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--- home:texts_and_library:dialogues:saturnalian-letters [2019/07/06 23:36] – created frank
+++ home:texts_and_library:dialogues:saturnalian-letters [2019/07/06 23:38] (current) – frank
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-I have written to you before telling you of my condition, how poverty was likely to exclude me from the festival you have proclaimed. I remember observing how unreasonable it was that some of us should be in the lap of wealth and luxury, and never give a share of their good things to the poor, while others are dying of hunger with your holy season just upon them. But as you did not answer, I thought I might as well refresh  your memory. Dear good Cronus, you ought really to remove this inequality and pool all the good things before telling us to make merry. The world is peopled with camels and ants now, nothing between the two. Or, to put it another way, kindly imagine an actor, with one foot mounted on the tragic stilt and the other bare; if he walks like that, he must be a giant or a dwarf according to the leg he stands on; our lives are about as equal as his heights. Those who are taken on by manager Fortune and supplied with stilts come the hero over us, while the rest pad it on the ground, though you may take my word for it we could rant and stalk with the best of them if we were given the same chance.
+I have written to you before telling you of my condition, how poverty was likely to exclude me from the festival you have proclaimed. I remember observing how unreasonable it was that some of us should be in the lap of wealth and luxury, and never give a share of their good things to the poor, while others are dying of hunger with your holy season just upon them. But as you did not answer, I thought I might as well refresh your memory. Dear good Cronus, you ought really to remove this inequality and pool all the good things before telling us to make merry. The world is peopled with camels and ants now, nothing between the two. Or, to put it another way, kindly imagine an actor, with one foot mounted on the tragic stilt and the other bare; if he walks like that, he must be a giant or a dwarf according to the leg he stands on; our lives are about as equal as his heights. Those who are taken on by manager Fortune and supplied with stilts come the hero over us, while the rest pad it on the ground, though you may take my word for it we could rant and stalk with the best of them if we were given the same chance.
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-Further let them entertain us by fours and fives, and not as they now do, but more on principles of equality; let us all share alike. The way now is for one to gorge himself on some dainty, keeping the servant waiting about him till he is pleased to have done; but when it reaches us, as we are in the act of helping ourselves it is whisked off, and we have but that fleeting glimpse of the entrÃ©e or fag-end of a sweet. Or in comes a sucking-pig; half of it, including the head, falls to the host; the rest of us share the bones, slightly disguised. And pray charge the butlers not to make us call unto seven times, but bring us our wine when we ask for it first; and let it be a full-sized cup and a bumper, as it is for their masters. And the same wine, please, for every one at table; where is the legal authority for my host's growing mellow on the choicest bouquet while my stomach is turned with mere must?
+Further let them entertain us by fours and fives, and not as they now do, but more on principles of equality; let us all share alike. The way now is for one to gorge himself on some dainty, keeping the servant waiting about him till he is pleased to have done; but when it reaches us, as we are in the act of helping ourselves it is whisked off, and we have but that fleeting glimpse of the entrÃ©e or fag-end of a sweet. Or in comes a sucking-pig; half of it, including the head, falls to the host; the rest of us share the bones, slightly disguised. And pray charge the butlers not to make us call unto seven times, but bring us our wine when we ask for it first; and let it be a full-sized cup and a bumper, as it is for their masters. And the same wine, please, for everyone at table; where is the legal authority for my host's growing mellow on the choicest bouquet while my stomach is turned with mere must?
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-These things if you correct and reform, you will have made life life, and your feast a feast. If not we will leave the feasting to them, and just kneel down and pray that as they come from the bath the slave may knock down and spill their wine, the cook smoke their sauce and absent-mindedly pour the pea-soup over the caviare, the dog steal in while the scullions are busy and make away with the whole of the sausage and most of the pastry. Boar and buck and sucking-pigs, may they rival in their roasting Homer's oxen of the Sun! only let them not  confine themselves to crawling [[#fn11|<sup>1</sup>]], but jump up and make off to the mountains with their spits sticking in them! and may the fat fowls, all plucked and trussed, fly far away and rob them of their unsociable delights!
+These things if you correct and reform, you will have made life life, and your feast a feast. If not we will leave the feasting to them, and just kneel down and pray that as they come from the bath the slave may knock down and spill their wine, the cook smoke their sauce and absent-mindedly pour the pea-soup over the caviare, the dog steal in while the scullions are busy and make away with the whole of the sausage and most of the pastry. Boar and buck and sucking-pigs, may they rival in their roasting Homer's oxen of the Sun! only let them not confine themselves to crawling, but jump up and make off to the mountains with their spits sticking in them! and may the fat fowls, all plucked and trussed, fly far away and rob them of their unsociable delights!
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-But we can touch them more closely than that. May Indian gold-ants [[#fn12|<sup>2</sup>]] come by night, unearth their hoards and convey them to their own state treasury! May their wardrobe-keepers be negligent, and our good friends the mice make sieve-work of their raiment, fit for nothing but tunny-nets! May every pretty curled minion, every Hyacinth and Achilles and Narcissus they keep, turn bald as he hands the cup! let his hair fall off and his chin grow bristly, till he is like the peak-bearded fellows on the comic stage, hairy and prickly on cheek and temple, and on the top smooth and bare! These are specimens of the petitions we will send up, if they will not moderate their selfishness, acknowledge themselves trustees for the public, and let us have our fair share.
+But we can touch them more closely than that. May Indian gold-ants come by night, unearth their hoards and convey them to their own state treasury! May their wardrobe-keepers be negligent, and our good friends the mice make sieve-work of their raiment, fit for nothing but tunny-nets! May every pretty curled minion, every Hyacinth and Achilles and Narcissus they keep, turn bald as he hands the cup! let his hair fall off and his chin grow bristly, till he is like the peak-bearded fellows on the comic stage, hairy and prickly on cheek and temple, and on the top smooth and bare! These are specimens of the petitions we will send up, if they will not moderate their selfishness, acknowledge themselves trustees for the public, and let us have our fair share.
-[[#nr12|120:1]] Homer, //Od//. xii. 395. Odysseus's crew had killed and begun to cook the oxen of the Sun. 'And soon thereafter the Gods chewed forth signs and wonders to my company. The skins were creeping, and the flesh bellowing upon the spits, both the roast and raw, and there was a sound as of the voice of kine.'--//Butcher and Lang//.
-[[#nr13|120:2]] Herodotus, iii. 102. 'And in this desert and sandy tract' (in North India) 'are produced ants, which are in size smaller than dogs but larger than foxes. . . These ants there make their dwelling under ground and carry up the sand just in the same manner as the ants found in the land of the Hellenes . . . and the sand which is brought up contains gold.'--//Macaulay's translation//.
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-I lately received a letter from the poor, complaining that you give them no share of your prosperity. They petitioned me in general terms to institute community of goods and let each have his part: it was only right that equality should be established, instead of one's having a superfluity while another was cut off from pleasure altogether. I told them that had better be left to Zeus; but their particular festival grievances I considered to belong to my own jurisdiction, and so I undertook to write to you. These demands of theirs are moderate enough, it seems to me. How can we possibly keep the feast (they ask), when we are numb with frost and pinched with hunger? if I meant them to participate, I must compel you to bestow on them any clothes that you do not require, or find too heavy for your own use, and also to vouchsafe them just a slight sprinkling of gold. If you do this, they engage not to dispute your right to your property any further in the court of Zeus. Otherwise they will demand redistribution the next time he takes his seat  upon the bench. Well, this is no heavy call, considering the vast property on the possession of which I congratulate you.
+I lately received a letter from the poor, complaining that you give them no share of your prosperity. They petitioned me in general terms to institute community of goods and let each have his part: it was only right that equality should be established, instead of one's having a superfluity while another was cut off from pleasure altogether. I told them that had better be left to Zeus; but their particular festival grievances I considered to belong to my own jurisdiction, and so I undertook to write to you. These demands of theirs are moderate enough, it seems to me. How can we possibly keep the feast (they ask), when we are numb with frost and pinched with hunger? if I meant them to participate, I must compel you to bestow on them any clothes that you do not require, or find too heavy for your own use, and also to vouchsafe them just a slight sprinkling of gold. If you do this, they engage not to dispute your right to your property any further in the court of Zeus. Otherwise they will demand redistribution the next time he takes his seat upon the bench. Well, this is no heavy call, considering the vast property on the possession of which I congratulate you.
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-It rests with you to obviate these complaints and secure honour and affection; a liberality that costs you nothing appreciable will impress itself permanently by its timeliness on the memory of recipients. Why, your cities would not be habitable, if you had not poor fellow citizens to make their numberless contributions to your well-being; you would have no admirers of your wealth if you lived alone with it in the obscurity of isolation. Let there be plenty to see it and to marvel at your silver and your exquisite tables; let them drink to your health, and as they drink examine the goblet, feel and guess at its weight, enjoy its storied workmanship enhanced by  and enhancing the preciousness of the material. So you may not only gain a reputation for goodness and geniality, but also escape envy; that is a feeling not directed against people who let others participate in their prosperity to a reasonable extent; every one prays that they may live long to enjoy it. Your present practice results in an unsatisfying life, with none to see your happiness, but plenty to grudge you your wealth.
+It rests with you to obviate these complaints and secure honour and affection; a liberality that costs you nothing appreciable will impress itself permanently by its timeliness on the memory of recipients. Why, your cities would not be habitable, if you had not poor fellow citizens to make their numberless contributions to your well-being; you would have no admirers of your wealth if you lived alone with it in the obscurity of isolation. Let there be plenty to see it and to marvel at your silver and your exquisite tables; let them drink to your health, and as they drink examine the goblet, feel and guess at its weight, enjoy its storied workmanship enhanced by and enhancing the preciousness of the material. So you may not only gain a reputation for goodness and geniality, but also escape envy; that is a feeling not directed against people who let others participate in their prosperity to a reasonable extent; every one prays that they may live long to enjoy it. Your present practice results in an unsatisfying life, with none to see your happiness, but plenty to grudge you your wealth.
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-For I put it to you whether, if blindness were a regular concomitant of poverty (fancy is free), you would be indifferent to the want of any one to impress with your purple clothes and attendant crowds and massive rings. I will not dwell on the certainty that plots and ill-feeling will be excited against you by your exclusiveness; suffice it to say that the curses they threaten to imprecate upon you are positively horrible; God forbid they should really be driven to it! You would never taste sausage or pastry more; if the dog's depredations stopped short of completeness, you would still find a fishy flavour in your soup, the boar and the buck would effect an escape to the mountains from off the very roasting-jack, and your birds (no matter for their being plucked) would be off with a whiz and a whirr to the poor men's tables. Worst of all, your pretty cup-bearers would turn bald in a twinkling--the wine, by the way, having  previously all been spilt. I now leave you to make up your minds on the course that the festival proprieties and your own safety recommend; these people are extremely poor; a little relief will gain you friends worth having at a trifling cost.
+For I put it to you whether, if blindness were a regular concomitant of poverty (fancy is free), you would be indifferent to the want of anyone to impress with your purple clothes and attendant crowds and massive rings. I will not dwell on the certainty that plots and ill-feeling will be excited against you by your exclusiveness; suffice it to say that the curses they threaten to imprecate upon you are positively horrible; God forbid they should really be driven to it! You would never taste sausage or pastry more; if the dog's depredations stopped short of completeness, you would still find a fishy flavour in your soup, the boar and the buck would effect an escape to the mountains from off the very roasting-jack, and your birds (no matter for their being plucked) would be off with a whiz and a whirr to the poor men's tables. Worst of all, your pretty cup-bearers would turn bald in a twinkling--the wine, by the way, having previously all been spilt. I now leave you to make up your minds on the course that the festival proprieties and your own safety recommend; these people are extremely poor; a little relief will gain you friends worth having at a trifling cost.
 H.
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-On their side, they started with professions of wanting very little indeed; but that was only the thin edge of the wedge. Now, if their demands are not instantly and literally satisfied, there is bad temper and offence and talk; their tales may be as false as they will, every one believes them: they have been there; they must know! Our only choice was between a refusal that meant detestation, and a total surrender that meant speedy ruin and transfer to the begging class for ourselves.
+On their side, they started with professions of wanting very little indeed; but that was only the thin edge of the wedge. Now, if their demands are not instantly and literally satisfied, there is bad temper and offence and talk; their tales may be as false as they will, everyone believes them: they have been there; they must know! Our only choice was between a refusal that meant detestation, and a total surrender that meant speedy ruin and transfer to the begging class for ourselves.
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-But the worst is to come. At table that filling of the stomach (of which we have by no means the monopoly) does not so completely  occupy them but that, when they have drunk a drop too much, they find time for familiarities with the attendants or saucy compliments to the ladies. Then, after being ill at our tables, they go home, and next day reproach us with the hunger and thirst they feelingly describe. If you doubt the accuracy of this account, we refer you to your own quondam guest Ixion, who being hospitably received by you and treated as one of yourselves distinguished himself by his drunken addresses to Hera.
+But the worst is to come. At table that filling of the stomach (of which we have by no means the monopoly) does not so completely occupy them but that, when they have drunk a drop too much, they find time for familiarities with the attendants or saucy compliments to the ladies. Then, after being ill at our tables, they go home, and next day reproach us with the hunger and thirst they feelingly describe. If you doubt the accuracy of this account, we refer you to your own quondam guest Ixion, who being hospitably received by you and treated as one of yourselves distinguished himself by his drunken addresses to Hera.
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