No respite yet; they leisurely hum o'er

The numerous items of the day before,

And bid him still lay on; till, faint with toil,

He drops the scourge; when, with a rancorous smile,

Begone," they thunder, in a horrid tone,

"Now your accounts are settled, rogues, begone!"
But worse remains; for, should she wish to dress
With more than common care, and the time press,
(Whether th' adulterer for her coming wait
In Isis' fane, to bawdry consecrate,

Or in Lucullus' walks,) the house appears
Like Phalaris' court, all bustle, gloom, and tears.
The wretched Psecas, for the whip prepar'd,
Her locks dishevell'd, and her shoulders bar'd,
Attempts her hair: fire flashes from her eyes,
And, "strumpet, why this curl so high?" she cries.
Instant the lash, without remorse, is plied,
And the blood stains her bosom, back, and side.
But why this fury? Is the girl to blame,

If your own looks displease you? shame, O shame!—

But now another on the left, prepares

To open, and arrange the straggling hairs

In ringlet's trim; meanwhile the council meet;

And first the nurse, a personage discreet,

Late from the toilet to the wheel remov'd,

(Th' effect of time,) yet still of taste approv'd,
Gives her opinion; then the rest debate,

In turn, as age, or practice gives them weight.
So warm they grow, and so much pains they take,
You'd think her honour, or her life at stake.

So high they build her head, such tiers on tiers,
With wary hands they pile, that she appears

VER. 749. So high they build her head, &c.] Synesius, who lived in the fourth century, describes a bride as walking about like Cybele, with turrets on her head. Who instigated the women to follow so absurd a fashion in this good man's time, I cannot tell; but about two centuries before, the turpitude of it was ascribed to the devil. "He" says one of the fathers, "first introduced it to give the lie to our Saviour, who hath said, no one can add one cubit to his stature."-An idea which proves (and which, indeed, was my sole reason for producing it) the preposterous excess to which this custom was carried.

Juvenal adds, that she appeared in front like Andromache. Tradition represents this lady (I suppose because she was the wife of a hero) as very tall. Dares Phrygius (aut quisquis ille fuit) calls her longam, Ovid, longissimam ; and in another place he says, "that though every body else thought her too strapping a dame, spatiosior æquo, Hector himself was perfectly satisfied with her," which I am very glad to hear.

I have thrown this passage out of the text, not so much on account of its singular clumsiness, as of my utter inability to make any tolerable sense of it. Holyday satisfied himself with rendering it in this manner:

Andromache before ;-and what behind?
A dwarf, a creature of a different kind.-
Meanwhile engross'd by these important cares,
She thinks not on her lord's distrest affairs,
Scarce on himself; but leads a separate life,
As if she were his neighbour, not his wife;
Or, but in this, that all he loves she hates,
Destroys his peace, and squanders his estates.
Room for Bellona's frantic votaries! room
For Cybele's mad enthusiasts! lo, they come!

The other translators have, I think, evaded the difficulty. If it be at all intelligible, it may be something in this way: though, even thus, the drift of the author is not very apparent:

Nay, if unbuskin'd, she scarce match in size

A Pygmy virgin, and must lightly rise

On tip-toe for a kiss; there's some excuse,

If every art to aid her height, she use.

VER. 759. Room for Bellona's frantic votaries! &c.] We come now to one of the grand divisions of this Satire, and, as it seems to me, the most curious. How a late translator could call it "dull and tedious," I cannot conceive; since the very reason he gives for his assertion-" that the practices here mentioned are now no where to be met with"-evidently tends to render it peculiarly interesting. Whatever may be thought of this, however, it must have appeared of no little importance to Juvenal, since he has laboured it with uncommon care: nor is there any part of his works in which his genius is more conspicuous.

A lusty semivir, whose part obscene

A broken shell has whipp'd off smooth and clean,
A raw-bon'd, turban'd priest, whom the whole choir

Of curtail'd priestlings reverence and admire,
Enters, with his wild rout; and bids the fair
Of autumn, and its sultry blasts, beware,
Unless she lustrate with an hundred eggs
Her houshold straight :-them impudently begs
Her cast-off clothes, that every ill they fear
May enter them, and expiate all the year!
But lo! another tribe: at whose command,
See her, in winter, near the Tiber stand,

Of Cybele and her frantic votaries I have already spoken. (Sat. 11. v. 162.) Bellona's were not a whit more sane. They ran up and down, lancing their arms with sharp knives, upon her festival, which was kept on the twenty-third, or twenty-fourth of March, and which, in allusion to those horrid rites, was sometimes called the DAY OF BLOOD.

VER. 761. A lusty semivir, &c.] Lusty (ingens) is not an idle epithet; for these priests of Cybele seem to have been creatures of an extraordinary size. I suppose their bulk was increased by the operation they underwent; but I do not know that it was so. Persius calls them grandes-this, a late commentator says, must be applied to the mind, and rendered stupid. Must it so then both Juvenal and Persius have chosen the wrong words; since, whatever these people might be, they were certainly not stupid. The truth is, that grandis, like ingens, must be applied to the body, and in its customary sense; as a very little acquaintance with the subject, would have sufficed to shew.

VER. 771. But lo! another tribe, &c.] absurd and contemptible ceremonies, are humour.

These are the priests of Isis, whose described with admirable spirit and

Break the thick ice, and, ere the sun appears,
Plunge in the crashing eddy to the ears,

It is not easy to say by what criterion the Romans judged of the admissibility of foreign divinities into their temples. Cybele, with all her train of wild and furious enthusiasts, found an easy admittance; while Isis and Osiris, deities not more detestable, were long opposed, and still longer regarded with distrust and aversion.

Of a truth, however, this was confined to the men: the women seem to have found something peculiarly seducing in the worship of Isis, and to have been from the first, her warmest devotees.

Whether the envy of the priests of Cybele, and other exotic divinities, was excited by this marked predilection, or whether the attendance on her rites was made (as it certainly was in after times) a cloak for intrigue, I do not know; but in the consulship of Piso and Gabinius, a furious prosecution was raised against her; and she was banished, with all her ridiculous mummery, from the territories of the republic. Some years afterwards, however, her worship was re-established when Tiberius, on account of an impious farce which was played in one of her temples, (see the story in Joseph. Antiquit. lib. xvIII) rased it to the ground, hanged or crucified the priests, and flung the statue of the goddess into the Tiber. Again the temple was rebuilt, again destroyed by a decree of the senate, and again, and again reconstructed, till the vigilance of the government was finally remitted, or its obstinacy overcome. It was then, that they rose on all sides, and became (what too many of the Roman temples were) the most favoured spots for forming assignations.

Whenever Juvenal has occasion to mention these Ægyptian divinities, he does it with a contemptuous sneer; but in this, he is not singular; since almost every ancient writer on the subject, does the same. Lucan conveys a bitter reproach to his countrymen for their partiality to them, in a pathetic and beautiful apostrophe to Ægypt, on the murder of Pompey. Lib. v111. 831.