The Psychology of Perjury and the Commonness of Heinous Crimes

'and the half-head of my son, boiled and dripping with Pharian vinegar.' There are some who place all things in the chances of fortune and believe the world is moved by no ruler, with nature rolling the changes of both light and the year, and therefore, fearless, they touch whatever altars. There is another fearing lest punishment should follow a crime; he thinks there are gods and perjures himself, and thus speaks to himself: 'Let Isis decree whatever she wishes concerning our body, and let her strike my eyes with her angry sistrum, provided that, even blind, I keep the money which I deny, and consumption, and putrid tumors, and a half-leg are worth so much; let poor Ladas not hesitate to wish for the rich man's gout, if he does not need Anticyra nor Archigenes; for what does the glory of a swift foot provide, and the hungry branch of Pisaean olive? Though it be great, yet certainly the anger of the gods is slow; if they care, therefore, to punish all the guilty, when will they come to me?

But perhaps I shall experience a placable deity; he is accustomed to forgive these things; many commit the same crimes with a different fate: one has borne the cross as the reward of his wickedness, another a diadem.' Thus he strengthens his mind trembling with the dread of terrible guilt; then he precedes you calling him to the sacred temples, nay, ready rather of his own accord to drag and harass you, for when great audacity remains to a bad cause, it is believed by many to be confidence; he acts a play, such as the runaway buffoon of polite Catullus. You, wretched, cry out so that you could surpass Stentor, or rather as much as the Homeric Gradivus: 'Do you hear, Jupiter, these things, and do you not move your lips, when you ought to have uttered a voice, whether marble or bronze?

Or why do we place on your coal pious incense released from its paper, and the cut liver of a calf, and the white caul of a pig?

As I see, no distinction is to be made between your images and the statue of Vagellius.' Receive what consolations he is able to bring against this, even he who has read neither the Cynics nor the Stoic dogmas, differing from the Cynics by a tunic, nor looks up to Epicurus happy with the plants of his tiny garden; let doubtful patients be cured by greater physicians: do you commit your vein even to a disciple of Philippus. If you show no deed so detestable on earth, I am silent, nor do I forbid you to strike your breast with your fists, nor to bruise your face with your flat palm, since indeed, when a loss is received, the door must be closed, and with greater groaning of the house, with greater tumult, money is lamented than funerals; no one feigns grief in this misfortune, content to tear the edge of his garment, or to vex his eyes with forced moisture: lost money is deplored with true tears. But if you see all the forums filled with similar complaint, if, though the tablets have been read ten times by the opposing side, they say the signatures on the empty wood are void, whom their own handwriting and the chief gem of sardonyx, which is kept in ivory boxes, convicts, do you, O darling, think you must be placed outside common misfortunes, because you are the son of a white hen, and we are cheap chicks, born from unhappy eggs? You suffer a moderate thing, to be borne with moderate anger, if you turn your eyes to greater crimes; compare the hired robber, fires started with sulfur and by deceit, when the door collects the first flames; compare also those who carry off the huge cups of an ancient temple, with venerable rust, and the gifts of nations, or crowns placed by an ancient king; if these are not there, a minor sacrilegist appears, who scrapes the thigh of a gilded Hercules and the very face of Neptune, who strips the gold leaf from Castor; would he hesitate, who is accustomed to melt down a whole Thunderer? Compare also the compounders and the merchant of poison, and him to be cast into the sea in a bull's hide, with whom an innocent monkey is enclosed by adverse fates; what a small part of the crimes is this, which Gallicus, the guardian of the city, hears from morning star until the light sets? To you wishing to know the manners of the human race, one house is enough: spend a few days there, and dare to call yourself wretched after you return from there. Who wonders at a swollen throat in the Alps?

Or who in Meroe at a breast larger than a fat infant? Who has been amazed at the blue eyes of a German, his yellow hair, and twisting his curls into a damp knot?