Iuli iugera pauca Martialis hortis Hesperidum beatiora longo Ianiculi iugo recumbunt: lati collibus imminent recessus et planus modico tumore vertex caelo perfruitur sereniore et curvas nebula tegente valles solus luce nitet peculiari: puris leniter admoventur astris celsae culmina delicata villae. hinc septem dominos videre montes et totam licet aestimare Romam, Albanos quoque Tusculosque colles et quodcumque iacet sub urbe frigus (iv. 64).
Martial's few acres, e'en more blestThan those famed gardens of the West,Lie on Janiculum's long crest;Above the slopes wide reaches hang recessed.The level, gently swelling crownBreathes air from purer heavens blown;When mists the hollow valleys drown'Tis radiant with a light that's all its own.The clear stars almost seem to lieOn the wrought roof that's built so high;The seven hills stand in majesty,And Rome is summed in one wide sweep of eye.Tusculan, Alban hills unfold,Each nook which holds its store of cold.A. E. STREET.
Such a picture is unsurpassed in any language.[665] Statius, with all his brilliance, never came near such perfect success; he lacks sincerity; he can juggle with words against any one, but he never learned their truest and noblest use.
There are many other themes beside landscape painting in which theSilvaeof Statius challenge comparison with the epigrams of Martial. Both use the same servile flattery to the emperor, both celebrate the same patrons,[666] both console their noble friends for the loss of relatives, or favourite slaves; both writepropemptica. Even in the most trivial of these poems, those addressed to the emperor, Statius is easily surpassed by his humbler rival. His inferiority lies largely in the fact that he is more ambitious. He wrote on a larger scale. When the infinitely trivial is a theme for verse, the epigrammatist has the advantage of the author of the more lengthySilvae. Perfect neatness vanquishes dexterous elaboration. Moreover, if taste can be said to enter into such poems at all, Martial errs less grossly. Even Domitian—one might conjecture—may have felt that Statius' flattery was 'laid on with a trowel'. Martial may have used the same instrument, but had the art to conceal it.[667] There are even occasions where his flattery ceases to revolt the reader, and where we forget the object of the flattery. In a poem describing the suicide of a certain Festus he succeeds in combining the dignity of a funerallaudatiowith the subtlest and most graceful flattery of the princeps:
indignas premeret pestis cum tabida fauces,inque suos voltus serperet atra lues,siccis ipse genis flentes hortatus amicosdecrevit Stygios Festus adire lacus.nec tamen obscuro pia polluit ora venenoaut torsit lenta tristia fata fame,sanctam Romana vitam sed morte peregitdimisitque animam nobiliore via.hanc mortem fatis magni praeferre Catonisfama potest; huius Caesar amicus erat (i. 78).
When the dire quinsy choked his guiltless breath,And o'er his face the blackening venom stole,Festus disdained to wait a lingering death,Cheered his sad friends and freed his dauntless soul.No meagre famine's slowly-wasting force,Nor hemlock's gradual chillness he endured,But like a Roman chose the nobler course,And by one blow his liberty secured.His death was nobler far than Cato's end,For Caesar to the last was Festus' friend.HODGSON (slightly altered).
The unctuous dexterity of Statius never achieved such a master-stroke.
So, too, in laments for the dead, the superior brevity and simplicity of Martial bear the palm away. Both poets bewailed the death of Glaucias, the child favourite of Atedius Melior. Statius has already been quoted in this connexion; Martial's poems on the subject,[668] though not quite among his best, yet ring truer than the verse of Statius. And Martial's epitaphs and epicedia at their best have in their slight way an almost unique charm. We must go to the best work of the Greek Anthology to surpass the epitaph on Erotion (v. 34):
hanc tibi, Fronto pater, genetrix Flaccilla, puellamoscula commendo deliciasque meas,parvola ne nigras horrescat Erotion umbrasoraque Tartarei prodigiosa canis.inpletura fuit sextae modo frigora brumae,vixisset totidem ni minus illa dies.inter tam veteres ludat lasciva patronoset nomen blaeso garriat ore meum.mollia non rigidus caespes tegat ossa nec illi,terra, gravis fueris: non fuit illa tibi.
Fronto, and you, Flaccilla, to you, my father and mother,Here I commend this child, once my delight and my pet,So may the darkling shades and deep-mouthed baying of hellhoundTouch not with horror of dread little Erotion dear.Now was her sixth year ending, and melting the snows of the winter,Only a brief six days lacked to the tale of the years.Young, amid dull old age, let her wanton and frolic and gambol,Babble of me that was, tenderly lisping my name.Soft were her tiny bones, then soft be the sod that enshrouds her,Gentle thy touch, mother Earth, gently she rested on thee!A. E. STREET.
Another poem on a like theme shows a different and more fantastic, but scarcely less pleasing vein (v. 37):
puella senibus dulcior mihi cycnis, agna Galaesi mollior Phalantini, concha Lucrini delicatior stagni, cui nec lapillos praeferas Erythraeos nec modo politum pecudis Indicae dentem nivesque primas liliumque non tactum; quae crine vicit Baetici gregis vellus Rhenique nodos aureamque nitellam; fragravit ore quod rosarium Paesti, quod Atticarum prima mella cerarum, quod sucinorum rapta de manu gleba; cui conparatus indecens erat pavo, inamabilis sciurus et frequens phoenix, adhuc recenti tepet Erotion busto, quam pessimorum lex amara fatorum sexta peregit hieme, nec tamen tota, nostros amores gaudiumque lususque.
Little maiden sweeter far to meThan the swans are with their vaunted snows,Maid more tender than the lambkins beWhere Galaesus by Phalantus flows;Daintier than the daintiest shells that lieBy the ripples of the Lucrine wave;Choicer than new-polished ivoryThat the herds in Indian jungles gave;Choicer than Erythrae's marbles white,Snows new-fallen, lilies yet unsoiled:Softer were your tresses and more brightThan the locks by German maidens coiled:Than the finest fleeces Baetis shows,Than the dormouse with her golden hue:Lips more fragrant than the Paestan rose,Than the Attic bees' first honey-dew,Or an amber ball, new-pressed and warm;Paled the peacock's sheen in your compare;E'en the winsome squirrel lost his charm,And the Phoenix seemed no longer rare.Scarce Erotion's ashes yet are cold;Greedily grim fate ordained to smiteE'er her sixth brief winter had grown old—Little love, my bliss, my heart's delight.A.D. INNES.
Through all the playful affectations of the lines we get the portrait of a fairy-like child, light-footed as the squirrel, golden-haired and fair as ivory or lilies.[669] Martial was a child-lover before he was a man of letters.
Beautiful as these little poems are, there is in Martial little trace of feeling for the sorrows of humanity in general. He can feel for his intimate friends, and his tears are ready to flow for his patron's sorrows. But the general impression given by his poetry is that of a certain hardness and lack of feeling, of a limited sympathy, and an unemotional temperament. It is a relief to come upon a poem such as that in which he describes a father's poignant anguish for the loss of his son (ix. 74):
effigiem tantum pueri pictura Camoniservat, et infantis parva figura manet.florentes nulla signavit imagine voltus,dum timet ora pius muta videre pater.
Here as in happy infancy he smiledBehold Camonus—painted as a child;For on his face as seen in manhood's daysHis sorrowing father would not dare to gaze.W. S. B.
or to find a sudden outbreak of sympathy with the sorrows of the slave (iii. 21):
proscriptum famulus servavit fronte notata,non fuit haec domini vita sed invidia.[670]
When scarred with cruel brand, the slaveSnatched from the murderer's handHis proscript lord, not life he gaveHis tyrant, but the brand.PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH.
Of thegravitasor dignity of character specially associated with Rome he shows equally few traces. His outlook on life is not sufficiently serious, he shows little interest in Rome of the past, and has nothing of the retrospective note so prominent in Lucan, Juvenal, or Tacitus; he lives in and for the present. He writes, it is true, of the famous suicide of Arria and Caecina Paetus,[671] of the death of Portia the wife of Brutus,[672] of the bravery of Mucius Scaevola.[673] But in none of these poems does he give us of his best. They lack, if not sincerity, at least enthusiasm; emotion is sacrificed to point. He is out of sympathy with Stoicism, and the suicide doctrinaire does not interest him. 'Live while you may' is his motto, 'and make the best of circumstances.' It is possible to live a reasonably virtuous life without going to the lengths of Thrasea:
quod magni Thraseae consummatique Catonisdogmata sic sequeris salvus ut esse velis,pectore nec nudo strictos incurris in enses,quod fecisse velim te, Deciane, facis.nolo virum facili redimit qui sanguine famam;hunc volo, laudari qui sine morte potest (i. 8).
That you, like Thrasea or Cato, great,Pursue their maxims, but decline their fate;Nor rashly point the dagger to your heart;More to my wish you act a Roman's part.I like not him who fame by death retrieves,Give me the man who merits praise and lives.HAY.
The sentiment is full of common sense, but it is undeniably unheroic. Martial is not quixotic, and refuses to treat life more seriously than is necessary. Our complaint against him is that he scarcely takes it seriously enough. It would be unjust to demand a deep fund of earnestness from a professed epigrammatist dowered with a gift of humour and a turn for satire. But it is doing Martial no injustice to style him the laureate of triviality. For his satire is neither genial nor earnest. His kindly temper led him to avoid direct personalities, but his invective is directed against vice, not primarily because it is wicked, but rather because it is grotesque or notcomme il faut. His humour, too, though often sparkling enough, is more often strained and most often filthy. Many of his epigrams were not worth writing, by whatever standard they be judged.[674] The point is hard to illustrate, since a large proportion of his inferior work is fatuously obscene. But the following may be taken at random from two books:
Eutrapelus tonsor dum circuit ora Luperciexpingitque genas, altera barba subit (vii. 83).
Eutrapelus the barber works so slow,That while he shaves, the beard anew does grow.ANON., 1695.
invitas ad aprum, ponis mihi, Gallice, porcum. hybrida sum, si das, Gallice, verba mihi (viii. 22).
You invite me to partake of a wild boar, you set before me a home-grown pig. I'm half-boar, half-pig, if you can cheat me thus.
pars maxillarum tonsa est tibi, pars tibi rasa est, pars volsa est. unum quis putet esse caput? (viii. 47).
tres habuit dentes, pariter quos expuit omnes,ad tumulum Picens dum sedet ipse suum;collegitque sinu fragmenta novissima laxioris et adgesta contumulavit humo.ossa licet quondam defuncti non legat heres:hoc sibi iam Picens praestitit officium (viii. 57).
Picens had three teeth, which he spat out altogether while he was sitting at the spot he had chosen for his tomb. He gathered in his robe the last fragments of his loose jaw and interred them in a heap of earth. His heir need not gather his bones when he is dead, Picens has performed that office for himself.
summa Palatini poteras aequare Colossi, si fieres brevior, Claudia, sesquipede (viii. 60).
Had you been eighteen inches shorter, Claudia, you would havebeen as tall as the Colossus on the Palatine.
Without wishing to break a butterfly on the wheel, we may well quote against Martial the remark made in a different context to a worthless poet:
tanti non erat esse te disertum (xii. 43).
'Twas scarce worth while to be thus eloquent.
There is much also which, without being precisely pointless or silly, is too petty and mean to be tolerable to modern taste. Most noticeable in this respect are the epigrams in which Martial solicits the liberality of his patrons. The amazing relations existing at this period between patron and client had worked a painful revolution in the manners and tone of society, a revolution which meant scarcely less than the pauperization of the middle class. The old sacred and almost feudal tie uniting client and patron had long since disappeared, and had been replaced by relations of a professional and commercial character. Wealth was concentrated in comparatively few hands, and with the decrease of the number of the patrons the throng of clients proportionately increased. The crowd of clients bustling to the early morningsalutatioof the patronus, and struggling with one another for thesportulais familiar to us in the pages of Juvenal and receives fresh and equally vivid illustration from Martial. The worst results of these unnatural relations were a general loss of independence of character and a lamentable growth of bad manners and cynical snobbery. The patron, owing to the increasingly heavy demands upon his purse, naturally tended to become close-fisted and stingy, the needy client too often was grasping and discontented. The patron, if he asked his client to dine, would regale him with food and drink of a coarser and inferior quality to that with which he himself was served.[675] The client, on the other hand, could not be trusted to behave himself; he would steal the table fittings, make outrageous demands on his patron, and employ every act of servile and cringing flattery to improve his position.[676] The poor poet was in a sense doubly dependent. He would stand in the ordinary relation ofcliensto apatronus, and would be dependent also for his livelihood on the generosity of his literary patrons. For, in spite of the comparative facilities for the publication and circulation of books, he could make little by the public sale of his works, and living at Rome was abnormally expensive. The worst feature of all was that such a life of servile dependence was not clearly felt to be degrading. It was disliked for its hardship, annoyance, and monotony, but the client too often seems to have regarded it as beneath his dignity to attempt to escape from it by industry and manly independence.
As a result of these conditions, we find the pages of Martial full of allusions to the miserable life of the client. His skill does not fail him, but the theme is ugly and the historical interest necessarily predominates over the literary, though the reader's patience is at times rewarded with shrewd observations on human nature, as, for instance, the bitter expression of the truth that 'To him that hath shall be given'—
semper pauper eris, si pauper es, Aemiliane; dantur opes nullis nunc nisi divitibus (v. 81);
Poor once and poor for ever, Nat, I fear,None but the rich get place and pension here.N.B. HALHEAD.
or the even more incisive
pauper videri Cinna vult: et est pauper (viii. 19).
But we soon weary of the continual reference to dinners and parasites, to the snobbery and indifference of the rich, to the tricks of toadyism on the part of needy client or legacy hunter. It is a mean world, and the wit and raillery of Martial cannot make it palatable. Without a moral background, such as is provided by the indignation of Juvenal, the picture soon palls, and the reader sickens. Most unpleasing of all are the epigrams where Martial himself speaks as client in a language of mingled impertinence and servility. His flattery of the emperor we may pass by. It was no doubt interested, but it was universal, and Martial's flattery is more dexterous without being either more or less offensive than that of his contemporaries. His relations towards less exalted patrons cannot be thus easily condoned. He feels no shame in begging, nor in abusing those who will not give or whose gifts are not sufficient for his needs. His purse is empty; he must sell the gifts that Regulus has given him. Will Regulus buy?
aera domi non sunt, superest hoc, Regule, solum ut tua vendamus munera: numquid emis? (vii. 16).
I have no money, Regulus, at home. Only one thing is leftto do—sell the gifts you gave me. Will you buy?
Stella has given him some tiles to roof his house; he would like a cloak as well:
cum pluvias madidumque Iovem perferre negaretet rudis hibernis villa nataret aquis,plurima, quae posset subitos effundere nimbos,muneribus venit tegula missa tuis.horridus ecce sonat Boreae stridore December:Stella, tegis villam, non tegis agricolam (vii. 36).[677]
When my crased house heaven's showers could not sustain,But flooded with vast deluges of rain,Thou shingles, Stella, seasonably didst send,Which from the impetuous storms did me defend:Now fierce loud-sounding Boreas rocks doth cleave,Dost clothe the farm, and farmer naked leave?ANON., 1695.
This is not the way a gentleman thanks a friend, nor can modern taste appreciate at its antique value abuse such as—
primum est ut praestes, si quid te, Cinna, rogabo;illud deinde sequens ut cito, Cinna, neges.diligo praestantem; non odi, Cinna, negantem:sed tu nec praestas nec cito, Cinna, negas (vii. 43).
The kindest thing of all is to comply:The next kind thing is quickly to deny.I love performance nor denial hate:Your 'Shall I, shall I?' is the cursed state.
The poet's poverty is no real excuse for this petulant mendicancy.[678] He had refused to adopt a profession,[679] though professional employment would assuredly have left him time for writing, and no one would have complained if his output had been somewhat smaller. Instead, he chose a life which involved moving in society, and was necessarily expensive. We can hardly attribute his choice merely to the love of his art. If he must beg, he might have done so with better taste and some show of finer feeling. Macaulay's criticism is just: 'I can make large allowance for the difference of manners; but it can never have beencomme il fautin any age or nation for a man of note—an accomplished man—a man living with the great—to be constantly asking for money, clothes, and dainties, and to pursue with volleys of abuse those who would give him nothing.'
In spite, however, of the obscenity, meanness, and exaggerated triviality of much of his work, there have been few poets who could turn a prettier compliment, make a neater jest, or enshrine the trivial in a more exquisite setting. Take the beautifully finished poem to Flaccus in the eighth book (56), wherein Martial complains that times have altered since Vergil's day. 'Now there are no patrons and consequently no poets'—
ergo ego Vergilius, si munera Maecenatisdes mihi? Vergilius non ero, Marsus ero.
Shall I then be a Vergil, if you give me such gifts asMaecenas gave? No, I shall not be a Vergil, but a Marsus.
Here, at least, Martial shows that he could complain of his poverty with decency, and speak of himself and his work with becoming modesty. Or take a poem of a different type, an indirect plea for the recall of an exile (viii. 32):
aera per tacitum delapsa sedentis in ipsosfluxit Aratullae blanda columba sinus,luserat hoc casus, nisi inobservata maneretpermissaque sibi nollet abire fuga.si meliora piae fas est sperare sororiet dominum mundi flectere vota valent,haec a Sardois tibi forsitan exulis oris,fratre reversuro, nuntia venit avis.
A gentle dove glided down through the silent air and settled even in Aratulla's bosom as she was sitting. This might have seemed but the sport of chance had it not rested there, though undetained, and refused to part even when flight was free. If it is granted to the loving sister to hope for better things, and if prayers can move the lord of the world, this bird perchance has come to thee from Sardinia's shore of exile to announce the speedy return of thy brother.
Nothing could be more conventional, nothing more perfect in form, more full of music, more delicate in expression. The same felicity is shown in his epigrams on curiosities of art or nature, a fashionable and, it must be confessed, an easy theme.[680] Fish carved by Phidias' hand, a lizard cast by Mentor, a fly enclosed in amber, are all given immortality:
artis Phidiacae toreuma clarum pisces aspicis: adde aquam, natabunt (iii. 35).
These fishes Phidias wrought: with life by himThey are endowed: add water and they swim.PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH.
inserta phialae Mentoris manu ductalacerta vivit et timetur argentum (iii. 41).
That lizard on the goblet makes thee start.Fear not: it lives only by Mentor's art.PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH.
et latet et lucet Phaethontide condita gutta,ut videatur apis nectare clusa suo.dignum tantorum pretium tulit illa laborum:credibile est ipsam sic voluisse mori (iv. 32).
Here shines a bee closed in an amber tomb,As if interred in her own honey-comb.A fit reward fate to her labours gave;No other death would she have wished to have.MAY.
Always at home in describing the trifling amenities of life, he is at his best equally successful in dealing with its trifling follies. An acquaintance has given his cook the absurd name of Mistyllos in allusion to the Homeric phrase [Greek: mistyllon t' ora talla]. Martial's comment is inimitable:
si tibi Mistyllos cocus, Aemiliane, vocatur, dicatur quare non Taratalla mihi? (i. 50).
He complains of the wine given him at a dinner-party with a finished whimsicality:
potavi modo consulare vinum. quaeris quam vetus atque liberale? Prisco consule conditum: sed ipse qui ponebat erat, Severe, consul (vii. 79).
I have just drunk some consular wine. How old, you ask, and how generous? It was bottled in Priscus' consulship: and he who set it before me was the consul himself.
Polycharmus has returned Caietanus his IOU's. 'Little good will that do you, and Caietanus will not even be grateful':
quod Caietano reddis, Polycharme, tabellas,milia te centum num tribuisse putas?'debuit haec' inquis. tibi habe, Polycharme, tabellaset Caietano milia crede duo (viii. 37).
In giving back Caietanus his IOU's, Polycharmus, do you think you are giving him 100,000 sesterces? 'He owed me that sum,' you say. Keep the IOU's and lend him two thousand more!
Chloe, the murderess of her seven husbands, erects monuments to their memory, and inscribesfecit Chloeon the tombstones:
inscripsit tumulis septem scelerata virorum'se fecisse' Chloe. quid pote simplicius? (ix. 15).
On her seven husbands' tombs she doth impress'This Chloe did.' What more can she confess?WRIGHT.
Vacerra admires the old poets only. What shall Martial do?
miraris veteres, Vacerra, solos nec laudas nisi mortuos poetas. ignoscas petimus, Vacerra: tanti non est, ut placeam tibi, perire (viii. 69).
Vacerra lauds no living poet's lays,But for departed genius keeps his praise.I, alas, live, nor deem it worth my whileTo die that I may win Vacerra's smile.PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH.
All this is very slight,merae nugae; but even if the humour be not of the first water, it will compare well with the humour of epigrams of any age. Martial knows he is not a great poet.[681] He knows, too, that his work is uneven:
iactat inaequalem Matho me fecisse libellum:si verum est, laudat carmina nostra Matho.aequales scribit libros Calvinus et Vmber:aequalis liber est, Cretice, qui malus est (vii. 90).
Matho makes game of my unequal verse;If it's unequal it might well be worse.Calvinus, Umber, write on one dead level,The book that's got no up and down's the devil!
If there are thirty good epigrams in a book, he is satisfied (vii. 81). His defence hardly answers the question, 'Why publish so many?' but should at least mollify our judgement. Few poets read better in selections than Martial, and of few poets does selection give so inadequate an idea. For few poets of his undoubted genius have left such a large bulk of work which, in spite of its formal perfection, is morally repulsive or, from the purely literary standpoint, uninteresting. But he is an important figure in the history of literature, for he is the father of the modern epigram. Alone of Silver Latin poets is he a perfect stylist. He has the gift offelicitasto the full, but it is notcuriosa. Inferior to Horace in all other points, he has greater spontaneity. And he is free from the faults of his age. He is novirtuoso, eaten up with self-conscious vanity; he attempts no impossible feats of language; he is clear, and uses his mythological and geographical knowledge neatly and picturesquely; but he makes no display of obscure learning. 'I would please schoolmasters,' he says, 'but notquaschoolmasters' (x. 21. 5). So, too, he complains of his own education:
at me litterulas stulti docuere parentes: quid cum grammaticis rhetoribusque mihi? (ix. 73. 7).
My learning only proves my father fool!Why would he send me to a grammar school?HAY.
As a result, perhaps, of this lack of sympathy with the education of his day, we find that, while he knows and admires the great poets of the past, and can flatter the rich poetasters of the present, his bent is curiously unliterary. He gives us practically no literary criticism. It is with the surface qualities of life that he is concerned, with its pleasures and its follies, guilty or innocent. He has a marvellously quick and clear power of observation, and of vivid presentation. He is in this sense above all others the poet of his age. He either does not see or chooses to ignore many of the best and most interesting features of his time, but the picture which he presents, for all its incompleteness, is wider and more varied than any other. We both hate him and read him for the sake of the world he depicts. 'Ugliness is always bad art, and Martial often failed as a poet from his choice of subject.'[682] There are comparatively few of his poems which we read for their own sake. Remarkable as these few poems are, the main attraction of Martial is to be found not in his wit or finish, so much as in the vividness with which he has portrayed the life of the brilliant yet corrupt society in which his lot was cast. It lives before us in all its splendour and in all its squalor. The court, with its atmosphere of grovelling flattery, its gross vices veiled and tricked out in the garb of respectability; the wealthy official class, with their villas, their favourites, their circle of dependants, men of culture, wit, and urbanity, through all which runs, strangely intermingled, a vein of extreme coarseness, vulgarity, and meanness; the lounger and the reciter, the diner-out and the legacy-hunter; the clients struggling to win their patrons' favour and to rise in the social scale, enduring the hardships and discomfort of a sordid life unillumined by lofty ideals or strength of will, a life that under cold northern skies would have been intolerable; the freedman and the slave, with all the riff-raff that support a parasitic existence on the vices of the upper classes; the noise and bustle of Rome, its sleepless nights, its cheerless tenements, its noisy streets, loud with the sound of traffic or of revelry; the shows in the theatre, the races in the circus, the interchange of presents at the Saturnalia; the pleasant life in the country villa, the simplicity of rural Italy, the sights and sounds of the park and the farm-yard; and dimly seen beyond all, the provinces, a great ocean which absorbs from time to time the rulers of Rome and the leaders of society, and from which come faint and confused echoes of frontier wars; all are there. It is a great pageant lacking order and coherence, a scene that shifts continually, but never lacks brilliance of detail and sharply defined presentment. Martial was the child of the age; it gave him his strength and his weakness. If we hate him or despise him, it is because he is the faithful representative of the life of his times; his gifts we cannot question. He practised a form of poetry that at its best is not exalted, and must, even more than other branches of art, be conditioned by social circumstance. Within its limited sphere Martial stands, not faultless, but yet supreme.
Our knowledge of the life of the most famous of Roman satirists is strangely unsatisfactory. Many so-called lives of Juvenal have come down to us, but they are confused, contradictory, inadequate, and unreliable.[683] His own work and allusions in other writers help us but little in our attempt to reconstruct the story of the poet's life.
Only by investigating the dates within which the satires seem to fall is it possible to arrive at some idea of the dates within which falls the life of their author. The satires were published in five books at different times. The first book (1-5), which is full of allusions to the tyranny of Domitian, cannot have been published before 100 A.D., since the first satire contains an allusion to the condemnation of Marius Priscus,[684] which took place in that year. The fifth book (13-16) must, from references in the thirteenth and fifteenth[685] satires to the year 127, have been published not much later than that date. The publication of the satires falls, therefore, between 100 and 130.
With these data it is possible to approach the question of the dates of Juvenal's birth and death. The main facts to guide us are the statements of the best of the biographies that he did not begin to write satire till on the confines of middle age, that even then he delayed to publish, and that he died at the age of eighty.[686] The inference is that he was born between 50 and 60 A. D., and died between 130 and 140 A. D.[687]
As to the facts of his life we are on little firmer ground. But concerning his name and birthplace there is practical certainty. Decimus Junius Juvenalis[688] was born at Aquinum,[689] a town of Latium, and is said to have been the son or adopted son of a rich freedman. His education was of the usual character, literary and rhetorical, and was presumably carried out at Rome.[690] He acquired thus early in youth a taste for rhetoric that never left him. For he is said to have practised declamation up till middle age, not with a view to obtaining a position as professor of rhetoric or as advocate, but from sheer love of the art.[691] It is probable that he combined his passion for rhetoric with service as an officer in the army. Not only does he show considerable intimacy in his satires with a soldier's life,[692] but interesting external evidence is afforded by an inscription discovered near Aquinum. It runs:
If this inscription refers, as well it may, to the poet, it will follow that he served as tribune of the first Dalmatian cohort, probably in Britain,[694] held high municipal office in his native town, and was priest of the deified Vespasian. But thepraenomenis wanting in the original, and the inscription may have been erected not by the satirist but by one of his kinsfolk. That he spent the greater portion of his life at Rome is evident from his satires. Of his friends we know little. Umbricius, Persicus, Catullus, and Calvinus[695] are mere names. Of Quintilian[696] he speaks with great respect, and may perhaps have studied under him; of Statius he writes with enthusiasm, but there is no evidence that he had done more than be present at that poet's recitations.[697] Martial, however, was a personal friend, and writes affectionately of him and to him in three of his epigrams.[698] Unlike Martial, whose life was a continual struggle against poverty, Juvenal, though he had clearly endured some of the discomforts and degradations involved by a client's attendance on his richpatronus, was a man of some means, possessing an estate at Aquinum,[699] a country house at Tibur,[700] and a house at Rome.[701] At what date precisely he began to write is uncertain. We are told that his first effort was a brief poem attacking the actor Paris, which he afterwards embodied in the seventh satire. But it was long before he ventured to read his satires even to his intimate friends.[702] This suggests that portions, at any rate, of the satires of the first book were composed during the reign of Domitian.[703] Juvenal had certainly every reason for concealing their existence till after the tyrant's death. The first satire was probably written later to form a preface to the other four, and the whole book may have been published in 101. It is noteworthy, however, that Martial, writing to him in that year, mentions merely his gifts as a declaimer, and seems not to know him as a satirist. The second book, containing only the sixth satire, was probably published about 116, since it contains allusions to earthquakes in Asia and to a comet boding ill to Parthia and Armenia (l. 407-12). Such a comet was visible in Rome in the autumn of 115, on the eve of Trajan's campaign against Parthia, while in December an earthquake did great damage to the town of Antioch. The third book (7-9) opens with an elaborate compliment to Hadrian as the patron of literature at Rome. As Hadrian succeeded to the principate in 117 and left Rome for a tour of the provinces in 121, this book must fall somewhere between our dates. The fourth book (10-12) contains no indication as to its date, but must lie between the publication of the third book and of the fifth (after 127). Beyond these facts it is hardly possible to go in our reconstruction of the poet's life. As far as may be judged it was an uneventful career save for one great calamity. The ancient biographies assert that Juvenal's denunciation of actors embodied in the seventh satire offended an actor who was the favourite of the princeps. They are supported by Apollinaris Sidonius,[704] who speaks of Juvenal as the 'exile-victim of an actor's anger', and by Johannes Malala.[705] The latter writer, with certain of the ancient biographies, identifies the actor with Paris, the favourite of Domitian; others, again, say that the poet was banished by Nero[706]—a manifestly absurd statement—others by Trajan,[707] while our best authority asserts that he was eighty years old when banished, and that he died of grief and mortification.[708] The place of exile is variously given. Most of the biographies place it in Egypt, the best of them asserting that he was given a military command in that province.[709] Others mention Britain,[710] others the Pentapolis of Libya.[711] Amid such discrepancies it is impossible to give any certain answer. But it is certain that the actor who caused Juvenal's banishment was not Paris, who was put to death by Domitian as early as 83, and almost equally certain that Domitian is guiltless of the poet's exile. It is, however, possible that he was banished by Trajan or Hadrian, though it would surprise us to find Trajan, for all the debauchery of his private life, so far under the influence of an actor[712] as to sacrifice a Roman citizen to his displeasure; while as regards Hadrian it is noteworthy that the very satire said to have offended thepantomimuscontains an eloquent panegyric of that emperor. Further, it is hard to believe the story that Juvenal was banished to Egypt at the advanced age of eighty under the pretext of a military command. The problem is insoluble.[713] The most that can be said is that the persistence of the tradition gives it some claim to credibility, though the details handed down to us are wholly untrustworthy, and probably little better than clumsy inferences from passages in the satires.
The scope of Juvenal's work and the motives that spur him are set forth in the first satire. He is weary of the deluge of trivial and mechanical verse poured out by the myriad poetasters of the day:
Still shall I hear and never quit the score,Stunned with hoarse Codrus' Theseid, o'er and o'er?Shall this man's elegies and t'other's playUnpunished murder a long summer's day?… since the world with writing is possest,I'll versify in spite; and do my bestTo make as much waste-paper as the rest.[714]
He will write in a different vein from his rivals. Satire shall be his theme. In such an age, when virtue is praised and vice practised, the age of the libertine, theparvenu, the forger, the murderer, it is hard not to write satire. 'Facit indignatio versum!'[715] he cries. 'All the daily life of Rome shall be my theme':
quidquid agunt homines votum timor ira voluptas gaudia discursus nostri est farrago libelli.[716]
What human kind desires and what they shun,Rage, passion, pleasure, impotence of will,Shall this satirical collection fill.DRYDEN.
Never was vice so rampant; luxury has become monstrous; the rich lord lives in pampered and selfish ease, while those poor mortals, his clients, jostle together to receive the paltry dole of thesportula; that is all the help they will get from their patron:
No age can go beyond us; future timesCan add no further to the present crimes.Our sons but the same things can wish and do;Vice is at stand and at the highest flow.Thou, Satire, spread thy sails, take all the winds that blow.[717]
And yet the satirist must be cautious; the days are past when a Lucilius could lash Rome at his will:
When Lucilius brandishes his penAnd flashes in the face of guilty men,A cold sweat stands in drops on every part,And rage succeeds to tears, revenge to smart.Muse, be advised; 'tis past considering time,When entered once the dangerous lists of rhyme;Since none the living villains dare implead,Arraign them in the persons of the dead.[718]
No better preface has ever been written; it gives a perfect summary of the motives, the objects, and the methods of the poet's work in language which for vigour and brilliance he never surpassed. The closing lines show us his literary parentage. It is Lucilius who inspires him; it is the fierce invective of the father of Roman satire that appeals to him. Lucilius had scourged Rome, when the inroads of Hellenism and oriental luxury, the fruits of foreign conquest, were beginning to make themselves felt. To Juvenal it falls to denounce the triumph of these corroding influences. He has nothing of the almost pathetic philosophic detachment of Persius, nor of the easy-going compromise of Horace. He does not palter with problems of right and wrong, nor hesitate over his moral judgements; casuistry is wholly alien to his temper. It is indignation makes the verse, and from this fact, together with his rhetorical training, his chief merits and his chief failings spring. He introduces no novelty into satire save the almost unvarying bitterness and ferocity of his tone. Like Horace and Persius, he employs the dactylic hexameter to the exclusion of other metres, while, owing in the main to his taste for declamation, he is far more sparing in the use of the dialogue-form than either of his predecessors.
Before further discussing his general characteristics, it is necessary to take a brief survey of the remaining satires. The second and ninth are savage and, as was almost inevitable, obscene denunciations of unnatural vice. In the third, the most orderly in arrangement and the most brilliant in execution of all his satires, he describes all the dangers and horrors of life at Rome. Umbricius, a friend of the poet, is leaving the city. It is no place for a man of honour; it has become a city for Greeks; the worthless and astuteGraeculusis everywhere predominant, and, stained though he be with a thousand vices, has outwitted the native-born, and, by the arts of the panderer and the flatterer, has made himself their master. The poor are treated like slaves. Houses fall, or are burned with fire. Sleep is impossible, so loud with traffic are the streets. By day it is scarcely safe to walk abroad for fear of being crushed by one of the great drays that throng the city; by night there are the lesser perils of slops and broken crockery cast from the windows, the greater perils of roisterers and thieves. Rome is no place for Umbricius. He must go.
The fourth satire opens with a violent attack on theparvenuEgyptian Crispinus, so powerful at the court of Domitian, and goes on by a somewhat clumsy transition to tell the story of the huge turbot caught near Ancona and presented to the emperor. So large was it that a cabinet council must needs be called to decide what should be done with it. This affords excuse for an inimitable picture of Domitian's servile councillors. At last it is decided that the turbot is to be served whole and a special dish to be constructed for it. 'Ah! why,' the poet concludes, 'did not Domitian devote himself entirely to such trifles as these?'
In the fifth satire Juvenal returns to the subject of the hardships and insults which the poor client must endure. He pictures the host sitting in state with the best of everything set before him and served in the choicest manner, while the unhappy client must be content with food and drink of the coarsest kind. Virro, the rich man, does this not because he is parsimonious, but because the humiliation of his client amuses his perverted mind. But the satirist does not spare the client, whose servile complaisance leads him to put up with such treatment. 'Be a man!' he cries, 'and sooner beg on the streets than degrade yourself thus.'
The sixth satire, the longest of the collection, is a savage denunciation of the vices of womankind. The various types of female degradation are revealed to our gaze with merciless and often revolting portrayal. The unchastity of woman is the main theme, but ranked with the adulteress and the wanton are the murderess of husband or of child, the torturer of the slave, the client of the fortune-teller or the astrologer, and even the more harmless female athlete and blue-stocking. For vigour and skill the satire ranks among Juvenal's best, but it is marred by wanton grossness and at times almost absurd exaggeration.
The seventh satire deals with the difficulties besetting a literary career. It opens with a dexterous compliment to Hadrian; the poet qualifies his complaints by saying that they apply only to the past. The accession of Hadrian has swept all the storm-clouds from the author's sky. But in the unhappy days but lately passed away, the poet's lot was most miserable. His work brings him no livelihood; his patron's liberality goes but a little way. The historian is in no less parlous plight. The advocate makes some show of wealth, but it is, as a rule, the merest show; only the man already wealthy succeeds at the bar; many a struggling lawyer goes bankrupt in the struggle to advertise himself and push his way. The teacher of rhetoric and the school-master receive but a miserable fee, yet they have all the drudgery of discipline and all the responsibility of moulding the characters of the young placed upon their shoulders. They are expected to be omniscient, and yet they starve.
The eighth satire treats the familiar theme that without virtue birth is of small account. Many examples of the degeneracy of the aristocracy are given, some trivial, some grave, but above all the satirist denounces the cruelty and oppression of nobly-born provincial governors. He concludes in his noblest vein in praise of the great plebeians of the past, Cicero, Marius, the Decii, and Servius Tullius. It is in deeds, not in titles, that true nobility lies. Better be the son of Thersites and possess the valour of Achilles, than live the life of a Thersites and boast Achilles for your sire.
The eighth satire may be regarded as the presage of a distinct change of type. Instead of the vivid pictures of Roman life and the almost dramatic representation of vice personified, Juvenal seems to turn for inspiration to the scholastic declamation which had fascinated his youth. Moral problems are treated in a more abstract way, and the old fierce onset of indignation, though it has by no means disappeared, seems to have lost something of its former violence. There are also traces of declining powers, a greater tendency to digression, a lack of concentration and vigour, and even of dexterity of language. But the change is due in all probability not merely to advance in years nor to the calming and mellowing influence of old age, but also to a change that was gradually passing over the Roman world. The material for savage satire was appreciably less. Evil in its worst forms had triumphed under Domitian. With Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian virtue began slowly and uncertainly to reclaim part of her lost dominions.
The fourth book opens with the famous tenth satire on the vanity of human wishes. What should man pray for? The theme is hackneyed and the treatment shows no special originality. But the thought is elevated, the rhetoric superb, and the verse has a resounding tread such as is only found in Persius and Juvenal among the later poets of Rome. 'What shall man pray for?' Power? Think of Sejanus, Pompey, Demosthenes, Cicero! To each one greatness brought his doom. Think of Hannibal and Alexander, how they, and with them all their high schemings, came to die; Long life? What? Should we pray to outlive our bodily powers, to bewail the death of our nearest and dearest, to fall from the high place where once we stood? Beauty? Beauty is beset by a thousand perils in these vile days, and rarely do beauty and chastity go hand in hand. Rather than pray for boons like these, 'entrust thy fortune to the gods above,' or, if pray thou must,
stand confinedTo health of body and content of mind;A soul that can securely death defy,And count it nature's privilege to die;Serene and manly, hardened to sustainThe load of life and exercised in pain:Guiltless of hate and proof against desire,That all things weighs and nothing can admire;That dares prefer the toils of Hercules,To dalliance, banquet, and ignoble ease.The path to peace is virtue; what I show,Thyself may freely on thyself bestow;Fortune was never worshipped by the wise,But, set aloft by fools, usurps the skies.[719]
In the eleventh satire we drop from these splendid heights of rhetoric; to a declamatory invitation to dinner, which affords occasion for a denunciation of the extravagant indulgence in the pleasures of the table and for the praise of the good old days when Romans clave to the simple life. The dinner to which Juvenal invites his friend will be of simple fare simply served—
You'll have no scandal when you dine.But honest talk and wholesome wine.
And instead of lewd dance and song, a slave shall read aloud Homer andHomer's one rival, Vergil.
The twelfth satire opens with a thanksgiving for the escape of a friend, Catullus, from a great storm at sea, and ends with a denunciation of legacy hunters, the connecting link between these somewhat remote themes being that Juvenal, at any rate, is disinterested in his joy at his friend's escape.
The thirteenth and fourteenth satires deal with more abstract themes, the pangs of the guilty conscience and the importance of parental example. In the first, Juvenal consoles his friend, Calvinus, who has been defrauded of a sum of money. The loss, he says, is small, and, after all, honesty is rare nowadays. Men have so little care for the gods that they shrink from no perjury. Besides, what is such loss compared with the many worse crimes that darken life. Why thirst for revenge? It is the doctrine of the common herd. Philosophy teaches otherwise. The torment of conscience will be a worse penalty than any you can inflict, and at last justice will claim its own. In the next satire, to emphasize the value of parental example, the poet illustrates his point from the vice of avarice, and finally, forgetting his original theme, lashes the avaricious man in words such as would never suggest that the question of parental example had been raised at all. It is noteworthy that throughout these two satires the poet draws his illustrations from the themes of the schools rather than from the scenes of contemporary life.
In the fifteenth satire, however, he returns to depict and discuss actual occurrences, but in how altered and strange a manner. His theme is a case of cannibalism in Egypt,[720] the result of a collision between religious fanatics of neighbouring townships. The aged poet spurs himself into one last fury against the hated Oriental, regardless of the fact that the denunciation of cannibalism to a civilized audience must necessarily be insipid. Last comes a fragment expatiating bitterly on the shameful advantages of a military career. The unhappy civilian assaulted by a soldier cannot get redress, for the case must be heard in camp before a bench of soldiers. The soldier, on the other hand, can get summary settlement of all his disputes, and alone of Romans is exempt from thepatria potestas, can control his earnings and bequeath them to whom he will. At this point the satire breaks off abruptly, and we have no means of judging the extent of the loss. It is a striking reversion to his earlier manner. Once more the satire takes the form of a series of sketches from actual life.
Both of these satires, notably the fifteenth, show a marked falling off alike in style and matter. Both, in fact, have been branded as spurious, the latter from times as early as those of the scholia. But there is no real ground for such a suspicion. Both satires have all the characteristics of Juvenal, excepting only the vigour and brilliance of his earlier days. No poet's powers are proof against the advance of old age, and there is no vein of poetry more exhausting or more easily exhausted than satire. And, as has already been remarked, there are signs of a falling away before these satires are reached. Even the famous tenth satire, for all its indisputable greatness, does not demand or reveal, such special gifts of style and observation as the first and third. It is less in touch with actual life: it is a theme from the schools, and the illustrations, effective as they are, are as trite as the theme itself. Were it his only work, the tenth satire would give Juvenal high rank among Roman poets: it will always, thanks to the brilliance of its rhetoric and the wide applicability of its moral, be his most popular work: it is not his highest achievement.
It will have been obvious from this brief survey that the themes chosen by Juvenal are for the most part of a commonplace nature. It could hardly be otherwise. Satire, to be effective, must choose obvious themes. But in some respects the treatment of them is surprisingly commonplace. There is little freshness or originality about Juvenal's way of thinking. His morality is neither satisfying nor profound. His ideal is the old narrow Roman republican ideal of a chaste, vigorous, and unluxurious life, wherein publicity is for man alone, while woman is confined to the cares of the family and the household; the ideal of a society wholly Italian and free-born, untainted by the importations of Greece and Asia; of a state stern and exclusive, though just and merciful, sparing the subject and beating down the proud. The nobility of this ideal is not to be denied, but it is inadequate because it is wholly unpractical. There is no denying that the emancipation of women had led to gross evils, some of them imperilling the very existence of the State; nor can it be doubted that much of the Greek influence had been wholly for the bad, and that in many cases the introduction of the cults of the East served merely to cloak debauchery. The rich freedman, also, for whom Juvenal reserves his bitterest shafts, was often of vicious and degraded character and had risen to power by repulsive means. But there is another side to the picture, the existence of which Juvenal sometimes, by his vehemence, seems to deny. The freedman class supplied some of the most valuable of civil servants, and many must have been worthy of their emancipation and of their rise to power.[721] There was a higher Hellenism, which Juvenal ignored. The intellectual movements of the Empire still found their chief source in Greece, and the great Sophistic movement was already setting in, as a result of which Greek literature was to revive and the Greek language to supersede the Latin as the chief vehicle of literary expression even at Rome itself. The greater freedom accorded to women had its compensations; in spite of Juvenal, woman does not become worse or less attractive because she is cultured and well educated, and if there was much dissipation and debauchery in the high society of his day, even high society contained many noble women of fine intellect and pure character. The spread of Roman citizenship and the breaking down of the old exclusive tradition were potent factors for good in the history of civilization. It may be urged in Juvenal's defence that satire must necessarily deal with the darker side of life, that his silence as to the better and more hopeful elements in society does not mean that he ignored them, and that it is absurd to attack a satirist because he is not a scientific social historian. All this is true; but it is possible to have plenty of material for the bitterest satire and to indict gross and rampant vice without leaving the impression that the life of the day has no redeeming elements, without generalizing extravagantly from the vices of one section of society, even though that section be large and influential. The weakness of Juvenal is that he is too retrospective, both in his praise and in his blame. He dare not satirize the living, but will attack the dead. But it would be wrong to assume that in the dead he always attacks types of the living. There is always the impression that he is in reality attacking the first century rather than the second, the reigns of Nero and Domitian rather than the society governed by Trajan and Hadrian. He had lived through a night of terror and would not recognize the signs of a new dawn. Directing his attention too exclusively on Rome itself and on the past, he forgets the larger world and the future hope. It is to the impossible Rome of the past that he turns his eyes for inspiration. Hence comes his hatred, often merely racial, for Greek and Asiatic importations,[722] hence his dislike and contempt for the new woman. Moreover, he had lived on the fringe of high society and not in it; he had drunk in the bitterness of the client's life, and had lived in the enveloping atmosphere of scandal that always surrounds society for those who are excluded from it. A man of an acrid and jealous temperament, easily angered and not readily appeased, he yields too lightly and indiscriminately to that indignation, which, he tells us, is the fountain-head of all he writes. Satire should be something more than a wild torrent sweeping away obstacles great and small with one equal violence; it should have its laughing shallows and its placid deeps. But Juvenal's laughter rings harsh and wild, and wounds as deeply as his invective; he drives continually before the fierce gale of his spirit, and there are no calm havens where he may rest and contemplate the ideal that so much denunciation implies. He knows no gradations: all failings suffer beneath the same remorseless lash. The consul Lateranus has a taste for driving: bad taste, perhaps, yet hardly criminal. But Juvenal thunders at him as though he were guilty of high treason (viii. 146):
praeter maiorum cineres atque ossa volucri carpento rapitur pinguis Lateranus, et ipse, ipse rotam adstringit sufflamine mulio consul, nocte quidem, sed Luna videt, sed sidera testes intendunt oculos. finitum tempus honoris cum fuerit, clara Lateranus luce flagellum sumet et occursum numquam trepidabit amici iam senis.
See! by his great progenitor's remainsFat Lateranus sweeps, with loosened reins.Good Consul! he no pride of office feels,But stoops, himself, to clog his headlong wheels.'But this is all by night,' the hero cries,Yet the moon sees! yet the stars stretch their eyesPull on your shame!—A few short moments wait,And Damasippus quits the pomp of state:Then, proud the experienced driver to display,He mounts the chariot in the face of day,Whirls, with bold front, his grave associate by,And jerks his whip, to catch the senior's eye.GIFFORD.
Elsewhere (i. 55-62) the 'horsy' youth is spoken of as worse than the husband who connives at his wife's dishonour and pockets the reward of her shame. Among the monstrous women of the sixth satire we come with a shock of surprise upon the learned lady (434):
illa tamen gravior, quae cum discumbere coepit laudat Vergilium, periturae ignoscit Elissae, committit vates et comparat, inde Maronem atque alia parte in trutina suspendit Homerum.
But of all plagues the greatest is untold;The book-learned wife, in Greek and Latin bold;The critic dame, who at her table sits,Homer and Virgil quotes and weighs their wits,And pities Dido's agonizing fits.DRYDEN.
She figures strangely among the poisoners and adulteresses. Juvenal is misogynist by temperament as well as by conviction. Nero is a matricide like Orestes, but—
in scaena numquam cantavit Orestes, Troica non scripsit. quid enim Verginius armis debuit ulcisci magis aut cum Vindice Galba, quod Nero tam saeva crudaque tyrannide fecit? (viii. 220).
Besides, Orestes in his wildest moodSung on no public stage, no Troics wrote.—This topped his frantic crimes! This roused mankind!For what could Galba, what Virginius find,In the dire annals of that bloody reign,Which called for vengeance in a louder strain?GIFFORD.
It is almost a crime to be a foreigner. The Greek is a liar, a base flatterer, a monster of lust, a traitor, a murderer.[723] The Jew is the sordid victim of a narrow and degrading superstition.[724] The Oriental is the defilement of Rome; worst of all are the Egyptians;[725] they even eat each other. The freedman, thenouveau riche, theparvenu[726] are hated with all a Roman's hatred. The old patriotism of the city state is not yet merged in the wider imperialism. It is bitter to hear one of alien blood say 'Civis Romanus sum'.
This strange violence and lack of proportion are due in part to the poet's rhetorical training, which had warped still further a naturally biased temperament. He had been taught and loved to use the language of hyperbole. And he had lived through the principate of Domitian; it was that above all else which made him crydifficile est saturam non scribere. To this same tendency to exaggeration may be in part attributed the extreme grossness of so much of his work. It is true that vices flaunted themselves before his eyes that it would be hard to satirize without indecency. There is excuse to some extent for the second, sixth, and ninth satires. But even there Juvenal oversteps the mark and is often guilty of coarseness for coarseness' sake. It is easy to plead the custom of the age,[727] but it is doubtful whether such pleading affords any real palliation for a writer who sets out to be a moralist. It is easy in an access of admiration to say that Juvenal is never prurient: but it is hard to be genuinely convinced that such a statement is true, or that Juvenal's coarseness is never more than mere plain speaking.[728]
For not a few readers, this tenseness of language, this violence of judgement, and this occasional unclean handling of the unclean, make Juvenal an exhausting and a depressing poet to read in any large quantity at a time. Worse still, they lead the reader at times to harbour doubts as to the genuineness of Juvenal's indignation. Such doubts are not in reality justifiable. Juvenal sometimes goads himself into inappropriate frenzies and sometimes betrays a suspiciously close acquaintance with the most disgusting details of the worst vices of the age. But though he had something of the unreality of the rhetorician, and though his character may, perhaps, not have been free from serious blemish, he is never a hypocrite; nor, though he paints exclusively the darkest side of society, is there the least reason to accuse him of culpable misrepresentation of actual facts. He has selected the material most suited to his peculiar genius: we may complain of his principle of selection, and of his tendency to generalize. There our criticism must end.
These defects are largely the defects of his qualities and may be readily forgiven. We have Pliny the younger and the inscriptions to modify his sombre picture. When all is said, Juvenal had a matchless field for satire and matchless gifts, against which his defects will not weigh in the balance for a moment. His unrivalled capacity for declamation, for mordant epigram and scathing wit, more than compensate for his often ill-balanced ferocity; the extraordinary vividness of his pictures of the life of Rome makes up for lack of perspective and proportion, the richness and variety of his imagination for its too frequent superficiality, the vigour and trenchancy of his blows for the absence of the rapier thrust, the fervour of his teaching for its lack of breadth and depth. These qualities make him the greatest of the satirists of Rome, if not of the world.
It is, perhaps, his vividness that makes the most immediate impression. It would be hard to find in any literature a writer with such a power to make the scenes described live before his readers. The salient features of a scene or character are seized at once.[729] There is no irrelevant detail; the picture may be crowded, but it is never obscure; if there is a fault it is that the colouring is sometimes too crude and glaring to please. But before such word-painting as the description of Domitian's privy council criticism is dumb:
nec melior vultu quamvis ignobilis ibat Rubrius, offensae veteris reus atque tacendae. * * * * * Montani quoque venter adest abdomine tardus, et matutino sudans Crispinua amomo quantum vix redolent duo funera, saevior illo Pompeius tenui iugulos aperire susurro, et qui vulturibus servabat viscera Dacis Fuscus marmorea meditatus proelia villa, et cum mortifero prudens Veiento Catullo, qui numquam visae flagrabat amore puellae, grande et conspicuum nostro quoque tempore monstrum, caecus adulator, dirusque a ponte satelles dignus Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes blandaque devexae iactaret basia raedae (iv. 104).
Rubrius, though not, like these, of noble race,Followed with equal terror in his face;* * * * *Montanus' belly next, and next appearedThe legs on which that monstrous pile was reared.Crispinus followed, daubed with more perfume,Thus early! than two funerals consume.Then bloodier Pompey, practised to betray,And hesitate the noblest lives away.Then Fuscus, who in studious pomp at home,Planned future triumphs for the arms of Rome.Blind to the event! those arms a different fate,Inglorious wounds and Dacian vultures wait.Last, sly Veiento with Catullus came,Deadly Catullus, who at beauty's nameTook fire, although unseen: a wretch, whose crimesStruck with amaze even those prodigious times.A base, blind parasite, a murderous lord,From the bridge-end raised to the council-board,Yet fitter still to dog the traveller's heels,And whine for alms to the descending wheels.GIFFORD.
Figure after figure they live before us, till the procession culminates with the crowning horror of the blind delator, L. Valerius Catullus Messalinus. Equally vivid is Juvenal's description of places. There is the rude theatre of the country town with its white-robed audienceen négligé:—
ipsa dierum festorum herboso colitur si quando theatro maiestas tandemque redit ad pulpita notum exodium, cum personae pallentis hiatum in gremio matris formidat rusticus infans, aequales habitus illic similesque videbis orchestram et populum, clari velamen honoris sufficiunt tunicae summis aedilibus albae (iii. 172).
Some distant parts of Italy are known,Where none but only dead men wear a gown,On theatres of turf, in homely state,Old plays they act, old feasts they celebrate;* * * * *The mimic yearly gives the same delights;And in the mother's arms the clownish infant frights.Their habits (undistinguished by degrees)Are plain alike; the same simplicityBoth on the stage and in the pit you see.In his white cloak the magistrate appears;The country bumpkin the same livery wears.DRYDEN.
There is the poor gentleman's garret high on the topmost story of some totteringinsula, close beneath the tiles, where the doves nest:
lectus erat Codro Procula minor, urceoli sex ornamentum abaci nec non et parvulus infra cantharus, et recubans sub eodem marmore Chiro iamque vetus graecos servabat cista libellos, et divina opici rodebant carmina mures (iii. 203).
Codrus had but one bed, so short to boot,That his short wife's short legs go dangling outHis cupboard's head six earthen pitchers graced,Beneath them was his trusty tankard placed;And to support this noble plate, there layA bending Chiron cast from honest clay;His few Greek books a rotten chest contained,Whose covers much of mouldiness complained;Where mice and rats devoured poetic bread,And on heroic verse luxuriously were fed.DRYDEN.