INTRODUCTION
who has been defrauded of a sum of ten thousand sesterces by the dishonesty of the friend to whom it had been entrusted. In offering him consolation, the poet not only uses all the arguments of robust common sense, but also in his concluding passages he may be said to reach the high-water mark of pre-Christian ethics; there is at least one notable pronouncement which seems to breathe the very spirit of the Gospel.
Every guilty deed brings its own punishment along with it; no guilty man can escape at the bar of his own conscience. Your loss is one of every-day occurrence; has experience not taught you to bear the smallest of misfortunes? Crime of every kind is rampant amongst us; honest men are not more numerous than the mouths of the Nile; it is mere simplicity to expect any man nowadays to abstain from perjury. In the days of Saturn, before the heavens were crowded with their present mob of divinities; in the days when youth stood up to reverence old age, dishonesty was a marvel to be wondered at; but in these days, if a man acknowledges a trust, and restores the purse entrusted to him, I deem him a prodigy. I liken him to a shower of stones, or to a pregnant mule, or to a river running white with milk. What if some other man have lost ten times as much as you? So easy is it to escape the notice of heaven if no man be privy to the guilty deed! Some men disbelieve in divine
