le design of
overreaching each other, have summoned their respective lawyers to
declare at the same time their mutual but contradictory intentions. The
distress which follows and chastises extravagant luxury often reduces
the great to the use of the most humiliating expedients. When they
desire to borrow, they employ the base and supplicating style of the
slave in the comedy; but when they are called upon to pay, they assume
the royal and tragic declamation of the grandsons of Hercules. If the
demand is repeated, they readily procure some trusty sycophant,
instructed to maintain a charge of poison or magic against the insolent
creditor, who is seldom released from prison till he has signed a
discharge for the whole debt. These vices, which degrade the moral
character of the Romans, are mixed with a puerile superstition that
disgraces their understanding. They listen with confidence to the
predictions of haruspices, who pretend to read in the entrails of
victims the signs of future greatness and prosperity; and there are many
who do not presume either to bathe or to dine, or to appear in public,
till they have diligently consulted, according to the rules of
astrology, the situation of Mercury and the aspect of the moon. It is
singular enough that this vain credulity may often be discovered among
the profane sceptics who impiously doubt or deny the existence of a
celestial power."

CHAPTER 116. "They either take in or else they are taken in."

"Captare" may be defined as to get the upper hand of someone; and
"captari" means to be the dupe of someone, to be the object of interested
flattery; "captator" means a succession of successful undertakings of the
sort referred to above. Martial, lib. VI, 63, addresses the following
verses to a certain Marianus, whose inheritance had excited the avarice
of one of the intriguers:

"You know you're being influenced,
You know the miser's mind;
You know the miser, and you sensed
His purpose; still, you're blind."

Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, lib. XIV, chap. i, writes in
scathing terms against the infamous practice of paying assiduous court
to old people for the purpose of obtaining a legacy under their wills.
"Later, childlessness conferred advantages in the shape of the greatest
authority and Lower; undue influence became very insidious in its quest
of wealth, and in grasping the joyous things alon