Hadrian A.D. 138, when Juvenal was, according to this sketch, eighty or a little more. Thus the statements of the Grammarians in respect to the poet's age, and of that writer who says he died of old age in the time of Antoninus Pius, would be borne out. I have also allowed the fact of an honorable banishment into Egypt, though not the cause assigned by the Grammarians (the supposed attack on the pantomime Paris), which is impossible. That Juvenal did not professedly compose satire till late in life, is admitted and accounted for. Likewise that he may have written verses before he ventured to publish them, and that some of these were afterwards incorporated with his Satires, is allowed. It is also admitted that he attended the usual schools in early life, and practised rhetoric till middle age. Beyond these facts the Grammarians, I believe, have been misled. Independently of the chronological difficulties in respect to Paris, it does not appear that the verses quoted by the Grammarians (vii. 90–92) were ever intended as a satire on him, but if any thing as a compliment. So at least they appear in the connection in which we have them. And it is perfectly clear that in that connection they could not have given offence to the emperor, whoever he was, since the Satire sets out from the first with such praise as the worst of these princes coveted and rewarded, praise for his exclusive support of learning. If therefore it had been possible to admit these verses as the cause of Domitian's displeasure, it must have been when they appeared separately as an epigram, or with a different context from the present, which it must be admitted they do not very well suit, if, as seems certain, the rest of the Satire was written long after Paris's death. Of Juvenal's personal character it is not very easy to form an estimate from his writings. That his invectives against the vices of his time are not the mere artistic and declamatory compositions which some writers suppose them to be, but the fruits of an honest indignation, of rare powers of sarcasm, and of a large knowledge of the world, I think is manifest. His language is unreserved in dealing with the foulest vices, but there is no appearance of his being himself a loose liver in any part of his writings. When Horace is coarse, he betrays something of sympathy with vice, while Juvenal shows only contempt for it. Although therefore an expurgated edition of Juvenal would have more gaps than an expurgated edition of Horace, a well-regulated mind would be less offended with the entire text of Juvenal than with that of Horace. Juvenal's morality was of a higher and less technical sort than Horace's, and has led some into the notion that he drew it from the purest source, and was in understanding, if not by profession, a Christian. This of course is absurd. He knew human nature, and he knew right from wrong, and was not blinded by self-indulgence, and so was able to state the law of conscience in a way to astonish some Christians to whom that law is very imperfectly known. Apart from his morality, Juvenal was a great master of words, and had a large fund of illustration. His pictures drawn from real life, as I have observed in the course of the notes, are particularly happy; whether they represent the common room of a tavern, or the deck of a ship, or the inside of a soldier's hut or of a camp, or a school-room, or the greedy crowd at the sportula, or the streets of Rome, or a drunken brawl, these and a hundred other scenes are so drawn that an artist would have no difficulty But his hand must be in transferring them to canvas. vigorous and his brush free, or he would do no justice to Juvenal. * There is one particular form of lust from which modern wickedness shrinks, but which was one of the worst evils of Roman society under the Empire. This vice is exposed in two Satires of great power (ii., ix.). The wickedness of women was never so unsparingly handled as it is in the sixth Satire, a composition of extraordinary power and variety. The general degradation of Roman life and manners is exposed in the first, third, and fourteenth Satires, and in the last of these the chief cause of the universal wickedness is laid open in the indifference of parents to the morals of their young children, and the example which handed down vice as an inheritance from father to son. The degradation of the Senate, once the fountain of honor and authority and the proudest institution of a haughty people, but now obedient to the wantonness of a tyrant who mocked its weakness and played with its servility, is amusingly shown in the fourth Satire. The fifth exposes a different sort of servility, that of parasites, who sell their independence and accept contempt for the sake of a meal grudgingly given; a low practice which was more systematized at Rome, if it was not much more common, than it is in our own country. The neglect of literary men has a Satire to itself (the seventh); aristocratic pride has another (the eighth). The cunning of will-hunters is hit off at the end of the twelfth, which is not among the most interesting of these compositions. It relates chiefly to the arrival of a friend after a *The three Satires just mentioned are omitted from this edition. dangerous voyage, and is more of the nature of a familiar letter than of a Satire. The dishonesty of the age is described in the thirteenth Satire, which contains some of Juvenal's finest verses, and shows him in the best character. This also is in the form of an epistle to a friend, and so is the eleventh, which contains an invitation to dinner and contrasts the poet's own plainness of living with the luxurious habits of his contemporaries. Thus Juvenal goes through all the great scandals of his day, and treats them unsparingly. The crimes and criminals of former reigns are freely introduced by way of illustra tion, but this is because the vices of one reign represented those of another, and the names of the dead could be more safely used than of the living. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Otho, Domitian, are all brought up from time to time to point a moral or illustrate some aspect of crime. The most celebrated of Juvenal's poems, the tenth, has more of the declamatory character, which some of his critics attribute to all. It is on the vanity of human wishes, which is illustrated chiefly by historical examples, and the poem has not much bearing upon the particular character of his times. It is the finest specimen of that sort of composition that I am acquainted with. The fifteenth Satire is connected with a scene of little general interest, an Egyptian squabble, Juvenal's own interest in which can only be accounted for by his having been in the country where it happened. The last Satire, if it had been completed, would have furnished a sketch of military life, sarcastic but good-humored, from which a good deal of information might have been derived. D. JUNII JUVENALIS SATIRA E. SE SATIRA I. EMPER ego auditor tantum? nunquamne reponam Impune ergo mihi recitaverit ille togatas, Hic elegos? impune diem consumpserit ingens Cur tamen hoc potius libeat decurrere campo 5 10 15 20 |