Yet Nature[917] ever reverts to her depraved courses, fixed and immutable. For who ever prescribed to himself a limit to his sins? or ever recovered the blush[918] of ingenuous shame once banished from his brow now hardened? What mortal man is there whom you ever saw contented with a single crime? This false friend of ours will get his foot entangled in the noose, and endure the hook of the gloomy dungeon; or some crag[919] in the Ægean Sea, or the rocks that swarm with exiles of rank. You will exult in the bitter punishment of the hated name; and at length with joy confess[920] that no one of the gods is either deaf or a Tiresias.[921] FOOTNOTES: [817] _Displicet._ "To none their crime the wished-for pleasure yields: 'Tis the first scourge that angry justice wields." Badham. [818] _Ultio._ "Avenging conscience first the sword shall draw, And self-conviction baffle quibbling law." Hodgson. [819] _Urna._ From the "Judices Selecti" (a kind of jurymen chosen annually for the purpose), the Prætor Urbanus, who sat as chief judge, chose by lot about fifty to act as his assessors. To each of these were given three tablets: one inscribed with the letter A. for "absolvo," one with the letter C. for "condemno," and the third with the letters N. L. for "non liquet," i. e., "not proven." After the case had been heard and the judices had consulted together privately, they returned into court, and each judex dropped one of these tablets into an urn provided for the purpose, which was afterward brought to the prætor, who counted the number and gave sentence according to the majority of votes. In all these various steps, there was plenty of opportunity for the "gratia" of a corrupt prætor to influence the "fallax urna." [820] _Calvinus._ Martial mentions an indifferent poet of the name of Calvinus Umber, vii., Ep. 90. [821] _Acervo._ "One that from casual heaps without design Fortune drew forth, and bade the lot be thine." Badh. [822] _Fonteio consule._ Clinton (F. R., A.D. 118) considers that the consulship meant is that of L. Fonteius Capito, A.D. 59, which would bring the reference in this Satire to A.D. 119, the third year of Hadrian. There was also a Fonteius Capito consul with Junius Rufus, A.D. 67, and another, A.D. 11. «The Fonteius Capito mentioned Hor., i., Sat. v., 32, is of course far too early.» [823] _Proficis._ "Say, hast thou naught imbibed, no maxims sage, From the long use of profitable age?" Hodgson. [824] _Vitæ._ So Milton. "To know That which before us lies _in daily life_, Is the prime wisdom." [825] _Jactare jugum._ A metaphor from restive oxen. Cf. vi., 208, "Summitte caput cervice paratâ Ferre jugum." Æsch., Persæ, 190, _seq._ "And happy those whom life itself can train To bear with dignity life's various pain." Badham.