Satires of Juvenal and Persius

As Peace is worshipped, and Faith, Victory, Virtue,
and Concord that chirps when the nest is greeted.
But when the highest official counts at the end of the year
what the sportula handout brings, how much it adds to his accounts,
what will the retainers do, for whom the toga comes from this, and the shoe,
and bread, and the smoke of the house? A very dense crowd
of a hundred quadrantes small copper coins seeks the litter, and the wife follows her husband,
languid or pregnant, and is carried around.
This one, already clever in the known art, seeks for the absent one,
showing an empty and closed chair on behalf of his wife.
"It is my Galla," he says; "let her go quickly, you are delaying.
Bring out your head, Galla. Do not bother her, she is resting."
The day itself is marked out by a beautiful order of things.
The sportula handout. Then the forum, and the law-skilled Apollo,
and the triumphal statues, among which some Egyptian
or other, I know not who, dared to have titles, and an arabarches a governor of the Arabs in Egypt,
at whose image it is not even permitted to urinate.
The old and weary clients leave the entrance halls,
and abandon their vows, although the hope for a dinner
is very long for a man; he must buy cabbage and firewood.
Meanwhile, the king of these men will devour the best of the woods and the sea,
and he will lie alone on the empty couches.
For from so many beautiful, wide, and ancient
circular tables, they eat up entire inheritances at a single meal.
There will be no parasite left, but who could endure these
filths of luxury? How great is the gluttony, which sets before itself
whole boars, an animal born for banquets?
Yet punishment is present when you take off your garments,
bloated, and carry a raw peacock into the baths;
from this come sudden deaths and an intestate old age.