SUMMARY OF SATIRE IV
Puffed up by his ancestry, the youthful Alcibiades would fain guide the state. Knowledge of men and morals have come to him before his beard; trusting to his birth, his beauty, and his wheedling tongue, he advises the multitude on the most delicate points of right and policy. Yet he has none but the lowest conceptions of life; he has no higher ideals than an old woman who hawks vegetables in the street (1–22).
Not one of us has any knowledge of himself, though we are all ready to discourse about our neighbours. Ask a question about Vettidius, and you will learn all the particulars of his life; how miserly he is, how he starves alike himself and his slaves. And are you any better, though your vices lie in an opposite direction to his? (23–41).
Thus we lash and are lashed in turn. Do not deceive yourself; however much the neighbourhood may praise you, care for no man's opinion but your own. Look carefully into your own heart, and acknowledge how poorly you are furnished (42–52).
