JUVENAL, SATIRE VIII
has taken to harp-playing, it is not so very strange that a noble should act in a mime. Beyond this, what will be left but the gladiatorial school? And that scandal too you have seen in our city; a Gracchus fighting, not indeed as a murmillo, nor with the round shield and scimitar[1]; such accoutrements he rejects, ay rejects and detests; nor does a helmet shroud his face. See how he wields his trident! and when with poised right hand he has cast the trailing net in vain, he lifts up his bare face to the benches and flies, for all to recognise, from one end of the arena to the other.[2] We cannot mistake the golden tunic that flutters from his throat, and the twisted cord that dangles from the high-crowned cap[3]; and so the pursuer who was pitted against Gracchus endured a shame more grievous than any wound.
211If free suffrage were granted to the people, who would be so abandoned as not to prefer Seneca[4] to Nero—Nero, for whose chastisement no single ape or adder, no solitary sack,[5] should have been provided? His crime was like that of Agamemnon's son[6]; but the case was not the same, seeing that Orestes, at the bidding of the Gods, was avenging a father slain in his cups.[7] Orestes never stained himself with Electra's blood, or with that of his Spartan wife[8]; he never mixed poison-drafts for his own kin; he never sang upon the stage,[9] he never
- ↑ The phrase falce supina="a sickle on its back"; the point of the weapon was bent backwards instead of forwards.
- ↑ It was a disgrace for Gracchus to fight as a retiarius. Having no armour, he had to run away if he missed his throw with the net. His adversary was fully armed.
- ↑ Galerus or galerum was probably a kind of helmet or cap. The Schol. here says Galerus est humero impositus gladiatoris. See Duff and Mayor.
- ↑ Seneca had to open his veins by Nero's order.
- ↑ The ancient punishment for parricide was that the criminal should be tied up in a sack along with a dog, an ape, a snake, and a cock, and then cast into the sea.
- ↑ Orestes slew his mother Clytemnestra in revenge for the murder of his father. But he did not slay a sister or a wife as Nero slew his wife Octavia and his half-sister Antonia.
- ↑ So Homer, Od. xi. 409. The tragedian's story is that Agamemnon was slain in his bath.
- ↑ Hermione.
- ↑ In the year A.D. 59 Nero presented himself upon the stage (Tac. Ann. xiv. 15). In A.D. 67-8 he made a tour of the Greek games and won prizes at many musical contests.
