CHAPTER XII

JUVENAL

Our knowledge of the life of the most famous of Roman satirists is

strangely unsatisfactory. Many so-called lives of Juvenal have come down

to us, but they are confused, contradictory, inadequate, and

unreliable.[683] His own work and allusions in other writers help us but

little in our attempt to reconstruct the story of the poet's life.

Only by investigating the dates within which the satires seem to fall is

it possible to arrive at some idea of the dates within which falls the

life of their author. The satires were published in five books at

different times. The first book (1-5), which is full of allusions to the

tyranny of Domitian, cannot have been published before 100 A.D., since

the first satire contains an allusion to the condemnation of Marius

Priscus,[684] which took place in that year. The fifth book (13-16)

must, from references in the thirteenth and fifteenth[685] satires to

the year 127, have been published not much later than that date. The

publication of the satires falls, therefore, between 100 and 130.

With these data it is possible to approach the question of the dates of

Juvenal's birth and death. The main facts to guide us are the statements

of the best of the biographies that he did not begin to write satire

till on the confines of middle age, that even then he delayed to

publish, and that he died at the age of eighty.[686] The inference is

that he was born between 50 and 60 A. D., and died between 130 and 140

A. D.[687]

As to the facts of his life we are on little firmer ground. But

concerning his name and birthplace there is practical certainty.

Decimus Junius Juvenalis[688] was born at Aquinum,[689] a town of

Latium, and is said to have been the son or adopted son of a rich

freedman. His education was of the usual character, literary and

rhetorical, and was presumably carried out at Rome.[690] He acquired

thus early in youth a taste for rhetoric that never left him. For he is

said to have practised declamation up till middle age, not with a view

to obtaining a position as professor of rhetoric or as advocate, but

from sheer love of the art.[691] It is probable that he combined his

passion for rhetoric with service as an officer in the army. Not only

does he show considerable intimacy in his satires with a soldier's

life,[692] but interesting external evidence is afforded by an

inscription discovered near Aquinum. It runs:

C_ERE_RI. SACRVM

D. _IV_NIVS. IVVENALIS

_TRIB_. COH. _I_. DELMATARVM

II. _VIR_. QVINQ. FLAMEN

DIVI. VESPASIANI

VOVIT. DEDICAV_ITQ_VE

SVA PEC.[693]

If this inscription refers, as well it may, to the poet, it will follow

that he served as tribune of the first Dalmatian cohort, probably in

Britain,[694] held high municipal office in his native town, and was

priest of the deified Vespasian. But the _praenomen_ is wanting in the

original, and the inscription may have been erected not by the satirist

but by one of his kinsfolk. That he spent the greater portion of his

life at Rome is evident from his satires. Of his friends we know little.

Umbricius, Persicus, Catullus, and Calvinus[695] are mere names. Of

Quintilian[696] he speaks with great respect, and may perhaps have

studied under him; of Statius he writes with enthusiasm, but there is no

evidence that he had done more than be present at that poet's

recitations.[697] Martial, however, was a personal friend, and writes

affectionately of him and to him in three of his epigrams.[698] Unlike

Martial, whose life was a continual struggle against poverty, Juvenal,

though he had clearly endured some of the discomforts and degradations

involved by a client's attendance on his rich _patronus_, was a man of

some means, possessing an estate at Aquinum,[699] a country house at

Tibur,[700] and a house at Rome.[701] At what date precisely he began to

write is uncertain. We are told that his first effort was a brief poem

attacking the actor Paris, which he afterwards embodied in the seventh

satire. But it was long before he ventured to read his satires even to

his intimate friends.[702] This suggests that portions, at any rate, of

the satires of the first book were composed during the reign of

Domitian.[703] Juvenal had certainly every reason for concealing their

existence till after the tyrant's death. The first satire was probably

written later to form a preface to the other four, and the whole book

may have been published in 101. It is noteworthy, however, that Martial,

writing to him in that year, mentions merely his gifts as a declaimer,

and seems not to know him as a satirist. The second book, containing

only the sixth satire, was probably published about 116, since it

contains allusions to earthquakes in Asia and to a comet boding ill to

Parthia and Armenia (l. 407-12). Such a comet was visible in Rome in

the autumn of 115, on the eve of Trajan's campaign against Parthia,

while in December an earthquake did great damage to the town of Antioch.

The third book (7-9) opens with an elaborate compliment to Hadrian as

the patron of literature at Rome. As Hadrian succeeded to the principate

in 117 and left Rome for a tour of the provinces in 121, this book must

fall somewhere between our dates. The fourth book (10-12) contains no

indication as to its date, but must lie between the publication of the

third book and of the fifth (after 127). Beyond these facts it is hardly

possible to go in our reconstruction of the poet's life. As far as may

be judged it was an uneventful career save for one great calamity. The

ancient biographies assert that Juvenal's denunciation of actors

embodied in the seventh satire offended an actor who was the favourite

of the princeps. They are supported by Apollinaris Sidonius,[704] who

speaks of Juvenal as the 'exile-victim of an actor's anger', and by

Johannes Malala.[705] The latter writer, with certain of the ancient

biographies, identifies the actor with Paris, the favourite of Domitian;

others, again, say that the poet was banished by Nero[706]--a manifestly

absurd statement--others by Trajan,[707] while our best authority

asserts that he was eighty years old when banished, and that he died of

grief and mortification.[708] The place of exile is variously given.

Most of the biographies place it in Egypt, the best of them asserting

that he was given a military command in that province.[709] Others

mention Britain,[710] others the Pentapolis of Libya.[711] Amid such

discrepancies it is impossible to give any certain answer. But it is

certain that the actor who caused Juvenal's banishment was not Paris,

who was put to death by Domitian as early as 83, and almost equally

certain that Domitian is guiltless of the poet's exile. It is, however,

possible that he was banished by Trajan or Hadrian, though it would

surprise us to find Trajan, for all the debauchery of his private life,

so far under the influence of an actor[712] as to sacrifice a Roman

citizen to his displeasure; while as regards Hadrian it is noteworthy

that the very satire said to have offended the _pantomimus_ contains an

eloquent panegyric of that emperor. Further, it is hard to believe the

story that Juvenal was banished to Egypt at the advanced age of eighty

under the pretext of a military command. The problem is insoluble.[713]

The most that can be said is that the persistence of the tradition gives

it some claim to credibility, though the details handed down to us are

wholly untrustworthy, and probably little better than clumsy inferences

from passages in the satires.

The scope of Juvenal's work and the motives that spur him are set forth

in the first satire. He is weary of the deluge of trivial and mechanical

verse poured out by the myriad poetasters of the day:

Still shall I hear and never quit the score,

Stunned with hoarse Codrus' Theseid, o'er and o'er?

Shall this man's elegies and t'other's play

Unpunished murder a long summer's day?

... since the world with writing is possest,

I'll versify in spite; and do my best

To make as much waste-paper as the rest.[714]

He will write in a different vein from his rivals. Satire shall be his

theme. In such an age, when virtue is praised and vice practised, the

age of the libertine, the _parvenu_, the forger, the murderer, it is

hard not to write satire. 'Facit indignatio versum!'[715] he cries. 'All

the daily life of Rome shall be my theme':

quidquid agunt homines votum timor ira voluptas

gaudia discursus nostri est farrago libelli.[716]

What human kind desires and what they shun,

Rage, passion, pleasure, impotence of will,

Shall this satirical collection fill.

DRYDEN.

Never was vice so rampant; luxury has become monstrous; the rich lord

lives in pampered and selfish ease, while those poor mortals, his

clients, jostle together to receive the paltry dole of the _sportula_;

that is all the help they will get from their patron:

No age can go beyond us; future times

Can add no further to the present crimes.

Our sons but the same things can wish and do;

Vice is at stand and at the highest flow.

Thou, Satire, spread thy sails, take all the winds that blow.[717]

And yet the satirist must be cautious; the days are past when a Lucilius

could lash Rome at his will:

When Lucilius brandishes his pen

And flashes in the face of guilty men,

A cold sweat stands in drops on every part,

And rage succeeds to tears, revenge to smart.

Muse, be advised; 'tis past considering time,

When entered once the dangerous lists of rhyme;

Since none the living villains dare implead,

Arraign them in the persons of the dead.[718]

No better preface has ever been written; it gives a perfect summary of

the motives, the objects, and the methods of the poet's work in language

which for vigour and brilliance he never surpassed. The closing lines

show us his literary parentage. It is Lucilius who inspires him; it is

the fierce invective of the father of Roman satire that appeals to him.

Lucilius had scourged Rome, when the inroads of Hellenism and oriental

luxury, the fruits of foreign conquest, were beginning to make

themselves felt. To Juvenal it falls to denounce the triumph of these

corroding influences. He has nothing of the almost pathetic philosophic

detachment of Persius, nor of the easy-going compromise of Horace. He

does not palter with problems of right and wrong, nor hesitate over his

moral judgements; casuistry is wholly alien to his temper. It is

indignation makes the verse, and from this fact, together with his

rhetorical training, his chief merits and his chief failings spring. He

introduces no novelty into satire save the almost unvarying bitterness

and ferocity of his tone. Like Horace and Persius, he employs the

dactylic hexameter to the exclusion of other metres, while, owing in the

main to his taste for declamation, he is far more sparing in the use of

the dialogue-form than either of his predecessors.

Before further discussing his general characteristics, it is necessary

to take a brief survey of the remaining satires. The second and ninth

are savage and, as was almost inevitable, obscene denunciations of

unnatural vice. In the third, the most orderly in arrangement and the

most brilliant in execution of all his satires, he describes all the

dangers and horrors of life at Rome. Umbricius, a friend of the poet, is

leaving the city. It is no place for a man of honour; it has become a

city for Greeks; the worthless and astute _Graeculus_ is everywhere

predominant, and, stained though he be with a thousand vices, has

outwitted the native-born, and, by the arts of the panderer and the

flatterer, has made himself their master. The poor are treated like

slaves. Houses fall, or are burned with fire. Sleep is impossible, so

loud with traffic are the streets. By day it is scarcely safe to walk

abroad for fear of being crushed by one of the great drays that throng

the city; by night there are the lesser perils of slops and broken

crockery cast from the windows, the greater perils of roisterers and

thieves. Rome is no place for Umbricius. He must go.

The fourth satire opens with a violent attack on the _parvenu_

Egyptian Crispinus, so powerful at the court of Domitian, and goes on

by a somewhat clumsy transition to tell the story of the huge turbot

caught near Ancona and presented to the emperor. So large was it that

a cabinet council must needs be called to decide what should be done

with it. This affords excuse for an inimitable picture of Domitian's

servile councillors. At last it is decided that the turbot is to be

served whole and a special dish to be constructed for it. 'Ah! why,'

the poet concludes, 'did not Domitian devote himself entirely to such

trifles as these?'

In the fifth satire Juvenal returns to the subject of the hardships

and insults which the poor client must endure. He pictures the host

sitting in state with the best of everything set before him and served

in the choicest manner, while the unhappy client must be content with

food and drink of the coarsest kind. Virro, the rich man, does this

not because he is parsimonious, but because the humiliation of his

client amuses his perverted mind. But the satirist does not spare the

client, whose servile complaisance leads him to put up with such

treatment. 'Be a man!' he cries, 'and sooner beg on the streets than

degrade yourself thus.'

The sixth satire, the longest of the collection, is a savage

denunciation of the vices of womankind. The various types of female

degradation are revealed to our gaze with merciless and often revolting

portrayal. The unchastity of woman is the main theme, but ranked with

the adulteress and the wanton are the murderess of husband or of child,

the torturer of the slave, the client of the fortune-teller or the

astrologer, and even the more harmless female athlete and blue-stocking.

For vigour and skill the satire ranks among Juvenal's best, but it is

marred by wanton grossness and at times almost absurd exaggeration.

The seventh satire deals with the difficulties besetting a literary

career. It opens with a dexterous compliment to Hadrian; the poet

qualifies his complaints by saying that they apply only to the past.

The accession of Hadrian has swept all the storm-clouds from the

author's sky. But in the unhappy days but lately passed away, the

poet's lot was most miserable. His work brings him no livelihood; his

patron's liberality goes but a little way. The historian is in no less

parlous plight. The advocate makes some show of wealth, but it is, as a

rule, the merest show; only the man already wealthy succeeds at the

bar; many a struggling lawyer goes bankrupt in the struggle to

advertise himself and push his way. The teacher of rhetoric and the

school-master receive but a miserable fee, yet they have all the

drudgery of discipline and all the responsibility of moulding the

characters of the young placed upon their shoulders. They are expected

to be omniscient, and yet they starve.

The eighth satire treats the familiar theme that without virtue birth is

of small account. Many examples of the degeneracy of the aristocracy are

given, some trivial, some grave, but above all the satirist denounces

the cruelty and oppression of nobly-born provincial governors. He

concludes in his noblest vein in praise of the great plebeians of the

past, Cicero, Marius, the Decii, and Servius Tullius. It is in deeds,

not in titles, that true nobility lies. Better be the son of Thersites

and possess the valour of Achilles, than live the life of a Thersites

and boast Achilles for your sire.

The eighth satire may be regarded as the presage of a distinct change of

type. Instead of the vivid pictures of Roman life and the almost

dramatic representation of vice personified, Juvenal seems to turn for

inspiration to the scholastic declamation which had fascinated his

youth. Moral problems are treated in a more abstract way, and the old

fierce onset of indignation, though it has by no means disappeared,

seems to have lost something of its former violence. There are also

traces of declining powers, a greater tendency to digression, a lack of

concentration and vigour, and even of dexterity of language. But the

change is due in all probability not merely to advance in years nor to

the calming and mellowing influence of old age, but also to a change

that was gradually passing over the Roman world. The material for savage

satire was appreciably less. Evil in its worst forms had triumphed under

Domitian. With Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian virtue began slowly and

uncertainly to reclaim part of her lost dominions.

The fourth book opens with the famous tenth satire on the vanity of

human wishes. What should man pray for? The theme is hackneyed and the

treatment shows no special originality. But the thought is elevated, the

rhetoric superb, and the verse has a resounding tread such as is only

found in Persius and Juvenal among the later poets of Rome. 'What shall

man pray for?' Power? Think of Sejanus, Pompey, Demosthenes, Cicero! To

each one greatness brought his doom. Think of Hannibal and Alexander,

how they, and with them all their high schemings, came to die; Long

life? What? Should we pray to outlive our bodily powers, to bewail the

death of our nearest and dearest, to fall from the high place where once

we stood? Beauty? Beauty is beset by a thousand perils in these vile

days, and rarely do beauty and chastity go hand in hand. Rather than

pray for boons like these, 'entrust thy fortune to the gods above,' or,

if pray thou must,

stand confined

To health of body and content of mind;

A soul that can securely death defy,

And count it nature's privilege to die;

Serene and manly, hardened to sustain

The load of life and exercised in pain:

Guiltless of hate and proof against desire,

That all things weighs and nothing can admire;

That dares prefer the toils of Hercules,

To dalliance, banquet, and ignoble ease.

The path to peace is virtue; what I show,

Thyself may freely on thyself bestow;

Fortune was never worshipped by the wise,

But, set aloft by fools, usurps the skies.[719]

In the eleventh satire we drop from these splendid heights of rhetoric;

to a declamatory invitation to dinner, which affords occasion for a

denunciation of the extravagant indulgence in the pleasures of the table

and for the praise of the good old days when Romans clave to the simple

life. The dinner to which Juvenal invites his friend will be of simple

fare simply served--

You'll have no scandal when you dine.

But honest talk and wholesome wine.

And instead of lewd dance and song, a slave shall read aloud Homer and

Homer's one rival, Vergil.

The twelfth satire opens with a thanksgiving for the escape of a friend,

Catullus, from a great storm at sea, and ends with a denunciation of

legacy hunters, the connecting link between these somewhat remote themes

being that Juvenal, at any rate, is disinterested in his joy at his

friend's escape.

The thirteenth and fourteenth satires deal with more abstract themes,

the pangs of the guilty conscience and the importance of parental

example. In the first, Juvenal consoles his friend, Calvinus, who has

been defrauded of a sum of money. The loss, he says, is small, and,

after all, honesty is rare nowadays. Men have so little care for the

gods that they shrink from no perjury. Besides, what is such loss

compared with the many worse crimes that darken life. Why thirst for

revenge? It is the doctrine of the common herd. Philosophy teaches

otherwise. The torment of conscience will be a worse penalty than any

you can inflict, and at last justice will claim its own. In the next

satire, to emphasize the value of parental example, the poet illustrates

his point from the vice of avarice, and finally, forgetting his original

theme, lashes the avaricious man in words such as would never suggest

that the question of parental example had been raised at all. It is

noteworthy that throughout these two satires the poet draws his

illustrations from the themes of the schools rather than from the scenes

of contemporary life.

In the fifteenth satire, however, he returns to depict and discuss

actual occurrences, but in how altered and strange a manner. His theme

is a case of cannibalism in Egypt,[720] the result of a collision

between religious fanatics of neighbouring townships. The aged poet

spurs himself into one last fury against the hated Oriental, regardless

of the fact that the denunciation of cannibalism to a civilized audience

must necessarily be insipid. Last comes a fragment expatiating bitterly

on the shameful advantages of a military career. The unhappy civilian

assaulted by a soldier cannot get redress, for the case must be heard in

camp before a bench of soldiers. The soldier, on the other hand, can get

summary settlement of all his disputes, and alone of Romans is exempt

from the _patria potestas_, can control his earnings and bequeath them

to whom he will. At this point the satire breaks off abruptly, and we

have no means of judging the extent of the loss. It is a striking

reversion to his earlier manner. Once more the satire takes the form of

a series of sketches from actual life.

Both of these satires, notably the fifteenth, show a marked falling off

alike in style and matter. Both, in fact, have been branded as spurious,

the latter from times as early as those of the scholia. But there is no

real ground for such a suspicion. Both satires have all the

characteristics of Juvenal, excepting only the vigour and brilliance of

his earlier days. No poet's powers are proof against the advance of old

age, and there is no vein of poetry more exhausting or more easily

exhausted than satire. And, as has already been remarked, there are

signs of a falling away before these satires are reached. Even the

famous tenth satire, for all its indisputable greatness, does not demand

or reveal, such special gifts of style and observation as the first and

third. It is less in touch with actual life: it is a theme from the

schools, and the illustrations, effective as they are, are as trite as

the theme itself. Were it his only work, the tenth satire would give

Juvenal high rank among Roman poets: it will always, thanks to the

brilliance of its rhetoric and the wide applicability of its moral, be

his most popular work: it is not his highest achievement.

It will have been obvious from this brief survey that the themes chosen

by Juvenal are for the most part of a commonplace nature. It could

hardly be otherwise. Satire, to be effective, must choose obvious

themes. But in some respects the treatment of them is surprisingly

commonplace. There is little freshness or originality about Juvenal's

way of thinking. His morality is neither satisfying nor profound. His

ideal is the old narrow Roman republican ideal of a chaste, vigorous,

and unluxurious life, wherein publicity is for man alone, while woman is

confined to the cares of the family and the household; the ideal of a

society wholly Italian and free-born, untainted by the importations of

Greece and Asia; of a state stern and exclusive, though just and

merciful, sparing the subject and beating down the proud. The nobility

of this ideal is not to be denied, but it is inadequate because it is

wholly unpractical. There is no denying that the emancipation of women

had led to gross evils, some of them imperilling the very existence of

the State; nor can it be doubted that much of the Greek influence had

been wholly for the bad, and that in many cases the introduction of the

cults of the East served merely to cloak debauchery. The rich freedman,

also, for whom Juvenal reserves his bitterest shafts, was often of

vicious and degraded character and had risen to power by repulsive

means. But there is another side to the picture, the existence of which

Juvenal sometimes, by his vehemence, seems to deny. The freedman class

supplied some of the most valuable of civil servants, and many must have

been worthy of their emancipation and of their rise to power.[721] There

was a higher Hellenism, which Juvenal ignored. The intellectual

movements of the Empire still found their chief source in Greece, and

the great Sophistic movement was already setting in, as a result of

which Greek literature was to revive and the Greek language to supersede

the Latin as the chief vehicle of literary expression even at Rome

itself. The greater freedom accorded to women had its compensations; in

spite of Juvenal, woman does not become worse or less attractive because

she is cultured and well educated, and if there was much dissipation and

debauchery in the high society of his day, even high society contained

many noble women of fine intellect and pure character. The spread of

Roman citizenship and the breaking down of the old exclusive tradition

were potent factors for good in the history of civilization. It may be

urged in Juvenal's defence that satire must necessarily deal with the

darker side of life, that his silence as to the better and more hopeful

elements in society does not mean that he ignored them, and that it is

absurd to attack a satirist because he is not a scientific social

historian. All this is true; but it is possible to have plenty of

material for the bitterest satire and to indict gross and rampant vice

without leaving the impression that the life of the day has no redeeming

elements, without generalizing extravagantly from the vices of one

section of society, even though that section be large and influential.

The weakness of Juvenal is that he is too retrospective, both in his

praise and in his blame. He dare not satirize the living, but will

attack the dead. But it would be wrong to assume that in the dead he

always attacks types of the living. There is always the impression that

he is in reality attacking the first century rather than the second, the

reigns of Nero and Domitian rather than the society governed by Trajan

and Hadrian. He had lived through a night of terror and would not

recognize the signs of a new dawn. Directing his attention too

exclusively on Rome itself and on the past, he forgets the larger world

and the future hope. It is to the impossible Rome of the past that he

turns his eyes for inspiration. Hence comes his hatred, often merely

racial, for Greek and Asiatic importations,[722] hence his dislike and

contempt for the new woman. Moreover, he had lived on the fringe of high

society and not in it; he had drunk in the bitterness of the client's

life, and had lived in the enveloping atmosphere of scandal that always

surrounds society for those who are excluded from it. A man of an acrid

and jealous temperament, easily angered and not readily appeased, he

yields too lightly and indiscriminately to that indignation, which, he

tells us, is the fountain-head of all he writes. Satire should be

something more than a wild torrent sweeping away obstacles great and

small with one equal violence; it should have its laughing shallows and

its placid deeps. But Juvenal's laughter rings harsh and wild, and

wounds as deeply as his invective; he drives continually before the

fierce gale of his spirit, and there are no calm havens where he may

rest and contemplate the ideal that so much denunciation implies. He

knows no gradations: all failings suffer beneath the same remorseless

lash. The consul Lateranus has a taste for driving: bad taste, perhaps,

yet hardly criminal. But Juvenal thunders at him as though he were

guilty of high treason (viii. 146):

praeter maiorum cineres atque ossa volucri

carpento rapitur pinguis Lateranus, et ipse,

ipse rotam adstringit sufflamine mulio consul,

nocte quidem, sed Luna videt, sed sidera testes

intendunt oculos. finitum tempus honoris

cum fuerit, clara Lateranus luce flagellum

sumet et occursum numquam trepidabit amici

iam senis.

See! by his great progenitor's remains

Fat Lateranus sweeps, with loosened reins.

Good Consul! he no pride of office feels,

But stoops, himself, to clog his headlong wheels.

'But this is all by night,' the hero cries,

Yet the moon sees! yet the stars stretch their eyes

Pull on your shame!--A few short moments wait,

And Damasippus quits the pomp of state:

Then, proud the experienced driver to display,

He mounts the chariot in the face of day,

Whirls, with bold front, his grave associate by,

And jerks his whip, to catch the senior's eye.

GIFFORD.

Elsewhere (i. 55-62) the 'horsy' youth is spoken of as worse than the

husband who connives at his wife's dishonour and pockets the reward of

her shame. Among the monstrous women of the sixth satire we come with a

shock of surprise upon the learned lady (434):

illa tamen gravior, quae cum discumbere coepit

laudat Vergilium, periturae ignoscit Elissae,

committit vates et comparat, inde Maronem

atque alia parte in trutina suspendit Homerum.

But of all plagues the greatest is untold;

The book-learned wife, in Greek and Latin bold;

The critic dame, who at her table sits,

Homer and Virgil quotes and weighs their wits,

And pities Dido's agonizing fits.

DRYDEN.

She figures strangely among the poisoners and adulteresses. Juvenal is

misogynist by temperament as well as by conviction. Nero is a matricide

like Orestes, but--

in scaena numquam cantavit Orestes,

Troica non scripsit. quid enim Verginius armis

debuit ulcisci magis aut cum Vindice Galba,

quod Nero tam saeva crudaque tyrannide fecit? (viii. 220).

Besides, Orestes in his wildest mood

Sung on no public stage, no Troics wrote.--

This topped his frantic crimes! This roused mankind!

For what could Galba, what Virginius find,

In the dire annals of that bloody reign,

Which called for vengeance in a louder strain?

GIFFORD.

It is almost a crime to be a foreigner. The Greek is a liar, a base

flatterer, a monster of lust, a traitor, a murderer.[723] The Jew is the

sordid victim of a narrow and degrading superstition.[724] The Oriental

is the defilement of Rome; worst of all are the Egyptians;[725] they

even eat each other. The freedman, the _nouveau riche_, the

_parvenu_[726] are hated with all a Roman's hatred. The old patriotism

of the city state is not yet merged in the wider imperialism. It is

bitter to hear one of alien blood say 'Civis Romanus sum'.

This strange violence and lack of proportion are due in part to the

poet's rhetorical training, which had warped still further a naturally

biased temperament. He had been taught and loved to use the language of

hyperbole. And he had lived through the principate of Domitian; it was

that above all else which made him cry _difficile est saturam non

scribere_. To this same tendency to exaggeration may be in part

attributed the extreme grossness of so much of his work. It is true that

vices flaunted themselves before his eyes that it would be hard to

satirize without indecency. There is excuse to some extent for the

second, sixth, and ninth satires. But even there Juvenal oversteps the

mark and is often guilty of coarseness for coarseness' sake. It is easy

to plead the custom of the age,[727] but it is doubtful whether such

pleading affords any real palliation for a writer who sets out to be a

moralist. It is easy in an access of admiration to say that Juvenal is

never prurient: but it is hard to be genuinely convinced that such a

statement is true, or that Juvenal's coarseness is never more than mere

plain speaking.[728]

For not a few readers, this tenseness of language, this violence of

judgement, and this occasional unclean handling of the unclean, make

Juvenal an exhausting and a depressing poet to read in any large

quantity at a time. Worse still, they lead the reader at times to

harbour doubts as to the genuineness of Juvenal's indignation. Such

doubts are not in reality justifiable. Juvenal sometimes goads himself

into inappropriate frenzies and sometimes betrays a suspiciously close

acquaintance with the most disgusting details of the worst vices of the

age. But though he had something of the unreality of the rhetorician,

and though his character may, perhaps, not have been free from serious

blemish, he is never a hypocrite; nor, though he paints exclusively the

darkest side of society, is there the least reason to accuse him of

culpable misrepresentation of actual facts. He has selected the

material most suited to his peculiar genius: we may complain of his

principle of selection, and of his tendency to generalize. There our

criticism must end.

These defects are largely the defects of his qualities and may be

readily forgiven. We have Pliny the younger and the inscriptions to

modify his sombre picture. When all is said, Juvenal had a matchless

field for satire and matchless gifts, against which his defects will not

weigh in the balance for a moment. His unrivalled capacity for

declamation, for mordant epigram and scathing wit, more than compensate

for his often ill-balanced ferocity; the extraordinary vividness of his

pictures of the life of Rome makes up for lack of perspective and

proportion, the richness and variety of his imagination for its too

frequent superficiality, the vigour and trenchancy of his blows for the

absence of the rapier thrust, the fervour of his teaching for its lack

of breadth and depth. These qualities make him the greatest of the

satirists of Rome, if not of the world.

It is, perhaps, his vividness that makes the most immediate impression.

It would be hard to find in any literature a writer with such a power to

make the scenes described live before his readers. The salient features

of a scene or character are seized at once.[729] There is no irrelevant

detail; the picture may be crowded, but it is never obscure; if there is

a fault it is that the colouring is sometimes too crude and glaring to

please. But before such word-painting as the description of Domitian's

privy council criticism is dumb:

nec melior vultu quamvis ignobilis ibat

Rubrius, offensae veteris reus atque tacendae.

* * * * *

Montani quoque venter adest abdomine tardus,

et matutino sudans Crispinua amomo

quantum vix redolent duo funera, saevior illo

Pompeius tenui iugulos aperire susurro,

et qui vulturibus servabat viscera Dacis

Fuscus marmorea meditatus proelia villa,

et cum mortifero prudens Veiento Catullo,

qui numquam visae flagrabat amore puellae,

grande et conspicuum nostro quoque tempore monstrum,

caecus adulator, dirusque a ponte satelles

dignus Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes

blandaque devexae iactaret basia raedae (iv. 104).

Rubrius, though not, like these, of noble race,

Followed with equal terror in his face;

* * * * *

Montanus' belly next, and next appeared

The legs on which that monstrous pile was reared.

Crispinus followed, daubed with more perfume,

Thus early! than two funerals consume.

Then bloodier Pompey, practised to betray,

And hesitate the noblest lives away.

Then Fuscus, who in studious pomp at home,

Planned future triumphs for the arms of Rome.

Blind to the event! those arms a different fate,

Inglorious wounds and Dacian vultures wait.

Last, sly Veiento with Catullus came,

Deadly Catullus, who at beauty's name

Took fire, although unseen: a wretch, whose crimes

Struck with amaze even those prodigious times.

A base, blind parasite, a murderous lord,

From the bridge-end raised to the council-board,

Yet fitter still to dog the traveller's heels,

And whine for alms to the descending wheels.

GIFFORD.

Figure after figure they live before us, till the procession culminates

with the crowning horror of the blind delator, L. Valerius Catullus

Messalinus. Equally vivid is Juvenal's description of places. There is

the rude theatre of the country town with its white-robed audience _en

négligé_:--

ipsa dierum

festorum herboso colitur si quando theatro

maiestas tandemque redit ad pulpita notum

exodium, cum personae pallentis hiatum

in gremio matris formidat rusticus infans,

aequales habitus illic similesque videbis

orchestram et populum, clari velamen honoris

sufficiunt tunicae summis aedilibus albae (iii. 172).

Some distant parts of Italy are known,

Where none but only dead men wear a gown,

On theatres of turf, in homely state,

Old plays they act, old feasts they celebrate;

* * * * *

The mimic yearly gives the same delights;

And in the mother's arms the clownish infant frights.

Their habits (undistinguished by degrees)

Are plain alike; the same simplicity

Both on the stage and in the pit you see.

In his white cloak the magistrate appears;

The country bumpkin the same livery wears.

DRYDEN.

There is the poor gentleman's garret high on the topmost story of some

tottering _insula_, close beneath the tiles, where the doves nest:

lectus erat Codro Procula minor, urceoli sex

ornamentum abaci nec non et parvulus infra

cantharus, et recubans sub eodem marmore Chiro

iamque vetus graecos servabat cista libellos,

et divina opici rodebant carmina mures (iii. 203).

Codrus had but one bed, so short to boot,

That his short wife's short legs go dangling out

His cupboard's head six earthen pitchers graced,

Beneath them was his trusty tankard placed;

And to support this noble plate, there lay

A bending Chiron cast from honest clay;

His few Greek books a rotten chest contained,

Whose covers much of mouldiness complained;

Where mice and rats devoured poetic bread,

And on heroic verse luxuriously were fed.

DRYDEN.

There is the hurrying throng of the streets of Rome with all its dangers

and discomforts:

nobis properantibus opstat

unda prior, magno populus premit agmine lumbos

qui sequitur; ferit hic cubito, ferit assere duro

alter, at hic tignum capiti incutit, ille metretam.

pinguia crura luto, planta mox undique magna

calcor et in digito clavus mihi militis haeret.

nonne vides quanto celebretur sportula fumo?

centum convivae, sequitur sua quemque culina.

Corbulo vix ferret tot vasa ingentia, tot res

inpositas capiti, quas recto vertice portat

servulus infelix et cursu ventilat ignem.

scinduntur tunicae sartae modo, longa coruscat

serraco veniente abies, atque altera pinum

plaustra vehunt, nutant alte populoque minantur (iii. 243).

The press before him stops the client's pace;

The crowd that follows crush his panting sides,

And trip his heels; he walks not but he rides.

One elbows him, one jostles in the shoal,

A rafter breaks his head or chairman's pole;

Stockinged with loads of fat town dirt he goes,

And some rogue-soldier with his hob-nailed shoes

Indents his legs behind in bloody rows.

See, with what smoke our doles we celebrate!

A hundred guests invited walk in state;

A hundred hungry slaves with their Dutch-kitchens wait:

Huge pans the wretches on their heads must bear,

Which scarce gigantic Corbulo could rear;

Yet they must walk upright beneath the load,

Nay run, and running blow the sparkling flames abroad,

Their coats from botching newly brought are torn.

Unwieldy timber-trees in waggons borne,

Stretched at their length, beyond their carriage lie,

That nod and threaten ruin from on high.

DRYDEN.

Even in the later satires, where with the advance of age this pictorial

gift begins to fail him and he tends to rely rather on brilliant

rhetorical treatment of philosophical commonplaces, there are still

flashes of the old power. The well-known description of the fall of

Sejanus in the tenth satire is in his best manner, while even the

humbler picture of the rustic family of primitive Rome in the fourteenth

satire shows the same firmness of touch, the same eye for vivid and

direct representation:

saturabat glaebula talis

patrem ipsum turbamque casae, qua feta iacebat

uxor et infantes ludebant quattuor, unus

vernula, tres domini, sed magnis fratribus horum

a scrobe vel sulco redeuntibus altera cena

amplior et grandes fumabant pultibus ollae (166).

For then the little glebe, improved with care,

Largely supplied with vegetable fare,

The good old man, the wife in childbed laid,

And four hale boys, that round the cottage played,

Three free-born, one a slave: while, on the board,

Huge porringers, with wholesome pottage stored,

Smoked for their elder brothers, who were now,

Hungry and tired, expected from the plough.

GIFFORD.

His handling of the essential weapons of satire, scathing epigram,

and impetuous rhetoric, contribute equally to his success. He has

the capacity of branding a character with eternal shame in a few

terse trenchant lines. Who can forget the Greek adventurer of the

third satire?--

grammaticus rhetor geometres pictor aliptes

augur schoenobates medicus magus, omnia novit

Graeculus esuriens; in caelum miseris, ibit (iii. 76);

A cook, a conjurer, a rhetorician,

A painter, pedant, a geometrician,

A dancer on the ropes and a physician;

All things the hungry Greek exactly knows,

And bid him go to heaven, to heaven he goes.

DRYDEN.

or the summary of Domitian's reign with which he dates the story of the

gigantic turbot?--

cum iam semianimum laceraret Flavius orbem

ultimus et calvo serviret Roma Neroni (iv. 37);

When the last Flavius, drunk with fury, tore

The prostrate world, which bled at every pore,

And Rome beheld, in body as in mind,

A bald-pate Nero rise to curse mankind.

GIFFORD.

or the curse upon the legacy-hunter Pacuvius?--

vivat Pacuvius quaeso vel Nestora totum,

possideat quantum rapuit Nero, montibus aurum

exaequet, nec amet quemquam nec ametur ab ullo (xii. 128).

Health to the man! and may he thus get more

Than Nero plundered! pile his shining store

High, mountain high: in years a Nestor prove,

And, loving none, ne'er know another's love!

GIFFORD.

Not less mordant in a different way is the savage and sceptical

melancholy of the conclusion of the second satire, where he contrasts

the degenerate Roman, tainted by the foulest lusts, with the noble

Romans of the past, and even with the barbarians, newly conquered, on

the confines of empire (149):

esse aliquos manes et subterranea regna

et contum et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras

atque una transire vadum tot milia cumba

nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aere lavantur.

sed tu vera puta: Curius quid sentit et ambo

Scipiadae, quid Fabricius manesque Camilli,

quid Cremerae legio et Cannis consumpta iuventus,

tot bellorum animae, quotiens hinc talis ad illos

umbra venit? cuperent lustrari, si qua darentur

sulpura cum taedis et si foret umida laurus.

illic heu miseri traducimur. arma quidem ultra

litora Iuvernae promovimus et modo captas

Orcadas ac minima contentos nocte Britannos,

sed quae nunc populi fiunt victoris in urbe,

non faciuut illi quos vicimus.

That angry Justice formed a dreadful hell,

That ghosts in subterranean regions dwell,

That hateful Styx his sable current rolls,

And Charon ferries o'er unbodied souls,

Are now as tales or idle fables prized;

By children questioned and by men despised.

Yet these, do thou believe. What thoughts, declare,

Ye Scipios, once the thunderbolts of war!

Fabricius, Curius, great Camillus' ghost!

Ye valiant Fabii, in yourselves an host!

Ye dauntless youths at fatal Cannae slain!

Spirits of many a brave and bloody plain!

What thoughts are yours, whene'er with feet unblest,

An unbelieving shade invades your rest?

Ye fly, to expiate the blasting view;

Fling on the pine-tree torch the sulphur blue,

And from the dripping bay dash round the lustral dew.

And yet--to these abodes we all must come,

Believe, or not, these are our final home;

Though now Ierne tremble at our sway,

And Britain, boastful of her length of day;

Though the blue Orcades receive our chain,

And isles that slumber in the frozen main.

But why of conquest boast? the conquered climes

Are free, O Rome, from thy detested crimes.

GIFFORD.

In the same bitter spirit, Umbricius is made to cry:

quid Romae faciam? mentiri nescio; librum,

si malus est, nequeo laudare et poscere; motus

astrorum ignoro; funus promittere patris

nec volo nec possum; ranarum viscera numquam

inspexi; ferre ad nuptam quae mittit adulter,

quae mandat, norunt alii; me nemo ministro

fur erit, atque ideo nulli comes exeo tamquam

mancus et extinctae, corpus non utile, dextrae (iii. 41).

What's Rome to me, what business have I there?

I who can neither lie nor falsely swear?

Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes,

Nor yet comply with him nor with his times?

Unskilled in schemes by planets to foreshow,

Like canting rascals, how the wars will go;

I neither will nor can prognosticate

To the young gaping heir his father's fate;

Nor in the entrails of a toad have pried,

Nor carried bawdy presents to a bride:

For want of these town-virtues, thus alone

I go conducted on my way by none;

Like a dead member from the body rent,

Maimed and unuseful to the government.

DRYDEN.

This bitterness Juvenal seasons at times with saturnine jests of a type

that is all his own. Virro gives rancid oil to his poor guests as

dressing to their salad:

illud enim vestris datur alveolis quod

canna Micipsarum prora subvexit acuta,

propter quod Romae cum Boccare nemo lavatur,

quod tutos etiam facit a serpentibus atris (v. 88).

Such oil to you is thrown,

Such rancid grease, as Afric sends to town;

So strong that when her factors seek the bath,

All wind and all avoid the noisome path.

GIFFORD.

When the blind _delator_, Catullus Messalinus, is summoned to give his

advice concerning the gigantic turbot:

nemo magis rhombum stupuit; nam plurima dixit

in laevom conversus, at illi dextra iacebat

belua. sic pugnas Cilicis laudabat et ictus

et pegma et pueros inde ad velaria raptos (iv. 119).

None dwelt so largely on the turbot's size,

Or raised with such applause his wondering eyes;

But to the left (O treacherous want of sight)

He poured his praise;--the fish was on the right.

Thus would he at the fencer's matches sit,

And shout with rapture at some fancied hit;

And thus applaud the stage machinery, where

The youths were rapt aloft and lost in air.

GIFFORD.

Grimmest of all is the jest on the mushrooms set before Virro:

vilibus ancipites fungi ponentur amicis,

boletus domino, sed quales Claudius edit

ante illum uxoris, post quem nihil amplius edit (v. 146).

You champ on spongy toadstools, hateful treat!

Fearful of poisons in each bit you eat:

He feasts secure on mushrooms, fine as those

Which Claudius for his special eating chose,

Till one more fine, provided by his wife,

Finished at once his feasting and his life!

GIFFORD.

But Juvenal is not always bitter, nor always angry. His indignation is

never absent, but takes at times a graver and a nobler tone. At times he

preaches virtue directly, instead of doing so indirectly through the

denunciation of vice. He has no new secret of morality to reveal, no

fresh lights to throw upon problems of conduct; his advice is obvious

and straightforward; neither in form nor matter is there anything

paradoxical. He was no student of philosophy,[730] though naturally

familiar with the more important philosophic creeds and disposed by

temperament to fall in with the views of the stern Stoic school. The

conclusion of the tenth satire quoted above owes much to the Stoics.

'Leave the ordering of your fortunes to the powers above. Man is dearer

to them than to himself. The wise man is free from all desire, all anger

and all fear of death.'[731] 'Revenge is an unworthy and degrading

passion.'[732] 'Fate[733] and the revolution[734] of the stars in heaven

rule all with unchanging law.' All these maxims have their counterpart

in the Stoic creed. But there is no need of the philosophy of the

schools to guide man to the paths of virtue.

numquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit (xiv. 321).

Nature and wisdom never are at strife.

GIFFORD.

Philosophy has its value, but the good man is no less good for not being

a philosopher:

magna quidem, sacris quae dat praecepta libellis,

victrix fortunae sapientia, ducimus autem

hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda vitae

nec iactare iugum vita didicere magistra (xiii. 19).

Wisdom, I know, contains a sovereign charm,

To vanquish fortune or at least disarm:

Blest they who walk in her unerring rule!

Nor those unblest who, tutored in life's school,

Have learned of old experience to submit,

And lightly bear the yoke they cannot quit.

GIFFORD.

He agrees with the Stoics just because their practical teaching

harmonizes so entirely with the old _virtus Romana_, that is his ideal.

No more profound are his religious views: he hates the alien cults that

work as insidious poison in the life of Rome; he rejects the picturesque

legends of the afterworld, bred of the fertile imagination of the

Greeks. But he is no unbeliever:

separat hoc nos

a grege mutorum, atque ideo venerabile soli

sortiti ingenium divinorumque capaces

atque exercendis pariendisque artibus apti

sensum a caelesti demissum traximus arce,

cuius egent prona et terram spectantia. mundi

principio indulsit communis conditor illis

tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, mutuus ut nos

adfectus petere auxilium et praestare iuberet (xv. 142).

This marks our birth

The great distinction from the beasts of earth!

And therefore--gifted with superior powers

And capable of things divine--'tis ours

To learn and practise every useful art;

And from high heaven deduce that better part,

That moral sense, denied to creatures prone

And downward bent, and found with man alone!--

For He, who gave this vast machine to roll,

Breathed life in them, in us a reasoning soul:

That kindred feelings might our state improve,

And mutual wants conduct to mutual love.

GIFFORD.

God is over all and guides and guards the world, and has ordained

torment of conscience and slow retribution for sin.[735] Yet Juvenal

does not definitely reject the gods of his native land; nor do these

exalted beliefs cause him to refuse sacrifice to Jupiter, Juno, Minerva,

and his household gods.[736] It is the creed, not of a theologian, but

of a man with high ideals, a staunch patriotism, and a deep reverence

for the past.

But this lack of profundity and philosophical training does not, as may

be inferred from passages already quoted, prevent him from being

intensely effective as a moral teacher. His platitudes are none the

worse for not having a Stoic label and all the better for their

simplicity and directness of expression. They do not reveal the hunger

and thirst after righteousness that breathe from the lines of Persius,

but they have at least an equal appeal to the plain man, and they are

matchlessly expressed. His pleading against revenging the wrong done, if

not on the very highest moral plane, possesses a grave dignity and

beauty that brings it straight home to the heart:

at vindicta bonum vita iucundius ipsa.

nempe hoc indocti, quorum praecordia nullis

interdum aut levibus videas flagrantia causis.

* * * * *

Chrysippus non dicet idem nec mite Thaletis

ingenium dulcique senex vicinus Hymetto,

qui partem acceptae saeva inter vincla cicutae

accusatori nollet dare. plurima felix

paulatim vitia atque errores exuit omnes,

prima docet rectum sapientia. quippe minuti

semper et infirmi est animi exiguique voluptas

ultio. continuo sic collige, quod vindicta

nemo magis gaudet quam femina. cur tamen hos tu

evasisse putes, quos diri conscia facti

mens habet attonitos et surdo verbere caedit

occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum?

poena autem vehemens ac multo saevior illis

quas et Caedicius gravis invenit et Rhadamanthus,

nocte dieque suum gestare in pectore testem (xiii. 180).

'Revenge,' they say, and I believe their words,

'A pleasure sweeter far than life affords.'

Who say? The fools, whose passions prone to ire

At slightest causes or at none take fire.

... ... ... Chrysippus said not so;

Nor Thales, to our frailties clement still;

Nor that old man, by sweet Hymettus' hill,

Who drank the poison with unruffled soul,

And, dying, from his foes withheld the bowl.

Divine philosophy! by whose pure light

We first distinguish, then pursue the right,

Thy power the breast from every error frees

And weeds out every error by degrees:--

Illumined by thy beam, revenge we find

The abject pleasure of an abject mind,

And hence so dear to poor, weak womankind.

But why are those, Calvinus, thought to 'scape

Unpunished, whom in every fearful shape

Guilt still alarms, and conscience ne'er asleep

Wounds with incessant strokes 'not loud but deep',

While the vexed mind, her own tormentor, plies

A scorpion scourge, unmarked by human eyes?

Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign,

Can match the fierce, the unutterable pain

He feels, who night and day, devoid of rest,

Carries his own accuser in his breast.

GIFFORD.

The same characteristics mark his praise of nobility of character as

opposed to nobility of birth:

tota licet veteres exornent undique cerae

atria, nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus.

Paulus vel Cossus vel Drusus moribus esto,

hos ante effigies maiorum pone tuorum,

praecedant ipsas illi te consule virgas.

prima mihi debes anima bona. sanctus haberi

iustitiaeque tenax factis dictisque mereris?

adgnosco procerem; salve Gaetulice, seu tu

Silanus, quocumque alio de sanguine, rarus

civis et egregius patriae contingis ovanti (viii. 19).

Fond man, though all the heroes of your line

Bedeck your halls, and round your galleries shine

In proud display: yet take this truth from me,

'Virtue alone is true nobility.'

Set Cossus, Drusus, Paulus, then, in view,

The bright example of their lives pursue;

Let these precede the statues of your race,

And these, when consul, of your rods take place,

O give me inborn worth! Dare to be just,

Firm to your word and faithful to your trust.

Then praises hear, at least deserve to hear,

I grant your claim and recognize the peer.

Hail from whatever stock you draw your birth,

The son of Cossus or the son of Earth,

All hail! in you exulting Rome espies

Her guardian power, her great Palladium rise.

GIFFORD.

This is rhetoric, but rhetoric of the noblest kind. Of pure poetry

there is naturally but little in Juvenal. Neither his temperament nor

his subject would admit it. He had too keen an eye for the hideous and

the grotesque, too strong a passion for the declamatory style. Hence it

is rather his brilliant sketches of a vicious society, his fiery

outbursts of rhetoric, his striking _sententiae_ that primarily impress

the reader:

expende Hannibalem: quot libras in duce summo

invenies? (x. 147).

Great Hannibal within the balance lay,

And count how many pounds his ashes weigh.

DRYDEN.

finem animae quae res humanas miscuit olim,

non gladii, non saxa dabunt nec tela, sed ille

Cannarum vindex et tanti sanguinis ultor

anulus. i demens et saevas curre per Alpes,

ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias (x. 163).

What wondrous sort of death has heaven designed

For so untamed, so turbulent a mind?

Nor swords at hand, nor hissing darts afar,

Are doomed to avenge the tedious bloody war;

But poison drawn through a ring's hollow plate,

Must finish him--a sucking infant's fate.

Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool,

To please the boys, and be a theme at school.

DRYDEN.

nemo repente fuit turpissimus (ii. 83).

For none become at once completely vile.

GIFFORD.

summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori

et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas (viii. 83).

si natura negat, facit indignatio versum (i. 79).

Think it a crime no tears can e'er efface,

To purchase safety with compliance base,

At honour's cost a feverish span extend,

And sacrifice for life, life's only end!

GIFFORD.

It is lines such as these that first rise to the mind at the mention of

Juvenal. But he was no mere declaimer. Here and there we may find

phrases of the purest poetry and of the most perfect form. Far above all

others come the wonderful lines of the ninth satire:

festinat enim decurrere velox

flosculus angustae miseraeque brevissima vitae

portio; dum bibimus, dum serta unguenta puellas

poscimus, obrepit non intellecta senectus (ix. 126).

For youth, too transient flower! of life's short day

The shortest part, but blossoms--to decay.

Lo! while we give the unregarded hour

To revelry and joy in Pleasure's bower,

While now for rosy wreaths our brow to twine,

While now for nymphs we call, and now for wine,

The noiseless foot of time steals swiftly by,

And, ere we dream of manhood, age is nigh!

GIFFORD.

Of a very different character, but of a beauty that is nothing less

than startling in its sombre surroundings, is the blessing that he

invokes on the good men of old who 'enthroned the teacher in the

revered parent's place'.

di maiorum umbris tenuem et sine pondere terram

spirantesque crocos et in urna perpetuum ver,

qui praeceptorem sancti voluere parentis

esse loco (vii. 207).

Shades of our sires! O sacred be your rest,

And lightly lie the turf upon your breast!

Flowers round your urns breathe sweets beyond compare,

And spring eternal shed its influence there!

You honoured tutors, now a slighted race,

And gave them all a parent's power and place.

GIFFORD.

The sensuous appeal of the 'fragrant crocus and the spring that dies not

in the urn of death' is unique in Juvenal. This slender stream of

definitely poetic imagination reveals itself suddenly and unexpectedly

in strange forms and circumstances. At the close of the passage in the

third satire describing the perils of the Roman streets, Juvenal

imagines the death of some householder in a street accident. All is

bustle and business at home in expectation of his return:

domus interea secura patellas

iam lavat et bucca foculum excitat et sonat unctis

striglibus et pleno componit lintea guto.

haec inter pueros varie properantur, at ille

iam sedet in ripa taetrumque novicius horret

porthmea nec sperat caenosi gurgitis alnum

infelix nec habet quem porrigat ore trientem (iii. 261).

Meantime, unknowing of their fellow's fate,

The servants wash the platter, scour the plate,

Then blow the fire with puffing cheeks, and lay

The rubbers and the bathing-sheets display,

And oil them first, each handy in his way.

But he for whom this busy care they take,

Poor ghost! is wandering by the Stygian lake;

Affrighted by the ferryman's grim face,

New to the horrors of the fearful place,

His passage begs, with unregarded prayer,

And wants two farthings to discharge his fare.

DRYDEN.

Out of the grotesque there gradually looms the horror of death and the

friendless ghost sitting lost and homeless by the Stygian waters.

That there is small scope in his work for such distinctively poetic

imagination is not Juvenal's fault, nor can we complain of its absence.

But in technical accomplishment he shows himself a writer of the first

rank. His treatment of the hexameter exactly suits his declamatory type

of satire. The conversational verse of Horace, with its easy-going

rambling gait, was unsuitable for the thunders of Juvenal's rhetoric.

Something more massive in structure, more vigorous in movement, was

needed as the vehicle of so much rhetoric and invective. The delicate

tripping hexameter of contemporary epic was equally unsuitable.

Unlike the majority of post-Augustan poets, Juvenal is almost untouched

by the Ovidian influence. As far as his metre has any ancestry, it is

descended from the Vergilian hexameter, though with the licence of

satire it claims greater liberty in its treatment of pauses and of

elision. The post-Augustan poet with whom in this respect Juvenal has

greatest affinity is Persius. For vigour and variety he far surpasses

all other poets of the age; while even Persius, although at his best and

in his more declamatory passages he is at least Juvenal's equal, does

not maintain the same level of excellence, and his more frequent

employment of the traditional dialogue of satire gives him fewer

opportunities for striking metrical effect.

As regards his diction Juvenal is equally remarkable. He has suffered

little from the schools of rhetoric and has gained much. He is pointed

and clear, without being either obscure[737] or mechanical. There is no

vain striving after antithesis and no epigram for epigram's sake.

Grotesque he is not seldom, but the grotesqueness is deliberate and

effective, and no mere affectation.

His one serious weakness is his lack of constructive power and his

incapacity to preserve due proportion between the parts of his satires.

The most glaring instances of this failing are to be found in the

fourth, twelfth, and fourteenth satires, but except the third there is

hardly a satire that can be regarded as wholly successful in point of

construction. This defect, it may be admitted, is less serious in satire

than in almost any other branch of literature. Such discursiveness was

justified by the tradition and by the inherent nature of satire. But

Juvenal offends in this respect beyond due reason, and only his

extraordinary merits in other directions save him from the penalties of

this failing.

Juvenal is the last of the poets of the Silver Age, and the only one of

them to whom the epithet 'great' can reasonably be applied. He is no

faultless writer, but he has genius and power, and has risen superior to

the besetting sins of the age. He is a rhetorician, it is true, but he

chose a form of literature where his rhetoric could have legitimate

play. But he is no plagiarist or imitator; though, as in any other poet,

we may find in him many traces and even echoes of his predecessors, he

is in the best sense original. He is never a mere juggler in words and

phrases, he is a true artist. Form and matter are indissolubly welded

and interfused one with another. And this is because, unlike other

writers of the age, he has something to say. He is poet by inspiration,

not by profession. His excessive pessimism, his tendency to bias and

exaggeration, cannot on the worst estimate obscure his merits either as

artist or moralist. His picture of society has large elements of truth,

and we can no more blame him for his tendency to caricature than we can

blame Hogarth. Satire, especially the satire of declamatory invective,

must be one-sided, and the satirist must select the features of life

which he desires to denounce. And if this leads us at times into

unpleasant places and among unpleasant people unpleasantly described,

that does not justify us in denouncing the satirist. It must be

remembered that the true satirist is not likely to be a man of perfect

character. He must have seen much and experienced much; if his character

has in the process become not merely unduly embittered, but perhaps

somewhat smirched, these failings may be redeemed by other qualities.

And in the case of Juvenal they are so redeemed.

He has not the lucid judgement of Horace nor the pure fervour of

Persius. He is more positive than the former, more negative than the

latter. But he has lived in a sense in which Persius never had, and

possesses the gift of direct and lucid expression; therefore, when he

strikes, he strikes home. He cannot, like Horace, 'play about the hearts

of men,' he will have nothing of compromise, he cannot and will not

adapt himself to his environment. The doctrine of [Greek: m_eden agan],

the _aurea mediocritas_, have no attractions for him. Hence his ideal is

often unpractical; 'the times were out of joint,' and Juvenal was not

precisely the man to 'set them right'. But at least he sets forth an

ideal, that any honest man must admit to be noble. It is precisely

because he is no casuist, because he hits hard and unsparingly, and is

translucently honest, and because his weapon is the most fervid and

trenchant rhetoric, that Juvenal is the most quoted and one of the most

popular of Latin poets. He has contributed little to the thought of the

world, but he has taught men to hate iniquity. He does not rise to the

height of such an immortal saying as

virtutem videant intabescantque relicta;

he is no philosopher, and his ideals have neither the exaltation nor the

stimulating power of the Stoic ideal. But he unveils vice and folly, so

that men may fly from their utter hideousness, in such burning words as

it has fallen to few poets to utter. He is 'dowered with the hate of

hate, the scorn of scorn'; had he possessed also the 'love of love', he

might have reached greater heights of pure poetry, but he would not have

been Juvenal, and the world would have been the loser.

INDEX OF NAMES

Abascantus 205 _n_, 299 _n_.

Accius 12, 71, 89.

Aeschylus 207 _n_, 212 _n_, 216 _n_.

Aetna 140-6, 156.

Afranius 12, 25.

Agrippina 25, 74, 76.

Antimachus 207 _n_, 209, 210.

Antistius Sosianus 163 _n_, 164.

Apollonius Rhodius 182 sqq.

Aquilius Regulus 256.

Arria 81, 275.

Arrius Antoninus 173 _n_.

Arulenus Rustieus 168.

Asellius Sabinus 3.

Asinius Pollio 18.

Atedius Melior 205 _n_, 230, 256, 272.

Attalus 32.

Attius Labeo 160.

Ausonius 174, 175.

Bassus, Caesius 80-2, 163-5.

Bassus, Saleius 19, 168, 169.

Bathyllus 27.

Caecilius 12.

Caesar, C. Julius 103 sqq., 263.

Caesennia 163.

Calenus 175.

Caligula 4, 5, 31, 163.

Callimachus 207.

Calpurnius Piso 35, 99, 152, 156-9, 251.

Calpurnius Siculus 137, 150-9, 245.

Calpurnius Statura 80.

Calvinus 289.

Carinas Secundus 4.

Cassius Rufus 256.

Cato 37, 38, 58, 101, 103 sqq., 262.

Catullus, C. Valerius 2, 123 _n_, 176, 260, 261, 263.

Catullus (writer of mimes) 24.

Catullus (friend of Juvenal) 289, 297.

Cicero 58, 172, 238.

Claudia 204.

Claudianus 174.

Claudius 5, 25, 32, 36, 63.

Claudius Agathurnus 80.

Claudius Augustalis 146.

Claudius Etruscus 205 _n_, 231, 256, 299 _n_.

Clutorius Priscus 3.

Codrus 291.

Columella 137, 146-9, 180.

Cornelius Severus 144.

Cornutus 6, 79-82, 94, 95, 97, 267.

Cremutius Cordus 2, 101.

Crispinus (1) 205 _n_.

---- (2) 294.

Curiatius Maternus 30.

Decianus 257, 264.

Demosthenes 128.

Domitianus 19, 21, 25, 168, 176, 181, 203, 204, 228,

229, 252, 271, 287, 293, 296, 303, 305.

Earinus 229.

Einsiedeln Fragments 151, 156, 157.

Ennius 12, 23.

Epictetus 70, 238.

Erotion 272.

Euphorion 3.

Euripides 45, 46, 74, 127, 207 _n_, 212 _n_, 216 _n_.

Faustus 30.

Flaccilla 251, 272.

Flaccus (father of Persius) 79.

Flaccus of Patavium 180, 281.

Fronto (rhetorician) 35.

Fronto (father of Martial) 251, 272.

Fulgentius 134, 135.

Fulvia Sisennia 79.

Gaetulicus 163, 259, 261.

Galba 25.

Gallio L. Iunius 31.

Glaucias 230, 272.

Hadrianus 290, 291, 294, 296.

Hecato 43 _n_.

Helvidius Priscus 168.

Herennius Senecio 168.

Hesiod 12.

Homer 4, 12, 160, 161, 188, 221, 227.

Horatius 10-12, 71, 83, 84, 89, 91, 92, 123 _n_, 171, 191, 241, 244,

284, 293, 317, 320.

Hyperides 128.

Ilias Latina 22, 160-3.

Italicus, Babius 163.

Iulius Martialis 257, 264, 265, 270.

Iuvenalis 21, 22, 91, 92,121,168,169, 170, 174, 236, 245, 256, 260,

261, 263, 275, 278, 279, 287-320.

Labienus 4.

Latro 15 _n_.

Lentulus Sura 256.

Livilla 32, 33.

Livius Andronicus 160.

Livius, T. 4, 239, 242, 245.

Lucanus 7, 8, 20-2, 28, 31, 80, 94, 97-124, 132, 179, 180, 187, 192,

221 _n_, 226, 229, 233, 235, 238, 239, 243, 244. 251, 260, 275.

Lucian 27.

Lucilius Iunior 144, 163 _n_.

Lucilius (satirist) 10, 83, 89, 293.

Lucinianus Maternus 256.

Lucretius 123 _n_, 140, 143.

Lynceus 207 _n_.

Macrinus 80, 82.

Marcella 255.

Marius Priscus 287.

Marsus, Domitius 259, 261, 281.

Martialis 8 _n_, 134, 139, 163, 167, 169, 173-6,

180, 204, 238, 243, 250, 251-86, 289.

Matius, Cn. 160.

Maximus Vibius 204, 205.

Mela, M. Annaeus 31, 36, 97.

Meliboeus 152, 156-9.

Memor, Scaevus 30.

Menander 12.

Messala, Vipstanus 16, 126.

Montanus, Curtius 163 _n_.

Mummius 24 _n_.

Musonius Rufus 8.

Naevius 12.

Nero 6-8, 19, 20, 28, 33, 41, 43, 74-6, 89 _n_, 97, 98, 101, 102, 119,

125-7, 131 _n_, 132, 144, 151, 236, 251, 290, 291, 302.

Nerva 21, 169, 170, 255, 296.

Ninnius Crassus 160.

Norbanus 256.

Novatus, M. Annaeus 31, 30.

Novius Vindex 205 _n_.

Octavia 40, 41, 74-8.

Ovidius 11, 12, 17 _n_, 29, 46, 71, 112, 123 _n_, 143, 144, 161, 192,

207, 221 _n_, 226, 259, 260, 263.

Paccius 30.

Pacuvius 12, 23, 71, 89.

Paris, 28, 203, 291.

Parthenius 8.

Passennus Paulus Propertius Blaesus 170, 171.

Passienus, Crispus 36.

Patronius Aristocrates 80.

Pedo, Albinovanus 259 _n_, 261.

Persicus 289.

Persius 20-2, 79-96, 160, 164, 191, 236, 267, 293, 318, 319.

Pervigilium Veneris 174.

Petronius Arbiter 16 _n_, 20, 103, 125-39, 239, 259.

Phaedrus 3.

Pindar 127.

Piso, _see_ Calpurnius.

Pisonem, Panegyricus in 156-9.

Plato 127.

Plautus 12, 23.

Plinius (the younger) 20, 25, 163, 170-3, 232, 236, 245, 255, 268, 305.

Plotius Grypus 205 _n_.

Plutarch 94.

Polla, Argentaria 100, 205 _n_.

Pollius 231, 268.

Polybius 4, 32, 161.

Pompeius 37, 101, 102 sqq.

Pomponius Bassulus 25, 170.

Pomponius Secundus 29.

Ponticus 207 _n_.

Probus 79.

Propertius 139, 170, 171.

Pudens (friend of Martial) 257

Pudens L. Valerius (boy-poet) 14 _n_.

Pylades (1) 27.

---- (2) 291.

Quintilianus 12, 16, 20, 25, 29, 35, 116, 164, 167-9, 179, 180, 251,

252, 256.

Quintus Ovidius 257.

Remmius Palaemon 17 _n_, 79.

Rhianus 3.

Rubrenus Lappa 30.

Rutilius Gallicus 205 _n_.

Rutilius Namatianus 174.

Sappho 176.

Scaurus, Mamercus 2.

Seneca (the elder) 15, 31, 97.

Seneca (the younger) 4, 5, 20, 31-78, 93, 94, 97, 115, 124, 132,

134, 144, 145, 161, 164, 179, 180, 185-7, 207 _n_, 221 _n_, 236,

251, 259, 260.

Sentius Augurinus 170, 171.

Serranus 168, 169.

Servilius Nonianus 80.

Severus, Cassius 4.

Silius Italicus 20, 102, 123_n_, 145, 156, 163, 168, 179, 191,

236-50, 256.

Silvinus 146.

Sophocles 47 _n_, 127, 207 _n_, 216 _n_.

Sotion 32.

Statius (the elder) 169, 202, 203.

Statius (the younger) 8 _n_, 20, 22, 28, 100, 123 _n_, 164, 167-9,

179, 191, 192, 202-35, 240, 260, 268, 270-2.

Stella, Arruntius 169, 205 _n,_ 256, 280.

Stertinius Avitus 256.

Sulpicia (the elder) 174.

Sulpicia (the younger) 174-8.

Sulpicius Maximus 14 _n._

Tacitus 20, 21, 121, 125, 127, 168, 169, 170, 179, 243, 275.

Terentius 23.

Theocritus 150, 268.

Thrasea 34, 80, 168.

Thucydides 128.

Tiberianus 174.

Tiberius 2-4, 25, 102.

Tibullus 174.

Titus 167, 181, 252.

Traianus 21, 127, 169, 170, 256, 290, 291, 296.

Triarius 15 _n._

Turnus 30, 169.

Umbricius 289, 293, 294.

Vacca 97.

Vagellius 163 _n._

Valerius Flaccus 20, 123 _n,_ 167, 168, 179-201, 212 _n,_ 220, 226,

235, 236.

Varius 29.

Varro (Atacinus) 183.

Varro (Reatinus) 127.

Varus 257.

Vergilius Maro 4, 11, 12, 17 _n,_ 20, 101, 102, 115, 123 _n,_ 130,

143, 144, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 153, 161, 179, 186, 187, 191,

193, 194, 198, 207 _n,_ 210, 211, 220 _n,_ 221, 226, 227, 237,

238-40, 243-5, 281.

Vergilius Romanus 25, 170.

Verginius Flavus 7.

Verginius Rufus 169.

Vespasianus 144, 166, 169, 170, 180.

Vestricius Spurinna 169.

Vopiscus 231.

FOOTNOTES:

1. See Teuffel and Schwabe, § 272.

2. Cf. Tac. _Ann_. i. 1. Velleius Paterculus is a good example of

the servile historian. For an example of servile oratory of. Tac.

_Ann_. xvi. 28.

3. Suet, _Tib_. 21.

4. Dion. 1 vii. 22; Tac. _Ann_. vi. 39; iv. 31.

5. Tac. _Ann_. iv. 34.

6. Dion. lviii. 24 [Greek: math_on oun touto ho Tiberios, eph' eaut_oi

tote to epos eir_esthai eph_e, Atreus dia t_en miaiphonian einai

prospoi_esamenos.] Tac. _Ann_. vi. 29.

7. 'Pulsi tum Italia histriones,' Tac. _Ann_. iv. 14.

8. III Prol. 38 sqq., Epil. 29 sqq.

9. Suet. _Tib_. 42.

10. Tac. _Ann_. iii. 49; Dion. lvii. 20.

11. Suet. _Tib_. 70

12. Suet. _Tib_. 71

13. Suet. _Tib_. 61

14. Suidas, s.v. [Greek: Kaisar Tiberios].

15. Suet. _Tib_. 70.

16. Suet. _Tib. 70._

17. Suet. _Cal. 53._

18. Suet. _Cal. 53._

19. Suet. _Cal. 16._

20. Dion. _lix. 20._

21. Suet. _Cal. 27._

22. Dion. _lix. 19._

23. Suet. _Cal._ 34 'nullius ingenii minimaeque doctrinae'.

24. Suet. _Cal. 20._

25. For his writings generally of. Suet. _Claud. 41, 42._

26. Tac. _Ann. xiii. 43._

27. Suet. _Claud. 33._

28. For his writings generally of. Suet. _Claud. 41, 42._

29. Suet _Claud. 11._

30. Suet. _Claud. 41. This is borne out by the fragments of the speech

delivered at Lyons on the Gallic franchise. _C.I. L. 13, 1668._

31. Suet. _Claud. 28._

32. Sc. in the _Apocolocyntosis_.

33. Suet. _Ner. 52._

34. Suet. _Ner. 49_ 'qualis artifex pereo!'

35. Suet. _Ner. 52_; Tac. _Ann. xiii. 3._

36. Tac. _Ann. xiv. 16._

37. Suet. _Domit. 1_; Tac. _Ann. xv. 49_; Suet. _Ner. 24._

38. Mart, ix. 26. 9; Plin. _N. H. xxxvii. 50._

39. Persius is sometimes said to quote from the Bacchae. Cf. Schol.

Pers. _Sat. i. 93-5, 99-102_. But see ch. in, p. 89.

40. Juv. viii. 221; Serv. Verg. _Georg. iii. 36, Aen. v. 370._

41. Dion. lxii. 29.

42. Dion. lxii. 18; Suet. _Ner. 38_; Tac. _Ann. xv. 39_. For fragments

of his work see Baehrens, _Poet. Rom. Fragm., p. 368._

43. Suet, Ner. 10, 21.

44. Philostr. _vit. Apoll_. iv. 39 [Greek: ad_on ta tou Ner_onos mel_e

... ep_ege mel_e ta men ex Oresteias, ta d' ex Antigon_es, ta d'

opothenoun t_on prag_odoumen_on aut_o kai _odas ekampten oposas Ner_on

elugize te kai kak_os estrephen].

45. Suet. _vita Lucani_; see chapter on Lucan, p. 97.

46. See chapter on Lucan, p. 98.

47. Suet. _Luc_.; Tac. _Ann_. xv. 49.

48. Suet. _Ner_. 39.

49. It may be urged that the damage lies not in the loss of poetry

suppressed by the Emperor, but in the generation of a type of court

poetry, examples of which survive in their most repulsive form in the

_Silvae_ of Statius and the epigrams of Martial. The objection has its

element of truth, but only affects a very small and comparatively

unimportant portion of the poetry of the age.

50. See Tacitus, _Dial._ 28 sqq. on the moral training of a young Roman

of his day. Also Juv. xiv.

51. After the death of the great Augustan authors Alexandrian erudition

becomes yet more rampant. It was a great assistance to men of

second-rate poetical talent.

52. Quint, i. 1. 12.

53. Quint, i. 8. 3; Plin. _Ep._ ii. 14.

54. Quint, i. 9. 2; Cic. _Ep. ad Fam._ vi. 18. 5; Quint. i. 8. 6; Stat.

_Silv._ ii. 1. 114; Ov. _Tr._ ii. 369.

55. Cp. Wilkins, _Rom. Education_, p. 60.

56. Op. Juv. vii. 231-6; Suet. _Tib._ 70. The result of this type of

instruction is visible throughout the poets of the age, whereas Vergil

and the best of the Greek Alexandrians had a true appreciation of the

sensuous charm of proper names and legendary allusions, as in our

literature had Marlowe, Milton, Keats, and Tennyson. Cp. Milton,

_Paradise Lost_, Bk. 1:

What resounds

In fable or romance of Uther's son

Begirt with British and Armoric knights;

And all who since, baptised or infidel,

Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,

Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond,

Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore,

When Charlemain with all his peerage fell

By Fontarabia.

Or compare Tennyson's use of the names of Arthur's battles, 'Agned

Cathregonion' and the 'waste sand-shore of Trath Treroit.'

57. Wilkins, _Roman Education_, p. 72.

58. See Wilkins, op. cit, p. 74.

59. Wilkins, _Roman Education_, p. 75.

60. The most striking instances of this precocity are Q. Sulpicius

Maximus, who at the age of twelve and a half won the prize for Greek

verse at the Agon Capitolinus A.D. 94 (cp. Kaibel, _Epigr_. Gr. 618),

and L. Valerius L. F. Pudens, aged thirteen, who won the prize for Latin

verse in A.D. 106. Cp. _C.I.L._ ix. 286.

61. For the importance attached to imitation sec Quint, x. 2.

62. The Greek rhetoricians of this period lay great stress on the

importance of avoiding declamatory rhetoric. They belong to the Attic

revival. But the Attic revival never really 'caught on' at Rome; by the

time of Quintilian the mischief was done.

63. Sen. _Suas_. 3.

64. Ib. 7.

65. Ib. 2. I subjoin the text of the last. The author is Triarius.' 'Non

pudet Laconas ne pugna quidem hostium, sed fabula vinci? Magnum est

alumnum virtutis nasci et Laconem: ad certam victoriam omnes

remansissent: ad certam mortem tantum Lacones. Non est Sparta lapidibus

circumdata: ibi muros habet ubi viros. Melius revocabimus fugientes

trecenos quam sequemur. Sed montes perforat, maria contegit. Nunquam

solido stetit superba felicitas et ingentium imperiorum magna fastigia

oblivione fragilitatis humanae conlapsa sunt. Scias licet non ad finem

pervenisse quae ad invidiam porducta sunt. Maria terrasque, rerum

naturam statione immutavit sua: moriamur trecenti, ut hic primum

invenerit quod mutare non posset. Si tam demens placiturum consilium

erat, cur non potius in turba fuginius?'

66. Latro is the author of the following treatment of the theme. 'Hoc

exspectastis ut capite demisso verecundia se ipsa antequam impelleretur

deiceret? id enim decrat ut modestior in saxo esset quam in sacrario

fuerat. Constitit et circumlatis in frequentiam oculis sanctissimum

numen, quasi parum violasset inter altaria, coepit in ipso quo

vindicabatur violare supplicio: hoc alterum damnatae incestum fuit,

damnata est quia incesta erat, deiceta est quia damnata erat, repetenda

est quia et incesta et damnata et deiceta est, dubitari potest quin

usque eo deicienda sit, donec efficiatur propter quod deiecta est?

patrocinium suum vocat pereundi infelicitatem. Quid tibi, importuna

mulier, precor nisi ut ne vis quidem deiceta pereas? "Invocavi,"

inquit, "deos", statuta in illo saxo deos nominasti, et miraris si te

iterum deici volunt? si nihil aliud, loco incestarum stetisti.' Sen.

_Cont_. i. 3.

67. e.g. Sen. _Cont_. i. 7 'Liberi parentes alant aut vinciant: quidam

alterum fratrem tyrannum occidit, alterum in adulterio deprehensum

deprecante patre interfecit. A piratis captas scripsit patri de

redemptione. Pater piratis epistolam scripsit, si praecidissent manus,

duplam se daturum. Piratae illum dimiserunt: patrem egentem non alit.'

68. For a brilliant description of the evils of the Roman system of

education see Tac. _Dial_. 30-5. See also p. 127 for the very similar

criticism of Petronius.

69. ce. 28-30. Cp. also Quint, i. 2 1-8.

70. The schoolmaster was not infrequently, it is to be feared, of

doubtful character. Cp. the case of the famous rhetorician Remmius

Palaemon. Cp. also Quint, i. 3. 13.

71. c. 35.

72. Tac. _Dial_. 26.

73. The influence of rhetoric was of course large in the Augustan age.

Vergil and still more Ovid testify to this fact. But the tone of

rhetoric was saner in the days of Vergil. Ovid, himself no

inconsiderable influence on the poetry of the Silver Age, begins to show

the effects of the new and meretricious type of rhetoric that flourished

under the anti-Ciceronian reaction, when the healthy influence of the

great orators of a saner age began to give way before the inroads of the

brilliant but insincere epigrammatic style. This latter style was

fostered largely by the importance assigned to the _controversia_ and

_suasoria_ as opposed to the more realistic methods of oratorical

training during the last century of the republic.

74. See Mayor on Juv. iii. 9.

75. Cp. Juv. i. 1 sqq., iii. 9. For the enormous part played in social

life by recitations cp. Plin. _Ep_. i. 13, ii. 19, iv. 5, 27, v. 12, vi.

2, 17, 21, viii. 21.

76. Cp. especially the speeches of Lucan.

77. For some very just criticism on this head cp. Quint, viii. 5. 25

sqq.

78. For amusing instances of rudeness on the part of members of the

audience ep. Sen. _Ep._ cxxii. 11; Plin. _Ep._ vi. 15.

79. Petr. 83, 88-91, 115. Mart. iii. 44. 10 'et stanti legis et legis

cacanti. | in thermas fugio: sonas ad aurem. | piscinam peto: non licet

natare. | ad cenam propero: tenes euntem. | ad cenam venio: fugas

sedentem. | lassus dormio: suscitas iacentem.' Cp. also 3, 50 and

passim. Plin. _Ep._ vi. 13; Juv. i. 1-21; iii. 6-9; vii. 39 sqq.

80. Plin. _Ep._ viii. 12.

81. Suet. _Dom._ 4.

82. Tac. _Dial_. 35

83. See ch. v.

84. There had always, it may be noted, existed an archaistic section of

literary society. Seneca (_Ep._ cxiv. 13), Persius (i. 76), and Tacitus

(_Dial._ 23) decide the imitators of the early poets of the republic.

But virtually no trace of pronounced imitation of this kind is to be

observed in the poetry that has survived. Novelty and what passed for

originality were naturally more popular than the resuscitation of the

dead or dying past.

85. Boissier, _L'Opposition sous les Césars_, p. 238.

86. Macrobius (_Sat._ 10. 3) speaks of a revival of the Atellan by a

certain Mummius, but gives no indication of the date.

87. Juv. viii. 185.

888. Suet. _Calig._ 57; Joseph. _Ant._ xix. 1. 13; Juv. viii. 187.

89. Mart. _de Spect._ 7.

90. Plutarch, _de Sollert. Anim._ xix. 9.

91. Suet. _Tib_. 45.

92. ib. _Ner_. 39.

93. Ib. _Galb_. 13.

94. Ib. _Dom_. 10.

95. Ib. _Calig_. 27; _Nero_, I. c.; Tac. _Ann_. iv. 14.

96. _C. I. L_. ix. 1165.

97. _Ep_. vi. 21.

98. Suet. _Ner_. II.

999. Quint, xi. 3. 178.

100. Juv. iii. 93.

101. x. 1, 99.

102. Lucian, _de Salt_. 27.

103. Suet. _Ner_. 24.

104. Lucian, _de Salt_. 79.

105. Suet. _ap. Hieronym_. (Roth, p. 301, 25).

106. Plut. _Qu. Conv_. vii. 8. 3; Sen. _Contr_. 3. praef. 10.

107. Lucian, op. cit., 37-61.

108. Plut, _Qu. Conv_. iv. 15. 17; Libanius (Reiske) iii, p. 381.

109. Lucian, op. cit., 69 sqq.

110. e.g. Pasiphae, Cinyras and Myrrha, Jupiter and Leda. Lucian, 1. c.;

Joseph. _Ant. Iud_. xix. 1. 13; Juv. vi. 63-6.

111. For the effect of such dancing cp. the interesting stories told by

Lucian, op. cit., 63-6. Cp. also Liban., in, p. 373. For the importance

attached to gesture in ancient times see Quint. xi. 3. 87 sqq.

112. Story of Turnus; Suet, _Ner_. 54. Dido; Macrob. Sat. v. 17. 15.

113. See p. 100.

114. Juv. vii. 92.

115. For the general history of the pantomimus see Friedländer,

_Sittengeschicht,_ II. in. 3, and Lucian, _de Saltatione_.

116. Dion. liv. 17; Tac. _Ann_. i. 54 and 77; Dion. lvii. 14.

117. Suet. _Ner_. 46.

118. There is no clear proof of the performance on the Roman stage of

any tragedy in the strict sense of the word during the Silver Age. The

words used e.g. in Dio Chrys. (19, p. 261: 23, p. 396), Lucian

(_Nigrin_. 8), Libanius (iii, p. 265, Reiske) may refer merely to the

performance of isolated scenes. See note on Vespasian's attitude to the

theatre, p. 166.

119. Pliny the elder wrote his life. Plin. _Ep_. iii. 5. Cp. also Tac.

_Ann_. v. 8; xii. 28; Plin. _N.H_. xiii. 83.

120. Ribbeck, _Trag. Rom. Fr_. p. 268, fr. 1; p. 331 (ed. 3).

121. _Ann_. xi. 13.

122. Charis, _Gr. Lat_. i. p. 125, 23; p. 137, 23.

123. Tac. _Dial_. II.

124. Ib. 2, 3.

125. Ib. 3.

126. Ib. 3.

127. Ib. II.

128. Juv. vii. 12.

129. Juv. vii. 12.

130. Ib. vii. 72.

131. He flourished in reign of Domitian. Schol. Vall. luv. i. 20; Mart.

xi. 9 and 10; Donat. _Gramm. Lat_. iv. p. 537, 17; Apollin. Sid. ix. 266.

132. In the fragment preserved by Donatus (Ribbeck, _Trag. Rom. Fr_. p.

269) the chorus address Hecuba under the name Cisseis. 'Fulgentius

expos. serm. antiq. 25 (p. 119, 5, Helm) says _Memos_ (Schopen emends

to _Memor_) _in tragoedia Herculis ait: ferte suppetias optimi

comites_.'

133. xi. 2. 8.

134. Mart. _i._ 61, 7; _Poet. Lat. Min._ iv. p. 62, 19, Bachrens.

135. Tac. _Ann._ xv. 73; xvi. 17.

136. Tac. _Ann._ xv. 73; xvi. 17.

137. Sen. _ad Helv. de Cons._ xix. 2.

138. Sen. _ad Helv._ 1. c.; _Ep._ lxxviii. 1. Dion. Cass. lix. 19.

139. 5 Dion. Cass. 1. c.

140. Suet. _Calig._ 53. See ch. i. p. 4.

141. _Ep._ cviii. 17 sqq.; Hioronym. _ad ann._ 2029. That he knew and

never lost his respect for the teaching of Pythagoras is shown by the

frequency with which he quotes him in the letters.

142. _Ep._ cviii. 3 sqq.

143. Cp. the speech of Suillius, Tac. _Ann._ xiii. 42; Dion.

Cass. lxi. 10.

144. _ad Helv. de Cons._ 6 sqq.

145. _ad Polyb. de Cons._

146. The _Apocolocyntosis_--almost undoubtedly by Seneca--hardly falls

within the scope of this work. Such intrinsic importance as it possesses

is due to the prose portions. In point of form it is an example of the

_Menippean Satire_, that strange medley of prose and verse. The verse

portions form but a small proportion of the whole and are insipid and

lacking in interest.

147. He was forbidden by Agrippina to give definite philosophical

instruction. Cp. Suet. _Nero_, 52.

148. Cp. _ad Ner. de Clem._ ii. 2; Henderson, _Life of Nero_,

Notes, p. 459.

149. For what may be regarded as an academic _apologia pro vita sua_,

cp. _Ep._ 5; 17: 20; _de Ira_, in. 33; _de Const. Sap._ 1-4, 10-13; _de

Vit. Beat._ 17-28, &c.

150. Dion. Cass. lxi. 4. 5.

151. Tac. _Ann_. xvi. 28.

152. This is Dion's view, lxi. 10. For an ingenious view of Seneca's

character see Ball, _Satire of Sen. on apotheosis of Claudius_, p.

34. 'It may be that Seneca cared less for the realization of high

ideals in life than for the formulation of the ideals as such.

Sincerity and hypocrisy are terms much less worth controversy in some

minds than others.'

153. Tac. _Ann._ xv. 61-4.

154. Quint, x. 1. 125-9.

155. Fronto, p. 155, N.

156. Quint, x. 1. 129. Over and above his writings on moral philosophy

we possess seven books _ad Lucilium naturalium quaestionum._

157. _Patruos duos_ more naturally, however, refers to Gallio and Mela,

in which case Marcus is the son of Seneca himself.

158. Cp. _P.L.M._ iv. 15, 8; Plin. _N.H._ xvi. 242.

159. For these cp. _Ep._ xiv. 13; ib. civ. 29.

160. e.g. 7l 'de Atho monte', 57 'de Graeciae ruina', 50 'de bono

quietae vitae', 47, 48 'morte omnes aequari', 25 'de spe'.

161. There is, in fact, direct evidence that he wrote such verses. Plin.

_Ep._ v. 3. 5.

162. Cp. p. 263.

163. Cp. the not dissimilar situation in Sen. _Oed_. (936), where

Oedipus meditates in very similar style, as to how he may expiate his

guilt. The couplet _vivere si poteris_, &c., is nothing if not Senecan.

164. Quint, viii. 3. 31 ('memini iuvenis admodum inter Pomponium ac

Senecam etiam praefationibus esse tractatum, an "gradus eliminet" in

tragoedia dici oportuisset') shows Seneca as critic of dramatic diction;

there is no evidence to show what these _praefationes_ were, but they

_may_ have been prefaces to tragedies. The _Medea_ (453) is cited by

Quintilian ix. 2. 8. For later quotations from the tragedies, cp.

Diomedes, _gr. Lat_. i. p. 511, 23; Terentianus Maurus, ibid. vi. p.

404, 2672; Probus, ibid. iv. p. 229, 22, p. 246, 19; Priscian, ibid. ii.

p. 253, 7 and 9; Tertullian, _de An_. 42, _de Resurr_. 1; Lactantius,

_Schol. Stat. Theb_. iv. 530.

165. Cp. also the iambic translation of Cleanthes, _Ep_. cvii. 11:--

duc, o parens celsique dominator poli,

quocunque placuit: nulla parendi mora est.

adsum impiger. fac nolle, comitabor gemens

malusque patiar, facere quod licuit bono.

ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.

166. Some of the more remarkable parallels have been collected by Nisard

(_Études sur les poètes latins de la décadence_, i. 68-91), e.g. _Med_.

163 'qui nil potest sperare, desperet nihil'. _Ep_. v. 7 'desines

timere, si sperare desieris'. _Oed_. 705 'qui sceptra duro saevus

imperio regit, timet timentes: metus in auctorem redit'. _Ep_. cv. 4

'qui timetur, timet: nemo potuit terribilis esse secure'. de Ira_, ii.

11 'quid quod semper in auctores redundat timor, nec quisquam metuitur

ipse securus?'-_Oed_. 980 sqq.; _de Prov_. v. 6 sqq.; _Phoen_. 146, 53;

_Ep_. xii. 10; _de Prov_. vi. 7; _Herc. F_. 463, 464; _Ep_. xcii. 14.

167. The arguments against the Senecan authorship are of little weight.

It has been urged (a) that the MSS. assign the author a _praenomen_

Marcus. No Marcus Seneca is known, though Marcus was the _praenomen_ of

both Gallio and Mela, and of Lucan. Mistakes of this kind are, however,

by no means rare (cp. the 'Sextus Aurelius Propertius Nauta' of many

MSS. of that poet: both 'Aurelius' and 'Nauta' are errors), (b) Sidonius

Apollinaris (ix. 229) mentions three Senecas, philosopher, tragedian,

and epic writer (i.e. Lucan). But Sidonius lived in the fifth century

A.D., and may easily have made a mistake. Such a mistake actually occurs

(S. A. xxiii. 165) where he seems to assert that Argentaria Polla,

Lucan's faithful widow, subsequently married Statius. The mistake as

regards Seneca is probably due to a misinterpretation of Martial i. 61

'duosque Senecas unicumque Lucanum facunda loquitur Corduba'. Not being

acquainted with the works of the elder Seneca the rhetorician, Sidonius

invented a new author, Seneca the tragedian.

168. See ch. on Octavia, p.78.

169. Leo, _Sen. tragoed._ i. 89-134.

170. It is not even necessary to suppose with Leo that these were the

earliest of the plays and that these metrical experiments were youthful

indiscretions which failed and were not repeated. Leo, i. p. 133.

171. For a detailed treatment see Leo, i. p. 48. Melzer, _de H. Oetaeo

Annaeano_, Chemnitz, 1890; _Classical Review_, 1905, p. 40, Summers.

172. See p. 39 on relation of epigrams to dramas.

173. _Ann_. xiv. 52.

174. See also note on p. 42 for Leo's ingenious, but inconclusive theory

for the dates of the _Agamemnon_ and _Oedipus_.