De mercede

You must be content, how- “ever, for it would not even be possible for you to get away, now that you are in the paddock. So you take the bit with your eyes shut, and in the beginning you answer his touch readily, as he does not pull hard or spur sharply until you have imperceptibly grown quite used to him.

People on the outside envy you after that, seeing that you live within the pale and enter without let and have become a notable figure in the inner circle.

Slowly and gradually, therefore, as if you could then distinguish things for the first time in the indistinct light, you begin to realize that those golden hopes were nothing but gilded bubbles, while your labours are burdensome and genuine, inexorable and continuous. “What are they?” perhaps you will ask me: “J. do not see what there is in such posts that is laborious, nor can I imagine what those wearisome and insupportable things are that you spoke of.”[*](In chapter 13. ) Listen, then, my worthy friend, and do not simply try to find out whether there is any weariness im the thing, but give its baseness and humility and general slavishness more than incidental consideration in the hearing.

First of all, remember never again from that time forward to think yourself free or noble. All that— your pride of race, your freedom, your ancient lineage—you will leave outside the threshold, let me tell you, when you go in after having sold yourself into such service; for Freedom will refuse to enter with you when you go in for purposes so base and humble. So you will be a slave perforce, however distasteful you may find the name, and not the slave of one man but of many; and you will

Perhaps, however, you think it quite enough to establish your freedom that you are not the son of a Pyrrhias or a Zopyrion, and that you have not been sold in the market like a Bithynian by a loud-voiced auctioneer. But, my excellent friend, when the first of the month arrives and side by side with Pyrrhias and Zopyrion you stretch out your hand like the rest of the servants and take your earnings, whatever they are—that is sale! There was no need of an auctioneer in the case of a man who put himself up at auction and for a long time solicited a master.

Ah, scurvy outcast (that would be my language, above all to a self-styled philosopher), if a wrecker or a pirate had taken you at sea and were offering you for sale, would you not pity yourself for being ill-fated beyond your deserts; or if someone had laid hands upon you and were haling you off, saying that you were a slave, would you not invoke the law and make a great stir and be wrathful and shout ‘“Heavens and Earth!” at the top of your voice? Then just for a few obols, at that age when, even if you were a slave by birth, it would be high

Indeed, it would be lucky for you if the thing

You must therefore be seen with him always and never be missing; you must get up early to let yourself be noted in attendance, and you must not desert your post. Putting his hand upon your shoulder now and then, he talks nonsense at random,

For your own part, poor fellow, now you run at his side, and now you forge about at a foot’s pace, over many ups and downs (the city is like that, you know), until you are sweaty and out of breath, and then, while he is indoors talking to a friend whom he came to see, as you have no place to sit down, you stand up, and for lack of employment read the book with which you armed yourself.

When night overtakes you hungry and thirsty, after a wretched bath you go to your dinner at an unseasonable hour, in the very middle of the night; but you are no longer held in the same esteem and admiration by the company. If anyone arrives who is more of a novelty, for you it is “Get back!” In this way you are pushed off into the most unregarded corner and take your place merely to witness the dishes that are passed, gnawing the bones like a dog if they get as far as you, or regaling yourself with gratification, thanks to your hunger, on the tough mallow leaves with which the other food is garnished, if they should be disdained by those nearer the head of the table.

Moreover, you are not spared other forms of rudeness. You are the only one that does not have an egg. There is no necessity that you should always expect the same treatment as foreigners and strangers: that would be unreasonable! Your bird, too, is not like the others; your neighbour's is fat and plump, and yours is half a tiny chick, or a tough pigeon—out-and-out rudeness and contumely! Often, if there is a shortage when another guest appears of

You are annoyed, indeed, by many things, a great many, almost everything; most of all when your favour is rivalled by a cinaedus or a dancing-master or an Alexandrian dwarf who recites Ionics.[*](Anacreontics, Sotadeans, and in general, the “erotic ditties” mentioned below. ), How could you be on a par, though, with those who render these services to passion and carry notes about in their clothing ? So, couched in a far corner of the dining-room and shrinking out of sight for shame, you groan, naturally, and commiserate yourself and carp at Fortune for not besprinkling you with at least a few drops of the amenities. You would be glad, I think, to become a composer of

If a whispering servant accuse you of being the only one who did not praise the mistress’s page when he danced or played, there is no little risk in the thing. So you must raise your thirsty voice like a stranded frog, taking pains to be conspicuous among the claque and to lead the chorus; and often when the others are silent you must independently let drop a well-considered word of praise that will convey great flattery.

That a man who is famished, yes, and athirst, should be perfumed with myrrh and have a wreath on his head is really rather laughable, for then you are like the gravestone of an ancient corpse that is getting a feast to his memory. They drench the stones with myrrh and crown them with wreaths, and then they themselves enjoy the food and drink that has been prepared !

If the master is of a jealous disposition and has handsome sons or a young wife, and you are not wholly estranged from Aphrodite and the Graces,

. Then, after you have left the dinner-party, you get a little bit of sleep, but towards cock-crow you wake up and say: “Oh, how miserable and wretched Iam! To think what I left—the occupations of former days, the comrades, the easy life, the sleep limited only by my inclination, and the strolls in freedom—and what a pit I have impetuously flung myself into! Why, in heaven’s name? What does this splendid salary amount to? Was there no other way in which I could have earned more than this and could have kept my freedom and full independence? As the case stands now, I am pulled about like a lion leashed with a thread, as the saying is, up hill and down dale; and the most pitiful part of it all is that I do not know how to be a success and cannot be a favourite. I am an outsider in such matters and have not the knack of it, especially when I am put in comparison with men who have ‘made an art of the business. Consequently I am unentertaining and not a bit convivial; I cannot even raise a laugh. I am aware, too, that it often actually annoys him to look at me, above all when he

While you are still debating these matters the bell rings, and you must follow the same routine, go the rounds and stand up; but first you must rub your loins and knees with ointment if you wish to last the struggle out! Then comes a similar dinner, prolonged to the same hour. In your case the diet is in contrast to your former way of living; the sleeplessness, too, and the sweating and the weariness gradually undermine you, giving rise to consumption, pneumonia, indigestion, or that noble complaint, the gout. You stick it out, however, and often you ought to be abed, but this is not permitted. They think illness a pretext, and a way of shirking your duties. The general consequences are that you are always pale and look as if you were going to die any minute.

So it goes in the city. And if you have to go into the country, I say nothing of anything else, but it often rains; you are the last to get there—even in the matter of horses it was your luck to draw that kind !— and you wait about until for lack of accommodation they crowd you in with the cook or the mistress’s hairdresser without giving you even a generous supply of litter for a bed !

I make no bones of telling you a story that I was told by our friend Thesmopolis, the Stoic, of something that happened to him which was very comical, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the same thing may happen to someone else. He was in the household of a rich and self-indulgent woman who belonged to a distinguished family in the city. Having to go into the country one time, in the first place he underwent, he said, this highly ridiculous experience, that he, a philosopher, was given a favourite to sit by, one of those fellows who have their legs depilated and their beards shaved off ; the mistress held him in high honour, no doubt. He gave the fellow’s name; it was Dovey_ Now what a thing that was, to begin with, for a stern‘old man with a grey beard (you know what a long, venerable beard Thesmopolis used to have) to sit beside a fellow with rouged cheeks, underlined eyelids, an unsteady glance, and a skinny neck—no dove, by Zeus, but a plucked vulture! Indeed, had it not been for repeated entreaties, he would have worn a hair-net on his head. In other ways too Thesmopolis suffered numerous annoyances from him all the way, for he hummed and whistled and no doubt would even have danced in the carriage if Thesmopolis had not held him in check.

Then too, something else of a similar nature was required of him. The woman sent for him and said: “Thesmopolis, I am asking a great favour of you;

That is the way they make free with their dependants, yes, make game of them, gradually rendering them submissive to their effrontery. I know a sharp-

All this is not so bad, perhaps. But if Divesf himself has a turn for writing poetry or prose and recites his own compositions at dinner, then you must certainly split yourself applauding and flattering him and excogitating new styles of praise. Some of them wish to be admired for their beauty also, and they must hear themselves called an Adonis or a Hyacinthus, although sometimes they have a yard of nose. If you withhold your praise, off you go at once to the quarries of Dionysius because you are jealous and are plotting against your master. They must be philosophers and rhetoricians, too, and if they happen to commit a solecism, precisely on that account their language must seem full of the flavour of Attica and of Hymettus, and it must be the law to speak that way in future.

After all, one could perhaps put up with the conduct of the men. But the women—! That is another thing that the women are keen about—to have men of education living in their households on a salary

At last, after a long lapse of time, when the feast of Cronus[*](The Greek festival that corresponded to the Roman Saturnalia. ) or the Panathenaic festival comes, you are sent a beggarly scarf or a flimsy undergarment. Then by all means there must be a long and impressive procession. The first man, who has overheard his master still discussing the matter, immediately runs and tells you in advance, and goes away with a generous fee for his announcement, paid in advance. In the morning a baker’s dozen of them come bringing it, and each one tells you: “I talked about it a great deal!” “I jogged his memory!” “It was left to me, and I chose the finest one!’ So all of them depart with a tip, and even grumble that you did not give more.

As to your pay itself, it is a matter of two obols, or four, at a time, and when you ask for it you are a bore and a nuisance. So, in order to get it you

You are greatly envied, however, and perhaps some slanderous story or other gradually gets afoot by stealth and comes to a man who by now is glad to receive charges against you, for he sees that you are used up by your unbroken exertions and pay lame and exhausted court to him, and that the gout is growing upon you. To sum it up, after garnering all that was most profitable in you, after consuming the most fruitful years of your life and the greatest vigour of your body, after reducing you to a thing of _ rags and tatters, he is looking about for a rubbish-heap on which to cast you aside unceremoniously, and for another man to engage who can stand the work. Under the charge that you once made overtures to a page of his, or that, in spite of your age, you are trying to seduce an innocent girl, his wife's maid, or something else of that sort, you leave at night, hiding your face, bundled out neck and crop, destitute of everything and at the end of your tether, taking with you, in addition to the burden of your years, that excellent companion, gout. What you formerly knew you have forgotten in all these years, and you have made your belly bigger than a sack, an insatiable, inexorable curse. Your gullet, too, demands what it is used to, and dislikes to unlearn its lessons.

Nobody else would take you in, now that you have passed your prime and are like an old horse whose hide, even, is not as serviceable as it was. Besides, the scandal of your dismissal, exaggerated by conjecture, makes people think you an adulterer or poisoner or something of the kind. Your accuser is trustworthy even when he holds his tongue, while you are a Greek, and easy-going in your ways and prone to all sorts of wrong-doing. That is what they think of us all, very naturally. For I believe I have detected the reason for that opinion which they have of us. Many who have entered households, to make up for not knowing anything else that was useful, have professed to supply predictions, philtres, lovecharms, and incantations against enemies ; yet they assert they are educated, wrap themselves in the philosopher’s mantle, and wear beards that cannot lightly be sneered at. Naturally, therefore, they entertain the same suspicion about all of us on seeing that men whom they considered excellent are that sort, and above all observing their obsequiousness at dinners and in their other social relations, and their servile attitude toward gain.