Juvenal

Satire IV: Mock Epic; Crispinus and the Mullet -- Juvenal


Behold, Crispinus again! He’s someone I’ll often call on

To play a part, a monster without one redeeming virtue

To offset his faults, a weakling, strong only in lechery,

An adulterer, who rejects none but unmarried women.

What matter how extensive the porticoes are where he

Wears out his mules; how vast the groves where he’s borne

Beneath the shade; how many acres of palace he’s bought

Near the Forum? No miscreant’s happy, least of all a sinful

Seducer, who recently slept with a priestess in a headband;

And she now destined to be punished, by being buried alive.

So, on to his lighter sins: all the same, if another had done

The deed, he’d be convicted by the Censor, for lax morals,

For what’s normal in a Crispinus is criminal in another,

In a Titius or Seius. What can you do when the man himself

Is more dreadful and dire than any accusation you can bring?

He bought a red mullet, matched its weight in gold pieces,

Sixty, in fact, as those assert who’d make the gross, grosser.

I might praise his cunning plan, if with a gift so rare he stole

First place in the sealed will of some fond childless old man;

Or better still, sent it along to some high-ranking mistress,

Who rides along in that closed litter with the wide windows.

No way! It was for himself! Oh, we witness many things now,

The poor, miserly gourmet, Apicius, failed to enact. Did you,

Crispinus, clad in your native Egyptian papyrus dress, pay

As much, then, for fish-scales? Likely the fisherman could

Have been bought for less than the fish; land’s cheap too

In the provinces but fetches a whole lot more in Apulia.

Imagine what kind of feasts the Emperor himself guzzled

In those days, if so many silver coins, a tiny fraction,

A side-dish from a moderate repast, were belched forth

By a purple-clad clown attached to the Great Palace,

Now a great leader of horsemen, who used to shout

His wares, dealing in fellow catfish from a rotten haul!