JUVENAL, SATIRE X
trust can be placed in money! No misshapen youth was ever unsexed by cruel tyrant in his castle; never did Nero have a bandy-legged or scrofulous favourite, or one that was hump-backed or pot-bellied!
310Go to now, you that revel in your son's beauty; think of the deadly perils that lie before him. He will become a promiscuous gallant, and have to fear all the vengeance due to outraged husbands; no luckier than Mars, he will not fail to fall into the net. And so sometimes the husband's wrath exacts greater penalties than any law allows; one lover is slain by the sword, another bleeds under the lash; some undergo the punishment of the mullet. Your dear Endymion will become the gallant of some matron whom he loves; but before long, when Servilia has taken him into her pay, he will serve one also whom he loves not, and will strip her of all her ornaments; for what can any woman, be she an Oppia or a Catulla,[1] deny to the man who serves her passion? It is on her passion that a bad woman's whole nature centres, "But how does beauty hurt the chaste?" you ask. Well, what availed Hippolytus or Bellerophon[2] their firm resolve? The Cretan lady flared up as though repelled with scorn; no less furious was Stheneboea. Both dames lashed themselves into fury; for never is woman so savage as when her hatred is goaded on by shame.
329And now tell me what counsel you think should be given to him[3] whom Caesar's wife is minded to wed. Best and fairest of a patrician house, the un-
