SATIRE XIV

Juvenal

NO TEACHING LIKE THAT OF EXAMPLE

    THERE are many things of ill repute, friend Fusci-
nus,--things that would affix a lasting stain to the
brightest of lives,--which parents themselves reveal
and hand down to their sons. If the aged father
delights in ruinous gambling, his heir too gambles in
his teens, and rattles the selfsame weapons in a tiny
dice-box. If a youth has learnt from the hoary
gluttony of a spendthrift father to peel truffles, to
preserve mushrooms, and to souse beccaficoes in their
own juice, none of his relatives need expect better
things of him when he grows up. As soon as he has
passed his seventh year, before he has cut all his
second teeth, though you put a thousand bearded
teachers on his right hand, and as many on his
left, he will always long to fare sumptuously, and
not fall below the high standard of his cookery.
    When Rutilus delights in the sound of a cruel
flogging, deeming it sweeter than any Siren's song,
and being himself a very Antiphates,² or a Poly-
phemus, to his trembling household, is he teaching

² A cruel tyrant, king of the Laestrygones.

gentleness and leniency to slight faults: does he
hold that the bodies and souls of slaves are made of
the same stuff and elements as our own; or is he
inculcating cruelty, and never happy until he has
summoned a torturer and can brand someone with
a hot iron for stealing a couple of towels? What
counsel does the father give to his son when he
revels in the clanking of a chain, and takes
wondrous pleasure in branding, chain-gangs and
prison? Are you simple enough to suppose that
Larga's daughter will remain virtuous when she
cannot count over her mother's lovers so rapidly,
or string their names together so quickly, without
breathing thirty times? She was her mother's
confidante as a girl; at her dictation she now writes
her own little love-notes, despatching them to her
own paramour by the hand of the same perverts.
So Nature ordains; no evil example corrupts us so
soon and so rapidly as one that has been set at home,
since it comes into the mind on high authority.
Here and there perhaps a youth may decline to
follow the bad example: one whose soul the Titan ¹
has fashioned with kindlier skill and of a finer clay;
but the rest are led on by the father's steps which
they should avoid, and are dragged into the old
track of vice which has so long been pointed out
to them.
    Abstain therefore from things which you must
condemn: for this there is at least one all-powerful
motive, that our crimes be not copied by our children.
For we are all easily taught what is shameless and
crooked; you may find a Catiline among any people,
and in any clime, but nowhere will you find a Brutus,
or the uncle of a Brutus. Let no foul word or sight

¹ Prometheus, who made men out of clay.

cross the threshold within which there is a father.
Away, away with the girls from pimps and the
freeloader who sings all night long ! You owe
the greatest respect to the young - if you have any
evil deed in mind; don't disregard your boy's ten-
der years and let your infant son stand in the way of
the sin that you consider. For if some day or another
he shall do a deed deserving the censor's wrath, and
show himself to be like you, not in form and face
only, but also your child in vice, and following in all
your footsteps with sin deeper than your own, you
will doubtless rebuke him and chide him angrily
and thereafter prepare to change your will. But how
can you assume the grave brow and the free tone of
a father if you in your old age are doing things worse
than he did, and your now empty skull has long been
needing a real head instead of a puffed-up gourd.
    When you expect a guest, not one of your
household will be idle. "Sweep the floor! Polish
up the pillars! Down with those dried-up spider
webs! One of you clean the plain silver, another
the embossed vessels!" So roars the master,
standing over them holding a switch. And so you
are afraid, poor fool, that the eyes of your expected
guest may be offended by the sight of dog's filth in
the hall; or of a portico splashed with mud - things
which one slave-boy can put right with half a peck
of sawdust: and yet will you take no pains that your
son may behold a stainless home, free from any stain
and blemish? It is good that you have presented
your country and your people with a citizen, if you
make him serviceable to his country, useful for the
land, useful for the things both of peace and war.
For it will make all the difference in what practices,
in what habits, you bring him up.   The stork feeds
her young upon the snakes and lizards which
she finds in the wilds; the young will search for the
same animals when they have gotten wings for
themselves. The vulture hurries from dead cattle and
dogs and crucifixions to bring some of the carrion to
her offspring; so this becomes the food of the vulture
when he is full-grown and feeds himself, making his
nest in a tree of his own. Again, the noble birds
that wait on Jupiter hunt the hare or roe deer in the
woods, and from them serve up prey to their nest;
so when their progeny are of full age and soar up from
the nest, hunger bids them swoop down upon that
same prey which they had first tasted when they
broke the shell.
    Cretonius was given to building; now on Caieta's
winding shore, now on the highest hilltop of Tibur,
now on the Praenestine hills, he would rear villas with
lofty roofs, with marbles fetched from Greece and
distant lands, outdoing the temples of Fortune and of
Hercules ¹ by as much as the eunuch Posides ² over-
topped our own Capitol. Housed therefore in this
manner, he impaired his fortune and frittered away
his wealth; some goodly portion of it still remained,
but it was all squandered by his madman of a son in
building new mansions of still costlier marbles.
    Some who by chance have a father who reveres
the Sabbath, worship nothing but the clouds, and the
divinity of the heavens,³ and see no difference be-
tween eating swine's flesh, from which their father
abstained, and that of man; and in time they take

¹ There were great temples of Fortuna at Praeneste, of
Hercules at Tibur.
² A freedman of Claudius.
³ The phrase caeli numen must be properly understood.
What Juvenal means is that the Jews worshipped no con-
crete deity such as could be portrayed, but only some impal-
pable mysterious spirit. They did not worship the sky or the
heavens, but only the numen of the heavens. This what
Tacitus means when he says ( Hist. v. 5) "The Jews worship
with the mind alone."   So Lucan. ii. 592-3 dedita sacris
incerti Judaea dei.

to circumcision. Being accustomed to flouting the
laws of Rome, they learn and practise and revere the
Jewish law, and all that Moses handed down in his
secret tome, forbidding to point out the way to any
not worshipping the same rites, and conducting none
but the circumcised to the desired fountain.¹ For
all which the father was to blame, who gave up every
seventh day to idleness, keeping it apart from all the
concerns of life.²
    All vices but one the young imitate of their
own free will; avarice alone is enjoined on them
against the grain. For that vice has a deceptive
appearance and semblance of virtue, being gloomy of
mien, austere in face and garb. The miser is openly
commended for his thrift, being deemed a saving
man, who will be a surer guardian of his own wealth
than if it were watched by the dragon of the Hes-
perides or of Colchis. Moreover, such as he is
thought to be skilled in the art of money-getting;
for it is from workers such as him that fortunes grow.
And they grow bigger by every kind of means: the
anvil is ever working, and the forge never ceases to
glow.
    Thus the father deems the miser to be fortunate;
and when he worships wealth, believing that no poor
man was ever happy, he urges his sons to follow in
the same path and to attach themselves to the same
school. There are certain rudiments in vice; in these
he imbues them from the beginning, compelling them
to study its pettiest meannesses; after a while he
instructs them in the unappeasable lust of money-
getting. He pinches the bellies of his slaves with

¹ It is possible that this refers to the practice of baptism
which had become usual among the Jews in the time of our
Lord, as we can see from the case of John the Baptist.
² Tacitus also attributed the Sabbath to laziness; and
adds dein blandiente inertia septimum quoque annum ignaviae
datum (Hist. v. 4).

short rations, starving himself in the bargain; for he
cannot bear to eat up all the moldy blue fragments
of bread. In the middle of September he will save
up the mince-meat of yesterday; in summer-time
he will preserve under seal for tomorrow's dinner a
dish of beans, with a bit of mackerel, or half a rotten
sprat, counting the blades of the cut leeks before he
puts them away. No beggar from a bridge would
accept an invitation to such a meal ! But for what
end do you pile up riches gathered through torments
such as these, when it is plain madness and sheer
lunacy to live in want that you may be wealthy when
you die? Meantime, while your purse is full to
bursting, your love of gain grows as much as the
money itself has grown, and the man who has none
of it covets it the least. And so when one country
house is not good enough for you, you buy a second;
then you must extend your boundaries, because the
neighboring grain field seems bigger and better than
your own; you must buy that too, and his vineyard,
and the hill that is thick and grey with olive-trees.
And if no price will persuade the owner to sell, you
will send into his green corn by night a herd of lean
cattle and and famished oxen, with wearied necks,
who will not come home until they have put the whole
field into their ravenous bellies; no sickle could
make a cleaner job! How many bewail wrongs like
these can scarce be told, nor how many fields have
been brought to sale by such injustices.
    But what a talk there will be! How loud the blast
of evil rumor! "What harm in this?" you will say: "I
prefer my wolf-skin tunic to the praises of the whole
country-side if I am to reap but a small farm's meagre
spelt." Yes; and no doubt you will escape disease
and weakness, and will have no sorrow, no trouble,
and you will have long and ever happier days, if only
you are sole possessor of as many acres of good land
as all the Roman people tilled in the [early] days of
Tatius. In later times, Romans broken with old age,
who had fought in the Punic battles or against the brutal
Pyrrhus and the swords of the Molossians, scarcely
received at last, in return for all their wounds, two
acres of land. None ever deemed such recompense
too small for their service of toil and blood; none
spoke of a shabby, thankless country. A little plot
like that would feed the father himself and the noisy
thong at the cottage where lay the wife in child-
bed, with four little ones playing around--one slave-
born, three the master's own; but for their big brothers,
on their return from ditch or furrow, a second and
larger supper of porridge would be smoking in a
large pot. Today we don't think such a plot of
ground big enough for our garden!
    It is here mostly that lies the cause of crime.
No vice in the human mind has mixed more poisons,
nor more often sent the murderous dagger in search,
than the fierce craving for unbounded wealth. For
the man who wants wealth must have it at once; what
respect for laws, what fear, what sense of shame
is to be found in a greedy man hurrying to be rich?
"Live content, my boys, with these humble cottages
and hills of yours," said the Marsian or Hernican or
Vestinian father in the days of yore; "let the plough
win for us what bread shall suffice our table; such
fare the rustic Gods approve, whose aid and bounty
gave us the grateful ear of corn, and taught man to
disdain [the acorn from] the oak of ancient times.
The man who is not ashamed to wear high raw-hide
boots in time of frost, and who keeps off the East
wind with skins turned inwards, will never wish to
do a forbidden thing; it is purple raiment, whatever
kind it be, foreign and unknown to us, that leads
to crime and wickedness"
    Such were the maxims which those ancients
taught the young; but now, when autumn days are
over, the father rouses his sleeping son after mid-
night with a shout: "Awake, boy, and take your
tablets; scribble away and get up your cases; read
through the red-lettered laws of our forefathers, or
send in a petition for a centurion's vine-staff (See
that Laelius notes your uncombed head and hairy
nostrils, and admires your broad shoulders). Destroy
the huts of the Moors and the forts of the Brigantes,¹
so that your sixtieth year may bring you the eagle ²
that will make you rich. Or if you are too lazy to
endure the weary labours of the camp, if the sound
of horn and trumpet melts your fearful soul within
you, buy something that you can sell at half as much
again; feel no disgust at a trade that must be ban-
ished to the other side of the Tiber; make no dis-
tinction between hides and unguents: the smell of
gain is good whatever the thing from which it comes.
Let this maxim be ever on your lips, a saying worthy
of the Gods, and of Jove himself if he turned poet:
' Nobody asks where you got it, it just needs to be
gotten.'" These are the lessons taught by skinny old
nurses to little boys before they can walk; this is
what every girl learns before her A B C 's !
    To any father urging precepts such as these I
would say this: "Tell me, O emptiest of men, what's
your hurry? - the student will outdo his master.

¹ A powerful British tribe, occupying the greater part of
England north of the Humber.
² i.e. the post of Senior Centurion ( centurio primi pili ),
who had charge of the eagle of the legion.

You may leave sure of this; you will be outdone as
surely as Telamon was beaten by Ajax, or Peleus by
Achilles. Be gentle with the young; evil wickedness
has not yet ripened in their marrows. When the lad
begins to comb a long beard, and takes the sharp
point of a pruning knife to it, he will swear falsely
in the highest places for a trifling sum, while touching
the altar and the foot of Ceres. Trust that your
daughter-in-law has already been carried out for
burial if she moves into the house with a deadly dowry.
What kind of person is that whose fingers will throttle
her in her sleep! For the wealth which you think should
be hunted for over land and sea, your son will acquire
by a shorter road - great crimes demand no effort.
' I never taught these things,' you will say some day,
' I never advised them ' : no, but the cause and origin
of his evil mind belongs to you; for whosoever teaches
the love of wealth makes his sons greedy by his harmful
instruction, and gives them freedom to double their
patrimony by fraud, and is giving full reins to the chariot;
try to call him back, he doesn't know how to stop and
will pay no heed to you as he is carried away and leaves
the turning-posts far behind. No man is satisfied with
sinning just as far as you permit: so much greater is the
license which they allow themselves!
    " When you tell a youth that a man is a fool who
makes a present to a friend, or relieves and lightens
the poverty of a kinsman, you teach him to plunder
and to cheat and to commit any kind of crime for
money's sake, the love of which is as great in you as
was love of their country in the hearts of the Decii,
as much as Thebes was loved, if Greece is truthful,
by Menoeceus,¹ --in the place where from furrows

¹ Slew himself to save Thebes.

legions with shields sprang into life out of dragons'
teeth, taking right away to grim battle as though a
bugler had also risen up along with them. Thus you
will see the fire, whose sparks you yourself have
kindled, blazing far and wide and carrying all before
it. Nor will you yourself, poor wretch, meet with
any mercy; the protegee lion, with a loud roar, will
destroy his trembling trainer in the cage. Your
destiny is well-known to the astrologers, but it is
a tedious thing to wait for the slow-running spindle;
you will die before your thread is snapped. You
are already in your son's way and are delaying his
prayers; your long and stag-like old age is now a
torment to the young man. Seek out Archigenes
at once; buy some of that formula of Mithridates;
if you wish to pluck one more fig, and gather roses
once again, think about a drug, which should be
swallowed before a meal by one who is a king -
or even a father."
    I am showing you a choice diversion, one with
which no theatre, no stage of a fine Praetor can
compare; if you will observe at what a risk to life
men increase the worth of their estate, become
possessors of a big money-bag in a brass-bound
treasure-chest, and for cash to be deposited with
watchful Castor,¹ ever since Mars the Avenger lost
his helmet and failed to protect his own effects.² So
you may leave behind all the stage-curtains of Flora,
of Ceres, and of Cybele;³ so much greater entertain-
ment is the activity of human life. Is there more
pleasure to be gotten from gazing at men hurled from
a spring-board, or accustomed to going down a tight
rope, than from yourself--you who always stays on
a Corycian ⁴ ship - and lives there , ever tossed by the
wind from Northwest or South, a petty, contemptible

¹ Money was deposited in the temple of Castor, in the
Forum.
² The temple of Mars Ultor, in the Forum Augusti , seems
to have been burgled.
³ i.e. the games.        ⁴ Corycus, a town in Cilicia.

trafficker in stinking sacks, finding your joy in carrying
raisin wine from the shores of ancient Crete, and
flagons that were fellow-citizens of Jove? ¹ Yet that
man who plants his steps with balanced foot gains
his livelihood thereby; that rope keeps him from
cold and hunger; while you run the risk for the sake
of a thousand talents or a hundred mansions. Look
at our ports, our seas, crowded with big ships! The
men at sea now outnumber those on shore. A fleet
will come wherever hope of gain shall call, not just
the Carpathian and Gaetulian seas will it bound over,
but it will leave Calpe ² far behind, and hear the sun
hissing in the Herculean main. It is well worth while,
no doubt, to return home exulting in your tight-stuffed
purse and swollen money-bag after having beheld the
monsters of the deep and the young mermen of the
Ocean.
One form of madness doesn't drive all minds; one ³
madman in his sister's arms is terrified by the faces and
fire of the Furies; another,⁴ when he strikes down an
ox, believes that it is Agamemnon or the Ithacan ⁵ that
is bellowing. Although he spares his shirt and his
cloak, the man who loads his ship up to the gunwale
with goods, with only a plank between him and the
deep, is in need of a keeper, seeing that he endures all
the misery and danger of this for the sake of silver cut
up into little images and inscriptions! Clouds and lightning
appear: " Cast off the rope! " cries the owner of the grain
or pepper that has been bought up, " the color of the sky
is nothing, we aren't threatened by that dark streak--it is

¹ Because Zeus was born in Crete.
² The rock of Gibraltar.        ^₃ i.e. Orestes.
⁴ i.e. Ajax, who went mad, slaughtering a flock of sheep
in the belief that he was slaying Agamemnon and Ulysses.
⁵ Ulysses.

but summer lightning." Poor wretch! perhaps on this
very night he will be cast down amid broken timbers and
engulfed by the waves, clutching his money-belt with
his left hand or his teeth. The man who swore yesterday
that all the gold which Tagus and the ruddy Pactolus ¹
rolls along would not have sufficed, must now content
himself with a rag to stand up to the cold and cover his
nakedness, and meager food, while he begs for pennies
as a shipwrecked mariner, and supports himself by a
painted storm!
    Wealth gotten with such woes is preserved by
fears and troubles that are greater still; it is misery
to have the guardianship of a great fortune. The
millionaire Licinus orders a troop of slaves to be on
the watch all night with fire buckets in their places,
being terrified for his amber, his statues and Phry-
gian marbles, his ivory and his extensive tortoise-shell.
The nude Cynic's ² giant pot doesn't burn; if broken,
he will make himself a new house tomorrow, or keep
the same after it is repaired with lead. When Alex-
ander beheld in that pot its great occupant, he felt
how much happier was the man who had no desires
than he who claimed for himself the entire world, with
perils before him as great as his achievements. Had
we but wisdom, thou would have no Divinity, O
Fortune: it is we that make thee into a goddess!
    Yet if any should ask of me what measure of
fortune is enough, I will tell him: as much as thirst,
cold and hunger demand; as much as sufficed you,
Epicurus, in your little garden; as much as in earlier
days was to be found in the house of Socrates. Never
does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another. Do
the examples within which I confine you seem too
severe? Then mix in something of our own manners;

¹ The gold-bearing river of Lydia.        ² Diogenes.

make up a sum as big as that which Otho's law ¹
deems worthy of the fourteen rows. If that also
knits your brow, and makes you thrust out your lip,
take a couple of knights, or make up thrice four
hundred thousand sesterces! If your lap is not yet
full, if it is still opening for more, then neither the
wealth of Croesus, nor that of the Persian Monarchies,
will satisfy your heart, nor yet that of Narcissus,² on
whom Claudius Caesar lavished everything, and
whom he obeyed when ordered to slay his wife.³

¹ The law of Otho (B.C. 67) reserved for knights the first
fourteen rows in the theatre behind the orchestra where
senators sat. The knights ( equites ) were the wealthy
middle class, each having to possess a census of 400,000
sesterces.
² The most powerful and wealthiest of Claudius' freedmen.
³ For the part played by Narcissus in securing the punish-
ment of Messalina, see Tac. Ann. xi. 33-37.

Polyphemus : The cyclops from "The Odyssey" who ate humans. Antiphates and the Sirens are also from the same story.

perverts : i.e. The same perverted messengers her mother used or uses.

Catiline : Famous for the Catiline conspiracy; an example of an evil man as Brutus is the model of a virtuous man.

Colchis : Actually reads Ponticus - Pontus, where Colchis was and the Golden Fleece guarded by a dragon.

Laelius : Others figure this to be the commander of the unit he is petitioning. I don't know if the Romans had the equivalent of a recruiting officer or Sergeant Major but it figures to be something in this area. Apparently the call around midnight is just arising at a very early hour and the regard for becoming a lawyer or military man is low in Juvenal's eyes. Lawyers he has already spoken of and will address the military in the unfinished Satire XVI.

Telamon : By context you can guess that this is the father of Ajax and Peleus the father of Achilles.

teeth : "When Telephassa died, Cadmus buried her, and after being hospitably received by the Thracians he came to Delphi to inquire about Europa. The god told him not to trouble about Europa, but to be guided by a cow, and to found a city wherever she should fall down for weariness. After receiving such an oracle he journeyed through Phocis; then falling in with a cow among the herds of Pelagon, he followed it behind. And after traversing Boeotia, it sank down where is now the city of Thebes. Wishing to sacrifice the cow to Athena, he sent some of his companions to draw water from the spring of Ares. But a dragon, which some said was the offspring of Ares, guarded the spring and destroyed most of those that were sent. In his indignation Cadmus killed the dragon, and by the advice of Athena sowed its teeth. When they were sown there rose from the ground armed men whom they called Sparti. These slew each other, some in a chance brawl, and some in ignorance. But Pherecydes says that when Cadmus saw armed men growing up out of the ground, he flung stones at them, and they, supposing that they were being pelted by each other, came to blows." E 3.4 Apollodorus, Library and Epitome (ed. Sir James George Frazer)

Gaetulian : Carpathian.

Cilicia : Corcyra - modern Corfu. As you can see from the passage below the cloth imported from there was of low quality like the raisin wine.

"CILIC´IUM (derris), a hair-cloth. The material of which the Greeks and Romans almost universally made this kind of cloth, was the hair of goats. The Asiatics made it of camel's-hair. Goats were bred for this purpose in the greatest abundance, and with the longest hair, in Cilicia; and from this country the Latin name of such cloth was derived. Lycia, Phrygia, Spain, and Libya also produced the same article. The cloth obtained by spinning and weaving goat's-hair was nearly black, and was used for the coarse habits which sailors and fishermen wore, as it was the least subject to be destroyed by being wet; also for horse-cloths, tents, sacks, and bags to hold workmen's tools (fabriliavasa ), and for the purpose of covering military engines and the walls and towns of besieged cities, so as to deaden the force of the ram, and to preserve the woodwork from being set on fire." Smith, Wayte, Marindin

cloak : i.e. he doesn't tear his clothing due to his distress.

inscriptions : "A satirical description of minted coins stamped with the emperor's portrait and titles." Rudd

Tagus : "The Carthaginians, and after them the Romans, obtained their main supply from Spain, in the rivers of which country was a rich deposit of gold, notably in the Tagus." Smith, Wayte, Marindin

painted : A picture of the shipwreck was displayed while begging.

house : Literally penates - "household gods" or quantum .. ceperunt penates - "as much as the household gods took".

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