desires.
Another vain aspiration covets fame in eloquence. But the gift of oratory overthrew the two greatest orators of Greece and Rome—Demosthenes and Cicero. If Cicero had only stuck to his bad verses, he would never have earned Antony's deadly hatred by his "Second Philippic" (see Vol. IX, p. 155).