Exul inopsque cades irata pulsus ab urbe.
  A beggared outcast of the city’s rage,
  Beside a foreign shore cut short thy age.

The young man will complain:  I have brought you a royal gift, O Apollo, and you proclaim for me a lot so unhappy?  Apollo will say to him:  Your gift is pleasing to me, and I will do that which you ask of me, I will tell you what will happen.  I know the future, but I do not bring it about.  Go make your complaint to Jupiter and the Parcae.  Sextus would be ridiculous if he continued thereafter to complain about Apollo.  Is not that true?  ANT.—­He will say:  I thank you, O holy Apollo, for not having repaid me with silence, for having revealed to me the Truth.  But whence comes it that Jupiter is so cruel towards me, that he prepares so hard a fate for an[368] innocent man, for a devout worshipper of the Gods?  LAUR.—­You innocent?  Apollo will say.  Know that you will be proud, that you will commit adulteries, that you will be a traitor to your country.  Could Sextus reply:  It is you who are the cause, O Apollo; you compel me to do it, by foreseeing it?  ANT.—­I admit that he would have taken leave of his senses if he were to make this reply.  LAUR.—­Therefore neither can the traitor Judas complain of God’s foreknowledge.  And there is the answer to your question.

410.  ANT.—­You have satisfied me beyond my hopes, you have done what Boethius was not able to do:  I shall be beholden to you all my life long.  LAUR.—­Yet let us carry our tale a little further.  Sextus will say:  No, Apollo, I will not do what you say.  ANT.—­What! the God will say, do you mean then that I am a liar?  I repeat to you once more, you will do all that I have just said.  LAUR.—­Sextus, mayhap, would pray the Gods to alter fate, to give him a better heart.  ANT.—­He would receive the answer: 

  Desine fata Deum flecti sperare precando.

He cannot cause divine foreknowledge to lie.  But what then will Sextus say?  Will he not break forth into complaints against the Gods?  Will he not say?  What?  I am then not free?  It is not in my power to follow virtue?  LAUR.—­Apollo will say to him perhaps:  Know, my poor Sextus, that the Gods make each one as he is.  Jupiter made the wolf ravening, the hare timid, the ass stupid, and the lion courageous.  He gave you a soul that is wicked and irreclaimable; you will act in conformity with your natural disposition, and Jupiter will treat you as your actions shall deserve; he has sworn it by the Styx.

411.  ANT.—­I confess to you, it seems to me that Apollo in excusing himself accuses Jupiter more than he accuses Sextus, and Sextus would answer him:  Jupiter therefore condemns in me his own crime; it is he who is the only guilty one.  He could have made me altogether different:  but, made as I am, I must act as he has willed.  Why then does he punish me?  Could I have resisted his will?  LAUR.—­I confess that I am brought to a pause here as you are.  I have made