stions, and reply in my turn? Ask. Why does Ajax, the
second hero after Achilles, rot [above ground], so often renowned for
having saved the Grecians; that Priam and Priam's people may exult in
his being unburied, by whose means so many youths have been deprived of
their country's rites of sepulture. In his madness he killed a thousand
sheep, crying out that he was destroying the famous Ulysses and
Menelaus, together with me. When you at Aulis substituted your sweet
daughter in the place of a heifer before the altar, and, O impious one,
sprinkled her head with the salt cake; did you preserve soundness of
mind? Why do you ask? What then did the mad Ajax do, when he slew the
flock with his sword? He abstained from any violence to his wife and
child, though he had imprecated many curses on the sons of Atreus: he
neither hurt Teucer, nor even Ulysses himself. But I, out of prudence,
appeased the gods with blood, that I might loose the ships detained on
an adverse shore. Yes, madman! with your own blood. With my own
[indeed], but I was not mad. Whoever shall form images foreign from
reality, and confused in the tumult of impiety, will always be reckoned
disturbed in mind: and it will not matter, whether he go wrong through
folly or through rage. Is Ajax delirious, while he kills the harmless
lambs? Are you right in your head, when you willfully commit a crime for
empty titles? And is your heart pure, while it is swollen with the vice?
If any person should take a delight to carry about with him in his sedan
a pretty lambkin; and should provide clothes, should provide maids and
gold for it, as for a daughter, should call it Rufa and Rufilla, and
should destine it a wife for some stout husband; the praetor would
take power from him being interdicted, and the management of him would
devolve to his relations, that were in their senses. What, if a man
devote his daughter instead of a dumb lambkin, is he right of mind?
Never say it. Therefore, wherever there is a foolish depravity, there
will be the height of madness. He who is wicked, will be frantic too:
Bellona, who delights in bloodshed, has thundered about him, whom
precarious fame has captivated.

Now, come on, arraign with me luxury and Nomentanus; for reason will
evince that foolish spendthrifts are mad. This fellow, as soon as he
received a thousand talents of patrimony, issues an order that the
fishmonger, the fruiterer, the poulterer, the perfumer, and the impious
gang o