JUTIGALPA, or JUTICALPA, the capital of the department of Jutigalpa in
eastern Honduras, on one of the main roads from the Bay of Fonseca to
the Atlantic coast, and on a small left-hand tributary of the river
Patuca. Pop. (1905), about 18,000. Jutigalpa is the second city of
Honduras, being surpassed only by Tegucigalpa. It is the administrative
centre of a mountainous region rich in minerals, though mining is
rendered difficult by the lack of communications and the unsettled
condition of the country. The majority of the inhabitants are Indians or
half-castes, engaged in the cultivation of coffee, bananas, tobacco,
sugar or cotton.
JUTLAND (Danish _Jylland_), though embracing several islands as well as
a peninsula, may be said to belong to the continental portion of the
kingdom of Denmark. The peninsula (Chersonese or Cimbric peninsula of
ancient geography) extends northward, from a line between Lubeck and the
mouth of the Elbe, for 270 m. to the promontory of the Skaw (Skagen),
thus preventing a natural communication directly east and west between
the Baltic and North Seas. The northern portion only is Danish, and
bears the name Jutland. The southern is German, belonging to
Schleswig-Holstein. The peninsula is almost at its narrowest (36 m.) at
the frontier, but Jutland has an extreme breadth of 110 m. and the
extent from the south-western point (near Ribe) to the Skaw is 180 m.
Jutland embraces nine _amter_ (counties), namely, Hjorring, Thisted,
Aalborg, Ringkjobing, Viborg, Randers, Aarhus, Vejle and Ribe. The main
watershed of the peninsula lies towards the east coast; therefore such
elevated ground as exists is found on the east, while the western slope
is gentle and consists of a low sandy plain of slight undulation. The
North Sea coast (western) and Skagerrack coast (north-western) consist
mainly of a sweeping line of dunes with wide lagoons behind them. In the
south the northernmost of the North Frisian Islands (Fano) is Danish.
Towards the north a narrow mouth gives entry to the Limfjord, or
Liimfjord, which, wide and ramifying among islands to the west, narrows
to the east and pierces through to the Cattegat, thus isolating the
counties of Hjorring and Thisted (known together as Vendsyssel). It is,
however, bridged at Aalborg, and its depth rarely exceeds 12 ft. The
seaward banks of the lagoons are frequently broken in storms, and the
narrow channels through them are constantly shifting. The east coast is
slightly bolder than the west, and indented with true estuaries and
bays. From the south-east the chain of islands forming insular Denmark
extends towards Sweden, the strait between Jutland and Funen having the
name of the Little Belt. The low and dangerous coasts, off which the
seas are generally very shallow, are efficiently served by a series of
lifeboat stations. The western coast region is well compared with the
Landes of Gascony. The interior is low. The Varde, Omme, Skjerne, Stor
and Karup, sluggish and tortuous streams draining into the western
lagoons, rise in and flow through marshes, while the eastern Limfjord is
flanked by the swamps known as Vildmose. The only considerable river is
the Gudenaa, flowing from S.W. into the Randersfjord (Cattegat), and
rising among the picturesque lakes of the county of Aarhus, where the
principal elevated ground in the peninsula is found in the Himmelbjerg
and adjacent hills (exceeding 500 ft.). The German portion of the
peninsula is generally similar to that of western Jutland, the main
difference lying in the occurrence of islands (the North Frisian) off
the west coast in place of sand-bars and lagoons. Erratic blocks are of
frequent occurrence in south Jutland. (For geology, and the general
consideration of Jutland in connexion with the whole kingdom, see
DENMARK.)
Although in ancient times well wooded, the greater portion of the
interior of Jutland consisted for centuries of barren drift-sand, which
grew nothing but heather; but since 1866, chiefly through the
instrumentality of the patriotic Heath association, assisted by annual
contributions from the state, a very large proportion of this region has
been more or less reclaimed for cultivation. The means adopted are: (i.)
the plantation of trees; (ii.) the making of irrigation canals and
irrigating meadows; (iii.) exploring for, extracting and transporting
loam, a process aided by the construction of short light railways; and
(iv.), since 1889, the experimental cultivation of fenny districts. The
activity of the association takes the form partly of giving gratuitous
advice, partly of experimental attempts, and partly of model works for
imitation. The state also makes annual grants directly to owners who are
willing to place their plantations under state supervision, for the sale
of plants at half price to the poorer peasantry, for making protective
or sheltering plantations, and for free transport of marl or loam. The
species of timber almost exclusively planted are the red fir (_Picea
excelsa_) and the mountain pine (_Pinus montana_). This admirable work
quickly caused the population to increase at a more rapid rate in the
districts where it was practised than in any other part of the Danish
kingdom. The counties of Viborg, Ringkjobing and Ribe cover the
principal heath district.
Jutland is well served by railways. Two lines cross the frontier from
Germany on the east and west respectively and run northward near the
coasts. The eastern touches the ports of Kolding, Fredericia, Vejle,
Horsens, Aarhus, Randers, Aalborg on Limfjord, Frederikshavn and Skagen.
On the west the only port of first importance is Esbjerg. The line runs
past Skjerne, Ringkjobing, Vemb and Holstebro to Thisted. Both throw off
many branches and are connected by lines east and west between Kolding
and Esbjerg, Skanderborg and Skjerne, Langaa and Struer on Limfjord via
Viborg. Of purely inland towns only Viborg in the midland and Hjorring
in the extreme north are of importance.
JUTURNA (older form Diuturna, the lasting), an old Latin divinity, a
personification of the never-failing springs. Her original home was on
the river Numicius near Lavinium, where there was a spring called after
her, supposed to possess healing qualities (whence the old Roman
derivation from _juvare_, to help). Her worship was early transferred to
Rome, localized by the Lacus Juturnae near the temple of Vesta, at which
Castor and Pollux, after announcing the victory of lake Regillus, were
said to have washed the sweat from their horses. At the end of the First
Punic War Lutatius Catulus erected a temple in her honour on the Campus
Martius, subsequently restored by Augustus. Juturna was associated with
two festivals: the Juturnalia on the 11th of January, probably a
dedication festival of a temple built by Augustus, and celebrated by the
college of the _fontani_, workmen employed in the construction and
maintenance of aqueducts and fountains; and the Volcanalia on the 23rd
of August, at which sacrifice was offered to Volcanus, the Nymphs and
Juturna, as protectors against outbreaks of fire. In Virgil, Juturna
appears as the sister of Turnus (probably owing to the partial
similarity of the names), on whom Jupiter, to console her for the loss
of her chastity, bestowed immortality and the control of all the lakes
and rivers of Latium. For the statement that she was the wife of Janus
and mother of Fontus (or Fons), the god of fountains, Arnobius (_Adv.
gentes_ iii. 29) is alone responsible.
See Virgil, _Aeneid_, xii. 139 and Servius _ad loc._; Ovid, _Fasti_,
ii. 583-616; Valerius Maximus, i. 8. 1; L. Deubner, "Juturna und die
Ausgrabungen auf dem romischen Forum," in _Neue Jahrb. f. das
klassische Altertum_ (1902), p. 370.
JUVENAL (DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS) (c. 60-140), Roman poet and satirist,
was born at Aquinum. Brief accounts of his life, varying considerably in
details, are prefixed to different MSS. of the works. But their common
original cannot be traced to any competent authority, and some of their
statements are intrinsically improbable. According to the version which
appears to be the earliest:--
"Juvenal was the son or ward of a wealthy freedman; he practised
declamation till middle age, not as a professional teacher, but as an
amateur, and made his first essay in satire by writing the lines on
Paris, the actor and favourite of Domitian, now found in the seventh
satire (lines 90 seq.). Encouraged by their success, he devoted
himself diligently to this kind of composition, but refrained for a
long time from either publicly reciting or publishing his verses. When
at last he did come before the public, his recitations were attended
by great crowds and received with the utmost favour. But the lines
originally written on Paris, having been inserted in one of his new
satires, excited the jealous anger of an actor of the time, who was a
favourite of the emperor, and procured the poet's banishment under the
form of a military appointment to the extremity of Egypt. Being then
eighty years of age, he died shortly afterwards of grief and
vexation."
Some of these statements are so much in consonance with the indirect
evidence afforded by the satires that they may be a series of
conjectures based upon them. The rare passages in which the poet speaks
of his own position, as in satires xi. and xiii., indicate that he was
in comfortable but moderate circumstances. We should infer also that he
was not dependent on any professional occupation, and that he was
separated in social station, and probably too by tastes and manners,
from the higher class to which Tacitus and Pliny belonged, as he was by
character from the new men who rose to wealth by servility under the
empire. Juvenal is no organ of the pride and dignity, still less of the
urbanity, of the cultivated representatives of the great families of the
republic. He is the champion of the more sober virtues and ideas, and
perhaps the organ of the rancours and detraction, of an educated but
depressed and embittered middle class. He lets us know that he has no
leanings to philosophy (xiii. 121) and pours contempt on the serious
epic writing of the day (i. 162). The statement that he was a trained
and practised declaimer is confirmed both by his own words (i. 16) and
by the rhetorical mould in which his thoughts and illustrations are
cast. The allusions which fix the dates when his satires first appeared,
and the large experience of life which they imply, agree with the
statement that he did not come before the world as a professed satirist
till after middle age.
The statement that he continued to write satires long before he gave
them to the world accords well with the nature of their contents and the
elaborate character of their composition, and might almost be inferred
from the emphatic but yet guarded statement of Quintilian in his short
summary of Roman literature. After speaking of the merits of Lucilius,
Horace and Persius as satirists, he adds, "There are, too, in our own
day, distinguished writers of satire whose names will be heard of
hereafter" (_Inst. Or._ x. 1, 94). There is no Roman writer of satire
who could be mentioned along with those others by so judicious a critic,
except Juvenal. The motive which a writer of satire must have had for
secrecy under Domitian is sufficiently obvious; and the necessity of
concealment and self-suppression thus imposed upon the writer may have
permanently affected his whole manner of composition.
So far the original of these lives follows a not improbable tradition.
But when we come to the story of the poet's exile the case is otherwise.
The undoubted reference to Juvenal in Sidonius Apollinaris as the victim
of the rage of an actor only proves that the original story from which
all the varying versions of the lives are derived was generally believed
before the middle of the 5th century of our era. If Juvenal was banished
at the age of eighty, the author of his banishment could not have been
the "enraged actor" in reference to whom the original lines were
written, as Paris was put to death in 83, and Juvenal was certainly
writing satires long after 100. The satire in which the lines now appear
was probably first published soon after the accession of Hadrian, when
Juvenal was not an octogenarian but in the maturity of his powers. The
cause of the poet's banishment at that advanced age could not therefore
have been either the original composition or the first publication of
the lines.
An expression in xv. 45 is quoted as a proof that Juvenal had visited
Egypt. He may have done so as an exile or in a military command; but it
seems hardly consistent with the importance which the emperors attached
to the security of Egypt, or with the concern which they took in the
interests of the army, that these conditions were combined at an age so
unfit for military employment. If any conjecture is warrantable on so
obscure a subject, it is more likely that this temporary disgrace should
have been inflicted on the poet by Domitian. Among the many victims of
Juvenal's satire it is only against him and against one of the vilest
instruments of his court, the Egyptian Crispinus, that the poet seems to
be animated by personal hatred. A sense of wrong suffered at their hands
may perhaps have mingled with the detestation which he felt towards them
on public grounds. But if he was banished under Domitian, it must have
been either before or after 93, at which time, as we learn from an
epigram of Martial, Juvenal was in Rome.
More ancient evidence is supplied by an inscription found at Aquinum,
recording, so far as it has been deciphered, the dedication of an altar
to Ceres by a Iunius Iuvenalis, tribune of the first cohort of
Dalmatians, _duumvir quinquennalis_, and _flamen Divi Vespasiani_, a
provincial magistrate whose functions corresponded to those of the
censor at Rome. This Juvenalis may have been the poet, but he may
equally well have been a relation. The evidence of the satires does not
point to a prolonged absence from the metropolis. They are the product
of immediate and intimate familiarity with the life of the great city.
An epigram of Martial, written at the time when Juvenal was most
vigorously employed in their composition, speaks of him as settled in
Rome. He himself hints (iii. 318) that he maintained his connexion with
Aquinum, and that he had some special interest in the worship of the
"Helvinian Ceres." Nor is the tribute to the national religion implied
by the dedication of the altar to Ceres inconsistent with the beliefs
and feelings expressed in the satires. While the fables of mythology are
often treated contemptuously or humorously by him, other passages in the
satires clearly imply a conformity to, and even a respect for, the
observances of the national religion. The evidence as to the military
post filled by Juvenal is curious, when taken in connexion with the
confused tradition of his exile in a position of military importance.
But it cannot be said that the satires bear traces of military
experience; the life described in them is rather such as would present
itself to the eyes of a civilian.
The only other contemporary evidence which affords a glimpse of
Juvenal's actual life is contained in three epigrams of Martial. Two of
these (vii. 24 and 91) were written in the time of Domitian, the third
(xii. 18) early in the reign of Trajan, after Martial had retired to his
native Bilbilis. The first attests the strong regard which Martial felt
for him; but the subject of the epigram seems to hint that Juvenal was
not an easy person to get on with. In the second, addressed to Juvenal
himself, the epithet _facundus_ is applied to him, equally applicable to
his "eloquence" as satirist or rhetorician. In the last Martial imagines
his friend wandering about discontentedly through the crowded streets of
Rome, and undergoing all the discomforts incident to attendance on the
levees of the great. Two lines in the poem suggest that the satirist,
who inveighed with just severity against the worst corruptions of Roman
morals, was not too rigid a censor of the morals of his friend. Indeed,
his intimacy with Martial is a ground for not attributing to him
exceptional strictness of life.
The additional information as to the poet's life and circumstances
derivable from the satires themselves is not important. He had enjoyed
the training which all educated men received in his day (i. 15); he
speaks of his farm in the territory of Tibur (xi. 65), which furnished a
young kid and mountain asparagus for a homely dinner to which he invites
a friend during the festival of the Megalesia. From the satire in which
this invitation is contained we are able to form an idea of the style in
which he habitually lived, and to think of him as enjoying a hale and
vigorous age (203), and also as a kindly master of a household (159
seq.). The negative evidence afforded in the account of his
establishment suggests the inference that, like Lucilius and Horace,
Juvenal had no personal experience of either the cares or the softening
influence of family life. A comparison of this poem with the invitation
of Horace to Torquatus (_Ep._ i. 5) brings out strongly the differences
not in urbanity only but in kindly feeling between the two satirists.
Gaston Boissier has drawn from the indications afforded of the career
and character of the persons to whom the satires are addressed most
unfavourable conclusions as to the social circumstances and associations
of Juvenal. If we believe that these were all real people, with whom
Juvenal lived in intimacy, we should conclude that he was most
unfortunate in his associates, and that his own relations to them were
marked rather by outspoken frankness than civility. But they seem to be
more "nominis umbrae" than real men; they serve the purpose of enabling
the satirist to aim his blows at one particular object instead of
declaiming at large. They have none of the individuality and traits of
personal character discernible in the persons addressed by Horace in his
_Satires_ and _Epistles_. It is noticeable that, while Juvenal writes of
the poets and men of letters of a somewhat earlier time as if they were
still living, he makes no reference to his friend Martial or the younger
Pliny and Tacitus, who wrote their works during the years of his own
literary activity. It is equally noticeable that Juvenal's name does not
appear in Pliny's letters.
The times at which the satires were given to the world do not in all
cases coincide with those at which they were written and to which they
immediately refer. Thus the manners and personages of the age of
Domitian often supply the material of satiric representation, and are
spoken of as if they belonged to the actual life of the present,[1]
while allusions even in the earliest show that, as a finished literary
composition, it belongs to the age of Trajan. The most probable
explanation of these discrepancies is that in their present form the
satires are the work of the last thirty years of the poet's life, while
the first nine at least may have preserved with little change passages
written during his earlier manhood. The combination of the impressions,
and, perhaps of the actual compositions, of different periods also
explains a certain want of unity and continuity found in some of them.
There is no reason to doubt that the sixteen satires which we possess
were given to the world in the order in which we find them, and that
they were divided, as they are referred to in the ancient grammarians,
into five books. Book I., embracing the first five satires, was written
in the freshest vigour of the author's powers, and is animated with the
strongest hatred of Domitian. The publication of this book belongs to
the early years of Trajan. The mention of the exile of Marius (49) shows
that it was not published before 100. In the second satire, the lines 29
seq.,
"Qualis erat nuper tragico pollutus adulter
Concubitu,"
show that the memory of one of the foulest scandals of the reign of
Domitian was still fresh in the minds of men. The third satire, imitated
by Samuel Johnson in his _London_, presents such a picture as Rome may
have offered to the satirist at any time in the 1st century of our era;
but it was under the worst emperors, Nero and Domitian, that the arts of
flatterers and foreign adventurers were most successful, and that such
scenes of violence as that described at 277 seq. were most likely to
occur;[2] while the mention of Veiento (185) as still enjoying influence
is a distinct reference to the court of Domitian. The fourth, which
alone has any political significance, and reflects on the emperor as a
frivolous trifler rather than as a monster of lust and cruelty, is the
reproduction of a real or imaginary scene from the reign of Domitian,
and is animated by the profoundest scorn and loathing both of the tyrant
himself and of the worst instruments of his tyranny. The fifth is a
social picture of the degradation to which poor guests were exposed at
the banquets of the rich, but many of the epigrams of Martial and the
more sober evidence of one of Pliny's letters show that the picture
painted by Juvenal, though perhaps exaggerated in colouring, was drawn
from a state of society prevalent during and immediately subsequent to
the times of Domitian.[3] Book II. consists of the most elaborate of the
satires, by many critics regarded as the poet's masterpiece, the famous
sixth satire, directed against the whole female sex, which shares with
Domitian and his creatures the most cherished place in the poet's
antipathies. It shows certainly no diminution of vigour either in its
representation or its invective. The time at which this satire was
composed cannot be fixed with certainty, but some allusions render it
highly probable that it was given to the world in the later years of
Trajan, and before the accession of Hadrian. The date of the publication
of Book III., containing the seventh, eighth and ninth satires, seems to
be fixed by its opening line to the first years after the accession of
Hadrian. In the eighth satire another reference is made (120) to the
misgovernment of Marius in Africa as a recent event, and at line 51
there may be an allusion to the Eastern wars that occupied the last
years of Trajan's reign. The ninth has no allusion to determine its
date, but it is written with the same outspoken freedom as the second
and the sixth, and belongs to the period when the poet's power was most
vigorous, and his exposure of vice most uncompromising. In Book IV.,
comprising the famous tenth, the eleventh and the twelfth satires, the
author appears more as a moralist than as a pure satirist. In the tenth,
the theme of the "vanity of human wishes" is illustrated by great
historic instances, rather than by pictures of the men and manners of
the age; and, though the declamatory vigour and power of expression in
it are occasionally as great as in the earlier satires, and although
touches of Juvenal's saturnine humour, and especially of his misogyny,
appear in all the satires of this book, yet their general tone shows
that the white heat of his indignation is abated; and the lines of the
eleventh, already referred to (201 seq.),
"Spectent juvenes quos clamor et audax
Sponsio, quos cultae decet assedisse puellae:
Nostra bibat vernum contrada cuticula solem,"
leave no doubt that he was well advanced in years when they were
written.
Two important dates are found in Book V., comprising satires xiii.-xvi.
At xiii. 16 Juvenal speaks of his friend Calvinus as now past sixty
years of age, having been born in the consulship of Fonteius. Now L.
Fonteius Capito was consul in 67. Again at xv. 27 an event is said to
have happened in Egypt "nuper consule Iunco." There was a L. Aemilius
Iuncus consul _suffectus_ in 127. The fifth book must therefore have
been published some time after this date. More than the fourth, this
book bears the marks of age, both in the milder tone of the sentiments
expressed, and in the feebler power of composition exhibited. The last
satire is now imperfect, and the authenticity both of this and of the
fifteenth has been questioned, though on insufficient grounds.
Thus the satires were published at different intervals, and for the most
part composed between 100 and 130, but the most powerful in feeling and
vivid in conception among them deal with the experience and impressions
of the reign of Domitian, occasionally recall the memories or traditions
of the times of Nero and Claudius, and reproduce at least one startling
page from the annals of Tiberius.[4] The same overmastering feeling
which constrained Tacitus (_Agric._ 2, 3), when the time of long
endurance and silence was over, to recall the "memory of the former
oppression," acted upon Juvenal. There is no evidence that these two
great writers, who lived and wrote at the same time, who were animated
by the same hatred of the tyrant under whom the best years of their
manhood were spent, and who both felt most deeply the degradation of
their times, were even known to one another. Tacitus belonged to the
highest official and senatorial class, Juvenal apparently to the middle
class and to that of the struggling men of letters; and this difference
in position had much influence in determining the different bent of
their genius, and in forming one to be a great national historian, the
other to be a great social satirist. If the view of the satirist is
owing to this circumstance more limited in some directions, and his
taste and temper less conformable to the best ancient standards of
propriety, he is also saved by it from prejudices to which the
traditions of his class exposed the historian. But both writers are
thoroughly national in sentiment, thoroughly masculine in tone. No
ancient authors express so strong a hatred of evil. The peculiar
greatness and value of both Juvenal and Tacitus is that they did not
shut their eyes to the evil through which they had lived, but deeply
resented it--the one with a vehement and burning passion, like the
"saeva indignatio" of Swift, the other with perhaps even deeper but more
restrained emotions of mingled scorn and sorrow, like the scorn and
sorrow of Milton when "fallen on evil days and evil tongues." In one
respect there is a difference. For Tacitus the prospect is not wholly
cheerless, the detested tyranny was at an end, and its effects might
disappear with a more beneficent rule. But the gloom of Juvenal's
pessimism is unlighted by hope.
A. C. Swinburne has suggested that the secret of Juvenal's concentrated
power consisted in this, that he knew what he hated, and that what he
did hate was despotism and democracy. But it would be hardly true to say
that the animating motive of his satire was political. It is true that
he finds the most typical examples of lust, cruelty, levity and weakness
in the emperors and their wives--in Domitian, Otho, Nero, Claudius and
Messalina. It is true also that he shares in the traditional idolatry of
Brutus, that he strikes at Augustus in his mention of the "three
disciples of Sulla," and that he has no word of recognition for what
even Tacitus acknowledges as the beneficent rule of Trajan. So too his
scorn for the Roman populace of his time, who cared only for their dole
of bread and the public games, is unqualified. But it is only in
connexion with its indirect effects that he seems to think of despotism;
and he has no thought of democracy at all. It is not for the loss of
liberty and of the senatorian rule that he chafes, but for the loss of
the old national manliness and self-respect. This feeling explains his
detestation of foreign manners and superstitions, his loathing not only
of inhuman crimes and cruelties but even of the lesser derelictions from
self-respect, his scorn of luxury and of art as ministering to luxury,
his mockery of the poetry and of the stale and dilettante culture of his
time, and perhaps, too, his indifference to the schools of philosophy
and his readiness to identify all the professors of stoicism with the
reserved and close-cropped puritans, who concealed the worst vices under
an outward appearance of austerity. The great fault of his character, as
it appears in his writings, is that he too exclusively indulged this
mood. It is much more difficult to find what he loved and admired than
what he hated. But it is characteristic of his strong nature that, where
he does betray any sign of human sympathy or tenderness, it is for those
who by their weakness and position are dependent on others for their
protection--as for "the peasant boy with the little dog, his
playfellow,"[5] or for "the home-sick lad from the Sabine highlands, who
sighs for his mother whom he has not seen for a long time, and for the
little hut and the familiar kids."[6]
If Juvenal is to be ranked as a great moralist, it is not for his
greatness and consistency as a thinker on moral questions. In the
rhetorical exaggeration of the famous tenth satire, for instance, the
highest energies of patriotism--the gallant and desperate defence of
great causes, by sword or speech--are quoted as mere examples of
disappointed ambition; and, in the indiscriminate condemnation of the
arts by which men sought to gain a livelihood, he leaves no room for the
legitimate pursuits of industry. His services to morals do not consist
in any positive contributions to the notions of active duty, but in the
strength with which he has realized and expressed the restraining
influence of the old Roman and Italian ideal of character, and also of
that religious conscience which was becoming a new power in the world.
Though he disclaims any debt to philosophy (xiii. 121), yet he really
owes more to the "Stoica dogmata," then prevalent, than he is aware of.
But his highest and rarest literary quality is his power of painting
characters, scenes, incidents and actions, whether from past history or
from contemporary life. In this power, which is also the great power of
Tacitus, he has few equals and perhaps no superior among ancient
writers. The difference between Tacitus and Juvenal in power of
representation is that the prose historian is more of an imaginative
poet, the satirist more of a realist and a grotesque humorist. Juvenal
can paint great historical pictures in all their detail--as in the
famous representation of the fall of Sejanus; he can describe a
character elaborately or hit it off with a single stroke. The picture
drawn may be a caricature, or a misrepresentation of the fact--as that
of the father of Demosthenes, "blear-eyed with the soot of the glowing
mass," &c.--but it is, with rare exceptions, realistically conceived,
and it is brought before us with the vivid touches of a Defoe or a
Swift, or of the great pictorial satirist of the 18th century, Hogarth.
Yet even in this, his most characteristic talent, his proneness to
exaggeration, the attraction which coarse and repulsive images have for
his mind, and the tendency to sacrifice general effect to minuteness of
detail not infrequently mar his best effects.
The difficulty is often felt of distinguishing between a powerful
rhetorician and a genuine poet, and it is felt particularly in the case
of Juvenal. He himself knew and has well described (vii. 53 seq.) the
conditions under which a great poet could flourish; and he felt that his
own age was incapable of producing one. He has little sense of beauty
either in human life or nature. Whenever such sense is evoked it is only
as a momentary relief to his prevailing sense of the hideousness of
contemporary life, or in protest against what he regarded as the
enervating influences of art. Even his references to the great poets of
the past indicate rather a _blase_ sense of indifference and weariness
than a fresh enjoyment of them. Yet his power of touching the springs of
tragic awe and horror is a genuine poetical gift, of the same kind as
that which is displayed by some of the early English dramatists. But he
is, on the whole, more essentially a great rhetorician than a great
poet. His training, the practical bent of his understanding, his strong
but morose character, the circumstances of his time, and the materials
available for his art, all fitted him to rebuke his own age and all
after-times in the tones of a powerful preacher, rather than charm them
with the art of an accomplished poet. The composition of his various
satires shows no negligence, but rather excess of elaboration; but it
produces the impression of mechanical contrivance rather than of organic
growth. His movement is sustained and powerful, but there is no rise and
fall in it. The verse is most carefully constructed, and is also most
effective, but it is so with the rhetorical effectiveness of Lucan, not
with the musical charm of Virgil. The diction is full, even to excess,
of meaning, point and emphasis. Few writers have added so much to the
currency of quotation. But his style altogether wants the charm of ease
and simplicity. It wearies by the constant strain after effect, its
mock-heroics and allusive periphrasis, and excites distrust by its want
of moderation.
On the whole no one of the ten or twelve really great writers of ancient
Rome leaves on the mind so mixed an impression, both as a writer and as
a man, as Juvenal. He has little, if anything at all, of the high
imaginative mood--the mood of reverence and noble admiration--which made
Ennius, Lucretius and Virgil the truest poetical representatives of the
genius of Rome. He has nothing of the wide humanity of Cicero, of the
urbanity of Horace, of the ease and grace of Catullus. Yet he represents
another mood of ancient Rome, the mood natural to her before she was
humanized by the lessons of Greek art and thought. If we could imagine
the elder Cato living under Domitian, cut off from all share in public
life, and finding no outlet for his combative energy except in
literature, we should perhaps understand the motives of Juvenal's satire
and the place which is his due as a representative of the genius of his
country. As a man he shows many of the strong qualities of the old Roman
plebeian--the aggressive boldness, the intolerance of superiority and
privilege, which animated the tribunes in their opposition to the
senatorian rule. Even where we least like him we find nothing small or
mean to alienate our respect from him. Though he loses no opportunity of
being coarse, he is not licentious; though he is often truculent, he
cannot be called malignant. It is, indeed, impossible to say what
motives of personal chagrin, of love of detraction, of the mere literary
passion for effective writing, may have contributed to the indignation
which inspired his verse. But the prevailing impression we carry away
after reading him is that in all his early satires he was animated by a
sincere and manly detestation of the tyranny and cruelty, the debauchery
and luxury, the levity and effeminacy, the crimes and frauds, which we
know from other sources were then rife in Rome, and that a more serene
wisdom and a happier frame of mind were attained by him when old age had
somewhat allayed the fierce rage which vexed his manhood.
AUTHORITIES.--The remarkable statements in a "life" found in a late
Italian MS. (Barberini, viii. 18), "Iunius Iuvenalis Aquinas Iunio
Iuvenale patre matre vero Septumuleia ex Aquinati municipio Claudio
Nerone et L. Antistio consulibus (55) natus est, sororem habuit
Septumuleiam quae Fuscino (_Sat._ xiv. 1) nupsit," though not
necessarily false, cannot be accepted without confirmation.
The earliest evidence for the banishment of Juvenal is that of
Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 480), _Carm._ ix. 269, "Non qui tempore
Caesaris secundi | Aeterno coluit Tomos reatu | Nec qui consimili
deinde casu | Ad vulgi tenuem strepentis auram | Irati fuit histrionis
exul," lines which by the exact parallel drawn between Ovid's fate and
Juvenal's imply the belief that Juvenal died in exile. The banishment
is also mentioned by J. Malalas, a Greek historian subsequent to
Justinian, who gives the place as Pentapolis in Africa, _Chron._ x.
262, Dindorf. The inscription (on a stone now lost) is as follows, the
words and letters in brackets being the conjectural restorations of
scholars:--"[Cere] ri sacrum | [D. Iu] nius Iuvenalis | trib. coh. [I]
Delmatarum | II vir quinq. flamen | divi Vespasiani | vovit
dedicav[it] que | sua pec.," _Corp. inscr. lat._ X. 5382, xiii. 201
sqq. The best of the known manuscripts of Juvenal (P) is at
Montpellier (125); but there are several others which cannot be
neglected. Amongst these may be specially mentioned the Bodleian MS.
(Canon. Lat. 41), which contains a portion of Satire vi., the
existence of which was unknown until E. O. Winstedt published it in
the _Classical Review_ (1899), pp. 201 seq. Another fragment in the
Bibliotheque Nationale was described by C. E. Stuart in the _Classical
Quarterly_ (Jan. 1909). Numerous scholia and glossaries attest the
interest taken in Juvenal in post-classical times and the middle ages.
There are two classes of scholia--the older or "Pithoeana," first
published by P. Pithoeus, and the "Cornutus scholia" of less value,
specimens of which have been published by various scholars. The
earliest edition which need now be mentioned is that of P. Pithoeus,
1585, in which P was first used for the text. Amongst later ones we
may mention the commentaries of Ruperti (1819) and C. F. Heinrich
(1839, with the old scholia), O. Jahn (1851, critical with the old
scholia), A. Weidner (1889), L. Friedlander (1895, with a full verbal
index). The most useful English commentaries are those of J. E. B.
Mayor (a voluminous and learned commentary on thirteen of the
_Satires_, ii., vi. and ix. being omitted), J. D. Lewis (1882, with a
prose translation) and J. D. Duff (1898, expurgated, and ii. and ix.
being omitted). There are recent critical texts: conservative and
chiefly based on P, by F. Buecheler (1893, with selections from the
scholia) and S. G. Owen (in the Oxford Series of Texts); on the other
side, by A. E. Housman (1905) and by the same, but with fewer
innovations, in the new _Corpus poetarum latinorum_, fasc. v. The two
last-named editors alone give the newly discovered lines of Satire vi.
There are no recent translations of Juvenal into English verse. Dryden
translated i., iii., vi., x. and xvi., the others being committed to
inferior hands. Other versions are Gifford's (1802), of some merit,
and C. Badham's (1814). Johnson's imitations of Satires iii. and x.
are well known. For the numerous articles and contributions to the
criticism and elucidation of the _Satires_, reference should be made
to Teuffel's _Geschichte der romischen Litteratur_ (Eng. trans. by
Warre), S 331, and Schanz, ditto (1901, ii. S 2, S 420a).
(W. Y. S.; J. P. P.)