Nor let these things be suspected by you, Corvinus. Catullus, for whose safe return I erect so many altars, has three little heirs. You may wait long enough for a man that would expend even a sick hen at the point of death for so unprofitable a friend. But even this is too great an outlay. Not even a quail will ever be sacrificed in behalf of one who is a father. If rich Gallita[804] and Paccius, who have no children, begin to feel the approach of fever, every temple-porch is covered with votive tablets,[805] affixed according to due custom. There are some who would even promise a hecatomb[806] of oxen. Since elephants are not to be bought here or in Latium, nor is there any where in our climate such a large beast generated; but, fetched from the dusky nation, they are fed in the Rutulian forests, and the field of Turnus, as the herd of Cæsar, prepared to serve no private individual, since their ancestors used to obey Tyrian Hannibal, and our own generals,[807] and the Molossian king, and to bear on their backs cohorts--no mean portion of the war--and a tower that went into battle. It is no fault, consequently, of Novius, or of Ister Pacuvius,[808] that that ivory is not led to the altars, and falls a sacred victim before the Lares of Gallita, worthy of such great gods, and those that court their favor! One of these two fellows, if you would give him license to perform the sacrifice, would vow the tallest or all the most beautiful persons among his flock of slaves, or place sacrificial fillets on his boys and the brows of his female slaves. And if he has any Iphigenia[809] at home of marriageable age, he will offer her at the altars, though he can not hope for the furtive substitution of the hind of the tragic poets. I commend my fellow-citizen, and do not compare a thousand[810] ships to a will; for if the sick man shall escape Libitina,[811] he will cancel his former will, entangled in the meshes of the act,[812] after a service so truly wonderful: and perhaps in one short line will give his all to Pacuvius as sole[813] heir. Proudly will he strut over his defeated rivals. You see, therefore, what a great recompense the slaughtered Mycenian maid earns. Long live Pacuvius, I pray, even to the full age of Nestor.[814] Let him own as much as ever Nero plundered,[815] let him pile his gold mountains high, and let him love no one,[816] and be loved by none. FOOTNOTES: [772] _Natali._ The birthday was sacred to the "Genius" to whom they offered wine, incense, and flowers: abstaining from "bloody" sacrifices, "ne die quâ ipsi lucem accepissent aliis demerent," Hor., ii., Ep. 144. "Floribus et vino Genium memorem brevis avi," Pers., ii., 3. "Funde merum Genio," Censorin., de D. N., 3. Virg., Ecl. iii., 76. Compare Hor., Od., IV., xi., where he celebrates the birthday of Mæcenas as "sanctior pœne _natali proprio_." Cf. Dennis's Etruria, vol. ii., p. 65.