’Tis easy, while at meals you take your fill, To say to sickly people, Don’t be ill! Easy to blame bad boxing at a fight, But not so for oneself to do it right. Action is one thing, talk another quite. Your fortune differs as to bed and board; Your wife--if ugly--can good fare afford. DIPHILUS Learn, mortal, learn thy natural ills to bear: These, these alone thou _must_ endure; but spare A heavier load upon thyself to bring By burdens that from thine own follies spring. When I am asked by some rich man to dine, I mark not if the walls and roofs are fine, Nor if the vases such as Corinth prizes,-- But _solely_ how the smoke from cooking rises. If dense it runs up in a column straight, With fluttering heart the dinner-hour I wait. If, thin and scant, the smoke-puffs sideway steal, Then I forebode a thin and scanty meal. So plain is she, her father shuns the sight: She holds out bread; no dog will take a bite. So dark is she, that entering a room Night seems to follow her, and all is gloom. APOLLODORUS Sweet is a life apart from toil and care; Blessed lot, with others such repose to share! But if with beasts and apes you have to do, Why, _you_ must play the brute and monkey too! In youth I felt for the untimely doom Of offspring carried to an early tomb. But now I weep when old men’s death I see; That moved my pity; this comes home to _me_. Seek not, my son, an old man’s ways to spurn; To these in old age you yourself will turn. Herein we fathers lose a point you gain; When you of “father’s cruelty” complain, “_You_ once were young,” we tauntingly are told. We can’t retort, “My son, you once were old.” PART II ROME The Roman Juvenal observed, “All Greece is a comedian.” But he could not say the same of his own country. Though there was Roman Comedy and Roman Satire, the real and spontaneous spirit of fun was conspicuously lacking in the tastes and tendencies of the Romans. Glory is attributed to Greece and grandeur to Rome, and it may be the “sudden glory” of humor was an integral part of the Grecian nature. Yet we must not differentiate too carefully between the two, for the literature of Greece and Rome is so fused and intermingled that only a historian may take up the chronological tabulation. For our purpose it is well to let the literature of the two countries merge and continue the consideration of classic comedy without over cautious regard for dates. The Greek influence on literature of all ages will never disappear, but the Greek spirit of pure joy and gaiety will, probably never reappear.