Where steadfast virtue dwells not in the breast,
Man is a wavering creature at the best!
Man is a wavering creature at the best!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v14 - Ibn to Juv
Accepting the more
probable of these statements, we may assume that Juvenal was the
son of a freedman, born at Aquinum about 60 A. D. ; that he spent
most of his life at Rome, where he was especially interested in the
study of rhetoric; and that his satires were written after he reached
middle age, between 96 and 120 A. D. It is probable that he served
in the army, that he was at one time banished to Egypt, and that he
was about eighty years old when he died. The two most striking
things about this dearth of information are --- first, that Martial, the
only classical writer who mentions Juvenal, speaks of him simply as
a friend, with no reference to his literary achievements; and second,
that the poet is so singularly chary of information about his own
life.
Many poets write autobiographies in spite of themselves; from
simplicity rather than egoism they lay before their readers records of
## p. 8414 (#626) ###########################################
8414
JUVENAL
their lives, -as Burns and Horace, for instance, have done. All that
we need to know of the birth of Horace, his education, his friends,
his pleasures, his taste, and his philosophy, we may find written down
by his own hand, either in intentional description or in unintentional
reference. Juvenal's reticence is in the more striking contrast to this
self-revelation, since they both deal with the same general subject, -
the follies and vices of their own contemporaries. It is characteristic
of the two points of view. Horace is not only in the world of which
he writes, but of it. We may fancy him resting at ease in a circle
of his friends, reading aloud to them, while a quiet smile plays about
his lips, the carefully prepared, well-polished, often persuasive, but
rarely convincing arguments in favor - of what? Not of righteous-
ness, not even of good morals,— but of moderation, content, and good
taste. Honesty is the best policy; discontent is very disquieting;
violent emotion is conducive to dyspepsia: even his friends would
hardly resent these pleasant discussions of every-day topics, this
mingling of wit and wisdom, these little thrusts at their follies and
affectations.
“We all have our faults: let us deal gently with each other; and
when we laugh at our friends, let us laugh with them too. The
really foolish man is the one that gives up the calm joy of living,
in the pursuit of some vulgar extreme of wealth or power or philo-
sophic asceticism. ” Such a man, with such a disposition, and in such
an environment as that of the early Empire, was naturally communi-
cative.
If we can imagine Juvenal reading his satires to an audience, it
must be to one that stood with him aloof from the world that he
describes. The man who recognized his own portrait in any one of
these figures, standing out with such startling distinctness from the
background of infamy and degradation furnished by the later Empire,
would be in no mood to take the reader by the hand and thank him
for a very pleasant evening. Juvenal is not resting on a couch talk-
ing things over with his friends: he is standing in the full strength
of an indignant manhood, denouncing with the voice of one of the
old Hebrew prophets the debauchery and the crime which are the
death of all that is great and good. He does not play about his
subject, but attacks it directly and vigorously; and we follow him
with personal sympathetic attention, confident that he means what
he says, and that he will not turn around upon us at the end of the
journey and laugh at us because we are out of breath. Sometimes
indeed we may feel that the pace is rather hot, and we may think
with a touch of envy of our round-bodied good-natured little friend
Horace ambling along in the rear; but on the whole we enjoy the
rush and the whirl of Juvenal's gallop. After all, it is hard to make
## p. 8415 (#627) ###########################################
JUVENAL
8415
a hero of a philosopher. The man of few ideas, but of single pur-
pose and indomitable will, rouses our enthusiasm, however much in
our moments of calm reflection we may deprecate his violence.
The main source of Juvenal's power is this directness — this honest
recognition of the brute in man: he is like a preacher that believes
in original sin and total depravity. We may gloss it over, and talk
about the educative value of evil, and the refining influences of art
and wealth; we may laugh with Horace, and say «What fools these
mortals be! » — but when Juvenal sweeps away these philosophic com-
promises, we instinctively put out our hands as if to ward off a blow.
The works of Juvenal as they have come down to us consist of
sixteen satires, containing about four thousand lines. The genuine-
ness of several satires, and of passages in others, has been disputed;
but while the two sections into which such critics divide the works
attributed to Juvenal differ decidedly in subject and in style, these
differences are not of such a sort as to lead the best editors to reject
the disputed portions.
Juvenal announces his subject as “The doings of men, their hopes,
their fears, their runnings to and fro. ” It was a topic that found
little or no place in the great body of Greek literature. Quintilian
claimed this field for the Romans when he said, “Satire is wholly our
own;" and Horace speaks of it as a form of verse untouched by the
Greeks. Among the Romans themselves Juvenal's most important
predecessors were Ennius, Lucilius, Horace, and Persius. The frag-
ments of Ennius are so few that the character of his satires is doubt-
ful. We know little more of them than that they were medleys,
sometimes in dialogue form. True satire began with Lucilius. Like
Juvenal he was essentially Roman in spirit, and stood for the old
Roman virtues; but, also like Juvenal, he sometimes rose to a broader
conception, as in his famous definition of virtue: his style was care-
less, but full of force, and sharp with real satiric power. Horace
differs from Juvenal in his whole spirit and tone. He is cosmopolitan
rather than national, his weapon is ridicule rather than invective.
His style is easy and conversational, free from rhetorical exaggera-
tion and systematic elaboration. Persius, a student of books rather
than of inen, is didactic and pseudo-philosophical, full of affectation
and self-consciousness; occasionally, however, he forgets himself and
writes an effective passage, as in his description of the prayers
offered in the temples. Juvenal is more polished and rhetorical than
Lucilius, more vigorous than Horace, more real than Persius.
In the first satire, which is in a way introductory to the whole
series, Juvenal gives his reasons for writing. He is tired of the
fashionable poetry of the day, made up of mythology and common-
place, and proposes to follow in the footsteps of Lucilius. The state
## p. 8416 (#628) ###########################################
8416
JUVENAL
of the times certainly justifies satire. The social order is upside
down, Rome is full of masculine women and effeminate men, rascally
lawyers and malicious informers, rich upstarts and dishonest politi-
cians, gamblers, forgers, poisoners. Here is a field indeed where
<if nature fail, just wrath may fill the line. ”
The third satire shares with the tenth the claim to greatest gen-
eral interest. It was imitated by Johnson in his London’; but the
imitation is not close enough to be a good translation, and is too
close to be a good paraphrase. Here Juvenal's power of vivid word-
painting is at its best. His friend Umbricius feels forced to leave
Rome and go to live in a quiet little country town; and to justify
this resolution he describes the state of the city. There is no
room for honest men, since all success is the reward of wrong-doing.
Rome has become the paradise of the versatile time-serving Greeks,
who are ready to assume any part and do any work, and are equally
unscrupulous in all. Nor is there room in Rome for a poor man: he
is ill treated and despised, and driven to dishonesty by the ostenta-
tion that society forces upon him. Even in the streets deep with
mud, brawny porters, with casks or beams on their shoulders, and
sturdy soldiers with hob-nailed shoes, crowd and jostle him, while he
makes way for the rich man's litter or for the contractor's wagon.
The night is worse than the day; for then the streets are full of
boisterous revelers, who delight to pick a quarrel, and after insults
and blows, finish their frolic by summoning their victim for assault
and battery! His head is not safe from falling tiles and objects of
various sorts thrown from the windows of the tall buildings, — whose
ill-built walls are a danger in themselves, - nor his neck from the
footpads and garroters that infest the town.
The tenth satire, which English readers know through Dr. John-
son's imitation, entitled “The Vanity of Human Wishes,' is perhaps
the least technical, the least Roman, and the least savage of all
Juvenal's works. It is marked by great breadth of view, and rests
more firmly on ground common to humanity. Its instances of the
better that is ever the enemy of the good » teach the wisdom of con-
tent quite as clearly as the more direct maxims of the apostle of
moderation, Horace himself. Sejanus, who sought the imperial crown
and found a felon's death; Hannibal, who fretted within the narrow
limits of a single empire and became an exile and a suicide; Cicero,
anxious to pose a second time as the savior of his country; Priam,
whose length of days brought heaped-up woes: all these and other
examples show — not, as some have thought, the futility of human
effort, but as Juvenal himself says, the blindness of the human heart,
and its inability to distinguish between the good and its opposite.
What wonder that Heraclitus wept, and Democritus laughed, at the
## p. 8417 (#629) ###########################################
JUVENAL
8417
sane
9
folly of man? Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Man
is dearer to the gods than to himself. Let him pray for a
mind in a sound body; for the strength of soul that death cannot
affright; for a heart that bears its burdens patiently, that knows not
anger nor admits inordinate desire. Dr. Johnson's imitation suffers
by comparison with the original. It lacks force and fervor; its pict-
ures are dull beside the brilliant coloring of Juvenal; while Wolsey
is but a poor substitute for Sejanus, and Charles of Sweden a dim
reflection of the man who bade his soldiers scale the Alps, “the walls
of Rome. " Chaucer refers to this satire in Troilus and Creseide):-
“O Juvenall, lord, true is thy sentence,
That little wenen folke what is to yerne,
That they ne finden in hir desire offence,
For cloud of errour ne lette hem discerne
What best is. )
Another satire which appeals rather to humanity than to anything
distinctly Roman is the fourteenth, on the influence of parental
example. The young man learns of his father as the young bird
learns of the old. Men complain of the faults and vices of their
sons, and say, "I never taught him that. ” No; but your example was
stronger than your precepts, and he is only treading your own foot-
steps deeper. In the case of avarice indeed you add precept to exam-
ple; and teach your boy meanness, injustice, and crime, only that he
may be tormented by anxiety to retain what he has been tormented
by anxiety to acquire.
The contrast between the early Roman Senate and the collection
of sycophants that bore the name in Juvenal's day is brought out in
the fourth satire. The Emperor summons his advisers to his Alban
villa to decide on the disposition of a great fish which the poor fish-
erman, making a virtue of necessity, has presented to his imperial
master. The various senators are described, each in a few lines, but
in phrases so carefully chosen and so aptly framed that the individ-
uals stand out like pictures on a canvas, from “kindly old Crispus »
to “Pompeius,” who was “good at slitting throats with a whisper. ”
The degenerate form of the old Roman relation of patron and
client is depicted in the fifth satire. The mean servility that will
submit to all sorts of indignities for the sake of a place at a rich
man's table, where the obsequious guest receives an occasional word,
like a bone thrown to a dog, calls for little pity. The man that will
practice it deserves all the contempt that is his inevitable reward.
The famous chapter in Punch, Advice to Those about to Marry,'
is a condensation into one word of Juvenal's six hundred lines of
warning on the same subject to his friend Postumus, in the sixth
satire. There is probably no chapter in the whole range of literature
XIV-527
## p. 8418 (#630) ###########################################
8418
JUVENAL
that deals so unsparingly with the faults and vices of women as this.
The writer does not confine himself to sex relations, but dilates with
vigor upon their extravagant love of display, silly devotion to actors
and musicians, delight in gossip, cruelty to those weaker than them-
selves, childish literary aspirations, foolish superstitions, imitation of
men's dress, manners, and pursuits. If a woman be free from these
vices of her sex, her self-complacency makes her very virtue distaste-
ful. The chief value of the satire lies in its picture of the times,
set forth with all the unrivaled vigor of Juvenal's denunciation. An
interesting parallel may be found in the third chapter of Isaiah.
The thirteenth satire contains several famous passages.
In one
of them Juvenal describes the different mental attitudes of different
men in the face of wrong-doing, in another the pains of remorse, and
in a third the pettiness of revenge. In breadth of view, strength of
grasp, psychological insight, and evidence of reserve power, the satire
ranks with the masterpieces of literature; and it furnishes the chief
arguments to those critics who have thought that its author was well
acquainted with the ethics of the Christian system.
Juvenal's whole work takes its dominant note from his standard of
morality, which is drawn not from any system of philosophic ethics,
but from a simple recognition of the eternal conflict between right
and wrong.
In many passages indeed he applies this standard in a
conventional Roman way, as when he fings his scorn upon the
Roman noble who drives his own chariot past the very tombs of his
ancestors. In general, however, he is human rather than merely
Roman. It is the same standard that the old Roman character
evolved without the help of Greek philosophy; the same crude but
definite standard that Cato feared to see obscured by the compli-
cation and compromises of Greek culture. It results in that direct
appeal to the individual conscience which marks all earnest reformers,
all great religious movements. This gives to the satires their imme-
diate personal interest.
Juvenal's style is the natural expression of strong feeling tinged
with bitterness. His sentences come out with a rush and a swing
that force the attention. They have the drum and trumpet's din,”
rather than the continuity, the long slow slope and vast curves of
the gradual violin. ” Artistic in the Horatian sense he is not. The
tension is rarely relaxed. There are few lights and shades. His
very strength becomes his weakness. We seem to feel, not the calm
consciousness of power in which the word inevitably follows the
thought, but the tumult of feeling that seizes upon the words and
forces them into the verse: such a style is effective, but by its very
stress and strain it is wearisome. Many critics have accused him of
being a mere rhetorician; failing to see that while his strong phrases
may sometimes cloud his thought, they never take its place.
## p. 8419 (#631) ###########################################
JUVENAL
8419
>
Besides its pictorial quality, instances of which have already been
given, his style is marked by an epigrammatic terseness which puts
an essay into a single line, and has made him one of the best quoted
of Roman writers. “A sane mind in a sound body;" «But who shall
watch the watchers ? ” “All men praise honesty- and let her freeze;"
« The traveler with empty purse will whistle in the footpad's face; »
« To save his life, he gives up all that makes life dear;) Prayers
which the unkindly gods have granted;” “It is the innocence of
youth that most deserves our reverence. ” His works abound in such
summaries of thought, which place a whole situation at the command
of a reader who possesses an imagination, though they may leave the
mere grammarian cold.
A satirist without humor is a literary scold; and while Juvenal's
humor has none of the lightness and delicacy which we usually asso-
ciate with the word, it is present in full measure. Remorseless as
that of Swift, bitter as that of Thackeray, it does not stir to laughter,
but raises at best a grim smile. Scornful rather than contemptuous,
it is the humor of indignation rather than of ridicule. Juvenal can
knock his victim down with the bludgeon of Cato, run him through
with Swift's rapier, and then draw his picture with Hogarth's pencil.
For us, then, Juvenal means a strong, earnest spirit with great
breadth of view and distinctness of vision, depicting with marvelous
power of expression the state of society during one of the most im-
portant periods of human history. He is not only a poet, - he is
preacher and prophet as well.
Thomas Ronde
a hurissang
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. — The earliest English versions of Juvenal
are those by Holyday and Stapylton in the middle of the seventeenth
century. Gifford, Hodgson, and Badham have made translations in
English verse. There are literal prose translations by Madan, Evans,
and Lewis. Five of the satires here translated by Dryden; and two,
the third and the tenth, were imitated by Dr. Johnson. The best
English editions are those of Macleane and the exhaustive one of
Mayor. There are excellent articles on Juvenal by Professor Ramsay
in Dr. Smith's ' Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography,' by Sellar
in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,' and in the introductions to Dryden's,
Gifford's, and Lewis's translations.
T. B. L.
## p. 8420 (#632) ###########################################
8420
JUVENAL
UMBRICIUS'S FAREWELL TO ROME
From the Third Satire
ST
INCE of honest gains —
By honest arts no hope at Rome remains;
Since from the remnant of my scanty store
Each morrow still wears off some fragment more:
Thither I go where Dædalus, distressed,
Took his tired wings off, and was glad to rest –
In the first freshness of an old man's prime.
What should I do at Rome, untaught to lie,
Who neither praise the stupid book, nor buy?
Who cannot, will not, bid the stars declare
His father's funeral to the greedy heir ?
The bowels of the toad I ne'er inspect,
To bear th' adulterer's gifts none me select;
No public robbers through my aid shall thrive:
Then wherefore with the current longer strive?
No man's confederate, here alone I stand,
Like the maimed owner of a palsied hand.
From that vile race at length behold me free;
Dear to the great, detestable to me!
Scruples, away! What! is it come to this?
Is Rome at last a Greek metropolis ?
Yet of the filth derived from foreign mart,
The feculence of Greece but forms a part:
Full into Tiber's stream 'tis many a day
Since foul Orontes forced its fatal way:
Hence Syrian speech and Syrian manners come,
And Syrian music, and the barbarous drum:
Hie to the circus, ye that set a price
On foreign lures, and exoteric vice!
Into each house the wily strangers crawl,—
Obsequious now, soon to be lords of all.
Prompt to discern, and swift to seize his time,
Your Greek stands forth in impudence sublime.
Torrents of words that might Isæus drown
Rush forth at once, and bear you helpless down.
Hope not to scan that prodigy of parts,
The deep in science, the adept in arts:
Geometer, logician, man of taste,
Versed in all lore, with all acquirements graced,
Medicine and magic swell the ample list,
From augur grave to light funambulist:
## p. 8421 (#633) ###########################################
JUVENAL
8421
Bid an esurient Greek do what you choose,-
The absurd, the impossible,- he'll not refuse!
Was it for nothing, that of Aventine
The freshening gales in infancy were mine?
For nothing that on Roman soil I grew,
And my first strength from Sabine olives drew ?
Go, persevere; and in most prudent strain,
Praise wit in fools and features in the plain;
On lanky, long-necked feebleness confer
The grasp of Hercules — ye cannot err!
Go, praise a voice as mellow as the note
Which the shrill cock pours from exulting throat.
Thus too might we,— but who would be deceived ?
The Greek alone may lie and be believed.
Who at Præneste ever lived in dread
Lest the frail roof should crumble o'er his head ?
At Gabii who? Volsinium's woodland height,
Or Tibur throned upon its mountain site ?
Here props and buttresses the crash suspend,
And loaded with incumbent ruin, bend:
For thus the thrifty steward would conceal
The perils which old flaws anon reveal;
And while the loosened pile yet nods on high,
Bids us sleep on, nor fear the danger nigh.
Oh! let me dwell where no nocturnal screams
Shall break the golden links of blissful dreams!
Hark! where Ucalegon for water cries,
Casts out his chattels, from the peril flies;
Dense smoke is bursting from the floor below,-
Ho! wake thee, man! thy instant perils know.
The basement totters, and thou snor'st the while!
Last to be burnt, all snug beneath the tile
That gives thee shelter from the vernal rain,
Where the fond dove hath pledged her eggs in vain.
Such are our days; let a new theme invite,
And hear the greater perils of the night.
Behold those lofty roofs from which, on high,
The loosened tile oft wounds the passer-by;
Nor seldom, from some lofty casement thrown,
The cracked and broken vase comes thundering down;
See with what force it strikes the Aint below,
Where the flawed pavement tells the frequent blow!
Oh! thoughtless, careless, indolent, or blind,
Sup not abroad before thy will be signed;
## p. 8422 (#634) ###########################################
8422
JUVENAL
Assured, as many dangers thou shalt meet
As there be open windows in the street.
To these, my friend, more reasons yet remain:
Enough! the sun's already on the wane;
The cattle wait — th' impatient driver, see,
Points to the road, and only stays for me.
Farewell! forget me not, and when, oppressed
With cares at Rome, thou seek'st Aquinum's rest,
The much-loved shores of Cuma I'll resign,
At his own Ceres' and Diana's shrine,
To greet my friend; and in his satires there
(If they disdain not) I will gladly bear
What part I may: in country shoes I'll come,
Tread your bleak lands, and share your friendly home.
TERRORS OF CONSCIENCE
From the Thirteenth Satire
THE
HE Spartan rogue who, boldly bent on fraud,
Dared ask the god to sanction and applaud,
And sought for counsel at the Pythian shrine,
Received for answer from the lips divine, -
(That he who doubted to restore his trust,
And reasoned much, reluctant to be just,
Should for those doubts and that reluctance prove
The deepest vengeance of the powers above. "
The tale declares that not pronounced in vain
Came forth the warning from the sacred fane:
Ere long no branch of that devoted race
Could mortal man on soil of Sparta trace!
Thus but intended mischief, stayed in time,
Had all the mortal guilt of finished crime.
If such his fate who yet but darkly dares,
Whose guilty purpose yet no act declares,
What were it, done! Ah! now farewell to peace!
Ne'er on this earth his soul's alarms shall cease!
Held in the mouth that languid fever burns,
His tasteless food he indolently turns;
On Alba's oldest stock his soul shall pine!
Forth from his lips he spits the joyless wine!
Nor all the nectar of the hills shall now
Or glad the heart, or smooth tle wrinkled brow!
## p. 8423 (#635) ###########################################
JUVENAL
8423
While o'er the couch his aching limbs are cast,
If care perinit the brief repose at last,
Lo! there the altar and the fane abused!
Or darkly shadowed forth in dream confused,
While the damp brow betrays the inward storm,
Before him flits thy aggravated form!
Then as new fears o'er all his senses press,
Unwilling words the guilty truth confess!
These, these be they whom secret terrors try,
When muttered thunders shake the lurid sky;
Whose deadly paleness now the gloom conceals
And now the vivid flash anew reveals.
No storm as Nature's casualty they hold,
They deem without an aim no thunders rolled;
Where'er the lightning strikes, the flash is thought
Judicial fire, with Heaven's high vengeance fraught.
Passes this by, with yet more anxious ear
And greater dread, each future storm they fear;
In burning vigil, deadliest foe to sleep,
In their distempered frame if fever keep,
Or the pained side their wonted rest prevent,
Behold some incensed god his bow has bent!
All pains, all aches, are stones and arrows hurled
At bold offenders in this nether world!
From them no crested cock acceptance meets!
Their lamb before the altar vainly bleats!
Can pardoning Heaven on guilty sickness smile?
Or there victim than itself more vile ?
Where steadfast virtue dwells not in the breast,
Man is a wavering creature at the best!
PARENTAL INFLUENCE
From the Fourteenth Satire
ET naught
L* Approach the precincts that protect thy son!
Far be the revel from thy halls away,
And of carousing guests the wanton lay:
His child's unsullied purity demands
The deepest reverence at a parent's hands!
Quit for his sake thy pleasant vice in time,
Nor plunge thy offspring in the lore of crime;
## p. 8424 (#636) ###########################################
8424
JUVENAL
For if the laws defied at length requite
His guilty course, and angry censors smite,
Thy moral likeness if the world shall see,
And sins made worse by practice, taught by thee,-
Then shalt thou sharply, in thy wrath, declare
Thy canceled will, and him no longer heir!
What! dost assume the grave parental face,
Thou, whom persistive vices still disgrace?
Thou, from whose head, where endless follies reign,
The void cucurbit were a needful drain ?
Expects thy dwelling soon a stranger guest ?
Behold! not one of all thy menials rest;
Down comes the spider, struggling in his loom,
O'er walls and pavements moves the active broom;
This brings the pail, to that the brush assigned,
While storms the master with his whip behind!
Wretch! art thou troubled lest thy friend descry
Some unswept corner with too curious eye?
Lest marks unseemly at thy porch be seen,
Which sawdust and a slave may quickly clean ?
And is it nothing, nothing, that thy child
Should see thy house with vices undefiled,
From moral stains immaculate and free,
The home of righteousness and sanctity ?
Yes! if thou rear'st thy son to till the soil,
To bear the patriot's or the statesman's toil,
Then from thy grateful country claim thy meed,
A good and useful citizen indeed!
But ere she thank thee, let that country know
From early care of thine what virtues flow!
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probable of these statements, we may assume that Juvenal was the
son of a freedman, born at Aquinum about 60 A. D. ; that he spent
most of his life at Rome, where he was especially interested in the
study of rhetoric; and that his satires were written after he reached
middle age, between 96 and 120 A. D. It is probable that he served
in the army, that he was at one time banished to Egypt, and that he
was about eighty years old when he died. The two most striking
things about this dearth of information are --- first, that Martial, the
only classical writer who mentions Juvenal, speaks of him simply as
a friend, with no reference to his literary achievements; and second,
that the poet is so singularly chary of information about his own
life.
Many poets write autobiographies in spite of themselves; from
simplicity rather than egoism they lay before their readers records of
## p. 8414 (#626) ###########################################
8414
JUVENAL
their lives, -as Burns and Horace, for instance, have done. All that
we need to know of the birth of Horace, his education, his friends,
his pleasures, his taste, and his philosophy, we may find written down
by his own hand, either in intentional description or in unintentional
reference. Juvenal's reticence is in the more striking contrast to this
self-revelation, since they both deal with the same general subject, -
the follies and vices of their own contemporaries. It is characteristic
of the two points of view. Horace is not only in the world of which
he writes, but of it. We may fancy him resting at ease in a circle
of his friends, reading aloud to them, while a quiet smile plays about
his lips, the carefully prepared, well-polished, often persuasive, but
rarely convincing arguments in favor - of what? Not of righteous-
ness, not even of good morals,— but of moderation, content, and good
taste. Honesty is the best policy; discontent is very disquieting;
violent emotion is conducive to dyspepsia: even his friends would
hardly resent these pleasant discussions of every-day topics, this
mingling of wit and wisdom, these little thrusts at their follies and
affectations.
“We all have our faults: let us deal gently with each other; and
when we laugh at our friends, let us laugh with them too. The
really foolish man is the one that gives up the calm joy of living,
in the pursuit of some vulgar extreme of wealth or power or philo-
sophic asceticism. ” Such a man, with such a disposition, and in such
an environment as that of the early Empire, was naturally communi-
cative.
If we can imagine Juvenal reading his satires to an audience, it
must be to one that stood with him aloof from the world that he
describes. The man who recognized his own portrait in any one of
these figures, standing out with such startling distinctness from the
background of infamy and degradation furnished by the later Empire,
would be in no mood to take the reader by the hand and thank him
for a very pleasant evening. Juvenal is not resting on a couch talk-
ing things over with his friends: he is standing in the full strength
of an indignant manhood, denouncing with the voice of one of the
old Hebrew prophets the debauchery and the crime which are the
death of all that is great and good. He does not play about his
subject, but attacks it directly and vigorously; and we follow him
with personal sympathetic attention, confident that he means what
he says, and that he will not turn around upon us at the end of the
journey and laugh at us because we are out of breath. Sometimes
indeed we may feel that the pace is rather hot, and we may think
with a touch of envy of our round-bodied good-natured little friend
Horace ambling along in the rear; but on the whole we enjoy the
rush and the whirl of Juvenal's gallop. After all, it is hard to make
## p. 8415 (#627) ###########################################
JUVENAL
8415
a hero of a philosopher. The man of few ideas, but of single pur-
pose and indomitable will, rouses our enthusiasm, however much in
our moments of calm reflection we may deprecate his violence.
The main source of Juvenal's power is this directness — this honest
recognition of the brute in man: he is like a preacher that believes
in original sin and total depravity. We may gloss it over, and talk
about the educative value of evil, and the refining influences of art
and wealth; we may laugh with Horace, and say «What fools these
mortals be! » — but when Juvenal sweeps away these philosophic com-
promises, we instinctively put out our hands as if to ward off a blow.
The works of Juvenal as they have come down to us consist of
sixteen satires, containing about four thousand lines. The genuine-
ness of several satires, and of passages in others, has been disputed;
but while the two sections into which such critics divide the works
attributed to Juvenal differ decidedly in subject and in style, these
differences are not of such a sort as to lead the best editors to reject
the disputed portions.
Juvenal announces his subject as “The doings of men, their hopes,
their fears, their runnings to and fro. ” It was a topic that found
little or no place in the great body of Greek literature. Quintilian
claimed this field for the Romans when he said, “Satire is wholly our
own;" and Horace speaks of it as a form of verse untouched by the
Greeks. Among the Romans themselves Juvenal's most important
predecessors were Ennius, Lucilius, Horace, and Persius. The frag-
ments of Ennius are so few that the character of his satires is doubt-
ful. We know little more of them than that they were medleys,
sometimes in dialogue form. True satire began with Lucilius. Like
Juvenal he was essentially Roman in spirit, and stood for the old
Roman virtues; but, also like Juvenal, he sometimes rose to a broader
conception, as in his famous definition of virtue: his style was care-
less, but full of force, and sharp with real satiric power. Horace
differs from Juvenal in his whole spirit and tone. He is cosmopolitan
rather than national, his weapon is ridicule rather than invective.
His style is easy and conversational, free from rhetorical exaggera-
tion and systematic elaboration. Persius, a student of books rather
than of inen, is didactic and pseudo-philosophical, full of affectation
and self-consciousness; occasionally, however, he forgets himself and
writes an effective passage, as in his description of the prayers
offered in the temples. Juvenal is more polished and rhetorical than
Lucilius, more vigorous than Horace, more real than Persius.
In the first satire, which is in a way introductory to the whole
series, Juvenal gives his reasons for writing. He is tired of the
fashionable poetry of the day, made up of mythology and common-
place, and proposes to follow in the footsteps of Lucilius. The state
## p. 8416 (#628) ###########################################
8416
JUVENAL
of the times certainly justifies satire. The social order is upside
down, Rome is full of masculine women and effeminate men, rascally
lawyers and malicious informers, rich upstarts and dishonest politi-
cians, gamblers, forgers, poisoners. Here is a field indeed where
<if nature fail, just wrath may fill the line. ”
The third satire shares with the tenth the claim to greatest gen-
eral interest. It was imitated by Johnson in his London’; but the
imitation is not close enough to be a good translation, and is too
close to be a good paraphrase. Here Juvenal's power of vivid word-
painting is at its best. His friend Umbricius feels forced to leave
Rome and go to live in a quiet little country town; and to justify
this resolution he describes the state of the city. There is no
room for honest men, since all success is the reward of wrong-doing.
Rome has become the paradise of the versatile time-serving Greeks,
who are ready to assume any part and do any work, and are equally
unscrupulous in all. Nor is there room in Rome for a poor man: he
is ill treated and despised, and driven to dishonesty by the ostenta-
tion that society forces upon him. Even in the streets deep with
mud, brawny porters, with casks or beams on their shoulders, and
sturdy soldiers with hob-nailed shoes, crowd and jostle him, while he
makes way for the rich man's litter or for the contractor's wagon.
The night is worse than the day; for then the streets are full of
boisterous revelers, who delight to pick a quarrel, and after insults
and blows, finish their frolic by summoning their victim for assault
and battery! His head is not safe from falling tiles and objects of
various sorts thrown from the windows of the tall buildings, — whose
ill-built walls are a danger in themselves, - nor his neck from the
footpads and garroters that infest the town.
The tenth satire, which English readers know through Dr. John-
son's imitation, entitled “The Vanity of Human Wishes,' is perhaps
the least technical, the least Roman, and the least savage of all
Juvenal's works. It is marked by great breadth of view, and rests
more firmly on ground common to humanity. Its instances of the
better that is ever the enemy of the good » teach the wisdom of con-
tent quite as clearly as the more direct maxims of the apostle of
moderation, Horace himself. Sejanus, who sought the imperial crown
and found a felon's death; Hannibal, who fretted within the narrow
limits of a single empire and became an exile and a suicide; Cicero,
anxious to pose a second time as the savior of his country; Priam,
whose length of days brought heaped-up woes: all these and other
examples show — not, as some have thought, the futility of human
effort, but as Juvenal himself says, the blindness of the human heart,
and its inability to distinguish between the good and its opposite.
What wonder that Heraclitus wept, and Democritus laughed, at the
## p. 8417 (#629) ###########################################
JUVENAL
8417
sane
9
folly of man? Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Man
is dearer to the gods than to himself. Let him pray for a
mind in a sound body; for the strength of soul that death cannot
affright; for a heart that bears its burdens patiently, that knows not
anger nor admits inordinate desire. Dr. Johnson's imitation suffers
by comparison with the original. It lacks force and fervor; its pict-
ures are dull beside the brilliant coloring of Juvenal; while Wolsey
is but a poor substitute for Sejanus, and Charles of Sweden a dim
reflection of the man who bade his soldiers scale the Alps, “the walls
of Rome. " Chaucer refers to this satire in Troilus and Creseide):-
“O Juvenall, lord, true is thy sentence,
That little wenen folke what is to yerne,
That they ne finden in hir desire offence,
For cloud of errour ne lette hem discerne
What best is. )
Another satire which appeals rather to humanity than to anything
distinctly Roman is the fourteenth, on the influence of parental
example. The young man learns of his father as the young bird
learns of the old. Men complain of the faults and vices of their
sons, and say, "I never taught him that. ” No; but your example was
stronger than your precepts, and he is only treading your own foot-
steps deeper. In the case of avarice indeed you add precept to exam-
ple; and teach your boy meanness, injustice, and crime, only that he
may be tormented by anxiety to retain what he has been tormented
by anxiety to acquire.
The contrast between the early Roman Senate and the collection
of sycophants that bore the name in Juvenal's day is brought out in
the fourth satire. The Emperor summons his advisers to his Alban
villa to decide on the disposition of a great fish which the poor fish-
erman, making a virtue of necessity, has presented to his imperial
master. The various senators are described, each in a few lines, but
in phrases so carefully chosen and so aptly framed that the individ-
uals stand out like pictures on a canvas, from “kindly old Crispus »
to “Pompeius,” who was “good at slitting throats with a whisper. ”
The degenerate form of the old Roman relation of patron and
client is depicted in the fifth satire. The mean servility that will
submit to all sorts of indignities for the sake of a place at a rich
man's table, where the obsequious guest receives an occasional word,
like a bone thrown to a dog, calls for little pity. The man that will
practice it deserves all the contempt that is his inevitable reward.
The famous chapter in Punch, Advice to Those about to Marry,'
is a condensation into one word of Juvenal's six hundred lines of
warning on the same subject to his friend Postumus, in the sixth
satire. There is probably no chapter in the whole range of literature
XIV-527
## p. 8418 (#630) ###########################################
8418
JUVENAL
that deals so unsparingly with the faults and vices of women as this.
The writer does not confine himself to sex relations, but dilates with
vigor upon their extravagant love of display, silly devotion to actors
and musicians, delight in gossip, cruelty to those weaker than them-
selves, childish literary aspirations, foolish superstitions, imitation of
men's dress, manners, and pursuits. If a woman be free from these
vices of her sex, her self-complacency makes her very virtue distaste-
ful. The chief value of the satire lies in its picture of the times,
set forth with all the unrivaled vigor of Juvenal's denunciation. An
interesting parallel may be found in the third chapter of Isaiah.
The thirteenth satire contains several famous passages.
In one
of them Juvenal describes the different mental attitudes of different
men in the face of wrong-doing, in another the pains of remorse, and
in a third the pettiness of revenge. In breadth of view, strength of
grasp, psychological insight, and evidence of reserve power, the satire
ranks with the masterpieces of literature; and it furnishes the chief
arguments to those critics who have thought that its author was well
acquainted with the ethics of the Christian system.
Juvenal's whole work takes its dominant note from his standard of
morality, which is drawn not from any system of philosophic ethics,
but from a simple recognition of the eternal conflict between right
and wrong.
In many passages indeed he applies this standard in a
conventional Roman way, as when he fings his scorn upon the
Roman noble who drives his own chariot past the very tombs of his
ancestors. In general, however, he is human rather than merely
Roman. It is the same standard that the old Roman character
evolved without the help of Greek philosophy; the same crude but
definite standard that Cato feared to see obscured by the compli-
cation and compromises of Greek culture. It results in that direct
appeal to the individual conscience which marks all earnest reformers,
all great religious movements. This gives to the satires their imme-
diate personal interest.
Juvenal's style is the natural expression of strong feeling tinged
with bitterness. His sentences come out with a rush and a swing
that force the attention. They have the drum and trumpet's din,”
rather than the continuity, the long slow slope and vast curves of
the gradual violin. ” Artistic in the Horatian sense he is not. The
tension is rarely relaxed. There are few lights and shades. His
very strength becomes his weakness. We seem to feel, not the calm
consciousness of power in which the word inevitably follows the
thought, but the tumult of feeling that seizes upon the words and
forces them into the verse: such a style is effective, but by its very
stress and strain it is wearisome. Many critics have accused him of
being a mere rhetorician; failing to see that while his strong phrases
may sometimes cloud his thought, they never take its place.
## p. 8419 (#631) ###########################################
JUVENAL
8419
>
Besides its pictorial quality, instances of which have already been
given, his style is marked by an epigrammatic terseness which puts
an essay into a single line, and has made him one of the best quoted
of Roman writers. “A sane mind in a sound body;" «But who shall
watch the watchers ? ” “All men praise honesty- and let her freeze;"
« The traveler with empty purse will whistle in the footpad's face; »
« To save his life, he gives up all that makes life dear;) Prayers
which the unkindly gods have granted;” “It is the innocence of
youth that most deserves our reverence. ” His works abound in such
summaries of thought, which place a whole situation at the command
of a reader who possesses an imagination, though they may leave the
mere grammarian cold.
A satirist without humor is a literary scold; and while Juvenal's
humor has none of the lightness and delicacy which we usually asso-
ciate with the word, it is present in full measure. Remorseless as
that of Swift, bitter as that of Thackeray, it does not stir to laughter,
but raises at best a grim smile. Scornful rather than contemptuous,
it is the humor of indignation rather than of ridicule. Juvenal can
knock his victim down with the bludgeon of Cato, run him through
with Swift's rapier, and then draw his picture with Hogarth's pencil.
For us, then, Juvenal means a strong, earnest spirit with great
breadth of view and distinctness of vision, depicting with marvelous
power of expression the state of society during one of the most im-
portant periods of human history. He is not only a poet, - he is
preacher and prophet as well.
Thomas Ronde
a hurissang
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. — The earliest English versions of Juvenal
are those by Holyday and Stapylton in the middle of the seventeenth
century. Gifford, Hodgson, and Badham have made translations in
English verse. There are literal prose translations by Madan, Evans,
and Lewis. Five of the satires here translated by Dryden; and two,
the third and the tenth, were imitated by Dr. Johnson. The best
English editions are those of Macleane and the exhaustive one of
Mayor. There are excellent articles on Juvenal by Professor Ramsay
in Dr. Smith's ' Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography,' by Sellar
in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,' and in the introductions to Dryden's,
Gifford's, and Lewis's translations.
T. B. L.
## p. 8420 (#632) ###########################################
8420
JUVENAL
UMBRICIUS'S FAREWELL TO ROME
From the Third Satire
ST
INCE of honest gains —
By honest arts no hope at Rome remains;
Since from the remnant of my scanty store
Each morrow still wears off some fragment more:
Thither I go where Dædalus, distressed,
Took his tired wings off, and was glad to rest –
In the first freshness of an old man's prime.
What should I do at Rome, untaught to lie,
Who neither praise the stupid book, nor buy?
Who cannot, will not, bid the stars declare
His father's funeral to the greedy heir ?
The bowels of the toad I ne'er inspect,
To bear th' adulterer's gifts none me select;
No public robbers through my aid shall thrive:
Then wherefore with the current longer strive?
No man's confederate, here alone I stand,
Like the maimed owner of a palsied hand.
From that vile race at length behold me free;
Dear to the great, detestable to me!
Scruples, away! What! is it come to this?
Is Rome at last a Greek metropolis ?
Yet of the filth derived from foreign mart,
The feculence of Greece but forms a part:
Full into Tiber's stream 'tis many a day
Since foul Orontes forced its fatal way:
Hence Syrian speech and Syrian manners come,
And Syrian music, and the barbarous drum:
Hie to the circus, ye that set a price
On foreign lures, and exoteric vice!
Into each house the wily strangers crawl,—
Obsequious now, soon to be lords of all.
Prompt to discern, and swift to seize his time,
Your Greek stands forth in impudence sublime.
Torrents of words that might Isæus drown
Rush forth at once, and bear you helpless down.
Hope not to scan that prodigy of parts,
The deep in science, the adept in arts:
Geometer, logician, man of taste,
Versed in all lore, with all acquirements graced,
Medicine and magic swell the ample list,
From augur grave to light funambulist:
## p. 8421 (#633) ###########################################
JUVENAL
8421
Bid an esurient Greek do what you choose,-
The absurd, the impossible,- he'll not refuse!
Was it for nothing, that of Aventine
The freshening gales in infancy were mine?
For nothing that on Roman soil I grew,
And my first strength from Sabine olives drew ?
Go, persevere; and in most prudent strain,
Praise wit in fools and features in the plain;
On lanky, long-necked feebleness confer
The grasp of Hercules — ye cannot err!
Go, praise a voice as mellow as the note
Which the shrill cock pours from exulting throat.
Thus too might we,— but who would be deceived ?
The Greek alone may lie and be believed.
Who at Præneste ever lived in dread
Lest the frail roof should crumble o'er his head ?
At Gabii who? Volsinium's woodland height,
Or Tibur throned upon its mountain site ?
Here props and buttresses the crash suspend,
And loaded with incumbent ruin, bend:
For thus the thrifty steward would conceal
The perils which old flaws anon reveal;
And while the loosened pile yet nods on high,
Bids us sleep on, nor fear the danger nigh.
Oh! let me dwell where no nocturnal screams
Shall break the golden links of blissful dreams!
Hark! where Ucalegon for water cries,
Casts out his chattels, from the peril flies;
Dense smoke is bursting from the floor below,-
Ho! wake thee, man! thy instant perils know.
The basement totters, and thou snor'st the while!
Last to be burnt, all snug beneath the tile
That gives thee shelter from the vernal rain,
Where the fond dove hath pledged her eggs in vain.
Such are our days; let a new theme invite,
And hear the greater perils of the night.
Behold those lofty roofs from which, on high,
The loosened tile oft wounds the passer-by;
Nor seldom, from some lofty casement thrown,
The cracked and broken vase comes thundering down;
See with what force it strikes the Aint below,
Where the flawed pavement tells the frequent blow!
Oh! thoughtless, careless, indolent, or blind,
Sup not abroad before thy will be signed;
## p. 8422 (#634) ###########################################
8422
JUVENAL
Assured, as many dangers thou shalt meet
As there be open windows in the street.
To these, my friend, more reasons yet remain:
Enough! the sun's already on the wane;
The cattle wait — th' impatient driver, see,
Points to the road, and only stays for me.
Farewell! forget me not, and when, oppressed
With cares at Rome, thou seek'st Aquinum's rest,
The much-loved shores of Cuma I'll resign,
At his own Ceres' and Diana's shrine,
To greet my friend; and in his satires there
(If they disdain not) I will gladly bear
What part I may: in country shoes I'll come,
Tread your bleak lands, and share your friendly home.
TERRORS OF CONSCIENCE
From the Thirteenth Satire
THE
HE Spartan rogue who, boldly bent on fraud,
Dared ask the god to sanction and applaud,
And sought for counsel at the Pythian shrine,
Received for answer from the lips divine, -
(That he who doubted to restore his trust,
And reasoned much, reluctant to be just,
Should for those doubts and that reluctance prove
The deepest vengeance of the powers above. "
The tale declares that not pronounced in vain
Came forth the warning from the sacred fane:
Ere long no branch of that devoted race
Could mortal man on soil of Sparta trace!
Thus but intended mischief, stayed in time,
Had all the mortal guilt of finished crime.
If such his fate who yet but darkly dares,
Whose guilty purpose yet no act declares,
What were it, done! Ah! now farewell to peace!
Ne'er on this earth his soul's alarms shall cease!
Held in the mouth that languid fever burns,
His tasteless food he indolently turns;
On Alba's oldest stock his soul shall pine!
Forth from his lips he spits the joyless wine!
Nor all the nectar of the hills shall now
Or glad the heart, or smooth tle wrinkled brow!
## p. 8423 (#635) ###########################################
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8423
While o'er the couch his aching limbs are cast,
If care perinit the brief repose at last,
Lo! there the altar and the fane abused!
Or darkly shadowed forth in dream confused,
While the damp brow betrays the inward storm,
Before him flits thy aggravated form!
Then as new fears o'er all his senses press,
Unwilling words the guilty truth confess!
These, these be they whom secret terrors try,
When muttered thunders shake the lurid sky;
Whose deadly paleness now the gloom conceals
And now the vivid flash anew reveals.
No storm as Nature's casualty they hold,
They deem without an aim no thunders rolled;
Where'er the lightning strikes, the flash is thought
Judicial fire, with Heaven's high vengeance fraught.
Passes this by, with yet more anxious ear
And greater dread, each future storm they fear;
In burning vigil, deadliest foe to sleep,
In their distempered frame if fever keep,
Or the pained side their wonted rest prevent,
Behold some incensed god his bow has bent!
All pains, all aches, are stones and arrows hurled
At bold offenders in this nether world!
From them no crested cock acceptance meets!
Their lamb before the altar vainly bleats!
Can pardoning Heaven on guilty sickness smile?
Or there victim than itself more vile ?
Where steadfast virtue dwells not in the breast,
Man is a wavering creature at the best!
PARENTAL INFLUENCE
From the Fourteenth Satire
ET naught
L* Approach the precincts that protect thy son!
Far be the revel from thy halls away,
And of carousing guests the wanton lay:
His child's unsullied purity demands
The deepest reverence at a parent's hands!
Quit for his sake thy pleasant vice in time,
Nor plunge thy offspring in the lore of crime;
## p. 8424 (#636) ###########################################
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JUVENAL
For if the laws defied at length requite
His guilty course, and angry censors smite,
Thy moral likeness if the world shall see,
And sins made worse by practice, taught by thee,-
Then shalt thou sharply, in thy wrath, declare
Thy canceled will, and him no longer heir!
What! dost assume the grave parental face,
Thou, whom persistive vices still disgrace?
Thou, from whose head, where endless follies reign,
The void cucurbit were a needful drain ?
Expects thy dwelling soon a stranger guest ?
Behold! not one of all thy menials rest;
Down comes the spider, struggling in his loom,
O'er walls and pavements moves the active broom;
This brings the pail, to that the brush assigned,
While storms the master with his whip behind!
Wretch! art thou troubled lest thy friend descry
Some unswept corner with too curious eye?
Lest marks unseemly at thy porch be seen,
Which sawdust and a slave may quickly clean ?
And is it nothing, nothing, that thy child
Should see thy house with vices undefiled,
From moral stains immaculate and free,
The home of righteousness and sanctity ?
Yes! if thou rear'st thy son to till the soil,
To bear the patriot's or the statesman's toil,
Then from thy grateful country claim thy meed,
A good and useful citizen indeed!
But ere she thank thee, let that country know
From early care of thine what virtues flow!
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