"Well, the advice you have just given me to enable me to laugh to scorn my servants' tongues is very good, but too general. Now, what do you advise in my particular case, after the loss of my time and the disappointment of my hopes? For the short-lived bloom[540] and contracted span of a brief and wretched life is fast fleeting away! While we are drinking,[541] and calling for garlands, and perfumes, and women, old age steals on us unperceived! Do not be alarmed! So long as these seven hills stand fast you will never lack a pathic friend. Those effeminates, who scratch their heads with one finger,[542] will flock from all quarters to these hills, in carriages and ships. You have still another and a better hope in store. All you have to do is to chew eringo vigorously." "Tell this to luckier wights! My Clotho and Lachesis are well content, if I can earn a subsistence by my vile labors. Oh! ye small Lares,[543] that call me master, whom I supplicate with a fragment of frankincense, or meal, and a poor garland, when shall I secure[544] a sum that may insure my old age against the beggar's mat and crutch? Twenty thousand sesterces as interest, with good security for the principal; some small vessels of silver not enchased, but such as Fabricius,[545] if censor, would condemn; and two sturdy Mœsian slaves,[546] who, bearing me on their shoulders, might bid me stand without inconvenience in the noisy circus! Let me have besides an engraver stooping[547] over his work, and another who may with all speed paint[548] me a row of portraits. This is quite enough--since poor I ever shall be. A poor, wretched wish indeed! and yet I have no hope even of this! For when dame Fortune[549] is invoked for me, she stops her ears with wax fetched from that ship which escaped the Sirens' songs with its deaf rower." FOOTNOTES: [503] _Nævolus_ is mentioned repeatedly by Martial, and seems to have been a lawyer, i., Ep. 98; iii., Ep. 71 and 95; iv., Ep. 84: hence perhaps the allusion to Marsyas, whose statue stood in the Forum, opposite the Rostra, as a warning to the litigious. Cf. Hor., i., Sat. vi., 120. Xen., Anab., I., ii., 8. [504] _Rhodope._ Some well-known courtesan named after Æsop's fellow-slave in the house of Iadmon the Samian, afterward so well known in Egypt. Herod., ii., 134. Cf. Ælian., V. H., xiii., 33. [505] _Pollio._ Cf. xi., 43, "digito mendicat Pollio nudo." [506] _Vernam equitem._ The slaves born in the house were generally spoiled by indulgence; and they frequently got the nickname of Equites, out of petulant familiarity or fondness. [507] _Sylva._ "And every limb, once smooth'd with nicest care, Rank with neglect, a shrubbery of hair." Gifford. [508] _Deprendas._ "Sorrow nor joy can be disguised by art, Our foreheads blab the secrets of our heart." Dryden. [509] _Isis._ Cf. vi., 489, "Aut apud Isiacæ potius sacraria lenæ."