Satires of Juvenal and Persius

of the city, and poets reciting in the month of August?
But when the whole household is packed into one carriage,
It stops at the old arches and the damp Porta Capena,
Here where Numa used to arrange meetings with his nightly mistress the nymph Egeria.
Now the grove of the sacred spring and the shrines are let out
to Jews, whose belongings are a basket and some hay.
For every tree is ordered to pay rent to the people,
and the forest begs, with the Muses cast out.
We descend into the valley of Egeria and the caves,
which are so unlike the real ones. How much more worthy would be
the spirit of the fountain, if the grass enclosed the waters
with a green margin, and marble did not violate the native tufa?
Here then, Umbritius says: "Since for honest arts
there is no place in the city, no rewards for labor,
my property is less today than it was yesterday, and the same tomorrow
will wear away some small part, we propose to go there
where Daedalus laid down his tired wings,
While my hair is turning gray, while my old age is in its prime and upright,
while there is still something left for Lachesis one of the Fates to spin, and I carry myself
on my own feet, with no staff supporting my right hand.
Let us yield our country. Let Arturius live there,
and Catulus; let those remain who turn black into white,
for whom it is easy to lease a temple, rivers, harbors,
to drain away filth, to carry a corpse to the funeral pyre,
and to offer their own heads for sale under the mistress's spear the sign of a public auction.
Formerly these were horn-blowers and perpetual companions
of the municipal arena, known throughout the towns for their cheeks puffed out by blowing horns,
now they put on shows, and with the thumb turned by the crowd
they kill whomever they please for popularity; then having returned
they lease out public latrines. And why not everything? Since they are"