I return to King.  After nothing could be settled betwixt them (for people among whom adverse war breaks out, are proportionably vexatious on the same account as they are brave.  Thus between Hector, the son of Priam, and the high-spirited Achilles, the rage was of so capital a nature, that only the final destruction [one of them] could determine it; on no other account, than that valor in each of them was consummate.  If discord sets two cowards to work; or if an engagement happens between two that are not of a match, as that of Diomed and the Lycian Glaucus; the worst man will walk off, [buying his peace] by voluntarily sending presents), when Brutus held as praetor the fertile Asia, this pair, Rupilius and Persius, encountered; in such a manner, that [the gladiators] Bacchius and Bithus were not better matched.  Impetuous they hurry to the cause, each of them a fine sight.

Persius opens his case; and is laughed at by all the assembly; he extols Brutus, and extols the guard; he styles Brutus the sun of Asia, and his attendants he styles salutary stars, all except King; that he [he says,] came like that dog, the constellation hateful to husbandman:  he poured along like a wintery flood, where the ax seldom comes.

Then, upon his running on in so smart and fluent a manner, the Praenestine [king] directs some witticisms squeezed from the vineyard, himself a hardy vine-dresser, never defeated, to whom the passenger had often been obliged to yield, bawling cuckoo with roaring voice.

But the Grecian Persius, as soon as he had been well sprinkled with Italian vinegar, bellows out:  O Brutus, by the great gods I conjure you, who are accustomed to take off kings, why do you not dispatch this King?  Believe me, this is a piece of work which of right belongs to you.

* * * * *

SATIRE VIII.

Priapus complains that the Esquilian mount is infested with the incantations of sorceresses.

Formerly I was the trunk of a wild fig-tree, an useless log:  when the artificer, in doubt whether he should make a stool or a Priapus of me, determined that I should be a god.  Henceforward I became a god, the greatest terror of thieves and birds:  for my right hand restrains thieves, and a bloody-looking pole stretched out from my frightful middle:  but a reed fixed upon the crown of my head terrifies the mischievous birds, and hinders them from settling in these new gardens.  Before this the fellow-slave bore dead corpses thrown out of their narrow cells to this place, in order to be deposited in paltry coffins.  This place stood a common sepulcher for the miserable mob, for the buffoon Pantelabus, and Nomentanus the rake.  Here a column assigned a thousand feet [of ground] in front, and three hundred toward the fields:  that the burial-place should not descend to the heirs of the estate.  Now one may live in the Esquiliae, [since it is made] a healthy place;