120; a very
short time previous to the composition of the following Satire.
short time previous to the composition of the following Satire.
Satires
Again, line 49 seems to refer to the condemnation of
Marius as a recent event; but this took place in A. D. 100. And in that
same year M. Cornelius Fronto was consul with Trajan; and may have been
the proprietor of the plane-groves, mentioned l. 12. But then, again,
we hear of Julius Fronto in A. D. 129, and Hadrian's conduct toward
Antinous in that and the following year, might well have given occasion
to the 60th and following lines; and if we are right in applying line
40 to Plotina's manœuvring to secure the succession to Hadrian, it will
furnish an additional argument for supposing these passages to have
been added some time after. We may therefore offer the conjecture, that
the first Satire was written shortly after the year A. D. 100, as a
preface or introduction to the book, and that a few additions were made
to it, even so late as thirty years subsequently.
The second Satire was, in all probability, the first written. The
allusion in the first line to the Sarmatæ, may perhaps be connected
with the Sarmatian war, which took place A. D. 93, and in which
Domitian engaged in person. And this date will correspond with the
other references in the Satire by which an approximation to the time
of its composition may be obtained. In A. D. 84 Domitian received the
censorship for life (l. 121), at the same time that he was carrying on
an incestuous intercourse with his own niece Julia. This connection
was continued for some years. Shortly after the death of Julia, the
Vestal virgin Cornelia was buried alive, A. D. 91. These are alluded
to as _recent_ events (l. 29, "nuper"). Agricola, too, the conqueror
of Britain, died A. D. 93 (cf. l. 160), whose campaigns are spoken of
as recent occurrences, "modo captas Orcadas. " The mention of Gracchus
also connects this with the eighth Satire, part of which at least was
probably written soon after the consulship of Lateranus in A. D. 94. We
may therefore conjecture that the Satire was composed between the years
A. D. 93 and 95.
The third Satire may perhaps have been written in the reign of
Domitian, and may refer to the general departure of men of worth from
Rome, when Domitian expelled the philosophers, A. D. 90. Umbritius,
who predicted the murder of Galba, A. D. 69, might have been alive at
that time; and, from his political views, would have been a friend of
Juvenal, who was a bitter enemy of Otho. The nightly deeds of violence
perpetrated by Nero would have been still fresh in men's memories (l.
278, _seq. _; cf. Pers. , Sat. , iv. , 49); as would the judicial murder of
Barea Soranus, and the arrogance of Fabricius Veiento (l. 116, 185).
Still there are other parts of the Satire that seem to bear evidence of
a later date. The name of Isæus would hardly have been so familiar in
Rome till ten years after this date, l. 74. It was not till A. D. 107
that Trajan undertook the draining of the Pontine marshes; to which
there is most probably an allusion in l. 32 and 307; to which nothing
of importance had been done since the days of Augustus. The great
influx of foreigners into Rome, in the train of Hadrian, at a still
later date, A. D. 118, probably gave rise to the spirited episode from
l. 58-125. (See Chronology. ) We may therefore consider it probable that
the main body of the Satire was written toward the close of the reign
of Domitian, and received additions in the commencement of the reign of
Hadrian.
The fourth Satire in all probability describes a real event; and would
have possessed but little interest after any great lapse of time,
subsequent to the fact described. We may therefore fairly assign it
to the early part of Nerva's reign, very shortly after the death of
Domitian, which is mentioned at the close of the Satire.
The fifth Satire contains nothing by which we can determine the date.
From Juvenal's hatred of Domitian, we may suppose that l. 36 was
suggested by the condemnation of Senecio, who was put to death for
writing a panegyric on Helvidius Priscus, A. D. 90. If the Aurelia
(l. 98) be the lady mentioned by Pliny (Epist. , ii. , 20), this would
strengthen the conjecture, as Pliny's second book of Epistles was
probably written very shortly before that date.
There is little doubt that considerable portions of the sixth Satire
were written in the reign of Trajan. 1. The lines 407-411 describe
exactly the events which took place at Antioch, in A. D. 115, when
Trajan was entering on his Armenian and Parthian campaigns. 2. The
coins of Trajan of the year A. D. 110, have the legend Dacicus and
Germanicus, cf. l. 205; and although Domitian triumphed over the
Dacians and Germans, none of his extant coins bear that inscription;
the general title being Augustus Germanicus simply. 3. Again, l.
502 describes a kind of headdress, very common on the coins of the
reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, representing Plotina the wife of Trajan,
Marciana his sister, and Sabina the wife of Hadrian, and others: and
this fashion was a very short-lived one. Beginning with the court, it
probably soon descended to the ladies of inferior rank; but like its
unnatural antitype, the towering, powdered, and plastered rolls of our
own countrywomen, in the degraded days of the two first Georges, it was
too unnatural and disfiguring to remain long in vogue with that sex,
to whom "tanta est quærendi cura decoris tanquam famæ discrimen agatur
aut animæ. " 4. The subject itself also affords an additional reason
for supposing that the Satire was composed when the poet was advanced
in life. The vices of women are hardly a topic for a young writer to
select; but the vigorous manner in which he handles the lash, rather
marks the state of mind of the man who has outgrown the passions of
early manhood, and from "the high heaven of his philosophy" looks down
with cold austerity on the desires, and with bitter indignation at the
vices, of those whose feelings he has long since ceased to share.
Juvenal was, as Hodgson says, "an impenetrable bachelor," and if, as
he conjectures, he was jilted in his early youth, this fact would give
additional bitterness to the rancor which in old age he would feel
toward the sex by whom his personal happiness had been embittered, as
well as the ruin of his native country precipitated. 5. If we are right
in supposing that by Heliodorus, Juvenal meant Artemidorus Capito (and
the change in the name is both simple and readily suggested), this
would also bring down the date of this Satire to Juvenal's later years,
as about A. D. 122 was the time when this court-physician of Hadrian had
attained his greatest reputation. 6. In line 320, Saufeia is spoken of
in similar terms to those employed in the eleventh Satire, which was
confessedly the work of his later years. 7. Compare also the mention
of Archigenes (l. 236) with the 98th line of the thirteenth Satire,
written A. D. 118. 8. The allusions to the importation of foreigners,
with their exotic vices, would also refer to the same date. See Chron. ,
A. D. 118.
The date of the seventh Satire will depend mainly on the question, Whom
does Juvenal intend to panegyrize in his 1st line?
"Et spes et ratio studiorum in Cæsare tantum. "
Gifford pronounces unhesitatingly in favor of Domitian, and his
argument is very plausible. "The Satire," he says, "would appear to
have been written in the early part of Domitian's reign; and Juvenal,
by giving the emperor '_one honest line_' of praise, probably meant to
stimulate him to extend his patronage. He did not think very ill of him
at the time, and augured happily for the future. " Juvenal's subsequent
hatred of Domitian was caused, he thinks, by his bitter mortification
at finding, in a few years, this "sole patron of literature" changed
into a ferocious and bloody persecutor of all the arts. This opinion
he supports by some references to contemporary writers, and by the
evidence of coins of Domitian existing with a head of Pallas on the
reverse, to symbolize his royal patronage of poetry and literary
pursuits. But in almost every instance Gifford errs in assigning too
early a date to the Satires; and one or two points in this clearly
show that we must bring it down to a much later period. Domitian
succeeded to the throne A. D. 81, and it could only have been in the
_earlier_ years of his reign that even his most servile flatterers
could have complimented him upon his patronage of learning. Now,
1. It was not till about ten years after this that the actor Paris
acquired his influence and his wealth; and even allowing the very
problematical story of the banishment of Juvenal having been caused by
the offense given to the favorite by the famous lines (85-92) to be
true, this would bring it down to a time subsequent to the banishment
of philosophers from Rome; after which act Juvenal, certainly, would
not have written the first line on Domitian. 2. Again, in A. D. 90,
Quintilian was teaching in a public school at Rome, and receiving a
salary from the imperial treasury; it could hardly therefore be so
early as this date that he had acquired the fortune and estates alluded
to in l. 189. 3. In l. 82, the Thebaid of Statius is mentioned. This
poem was finished A. D. 94; and though it is true that Statius might,
most probably, have publicly recited portions of it _during its
progress_, it would have hardly earned the great reputation implied in
Juvenal's lines, at a sufficiently early date to allow us to assign it
to the first two or three years of Domitian's reign.
I should, therefore, rather suppose that by Cæsar we are to understand
Nerva. The praise of Domitian is incompatible with Juvenal's universal
hatred and execration of him. The opening of the reign of the mild and
excellent Nerva might well inspire hopes of the revival of a taste for
literature and the arts; and I would conjecture the close of A. D. 96 as
the date of the Satire. Before the end of the year Statius was dead;
but Juvenal's words seem to imply that he was still living. Again,
Matho the lawyer has failed, and is in great poverty (l. 129), to which
Martial alludes in lib. xi. , Ep. , part of which book was evidently
written shortly before A. D. 97. But if we are right in supposing the
first Satire to have been written about A. D. 100, the intervening
years will have given Matho ample time to retrieve his fortune by his
infamous trade of informing, and reappear as the luxurious character
described Sat. , i. , 32.
Of the eighth Satire, if "Lateranus" be the true reading (l. 147), or
if he be intended by "Damasippus," as I believe, we may assume the year
A. D. 101 or 102 as the probable date: Lateranus had been consul A. D.
94, and in the year A. D. 101 Trajan for the first time extended the
arms of Rome beyond the Danube. Cf. l. 169.
The plunder of his province of Africa, by Marius Priscus, was a recent
event (l. 120 "nuper"); but, as we have said above, he was impeached by
Pliny and Tacitus in the year A. D. 100. Ponticus, to whom the Satire
is addressed, may be the person to whom Martial refers in his twelfth
book, which was written A. D. 104.
There are two allusions by which we may form a conjecture as to the
date of the ninth Satire. Crepereius Pollio is mentioned as nearly in
the same circumstances of profligate poverty (l. 6, 7) as is described
in the eleventh Satire (l. 43), which was undoubtedly written in
Juvenal's later years; and he alludes (l. 117) to Saufeia, in very much
the same terms in which he speaks of her in the sixth Satire (l. 320),
which we suppose to have been written in his old age.
The internal evidence, supplied by the sustained majesty and dignified
flow of language of the tenth (as well as of the fourteenth) Satire,
without taking into consideration the philosophical nature of the
subject of both, is quite sufficient to prove that they must have been
the finished productions of a late period of a thoughtful life. We are
therefore quite prepared to admit the conjecture that the allusion in
line 136 is to the column of Trajan, erected in the year A. D. 113. The
repetition of the line (226) also connects this with the first Satire,
which it probably preceded only by a short interval.
The 203d line of the eleventh Satire fixes its date to the later
years of Juvenal's life. It breathes, besides, throughout the spirit
of a calm and philosophic enjoyment of the blessings of life, that
tells of declining age; cheered by a chastened appreciation of the
comforts by which it is surrounded, but far removed from all extraneous
or meretricious excitement, and utterly abhorrent of all noisy or
exuberant hilarity. An additional argument is mentioned in the
Chronology for referring it to the date A. D. 124.
The twelfth Satire contains nothing by which we can fix its date with
any certainty. If, however, as the commentators suppose, the wife of
Fuscus, in the 45th line, be Saufeia, it will be connected with the
sixth, ninth, and eleventh Satires, and may probably be considered the
work of his advanced age.
The thirteenth Satire is fixed by line 17 to the year A. D. 118, the
60th after the consulship of L. Fonteius Capito. This is the only
Satire to which Mr. Clinton has assigned a date.
The argument applied to the tenth Satire will apply with nearly equal
force to the fourteenth. We are therefore prepared to admit the
plausibility of the conjecture, that l. 196 refers to the progress of
Hadrian through Britain, which would fix the date to A. D.
120; a very
short time previous to the composition of the following Satire.
The event recorded in the fifteenth Satire occurred shortly after the
consulship of Junius, l. 27, "nuper consule Junio gesta. " This was, in
all probability, Junius Rusticus, who was consul with Hadrian A. D. 119.
The 110th line also probably refers to the influx of Greeks and other
foreigners into Rome, in the train of Hadrian (to which we have alluded
in discussing the date of the third Satire), which took place in the
preceding year.
The sixteenth Satire may have either been the draft of a longer poem,
commenced in early life (as l. 3 _may_ imply), which the poet never
cared to finish; or an outline for a more perfect composition, which he
never lived to elaborate. The mention of Fucus may connect it with the
twelfth Satire. But though there is quite enough remaining to warrant
us in unhesitatingly ascribing the authorship to Juvenal, there is too
little left to enable us to form even a probable conjecture as to the
date of its composition.
It is hardly necessary to add, that, after a careful examination
of the foregoing Chronology, it must be evident to every novice in
scholarship, that the whole life of Juvenal, as usually given, is
a mere myth, to which one can not even apply, as in many legendary
biographies, the epithet of poetical.
L. E.
ARGUMENTS OF THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL.
SATIRE I.
This Satire seems, from several incidental circumstances to have been
produced subsequently to most of them; and was probably drawn up after
the author had determined to collect and publish his works, as a kind
of Introduction.
He abruptly breaks silence with an impassioned complaint of the
importunity of bad writers, and a resolution of retaliating upon them;
and after ridiculing their frivolous taste in the choice of their
subjects, declares his own intention to devote himself to Satire. After
exposing the corruption of men, the profligacy of women, the luxury of
courtiers, the baseness of informers and fortune-hunters, the treachery
of guardians, and the peculation of officers of state, he censures the
general passion for gambling, the servile rapacity of the patricians,
the avarice and gluttony of the rich, and the miserable poverty and
subjection of their dependents; and after some bitter reflections on
the danger of satirizing living villainy, concludes with a resolution
to attack it under the mask of departed names.
SATIRE II.
This Satire contains an animated attack upon the hypocrisy of the
philosophers and reformers of the day, whose ignorance, profligacy, and
impiety it exposes with just severity.
Domitian is here the object; his vices are alluded to under every
different name; and it gives us a high opinion of the intrepid spirit
of the man who could venture to circulate, even in private, so faithful
a representation of that blood-thirsty tyrant.
SATIRE III.
Umbritius, an Aruspex and friend of the author, disgusted at the
prevalence of vice and the disregard of unassuming virtue, is on the
point of quitting Rome; and when a little way from the city stops
short to acquaint the poet, who has accompanied him, with the causes
of his retirement. These may be arranged under the following heads:
That Flattery and Vice are the only thriving arts at Rome; in these,
especially the first, foreigners have a manifest superiority over
the natives, and consequently engross all favor--that the poor are
universally exposed to scorn and insult--that the general habits of
extravagance render it difficult for them to subsist--that the want
of a well-regulated police subjects them to numberless miseries and
inconveniences, aggravated by the crowded state of the capital, from
all which a country life is happily free: on the tranquillity and
security of which he dilates with great beauty.
SATIRE IV.
In this Satire Juvenal indulges his honest spleen against Crispinus,
already noticed, and Domitian, the constant object of his scorn
and abhorrence. The introduction of the tyrant is excellent; the
mock solemnity with which the anecdote of the Turbot is introduced,
the procession of the affrighted counselors to the palace, and the
ridiculous debate which terminates in as ridiculous a decision, show a
masterly hand. The whole concludes with an indignant and high-spirited
apostrophe.
SATIRE V.
Under pretense of advising one Trebius to abstain from the table of
Virro, a man of rank and fortune, Juvenal takes occasion to give a
spirited detail of the insults and mortifications to which the poor
were subjected by the rich, at those entertainments to which, on
account of the political connection subsisting between patrons and
clients, it was sometimes thought necessary to invite them.
SATIRE VI.
The whole of this Satire, not only the longest, but the most complete
of the author's works, is directed against the female sex. It may
be distributed under the following heads: Lust variously modified,
imperiousness of disposition, fickleness, gallantry, attachment to
improper pursuits, litigiousness, drunkenness, unnatural passions,
fondness for singers, dancers, etc. ; gossiping, cruelty, ill manners;
outrageous pretensions to criticism, grammar, and philosophy;
superstitious and unbounded credulity in diviners and fortune-tellers;
introducing supposititious children; poisoning their step-sons to
possess their fortunes; and, lastly, murdering their husbands.
SATIRE VII.
This Satire contains an animated account of the general discouragement
under which literature labored at Rome. Beginning with poetry, it
proceeds through the various departments of history, law, oratory,
rhetoric, and grammar; interspersing many curious anecdotes, and
enlivening each different head with such satirical, humorous, and
sentimental remarks as naturally flow from the subject.
SATIRE VIII.
Juvenal demonstrates, in this Satire, that distinction is merely
personal; that though we may derive rank and titles from our ancestors,
yet if we degenerate from the virtues by which they obtained them,
we can not be considered truly noble. This is the main object of the
Satire; which, however, branches out into many collateral topics--the
profligacy of the young nobility; the miserable state of the provinces,
which they plundered and harassed without mercy; the contrast between
the state of debasement to which the descendants of the best families
had sunk, and the opposite virtues to be found in persons of the lowest
station and humblest descent.
SATIRE IX.
The Satire consists of a dialogue between the poet and one Nævolus, a
dependent of some wealthy debauchee, who, after making him subservient
to his unnatural passions, in return starved, insulted, hated, and
discarded him. The whole object seems to be, to inculcate the grand
moral lesson, that, under any circumstances, a life of sin is a life of
slavery.
SATIRE X.
The subject of this inimitable Satire is the vanity of human wishes.
From the principal events of the lives of the most illustrious
characters of all ages, the poet shows how little happiness is promoted
by the attainment of what our indistinct and limited views represent as
the greatest of earthly blessings. Of these he instances wealth, power,
eloquence, military glory, longevity, and personal accomplishments;
all of which, he shows, have proved dangerous or destructive to their
respective possessors. Hence he argues the wisdom of acquiescing in
the dispensations of Heaven; and concludes with a form of prayer, in
which he points out with great force and beauty the objects for which a
rational being may presume to approach the Almighty.
SATIRE XI.
Under the form of an invitation to his friend Persicus, Juvenal takes
occasion to enunciate many admirable maxims for the due regulation
of life. After ridiculing the miserable state to which a profligate
patrician had reduced himself by his extravagance, he introduces the
picture of his own domestic economy, which he follows by a pleasing
view of the simplicity of ancient manners, artfully contrasted with
the extravagance and luxury of the current times. After describing
with great beauty the entertainment he proposes to give his friend, he
concludes with an earnest recommendation to him to enjoy the present
with content, and await the future with calmness and moderation.
SATIRE XII.
Catullus, a valued friend of the poet, had narrowly escaped shipwreck.
In a letter of rejoicing to their common friend, Corvinus, Juvenal
describes the danger that his friend had incurred, and his own hearty
and disinterested delight at his preservation, contrasting his own
sacrifices of thanksgiving at the event, with those offered by the
designing legacy-hunters, by which the rich and childless were
attempted to be insnared.
SATIRE XIII.
Calvinus had left a sum of money in the hands of a confidential
person, who, when he came to re-demand it, forswore the deposit. The
indignation and fury expressed by Calvinus at this breach of trust,
reached the ears of his friend Juvenal, who endeavors to soothe and
comfort him under his loss. The different topics of consolation follow
one another naturally and forcibly, and the horrors of a troubled
conscience were perhaps never depicted with such impressive solemnity
as in this Satire.
SATIRE XIV.
The whole of this Satire is directed to the one great end of
self-improvement. By showing the dreadful facility with which children
copy the vices of their parents, the poet points out the necessity as
well as the sacred duty of giving them examples of domestic purity
and virtue. After briefly enumerating the several vices, gluttony,
cruelty, debauchery, etc. , which youth imperceptibly imbibe from their
seniors, he enters more at large into that of avarice; of which he
shows the fatal and inevitable consequences. Nothing can surpass the
exquisiteness of this division of the Satire, in which he traces the
progress of that passion in the youthful mind from the paltry tricks
of saving a broken meal to the daring violation of every principle,
human and divine. Having placed the absurdity as well as the danger of
immoderate desires in every point of view, he concludes with a solemn
admonition to rest satisfied with those comforts and conveniences which
nature and wisdom require, and which a decent competence is easily
calculated to supply.
SATIRE XV.
After enumerating with great humor the animal and vegetable gods of the
Egyptians, the author directs his powerful ridicule at their sottish
and ferocious bigotry; of which he gives an atrocious and loathsome
example. The conclusion of the Satire, which is a just and beautiful
description of the origin of civil society (infinitely superior to any
thing that Lucretius or Horace has delivered on the subject), founded
not on natural instinct, but on principles of mutual benevolence
implanted by God in the breast of man, and of man alone, does honor to
the genius, good sense, and enlightened morality of the author.
SATIRE XVI.
Under a pretense of pointing out to his friend Gallus the advantages of
a military life, Juvenal attacks with considerable spirit the exclusive
privileges which the army had acquired or usurped, to the manifest
injury of the civil part of the community.
JUVENAL'S SATIRES.
SATIRE I.
Must I always be a hearer only? Shall I never retaliate,[33] though
plagued so often with the Theseid of Codrus,[34] hoarse _with reciting
it_? Shall one man, then, recite[35] to me his Comedies, and another
his Elegies, with impunity? Shall huge "Telephus" waste a whole day for
me, or "Orestes," with the margin of the manuscript full to the very
edge, and written on the back too,[36] and yet not finished, _and I not
retort_?
No one knows his own house better than I do the grove of Mars, and
Vulcan's cave close to the Æolian rocks. The agency of the winds,[37]
what ghosts Æacus is torturing, whence another bears off the gold[38]
of the stolen fleece, what huge mountain-ashes Monychus hurls, _all
this_ the plane-groves of Fronto,[39] and the statues shaken and the
columns split by the eternal reciter, are for ever re-echoing. You may
look for the same themes from the greatest poet and the least.
And yet I too have shirked my hand away from the rod. [40] I too
have given advice to Sylla, that he should enjoy a sound sleep by
returning to a private station. [41] When at every turn you meet so
many poetasters, it were a foolish clemency to spare paper that is
sure to be wasted. Yet why I rather choose to trace my course over
that plain through which the great foster-son of Aurunca[42] urged his
steeds, I will, if you are at leisure, and with favorable ear listen to
reason, tell you. When a soft eunuch[43] marries a wife; when Mævia[44]
transfixes the Tuscan boar, and, with breasts exposed, grasps the
hunting-spears; when one man singly vies in wealth with the whole body
of patricians, under whose razor my beard, grown exuberant, sounded
while I was in my prime;[45] when Crispinus, one of the dregs of the
mob of the Nile, a born-slave of Canopus, (while his shoulder hitches
up his Tyrian cloak,)[46] airs his summer ring from his sweating
fingers, and can not support the weight of his heavier gem;--it is
difficult not to write satire. For who can be so tolerant of this
iniquitous city, who so case-hardened,[47] as to contain himself! When
there comes up the bran-new litter of Matho[48] the lawyer, filled with
himself; and after him, he that informed upon his powerful friend; and
will soon plunder the nobility, already close-shorn, of the little
that remains to them; one whom even Massa fears, whom Carus soothes
with a bribe; or a Thymele suborned by some trembling Latinus. [49]
When fellows supplant you, who earn their legacies by night-work,
lifted up to heaven[50] by what is now the surest road to the highest
advancement, the lust of some ancient harridan. Proculeius gets one
poor twelfth; but Gillo has eleven twelfths. Each gets the share
proportioned to his powers. Well! let him take the purchase-money of
his blood, and be as pale as one that has trodden on a snake with naked
heel, or a rhetorician about to declaim at the altar at Lyons. [51]
Why need I tell with what indignation my parched liver boils, when
here, the plunderer of his ward (reduced by him to the vilest gains)
presses on the people with his crowds of menials, and there, he that
was condemned by a powerless sentence. (For what cares he for infamy
while he retains the plunder? ) Marius,[52] though an exile, drinks
from the eighth hour, and laughs at the angry gods, while thou, O
Province, victorious in the suit, art in tears! Shall I not deem these
themes worthy of the lamp of Venusium? [53] Shall I not lash these?
Why rather sing tales of Hercules or Diomede, or the bellowing of
the Labyrinth, and the sea struck by the boy Icarus, and the winged
artificer? [54] When the pander inherits the wealth of the adulterer
(since the wife has lost the right of receiving it),[55] taught
to gaze at the ceiling, and snore over his cups with well-feigned
sleep. When he considers himself privileged to expect the command of
a cohort, who has squandered his money on his stables, and has run
through all his ancestors' estate, while he flies with rapid wheel
along the Flaminian road;[56] for while yet a youth, like Automedon,
he held the reins, while the great man showed himself off to his
"mistress-in-his-cloak. "[57] Do you not long to fill your capacious
tablets, even in the middle of the cross-ways, when there comes borne
on the shoulders of six slaves, exposed to view on either side, with
palanquin almost uncurtained, and aping the luxurious Mæcenas, the
forger, who made himself a man of splendor and wealth by a few short
lines, and a moistened seal? [58] Next comes the powerful matron, who
when her husband thirsts, mingles the toad's-poison in the mellow
wine of Cales which she is herself about to hand him, and with skill
superior even to Locusta,[59] initiates her neighbors, too simple
before, in the art of burying their husbands, livid from the poison, in
despite of infamy and the public gaze. [60]
Dare some deed to merit scanty Gyarus[61] and the jail, if you wish to
be somebody. Honesty is commended, and starves. It is to their crimes
they are indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their tables, their
fine old plate, and the goat standing in high relief from the cup.
Whom does the seducer of his own daughter-in-law, greedy for gold,
suffer to sleep? Or the unnatural brides, or the adulterer not out of
his teens? [62] If nature denies the power, indignation would give birth
to verses, such as it could produce, like mine and Cluvienus'.
From the time that Deucalion ascended the mountain in his boat, while
the storm upheaved the sea,[63] and consulted the oracle, and the
softening stones by degrees grew warm with life, and Pyrrha displayed
to the males the virgins unrobed; all that men are engaged in, their
wishes, fears, anger, pleasures, joys, and varied pursuits, form the
hotch-potch of my book.
And when was the crop of vices more abundant? When were the sails of
avarice more widely spread? When had gambling its present spirits? For
now men go to the hazard of the gaming-table not simply with their
purses, but play with their whole chest[64] staked. What fierce battles
will you see there, while the steward supplies the weapons for the
contest! Is it then mere common madness to lose a hundred sestertia,
and not leave enough for a tunic for your shivering slave! [65] Which
of our grandsires erected so many villas? Which of them ever dined by
himself[66] on seven courses? In our days the diminished sportula is
set outside the threshold, ready to be seized upon by the toga-clad
crowd. [67] Yet he (that dispenses it), before giving, scans your
features, and dreads lest you should come with counterfeit pretense
and under a false name. When recognized you will receive your dole.
He bids the crier summon the very Trojugenæ themselves. For even they
assail the door with us. "Give the prætor his! Then to the tribune. "
But the freedman must first be served! "I was before him! " he says.
"Why should I fear or hesitate to stand up for my turn, though I was
born on the banks of Euphrates, which the soft windows[68] in my ears
would attest, though I myself were to deny the fact. But my five
shops bring me in four hundred sestertia. What does the Laticlave[69]
bestow that's worth a wish, since Corvinus keeps sheep for hire in the
Laurentine fields? I own more than Pallas[70] and the Licini. Let the
tribunes wait then! " Let Riches carry the day, and let not him give
place even to the sacrosanct magistrate, who came but the other day
to this city with chalked feet. [71] Since with us the most revered
majesty is that of riches; even though as yet, pernicious money, thou
dwellest in no temple, nor have we as yet reared altars to coin, as we
worship Peace and Faith, Victory and Virtue, and Concord, whose temple
resounds with the noise of storks returning to their nests. [72] But
when a magistrate of the highest rank reckons up at the end of the
year, what the sportula brings him in, how much it adds to his revenue,
what shall the poor retainers do, who look to this for their toga, for
their shoes, their bread and fire at home? A closely-wedged crowd of
litters is clamorous for the hundred quadrantes, and his wife, though
sick or pregnant, accompanies and goes the rounds with her husband.
One practicing a crafty trick now worn threadbare, asks for his wife
though really absent, displaying in her stead an empty and closed
palanquin: "My Galla is inside," he says, "dispatch us with all speed.
Why hesitate? " "Put out your head, Galla! " "O don't disturb her! she's
asleep! "
The day is portioned out with a fine routine of engagements. First
the sportula; then the Forum,[73] and Apollo[74] learned in the law;
and the triumphal statues, among which some unknown Egyptian or
Arabarch has dared set up his titles, whose image, as though sacred,
one dare not venture to defile. [75] At length, the old and wearied-out
clients quit the vestibule and give up all their hopes;[76] although
their expectation of a dinner has been full-long protracted: the poor
wretches must buy their cabbage and fire. Meanwhile their patron-lord
will devour the best that the forest and ocean can supply, and will
recline in solitary state with none but himself on his couches. For
out of so many fair, and broad, and such ancient dishes, they gorge
whole patrimonies at a single course. In our days there will not be
even a parasite! Yet who could tolerate such sordid luxury! How gross
must that appetite be, which sets before itself whole boars, an animal
created to feast a whole company! Yet thy punishment is hard at hand,
when distended with food thou layest aside thy garments, and bearest
to the bath the peacock undigested! Hence sudden death, and old age
without a will. The news[77] travels to all the dinner-tables, but
calls forth no grief, and thy funeral procession advances, exulted
over by disgusted friends! [78] There is nothing farther that future
times can add to our immorality. Our posterity must have the same
desires, perpetrate the same acts. Every vice has reached its climax.
Then set sail! spread all your canvas! Yet here perchance you may
object, whence can talent be elicited able to cope with the subject?
Whence that blunt freedom of our ancestors, whose very name I dare not
utter, of writing whatever was dictated by their kindling soul. What
matter, whether Mucius forgive the libel, or not? But take Tigellinus
for your theme, and you will shine in that tunic, in which they blaze
standing,[79] who smoke with throat transfixed, and you will draw
a broad furrow in the middle of the sand. "Must he then, who has
given[80] aconite to his three uncles, be borne on down cushions,
suspended aloft, and from thence look down on us? " Yes! when he meets
you press your finger to your lip! There will be some informer standing
by to whisper in his ear, That's he! Without fear for the consequences
you may match[81] Æneas and the fierce Rutulian. The death of Achilles
breeds ill-will in no one; or the tale of the long-sought Hylas, who
followed his pitcher. But whensoever Lucilius, fired with rage, has
brandished as it were his drawn sword, his hearer, whose conscience
chills with the remembrance of crime, grows red. His heart sweats with
the pressure of guilt concealed. Then bursts forth rage and tears!
Ponder well, therefore, these things in your mind, before you sound the
signal blast. The soldier when helmeted repents too late of the fight.
I will try then what I may be allowed to vent on those whose ashes are
covered by the Flaminian[82] or Latin road.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] _Reponam_, "repay in kind. " A metaphor taken from the payment of
debts.
[34] _Codrus_; a poor poet in every sense, if, as some think, he is the
same as the Codrus mentioned iii. , 203.
[35] _Recitaverit. _ For the custom of Roman writers to recite their
compositions in public, cf. Sat. vii. , 40, 83; iii. , 9. Plin. , 1,
Ep. xiii. , "queritur se diem perdidisse. " _Togata_ is a comedy on a
Roman subject; _Prætexta_, a tragedy on the same; _Elegi_, trifling
love-songs.
[36] _In tergo. _ The ancients usually wrote only on one side of the
parchment: when otherwise, the works were called "Opisthographi," and
said to be written "aversa charta. "
[37] _Venti_; cf. xii. , 23, where he uses "Poëtica tempestas" as a
proverbial expression.
[38] _Aurum_; probably a hit at Valerius Flaccus, his contemporary.
[39] _Julius Fronto_ was a munificent patron of literature, thrice
consul, and once colleague of Trajan, A. D. 97. Cassiod.
[40] "Jam a grammaticis eruditi recessimus. " Brit.
Marius as a recent event; but this took place in A. D. 100. And in that
same year M. Cornelius Fronto was consul with Trajan; and may have been
the proprietor of the plane-groves, mentioned l. 12. But then, again,
we hear of Julius Fronto in A. D. 129, and Hadrian's conduct toward
Antinous in that and the following year, might well have given occasion
to the 60th and following lines; and if we are right in applying line
40 to Plotina's manœuvring to secure the succession to Hadrian, it will
furnish an additional argument for supposing these passages to have
been added some time after. We may therefore offer the conjecture, that
the first Satire was written shortly after the year A. D. 100, as a
preface or introduction to the book, and that a few additions were made
to it, even so late as thirty years subsequently.
The second Satire was, in all probability, the first written. The
allusion in the first line to the Sarmatæ, may perhaps be connected
with the Sarmatian war, which took place A. D. 93, and in which
Domitian engaged in person. And this date will correspond with the
other references in the Satire by which an approximation to the time
of its composition may be obtained. In A. D. 84 Domitian received the
censorship for life (l. 121), at the same time that he was carrying on
an incestuous intercourse with his own niece Julia. This connection
was continued for some years. Shortly after the death of Julia, the
Vestal virgin Cornelia was buried alive, A. D. 91. These are alluded
to as _recent_ events (l. 29, "nuper"). Agricola, too, the conqueror
of Britain, died A. D. 93 (cf. l. 160), whose campaigns are spoken of
as recent occurrences, "modo captas Orcadas. " The mention of Gracchus
also connects this with the eighth Satire, part of which at least was
probably written soon after the consulship of Lateranus in A. D. 94. We
may therefore conjecture that the Satire was composed between the years
A. D. 93 and 95.
The third Satire may perhaps have been written in the reign of
Domitian, and may refer to the general departure of men of worth from
Rome, when Domitian expelled the philosophers, A. D. 90. Umbritius,
who predicted the murder of Galba, A. D. 69, might have been alive at
that time; and, from his political views, would have been a friend of
Juvenal, who was a bitter enemy of Otho. The nightly deeds of violence
perpetrated by Nero would have been still fresh in men's memories (l.
278, _seq. _; cf. Pers. , Sat. , iv. , 49); as would the judicial murder of
Barea Soranus, and the arrogance of Fabricius Veiento (l. 116, 185).
Still there are other parts of the Satire that seem to bear evidence of
a later date. The name of Isæus would hardly have been so familiar in
Rome till ten years after this date, l. 74. It was not till A. D. 107
that Trajan undertook the draining of the Pontine marshes; to which
there is most probably an allusion in l. 32 and 307; to which nothing
of importance had been done since the days of Augustus. The great
influx of foreigners into Rome, in the train of Hadrian, at a still
later date, A. D. 118, probably gave rise to the spirited episode from
l. 58-125. (See Chronology. ) We may therefore consider it probable that
the main body of the Satire was written toward the close of the reign
of Domitian, and received additions in the commencement of the reign of
Hadrian.
The fourth Satire in all probability describes a real event; and would
have possessed but little interest after any great lapse of time,
subsequent to the fact described. We may therefore fairly assign it
to the early part of Nerva's reign, very shortly after the death of
Domitian, which is mentioned at the close of the Satire.
The fifth Satire contains nothing by which we can determine the date.
From Juvenal's hatred of Domitian, we may suppose that l. 36 was
suggested by the condemnation of Senecio, who was put to death for
writing a panegyric on Helvidius Priscus, A. D. 90. If the Aurelia
(l. 98) be the lady mentioned by Pliny (Epist. , ii. , 20), this would
strengthen the conjecture, as Pliny's second book of Epistles was
probably written very shortly before that date.
There is little doubt that considerable portions of the sixth Satire
were written in the reign of Trajan. 1. The lines 407-411 describe
exactly the events which took place at Antioch, in A. D. 115, when
Trajan was entering on his Armenian and Parthian campaigns. 2. The
coins of Trajan of the year A. D. 110, have the legend Dacicus and
Germanicus, cf. l. 205; and although Domitian triumphed over the
Dacians and Germans, none of his extant coins bear that inscription;
the general title being Augustus Germanicus simply. 3. Again, l.
502 describes a kind of headdress, very common on the coins of the
reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, representing Plotina the wife of Trajan,
Marciana his sister, and Sabina the wife of Hadrian, and others: and
this fashion was a very short-lived one. Beginning with the court, it
probably soon descended to the ladies of inferior rank; but like its
unnatural antitype, the towering, powdered, and plastered rolls of our
own countrywomen, in the degraded days of the two first Georges, it was
too unnatural and disfiguring to remain long in vogue with that sex,
to whom "tanta est quærendi cura decoris tanquam famæ discrimen agatur
aut animæ. " 4. The subject itself also affords an additional reason
for supposing that the Satire was composed when the poet was advanced
in life. The vices of women are hardly a topic for a young writer to
select; but the vigorous manner in which he handles the lash, rather
marks the state of mind of the man who has outgrown the passions of
early manhood, and from "the high heaven of his philosophy" looks down
with cold austerity on the desires, and with bitter indignation at the
vices, of those whose feelings he has long since ceased to share.
Juvenal was, as Hodgson says, "an impenetrable bachelor," and if, as
he conjectures, he was jilted in his early youth, this fact would give
additional bitterness to the rancor which in old age he would feel
toward the sex by whom his personal happiness had been embittered, as
well as the ruin of his native country precipitated. 5. If we are right
in supposing that by Heliodorus, Juvenal meant Artemidorus Capito (and
the change in the name is both simple and readily suggested), this
would also bring down the date of this Satire to Juvenal's later years,
as about A. D. 122 was the time when this court-physician of Hadrian had
attained his greatest reputation. 6. In line 320, Saufeia is spoken of
in similar terms to those employed in the eleventh Satire, which was
confessedly the work of his later years. 7. Compare also the mention
of Archigenes (l. 236) with the 98th line of the thirteenth Satire,
written A. D. 118. 8. The allusions to the importation of foreigners,
with their exotic vices, would also refer to the same date. See Chron. ,
A. D. 118.
The date of the seventh Satire will depend mainly on the question, Whom
does Juvenal intend to panegyrize in his 1st line?
"Et spes et ratio studiorum in Cæsare tantum. "
Gifford pronounces unhesitatingly in favor of Domitian, and his
argument is very plausible. "The Satire," he says, "would appear to
have been written in the early part of Domitian's reign; and Juvenal,
by giving the emperor '_one honest line_' of praise, probably meant to
stimulate him to extend his patronage. He did not think very ill of him
at the time, and augured happily for the future. " Juvenal's subsequent
hatred of Domitian was caused, he thinks, by his bitter mortification
at finding, in a few years, this "sole patron of literature" changed
into a ferocious and bloody persecutor of all the arts. This opinion
he supports by some references to contemporary writers, and by the
evidence of coins of Domitian existing with a head of Pallas on the
reverse, to symbolize his royal patronage of poetry and literary
pursuits. But in almost every instance Gifford errs in assigning too
early a date to the Satires; and one or two points in this clearly
show that we must bring it down to a much later period. Domitian
succeeded to the throne A. D. 81, and it could only have been in the
_earlier_ years of his reign that even his most servile flatterers
could have complimented him upon his patronage of learning. Now,
1. It was not till about ten years after this that the actor Paris
acquired his influence and his wealth; and even allowing the very
problematical story of the banishment of Juvenal having been caused by
the offense given to the favorite by the famous lines (85-92) to be
true, this would bring it down to a time subsequent to the banishment
of philosophers from Rome; after which act Juvenal, certainly, would
not have written the first line on Domitian. 2. Again, in A. D. 90,
Quintilian was teaching in a public school at Rome, and receiving a
salary from the imperial treasury; it could hardly therefore be so
early as this date that he had acquired the fortune and estates alluded
to in l. 189. 3. In l. 82, the Thebaid of Statius is mentioned. This
poem was finished A. D. 94; and though it is true that Statius might,
most probably, have publicly recited portions of it _during its
progress_, it would have hardly earned the great reputation implied in
Juvenal's lines, at a sufficiently early date to allow us to assign it
to the first two or three years of Domitian's reign.
I should, therefore, rather suppose that by Cæsar we are to understand
Nerva. The praise of Domitian is incompatible with Juvenal's universal
hatred and execration of him. The opening of the reign of the mild and
excellent Nerva might well inspire hopes of the revival of a taste for
literature and the arts; and I would conjecture the close of A. D. 96 as
the date of the Satire. Before the end of the year Statius was dead;
but Juvenal's words seem to imply that he was still living. Again,
Matho the lawyer has failed, and is in great poverty (l. 129), to which
Martial alludes in lib. xi. , Ep. , part of which book was evidently
written shortly before A. D. 97. But if we are right in supposing the
first Satire to have been written about A. D. 100, the intervening
years will have given Matho ample time to retrieve his fortune by his
infamous trade of informing, and reappear as the luxurious character
described Sat. , i. , 32.
Of the eighth Satire, if "Lateranus" be the true reading (l. 147), or
if he be intended by "Damasippus," as I believe, we may assume the year
A. D. 101 or 102 as the probable date: Lateranus had been consul A. D.
94, and in the year A. D. 101 Trajan for the first time extended the
arms of Rome beyond the Danube. Cf. l. 169.
The plunder of his province of Africa, by Marius Priscus, was a recent
event (l. 120 "nuper"); but, as we have said above, he was impeached by
Pliny and Tacitus in the year A. D. 100. Ponticus, to whom the Satire
is addressed, may be the person to whom Martial refers in his twelfth
book, which was written A. D. 104.
There are two allusions by which we may form a conjecture as to the
date of the ninth Satire. Crepereius Pollio is mentioned as nearly in
the same circumstances of profligate poverty (l. 6, 7) as is described
in the eleventh Satire (l. 43), which was undoubtedly written in
Juvenal's later years; and he alludes (l. 117) to Saufeia, in very much
the same terms in which he speaks of her in the sixth Satire (l. 320),
which we suppose to have been written in his old age.
The internal evidence, supplied by the sustained majesty and dignified
flow of language of the tenth (as well as of the fourteenth) Satire,
without taking into consideration the philosophical nature of the
subject of both, is quite sufficient to prove that they must have been
the finished productions of a late period of a thoughtful life. We are
therefore quite prepared to admit the conjecture that the allusion in
line 136 is to the column of Trajan, erected in the year A. D. 113. The
repetition of the line (226) also connects this with the first Satire,
which it probably preceded only by a short interval.
The 203d line of the eleventh Satire fixes its date to the later
years of Juvenal's life. It breathes, besides, throughout the spirit
of a calm and philosophic enjoyment of the blessings of life, that
tells of declining age; cheered by a chastened appreciation of the
comforts by which it is surrounded, but far removed from all extraneous
or meretricious excitement, and utterly abhorrent of all noisy or
exuberant hilarity. An additional argument is mentioned in the
Chronology for referring it to the date A. D. 124.
The twelfth Satire contains nothing by which we can fix its date with
any certainty. If, however, as the commentators suppose, the wife of
Fuscus, in the 45th line, be Saufeia, it will be connected with the
sixth, ninth, and eleventh Satires, and may probably be considered the
work of his advanced age.
The thirteenth Satire is fixed by line 17 to the year A. D. 118, the
60th after the consulship of L. Fonteius Capito. This is the only
Satire to which Mr. Clinton has assigned a date.
The argument applied to the tenth Satire will apply with nearly equal
force to the fourteenth. We are therefore prepared to admit the
plausibility of the conjecture, that l. 196 refers to the progress of
Hadrian through Britain, which would fix the date to A. D.
120; a very
short time previous to the composition of the following Satire.
The event recorded in the fifteenth Satire occurred shortly after the
consulship of Junius, l. 27, "nuper consule Junio gesta. " This was, in
all probability, Junius Rusticus, who was consul with Hadrian A. D. 119.
The 110th line also probably refers to the influx of Greeks and other
foreigners into Rome, in the train of Hadrian (to which we have alluded
in discussing the date of the third Satire), which took place in the
preceding year.
The sixteenth Satire may have either been the draft of a longer poem,
commenced in early life (as l. 3 _may_ imply), which the poet never
cared to finish; or an outline for a more perfect composition, which he
never lived to elaborate. The mention of Fucus may connect it with the
twelfth Satire. But though there is quite enough remaining to warrant
us in unhesitatingly ascribing the authorship to Juvenal, there is too
little left to enable us to form even a probable conjecture as to the
date of its composition.
It is hardly necessary to add, that, after a careful examination
of the foregoing Chronology, it must be evident to every novice in
scholarship, that the whole life of Juvenal, as usually given, is
a mere myth, to which one can not even apply, as in many legendary
biographies, the epithet of poetical.
L. E.
ARGUMENTS OF THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL.
SATIRE I.
This Satire seems, from several incidental circumstances to have been
produced subsequently to most of them; and was probably drawn up after
the author had determined to collect and publish his works, as a kind
of Introduction.
He abruptly breaks silence with an impassioned complaint of the
importunity of bad writers, and a resolution of retaliating upon them;
and after ridiculing their frivolous taste in the choice of their
subjects, declares his own intention to devote himself to Satire. After
exposing the corruption of men, the profligacy of women, the luxury of
courtiers, the baseness of informers and fortune-hunters, the treachery
of guardians, and the peculation of officers of state, he censures the
general passion for gambling, the servile rapacity of the patricians,
the avarice and gluttony of the rich, and the miserable poverty and
subjection of their dependents; and after some bitter reflections on
the danger of satirizing living villainy, concludes with a resolution
to attack it under the mask of departed names.
SATIRE II.
This Satire contains an animated attack upon the hypocrisy of the
philosophers and reformers of the day, whose ignorance, profligacy, and
impiety it exposes with just severity.
Domitian is here the object; his vices are alluded to under every
different name; and it gives us a high opinion of the intrepid spirit
of the man who could venture to circulate, even in private, so faithful
a representation of that blood-thirsty tyrant.
SATIRE III.
Umbritius, an Aruspex and friend of the author, disgusted at the
prevalence of vice and the disregard of unassuming virtue, is on the
point of quitting Rome; and when a little way from the city stops
short to acquaint the poet, who has accompanied him, with the causes
of his retirement. These may be arranged under the following heads:
That Flattery and Vice are the only thriving arts at Rome; in these,
especially the first, foreigners have a manifest superiority over
the natives, and consequently engross all favor--that the poor are
universally exposed to scorn and insult--that the general habits of
extravagance render it difficult for them to subsist--that the want
of a well-regulated police subjects them to numberless miseries and
inconveniences, aggravated by the crowded state of the capital, from
all which a country life is happily free: on the tranquillity and
security of which he dilates with great beauty.
SATIRE IV.
In this Satire Juvenal indulges his honest spleen against Crispinus,
already noticed, and Domitian, the constant object of his scorn
and abhorrence. The introduction of the tyrant is excellent; the
mock solemnity with which the anecdote of the Turbot is introduced,
the procession of the affrighted counselors to the palace, and the
ridiculous debate which terminates in as ridiculous a decision, show a
masterly hand. The whole concludes with an indignant and high-spirited
apostrophe.
SATIRE V.
Under pretense of advising one Trebius to abstain from the table of
Virro, a man of rank and fortune, Juvenal takes occasion to give a
spirited detail of the insults and mortifications to which the poor
were subjected by the rich, at those entertainments to which, on
account of the political connection subsisting between patrons and
clients, it was sometimes thought necessary to invite them.
SATIRE VI.
The whole of this Satire, not only the longest, but the most complete
of the author's works, is directed against the female sex. It may
be distributed under the following heads: Lust variously modified,
imperiousness of disposition, fickleness, gallantry, attachment to
improper pursuits, litigiousness, drunkenness, unnatural passions,
fondness for singers, dancers, etc. ; gossiping, cruelty, ill manners;
outrageous pretensions to criticism, grammar, and philosophy;
superstitious and unbounded credulity in diviners and fortune-tellers;
introducing supposititious children; poisoning their step-sons to
possess their fortunes; and, lastly, murdering their husbands.
SATIRE VII.
This Satire contains an animated account of the general discouragement
under which literature labored at Rome. Beginning with poetry, it
proceeds through the various departments of history, law, oratory,
rhetoric, and grammar; interspersing many curious anecdotes, and
enlivening each different head with such satirical, humorous, and
sentimental remarks as naturally flow from the subject.
SATIRE VIII.
Juvenal demonstrates, in this Satire, that distinction is merely
personal; that though we may derive rank and titles from our ancestors,
yet if we degenerate from the virtues by which they obtained them,
we can not be considered truly noble. This is the main object of the
Satire; which, however, branches out into many collateral topics--the
profligacy of the young nobility; the miserable state of the provinces,
which they plundered and harassed without mercy; the contrast between
the state of debasement to which the descendants of the best families
had sunk, and the opposite virtues to be found in persons of the lowest
station and humblest descent.
SATIRE IX.
The Satire consists of a dialogue between the poet and one Nævolus, a
dependent of some wealthy debauchee, who, after making him subservient
to his unnatural passions, in return starved, insulted, hated, and
discarded him. The whole object seems to be, to inculcate the grand
moral lesson, that, under any circumstances, a life of sin is a life of
slavery.
SATIRE X.
The subject of this inimitable Satire is the vanity of human wishes.
From the principal events of the lives of the most illustrious
characters of all ages, the poet shows how little happiness is promoted
by the attainment of what our indistinct and limited views represent as
the greatest of earthly blessings. Of these he instances wealth, power,
eloquence, military glory, longevity, and personal accomplishments;
all of which, he shows, have proved dangerous or destructive to their
respective possessors. Hence he argues the wisdom of acquiescing in
the dispensations of Heaven; and concludes with a form of prayer, in
which he points out with great force and beauty the objects for which a
rational being may presume to approach the Almighty.
SATIRE XI.
Under the form of an invitation to his friend Persicus, Juvenal takes
occasion to enunciate many admirable maxims for the due regulation
of life. After ridiculing the miserable state to which a profligate
patrician had reduced himself by his extravagance, he introduces the
picture of his own domestic economy, which he follows by a pleasing
view of the simplicity of ancient manners, artfully contrasted with
the extravagance and luxury of the current times. After describing
with great beauty the entertainment he proposes to give his friend, he
concludes with an earnest recommendation to him to enjoy the present
with content, and await the future with calmness and moderation.
SATIRE XII.
Catullus, a valued friend of the poet, had narrowly escaped shipwreck.
In a letter of rejoicing to their common friend, Corvinus, Juvenal
describes the danger that his friend had incurred, and his own hearty
and disinterested delight at his preservation, contrasting his own
sacrifices of thanksgiving at the event, with those offered by the
designing legacy-hunters, by which the rich and childless were
attempted to be insnared.
SATIRE XIII.
Calvinus had left a sum of money in the hands of a confidential
person, who, when he came to re-demand it, forswore the deposit. The
indignation and fury expressed by Calvinus at this breach of trust,
reached the ears of his friend Juvenal, who endeavors to soothe and
comfort him under his loss. The different topics of consolation follow
one another naturally and forcibly, and the horrors of a troubled
conscience were perhaps never depicted with such impressive solemnity
as in this Satire.
SATIRE XIV.
The whole of this Satire is directed to the one great end of
self-improvement. By showing the dreadful facility with which children
copy the vices of their parents, the poet points out the necessity as
well as the sacred duty of giving them examples of domestic purity
and virtue. After briefly enumerating the several vices, gluttony,
cruelty, debauchery, etc. , which youth imperceptibly imbibe from their
seniors, he enters more at large into that of avarice; of which he
shows the fatal and inevitable consequences. Nothing can surpass the
exquisiteness of this division of the Satire, in which he traces the
progress of that passion in the youthful mind from the paltry tricks
of saving a broken meal to the daring violation of every principle,
human and divine. Having placed the absurdity as well as the danger of
immoderate desires in every point of view, he concludes with a solemn
admonition to rest satisfied with those comforts and conveniences which
nature and wisdom require, and which a decent competence is easily
calculated to supply.
SATIRE XV.
After enumerating with great humor the animal and vegetable gods of the
Egyptians, the author directs his powerful ridicule at their sottish
and ferocious bigotry; of which he gives an atrocious and loathsome
example. The conclusion of the Satire, which is a just and beautiful
description of the origin of civil society (infinitely superior to any
thing that Lucretius or Horace has delivered on the subject), founded
not on natural instinct, but on principles of mutual benevolence
implanted by God in the breast of man, and of man alone, does honor to
the genius, good sense, and enlightened morality of the author.
SATIRE XVI.
Under a pretense of pointing out to his friend Gallus the advantages of
a military life, Juvenal attacks with considerable spirit the exclusive
privileges which the army had acquired or usurped, to the manifest
injury of the civil part of the community.
JUVENAL'S SATIRES.
SATIRE I.
Must I always be a hearer only? Shall I never retaliate,[33] though
plagued so often with the Theseid of Codrus,[34] hoarse _with reciting
it_? Shall one man, then, recite[35] to me his Comedies, and another
his Elegies, with impunity? Shall huge "Telephus" waste a whole day for
me, or "Orestes," with the margin of the manuscript full to the very
edge, and written on the back too,[36] and yet not finished, _and I not
retort_?
No one knows his own house better than I do the grove of Mars, and
Vulcan's cave close to the Æolian rocks. The agency of the winds,[37]
what ghosts Æacus is torturing, whence another bears off the gold[38]
of the stolen fleece, what huge mountain-ashes Monychus hurls, _all
this_ the plane-groves of Fronto,[39] and the statues shaken and the
columns split by the eternal reciter, are for ever re-echoing. You may
look for the same themes from the greatest poet and the least.
And yet I too have shirked my hand away from the rod. [40] I too
have given advice to Sylla, that he should enjoy a sound sleep by
returning to a private station. [41] When at every turn you meet so
many poetasters, it were a foolish clemency to spare paper that is
sure to be wasted. Yet why I rather choose to trace my course over
that plain through which the great foster-son of Aurunca[42] urged his
steeds, I will, if you are at leisure, and with favorable ear listen to
reason, tell you. When a soft eunuch[43] marries a wife; when Mævia[44]
transfixes the Tuscan boar, and, with breasts exposed, grasps the
hunting-spears; when one man singly vies in wealth with the whole body
of patricians, under whose razor my beard, grown exuberant, sounded
while I was in my prime;[45] when Crispinus, one of the dregs of the
mob of the Nile, a born-slave of Canopus, (while his shoulder hitches
up his Tyrian cloak,)[46] airs his summer ring from his sweating
fingers, and can not support the weight of his heavier gem;--it is
difficult not to write satire. For who can be so tolerant of this
iniquitous city, who so case-hardened,[47] as to contain himself! When
there comes up the bran-new litter of Matho[48] the lawyer, filled with
himself; and after him, he that informed upon his powerful friend; and
will soon plunder the nobility, already close-shorn, of the little
that remains to them; one whom even Massa fears, whom Carus soothes
with a bribe; or a Thymele suborned by some trembling Latinus. [49]
When fellows supplant you, who earn their legacies by night-work,
lifted up to heaven[50] by what is now the surest road to the highest
advancement, the lust of some ancient harridan. Proculeius gets one
poor twelfth; but Gillo has eleven twelfths. Each gets the share
proportioned to his powers. Well! let him take the purchase-money of
his blood, and be as pale as one that has trodden on a snake with naked
heel, or a rhetorician about to declaim at the altar at Lyons. [51]
Why need I tell with what indignation my parched liver boils, when
here, the plunderer of his ward (reduced by him to the vilest gains)
presses on the people with his crowds of menials, and there, he that
was condemned by a powerless sentence. (For what cares he for infamy
while he retains the plunder? ) Marius,[52] though an exile, drinks
from the eighth hour, and laughs at the angry gods, while thou, O
Province, victorious in the suit, art in tears! Shall I not deem these
themes worthy of the lamp of Venusium? [53] Shall I not lash these?
Why rather sing tales of Hercules or Diomede, or the bellowing of
the Labyrinth, and the sea struck by the boy Icarus, and the winged
artificer? [54] When the pander inherits the wealth of the adulterer
(since the wife has lost the right of receiving it),[55] taught
to gaze at the ceiling, and snore over his cups with well-feigned
sleep. When he considers himself privileged to expect the command of
a cohort, who has squandered his money on his stables, and has run
through all his ancestors' estate, while he flies with rapid wheel
along the Flaminian road;[56] for while yet a youth, like Automedon,
he held the reins, while the great man showed himself off to his
"mistress-in-his-cloak. "[57] Do you not long to fill your capacious
tablets, even in the middle of the cross-ways, when there comes borne
on the shoulders of six slaves, exposed to view on either side, with
palanquin almost uncurtained, and aping the luxurious Mæcenas, the
forger, who made himself a man of splendor and wealth by a few short
lines, and a moistened seal? [58] Next comes the powerful matron, who
when her husband thirsts, mingles the toad's-poison in the mellow
wine of Cales which she is herself about to hand him, and with skill
superior even to Locusta,[59] initiates her neighbors, too simple
before, in the art of burying their husbands, livid from the poison, in
despite of infamy and the public gaze. [60]
Dare some deed to merit scanty Gyarus[61] and the jail, if you wish to
be somebody. Honesty is commended, and starves. It is to their crimes
they are indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their tables, their
fine old plate, and the goat standing in high relief from the cup.
Whom does the seducer of his own daughter-in-law, greedy for gold,
suffer to sleep? Or the unnatural brides, or the adulterer not out of
his teens? [62] If nature denies the power, indignation would give birth
to verses, such as it could produce, like mine and Cluvienus'.
From the time that Deucalion ascended the mountain in his boat, while
the storm upheaved the sea,[63] and consulted the oracle, and the
softening stones by degrees grew warm with life, and Pyrrha displayed
to the males the virgins unrobed; all that men are engaged in, their
wishes, fears, anger, pleasures, joys, and varied pursuits, form the
hotch-potch of my book.
And when was the crop of vices more abundant? When were the sails of
avarice more widely spread? When had gambling its present spirits? For
now men go to the hazard of the gaming-table not simply with their
purses, but play with their whole chest[64] staked. What fierce battles
will you see there, while the steward supplies the weapons for the
contest! Is it then mere common madness to lose a hundred sestertia,
and not leave enough for a tunic for your shivering slave! [65] Which
of our grandsires erected so many villas? Which of them ever dined by
himself[66] on seven courses? In our days the diminished sportula is
set outside the threshold, ready to be seized upon by the toga-clad
crowd. [67] Yet he (that dispenses it), before giving, scans your
features, and dreads lest you should come with counterfeit pretense
and under a false name. When recognized you will receive your dole.
He bids the crier summon the very Trojugenæ themselves. For even they
assail the door with us. "Give the prætor his! Then to the tribune. "
But the freedman must first be served! "I was before him! " he says.
"Why should I fear or hesitate to stand up for my turn, though I was
born on the banks of Euphrates, which the soft windows[68] in my ears
would attest, though I myself were to deny the fact. But my five
shops bring me in four hundred sestertia. What does the Laticlave[69]
bestow that's worth a wish, since Corvinus keeps sheep for hire in the
Laurentine fields? I own more than Pallas[70] and the Licini. Let the
tribunes wait then! " Let Riches carry the day, and let not him give
place even to the sacrosanct magistrate, who came but the other day
to this city with chalked feet. [71] Since with us the most revered
majesty is that of riches; even though as yet, pernicious money, thou
dwellest in no temple, nor have we as yet reared altars to coin, as we
worship Peace and Faith, Victory and Virtue, and Concord, whose temple
resounds with the noise of storks returning to their nests. [72] But
when a magistrate of the highest rank reckons up at the end of the
year, what the sportula brings him in, how much it adds to his revenue,
what shall the poor retainers do, who look to this for their toga, for
their shoes, their bread and fire at home? A closely-wedged crowd of
litters is clamorous for the hundred quadrantes, and his wife, though
sick or pregnant, accompanies and goes the rounds with her husband.
One practicing a crafty trick now worn threadbare, asks for his wife
though really absent, displaying in her stead an empty and closed
palanquin: "My Galla is inside," he says, "dispatch us with all speed.
Why hesitate? " "Put out your head, Galla! " "O don't disturb her! she's
asleep! "
The day is portioned out with a fine routine of engagements. First
the sportula; then the Forum,[73] and Apollo[74] learned in the law;
and the triumphal statues, among which some unknown Egyptian or
Arabarch has dared set up his titles, whose image, as though sacred,
one dare not venture to defile. [75] At length, the old and wearied-out
clients quit the vestibule and give up all their hopes;[76] although
their expectation of a dinner has been full-long protracted: the poor
wretches must buy their cabbage and fire. Meanwhile their patron-lord
will devour the best that the forest and ocean can supply, and will
recline in solitary state with none but himself on his couches. For
out of so many fair, and broad, and such ancient dishes, they gorge
whole patrimonies at a single course. In our days there will not be
even a parasite! Yet who could tolerate such sordid luxury! How gross
must that appetite be, which sets before itself whole boars, an animal
created to feast a whole company! Yet thy punishment is hard at hand,
when distended with food thou layest aside thy garments, and bearest
to the bath the peacock undigested! Hence sudden death, and old age
without a will. The news[77] travels to all the dinner-tables, but
calls forth no grief, and thy funeral procession advances, exulted
over by disgusted friends! [78] There is nothing farther that future
times can add to our immorality. Our posterity must have the same
desires, perpetrate the same acts. Every vice has reached its climax.
Then set sail! spread all your canvas! Yet here perchance you may
object, whence can talent be elicited able to cope with the subject?
Whence that blunt freedom of our ancestors, whose very name I dare not
utter, of writing whatever was dictated by their kindling soul. What
matter, whether Mucius forgive the libel, or not? But take Tigellinus
for your theme, and you will shine in that tunic, in which they blaze
standing,[79] who smoke with throat transfixed, and you will draw
a broad furrow in the middle of the sand. "Must he then, who has
given[80] aconite to his three uncles, be borne on down cushions,
suspended aloft, and from thence look down on us? " Yes! when he meets
you press your finger to your lip! There will be some informer standing
by to whisper in his ear, That's he! Without fear for the consequences
you may match[81] Æneas and the fierce Rutulian. The death of Achilles
breeds ill-will in no one; or the tale of the long-sought Hylas, who
followed his pitcher. But whensoever Lucilius, fired with rage, has
brandished as it were his drawn sword, his hearer, whose conscience
chills with the remembrance of crime, grows red. His heart sweats with
the pressure of guilt concealed. Then bursts forth rage and tears!
Ponder well, therefore, these things in your mind, before you sound the
signal blast. The soldier when helmeted repents too late of the fight.
I will try then what I may be allowed to vent on those whose ashes are
covered by the Flaminian[82] or Latin road.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] _Reponam_, "repay in kind. " A metaphor taken from the payment of
debts.
[34] _Codrus_; a poor poet in every sense, if, as some think, he is the
same as the Codrus mentioned iii. , 203.
[35] _Recitaverit. _ For the custom of Roman writers to recite their
compositions in public, cf. Sat. vii. , 40, 83; iii. , 9. Plin. , 1,
Ep. xiii. , "queritur se diem perdidisse. " _Togata_ is a comedy on a
Roman subject; _Prætexta_, a tragedy on the same; _Elegi_, trifling
love-songs.
[36] _In tergo. _ The ancients usually wrote only on one side of the
parchment: when otherwise, the works were called "Opisthographi," and
said to be written "aversa charta. "
[37] _Venti_; cf. xii. , 23, where he uses "Poëtica tempestas" as a
proverbial expression.
[38] _Aurum_; probably a hit at Valerius Flaccus, his contemporary.
[39] _Julius Fronto_ was a munificent patron of literature, thrice
consul, and once colleague of Trajan, A. D. 97. Cassiod.
[40] "Jam a grammaticis eruditi recessimus. " Brit.
