Juvenal: Satires Book V 9781789622171, 1789622174

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ARIS & PHILLIPS CLASSICAL TEXTS

ARIS AND PHILLIPS CLASSICAL TEXTS

JUVENAL

Satires Book 5

Edited with a Translation and Commentary by

John Godwin

LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS

First published 2020 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk Copyright © 2020 John Godwin

The right of J. Godwin to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available ISBN 978-1-78962-217-1 hardback ISBN 978-1-78962-218-8 paperback ISBN 978-1-80034-573- 7 epdf Typeset by Tara Montane

Cover image: Dancer, detail of mosaic from the Domus of Stone Carpets, Ravenna. iStock.com/seraficus.

CONTENTS

Preface Introduction What is Satire? I Satire before Juvenal II Juvenal 's Satires - spleen and ideal III IV Juvenal and his times V Style VI Do these poems have a purpose? VII The metre VIII The transmission of the text Bibliography

Vil

1 1 2 5 9 12 20 24 27 30

Juvenal Satires Book 5 Satire 13 Satire 14 Satire 15 Satire 16

45 46 66 92 108

Commentaries Satire 13 Satire 14 Satire 15 Satire 16

114 201 306 359

Index

377

To Heather

uxori dilectissimae

PREFACE

Juvenal wrote some of the most famous phrases in Latin. He was the one who asked us 'who guards the guards?' and he it was who coined the contemptuous phrase 'bread and circuses'. He depicts life in the teeming heat of imperial Rome, making us see, hear and smell the world around him, and he deploys arguments to colour our attitudes towards his material with all the fiery eloquence of an accomplished orator. His attitudes are not always politically correct - indeed his views on race, gender and class would probably have him arrested if he were writing them now in English - and yet he writes it all with such comic verve and articulacy that we cannot help wondering just how seriously he means any of this. His Latin sometimes reads as if it were spat onto the page with impetuous venom, and yet there is nothing at all random about the way he uses the Latin language and the hexameter metre in which he composed. We know little about his life, but that matters little when we have a text as glowing with fire, energy and elegance as this to work on. Juvenal 's early work makes him come across as a raging, sneering underdog, but there is a definite shift in poetic attitude between that ranting voice of Satires 1-6 (Books 1-2) and the later poetry. These later poems are for the most part more measured and philosophical; they force us to reconsider our desires, face our realities and perhaps be more content with our lot, without losing any of the energy and the elan of the earlier work - or his lifelong ability to persuade and to entertain. This is the poet we meet in the later books (3, 4 and 5) and the purpose of this present volume is to try to help readers to enjoy reading this poetry, to understand the ideas being discussed and also to appreciate the literary quality of the Latin in which these ideas are expressed. The commentary is keyed to the English translation

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Preface

and I have attempted to make the explanations comprehensible (wherever possible) to readers who have little (or even no) Latin. This is demanding the impossible, of course - poetry of its very nature demands to be read and re-read in the original, and Juvenal is no exception to this rule - but my hope is that even those with little Latin may (with the help of the facing translation) be able to work out what is going on in the text and see from the commentary some of the ways in which this poetry is worth studying and enjoying. The translation is as close to the Latin as I could produce while keeping the sense and the flow of the sentences. My text, apparatus and sigla are based on those of Clausen and Willis, and readings which differ from the OCT are discussed in the commentary notes. I am greatly indebted to the giants of scholarship who have trodden this path before me: I have constantly consulted the commentaries of earlier scholars and found them inspiring and informative in equal measure, even when I found that I disagreed with their findings. I have enjoyed the personal assistance of many people who have gone beyond the call of duty in doing so: Martin Goodman, Susan Treggiari, Stephen Anderson advised me on matters great and small, while Chris Collard and James Uden read and commented on major sections of the commentary with typical generosity. I have above all enjoyed the unstinting editorial help of Clare Litt and her team at Liverpool University Press and in particular the series editor Professor Alan Sommerstein who has read the whole manuscript from cover to cover: it has gained hugely from his perceptive eye for detail and his remarkable ear for poetry. All mistakes which remain are (alas) my own. John Godwin Shrewsbury, January 2020

INTRODUCTION I. What is satire? Roman Satire is a peculiar genre. It purports to tell its audience things which the audience ought to hear, in the manner of an old-testament prophet, but it does so with jeering mockery more in the manner of a stand-up comedian. The satirist often sounds therefore like a moralist in a bad mood with a good sense of humour. The genre can be intensely conservative, deploring any changes in society and manners and longing for the good old days: equally it often preaches the delights of the idyllic country life to an audience living in the city, while being predominantly an urban art-form. It rails against the topsy-turvy world where the first are last and the last are first, where the ex-slaves, the chalk still on their feet from the slave-market, are running Rome while the scions of old Roman families go begging to upstart freedmen. Satire often seems to be urging a return to decency in an age of decadence, decrying luxury and greed and appealing for old-style austerity of life and behaviour. Its targets are traditionally folly (where people are misguided in their choices), and vice (where they deliberately outrage public morals): but above all it loves to unmask the hypocrite who affects virtue while indulging his real vices in private. Satire in all its forms is a literary genre - or even a 'supergenre' in that it envelops and exploits other available genres, as Jones argues 1 - but satire in verse is especially self-conscious of its own status as an art-form and uses poetry to mock poetry, debunking poetic affectation with its own brand of poetic parody but not above using poetic language to enhance the vividness of the scene being described. It claims the high ground in morals but often speaks from the worm's eye view of the common man, engaging in inverted snobbery whereby the rich and powerful are pathetic and vice-ridden while the poor lad from the hills is a finer specimen of humanity: satire disapproves of sexual immorality and lavish luxury but describes these vices in prurient lip-smacking terms which suggest that the poet is rather enjoying his disapproval. It places itself with one foot in the camp of 'truth-telling' I

See Jones (2007) 153-54.

2

Introduction

and another in the camp of 'entertainment', as famously epitomised in Horace 's (Satires 1.24) description of himself as 'telling the truth with a smile' (ridentem dicere uerum). It differs from comedy in that it is not solely seeking to amuse, although satire is often amusing: it differs from philosophy (which seeks to establish the truth for its own sake) by being an art-form which draws attention to itself and which seeks to entertain as well as to instruct, although some philosophers can be amusing as well as instructive. It is a mongrel, born of two very different parents, and it is in many ways a parasitic genre in that it latches on to other genres for its parodistic inspiration: it is also an encyclopaedic genre in that nothing is incapable of being included in its voluminous maw, from the vulgar details of life on the streets to the finest reaches of religion and philosophy. As Juvenal himself ( 1.85-6) sums up:

quidquid agunt homines, uotum, timor, ira, uoluptas gaudia, discursus, nostri farrago Zibelli est ('whatever men do, prayers, fear, anger, pleasure, joys, running around - this is the mixed meal of my little book') The culinary term 'mixed meal' (farrago) is a key to one major theme of Roman satire - food.farrago is derived fromfar ('grain') and means 'a mixed crop of inferior grains grown for animal feed', while the generic term satura is probably derived from the lanx satura - 'mixed dish' or 'sausage'. The point is twofold: satire in these Roman hands is not haute cuisine but rough food, and it is a mixture of contrasting ingredients cooked into a single dish.

II. Satire before Juvenal2 satura quidem tota nostra est. 'Satire is entirely our own', said Quintilian (10.1.93) and it seems to have been a Roman recipe, even though it helped itself to some very Greek ingredients. The first to compose saturae in Latin was Ennius (239-169 BC) who wrote plays and poetry as well as at least one prose work: what remains of his Saturae in six books is concerned with everyday life in Rome composed in a variety of metres including some epic-sounding hexameters (e.g. fragments 3-4W, 23W) 2

See on this: Muecke (2013); Coffey (1976).

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3

which admit of the possibility that he was sending up (his own?) epic language. The next great figure in the history of Roman satire was Gaius Lucilius (180-102 BC): 30 books of Saturae were composed in a variety of metres, showing a sharp line in wit and a caustic ability to attack his contemporaries. He attacked people by name and recounted his own sexual exploits; he denounced gluttony and political chicanery, and borrowed philosophical ideas while also mocking philosophical jargon. ars est celare artem: Lucilius often reads as ifhe is improvising his lines but there is a good deal of conscious artistry at work in the ribald and raucous polemic, although Horace was later to call his work 'a muddy river from which much should have been removed' (Satires 1.4.11). He also presents himself in a more or less ironic manner as the hero or anti-hero of his own narrative, and thus introduces a very personal voice into the poetic language. Lucilius had fixed on the hexameter as the rhythm of satire by his final book: but Varro ( 116--27BC) who wrote voluminously on matters of agriculture and language also produced 150 books of 'Menippean Satires' which are a blend of prose and verse, described by Cicero (Acad. 1.8) as 'a bit of philosophy with a dash of humour and dialogue'. Their name and their inspiration come from the Greek 3rd century Cynic philosopher Menippus of Gadara, and the mixture of prose and verse in satire was to be imitated much later by Seneca (in his Apocolocyntosis) and Petronius (in his Satyricon). This hybrid form of satire, using both prose and verse, derived to some extent from the Greek 'diatribe' (01a~p1~11). This was an ethical 'sermon' of popular philosophy delivered in the manner of a travelling speaker, which sought to make people think and change their ways. The tone was one of hectoring banter directed at vice and folly, couched in vivid and aggressive imagery. The term and the form seem to have arisen from a certain Bion of Borysthenes (see OCD s.v. Bion (1)) who made a name for himself as an itinerant Cynic speaker rejecting the pretensions of the human mind and of society - and Roman satire certainly has more than a whiff of the Cynic (and the cynic) about it. The tradition of satire was continued in a more polished form by Horace (65-8 BC), although he called his satirical poems sermones ('conversations', the first book of which was published in about 35 BC) rather than saturae. His is a gentler sort of satire after the savagery

4

Introduction

of Lucilius, and he comes over as an ironic self-satirist as much as a harpooner of other folk. He famously (1.5) tells of his hoping for sex with a servant-girl, only to be stood up by her after which he ends up 'staining his bedclothes'; and his account of how he tried to free himself from a boring social-climber in 1.9 is a study in how good manners can cause us grief. He links his mode of writing with the ribald comedy of 5th century Athens (1.4) and he certainly speaks frankly and crudely about sex (1.2) and food (2.2) in language worthy of an Aristophanes, but he avoids overt political satire and so (for instance) his account of the journey to Brundisium - where the fate of the world was to be decided with a treaty between Mark Antony and Octavian - avoids making much of the politics and concentrates instead on incidentals in an arch and ironic manner. His targets are ones which Juvenal also shares - such as hypocrisy and ambition - and the set-piece descriptions of events such as the dinner-party (2.8) give us a vivid glimpse into the social world in which Horace, the freedman's son, always (no doubt) felt himself to be something of an outsider. He made good use of a variety of styles in his poems: parody of epic, philosophical discourse in the manner of a didactic poet, vivid raconteurish descriptions of Roman life, and even animal fables such as the famous tale of the town mouse and country mouse (2.6). He clearly found the composition of this sort of accessible verse philosophy congenial and went on to compose a second book of Sermones (published in 30 BC), his first book of hexameter Epistles in 20 BC and the final three Epistles (Book 2 and the Ars Poetica) sometime after that. The Octavian who was going to meet Antony at Brundisium in Horace's Satire 1.5 was to be Rome's first emperor, of course, and the world Horace was born into was to be transformed from a republic into the Roman Empire. Writing under the emperor Nero (who ruled from AD 54-68), the satirist Persius (AD 34-62) composed only six satires - a meagre 650 lines in all - but took the genre in a new direction with his use of Stoic philosophy as the inspiration for his work. His poetry is involved and obscure but deals with the stock themes - food, poetry, sex, power, gods - and offers a more engaged and assertive model of satirical argument after the relaxed voice of Horace. Also writing in the age of Nero were two major literary figures: Petronius and Seneca. Petronius wrote a picaresque novel Satyricon

Introduction

5

which is a form of Menippean satire, making use of prose and verse, narrative and direct speech, ideas and the life of the streets. Its title is not in fact to do with 'satire' but rather with the fabled half-men half-goats known as Satyrs who were servants of the god Bacchus, often drunk and always disorderly, and the plot centres around the lives of young men finding their way in a debauched and decadent social world. Petronius 3 is usually linked to the man of that name who was a courtier of Nero until his enforced suicide in AD 66. The philosopher, dramatist and essayist Lucius Annaeus Seneca was tutor to the young emperor Nero until he too was forced to commit suicide in AD 65 on suspicion of his involvement in the Pisonian conspiracy. His spoof on the deification of the previous emperor Claudius - the Apocolocyntosis or 'Pumpkinification' of Claudius - is (like the Satyricon) a Menippean mixture of prose and verse and is one of the most effective pieces of comic literature to have survived from the ancient world.

III. Juvenal's Satires - spleen and ideal Juvenal is in many ways the culmination of this process of development. He has the anger of a Persius and a Lucilius married to the poetic skills of a Horace, the philosophical and ethical concern of Horace and Persius with the acute eye for detail of Lucilius, Seneca and Petronius. He manages to keep the best of them all while also forging his own unique style of rhetoric, humour and serious thought. The division into five books is almost certainly that of the author and it is fascinating to look at the ordering and the choice of satirical targets in each of the five books. It is commonplace to argue that the first two books (Satires 1-6) express a rage at the world around which the last two books of poems (10-16) largely replace with a more 'ironic detachment' 4 and acceptance of the way things are in the manner of the laughing philosopher Democritus. 5 Book 3 (Satires 7-9) is somewhere in the middle, 6 a transition phase between 'anger' and 'assessment', or perhaps a switch from 'vice' to 'folly' as the target of his verse. This is 3 See OCD s.v. 'Petronius Arbiter'. 4 Braund ( 1996) xiii. 5 See 10.31-2. 6 Braund elegantly entitled her 1988 study of Book 3 Beyond Anger.

6

Introduction

of course too neat to be accepted without qualification - in book V there is abundant anger directed at the cannibalistic Egyptians for instance, and (besides) variety of tone and target is important in any book of poems. Book V starts calmly enough with a mock-consolatio on the need to control anger for personal self-preservation ( 13), before moving to the need to promote good behaviour in family and society in 14 - both reasonable positions and based on enhancing good behaviour as much as castigating what is not, leaving us in a mood of souci de soi. Then, however, the poet suddenly flips back into angry mode 7 with his snarling and violent attack on Egypt in 15, the violence described being mirrored in the violence of its description. The final poem is even more reminiscent of the earlier poems as the poet once again adopts the worm's-eye stance of being on the receiving end of soldierly jack-boots. 8 The final poem is ironic to the extent that it purports to be extolling the life of the military while in fact it is attacking the abuses which this entails, but the poet is of course not going - and he is the victim and not the to sign up - whatever he claims in 16.2---4 hero here. The final poem thus enacts a form of ring-composition, looking back to the start of the first satire and showing that little has changed either in society or (alas) in this personal response to it. There is no evidence that any ancient unfinished text was intended to be left unfinished, but it is still tempting to read the fragmentary nature of 16 as a prompt to go back to the beginning of Satire 1 and start reading all over again. A summary of the sixteen poems will give some idea of the range of his targets and the areas of his interest: Book 1 (Satires 1-5) was probably published in or around AD 1159 and establishes the poet as a man of 'savage indignation' railing against the evils of the city around him and the appalling behaviour of his contemporaries. The poems may be summarised thus: 1: J. denounces bad poetry and expresses the need to write satire to expose the vicious and unfair world he lives in: society needs the satirist rather than the derivative epic poet, and there is so much wrong with Rome that 'it is difficult not to write satire'. 2: J. here exposes hypocrites who pretend to be austere Stoic 7 Courtney (1980) 12: 'Fifteen has something in common with Juvenal's earlier manner'. 8 16.14. 9 For more on the dating of the different books see Uden (2015) 219-26.

Introduction

7

philosophers but who love perverted sex in private and who even carry out gay marriages to the disgust of the ghosts of great dead Romans in the Underworld. 3: The poet speaks with Umbricius who is leaving Rome. Much of the poem is put into the mouth of Umbricius who criticises the city of Rome as a cesspit of noise, violence, rudeness as contrasted with the decent air of the Italian countryside. 4: A description of the absurd council summoned to discuss the problem of cooking the enormous turbot presented to the emperor Domitian - a fish which will not fit any of the available dishes. 5: A description of the the humiliation of the poor when they attend dinner-parties given by their rich patrons. Book 2. (Satire 6) was published after AD 117 (this poem refers to events from the years 113-117 and so must postdate the events: it is possible that books 1 and 2 were published simultaneously) and is one long single poem. The text is a diatribe against women, couched in terms of advice seeking to dissuade a young man from getting married. The poem goes through all the different types of women and concludes that happiness will be impossible with any of them. Book 3. Satires 7-9 published around AD 120 (early in the reign of Hadrian) marks a slight lightening of the angry tone: 7: A description of the decline of literary professions, such as poets, speech-writers and teachers. 8: What's the good of noble family trees? The poet denounces the base currency which is aristocratic blue blood: old aristocrats debase themselves these days, and the only nobility that counts is nobility of character. 9: A poem on the theme of patron and client: the poor man Naevolus ('Mr Warty') earns his handouts from his patron by satisfying the lust of both his patron and his patron's wife. Book 4. Satires 10-12 published sometime between AD 120 and AD 127: there are no internal markers of precise years and this text may have been written over a long period of time. These poems deal with ethical concerns rather than simply scandalised exposure of folly and vice for their own sake, as follows:

8

Introduction 10: 'The Vanity of Human Wishes': if we seek worldly success in terms of wealth, power, sex, or long life we will end up bitterly disappointed. The poet recommends seeking health of body and mind (mens sana in corpore sano). 11: An invitation to dinner contained in a lesson about living within one's means and enjoying the simple things of life rather than luxuries. 12: J. welcomes his friend back after an arduous sea-voyage and describes the storm at sea in lurid epic terms: the poem ends with a plea that he is not motivated by any desire to profit from his friend's legacy after death.

Book 5, Satires 13-16 published after AD 127: for more on the dating see notes on 13.16-18, 14.196, 15.27. This final book, showing 'the old lion roaring away with a new access of vigour', 10 deals with the two false gods of money and power, promoting people over property and urging us to educate ourselves, our children and each other in habits of friendship and love rather than selfish greed while also exploring the ugly side of human nature to a degree not seen since the early poems. 13: A consolation to a friend who has been cheated of money; such fraud is commonplace in Rome and the crook will pay for it with a guilty conscience, urges the poet. 14: The influence of parents over their children, especially in their attitude towards money: parents need to set a good example against avance. 15: A violent and lively critique of the Egyptians, culminating in a description of an incident of cannibalism. 16: J. discusses the privileges of the military and their abuses (incomplete). Some key targets of Juvenal 's satire are clear even from this rapid summary: (a) the hypocrisy of people pretending to be morally superior when they keep their vices hidden from view (explored especially in 2) (b) the folly of people who pursue goals such as money and power and end up paying the ultimate price for their misguided greed (10, 14) 10 Highet (1954) 138.

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9

(c) the state of contemporary Roman society, full of violence and the inability to trust others as everyone is only out for themselves (1, 3, 9, 12, 13, 16) (d) the parlous state of sexual morality in Rome and in particular the amoral attitude of women (1, 2, 6, 10, 11) (e) the topsy-turvy world where decent professions are paid almost nothing but the big money goes to the well-heeled crooks living on oysters (3, 7, 11, 16) (t) Greed for money, food, power, patronage, as seen in legacy-hunting and in the cultivation of patronage from the rich and powerful (9, 12, 13) (g) Foreigners and their appalling ways (3, 15) IV. Juvenal and his times Almost nothing is known about the life of Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, the man who wrote some of the most memorable phrases in Latin. There is an inscription from Aquinum (CIL 10.5382) which lists a 'Juvenal' as being a tribune of a cohort of Dalmatian troops and a priest of the cult of the deified emperor Vespasian, but serious doubt has been cast 11 on whether this can ref er to 'our' poet or be genuine. Three poems by his contemporary Martial are addressed to him as a friend (7.24.1) and as 'eloquent' (facundus 7.91.1) or living the life of a city cliens (12.18) so we know that he was known to other poets - but witty ironic epigram is not the most reliable of historical sources on the poet's actual life and circumstances. He does not dedicate his work to a patron (unlike (e.g.) Virgil and Horace) and so we can surmise that he was rich enough not to need financial support. Syme 12 investigates the poet's name and origin and concludes that 'Juvenalis' suggests low class or foreign origin: he ventures to suggest first that Spain offers the richest number of families called 'lunius' - in a later article 13 he argued for the possibility that the poet originated in Africa. He was born somewhere between 55 and 68 AD, and I am tempted by Syme's suggestion of 67 as his year of birth 14 • 11 12 13 14

Syme (1979) 1-5. Syme (1958) 774--76. Syme ( 1979). For discussion see Syme (1958) 774--75.

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Introduction

There was an old tradition that Juvenal was exiled to Libya by the emperor Domitian for lampooning his lover Paris (7 .90-2) and that he composed his poetry in exile: this tradition no doubt arose because (a) the poems mention Egypt and it seems the poet had first-hand knowledge of the area (see 15.44--46n.) and (b) he expresses distaste and dislike for the people there - somewhat like Ovid's attitude to the people of Tomis - which may be the fruit of his enforced exile. The weakness of this argument is obvious: satire is not much good if it does not express some distaste and dislike and there was also a long tradition of (often xenophobic) fascination with Egypt going back to Cleopatra and before. 15 None of it proves that Juvenal lived there. The general consensus is that the kind words addressed to the emperor at the start of Satire 1 ref er to Hadrian, who succeeded Trajan in 117,which would date Book 3 after that year: there are chronological markers in Book 5 to the year 127.16 There is nothing in Book 4 which helps us to date it, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that it was composed in the period around AD 120. There are, then, a few datable references in his poetry which support the idea that he published his five books of Satires between 110 and 130 AD, and the clear links between Juvenal's poems and the Annals of the historian Tacitus suggest that Juvenal knew the historian's work and alluded to key individuals in it such as Bruttidius (10.82-3: cf. Annals 3.66.4). The poet refers in his work to a house in Rome ( 11.171, 190) which was an inheritance (12.87-9) and also to a small farm in Tibur (11.65). Beyond that, we have little to go on in discovering the man behind the work. As is often the case, there is a temptation to reconstruct the 'life' from the 'art' - and plenty of scholars 17 have regarded the saturae as in some ways 'fragments of a great confession' in Goethe's phrase. 18 Literary fashions change, and it is more to modem taste to focus on the poetry rather than on the biography of the poet himself. Modem methods of literary analysis of satire draw more attention to the place and use of role-play, of irony, and of creative imagination in the forming of literary artefacts from the raw material of life. Juvenal was writing for an audience who would not be interested in him as a person but only in 15 16 17 18

See e.g. Dalby (2000) 172-77. See notes on 13.16--18, 14.196, 15.27. Highet (1954) is perhaps the most eloquent of these. Goethe Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit Book II, Chapter 7.

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11

what he wrote: his poems are addressed to us all and the poet maintains his anonymity 19 through his manipulation of style and language even when - especially when - he seems to be most open about his feelings. There is also a need to exercise caution when using the text of a poet such as Juvenal in reconstructing details even of the times in which he lived. It is axiomatic that this author is not composing for an audience such as ourselves, but for his contemporaries, who would not need to be informed of aspects of Roman life with which they were already familiar but rather entertained: similarly, they would not need a commentary to understand the references made. Nonetheless, this text has been found useful by historians both for the detail furnished where Juvenal refers to groups of people such as Jews (14.96-106), Egyptians (15 passim), soldiers (16), or where he appears to throw light on religious practice (14.262-3), sexual habits (14.25-30), the legal system (16.42-50), the legends of great philosophers (Pythagoras 15.171--4: Thales 13.184-5 etc.) and allusions to legal restrictions such as the /ex Roscia theatralis which barred all but equites from the front rows of theatres (14.323--4). There are some vivid vignettes of crime (agricultural imperialism at 14.145-9: daring thieves making off with the helmet from the statue of Mars in his temple (14.261-2) or scraping the gold leaf from a statue of Hercules (13.151-2)) and punishment (e.g. 13.155-6: the parricide tied into a sack with a dog, a snake and a monkey). We hear of everyday life in such areas as haute cuisine (14.7-9), after-dinner entertainment in the form of acrobats (14.265-7), property development (14.86-90), the preparation of a sacrifice to Jupiter ( 13.116-8) and medical care (16.12). We also hear of extraordinary people doing extraordinary things (Diogenes the Cynic in his pot (14.308-14) or Egyptians who will not eat some vegetables or animals but will eat people (15.9-13)). Allusions to what was everyday life give us some flavour of the times in which this poet lived and worked, and we also have prose historians such as Tacitus whose work often bears out Juvenal's words, but we have to remember at all times that the poet is writing for effect and not for information. When it comes to naming individuals, Juvenal has a policy ( 1.170-1) of only attacking the dead as it is dangerous to attack the living ( 1.16070), but he does name a large number of people in these poems and his audience simply has to know or guess who they were. There are famous 19 For this theme of anonymity in Juvenal see now Uden (2015); Geue (2017a).

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Introduction

names from history such as Alexander the Great ( 14.311), the emperor Claudius and his freedman Narcissus (14.329-331), the philosopher Socrates (14.320), Catiline (14.41) and the noble Brutus (14.43): and then there are the racial slurs and stereotypes ( 13.162- 73, 15.44-6), routine misogyny (6 passim, 13.191-2) and anti-semitism (14.96-106). There are thumbnail sketches of the 'donkey-brained ranter' Vagellius (16.23), the barrister Fuscus emptying his bladder in preparation for a long speech (16.46), the compulsive builder Caetronius (14.86-95), the doctor Philippus (13.125) and Faesidius supported by his baying mob of hangers-on (13.32-3). The poems are not, then, reportage which lifts the lid on contemporary life in the manner of an investigative journalist; but in the course of framing his argument the poet is happy to make use of any evidence which comes to hand. The journalist, of course, will - like the satirist simplify and exaggerate, but unlike the poet he has to remain within the realms of the plausible and the possible. Juvenal, the poet and satirist, has carte blanche to let his imagination take over where the facts are insufficient, and it would be rash to rely too much on these poems for hard evidence of the times in which they were composed. 20

V. Style We would probably not be interested in Juvenal if he were not a great master of the Latin language and a great writer of satire, and his poetry makes use of a wide range of modes and methods in order to focus our minds and to keep us constantly entertained and bemused by his words. Often, as with Lucilius, the style is artfully unadorned, and the words read as if they came tumbling out of the poet's head, but of course the artistry is no less acute for being concealed. Some of his methods of doing this could be summarised thus: (a) Irony. This term is much discussed 21 and its meaning can be slippery and elusive, but, in a literary context such as satire, one common feature is the poet's assumption of a mode of address which presents himself as a character within his own text, often espousing views 20 For a lively and convincing account of the milieu in which Juvenal lived see Danziger and Purcell (2005); see also Marache ( 1989). 21 See Muecke (1970).

Introduction

13

which are ridiculous or absurdly exaggerated in order to present the speaker himself as a target for his own satire - effectively putting quotation marks around his words. The poems in this book all present us with a 'Juvenal' who is giving advice to the reader/addressee, but there is ample scope for seeing the 'Juvenal' speaking as a fictive persona who may even be part of the joke rather than simply its mouthpiece: the poems are sometimes read as tracts delivered by a poet speaking for himself, when in fact they are conversations in which the character of the speaker may be being sent up as much as his quarry. This is particularly so with sexual matters: Satire 6, for instance, shows an excess of misogyny and a prurient fascination with sex which belies its own prudish disapproval, rather like the poet's rejection of the hideous cannibalism in Satire 15 which he nonetheless describes with lip-smacking prurience. The irony often depends on the reader being alert to the fun being had either by the speaker's sarcastic tum of phrase (as at 14.281) or else at the speaker's expense (such as the 'good old days' cliched counsel of the old men of the old Italian tribes at 14.179-89 or the dropping of great names at 14.43, where the language is both the means and the target of the satire). This ironic way of reading the text is hugely important as it relies on the judgement of the individual reader to be aware of the satirical nuances and to be less ready to swallow the lines uncritically, but (by the same token) it is a way of reading a passage which will provoke disagreement as to the sense and the meaning which the ironic text both conveys and conceals. For the larger questions surrounding the persona theory, see below (VI 'Do the Poems have a Purpose?'). (b) Parody. This is the humorous imitation of an art-form in which the salient characteristics of the target are exaggerated and so rendered comic. The obvious example in this book is the mock-consolatio which is Satire 13: the genre of 'consolation' 22 was well known in the ancient world, 23 but was usually reserved for the loss of life rather than the loss of cash. Juvenal's adoption of the form and the argumentation of this genre serves to send up the miser for whom money matters more than people. This counts as satire as there is 22 23

See Scourfield (2013). See introductory remarks to Satire 13.

14

Introduction implied criticism of the original in the distorted caricature of its obvious shape and habits. Parody of style is frequent in Juvenal. Classical epic was written in the same metre as these satires, and so it is easy for the satirist to slip into a higher register (e.g. 13.130-1 where the lines are a parody of Virgil) and so send up the genre by allowing the satirical persona to speak like a Lucan or a Statius. Juvenal is master of this: he makes use of the epic periphrasis (13.99, where the 'hungry branch of the Pisan olive-tree' refers to the garland awarded to the winner in the Olympic games and reduces the glory by bathos: cf. also 13.184) and epic allusions (14.114), he mocks the superstitious Romans quoting their imported quasi-scientific Greek terms (14.248) and calls Ulysses an aretalogus (15.16) in mockery both of his style and his self-congratulating stories. When the poet is creating a scene of conflict he can make bathetic use of epic battle-scenes (15.62-6) but with the parodic element supported by devices such as the bathos of the unpoetic word cox am for Aeneas' 'hip' (15.66).

(c) The 'grand style' (genus grande). 24 The poet of the satires had clearly enjoyed a rhetorical education as he himself tells us (1.15-17) and his use of the 'grand style' of oratory is shown in such literary devices as: (i)

24

his use of rhetorical questions (often at the beginning of his poems as at 13.5-6, 15.1-2, 16.1-2) adds a touch of high drama and forensic interrogation to the text. In telling us that animals do not attack their own kind in 15.159-64, J. gives us a sequence of five sentences, with two pithy generalised statements followed by two rhetorical questions followed by one longer statement, and the effect of the questions is to mock the absurdity of the position being questioned (even though in this case the speaker's assumption is false). Earlier in the same poem (15.16-23) J. ventriloquises this technique into the mouths of the Phaeacians who are angry at Ulysses' insult to their intelligence with his tall tales. They deliver one central statement framed by two rhetorical questions, ending with the final rhetorical question: 'did he think the Phaeacian people to be so empty-headed?'

See De Decker ( 1913), Braun ( 1989), Santorelli (2016).

Introduction

15

The rhetorical question is a good tool to strengthen a tone of moral outrage: see for instance 14.177-8 ('But what respect for the laws, what apprehension or decency do you ever find in an impatient miser?'). The device is also good at mocking anybody who does not agree with the speaker (e.g. 14.25: 'Do you expect - you moron - that Larga's daughter is not going to commit adultery?'). There is a similar sequence towards the end of Satire 13 (lines 239-249) where a pithy generalised statement (people do not change their nature) is followed by a powerful trio of rhetorical questions ('for who .... when ... who ...?) in lines 240-244, followed by a confident assertion of the fate awaiting 'our cheat', beginning with a strong future indicative verb (dabit) and going into some prurient detail of the criminal's suffering and ending with an equally confident prediction of the victim's own joy (gaudebis (247)). (ii) apostrophe, where the poet addresses a character in his own narrative. J. uses this device to add variety to his account of the perjuring thief at 13.81, where the address to Neptune enacts the personal address to the deity which the oath requires and presupposes: a similar use is found at 15.85- 7 where Prometheus is addressed and congratulated. (iii) sententious one-line generalisations summing up the argument in a memorable and pithy phrase, often with vivid use of language. See for instance 14.224 (having described the fate of the rich bride who is strangled for her dowry J. sums up with 'there is no hard work involved in large-scale crime') or 13.100 ('The wrath of the gods may be great but it is certainly slow'). These can sound almost like old school mottos: see for instance 14.47 ('The greatest respect is owed to a child') and J. can sometimes produce such asententia in ironic quotes as he does at 14.205-7: 'This is the mantra which should never leave your lips one worthy of the gods and even of Jupiter himself (if he were a poet): "nobody is asking where you got it from, but get it you must."'

16

Introduction

(iv) the balanced word-order known as the 'golden line', where a central verb (V) is framed by a pair of nouns (AB) and a pair of adjectives (ab ). J. varies this device and we find a-b-V-A-B (13.137) but also A-b-V-a-B at 15.137. (v) pointed antitheses, where stark contrasts are drawn for enhanced effect, such as the tart comment (15.8) that in Egypt 'it's the dog which whole towns worship - but nobody (worships) Diana' or the scathing statement (13.105) 'That man gets crucified as payment for his crime, this one gets a crown'. In Satire 14 (41-3) the poet contrasts the ease of finding a 'Catiline' with the difficulty of finding a 'Brutus - or his uncle'. Sometimes the contrast is verbal as at 13.19 where 'great' wisdom is found in 'little' books. (vi) diminutive forms of nouns and adjectives, lending a homely, almost intimate tone to the language such as 13.40 where Juno is reduced to a uirguncula (and cf. 14.29 for this effect) and 15.12 where Egyptians are forbidden to slaughter even the 'young' of a 'little goat' (capellae). The form is effective in adding emphasis as at 13.14, where the enjambed diminutive form of pars (particulam - a 'speck') adds an extra layer of tininess after leuium minimam exiguamque of the line before. J. makes good use of a diminutive to enhance contrast at 14.169 where the uernula ('little slave') is followed by the magnis fratribus ('big brothers') and of course the diminutive is much used in passages advocating the simple life (14.166 glebula ('a little clod of earth') and 14.179 (live in 'little cottages' (casulis)). The diminutive adds to the theme of degeneration in 15.70, where it is stated that the earth now brings forth men who are 'wicked and weedy' - with the diminutive form pusillos an effectively strong word to end the line. (vii) anaphora or rhetorical repetition of important words to raise the oratorical temperature as at 13.130, 13.144-147, 14.42, 14.111-2, 14.120, 14.256-7, 15.94, 15.99, 16.9-10, 16.24-5, 16.31, 16.43-4. At 14.294 the anaphora of nil is made more forceful by placing of the word, at the start of the line and again immediately after the caesura:

Introduction

17

nil co/or/ hie cae/li// nil /fascia/ nigra mi/natur. The device is especially useful in rhetorical questions such as 14.177-8, 15.103. (viii) hyperbole 25 or comic exaggeration: at 13.62-3, for instance, the rare case of honesty is described in language which is hyperbolic in its admiration, while later in the same poem (211-222) the thief is envisaged suffering massively over-drawn symptoms of distress and guilt. Simple hyperbole is found at 14.12 (no child could need 'one thousand tutors'), 14.28 (on the length of the list of a mother's lovers): sometimes ( 14.66 perfusa) the hyperbole is a focalisation of inner panic, while elsewhere (as at 14.114, 14.271) the poet ironically contrasts the low-level reality with heroic and mythical26 material. (ix) the appropriation of epic material for persuasive effect. Epic language was often used by Juvenal for ironic and parodistic effect (see above), but there are also moments when he could be seen as using the stories and the language of epic to enhance the force of his narrative: look for instance at the wonderful riff on Ulysses' tales at 15.13-26, where the poet imagines the incredulous Phaeacians listening to Ulysses' fabulous tales of cannibalism: When Ulysses was telling of a felony of this kind to a dumbstruck Alcinous over dinner, it was wrath or mirth perhaps that he aroused in some of them as if he were a lying big-mouth. 'Is nobody throwing this man into the sea? He deserves a real-life Charybdis, and a savage one at that, for inventing his giant Laestrygonians and Cyclops. For I would sooner believe in Scylla, or the clashing Cyanean rocks and the bags full of storm-winds or Elpenor, struck by Circe's flimsy blow and grunting with the oarsmen pigs. Did he think that the Phaeacian people were so emptyheaded?' This is how somebody might have spoken, and rightly so: somebody not yet drunk who had only taken a tiny drop of booze from the Corcyraean flagon: for this 25 See Fredericks ( 1979). 26 On this topic see Bellandi ( 1991).

18

Introduction was what the Ithacan recited to them, all by himself, with no witnesses to back him up. The comedy here is slick and relies on the audience knowing the Homeric original: 27 and while the point being made only needs to make mention of the man-eating Laestrygonians and Cyclops, J. throws in all the other tales so that he can work his satirical magic on them too - see in particular line 22 on Elpenor where the men begin the line as oarsmen and end the line as pigs (porcis). Look also at 13.38-52, where the poet produces a burlesque of mythology imagining the age of Saturn with pint-sized gods and happy shades. The battle in Egypt begins in excellent epic style (15. 51-76), and in the course of it J. makes explicit comparisons with the 'real' epic fighting scenes in Homer and Virgil (65-71). J. calls (72) this a 'diversion' (deuerticulum) but it is clearly part of the satirical purpose to ridicule these latter-day Egyptian 'heroes' for the monstrous cannibals they were. Elsewhere (14.45-6) J. uses high epic language for bathetic effect, as when the Sybils's stem warning to the uninitiated (Virgil Aeneid 6.258: 'keep away, o keep far away you who are not initiated' procul o procul este profani) is rewritten:

procul,aprocul indepuellae/ lenonumet cantuspernoctantis parasiti. ('Get away with you, get away from here, girls of pimps and the singing of the all-night party-crawler'). (x) Rhetorical exclamations. Everybody knows Cicero's famous exclamation o tempora o moresI (literally: 'o times, o way of life!': cf. in Verrem2.4.56). This oratorical method is found also in J. when he (like Cicero) waxes most indignant: see for instance 15.10-11, 13.140. To illustrate some of the above, look at the final lines of poem 14 to see the poet in action. 27 Which is also required for the use of epic periphrasis (e.g. 16.6).

Introduction si nondum impleui gremium, si panditur ultra, nee Croesi fortuna umquam nee Persica regna sufficient animo nee diuitiae Narcissi, indulsit Caesar cui Claudius omnia, cuius paruit imperiis uxorem occidere iussus.

19

330

'If I have still not filled your lap with that, if it gapes wider still, then neither the riches of Croesus nor the kingdoms of Persia will ever satisfy your heart - nor the wealth of Narcissus, the man to whom Claudius Caesar gave everything he wanted, and whose commands he obeyed when he was ordered to kill his wife'. Here we see the anaphora of si ... si ... , with the two phrases in asyndeton to add urgency to the words: there is the balanced pair of verbs impleui ... panditur as we see the appetite for money both negatively ('not yet sated') and positively ('gaping open'). J. 's coda uses human exempla in a tricolon crescendo of enormous power and ironic intent, with anaphora of nee and variation of the 'wealth' term (fortuna ... regna ... diuitiae). He begins with that byword for fabulous wealth to this day - Croesus - and then ups the ante even more with Persica regna (hinting at power (regna) as well as cash): but the final and climactic exemplum is from closer to home and to his own times - the freedman Narcissus. The name is placed for effect at the end of line 329 in a fifth-foot spondee which forces the reader to slow down on this weighty individual who out-trumps even the Persians. The poem might have ended there - but the final two lines add moral turpitude to the theme of unrestrained wealth with the murder of a wife and the topsy-turvy state in which the emperor takes orders from his servant: the rhetorical effect is heightened by the harsh alliteration of Caesar cui Claudius, the anaphora of cui ... cuius, the framing of the final line with words denoting obedience (paruit ... iussus) and the placing of the wife in the centre (uxorem ). The reader may wonder why the poet chose to end this poem with this vignette, and here one can see the playful way in which life and literature mingle in these poems: the 'wife' being killed was Messalina, who was herself a byword for immorality on a massive scale (Dio Cassius called her 'the most whorish {1topv1x:ro'ta't11) of women' (see note on 14.331)) and who has been one of J.'s most effective characters in his denunciation of the female sex (see 6.114-32). More

Introduction

20

pertinently, the picture harks back to an age where weak emperors were pushed around by upstart freedmen, and it is worth stressing that from Domitian onwards freedmen were never regarded as more than mere servants. 28 J. can safely fulminate against Narcissus as the emperor of his own day had no such staff: and of course J. can add another dig at the upstart freedmen whom he has been abusing since Satire 1.102-9. The poem ends with what amounts to a recap of themes in earlier books while also reminding the reader that the greed for money has many disastrous effects on family and society.

VI. Do these poems have a purpose? In Satire 15 Juvenal describes the cannibalism of one Egyptian tribe and then made reference to other cases where cannibalism was practised by men who were starving and so had no choice: all very repellent. He then broadens the discussion with a general statement abour our human capacity for empathy and our genuine grief at the suffering of others: naturae imperio gemimus, cum funus adultae uirginis occurrit uel terra clauditur infans et minor igne rogi. quis enim bonus et face dignus arcana, qua/em Cereris uolt esse sacerdos, ulla aliena sibi credit mala? (15.138-142) ('It is by nature's orders that we howl, when we meet the funeral of a grown-up unmarried girl, or when a little child is buried in earth not yet old enough for the funeral pyre. For who is there who is good, who is worthy of the secret torch, living as the priest of Ceres wishes, who thinks that other people's misfortunes do not concern him?')

Grief is built into our very nature, and the examples chosen elicit exactly the sort of human fellow-feeling which he is espousing as 'the best part of our sensibility' (15.133). Notice the choice of a girl old enough to marry but still unwed (adultae uirginis) and then the ghastly detail of the earth closing over the dead infant's body, with line 139 framed by the key words virginis ... infans in this short catalogue of misery. He 28

See CAH2 xi. 209-11.

Introduction

21

then puts the issue into a sharp rhetorical question (quis ...?), with the tart mention of the divine imperatives also at work but leading up to the 'no man is an island' conclusion. Few readers would be unmoved by these lines and few would disagree with them, although the poet offers no such empathy to the merchant facing death at sea (14.295-302) who is to him 'better than theatre' (14.256-7) as entertainment. The problem is partly that the examples chosen are perhaps overdone, 29 and then the tone is slightly undercut by the naming of the 'priest of Ceres' - it was not coincidental that the emperor Hadrian had been personally initiated into the Greek cult and the reference, complete with the detail of the 'secret torch' creates a slightly jarring edge which distances a genuine piece of emotive imagery into a ritual framework. The conclusion ('who thinks that other people's misfortunes do not concern him?') is a banal phrase with a long history in Latin literature (see 15.142n.). It is as if the poet has briefly voiced what (he thinks passes for) genuine emotion to come to the fore in lines 138-40, only to close down the tear-ducts with a return to more stiff upper-lip language. It may (after all) be all an act. What is the poet doing? Is he actively seeking our agreement with an ethical proposition or is he just using an ethical dilemma to show his poetic and rhetorical powers as a writer? Is he serious or is he a poseur? When elsewhere (Satire 3) he tells us of the living conditions in poor parts of Rome or (in Satire 1) the rotten life lived by the intellectuals of his age, or warns us of the lengths to which legacy-hunters (Satire 12) or foreign savages (Satire 15) will go, does it matter whether we can believe him? In the last century Anderson in a ground-breaking work 30 urged that the poet is a performer and that he is creating a character who is the narrator and the speaker of the words being uttered: this 'character' is referred to by Anderson as a persona (which literally means 'mask' and alludes to the theatrical nature of the text) and is the creation of the poet and is not therefore to be taken as identical with the man writing the words on the page. Just as we do not demand total sincerity on the part of a songwriter who may express feelings in a song which he does not personally have, so also this poet may be conjuring up what are more or less set-piece declamations which are delivered 'in character' 29 See Jenkyns (1982) 188 + n. 25. 30 Anderson, W. S. (1982) esp. 293-339.

22

Introduction

behind the mask of savage indignation or shocked humanitas which is the satirist's stock in trade. 31 Clearly this sort of judgement has to be made in reading many works of literature. When a Horace or a Catullus expresses love, we can choose to read the poem as an expression of the poet's real feeling for real persons, or else we can read it as a love-poem in the tradition of love poetry and with no need for a referent in the 'real' world. If the writer has done a good job then readers are often led to think that the writer is bursting to express genuine emotions ('feelings in search of a form') when it may in fact be the other way round ('form in search of a feeling') as the artist, working with a form (such as a sonnet), or a particular metre, will find that feelings emerge from his emotional depths and colour his work with emotion which is itself freely invented. Writers have (after all) to write about something, and there is always the strong possibility that writers produce what the public will enjoy rather than what they are burning personally to impart. This argument is more acute perhaps in discussing other poets such as Horace. After all, there is no doubt that Juvenal exaggerates wildly and risks his credibility by his hyperbole. His lines on premature death (quoted above) are moving, but a few lines later (15.147-58) he is back in didactic mode with a mini-lecture on social anthropology and he then follows this up with a ludicrous argument (15.159-64) that animals never attack their own kind which is blatantly false and had been contradicted centuries before by Hesiod (Works and Days 276--28032). The tender emotion of grief is thus seen as part of a role being played, an emotion being spun by this master-rhetorician who can both summon up our own feelings and then calm them down, and who can thus dazzle us with his own self-characterising display as a sententious and wrong-headed ranter. The same line of reasoning could also be used to get the poet off the hook in the eyes of many modem readers. Satire 6 is a sustained attack on women - all of them. It purports to give advice to a certain Postumus to avoid getting married as all the different classes of women are hideous. The poet runs through the different sorts of women and creates vividly offensive pictures to put Postumus off all of them. This sort of misogyny 31 32

On the persona theory see also Keane (1989), Braund (1996), Schmitz (2019) 11-30. See West ( 1978) 227 for further examples.

Introduction

23

is not without parallel in the ancient world, 33 but it is still pretty strong stuff and it is a difficult poem to read without feeling readerly revulsion. If, however, one were to see it as ironic mockery of misogyny rather than the real thing - assuming that the poet, in other words, adopts a 'mask' (persona) of 'woman-hater' and then writes a poem which such a man would deliver - then the purpose of the poem becomes the very opposite of what it appears to be. Far from espousing these revolting ideas, Juvenal is exposing the attitudes he expresses to ridicule as they are so obviously distorted and hyperbolic. It makes no sense to accuse Euripides of hating women because his character Hippolytus does 34 even though the contemporary comic poet Aristophanes invents characters who think exactly that. 35 The 'indignation' which 'drives' him to verse ( 1.79) and which makes it difficult not to write satire (1.30) is itself perhaps a pose to lure the reader in, and the enraged old-testament prophet is in fact enjoying working his audience with the power of his rhetoric and his poetic skill, where the audience may choose to laugh either with or at the speaker so long as they enjoy the poem. There is much to be said for this. Juvenal is writing in a tradition of epideictic oratory (where the point was to demonstrate oratorical subtlety rather than to prove a specific case) and with the memory of his own rhetorical training as a composer of suasoriae or 'set-piece speeches' such as he mocks in 1.17-18. James Uden 36 has explored the oratorical and intellectual world of the Second Sophistic in which Juvenal lived, and it would be a dull reader who did not realise this. Furthermore, in a fascinating pair of recent books, 37 the stylised form of speech has recently been examined as a study in anonymising the author - a process whereby he hides behind his own text and does not allow us to glimpse his reality behind the tissue of the words. This is not, however, the last word by any means. The persona which the poet adopts is not co-extensive with the poet himself, but it is the 33 E.g. Semonides Fr. 7W. 34 Euripides Hippolytus 61~8. 35 Thesmophoriazuai 85. 36 Uden (2015) esp. 129-35. 37 Uden (2015), Geue (2017a): see Godwin (2017) and Schmitz (2019b) for some qualifications of this theory.

24

Introduction

poet who chooses which persona to adopt and there is still scope for reading the text as in some ways revelatory of the mind of the writer and his readers in the time at which the work was composed. Some of the points being made are over-stated but still resonate with us today and continue to haunt our thinking - what is worth dying or killing for? is there any value in money? - while others let us glimpse a world in which social values of 'nobility' and masculinity are questioned and discussed in language which is unparalleled for its frankness and power to make us think. Readers must simply read the poems and decide the extent to which they are tongue-in-cheek or hand-on-heart, whether they are ironic parodies of rhetoric or else examples of genuine emotion captured in expressive language. There is, after all, no single way to read a poem. Roman literature was created with generic and metrical propriety, such that epic was always in hexameters and generally avoided vulgarities, while love-poetry tended to be in elegiac couplets and certain stock figures recur: but there is also a marked resistance to this restraint on the part of many writers who at all times need to avoid the tedium of predictability and who seek to foil the expectations of their audience. Juvenal obviously wrote within the tradition of verse satire, but beyond that he resists categorisation. The one area where he is totally devoted to a single purpose is as a writer, and he uses the many skills of his trade to keep the readers on their toes and to surprise us with his skill. When he makes points which are facetious or plain wrong, then we end up admiring the style even when the content is less impressive and it is then that the mask slips to reveal the grinning manipulator behind it. Ultimately, when all around the poet is bad, mad, and sad, then at least we have the consolations of the poetry itself in which the views are so vividly and eloquently expressed. VII. The metre Latin poetry is written in a fairly rigid system of metres, all of which in tum rely on the 'quantity' of each syllable as being either heavy or light which in tum often depends on the length of the vowel. A long vowel is reckoned to take twice as long to pronounce as a short vowel. A syllable is reckoned to be a vowel sound, followed either by nothing

Introduction

25

(an 'open' syllable) or by a consonant (a 'closed' syllable): usually a single consonant following a vowel is reckoned to be the first consonant of the following syllable (e.g. ca-li-gi-ne) and does not affect the length of the preceding syllable; but where two or more consonants follow a vowel, whether in the same word or in different words, the first one is included in the first syllable (men-sa) which is thus 'closed' and becomes lengthened - the exceptions being combinations of mute and liquid consonants within the same word (b, c, g, p, t followed by r, and c, p, t, followed by I) where both letters may optionally be considered as belonging to the following syllable (ma-tris) and need not lengthen the preceding one. Diphthongs (ae, eu, au, etc.) are always long by nature: single vowels may be long or short in length and may vary with inflection (e.g. the final -a of mensa is long by nature in the ablative case, short in the nominative). u x //

means a heavy syllable means a light syllable means a syllable which may be either heavy or light means the caesura (word-end in the middle of a foot of a hexameter).

The hexameter is the 'epic' metre used by Homer and all later epic and didactic poets: it also became (after Lucilius) the metre of all verse satire. The line is divided into six 'feet', each of which is either a dactyl (a heavy syllable followed by two light syllables (-uu in conventional notation)) or a spondee (two heavy syllables (- -)). The last foot is always dissyllabic, and the last syllable of all may be either heavy or light. The metrical analysis of a line is called 'scansion' and a typical hexameter line (16.4) may be scanned thus: -uu/ - uu/-// -I - uu/-uu/ - -/ sfdere/ plus ete/nfml/ fa/tf ualet/ hora be/nfgnf

where the// sign shows the 'caesura'-the word-break in the middle of a foot-which occurs in the third foot or (less often) the fourth (e.g. 14.216, 15.150). It may also occur between the two short syllables of a dactyl in the third foot and then be followed by a further caesura in the fourth, as at 14.305, 15.171. In cases where a word ending with a vowel (or a vowel + m such as iustam) is followed by a word beginning with a vowel

26

Introduction

or h, the two syllables usually merge ('elide') into a single syllable, as at 15.30 where quamquam omnia is scanned as quamqu(mn) omnia (four syllables), or 16.9 where immo etsi is read imm(t:Jjetsi (three syllables). Latin also had a stress accent, whereby most words were stressed on the penultimate syllable, or on the antepenultimate if the penultimate was a short vowel. Thus the first line of Satire 14 would be spoken: plurima sunt Fuscin(e) ~t _Ama djgna sin~tra

and scanned metrically as: plurima/ sunt Fuslcin(e) et/ _Amal djgna si/n~tra

In this line the speech accent and the metrical ictus or 'downbeat' coincide throughout. More often there is a clash of the two forms of stress, as at 14.3 where the speech accents are: quz. manstrant ipsi paeris tradantque pare_ntes

but the metrical scansion is: ~

mons/ triint fplsI.piie/t:£\:tra/diintque palrentes

This is especially effective when the poet uses the same word twice with different stresses as at 14.43: sed nee/ Brytiis er/it Brii/ti nee au/iinciiliis/ iisquam. Quite how the two ways of reading Latin verse blended or competed is unclear: in hexameters there is a tendency for the stress accent and the metrical ictus to collide in the earlier and middle parts of the line (as in line 14.3) but to coincide at the end - a tendency which is however abruptly broken when the line ends with a monosyllable as at 13.26, 13.95. One strength of the hexameter is its versatility in the variation of quick and slow rhythms and also its readiness to vary the ending of the phrases and resist the urge to end the phrase with the ending of the line - a device known as enjambement. To see some of this in action look at the lines describing the father barking at his son in 14.189-93: haec illi ueteres praecepta minoribus; at nunc postfin(em) aiitiimnf media de nocte supinum clamosiis iuuenem pater excztat: 'acclpe ceras,

190

Introduction

27

scribe, pu/er, uigil/a, caus/as gge, /perlege /rubras maforilm leges. ('These are the teachings which those men of old handed to the young, but these days once autumn has ended, when the son is flat on his back in the middle of the night his barking father wakes up the young man: "get your tablets, write, boy, do not fall asleep, prepare lawsuits, study closely the red-lettered laws of our ancestors".') The metre supports the meaning well here: the opening words of 189 merely recap the previous lines, but the two final monosyllables (at nunc) begin the process of finger-jabbing which is to follow. We see the young man drowsy on his back (supinum) and the spondees of 190 help to convey the image of him asleep in the dark nights of winter. Line 191 has the bellowing father described with suitably heavy syllables (clamosils) and the metre at once wakes up (as the youth does) with a string off our dactyls. Line 192 has a sequence of four stabbing imperatives and this line is noteworthy for the repeated clash of ictus and accent - the accent is marked with underlining above. This is ideal to convey the rapid fire of instruction which is being hammered into the sleepy youth's brain. The sequence ends with the father's stately enunciation of traditional legislation in the heavy syllables of maforilm leges. 38 VIII. The transmission of the text 39 It is possible to view Juvenal as something of a literary loner in his own time. Unlike writers such as Virgil who quickly became widely read and widely admired, Juvenal went largely unnoticed amongst his contemporaries and only the roughly contemporary poet Martial mentions him by name. This obscurity changed in the latter half of the fourth century, when an edition of his poetry was produced, and he is mentioned and quoted by Servius (the great commentator on Virgil) and the Christian apologist Lactantius (240-320) who cites 10.365-6 approvingly. It is not surprising that the more sententious and censorious lines of Juvenal were music to the ears of anti-pagan Christians. More impressive still, he 38 For more on this topic see Kenney in Braund and Osgood (2012) 124--36. 39 For fuller information on the manuscript tradition see Parker in Braund and Osgood (2012) 137-61, Griffith (1968), Tarrant in Reynolds and Wilson (1984)..

28

Introduction

began to be admired and imitated by poets such asAusonius (AD 310-94) and later on Paulinus and Prudentius - who all saw the poetic worth as well as the proto-Christian potential of the poems and who borrowed and adapted some of Juvenal 's best phrases. Christian apologists such as Jerome and Augustine used his satirical venom as ammunition against pagan immorality, while the historianAmmianus tells us (28.4.14) that he was the poet read by people who do not read poetry - a sentiment which rings true when one reads the opening of Satire 1 with its condemnation of (other) poets' pretentious poetry. The earliest commentary on a text of the poet was produced sometime between AD 350 and 420, and after that time the survival of Juvenal was never in doubt. The transmission of ancient literature was done by laborious and highly fallible copying out by scribes. Errors and variant readings crept into the system and by the time of our earliest manuscript (P) from the ninth century many lines had been corrupted, emended, interpolated or omitted. Interestingly, all the manuscripts of Juvenal break off suddenly at 16.60 and this suggests either that the poet died with his last poem incomplete or else that all the surviving manuscripts rely on one single version of the text which lacked its final pages. There are over 500 extant manuscripts of the poet - a number which shows how much he was read - and they are usually grouped into these categories: Pithoeanus (P) named after the 16th century scholar Pithou (who wrote his name on it) and housed in the Medical School at Montpellier. This is regarded as the most reliable (that is, least prone to error) of the manuscripts. A large number of manuscripts of lesser reliability derive from a different source and are usually referred to as . The central dilemma for any editor of this text is to decide whether to follow P over (as at 14.11, 14.51, 15.61) or over P (as at 13.28, 13.125, 15.18): or sometimes whether they are both wrong and one should adopt a newer reading (e.g. 13.141, 15.104). I have preferred in this edition to produce a readable text wherever possible and indicated in the apparatuscriticus where the text printed is the fruit of modem judgement rather than more ancient sources. Interpolations are also common in ancient poetry: sometimes marginal notes in a text were inserted into the text by the scribe copying it and then found themselves part of the text: this is plausible in passages such as 13.90, 13.153, 14.117. Some

Introduction

29

modem scholars 40 would excise more than others and I have marked up the relevant passages with square brackets but left them in place for readers to make their own judgement. The discovery in 1899 of the 'Oxford fragment' of 34 hitherto undiscovered lines from Satire 6 is still argued over: was this a page of real Juvenal which had fallen out of the archetype or was it the work of a skilled forger? For this edition I have relied heavily on the textual work of others. The text is largely that of Clausen, with such emendations as I have thought preferable to his readings. I have made use of the sigla which appear in the OCT throughout this book.

40

See Tarrant (1987) 297; Courtney (1975).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbreviations Allen, J. H. and Greenough, J. B., New Latin Grammar (New York, 2006). CAH The Cambridge Ancient History (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2000). Corpus Inscriptionum Latinorum (1853-). CIL K-S Kuhner, R. and Stegmann, C., Ausfiihrliche Grammatik der Lateinischen Sprache (Hannover, 1971). K.RS Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E. and Schofield, M., The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1983). LS Long, A. A. and Sedley, D. N., The Hellenistic Philosophers (2 vols, Cambridge, 1987). LSJ Liddell, H. G. and Scott, R., A Greek-English Lexicon (9th edn, Oxford, 1968). OCD The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn). OLD The Oxford Latin Dictionary. AG

Editions of Juvenal consulted Braund, S. M. (1996)Juvenal Satires Book 1 (Cambridge). Braund, S. M. (2004) Juvenal and Persius (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library)). Clausen, W. V. (1992) A. Persi Flacci et D. /uni Iuvenalis Saturae (Oxford Classical Text). Courtney, E. (1980, repr. 2013) A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (California). Duff, J. D. (rep. 1975) Juvenal Satires (Cambridge). Ferguson, J. (1979) Juvenal the Satires (London). Godwin, J. (2016) Juvenal Satires Book IV (Liverpool). Hardy, E. G. ( 1963) The Satires of Juvenal (London). Housman, A. E. (1931) D. lunii luvenalis Saturae (Cambridge). Mayor, J.E. B. (1886-89) Thirteen Satires of Juvenal (London). Ramsay, G. G. (1918) Juvenal and Persius (London). Stramaglia, A. (2008) Giovenale, Satire 1, 7, 12, 16. Storia di un poeta (Bologna, Patron Editore ). Willis, J. (1997) Iuuenalis Saturae (Stuttgart, Teubner).

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JUVENAL SATIRES BOOKS

SATIRE XIII [exemplo quodcumque malo committitur, ipsi displicet auctori. prima est haec ultio, quod se iudice nemo nocens absoluitur, improba quamuis gratia fallaci praetoris uicerit uma.] quid sentire putas homines, Caluine, recenti de scelere et fidei uiolatae crimine? sed nee tarn tenuis census tibi contigit, ut mediocris iacturae te mergat onus, nee rara uidemus quae pateris: casus multis hie cognitus ac iam tritus et e medio fortunae ductus aceruo. ponamus nimios gemitus. flagrantior aequo non debet dolor esse uiri nee uolnere maior. tu quamuis leuium minimam exiguamque malorum particulam uix ferre potes spumantibus ardens uisceribus, sacrum tibi quod non reddat amicus depositum? stupet haec qui iam post terga reliquit sexaginta annos Fonteio consule natus? an nihil in melius tot rerum proficis usu? magna quidem, sacris quae dat praecepta libellis, uictrix fortunae sapientia, ducimus au tern hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda uitae nee iactare iugum uita didicere magistra. quae tarn fausta dies, ut cesset prodere furtum, perfidiam, fraudes atque omni ex crimine lucrum quaesitum et partos gladio uel pyxide nummos?

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1-4 deleuit Reeve, post 195 transposuit Richards 4 fallaci: PG Seruius in Aeneid vi.431: fallacis :urna PSU Seruius ibid: urnam :fallacem ... urnam Markland 5 homines U, Ribbeck: omnes P 13 malorum PAGKTU:laborum FHLOZ 18 an PSAGU: at :ut K proficis :proficit PSL".usu P: usus KVat.281017 19 quidem PAFGU: equidem 23 fausta Markland: festa codd.: furtum Nisbet: furem codd.

SATIRE XIII [Anything which is done which sets a bad example does not please the one who does it. This is the first punishment: nobody who is guilty is acquitted in his own judgement, even though the wicked favour of the praetor has prevailed by means of a lying um.] What, Calvinus, do you think people feel about the recent crime and the charge of trust abused? But then you happen to have an estate which is not so tiny that the burden of a moderate loss would sink you, and we see that what you are suffering is not a rare occurrence. This misfortune is well-known to many people and is by now a threadbare subject taken from the middle of fortune's pile. Let us set aside excessive moaning. A man's pain ought not to be more fiery than is right, nor be bigger than the injury itself. You can scarcely bear a tiny, minuscule speck of misfortune, however light it is, as you blaze inside with guts bubbling up, all because a friend is not giving back to you a sum entrusted to him which was under divine protection. Is this a source of astonishment to one who has put sixty years behind him, one born in the consulship of Fonteius? Or do you derive no benefit from the experience of so much life? Great indeed is Philosophy - who gives us instructions in her sacred little books - the lady who overcomes fortune, but we reckon these men also to be fortunate, who have learned from their teacher Life to bear life's discomforts without throwing off the yoke. What day is so auspicious that it gives up on uncovering theft, treachery, deceit - and gain pursued by means of every crime, cash generated by the sword or the drug-box?

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rari quippe boni, numera, uix sunt totidem quot Thebarum portae uel diuitis ostia Nili. nona aetas agitur peioraque saecula ferri temporibus, quorum sceleri non inuenit ipsa nomen et a nullo posuit natura metallo. nos hominum diuomque fidem clamore ciemus quanto Faesidium laudat uocalis agentem sportula? die, senior bulla dignissime, nescis quas habeat ueneres aliena pecunia? nescis quern tua simplicitas risum uulgo moueat, cum exigis a quoquam ne peieret et putet ullis esse aliquod numen templis araeque rubenti? quondam hoe indigenae uiuebant more, priusquam sumeret agrestem posito diademate falcem Satumus fugiens, tune cum uirguncula Iuno et priuatus adhuc Idaeis luppiter antris; nulla super nubes conuiuia caelicolarum nee puer Iliacus formonsa nee Herculis uxor ad cyathos et iam siccato nectare tergens bracchia Volcanus Liparaea nigra tabema; prandebat sibi quisque deus nee turba deorum talis ut est hodie, contentaque sidera paucis numinibus miserum urguebant Atlanta minori pondere; nondum imi sortitus triste profundi imperium Sicula toruos cum coniuge Pluton, nee rota nee Furiae nee saxum aut uolturis atri

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numera PU: numero AHKOT: numerum FLUZ: innumerum G nona !) but also has the colloquial sense 'away with you!', 'enough' as in Horace Epistles 2.2.205. 213-214 you will be outclassed: the son's superior avarice to that of his father is compared to the superiority of warrior sons to their fathers in the age of the Trojan War in what is a ludicrous comparison: cf. Ovid Met. 15.855-6 for this sort of comparison. Ajax was the son ofTelamon, ruler of Salamis, while Achilles was the child of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis. In the latter case it had actually been prophesied that the son of Thetis would be greater than his father (Pindar Isthmian 8.35, Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 768, Ovid Met. 11.221-265), while in the former case things are less simple: Ajax declares in Sophocles (Ajax 434--6:) 'my father came home

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from this land of Ida bearing every kind of fame (eu1CA£1av), after winning the finest prize for courage in the army' (on which see Finglass (2011) ad loc. and cf. also Ajax 465) while Ajax himself takes his own life unable to look his father in the eye (Soph. Ajax 462-5) and feeling that he has not lived up to his father's example. Undoubtedly in Homer's Iliad Ajax cuts a heroic figure and is several times (2.768, 7.289, 13.321, 17.279) named as the greatest fighter among the Greeks after Achilles, while J. mentions Ajax as 'defeated' in 10.84. The names are listed in chiastic order here, with the sons framing the fathers, and there is neat variatio in praeteriit and uicit (for the metaphorical use of praeteriit as meaning 'surpassed' see OLD s.v. 'praetereo' 3). 215-6 Go easy on the young: parcendum est teneris harks back to Virgil's advice to farmers (Georgics 2.363) on how to tend young plants. The phrasing here is highly moralistic and rhetorical: for the metaphor of 'filling the bone-marrow' cf. OLD s.v. 'medulla' 2b and contrast a more literal use at 8.90: for the uses and meaning of medulla see further Watson (2003) on Horace Epode 5.37. Here the marrow is not yet filled with the evils of adult criminality where the two words denoting evil (mala nequitiae) are juxtaposed for effect. 216-17 beard cut: the youth's young adulthood is marked by his clipping his beard: the first beard was cut and kept as a memento when the youth assumed the toga uirilis (see e.g. 3.186, Petronius Satyricon 29, Suetonius Caligula 10, Nero 12.4 for the depositio barbae). Young men are said to have kept trimmed beards until the white hairs of middle age (at about 40) and thereafter gone clean-shaven (see the barbatuli iuuenes of Cicero ad Att. 1.14.5.3-4) and this suits the language of the present passage, where cultri suggests shears for trimming rather than a razor for close shaving (see OLD s.v. 'culter' Id). The verb ponere is Markland's emendation of the manuscript reading pectere ('to comb') and is well attested with the meaning of 'to have cut': see OLD s.v. 'pono' 6b and cf. Horace Ars Poetica 297-8, Suetonius Caligula 5. pectere would mean that the lad's beard has grown to a great length and so invited combing before shearing to protect the face beneath it: this is perhaps unlikely in the relatively brief period between puberty and the depositio barbae. For more on the Roman attitude towards shaving see 14.12n., Paoli (1990) 108-10: for the change in facial fashion of the bearded emperor Hadrian (not reflected in J.) see Anderson (1955). Elsewhere (8.165-6) J. regards the first beard as the time to cease from youthful folly, while here it is seen as the entry to adult misbehaviour:

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allowing the beard to grow was one sign of the philosopher (e.g. Horace Satires 2.3.35) although facial growth also was a mark of 'primitive rusticity' (Courtney on 4.103). 217 to let: admittere has the meaning here 'to allow the access of' (cf. 4.64, OLD s.v. 'admitto' 6a). longae is the reading of P and (if correct) would have to be taken as dative understanding barbae from barbam in 216: 'to allow the blade of the knife to it long'. It cannot be genitive as culter is masculine in gender, and 'sreading longi (genitive agreeing with cultri) is preferable. 218-9 lying witness: the future misbehaviour cited here is that of lying on oath as a witness (testis) and doing so even though the rewards are small (summal exigua) and the oath is sworn by a major deity. The points are enhanced by the enjambement of exigua (his price is small) and by the et suggesting that he would perjure himself 'even' before Ceres. Ceres was the Roman goddess of agriculture, parallel to the Greek deity Demeter (see Beard, North and Price (1998) vol. 1 p.70, OCD s.v.'Ceres') and an oath by her was especially binding as she presided over mysteries (see Braund (1996) on 3.144). 219 touching the altar of the god while swearing an oath made the oath even more binding: see 13.89n., 3.144-5, Plautus Rudens 1333--4, Horace Epistles 2.1.16, Herodotus 8.123, Demosthenes On the Crown 134. Here the oath is strengthened further by the touching of the foot of the statue of the goddess as well as her altar. The symbolic significance of this may be that of voluntarily submitting to the power of the god (see OLD s.v. 'pes' 7c): alternatively there may be a hint at the erotic significance of touching the foot (OLD s.v. 'pes' 3c, Ovid Amores 1.4.16) which adds a further touch of shamelessness to this perjurer's behaviour. 220-224 daughter-in-law ... dowry: a shocking statement: J. alleges that a husband will murder a wealthy wife for her dowry. If a wife died then the dos profecticia (that is, the dowry which the paterfamilias gave to his daughter) returned to the paterfamilias (after deductions for children - one-fifth per child). dos adventicia (which was a dowry given to her by other people such as kinsmen: see Treggiari (1991) 343) was kept by the widower, unless the donor had stipulated for its return - which then made it dos recepticia (Treggiari ( 1991) 351). Of course the short life-expectancy of men in Roman times would make it likely that there would be fewer surviving patresfamilias when a woman died and in these cases (when the wife's father had already died) then the dowry would be kept by the

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widower (see Treggiari (1991) 350-51, Crook (1967) 105). In cases of divorce, by contrast, a wife would need to recover her dowry both to give to her next husband and to support herself in the meantime - considerations which would not apply in the case of death, which helps to support J. 's assumption that the wife would be murdered. The vignette is ideal material for the satirist to exploit and is paralleled in the courts - see for example the rich, old and ugly wife of Aris in Cicero (Pro Scauro 7), who met a very convenient death by hanging - a death which looked like suicide but might well have been murder. Aris, says Cicero, 'did not wish to stay married as she (his wife) was hideous but he also did not want to divorce her because of her dowry' (see on this Treggiari (1991) 330-31). Many authors commented that men married a wealthy woman for her money and these uxores dotatae then exercised control over their gold-digging husbands as the dowry would have to be returned if the marriage ended (see e.g. 6.136-41, Horace Odes 3.24.19-20, Plautus Asinaria 87, Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1161al-2 ('sometimes women with an inheritance rule over men'), Martial 8.6.1-3). The scathing image of the hen-pecked husband is here replaced by one who marries to get his hands on the dowry and kills the wife to secure it: cf. Persius 2.14. 220-1 dead: elatam (from effero) simply means 'carried out' but here has the sense of 'carried out for her funeral' (see OLD s.v. 'effero 1' 3 and cf. 1.72, 6.175, 6.567, Martial 8.43.1, Horace Satires 2.5.85 and cf. the same meaning of Greek e1ecpepco ). uestra suggests that the son is still living his father and so the new bride will be sharing the home of her father-in-law. The force of the sentence is increased with the words iam ... si ... subit she is 'already' dead if she (so much as) enters the threshold accompanied by (cum) the fatal dowry. Crossing the threshold was the mark of a new marriage and the doorposts were decorated lavishly (see Watson and Watson (2014) on 6.51-2) before the bride was carried over the threshold by her attendants (Treggiari (1991) 168). subeo can simply mean 'go underneath' and so 'go through the doorway' (as at 6.419) but elsewhere (2.88) J. uses the simple verb intrant for this action of entering a house and subit may bear a more sinister sense of 'undergo' (OLD s.v. 'subeo' 4) as in 6.592, 6.652 as well as sexual submission (2.50). This joins well with the compound adjective mortifera (literally 'death-bringing' from mors +fero) to suggest the innocent sacrificial victim being murdered. For the compound adjective cf. 4.113, 9.95, 10.10, Lucretius 6.1138: J. elsewhere has similar forms such as letifero (4.56) and umbrifero (10.194). The lethal force of the dowry is

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well conveyed by the joining of this ponderous adjective to the dissyllabic dote - so much harm from so small a word. 221-2 fingers ... strangle: the husband is imagined strangling his bride, with the girl verbally enveloped by the murderous fingers (quibus ... digitis) which frame the sentence. The daughter-in-law (nurus) of 220 is now simply 'her' (ilia). For premo in the specific sense of 'throttle, strangle' see 6.621, OLD s.v. 'premo' 26: the detail per somnum (cf. Lucretius 4.1018, Virgil Aeneid 3.633, 5.636 Martial 11.46.1) adds vivid colour to the narrative by depicting the murder as taking place while the victim is asleep. 222--4 Whatever you think ... : J. postulates a contrast between the addressee (the father) who thinks wealth should be acquired by effort and the son (abruptly referred to as illi) who has a faster route (breuior uia) to riches. The difficulty of obtaining wealth by seeking it abroad is well conveyed by the heavy syllables of the gerundive adquirenda (cf. 114-6n., 125, 238) and by the polysyndetic epic phrase terraque marique (often used of accumulated dangers or triumphs: cf. Lucretius 3.837, 5.219, 6.678, Virgil Aeneid 10.162, Livy 33.39.6, Lucan 1.201,AugustusRes Gestae 13). Here the epic journey and risk is contrasted with a 'shorter route' depicted briefly in five (mostly light) syllabes (breuior ula). 224 there is no ... crime: another of J. 's sweeping generalisations (sententiae) as at: 1.74, 2.8, 2.47, 3.152-3, 10.22, 11.208, 13.191-2, 14.1767. The sentiment contrasts the honest toil of the father with the quick fix of the criminal son and assumes that theft is easy, using juxtaposition to contrast nullus and magni. The genitive case of sceleris is possessive: crime has many attributes perhaps but hard work is not one of them. 224-5 'I never told him ... ': J. puts words into the mouth of his interlocutor as at (e.g) 153-5, with his denial emphasised by the pair of strong verbs (mandaui ...suasi) framing line 225, as well as the four heavy spondees of mandaur dfces olfm nee. olim means here 'one day' in the future as at Horace Epodes 3.1, Satires 1.4.137, Ars Poetica 387-8, Virgil Aeneid 1. 20, 289-90 (see OLD s.v. 'olim' 3): elsewhere in J. it refers to the past (e.g. 3.163, 4.96, 5.110, 6.42, 6.157, 8.98, 9.17, 10.142, 11.77, 14.180: see OLD s.v. 'olim' 1,2). 226 the cause ... you: a strikingly inelegant line metrically, with final monosyllable and clash of ictus and accent in the last two words, suggestive perhaps of the finger-wagging indignation of the speaker. For the censorious phrasing cf. Livy 28.27 .11, Tacitus Annals 4.1.5 and for the thought that children's behaviour all down to the parents cf. Seneca Ep. 115.11. Here the son's condition is classed as insanity ('a bad mind' (mentis ... malae))

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as at Terence Andria 164, Catullus 15.14, 40.1, Seneca Medea 4~7, de Ben. 3.27.2, Tibullus 2.5.104: the opposite term bona mens indicates 'sanity' at Seneca de Beneficiis 2.14.3, Ovid Fasti 4.366. For the collocation of causa and origo as parallel terms cf. Cicero Orator 174.6, 177, Ovid Metamorphoses 15.68-9, Apuleius Apologia 10.3.18, Tacitus Germania 9.2.2: the effect here is to heighten the emphasis and extend the weight of the accusation being levelled throughout this line at the monosyllabic culprit te (you). source: origo always occurs at the end of the line in Lucretius, Ovid and Virgil, unlike here: penes means 'in the hands of' (OLD s.v. 'penes' 3). 227-232 Whoever ... : another sententia (see 224n.) generalising about anyone who seeks wealth before rounding once again on the addressee with second-person verb and pronoun (reuoces ... te). The imagery of the son in his runaway chariot hints possibly at the myth of Phaethon who took the chariot of his father the sun-god. For the thought cf. Seneca Epistles 115.11 ('our parents made us impressed by gold and silver, and avarice instilled in the young has settled more deeply and grown with us'). 227 The sentiment is given added weight by the heavily spondaic rhythm. For census as 'property' or wealth see 175-6n., 10.13.praecipio here means 'instruct' (OLD s.v. 'praecipio' 5b, cf. praecepta at 14.189, 15.107) or even 'recommend' (cf. 14.15-6, OLD s.v. 'praecipio' 6)-the word monitu in 228 picks up both senses. 228 brings up: there is a sharp change of tense from the perfectpraecepit to the present tenses producit ... dat ... effundit suggesting that the previous instruction leads to the present (unintended and unwelcome) state of affairs, as at 12.62-7. laeuo (literally 'left-side') here means 'harmful, pernicious' (OLD s.v. 'laeuus' 5: cf. 6.495). 229 This line is not found in and is bracketed as suspect by Mayor (who calls it 'doubtless spurious'), Clausen, Willis and Braund, but accepted as sound by many other editors. It is, after all, possible for the omission to be the result of homoeoarchon, as line 228 and 229 both begin with the same word and a scribe could easily have confused them: and the line is apt in the context as this avaricious father has sons who aim to double their patrimonia. The argument of the context also requires the sons' career to be one of crime as well as simply avarice (spoliare 237). Duff prints the lines as they stand, seeing the whole as two balanced clauses of relative clause (quisquis ... amorem - et qui ... conduplicari) followed by principal clause (et ... auaros - dat ... curriculo ), reading the sentence as simply 'whoever

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has instilled the love of great wealth, also (et) brings up avaricious boys, and who (has instructed, understanding praecepit from 237) them to have their estates doubled by fraud, he gives them free rein ... '. This is awkward: the passive infinitive conduplicari is found nowhere else in Latin (although the verb is found with diuitias in Lucretius 3.70 and cf. Persius 6.78 rem duplica) and the need to use praecepit to govern it is also hard to accept: Housman notes that understandingpraecepit makes per fraudes difficult- it would mean that the father deliberately makes his sons criminals, while the sense of the lines is that the father produces sons who imitate his avarice and turn to crime to fund this, an unintended consequence of his fatherly example and one which is adduced to deter the reader from avarice in the first place. Housman suggests that a line has dropped out after 229 and writes:

et qui, per fraudes patrimonia conduplicari

('and who, when they see their inheritance doubled by fraud, long for their own to be doubled in this way also.') which spells out the meaning of the passage in rhetorical style: and the omission can be explained by homoeoteleuton. The meaning envisaged is however difficult as the whole clause has to be taken as parallel to auaros - not just miserly but also ready to imitate crime - leaving the father as the singular subject of dat in 230. I follow Green and Ferguson in reading:

quippe et per fraudes patrimonia conduplicare suggested by Amyx (1941). This would make dat libertatem the main verb governing the infinitive, and this has many precedents (Amyx cites Propertius 3.15.4, Virgil Aen. 3.670 and 8.591, Statius Thebaid 3.311 and 10.792; and compares the use of copiam dare at Catullus 65.366 and Virgil Aeneid 9.482). 230-231 Most editors take curriculo as meaning chariot (OLD s.v. 'curriculum' 5): the word is in the dative case with effundit habenas as at Virgil Aeneid 6.1, Ovid Metamorphoses 1.280. Editors notice that the masculine relative quem must refer to the son rather than to the chariot as curriculum is neuter - although a masculine form curriculus is also found in the grammarians (see OLD s.v.'curriculum'). This seems an unnecessary distinction as it is clearly a person who will respond to being 'called back'

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rather than a thing (as Virgil notes in Georgics 1.514) and the chariot is only serving as a metaphor for the son. 231-2 If you call him back: the metaphor of the chariot-race continues, with the appropriate terms revoces (to recall the riders after a false start (OLD s.v. 'reuoco' 2, as at Ovid Amores 3.2.73)), subsistere (to stop running: see OLD s.v. 'subsisto' 3b), rapitur ('is swept along' or better races on as at Silius 1.134, 2.172, with a faint echo of the more literal sense of rapio ('I seize, steal') which fits the context) and metis (the turning-posts around which chariots had to pass to return up the track: see OLD s.v. 'meta' 2, Paoli (1990) 251, OCD s.v. 'horse- and chariot-races'). 232 ignoring you . . . behind: the line is elegantly constructed around the central strong present indicative verb rapitur, with both 'you' and the 'turning-posts' abandoned - albeit in different ways. The turning-posts were the crucial and critical elements in the race: if the chariot went too close to one it might well crash and wreck all chances of victory, whereas if the chariot passed too widely then it would give another driver the chance to undertake and seize the lead. relictis here focalises the exultant speed of the driver who has successfully negotiated the tum and left the posts (safely) behind. ignoring: contempto marks a sour point - the son who perhaps owes everything to his father is now full of contempt for him and has left him in disgust. 233--4 Nobody ... more latitude: a nice example of a sententia couched in both negative and then positive terms. No criminal will be satisfied if he only sins as much as you let him (and no more) - in fact everyone makes greater allowances for himself [than he makes for others]. The idea that we are more indulgent with our own faults than we are with those of others is found also in Horace Satires 1.3.20-37 - although Horace recommends that friends, just as parents and lovers do, should treat others with more indulgence, which uses this point of self-knowledge for different ends (see Gowers (2012) 119-120). J. is here remarking on the way in which children will push boundaries and so seek to break whatever limits parents set them: delinquere is found at Horace Satires 1.3.84 in the general sense of 'doing wrong'. tantum ... quantum is a neat correlative: 'so much' crime 'as much' as you (the addressee/reader) may allow, with the verb permittas emphasised in enjambement. When we read the plural verb indulgent we have to understand 'people' or 'all of us' from the negative nemo in 233. 234 give ... latitude: for sibi indulgere used of giving oneself license to

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misbehave cf. 6.283, OLD s.v. 'indulgeo' 3b, Cicero de legibus 1.39, Horace Odes 2.2.13. latius (the comparative adverb from latus) usually has a spatial sense (as at e.g. Horace Odes 2.2.9, 3.1.9) but here more plausibly has the metaphorical sense of 'latitude' involving 'grossness' of behaviour (cf. OLD s.v. 'latus' 1 5c). 235-238 When you tell ... : telling your son that generosity is stupid is tantamount to teaching him to rob and cheat, a message reinforced by the similarity of language (dicis ... doces) but not one which is in itself cogent as it conflates the tight-fisted with the criminal. The argument's force relies on the assumption of 233-4 that the young will always go beyond the limits we set them. 235 tell a young man: the scene, as Duff points out, is familiar from Roman comedy where the father advises his son against being generous to spendthrift friends (e.g. Plautus Trinummus 2.2). friend: amico is in emphatic position at the end of the line: giving money to strangers might be rash, but most people would assume that giving to one's friends, either in a spirit of mutual support (see e.g. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 8.1155) or as an expression of the love which underpins true friendship (see e.g. Seneca Ep. 9.8) is all part of the meaning of friendship. The word amicus of course has a social and political sense in Latin which includes 'partisan' and 'supporter' (OLD s.v. 'amicus' 3) and in this ethically diluted sense J.'s words have more of a ring of truth, especially as the next line reduces the amicus to a propinquus. The Latin is slightly elliptic: we have to understand cum dicis iuueni stultum qui .... 236 relative: propinquus means originally 'neighbouring' but came also to mean 'closely related' as at 8.219, 13.207, 14.6, OLD s.v. 'propinquus' 4. The line is elegantly and expressively phrased, with the heavy syllables of paupertatem at once lifted by the two short syllables of leuet and with the neat doublet variation of leuet attollatque - for this combination cf. Virgil Aeneid 4.690, Livy 21.58.9.3, Seneca Ep. 65.16.3, 117.19. For the idea of poverty as a heavy condition needing to be 'lifted' cf. Ovid Met. 8.633-4, Seneca Dialogi 12.12.1, Tacitus Annals 2.48.11. 23 7-8 to rob, to defraud and to use: there is a pleasing tricolon crescendo here of infinitive phrases beginning with et and dependent on doces: (1) et spoliare ... (2) et circumscribere (3) et omni/ crimine diuitias adquirere. circumscribo commonly has the meaning defraud as here: see 10. 222, 15.136, Seneca Ep. 97.11, OLD s.v. 'circumscribo' 6, 'circumscriptor', 'circumscriptio' 4. crimine here must mean crime (as 8.166, 13.24, OLD

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s.v. 'crimen' 4) rather than 'charge' (OLD s.v. 'crimen' 1): the whole phrase is close in meaning to 13.24-5. 238-9 the Decii: Publius Decius Mus and his son (with the same name) both died willingly to save the Roman army: the father in 340BC fighting the Latins (Livy 8.9.8) and the son in 295 fighting the Samnites (Livy 10.28.15). Both of them offered their lives in a ceremony called deuotioin which a man offered his life to the gods of the underworld in exchange for the safety of the state: this patriotic self-immolation of the Decii became the stuff of legend - see 8.254, Cicero Rab. Post.2, de natura deorum 3.15, Sest. 48, Virgil Aeneid 6.824. For more on deuotio see OCD s.v. 'deuotio', Beard, North and Price (1998) vol. 1, 35-36, 111, vol. ii, 157-58, Versnel (1976), Janssen (1981). There is proud alliteration of p_atriae... p_ectore.quarum picks up diuitias and we have to understand quantus as correlative to an implied tantus, thus: quarum amor

in te quantus erat.. .. 240-243 These lines refer to legends of the Greek city of Thebes. Cadmus the Phoenician killed a dragon which was guarding a spring sacred to the god Ares near Thebes, whereupon Athene told him to sow the teeth of this dead dragon (anguis); he did so, and men sprang up fully armed out of the furrows. These men were the 'Sparti' ('sown men') and Cadmus then had to defeat them in battle. He did so by tricking them and all but five were killed: these five became (with Cadmus) the founders of the city. Menoeceus was a descendant of these Sparti and when the prophet Tiresias told the city that the plague which was killing them required the sacrifice of one descended from the Sparti, he threw himself over the city-walls. His grandson (also called Menoeceus) stabbed himself when Tiresias made the same demand to rid the city of the invading army from Argos (see Apollodorus 3.6.7.7, Euripides Phoenissae 905-1018, 1090-2, Statius Thebaid 10.628-782, Cicero TusculanDisputations 1.116.14). 240 if Greece is not lying: si Graecia uera reminds us that in J.'s eyes Greeks are habitual liars: see 10.174 (Graecia mendax), 3.86-108 and cf. Pliny N.H. 5.4.2. The distancing of the author from his story allows him to embellish the following lines with expressive language without appearing to be gullible in believing them. Lines 241-3 were regarded as spurious by Knoche and Markland and are marked as suspect by Willis and Braund but are plausible when seen as the poet both maintaining his scepticism and also producing parody of the sort of mythological epic which he attacked in the opening of Satire 1 ( 1.1-13 ). For an earlier epic handling of this tale see Ovid Metamorphoses 3.104-110.

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241 furrows . . . teeth: there is a pleasing immediacy about the sudden appearance from out of the combination of furrows (sulcis) and teeth (dentibus) of legiones:not just people, but men fonned into armed ranks. dentibus is an ablative of source (AG §403a, KS Il.1.375-6) common with verbs such as nascor: cf. 4.140, 6.12, 8.259, 13.142, Horace Odes 1.1.1, VirgilAeneid 2.74. quonm, is masculineand so cannotbe picking up Thebas (which is feminine):it has to be read as WlderstandingThebanornm. 242-3 with their shields:the surprise of 241 is repeated here with the men being 'born with shields', recalling the birth of Athene fully armed from the head of Zeus in Greek mythology. The warfare is conveyed in epic language:for be/la capessuntcf. StatiusAchilleid 1.467,Silius Punica 1.313, 7.325, 9.611, 10.58, Livy 26.25.5, 45.22.11, Vrrgil Aeneid 3.234 (am,a capessant)), and the adverb continuo (at onte) is emphasised in enjambementin the next line (cf. Lucretius4.284, 345, VirgilAeneid 9.118, 11.810,Lucan 1.315 for this effect). The epic languageof the sentenceis then deflatedwith the batheticimage of the trumpeter.The tubicen was the trumpeter who signalled the start of the battle (see 1.169, 15. 52, 15.157,VrrgilAeneid 11.424,Ovid Met. 3.705, Donaldson(1988)) and the quasi-plausiblecommentis clearly satirisingthe whole incidentwith a caricatureof the trumpeterarising from the furrow. 244-5 For the metaphor of spa1·ks(scintillas)producingthe fl1·e(ignem) cf. V1rgilAeneid 12.102 (with Tarrant (2012) ad loc.). It is more effective here as scintillais also used by itself of incipientcharactertraits (e.g. Cicero de Finibus 5.43.12,de republica2.37.11:the image is used and explainedby SenecaEp. 94.29.3).The two lines operate as a form of tricolon crescendo: the fire is introduced(ergo ignem), then explained(cuius...dedistz)and then given a whole line to rampage over everything(flagrantem....uidebis).The expansivephrasingofjlagrantemlatemirroredin rapientemcunctaenactsthe fire spreadingover the line, and the two linesboth end with a personalsecondperson verb makingit clear that the addresseewill sufferwhat he has caused. 246 lenlenty be shown:parcetur is an impersonalpassive - parco is an intransitiveverb and so cannot be used in the personal passive (AG §208d) - and misero is to be understoodwith tibi. 246--7 Don-tub:the metaphor changes to that of a lion cub which grows up to destroy its own master.The image is an old one, found memorablyin AeschylusAgamemnon717-36 and used of the young generalAlcibiadesby Aristophanes(Frogs 1431-2): cf. also Theocritus 5.38 (see Gow (1950) ad loc.), Palatine Anthology 9.47, Lucan 4. 237-42, Martial Spectacles 10.1.

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Callicles in Plato ( Gorgias 483e5-6) alludes to this fable and his whole speech is a celebration of the powerful beast throwing off the shackles of education and law. For the rearing of lion-cubs see 7.75, Herodotus 3.32.1. Here the language is well chosen to elicit the reader's response: the person who is nominally the master (magistrum) is afraid (trepidum) and the juxtaposition of the words enhances the irony - and in cauea is nicely ironic also, in that the master is himself imprisoned by his own prisoner. The status of the lion as his pet (alumnus) is left to the end of the line and the sentence for maximum effect, and magno fremitu suggests the fearful qualities which made this lion both a wonderful beast to show off to his guests and also a terrifying animal to be eaten by. The ease with which this magister is dispatched is shown in the short two-syllable verb which kills him: toilet means here 'murder, despatch' (see OLD s.v. 'tollo' 13) but the word also connotes 'picking up' and so we have this sketch of the massive beast simply hoisting the master aloft to his death. cauea can mean either 'cage' (OLD s.v. 'cauea' 1) or 'arena' (OLD s.v. 4): the latter meaning would only make sense if this master had reared an animal for himself to fight in public and many translators opt for 'den'. Interestingly the manuscript reads in caueam which gives a graphic sense of the lion taking the master 'into the den' but raises the obvious question of how the lion can both drag and roar (magno fremitu) simultaneously. 248 mathematicis can mean 'mathematician' (OLD s.v. 'mathematicus' 1) but its common secondary meaning is astrologer as at 6.562, Seneca Apocolocyntosis 3.2, Petronius 76.10, Suetonius Nero 40.2: the two meanings conflate presumably because of the calculation involved in producing a horoscope, as in the case of Thales who allegedly predicted an eclipse by calculation (Herodotus 1.74). If the astrologers know the date of birth (genesis, ')'EVEcr~), they can work out the position of the seven known planets at the time and thus construct a horoscope. Interest in astrology was huge in the ancient world, as is seen in works such as Manilius' Astronomica, and it was taken as serious science by many rather than superstition (see Watson and Watson (2014) on 6.553-6). Petronius' Trimalchio has a 'zodiac dish' as part of his banquet and pronounces on astrological matters with pseudo-authority (Satyricon 35, 39) and astrology was seen as dangerous enough to have astrologers expelled from Rome periodically (see 6.562-4) especially if they predicted the death or downfall of the emperor (see Tacitus Annals 3.22): Tacitus describes (Histories 1.22) astrologers as 'a race of men treacherous to the powerful, quick to deceive the hopeful, a race which in

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our society will always be banned and will always also be retained' and such men were indeed banished in 33 BC, AD 17 (Tacitus Annals 2.32.3), AD 52 (TacitusAnnals 12.52.3) and again thereafter (see Cramer (1951 ). Predicting the date of death (such as J. mentions here) was banned by Augustus in AD 11 (Dio 56.25.5), although Augustus himself was impressed by the astrologer Theo genes who fell at his feet in homage of his future (Suetonius Augustus 94.12). Tiberius was famous for his reliance on astrologers (see 10.94 and my note ad loc.): see further OCD s.v. 'astrology'. In this case the son has consulted the astrologer to find out how long his father will live (cf. 3.42--4, 6.565-8, Ovid Met. 1.148) and decides to circumvent fate with a dose of poison to be rid of him sooner. Logically, this is (of course) nonsense. If fate decides what will happen then the time and manner of death cannot be brought forward by any means, but Virgil can still describe Dido's suicide as not one caused by fate but 'before her day' (ante diem (Aeneid 4.696-7)). J. here juxtaposes the Greek terms mathematicis genesis to give both the flavour of expertise and some hint of his distaste for all things Greek, as at 13.121 (where see note). 248-9 co/us denotes the spindle or distaff of the Fates 'from which the thread of each man's life is spun' (OLD s.v. 'colus' 3) and so by extension the fate itself. The word here agrees with tardas: the distaff is slow as it predicts a long time before the father's fated death: the stamen is the thread of life spun by the Fates (OLD s.v. 'stamen' 2b) which is 'broken off' to indicate the length a a man's thread/life. For the imagery of Fate as weaving cf. 10.252, 12.64-6, Homer Iliad 20. 127-8, 24. 209-10 Odyssey 7.196-8, Catullus 64. 306-22, [Tibullus] 3.3.35-6, Horace Odes 2.3.15-16, Lucan 3.19, and note that one of the Fates is called Clotho ('spinner'). The suggestion here is that the thread is only cut off at death: elsewhere (e.g. Horace Epodes 13.15-16) we find the idea that man's fate is determined at birth. graue goes with the infinitive expectare-waiting for the death is 'tedious' or 'oppressive' (OLD s.v. 'grauis' 10). 249 the slow ... thread is: this is an elegant balanced five-word line of A-B-C-B-A structure whereby words referring to future come first and last, technical nouns of the spinning are second and fourth and the central word is the strong future indicative verb morieris (you will die). The participle abrupto is held over to the next line in a splendidly effective enjambement whereby the reader - like the son - has to wait for the death. 250 delaying: moraris (from moror) hints at morieris (from morior) in a

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pointed jingle: you moraris when you should morieris. The heavy syllables and sequence of monosyllables also help to convey the lack of movement in the old man's refusal to die, and the repeated iam in this and the next line also emphasise the tedium. uota are petitionary prayers accompanied by promises to the gods (see 124-5n.). 251 stag-like: the stag - like the crow (10.247 where see my note) - was said to have an unusually long life-span, although this idea was denied by Aristotle (Hist. An. 6.29.578b23) and Pliny (NH.7.153.1), while Cicero (Tuscu/an Disputations 3.69) quotes Theophrastus as lamenting that crows and stags have more life than we are given. The idea was first voiced by Hesiod (fr. 304 M-W) who states that 'the chattering crow lives out nine generations of healthy men, but the stag lives four times the life of a crow'. Here there is a nice contrast between the youth of the son (iuuenem) and the longa ... senectus of the father and the pain of waiting is raised to the level of mental torture (OLD s.v. 'torqueo' 5). 252 Go and find: the message here to the father is that he needs to stock up on medical help and antidotes to poisons if he is to survive his son's impatience: the two imperatives (quaere atque eme) are juxtaposed centrally in the line to suggest the urgency of this need. Archigenes is the famous Syrian doctor mentioned at 13.98 (where see note), while Mithridates' name was attached to a range of antidotes which were popular: Mithridates VI Eupator Dionysus (120-63 BC) was king of Pontus and Rome's most feared enemy in the 1st century BC (see 10.273n.) who protected himself against poison by taking regular small amounts of them to build up his tolerance (Pliny NH. 25.6, Martial 5.76.1-2). These potions are mentioned in the medical literature (Celsus Med. 5.23.3, Galen 14.154-5) and casually alluded to by J. at 6.660-1 (where see Watson and Watson (2014) ad loc.). 253 concocted: the mot juste for putting together such potions was componere (see OLD s.v. 'compono' 7c) and this verb was used by Pliny (NH. 29.24) for the concoction of exactly this substance. 253-4 If you want to ... : instead of simply saying 'if you wish to live' J. uses two poetic paraphrases for 'living to next year' in the form of plucking another fig and handling new roses. Figs fruit in autumn while roses appear in spring and so the hysteron proteron sequence suggests 'if you wish to live till autumn- or even just until the spring ... '. The mention of figs is possibly ironic, as it was said that Livia had poisoned the figs which her husband the emperor Augustus was in the habit of picking, and this was allegedly the cause of his death (Dio 56.30.2) and Horace mentions the first figs along

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with the risk of sudden death in the late summer heat (Epistles 1.7.5). The imagery is very tactile: tractare and decerpere both denote physical handling of the plants. Roses are a symbol of luxury and pleasure (e.g. Horace Odes 1.5.1, 3.19.22, Cicero Tusc. 5.73, Seneca Ep. 36.9, Martial 3.68.5) which gives a clue to the father's wealth which the son wishes to have (see OLD s.v. 'rosa' lb) and which looks forward to the aesthetic pleasure which the next paragraph unfolds (uoluptatem 256). 255 J. 's addressee is a father who needs to fear his son, while Mithridates was both a father and also a king, fearful of being poisoned off his throne, and so he has twice as much reason as the next man to be fearful: for the conflict between parental and political obligations cf. Ovid's tart judgement on King Agamemnon killing his child Iphigenia as rexque patrem uicit ('the king overcame the father' Met. 12.30). Mithridates' son Pharnaces mounted an attack upon his father (Livy Periochae 102, Dio 37.13) and the king ended up asking a Gaul to kill him with a sword as poison would not work. 'sreading aut ... aut ('either (as) a father or (as) a king') makes perfect sense but offers the roles as alternative, whereas the reading preferred here shows that they are simultaneous. 256-302 The dangers incurred in the pursuit of wealth and the folly attached to it. J. introduces this familiar satirical trope with theatrical imagery (2568, 262--4), and examples from Greek tragedy (284-7), viewing the spectacle of human folly in the manner of a member of an audience viewing drama or farce: rather like the way he contrasted the falsity of contemporary epic with the monstrous realities of everyday life in the opening lines of Satire I. The poet moves away from the topic of parental guidance but the sequence of thought is not awkward: if (after all) the adults are going to educate their children they need to see things as they are, and J. is the man to show them. 256 I am showing: the short final syllable of monstro is common in J.: see 153n. and 10.363 for the same word in the same position in the line. 256- 7 you could not match it: the anaphora of nulla ... nulla creates a pair of parellel theatrical venues. First the theatra (plural of theatrum (a transliteration of the Greek 0ta-rpov and usually denoting a space such as the Theatre of Pompey): cf. 6.68, 10.128, 213) and then thepulpita (plural of pulpitum - a wooden stage for public performances and recitations). The two terms are combined in the same way at 3.173--4 (cf. Propertius 4.la.15-16, Horace Epistles 1.19.40-1, Ovid Ars Am. 1.103--4). The praetor was one of the senior officials in Rome: only the two consuls had more power than them in republican Rome (see OCD s.v. 'praetor' and cf. 11.194-5 with my

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note ad loc.) and even under the empire the office was a significant political achievement which enjoyed administrative authority in the lawcourts, the city and the provinces. The urban praetor had the responsibility for organising and paying for the games - which makes lauti (posh or 'wealthy': see 13-14n.) pointed and apt. The style of line 257 is itself bombastic and rhetorical in imitation of the theatrical experience alluded to: note the jingle of aeguare gMeasand the alliteration in Jl_raetoris Jl_ulpita. 258 watch: spectes is chosen rather than (say) uideas to keep the imagery of the theatrical spectator going. risk their lives: capitis (literally 'head') denotes life itself, as in phrases such as capitis damnare ('to sentence to death' e.g. Caesar B.C. 3.83.3, Nepos Pausanias 3.5.1 OLD s.v. 'damno' 1c). discrimen (from discerno and meaning literally 'distinguishing' or 'difference' as at 5.123, 6.301, 10.196, 13.118, 14.203) here means 'crisis' or 'mortal danger' (OLD s.v. 'discrimen' 5: cf. 10.311, 12.24, 12.55, 14.290). For the phrase capitis discrimen cf. Tacitus Germania 12.1, OLD s.v. 'discrimen' 3b). constent here has the meaning 'cost' with the ablative of price discrimine (cf. 6.365, 6.626, 7.45, OLD s.v. 'consto' 11): its subjects are incrementain 259 and also fiscus and nummi in 260. 259 estate: domus (literally 'house') here represents the sum-total of the family wealth, the res domestica,rather than the building. The treasure chest (area) is often mentioned where lavish wealth is under discussion: see 1.90, 3.143, 10.25,11.26, 13.74, Horace Sat. 1.1.67. This one is bronze-lined (aerata) but there may be also a suggestion of the money (aes) it contains. The word multus (agreeing withfiscus) is neatly placed aerata...in areajust as the cash is placed there in real life. 260 fat bag of cash: fiscus properly means the imperial treasury (4.55). Here it denotes the receptacle in which money was kept (OLD s.v. 'fiscus' 2: cf. Seneca Ep. 119.5) but there is also the suggestion of a grandiose fortune being stored. Money was regularly stored in temples and the epithet uigilem (transferred onto the god himself) here suggests that the temple of Castor had guards: this temple was on the south-west side of the Forum in Rome and was often referred to for brevity's sake as 'Castor' even though it was dedicated to both Castor and Pollux, the sons of Zeus and brothers of Helen of Troy. The line is neatly framed by two words for money:.fiscus ... nummi. 261-2 Avenging Mars: there had been a robbery at the temple of Mars (in the Forum Augusti) in which thieves got away with not only the cash deposits but also (quoque)the helmet from the god's statue which (ironically) represented the god's protection in battle - a crime alluded to at 13.151-2,

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where see note. The irony here is that Mars the Avenger (Ultor) could not prevent, let alone avenge, this slight to his godhead and so human guards had to be set in place, an irony brought out by suas - he could not protect his own goods, let alone those of others. Men of wealth had been storing their money with Castor rather than Mars since then. 262-3 you may leave aside: no need for religious festivals if you want drama - look around you. The three festivals mentioned here are: the Floralia (April 28th-May 3rd), the Cerealia (April 12th-19th) and the Ludi Megalenses of Cybele (April 4th-10th): 'with the winter over and the crops sown, April was a good month for festivity' (Balsdon (1969) 246). The Floralia (dedicated to the goddess Flora who was responsible for all things which flower) were (according to the scholiast) famous for using prostitutes to perform naked in something like gladiatorial combat (6.246-67: cf. Ovid Fasti 5.348-55, Valerius Maximus 2.10.8, Seneca Ep. 97.8). The Ludi Cereales (in praise of Ceres the goddess of agriculture, equivalent of the Greek Demeter) held chariot-racing events in the Circus Maximus and also performed dramas by Juvenal's day: Ovid (Fasti 4.681-2) also tells us that on the final day 'foxes were set on fire and released onto the track as an offering to Ceres' (Ash (2007) 226). Cybele was a Phrygian goddess whose worship came to Rome during the Punic Wars in 205-4 BC and who as the Magna Mater (Great Mother) exercised a profound impact on the religious life of the city (see OCD s.v. 'Cybele'). Plays were performed outside her temple on the Palatine, on wooden stages erected for the occasion. It is notable that J. here refers to the festivals by the names of their patron gods and that he refers to the dramas by simply mentioning the stage-curtains (aulaea): this is a neat way of moving from the helmet of Mars in 261 to the curtains of the gods in 263. aulaea were theatre curtains, lowered to reveal the scene and then raised at the end of the performance (see OCD s.v. 'theatre staging, Roman') and cf. the metaphorical use of the term at 10.39. The construction licet + subjunctive to mean 'you may' ( OLD s.v. 'licet' 1c) occurs many times in J. (e.g.1.162, 11.205): usually the construction has a concessive sense ('although' OLD s.v. 'licet' 4) as at 14.12. 264 human ... entertainment: a neat, one-line, verbless chiastic summary to remind the reader of the point being made: understand sunt with the line. There is a neat contrast between work and play here in the juxtaposition of negotia ludi. For the thought cf. Cicero de senectute 11.5 (with Powell (1988) ad loc.), Tacitus Annals 3.18, Horace Epistles 2.1.197-8.

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265-271 J. develops this theme with a detailed contrast of the circus entertainer and the merchant sailor. The circus entertainers are dismissed in two lines of reductive language, while the addressee's situation is spelled out over five lines covering both his personal plight and his mental state. The distinction is harsh and harshly drawn: circus performers were lowclass persons, while many rich men had money invested in trade, for all the disapproval this might elicit (see 142-3n.). For disapproval of the greed and folly of risking one's life in the pursuit of money see 288-91, 12.57-61, Persius 6.75-80, Horace Satires 1.1.29-32, Odes 1.1.11-14, Epode 2.6, Cato de agr. praef 3, Hesiod Works and Days 236-7: J.'s whole description of the storm at sea (12.17-82) is imbued with the same feeling. 265-6 The petaurum was a springboard which was used by acrobats to demonstrate their skills either at dinner-parties (cf. Petronius 53.11-12) or (as here) in public performances. J. reduces the value and the skill of the act by describing it as simply bodies thrown up and his questioning use of a phrase expressing strong delight (oblectant animum: cf. Lucretius 2.363, Cicero Tusc. 3.60, SenecaEp. 117.31) is ironic. Manilius (5.439--443) gives a lively account of the way such acts possibly played out, with a pair of acrobats using the petaurum to launch themselves into the air, alternately rising and falling in a see-saw movement which saw one rise as the other one landed back on the petaurum. Manilius tells us that they varied the excitement by leaping from the petaurum through flaming hoops. It is likely that this sort of flying performer was the famous Icarus who 'at his first attempt fell down close to the imperial couch and spattered the emperor with his blood' (Suetonius Nero 12). 266 Rope was also a common feature of acrobatic performance: and here and at 272 we get a glimpse of the acts concerned. rectum descendere funem suggests walking down a rope which has been pulled tight (rectum: see OLD s.v. 'rectus' la) from a point high up and stretching down to the ground: see Otto (1890) s.v. 'funis' and Horace Epistles 2.1.210 for the idiomatic phrase per extentum funem ire meaning 'to do a difficult task'. Line 272 makes it clear that this was a balancing act. The performer was known as afunambulus - J. uses the exotic Greek term schoenobates (Greek crxoivo~rt'tT)aA09 identified(like the ibis) with the god Thoth: for the enduringfascinationof the ape for the Romansand the link with Egyptsee McDermott(1936). 5 Memnon,as toldin thelostAethiopisofArctinus,wasthedark-skinnedson

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of Dawn (Eos) and Tithonus. He was the handsome (Homer Odyssey 11.522) ruler of Ethiopia (Hesiod Theogony 984-5) who took a force to help the Trojans in the Trojan war. There he killed Greeks such as Antilochus (as recalled by Juvenal at 10.253) who died saving the life of his father Nestor (Pindar Pythian 6.28-42). He was himself killed by Achilles and was honoured after his death: the statues referred to here are the 'Colossi ofMemnon' which were said to make musical sounds when the rising sun's rays hit them- as though Memnon were greeting his mother Dawn (see Pausanias 1.42.2, Pliny NH 36.58, Tacitus Annals 2.61 ). The statue was chopped in half by an earthquake (Strabo 17.1.46) and the most likely explanation of the sounds is that 'after the cold of night the rapid expansion of the loosened stones in the sudden change of temperature caused vibration of the material and air-currents through the cracks' (Courtney). The statue bears the name of the emperor Hadrian who visited the site inAD 130: when the statue was restored inAD 202 by Septimius Severns the musical sounds ceased to happen. See OCD s.v. 'Memnon', Balsdon (1969) 230, Danziger and Purcell (2005) 137. dimidio ... Memnone is most plausibly an ablative absolute but may also convey the sense of ablative of source ('from the split Memnon': see AG§ 403). chordae (another Greek word) are the strings of a musical instrument (as at 3.63, 6.382) which here sound (resonant) spontaneously as they are endowed with supernatural power (see OLD s.v. 'magicus' b)-like the spells of the gaslighting wife at 6.610 or Circe's wand in Valerius Flaccus (7.212). 6 Thebes in Greece famously had seven gates (see 13.27): its namesake in Egypt (called Waset in ancient times: modem Luxor) had one hundred gates and was famed from Homeric times (see Iliad 9.383 where it is termed EKa-r6µ1t1>Aot) to the other end of the classical period (Ammianus 17.4.2, 22.16.2) with a stream of visitors such as Herodotus (2.143). Roman tourists flocked there: Gennanicus in AD 19 (Tacitus Annals 2.60) went to see Thebes and Memnon, and the emperor Hadrian visited the place in November 130 ( CAH xi.144 ). The The bans even reckoned themselves to be the most ancient of all humans (Diodorus Siculus 1.50.1): for evaluation of the facts about Egyptian Thebes see S.West (1988) 201-202 on Homer Odyssey 4.125-7. The city was sacked more than once: by the Assyrian ruler Assurbanipal in 663BC and then by C. Cornelius Gallus in 30/29 BC. razed: obruo often has the sense of 'destroy' or 'bring down' (cf. 10.142) or 'drowned' (14.297): see OLD s.v. 'obruo' 4. The ablative portis is acceptable as ablative of description ('hundred-gated Thebes'): the case throws emphasis onto Thebe itself as being totally destroyed, gates and all.

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7-8 cats . . . flsh . . . dog: the poet gives us a neat tricolon of animals (aeluros ... piscem ... canem) to build up to the blunt nemo Dianam. As commonlyin tricola, the items are listed with anaphora(illic ... hie ... illic) and increasein length: in this case the dog is delayeduntil later in the colon for suspense.Cicero (de legibus 1.32.5)mocks those 'who worshipa dog or a cat as gods'. 1 aelurus is a Greek word (ailoupog for cat, found only here in extant Latin verse and giving the line a more exotic tone than (say)feles would have done. Herodotus(2.67)tells us that cats were mummifiedand buried in sacred chambersin Bubastis- a place which shared its name with the local cat-goddess (see OCD s.v. 'Bubastis'). The 1iver referred to (Jluminis) is presumablythe Nile: Herodotustells us (2.72) that the Egyptiansregard the Nile fish known as lepidotos ( 'with thick scales' (cf. AristotleHA 505a24), identifiedby LSJ with the carp) as sacred - as also the eel. Strabo assures us (17.1.40)-in contradictionto J. -that all Egyptianssharedthis worship. Herodotustells us (2.37) that priests were not allowed to eat any fish (cf. PlutarchMoralia 353d). 8 whole towns •••Diana:the line operatestwo strongcontraststo highlight the differences:oppida Iota versus nemo, and canem versus Dianam. The worship of a divinity in the form of a dog is referred to by Vrrgil(Aeneid 8. 698: the 'barkingAnubis': cf. Propertius3.11.41,OvidMet. 9.690,Apuleius Met. 11.11.4for similar phrasing): see OCD s.v. 'Anubis'. Diana was the Roman goddess of hunting who therefore was mistress of dogs, whereas Egyptiansspurnedthe goddessin favour of the animal. 9 leek . . . onion: onions and leeks were in fact eaten in Egypt as is clear from papyrologicalevidence (see Goelet (2003) 26, Mikhail (2000) 110) and biblical sources (Numbers 11.5): in fact Egyptian priests abstained from onions for practical reasons (Plutarch Moralia 353) as they induce both thirst and weeping. Egypt grew the best leeks accordingto Pliny (NH 19.110),who also tells us (19.101) that Egyptians treated onions and leeks as divine when swearing oaths, perhaps in the sense that they were offered as sacrifice. J. 's phrase here clearly recalls Horace Epistles 1.12.21 ('but whether you butcher fish or leek and onion') where the poet is giving good Epicureanadvice to the discontentedIccius: his point there is probably (as Mayer (1994) 200 puts it) 'fish was a delicacyand onions cheap, so H. may only be saying 'however you choose to treat yourself''. J. is here making the foods into Egyptian divinitiesas lines 10-11 (numina) make clear, with strongwords for the religiousprohibition(nefas) and two phrasesto spell out

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the general act of sacrilege (uiolare: see OLD s.v. 'uiolo' 2 and cf. 11.116, Cicero Tusc. 5.78) and the brutal munching of the crunchy vegetables (frangere morsu - a phrase found also in silver epic such as Lucan 6.114, Valerius Flaccus 2.459, Statius Thebaid 10.417). 10-11 oh what pious folk: J. uses heavy sarcasm here to express mock admiration for the piety of this nation: a piety which will be shattered when he describes their cannibalism later on. Duff suggests that J. is here alluding to the idea that gods revealed themselves to innocent men in innocent times (as in Catullus 64.384-6) but this seems unnecessary as the snarling irony of sanctas is linked with the absurd idea of gods growing in the garden, an absurdity highlighted by the enjambed emphasis of numina and its juxtaposition over the line-break with hortis. 11-12 woolly beasts: Herodotus tells us (2.42) that sheep were sacrificed in the Mendes province but not goats, while in Thebes sheep were sacred and goats were sacrificed, which contradicts J. 's blanket generalisations (abstinet omnis mensa ... nefas illic). The god Mendes was often shown as a ram and the deity was identified by Herodotus with the Greek god Pan (see OCD s.v. 'Mendes'). woolly: for lanatus as a term cf. 8.155: it is comnonly used in agricultural writers (Columella 6.2.4, 7.3.2, 11.2.33) and was the cognomen of the (presumably) downy-haired Menenius Agrippa (Livy 4.13.6). Pliny- like J. here - uses it as a covering term for all woolly animals and describes them as 'the stupidest animals' (NH 8.199). The poet varies and intensifies his language in this couplet, moving from the gentle abstinet ... mensa to the focalised brutality of fetum iugulare. For iugulare used in this sense ('to kill by cutting the throat' OLD s.v. 'iugulo' 1) cf. 12.127, Virgil Aeneid 12.214. kid: for fetus used of the young of an animal cf. 14.78, Lucretius 2.358. Tender young animals were often (but not always) chosen as sacrificial victims (see Virgil Aeneid 12.170 (fetum), Horace Odes 3.13, Ogilvie (1981) 42--43) and J.'s tone here suggests kindly feelings on the part of the Egyptians towards small animals, their smallness brought out in the diminutive capellae - feelings which (he will assert in the blunt and shocking phrase which follows) they do not extend to people. 13 eat ... flesh: uesci (+ ablative) here has the sense of 'devour' (OLD s.v. 'uescor' 2a) as in other celebrated cannibal feasts ( 15.106, Virgil Aeneid 3.622, Livy 23.5, Pliny NH 6.53.5). licet is placed last for emphasis - this abomination is actually permitted. Courtney wisely points out that J. 's inference of the legitimacy of cannibalism from the fact that it had happened was unfair - there are many examples of humans eating human flesh in

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order to smvive - but then satire does not usually aim to be fair and J. will considerthe less reprehensiblecases later (93-116). DiodorusSiculus 1.84.1tells us of cannibalismin Egyptowingto a famine,whereit is clearly justified:morecommonlycannibalismwas threatened(HomerIliad 22.3467, 24.212-213) or practised against one's enemies- Jews in Cyrene who revoltedagainstRomanrule in 115-117AD are saidby Dio (68.32)to have practised cannibalismon their victims, while the legendarylydeus slays and eats the head of his enemyMelanippusin Statius(Thebaid 8.718-66). J. will furnishmore examplesof legendarycannibalismin line 18. 13-15 Ulysseswaswashedashoreat the islandof Scheria(HomerOdyssey books 6-8) and entertainedthereby their king Alcinous:over dinner(super cenam) the hero recountedhis movementssince leavingTroy,a first-person narrativewhich occupiesbooks 9-12 of the Odyssey. dumbstruck:Homer tells us at the end of his story(Odyssey 13.1-2) that his audiencewere 'silent and spell-bound'whichJ. reinterpretsas incredulousastonishment(attonito, placedfirstin the sentence,at the end of the line for emphasisandheightened by the syncopatedrhythm of the final monosyllablecum), although he covers himselfwith the disclaimerpe1·baps(fortasse) juxtaposedwith the qualifyingterm quibusdam (i.e. some of them,but not all). 15-16 WJ·athor mirth: bi/em aut risum neatly sums up the conflicting emotions:anger at being taken for fools and laughterat the absurdityof his tale. bi/is (our word 'bile') is secretedby the liver which was seen as the source of emotions(see Watson(2003) on Horace Epodes 5.37) and is a more prosaicword not found in Virgil,Ovid and the major epic poets. For bile as indicatinganger vergingon nauseacf. 5.159,6.433, 11.187,13.143, HoraceOdes 1.13.4,Satires 1.9.66,Epistles 1.19.20,Epodes 11.16,Martial 5.26.3, OLD s.v. 'bills' 2. There is a nice irony here (as at 11.187)in the word being used in the contextof a dinner-partywhere digestivejuices are somethingto be regulated. 16 lying: mendax is in fact a perfectlyjustified term to use of Ulysses the accomplishedliar who created his 'Lying Tales' mainly to protect his identity from the murderous suitors (Homer Odyssey 13.253-295, 14.199-359, 17. 419-44, 19.172-202) and who admits to deceiving the Cyclops about his identity (Odyssey 9. 364-7) - but who also inventeda false identity to tease his aged father (24.304-14: on the whole topic see Aristotle Poetics 1460a,Walcot (1977), Richardson(2006)). big-mouth: aretalogus (transliteratedfromGreekcipet