JUVENAL, SATIRE VII
What of Ventidius[1] and Tullius?[2] What made their fortunes but the stars and the wondrous potency of secret Fate? The Fates will give kingdoms to a slave, and triumphs to a captive! Nevertheless that fortunate man is rare—rarer than a white crow. Many have repented them of the Professor's vain and unprofitable chair; witness the ends of Thrasymachus[3] and Secundus Carrinas.[3] Him too didst thou see in poverty on whom thou, O Athens, hadst nothing better to bestow than a cup of cold hemlock![4] Grant, O Gods, that the earth may lie soft and light upon the shades of our forefathers; may the sweet-scented crocus and a perpetual spring-time bloom over their ashes; who deemed that the teacher should hold the place of a revered parent! Achilles trembled for fear of the rod when already of full age, singing songs in his native hills; nor would he then have dared to laugh at the tail of his musical instructor.[5] But Rufus and the rest are cudgelled each by his own pupils—that Rufus[6] whom they have so often styled "the Allobrogian Cicero."
215Who pours into the lap of Celadus, or of the learned Palaemon,[7] as much as their grammatical labours deserve? And yet, small as the fee is—and it is smaller than the rhetor's wage—the pupil's unfeeling[8] attendant nibbles off a bit of it for himself; so too does the steward. But give in,
- ↑ P. Ventidius Bassus rose from nothing to be consul B.C. 43; he triumphed over the Parthians.
- ↑ Cicero.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Both rhetoricians. Carrinas was banished by Caligula, and apparently hanged himself.
- ↑ The reference must surely be to Socrates; though illum would have been more appropriate than hunc.
- ↑ Achilles was instructed in the lyre by the Centaur Chiron.
- ↑ Rufus was apparently an Allobrogian. The Allobroges occupied the country between the Rhone and the Isère.
- ↑ Q. Remmius Palaemon, a famous Roman grammarian in the time of Tiberius and Caligula.
- ↑ Acoenonoetus is one of those Greek terms whose use Juvenal wishes to ridicule. The Scholiast explains it as communi sensu carens. See Mayor.
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