413, 443), who attempts to defend his
own amatory poetry by the example of Sisenna, who translated an
obscene book.]
[Footnote 91: Probably there is an error in the name: Roscius has been
proposed as the probable reading.]
[Footnote 92: Plutarch is alluding to the fable of the two wallets,
which every man carries, one in front with his neighbours' faults in
it, and the other behind containing his own. Phaedrus (iv. 10, ed.
Orelli) has pithily told the apologue:--
Peras imposuit Iuppiter nobis duas:
Propriis repletam vitiis post tergum dedit,
Alienis ante pectus suspendit gravem.
Hac re videre nostra mala non possumus:
Alii simul delinquunt, censores sumus.
Two wallets Juppiter has placed upon us:
Our own faults fill the bag we bear behind,
Our neighbour's heavy wallet hangs in front.
And so we cannot see our own ill deeds;
But if another trips, forthwith we censure.
]
[Footnote 93: This word means a thick stick; and a snake of like
form.]
[Footnote 94: Greek adventurers were always making their way to the
courts of these barbarous Asiatic kings to serve in the capacity of
physicians, mountebanks, or impostors of some kind. Several instances
are mentioned by Herodotus. Tralles was a considerable town near the
west coast of Asia Minor, from which this actor came.]
[Footnote 95: Pentheus, king of Thebes, son of Agave; would not
recognise the divinity of Bacchus, whereupon Bacchus infuriated the
women, and among them Agave, who killed her own son.
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