PERSIUS, SATIRE V
humour is that swelling in your fevered heart so that a whole gallon of hemlock cannot assuage it? What? You to go skipping over the sea? You to take your dinner on a bench, with a coiled cable for a cushion, while a dumpy pot exhales for you the fumes of some reddish Veientine wine that has been spoilt because of the pitch going bad? What would you be at? Is it that the money which you have been nursing at a modest five per cent.[1] I shall go on until it sweats out an exorbitant eleven? No, no; give your Genius a chance! Let us gather our sweets! Our life is our own to-day, to-morrow you will be dust, a shade, and a tale that is told. Live mindful of death; the hour flies; the word that I speak is so much taken from it."
154What are you to do? Two hooks are pulling you in different ways; are you to follow this one or that? With wavering allegiance you must needs submit to each master by turns, and by turns break away from him. Nor if you have once made a stand, and refused the imperious command, can you say, "Now I have broken my chain"; for though even a dog may struggle against his chain and break it, yet as he runs away a good length of it will be trailing from his neck.
161"Here, Davus, quick! I am in real earnest; I mean[2] to bring my past follies to an end." So says Chaerestratus, biting his nails to the quick. "What? Am I to be a stumbling block and a scandal to my excellent relations? Am I to lose
- ↑ A quincunx was five ounces, of which there were twelve to the as, or pound. In calculating interest, five-twelfths of an as on 100 asses paid monthly was equivalent to five per cent, per annum; similarly eleven ounces a month would be equivalent to eleven per cent.
- ↑ The passage which follows is taken from the Eunuchus of Menander, translated by Terence; Persius gives the names Chaerestratus and Davus as in the Greek play, instead of Phaedria and Parmenio as in Terence.
C C
