two soldiers) and directed them to go directly to him, to feign conviction of his identity, to present him with money, to promise to be faithful to him and hazard everything for him. They executed these orders, and afterwards discovering that at night he was without guards, they took a band of men chosen for the purpose, and carried him to the palace, gagged and bound. To Tiberius, when he asked him "How he was become Agrippa?" he is said to have answered "Just as you became Cæsar." He could not be induced to discover his accomplices; neither dared Tiberius venture to execute him publicly, but ordered him to be dispatched in a secret part of the palace, and his body to be carried away privately; and, though many of the prince's household, many knights and senators, were said to have supported him with money, and assisted him with their counsels, no inquiry followed.

FROM JUVENAL'S TENTH SATIRE.

TRANSLATED BY JOHN DRYDEN.

[DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS, the most powerful satirical poet of the world, was born about A.D. 40, and died at above eighty. He was a rhetorician and lawyer, and poured out in his later years, when he could do so in safety after Domitian's death in A.D. 96, the fury which the shameless social corruption and political profligacy and barbarity of his time excited in him.]

Look round the habitable world, how few
Know their own good; or, knowing it, pursue.
How void of reason are our hopes and fears!
What in the conduct of our life appears
So well designed, so luckily begun,

But, when we have our wish, we wish undone ?
Whole houses, of their whole desires possest,
Are often ruined, at their own request.
In wars, and peace, things hurtful we require,
When made obnoxious to our own desire.

With laurels some have fatally been crowned;
Some, who the depths of eloquence have found,
In that unnavigable stream were drowned.

The brawny fool, who did his vigor boast,
In that presuming confidence was lost:
But more have been by avarice opprest,
And heaps of money crowded in the chest;

Unwieldy sums of wealth, which higher mount
Than files of marshaled figures can account.
To which the stores of Croesus, in the scale,
Would look like little dolphins, when they sail
In the vast shadow of the British whale.

For this, in Nero's arbitrary time,

When virtue was a guilt, and wealth a crime,
A troop of cutthroat guards were sent to seize
The rich men's goods, and gut their palaces:
The mob, commissioned by the government,
Are seldom to an empty garret sent.
The fearful passenger, who travels late,
Charged with the carriage of a paltry plate,
Shakes at the moonshine shadow of a rush,
And sees a redcoat rise from every bush:
The beggar sings, ev'n when he sees the place
Beset with thieves, and never mends his pace.

Of all the vows, the first and chief request
Of each is to be richer than the rest:

And yet no doubts the poor man's draught control,
He dreads no poison in his homely bowl;
Then fear the deadly drug, when gems divine
Enchase the cup and sparkle in the wine.

Will you not now the pair of sages praise,
Who the same end pursued, by several ways?
One pitied, one contemned, the woeful times;
One laughed at follies, one lamented crimes:
Laughter is easy; but the wonder lies,
What store of brine supplied the weeper's eyes.
Democritus could feed his spleen, and shake
His sides and shoulders till he felt them ache:
Though in his country town no lictors were,
Nor rods, nor ax, nor tribune, did appear,
Nor all the foppish gravity of show,
Which cunning magistrates on crowds bestow.
What had he done, had he beheld, on high,
Our pretor seated in mock majesty;
His chariot rolling o'er the dusty place,
While, with dumb pride, and a set formal face,
He moves, in the dull ceremonial track,
With Jove's embroidered coat upon his back:
A suit of hangings had not more opprest
His shoulders than that long, laborious vest;
A heavy gewgaw (called a crown) that spread
About his temples drowned his narrow head,

And would have crushed it with the massy freight,
But that a sweating slave sustained the weight:
A slave in the same chariot seen to ride,
To mortify the mighty madman's pride.
And now th' imperial eagle, raised on high,
With golden beak (the mark of majesty),
Trumpets before, and on the left and right,
A cavalcade of nobles, all in white;

In their own natures false and flattering tribes,
But made his friends by places and by bribes.
In his own age, Democritus could find
Sufficient cause to laugh at humankind:
Learn from so great a wit; a land of bogs

With ditches fenced, a heaven made fat with fogs,
May form a spirit fit to sway the state,

And make the neighboring monarchs fear their fate.
He laughs at all the vulgar cares and fears,
At their vain triumphs and their vainer tears;
An equal temper in his mind he found,

When Fortune flattered him and when she frowned. "Tis plain, from hence, that what our vows request Are hurtful things, or useless at the best.

Some ask for envied power; which public hate Pursues, and hurries headlong to their fate: Down go the titles; and the statue crowned Is by base hands in the next river drowned. The guiltless horses, and the chariot wheel, The same effects of vulgar fury feel: The smith prepares his hammer for the stroke, While the lunged bellows hissing fire provoke; Sejanus, almost first of Roman names, The great Sejanus crackles in the flames: Formed in the forge, the pliant brass is laid On anvils; and of head and limbs are made, Pans, cans, and jordans, a whole kitchen trade.

Adorn your doors with laurels; and a bull, Milk-white, and large, lead to the Capitol; Sejanus with a rope is dragged along, The sport and laughter of the giddy throng! Good Lord, they cry, what Ethiop lips he has, How foul a snout, and what a hanging face! By heaven, I never could endure his sight; But say, how came his monstrous crimes to light? What is the charge, and who the evidence (The savior of the nation and the prince)?

Nothing of this; but our old Cæsar sent

A noisy letter to his parliament:

Nay, sirs, if Cæsar writ, I ask no more,
He's guilty; and the question's out of door.
How goes the mob? (for that's a mighty thing,)
When the king's trump, the mob are for the king:
They follow fortune, and the common cry
Is still against the rogue condemned to die.

But the same very mob, that rascal crowd,
Had cried Sejanus, with a shout as loud;
Had his designs (by fortune's favor blest)
Succeeded, and the prince's age opprest.

But long, long since, the times have changed their face,
The people grown degenerate and base:

Not suffered now the freedom of their choice,
To make their magistrates, and sell their voice.
Our wise forefathers, great by sea and land,
Had once the power and absolute command;
All offices of trust, themselves disposed;

Raised whom they pleased, and whom they pleased
deposed.

But we, who give our native rights away,

And our enslaved posterity betray,

Are now reduced to beg an alms, and go

On holidays to see a puppet show.

There was a damned design, cries one, no doubt;

For warrants are already issued out:

I met Brutidius in a mortal fright;

He's dipt for certain, and plays least in sight.

I fear the rage of our offended prince,

Who thinks the senate slack in his defense!
Come, let us haste, our loyal zeal to show,
And spurn the wretched corpse of Cæsar's foe;
But let our slaves be present there, lest they
Accuse their masters, and for gain betray.
Such were the whispers of those jealous times,
About Sejanus' punishment and crimes.

Now tell me truly, wouldst thou change thy fate
To be, like him, first minister of state?
To have thy levees crowded with resort,
Of a depending, gaping, servile court:
Dispose all honors of the sword and gown,
Grace with a nod, and ruin with a frown:
To hold thy prince in pupilage, and sway
That monarch, whom the mastered world obey?

While he, intent on secret lust alone,
Lives to himself, abandoning the throne;
Cooped in a narrow isle, observing dreams
With flattering wizards and erecting schemes !

I well believe, thou wouldst be great as he;
For every man's a fool to that degree:

All wish the dire prerogative to kill;

Ev'n they would have the power, who want the will:
But wouldst thou have thy wishes understood,

To take the bad together with the good?
Wouldst thou not rather choose a small renown,
To be the mayor of some poor paltry town,
Bigly to look, and barbarously to speak;

To pound false weights, and scanty measures break?
Then, grant we that Sejanus went astray

In every wish, and knew not how to pray:
For he who grasped the world's exhausted store
Yet never had enough, but wished for more,
Raised a top-heavy tower, of monstrous height,
Which, moldering, crushed him underneath the weight.
What did the mighty Pompey's fall beget?

It ruined him, who, greater than the great,
The stubborn pride of Roman nobles broke,
And bent their haughty necks beneath his yoke:
What else but his immoderate lust of power,
Prayers made and granted in a luckless hour?
For few usurpers to the shades descend
By a dry death, or with a quiet end.

The boy, who scarce has paid his entrance down

To his proud pedant, or declined a noun,

(So small an elf, that when the days are foul,
He and his satchel must be borne to school,)
Yet prays, and hopes, and aims at nothing less,
To prove a Tully, or Demosthenes:

But both those orators, so much renowned,
In their own depths of eloquence were drowned;
The hand and head were never lost, of those
Who dealt in doggerel or who punned in prose.

"Fortune foretuned the dying notes of Rome,
Till I, thy consul sole, consoled thy doom:"
His fate had crept below the lifted swords,
Had all his malice been to murder words.
I rather would be Mævius, thrash for rhymes
Like his the scorn and scandal of the times,
Than that Philippic fatally divine,