Or Jove and Venus, with their friendly rays,
Will interpose, and bring us better days.
Beware the woman too, and shun her sight,
Who in these studies does herself delight,
By whom a greasy almanack is born,
With often handling, like chaft amber worn:
Not now consulting, but consulted, she
Of the twelve houses, and their lords, is free.
She, if the scheme a fatal journey show,
Stays safe at home, but lets her husband go.
If but a mile she travel out of town,
The planetary hour must first be known,
And lucky moment; if her eye but aches,
Or itches, its decumbiture she takes;
No nourishment receives in her disease,
But what the stars and Ptolemy * shall please.
The middle sort, who have not much to spare,
To chiromancers' cheaper art repair,
Who clap the pretty palm, to make the lines more fair.
But the rich matron, who has more to give,
Her answers from the Brachman† will receive;
Skilled in the globe and sphere, he gravely stands,
And, with his compass, measures seas and lands.
The poorest of the sex have still an itch
To know their fortunes, equal to the rich.
The dairy-maid enquires, if she shall take
The trusty tailor, and the cook forsake.
Yet these, though poor, the pain of childbed bear,
And without nurses their own infants rear:
You seldom hear of the rich mantle spread
For the babe, born in the great lady's bed.
A famous astrologer; an Egyptian.
The Brachmans are Indian philosophers, who remain to this day; and hold, after Pythagoras, the translation of souls from one body to another.
Such is the power of herbs, such arts they use
To make them barren, or their fruit to lose.
But thou, whatever slops she will have bought,
Be thankful, and supply the deadly draught;
Help her to make man-slaughter; let her bleed,
And never want for savin at her need.
For, if she holds till her nine months be run,
Thou may'st be father to an Ethiop's son;
A boy, who, ready gotten to thy hands,
By law is to inherit all thy lands;
One of that hue, that, should he cross the way,
His omen would discolour all the day.†
the foundling by, a race unknown, At doors exposed, whom matrons make their own; And into noble families advance
A nameless issue, the blind work of chance.
Indulgent fortune does her care employ,
And, smiling, broods upon the naked boy:
Her garment spreads, and laps him in the fold,
And covers with her wings from nightly cold:
Gives him her blessing, puts him in a way,
Sets up the farce, and laughs at her own play.
Him she promotes; she favours him alone,
And makes provision for him as her own.
The craving wife the force of magic tries,
And filters for the unable husband buys;
The potion works not on the part designed,
But turns his brains, and stupifies his mind.
The sotted moon-calf gapes, and, staring on,
Sees his own business by another done:
* Juvenal's meaning is, help her to any kind of slops which may cause her to miscarry, for fear she may be brought to bed of a black Moor, which thou, being her husband, art bound to father; and that bastard may, by law, inherit thy estate.
+ The Romans thought it ominous to see a black Moor in the morning, if he were the first man they met.
A long oblivion, a benumbing frost,
Constrains his head, and yesterday is lost.
Some nimbler juice would make him foam and rave,
Like that Cæsonia* to her Caius gave,
Who, plucking from the forehead of the foal
His mother's love,† infused it in the bowl;
The boiling blood ran hissing in his veins,
Till the mad vapour mounted to his brains.
The Thunderer was not half so much on fire,
When Juno's girdle kindled his desire.
What woman will not use the poisoning trade,
When Cæsar's wife the precedent has made?
Let Agrippina's mushroom + be forgot,
Given to a slavering, old, unuseful sot;
That only closed the driv'ling dotard's eyes,
And sent his godhead downward to the skies;
But this fierce potion calls for fire and sword,
Nor spares the commons, when it strikes the lord.
So many mischiefs were in one combined;
So much one single poisoner cost mankind.
If step-dames seek their sons-in-law to kill,
'Tis venial trespass-let them have their will;
But let the child, entrusted to the care
Of his own mother, of her bread beware;
Beware the food she reaches with her hand,-
The morsel is intended for thy land.
* Cæsonia, wife to Caius Caligula, the great tyrant. It is said she gave him a love-potion, which, flying up into his head, distracted him, and was the occasion of his committing so many acts of cruelty.
+ The hippomanes, a fleshy excrescence, which the ancients supposed grew in the forehead of a foal, and which the mare bites off when it is born. It was supposed to be a sovereign ingredient in philtres. EDITOR.
Agrippina was the mother of the tyrant Nero, who poisoned her husband Claudius, that Nero might succeed, who was her son, and not Britannicus, who was the son of Claudius, by a former wife.
Thy tutor be thy taster, ere thou eat;
There's poison in thy drink, and in thy meat.
You think this feigned; the satire, in a rage,
Struts in the buskins of the tragic stage;
Forgets his business is to laugh and bite,
And will of deaths and dire revenges write.
Would it were all a fable that you read!
But Drymon's wife* pleads guilty to the deed.
I, she confesses, in the fact was caught,
Two sons dispatching at one deadly draught.
What, two! two sons, thou viper, in one day!
Yes, seven, she cries, if seven were in my way.
Medea's legend is no more a lie,
Our age adds credit to antiquity.
Great ills, we grant, in former times did reign,
And murders then were done, but not for gain.
Less admiration to great crimes is due,
Which they through wrath, or through revenge pur
For, weak of reason, impotent of will,
The sex is hurried headlong into ill;
And like a cliff, from its foundations torn
By raging earthquakes, into seas is borne.
But those are fiends, who crimes from thought begin,
And, cool in mischief, meditate the sin.
They read the example of a pious wife,
Redeeming, with her own, her husband's life;
Yet if the laws did that exchange afford,
Would save their lap-dog sooner than their lord.
Where'er you walk the Belides† you meet,
And Clytemnestras grow in every street;
*The widow of Drymon poisoned her sons, that she might succeed to their estate: This was done in the poet's time, or just before it.
The Belides were fifty sisters, married to fifty young men, their cousin-germans; and killed them all on their wedding-night, excepting Hipermnestra, who saved her husband Linus.
But here's the difference,-Agamemnon's wife
Was a gross butcher with a bloody knife;
But murder now is to perfection grown,
And subtle poisons are employed alone;
Unless some antidote prevents their arts,
And lines with balsam all the nobler parts.
In such a case, reserved for such a need,
Rather than fail, the dagger does the deed.
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