The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) (68 page)

Their manner of living with their guests is easy and affable. As soon as they arise from sleep, which they generally protract till late in the day, they bathe, usually in warm water, as cold weather chiefly prevails there. After bathing they take their meal, each on a distinct seat, and at a separate table. Then they proceed, armed, to business; and not less frequently to convivial parties, in which it is no disgrace to pass days and nights, without intermission, in drinking. The frequent quarrels that arise amongst them, when intoxicated, seldom terminate in abusive language, but more frequently in blood. In their feasts, they generally deliberate on the reconcile- ment of enemies, on family alliances, on the appointment of chiefs, and finally on peace and war; conceiving that at no time the soul is more opened to sincerity, or warmed to heroism. These people, naturally void of artifice or disguise, disclose the most secret emotions of their hearts in the freedom of festivity. The minds of all being thus displayed without reserve, the subjects of their deliberahon are again canvassed the next day; and each time has its advantages. They consult when unable to dissemble; they determine when not liable to mistake.

Their drink is a liquor prepared from barley or wheat brought by fermentation to a certain resemblance of wine. Those who border on the Rhine also purchase wine. Their food is simple; wild fruits, fresh venison, or coagulated milk. They satisfy hunger without seeking the elegances and delicacies of the table. Their thirst for liquor is not quenched with equal moderation. If their propensity to drunkenness be gratified to the extent of their wishes, intemperance proves as effectual in subduing them as the force of arms.

They have only one kind of public spectacle, which is exhibited in every company. Young men, who make it their diversion, dance naked amidst drawn swords and presented spears. Practice has conferred skill at this exercise, and skill has given grace; but they do not exhibit for hire or gain: the only reward of this pastime, though a hazardous one, is the pleasure of the spectators. What is extraordinary, they play at dice, when sober, as a serious business: and that with such a desperate venture of gain or loss, that, when everything else is gone, they set their liberties and persons on the last throw. The loser goes into voluntary servitude; and, though the youngest and strongest, patiently suffers himself to be bound and sold. Such is their obstinacy in a bad practice—they themselves call it honour. The slaves thus acquired are exchanged away in commerce, that the winner may get rid of the scandal of his victory.

The rest of their slaves have not, like ours, particular employments in the family allotted them. Each is the master of a habitation and household of his own. The lord requires from him a certain quantity of grain, cattle, or cloth, as from a tenant; and so far only the subjection of the slave extends. His domestic offices are performed by his own wife and children. It is usual to scourge a slave, or punish him with chains or hard labour. They are sometimes killed by their masters: not through severity of chastisement, but in the heat of passion, like an enemy; with this difference, that it is done with impunity. Freedmen are little superior to slaves; seldom filling any important office in the family; never in the state, except in those tribes which are under regal government. There, they rise above the free-born, and even the nobles: in the rest, the subordinate condition of the freedmen is a proof of freedom.

Lending money upon interest, and increasing it by usury, is unknown amongst them: and this ignorance more effectually prevents the practice than a prohibition would do. The lands are occupied by townships, in allotments proportional to the number of cultivators; and are afterwards parcelled out among the individuals of the district, in shares according to the rank and condition of each person. The wide extent of plain facilitates this partition. The arable lands are annually changed, and a part left fallow; nor do they attempt to make the most of the fertility and plenty of the soil, by their own industry in planting orchards, inclosing meadows, and watering gardens. Corn is the only product required from the earth: hence their year is not divided into so many seasons as ours; for, while they know and distinguish by name Winter, Spring, and Summer, they are unacquainted equally with the appellation and bounty of Autumn.

Their funerals are without parade. The only circumstance to which they attend, is to burn the bodies of eminent persons with some particular kinds of wood. Neither vestments nor perfumes are heaped upon the pile: the arms of the deceased, and sometimes his horse, are given to the flames. The tomb is a mound of turf. They contemn the elaborate and costly honours of monumental structures, as mere burthens to the dead. They soon dismiss tears and lamentations; slowly, sorrow and regret. They think it the women’s part to bewail their friends, the men’s to remember them.

Chapters 10-27

(Decimus Junius Juvenal, 60? A.D.-?140 A.D.)

Griev’d tho I am, an Ancient Friend to lose,
I like the Solitary Seat he chose:
In quiet
Cumæ
fixing his Repose:
Where, far from Noisy
Rome
secure he Lives,
And one more Citizen to
Sybil
gives;
The road to
Bajæ,
and that soft Recess
Which all the Gods with all their Bounty bless.
Tho I in
Prochyta
with greater ease
Cou’d live, than in a Street of Palaces.
What Scene so Desart, or so full of Fright,
As tow‘ring Houses tumbling in the Night,
And
Rome
on Fire beheld by its own Blazing Light?
But worse than all, the clatt’ring Tiles; and worse
Than thousand Padders, is the Poet’s Curse.
Rogues that in Dog-days cannot Rhime forbear:
But without Mercy read, and make you hear.

Now while my Friend, just ready to depart,
Was packing all his Goods in one poor Cart;
He stopp’d a little at the Conduit-Gate,
Where
Numa
modell’d once the
Roman
State,
In Mighty Councels with his Nymph retir’d:
Though now the Sacred Shades and Founts are hir’d
By Banish’d Jews, who their whole Wealth can lay
In a small Basket, on a Wisp of Hay;
Yet such our Avarice is, that every Tree
Pays for his Head; not Sleep it self is free:
Nor Place, nor Persons now are Sacred held,
From their own Grove the Muses are expell’d.
Into this lonely Vale our Steps we bend,
I and my sullen discontented Friend:
The Marble Caves, and Aquæducts we view;
But how Adult‘rate now, and different from the true!
How much more Beauteous had the Fountain been
Embellish’t with her first Created Green,
Where Crystal Streams through living Turf had run,
Contented with an Urn of Native Stone!

Then thus
Umbricius
(with an Angry Frown,
And looking back on this degen‘rate Town,)
Since Noble Arts in
Rome
have no support,
And ragged Virtue not a Friend at Court,
No Profit rises from th’ ungrateful Stage,
My Poverty encreasing with my Age,
’Tis time to give my just Disdain a vent,
And, Cursing, leave so base a Government.
Where
Dedalus
his borrow’d Wings laid by,
To that obscure Retreat I chuse to fly:
While yet few furrows on my Face are seen,
While I walk upright, and Old Age is green,
And Lachesis has somewhat left to spin.
Now, now ‘tis time to quit this cursed place,
And hide from Villains my too honest Face:
Here let
Arturius
live, and such as he;
Such Manners will with such a Town agree.
Knaves who in full Assemblies have the knack
Of turning Truth to Lies, and White to Black;
Can hire large Houses, and oppress the Poor
By farm’d Excise; can cleanse the Common-shoare;
And rent the Fishery; can bear the dead;
And teach their Eyes dissembled Tears to shed,
All this for Gain; for Gain they sell their very Head.
These Fellows (see what Fortune’s pow’r can do)
Were once the Minstrels of a Country Show:
Follow’d the Prizes through each paltry Town,
By Trumpet-Cheeks and Bloated Faces known.
But now, grown rich, on drunken Holy-days,
At their own Costs exhibit Publick Plays;
Where influenc’d by the Rabble’s bloody will,
With Thumbs bent back, they popularly kill.
From thence return‘d, their sordid Avarice rakes
In Excrements again, and hires the Jakes.
Why hire they not the Town, not ev’ry thing,
Since such as they have Fortune in a String?
Who, for her pleasure, can her Fools advance;
And toss ‘em topmost on the Wheel of Chance.
What’s
Rome
to me, what bus’ness have I there,
I who can neither Lye, nor falsely Swear?
Nor Praise my Patron’s undeserving Rhimes,
Nor yet comply with him, nor with his Times;
Unskill’d in Schemes by Planets to foreshow,
Like Canting Rascals, how the Wars will go:
I neither will, nor can Prognosticate
To the young gaping Heir, his Father’s Fate:
Nor in the Entrails of a Toad have pry‘d,
Nor carry’d Bawdy Presents to a Bride:
For want of these Town Virtues, thus, alone,
I go conducted on my way by none:
Like a dead Member from the Body rent;
Maim’d, and unuseful to the Government.

Who now is lov‘d, but he who loves the Times,
Conscious of close Intrigues, and dipt in Crimes;
Lab’ring with Secrets which his Bosom burn,
Yet never must to publick light return?
They get Reward alone who can Betray:
For keeping honest Counsels none will pay.
He who can
Verres,
when he will, accuse,
The Purse of
Verres
may at Pleasure use:
But let not all the Gold which
Tagus
hides,
And pays the Sea in Tributary Tides,
Be Bribe sufficient to corrupt thy Breast;
Or violate with Dreams thy peaceful rest.
Great Men with jealous Eyes the Friend behold,
Whose secrecy they purchase with their Gold.

I haste to tell thee, nor shall Shame oppose,
What Confidents our Wealthy
Romans
chose:
And whom I most abhor: To speak my Mind,
I hate, in
Rome,
a
Grecian
Town to find:
To see the Scum of
Greece
transplanted here,
Receiv’d like Gods, is what I cannot bear.
Nor
Greeks
alone, but
Syrians
here abound,
Obscene
Orontes,
diving under Ground,
Conveys his Wealth to
Tyber’s
hungry Shoars,
And fattens
Italy
with Foreign Whores:
Hither their crooked Harps and Customs come;
All find Receipt in Hospitable
Rome.
The Barbarous Harlots crowd the Publick Place:
Go Fools, and purchase an unclean Embrace;
The painted Mitre court, and the more painted Face.
Old
Romulus,
and Father
Mars
look down,
Your Herdsman Primitive, your homely Clown
Is turn’d a
Beau
in a loose tawdry Gown.
His once unkem‘d, and horrid Locks, behold
Stilling sweet Oyl; his Neck inchain’d with Gold:
Aping the Foreigners, in ev’ry Dress;
Which, bought at greater cost, becomes him less.
Mean time they wisely leave their Native Land,
From
Sicyon, Samos,
and from
Alaband,
And
Amydon,
to
Rome
they Swarm in Shoals:
So Sweet and Easie is the Gain from Fools.
Poor Refugies at first, they purchase here:
And, soon as Denizen‘d, they domineer:
Grow to the Great, a flatt’ring Servile Rout:
Work themselves inward, and their Patrons out.
Quick Witted, Brazen-fac‘d, with fluent Tongues,
Patient of Labours, and dissembling Wrongs
Riddle me this, and guess him if you can,
Who bears a Nation in a single Man?
A Cook, a Conjuror, a Rhetorician,
A Painter, Pedant, a Geometrician,
A Dancer on the Ropes, and a Physician.
All things the hungry
Greek
exactly knows:
And bid him go to Heav’n, to Heav’n he goes.
In short, no
Scythian, Moor,
or
Thracian
born,
But in that Town which Arms and Arts adorn.
Shall he be plac’d above me at the Board,
In Purple Cloath‘d, and lolling like a Lord?
Shall he before me sign, whom t’ other Day
A small-craft Vessel hither did convey;
Where, stow’d with Prunes, and rotten Figs, he lay?
How little is the Priviledge become
Of being born a Citizen of
Rome!
The
Greeks
get all by fulsom Flatteries;
A most peculiar Stroke they have at Lies.
They make a Wit of their Insipid Friend;
His blobber-Lips, and beetle-Brows commend;
His long Crane Neck, and narrow Shoulders Praise;
You’d think they were describing Hercules.
A creaking Voice for a clear Trebble goes;
Tho harsher than a Cock that Treads and Crows.
We can as grosly praise; but, to our Grief,
No Flatt’ry but from
Grecians
gains belief.
Besides these Qualities, we must agree
They Mimick better on the Stage than we
The Wife, the Whore, the Shepherdess they play,
In such a Free, and such a Graceful way,
That we believe a very Woman shown,
And fancy something underneath the Gown.
But not
Antiochus,
nor
Stratocles,
Our Ears and Ravish’d Eyes can only please:
The Nation is compos’d of such as these.
All
Greece
is one Commedian: Laugh, and they
Return it louder than an Ass can bray:
Grieve, and they Grieve; if you Weep silently,
There seems a silent Eccho in their Eye:
They cannot
Mourn
like you; but they can Cry.
Call for a Fire, their Winter Cloaths they take:
Begin but you to shiver, and they shake:
In Frost and Snow, if you complain of Heat,
They rub th’ unsweating Brow, and Swear they Sweat.
We live not on the Square with such as these:
Such are our Betters who can better please:
Who Day and Night are like a Looking-Glass;
Still ready to reflect their Patron’s Face.
The Panegyrick Hand, and lifted Eye,
Prepar’d for some new Piece of Flattery.
Ev’n Nastiness, Occasions will afford;
They praise a belching, or well-pissing Lord.
Besides, there’s nothing Sacred, nothing free
From bold Attempts of their rank Leachery
Through the whole Family their labours run;
The Daughter is debauch‘d, the Wife is won:
Nor scapes the Bridegroom, or the blooming Son.
If none they find for their lewd purpose fit,
They with the Walls and very Floors commit.
They search the Secrets of the House, and so
Are worshipp’d there, and fear’d for what they know.