PERSIUS, SATIRE V
alike my patrimony and my character by singing drunken songs, with my torch put out, before my mistress's dripping door?" "Bravo! my young sir. Show your good sense, and slay a lamb to the Protecting Deities!" "But do you think, Davus, that she will cry if I leave her?" "You're just playing the fool! And won't you be catching it, my boy, with her red slipper, just to teach you not to jib or to gnaw at the tight-drawn meshes! At one moment you're all bluster and indignation; next moment, if she call you back, you'll be saying, 'What am I to do? Am I not to go to her even now, when she sends for me, and actually implores me to return?' No, no, say I, not even now, if once you have got away from her entire and heart-whole." Here, here is the freedom we are looking for, not in the stick[1] brandished by that nincompoop of a lictor.
176And that white-robed[2] wheedler there, dragged open-mouthed by his thirst for office—is he his own master? Up with you before dawn, and deal out showers of vetches for the people to scramble for, that old men sunning themselves in their old age may tell of the splendour of our Floralia![3] How grand! But when Herod's birthday[4] comes round, when the lamps wreathed with violets and ranged round the greasy window-sills have spat forth their thick clouds of smoke, when the floppy tunnies' tails are curled round the dishes of red ware, and the white
- ↑ Another word for the vindicta, the rod by which the elave was claimed for freedom.
- ↑ i.e. the man ambitious of public office. All candidates for public offices had their toga artificially whitened, and hence were called candidati.
- ↑ Candidates sought to gain popularity by exhibiting public games. At these games, especially at the Floralia, celebrated from April 28 to May 3, peas and other vegetables were often scrambled for by means of tickets (tesserae). Horace thus addresses a candidate for office; In cicere atque faba bona tu perdasque lupinis (Sat. II. iii. 182). These games were attended by great license, especially among women (Ov. Fast. v. 183–378; Juv. vi. 249–250). Hence the mention of them here leads naturally on to the consideration of the superstitious observances mentioned in the next section (179–188).
- ↑ Apparently the birthday of Herod the Great. The Romans regarded the Jews as practising the basest of all superstitions. See notes on Juv. xiv. 96-106 and vi. 542–547.
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