Juvenal and Persius Author:Juvenal Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SATIRE V. ARGUMENT. The poet dissuades Trebius, a parasite, from frequenting the tables of th great, where he was certain to be treated with the utmost sco... more »rn and contempt. Juvenal then proceeds to stigmatize the insolence and luxury of the nobility, their treatment of their poor dependents, whom they almost suifer to starve while they themselves fare deliciously. If you arc not yet ashamed of your purpose, and your mind is the same, That you can think it the highest happiness to live from another's trencher; If you can suffer those things, which neither Sarmentus at the unequal Tables of Caesar, nor vile Galba could have borne, I should be afraid to believe you as a witness, tho' upon oath. 1 know nothing more frugal than the belly: yet suppose even that ' 6 To have failed, which suffices for an empty stomach, Is there no hole vacant ? no where a bridge ? and part of a rug Shorter by the half? is the injury of a supper of so great value? Is hunger so craving, when you might, more honestly, there Both tremble, and gnaw the filth of dogs'-meat? n Fix in the first place, that you bidden to sit down at table, Receive a solid reward of old services: Food is the fruit of great friendship: this the great man reckons, And tho' rare, yet he reckons it. Therefore if, after two 15 Months, he likes to invite a neglected client, Lest the third pillow should be idle on an empty bed, " Let us be together," says he.—It is the sum of your wishes— what more Do you seek ? Trebius has that, for which he ought to break His sleep, and leave loose his shoe-ties; solicitous lest 20 The whole saluting crowd should have finished the circle, The stars dubious, or at that time, in which the Cold wains of slow Bootes turn themselves round. Yet, what sort of a supper ...« less