JUVENAL, SATIRE III
to Cossus? Or to be vouchsafed one glance, with lip firmly closed, from Veiento? One of these great men is cutting off his beard; another is dedicating the locks of a favourite; the house is full of cakes—which you will have to pay for. Take your cake,[1] and let this thought rankle in your heart; we clients are compelled to pay tribute and add to a sleek menial's perquisites.[2]
190"Who at cool Praeneste, or at Volsinii amid its leafy hills, was ever afraid of his house tumbling down? Who in modest Gabii, or on the sloping heights of Tivoli? But here we inhabit a city supported for the most part by slender props:[3] for that is how the bailiff patches up the cracks in the old wall, bidding the inmates sleep at ease under a roof ready to tumble about their ears. No, no, I must live where there are no fires, no nightly alarms. Ucalegon[4] below is already shouting far water and shifting his chattels; smoke is pouring out of your third-floor attic above, but you know nothing of it; for if the alarm begins in the ground-floor, the last man to burn will be he who has nothing to shelter him from the rain but the tiles, where the gentle doves lay their eggs. Codrus possessed a bed too small for the dwarf Procula, a marble slab adorned by six pipkins, with a small drinking cup, and a recumbent Chiron below, and an old chest containing Greek books whose divine lays were being gnawed by unlettered mice. Poor Codrus had nothing, it is true; but he lost that nothing, which was his
- ↑ The rendering is uncertain. Duff translates, "Take your money and keep your cake."
- ↑ At this feast cakes (liba) are provided; but the guests are expected to give a tip to the slaves. According to Duff, the client pays the slave, but is too indignant to take the cake.
- ↑ Lit. "a slender flute-player"; props were so called either from their resemblance to a flute, or to the position in which the flute was held in playing.
- ↑ Borrowed from Virgil, Aen. ii. 311, of the firing of Troy, iam proximus ardet=Vealegon. Juvenal's friend inhabits the third floor, and the fire has broken out on the ground floor.
