Let the world cease to wonder at the births of creatures half human, half bestial, at monstrous babes that affright their own mothers, at the howling of wolves heard by night in the cities, at beasts that speak to their astonied herds, at stones falling like rain, at the blood-red threatening storm clouds, at wells of water changed to gore, at moons that clash in mid heaven and at twin suns. All portents pale before our eunuch consul. O shame to heaven and earth! Our cities behold an old woman decked in a consul’s robe who gives a woman’s name to the year.[84] Open the pages of the Cumaean Sibyl, ye pontifs; let wise Etrurian seers consult the lightning’s flash, and the soothsayer search out the awful portent hidden in the entrails. What new dread warning is this the gods give? Does Nile desert his bed and leaving Roman soil seek to mix his waters with those of the Red Sea? Does cleft Niphates[85] once more let through a host of eastern barbarians to ravage our lands? Does a pestilence threaten us? Or shall no harvest repay the farmer? What victim can expiate divine anger such as this? What offering appease the cruel altars? The consul’s [84] For the consulship of Eutropius see Introduction, p. xv. [85] A mountain in Armenia. * * * * * Page 140 consule lustrandi fasces ipsoque litandum prodigio; quodcumque parant hoc omine fata, Eutropius cervice luat sic omnia nobis.[86] Hoc regni, Fortuna, tenes? quaenam ista iocandi saevitia? humanis quantum bacchabere rebus? 25 si tibi servili placuit foedare curules crimine, procedat laxata compede consul, rupta Quirinales sumant ergastula cinctus; da saltem quemcumque virum. discrimina quaedam sunt famulis splendorque suus, maculamque minorem condicionis habet, domino qui vixerit uno. 31 si pelagi fluctus, Libyae si discis harenas, Eutropii numerabis eros. quot iura, quot ille mutavit tabulas vel quanta vocabula vertit! nudatus quotiens, medicum dum consulit emptor, 35 ne qua per occultum lateat iactura dolorem! omnes paenituit pretii venumque redibat, dum vendi potuit. postquam deforme cadaver mansit et in rugas totus defluxit aniles, iam specie doni certatim limine pellunt 40 et foedum ignaris properant obtrudere munus. tot translata iugis summisit colla, vetustum servitium semperque novum, nec destitit umquam, saepe tamen coepit. Cunabula prima cruentis debet suppliciis; rapitur castrandus ab ipso 45 [86] Birt begins the new paragraph at _sic_, printing a comma at _nobis_. Alternatively, read _volvis_ for _nobis_ (so Cuiacius’ codd.). * * * * * Page 141