JUVENAL, SATIRE VIII
wrote an Epic upon Troy! For of all the deeds of Nero's cruel and bloody tyranny, which was there that more deserved to be avenged by the arms of a Verginius,[1] of a Vindex[2] or a Galba? These were the deeds, these the graces of our high-born Prince, whose delight it was to prostitute himself by unseemly singing upon a foreign stage, and to earn a chaplet of Greek parsley! Let thy ancestral images be decked with the trophies of thy voice! Place thou at the feet of a Domitius[3] the trailing robe of Thyestes[4] or Antigone,[4] or the mask of Melanippa,[4] and hang up thy harp on a colossus[5] of marble!
231Where can be found, O Catiline, nobler ancestors than thine, or than thine, Cethegus?[6] Yet you plot a night attack, you prepare to give our houses and temples to the flames as though you were the sons of trousered[7] Gauls, or sprung from the Senones,[8] daring deeds that deserved the shirt of torture.[9] But our Consul[10] is awake, and beats back your hosts. Born at Arpinum, of ignoble blood, a municipal knight new to Rome, he posts helmeted men at every point to guard the affrighted citizens, and is alert on every hill. Thus within the walls his toga won for him as much name and honour as Octavius
- ↑ Verginius Rufus, Legate of Upper Germany, defeated the revolting Vindex, and refused to be named emperor after Galba's death in A.D. 69.
- ↑ C. Julius Vindex, propraetor of the province Lugdunensis, revolted against Nero in A.D. 68, and was defeated by Verginius.
- ↑ Not the father of Nero, but one of his distinguished ancestors on his father's side. Nero's name before his adoption by Claudius was L. Domitius Ahenobarbus.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Tragic parts acted by Nero.
- ↑ This is doubtless meant as a hit at the famous bronze Colossus of Nero.
- ↑ C. Cornelius Cethegus was the most prominent associate of Catiline in the long-nursed conspiracy which was crushed by Cicero as consul in B.C. 63.
- ↑ Narbonese Gaul was called bracata because its inhabitants wore trousers.
- ↑ The Gauls who defeated the Romans in the battle of the Allia, B.C. 390.
- ↑ A shirt lined with pitch in which the victims were burnt to death. See above i. 115 and Tac. Ann. xv. 44.
- ↑ Cicero.
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