Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/223

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JUVENAL, SATIRE VII

648Let us believe all that Tragedy tells us of the savage Colchian[1] and of Procne[2]; I seek not to gainsay her. Those women were monsters of wickedness in their day; but it was not for money that they sinned. We marvel less at great crimes when it is wrath that incites the sex to the guilty deed, when burning passion carries them headlong, like a rock torn from a mountain side, when the ground beneath gives way, and the overhanging slopes fall in. I cannot endure the woman who calculates, and commits a great crime in her sober senses. Our wives look on at Alcestis undergoing her husband's fate; if they were granted a like liberty of exchange, they would fain let the husband die to save a lap-dog's life. You will meet a daughter of Belus[3] or an Eriphyle every morning; no street but has its Clytemnestra.[4] The only difference is this; the daughter of Tyndareus[5] wielded in her two hands a clumsy two-headed axe, whereas nowadays a slice of a toad's lung will do the business. Yet it may be done by steel as well, if the wary husband have beforehand tasted the medicaments of the thrice-conquered king of Pontus.[6]


SATIRE VII

Learning and Letters Unprofitable

On Caesar alone hang all the hopes and prospects of the learned; he alone in these days of ours has cast a favouring glance upon the sorrowing Muses—

  1. Medea.
  2. Procne, daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, revenged herself on her husband, Tereus, by serving up to him the flesh of his son Itys. She was turned into a swallow.
  3. Belus was the father of Danaus; hence the Danaids are called Belidae.
  4. The Danaids (daughters of Danaus), Eriphyle, and Clytemnestra, all killed their husbands.
  5. Clytemnestra was daughter of Tyndareus.
  6. Mithridates, who was said to have secured himself against poisoning by prophylactics.
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