change color at these false reproaches?  Whom does false honor delight, or lying calumny terrify, except the vicious and sickly-minded?  Who then is a good man?  He who observes the decrees of the senate, the laws and rules of justice; by whose arbitration many and important disputes are decided; by whose surety private property, and by whose testimony causes are safe.  Yet [perhaps] his own family and all the neighborhood observe this man, specious in a fair outside, [to be] polluted within.  If a slave should say to me, “I have not committed a robbery, nor run away:”  “You have your reward; you are not galled with the lash,” I reply.  “I have not killed any man:”  “You shall not [therefore] feed the carrion crows on the cross.”  I am a good man, and thrifty:  your Sabine friend denies, and contradicts the fact.  For the wary wolf dreads the pitfall, and the hawk the suspected snares, and the kite the concealed hook.  The good, [on the contrary,] hate to sin from the love of virtue; you will commit no crime merely for the fear of punishment.  Let there be a prospect of escaping, you will confound sacred and profane things together.  For, when from a thousand bushels of beans you filch one, the loss in that case to me is less, but not your villainy.  The honest man, whom every forum and every court of justice looks upon with reverence, whenever he makes an atonement to the gods with a wine or an ox; after he has pronounced in a clear distinguishable voice, “O father Janus, O Apollo;” moves his lips as one afraid of being heard; “O fair Laverna put it in my power to deceive; grant me the appearance of a just and upright man:  throw a cloud of night over my frauds.”  I do not see how a covetous man can be better, how more free than a slave, when he stoops down for the sake of a penny, stuck in the road [for sport].  For he who will be covetous, will also be anxious:  but he that lives in a state of anxiety, will never in my estimation be free.  He who is always in a hurry, and immersed in the study of augmenting his fortune, has lost the arms, and deserted the post of virtue.  Do not kill your captive, if you can sell him:  he will serve you advantageously:  let him, being inured to drudgery, feed [your cattle], and plow; let him go to sea, and winter in the midst of the waves; let him be of use to the market, and import corn and provisions.  A good and wise man will have courage to say, “Pentheus, king of Thebes, what indignities will you compel me to suffer and endure.  ‘I will take away your goods:’  my cattle, I suppose, my land, my movables and money:  you may take them.  ’I will confine you with handcuffs and fetters under a merciless jailer.’  The deity himself will discharge me, whenever I please.”  In my opinion, this is his meaning; I will die.  Death is the ultimate boundary of human matters.
       * * * * *

EPISTLE XVII.

TO SCAEVA.