De mercede

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.