The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) (49 page)

“Often have you heard me complain of the profuse expenses of the women—often of those of the men; and that not only of men in private stations, but of the magistrates: and that the state was endangered by two opposite vices, luxury and avarice; those pests, which have been the ruin of all great empires. These I dread the more, as the circumstances of the commonwealth grow daily more prosperous and happy; as the empire increases; as we have now passed over into Greece and Asia, places abounding with every kind of temptation that can inflame the passions; and as we have begun to handle even royal treasures: so much the more do I fear that these matters will bring us into captivity, rather than we them. Believe me, those statues from Syracuse were brought into this city with hostile effect. I already hear too many commending and admiring the decorations of Athens and Corinth, and ridiculing the earthen images of our Roman gods that stand on the fronts of their temples. For my part I prefer these gods—propitious as they are, and I hope will continue to be, if we allow them to remain in their own mansions. In the memory of our fathers, Pyrrhus, by his ambassador Cineas, made trial of the dispositions, not only of our men, but of our women also, by offers of presents: at that time the Oppian law, for restraining female luxury, had not been made; and yet not one woman accepted a present. What, think you, was the reason? That for which our ancestors made no provision by law on this subject: there was no luxury existing which needed to be restrained. As diseases must necessarily be known before their remedies, so passions come into being before the laws which prescribe limits to them. What called forth the Licinian law, restricting estates to five hundred acres, but the unbounded desire for enlarging estates? What the Cincian law, concerning gifts and presents, but that the plebians had become vassals and tributaries to the senate? It is not therefore in any degree surprising, that no want of the Oppian law, or of any other, to limit the expenses of the women, was felt at that time, when they refused to receive gold and purple that was thrown in their way, and offered to their acceptance. If Cineas were now to go round the city with his presents, he would find numbers of women standing in the public streets to receive them. There are some passions, the causes or motives of which I can no way account for. For that that should not be lawful for you which is permitted to another, may perhaps naturally excite some degree of shame or indignation; yet, when the dress of all is alike, why should any one of you fear, lest she should not be an object of observation? Of all kinds of shame, the worst, surely, is the being ashamed of frugality or of poverty; but the law relieves you with regard to both; since that which you have not it is unlawful for you to possess. This equalization, says the rich matron, is the very thing that I cannot endure. Why do not I make a figure, distinguished with gold and purple? Why is the poverty of others concealed under this cover of a law, so that it should be thought that, if the law permitted, they would have such things as they are not now able to procure? Romans, do you wish to excite among your wives an emulation of this sort, that the rich should wish to have what no other can have; and that the poor, lest they should be despised as such, should extend their expenses beyond their means? Be assured, that when a woman once begins to be ashamed of what she ought not to be ashamed of, she will not be ashamed of what she ought. She who can, will purchase out of her own purse; she who cannot, will ask her husband. Unhappy is the husband, both he who complies with the request, and he who does not; for what he will not give himself, he will see given by another. Now, they openly solicit favours from other women’s husbands; and, what is more, solicit a law and votes. From some they obtain them; although, with regard to yourself, your property, or your children, they would be inexorable. So soon as the law shall cease to limit the expenses of your wife, you yourself will never be able to do so. Do not suppose that the matter will hereafter be in the same state in which it was before the law was made on the subject. It is safer that a wicked man should even never be accused, than that he should be acquitted; and luxury, if it had never been meddled with, would be more tolerable than it will be, now, like a wild beast, irritated by having been chained, and then let loose. My opinion is, that the Oppian law ought on no account to be repealed. Whatever determination you may come to, I pray all the gods to prosper it.”

Book XXIV, Chapters 1-4

(Publius Ovidius Naso, 43? B.C.—17 A.D.)

 

When now Agenor had his daughter lost,
He sent his son to search on every coast,
And sternly bid him to his arms restore
The darling maid, or see his face no more,
But live in exile in a foreign clime;
Thus was the father pious to a crime.

The restless youth search’d all the world around;
But how can Jove in his amours be found?
When, tired at length with unsuccessful toil,
To shun his angry sire and native soil,
He goes a suppliant to the Delphic dame;
There asks the god what new appointed home
Should end his wand‘rings, and his toil relieve.
The Delphic oracles this answer give:

“Behold among the fields a lonely cow,
Unworn with yokes, unbroken to the plough:
Mark well the place where first she lays her down,
There measure out thy walls, and build thy town;
And from the guide Boeotia call the land,
In which the destined walls and town shall stand.”

No sooner had he left the dark abode,
Big with the promise of the Delphic god,
When in the fields the fatal cow he view‘d,
Nor gall’d with yokes, nor worn with servitude;
Her gently at a distance he pursued,
And, as he walk’d aloof, in silence pray’d
To the great power whose counsels he obey’d.
Her way through “Lowery Panope she took,
And now, Cephisus, cross’d thy silver brook,
When to the heavens her spacious front she raised,
And bellow’d thrice, then backward turning gazed
On those behind, till on the destined place
She stoop’d, and couch’d amid the rising grass.

Cadmus salutes the soil, and gladly hails
The new-found mountains and the nameless vales,
And thanks the gods, and turns about his eye
To see his new dominions round him lie;
Then sends his servants to a neighb‘ring grove
For living streams, a sacrifice to Jove.
O’er the wide plain there rose a shady wood
Of aged trees, in its dark bosom stood
A bushy thicket, pathless and unworn,
O‘errun with brambles, and perplex’d with thorn:
Amidst the brake a hollow den was found,
With rocks and shelving arches vaulted round.

Deep in the dreary den, conceal’d from day,
Sacred to Mars, a mighty dragon lay,
Bloated with poison to a monstrous size;
Fire broke in flashes when he glanced his eyes;
His towering crest was glorious to behold,
His shoulders and his sides were scaled with gold;
Three tongues he brandish’d when he charged his foes,
His teeth stood jaggy in three dreadful rows.
The Tyrians in the den for water sought,
And with their urns explored the hollow vault;
From side to side their empty urns rebound,
And rouse the sleeping serpent with the sound.
Straight he bestirs him, and is seen to rise,
And now with dreadful hissings fills the skies,
And darts his forky tongues, and rolls his glaring eyes.
The Tyrians drop their vessels in the fright,
All pale and trembling at the hideous sight.
Spire above spire uprear’d in air he stood,
And gazing round him overlook’d the wood,
Then floating on the ground in circles roll‘d,
Then leap’d upon them in a mighty fold.
Of such a bulk and such a monstrous size
The serpent in the polar circle lies,
That stretches over half the northern skies.
In vain the Tyrians on their arms rely,
In vain attempt to fight, in vain to fly;
All their endeavours and their hopes are vain;
Some die entangled in the winding train;
Some are devour’d, or feel a loathsome death,
Swoln up with blasts of pestilential breath.

And now the scorching sun was mounted high,
In all its lustre, to the noon-day sky,
When, anxious for his friends, and fill’d with cares,
To search the woods the impatient chief prepares.
A lion’s hide around his loins he wore,
The well-poised javelin to the field he bore,
Inured to blood, the far destroying dart,
And, the best weapon, an undaunted heart.

Soon as the youth approach’d the fatal place,
He saw his servants breathless on the grass,
The scaly foe amid their corpse he view‘d,
Basking at ease and feasting in their blood.

“Such friends,” he cries, “deserved a longer date;
But Cadmus will revenge, or share their fate.”
Then heaved a stone, and rising to the throw,
He sent it in a whirlwind at the foe;
A tower, assaulted by so rude a stroke,
With all its lofty battlements had shook;
But nothing here the unwieldy rock avails,
Rebounding harmless from the plaited scales,
That, firmly join‘d, preserved him from a wound,
With native armour crusted all around.
With more success the dart unerring flew,
Which at his back the raging warrior threw:
Amid the plaited scales it took its course,
And in the spinal marrow spent its force.
The monster hiss’d aloud, and raged in vain,
And writhed his body to and fro with pain;
He bit the dart, and wrench’d the wood away;
The point still buried in the marrow lay;
And now his rage, increasing with his pain,
Reddens his eyes and beats in every vein;
Churn’d in his teeth the foamy venom rose,
Whilst from his mouth a blast of vapours flows,
Such as the infernal Stygian waters cast;
The plants around him wither in the blast.
Now in a maze of rings he lies inroll’d;
Now all unravell’d and without a fold;
Now, like a torrent, with a mighty force
Bears down the forest in his boist’rous course.
Cadmus gave back, and on the lion’s spoil
Sustain’d the shock, then forced him to recoil:
The pointed javelin warded off his rage:
Mad with his pains, and furious to engage,
The serpent champs the steel, and bites the spear,
Till blood and venom all the point besmear.
But still the hurt he yet received was slight;

For, whilst the champion with redoubled might
Strikes home the javelin, his retiring foe
Shrinks from the wound, and disappoints the blow.

The dauntless hero still pursues his stroke,
And presses forward, till a knotty oak
Retards his foe, and stops him in the rear;
Full in his throat he plunged the fatal spear,
That in the extended neck a passage found,
And pierced the solid timber through the wound.
Fix’d to the reeling trunk, with many a stroke
Of his huge tail he lash’d the sturdy oak,
Till spent with toil, and lab‘ring hard for breath,
He now lay twisting in the pangs of death.
Cadmus beheld him wallow in a flood
Of swimming poison intermix’d with blood,
When suddenly a speech was heard from high
(The speech was heard, nor was the speaker nigh),
“Why dost thou thus with secret pleasure see,
Insulting man! what thou thyself shalt be?”
Astonish’d at the voice, he stood amazed,
And all around, with inward horror, gazed,
When Pallas swift descending from the skies,
Pallas, the guardian of the bold and wise,
Bids him plough up the field, and scatter round
The dragon’s teeth o’er all the furrow’d ground;
Then tells the youth how to his wondering eyes
Embattled armies from the field should rise.