JUVENAL, SATIRE X
for whenever Fortune is supplicated on my behalf, she plugs her ears with wax fetched from that self-same ship which escaped from the Sicilian song-stresses through the deafness of her crew."[1]
SATIRE X
The Vanity of Human Wishes
In all the lands that stretch from Gades to the Ganges and the Morn, there are but few who can distinguish true blessings from their opposites, putting aside the mists of error. For when does Reason direct our desires or our tears? What project do we form so auspiciously that we do not repent us of our effort and of the granted wish? Whole households have been destroyed by the compliant Gods in answer to the masters' prayers; in camp and city alike we ask for things that will be our ruin. Many a man has met death from the rushing flood of his own eloquence; others from the strength and wondrous thews in which they have trusted. More still have been ruined by money too carefully amassed, and by fortunes that surpass all patrimonies by as much as the British whale exceeds the dolphin. It was for this that in the dire days Nero ordered Longinus[2] and the great gardens of the over-wealthy Seneca[3] to be put under siege; for this was it that the noble Palace of the Laterani[4] was beset by an entire cohort; it is but seldom that soldiers find their way into a garret!
O
