This Satire seems, from several incidental circumstances to have been produced subsequently to most of them; and was probably drawn up after the author had determined to collect and publish his works, as a kind of Introduction.
He abruptly breaks silence with an impassioned complaint of the importunity of bad writers, and a resolution of retaliating upon them; and after ridiculing their frivolous taste in the choice of their subjects, declares his own intention to devote himself to Satire. After exposing the corruption of men, the profligacy of women, the luxury of courtiers, the baseness of informers and fortune-hunters, the treachery of guardians, and the peculation of officers of state, he censures the general passion for gambling, the servile rapacity of the patricians, the avarice and gluttony of the rich, and the miserable poverty and subjection of their dependents; and after some bitter reflections on the danger of satirizing living villainy, concludes with a resolution to attack it under the mask of departed names.
This Satire contains an animated attack upon the hypocrisy of the philosophers and reformers of the day, whose ignorance, profligacy, and impiety it exposes with just severity.
Domitian is here the object; his vices are alluded to under every different name; and it gives us a high opinion of the intrepid spirit of the man who could venture to circulate, even in private, so faithful a representation of that blood-thirsty tyrant.
Umbritius, an Aruspex and friend of the author, disgusted at the prevalence of vice and the disregard of unassuming virtue, is on the point of quitting Rome; and when a little way from the city stops short to acquaint the poet, who has accompanied him, with the causes of his retirement. These may be arranged under the following heads: That Flattery and Vice are the only thriving arts at Rome; in these, especially the first, foreigners have a manifest superiority over the natives, and consequently engross all favor—that the poor are universally exposed to scornand insult—that the general habits of extravagance render it difficult for them to subsist—that the want of a well-regulated police subjects them to numberless miseries and inconveniences, aggravated by the crowded state of the capital, from all which a country life is happily free: on the tranquillity and security of which he dilates with great beauty.
In this Satire Juvenal indulges his honest spleen against Crispinus, already noticed, and Domitian, the constant object of his scorn and abhorrence. The introduction of the tyrant is excellent; the mock solemnity with which the anecdote of the Turbot is introduced, the procession of the affrighted counselors to the palace, and the ridiculous debate which terminates in as ridiculous a decision, show a masterly hand. The whole concludes with an indignant and high-spirited apostrophe.
Under pretense of advising one Trebius to abstain from the table of Virro, a man of rank and fortune, Juvenal takes occasion to give a spirited detail of the insults and mortifications to which the poor were subjected by the rich, at those entertainments to which, on account of the political connection subsisting between patrons and clients, it was sometimes thought necessary to invite them.
The whole of this Satire, not only the longest, but the most complete of the author's works, is directed against the female sex. It may be distributed under the following heads: Lust variously modified, imperiousness of disposition, fickleness, gallantry, attachment to improper pursuits, litigiousness, drunkenness, unnatural passions, fondness for singers, dancers, etc.; gossiping, cruelty, ill manners; outrageous pretensions to criticism, grammar, and philosophy; superstitious and unbounded credulity in diviners and fortune-tellers; introducing supposititious children; poisoning their step-sons to possess their fortunes; and, lastly, murdering their husbands.
This Satire contains an animated account of the general discouragement under which literature labored at Rome. Beginning with poetry, it proceeds through the various departments of history, law, oratory, rhetoric, and grammar; interspersing many curious anecdotes, and enlivening each different head with such satirical, humorous, and sentimental remarks as naturally flow from the subject.
Juvenal demonstrates, in this Satire, that distinction is merely personal; that though we may derive rank and titles from our ancestors, yet if we degenerate from the virtues by which they obtained them, wecan not be considered truly noble. This is the main object of the Satire; which, however, branches out into many collateral topics—the profligacy of the young nobility; the miserable state of the provinces, which they plundered and harassed without mercy; the contrast between the state of debasement to which the descendants of the best families had sunk, and the opposite virtues to be found in persons of the lowest station and humblest descent.
The Satire consists of a dialogue between the poet and one Nævolus, a dependent of some wealthy debauchee, who, after making him subservient to his unnatural passions, in return starved, insulted, hated, and discarded him. The whole object seems to be, to inculcate the grand moral lesson, that, under any circumstances, a life of sin is a life of slavery.
The subject of this inimitable Satire is the vanity of human wishes. From the principal events of the lives of the most illustrious characters of all ages, the poet shows how little happiness is promoted by the attainment of what our indistinct and limited views represent as the greatest of earthly blessings. Of these he instances wealth, power, eloquence, military glory, longevity, and personal accomplishments; all of which, he shows, have proved dangerous or destructive to their respective possessors. Hence he argues the wisdom of acquiescing in the dispensations of Heaven; and concludes with a form of prayer, in which he points out with great force and beauty the objects for which a rational being may presume to approach the Almighty.
Under the form of an invitation to his friend Persicus, Juvenal takes occasion to enunciate many admirable maxims for the due regulation of life. After ridiculing the miserable state to which a profligate patrician had reduced himself by his extravagance, he introduces the picture of his own domestic economy, which he follows by a pleasing view of the simplicity of ancient manners, artfully contrasted with the extravagance and luxury of the current times. After describing with great beauty the entertainment he proposes to give his friend, he concludes with an earnest recommendation to him to enjoy the present with content, and await the future with calmness and moderation.
Catullus, a valued friend of the poet, had narrowly escaped shipwreck. In a letter of rejoicing to their common friend, Corvinus, Juvenal describes the danger that his friend had incurred, and his own hearty and disinterested delight at his preservation, contrasting his own sacrifices of thanksgiving at the event, with those offered by the designing legacy-hunters, by which the rich and childless were attempted to be insnared.
Calvinus had left a sum of money in the hands of a confidential person, who, when he came to re-demand it, forswore the deposit. The indignation and fury expressed by Calvinus at this breach of trust, reached the ears of his friend Juvenal, who endeavors to soothe and comfort him under his loss. The different topics of consolation follow one another naturally and forcibly, and the horrors of a troubled conscience were perhaps never depicted with such impressive solemnity as in this Satire.
The whole of this Satire is directed to the one great end of self-improvement. By showing the dreadful facility with which children copy the vices of their parents, the poet points out the necessity as well as the sacred duty of giving them examples of domestic purity and virtue. After briefly enumerating the several vices, gluttony, cruelty, debauchery, etc., which youth imperceptibly imbibe from their seniors, he enters more at large into that of avarice; of which he shows the fatal and inevitable consequences. Nothing can surpass the exquisiteness of this division of the Satire, in which he traces the progress of that passion in the youthful mind from the paltry tricks of saving a broken meal to the daring violation of every principle, human and divine. Having placed the absurdity as well as the danger of immoderate desires in every point of view, he concludes with a solemn admonition to rest satisfied with those comforts and conveniences which nature and wisdom require, and which a decent competence is easily calculated to supply.
After enumerating with great humor the animal and vegetable gods of the Egyptians, the author directs his powerful ridicule at their sottish and ferocious bigotry; of which he gives an atrocious and loathsome example. The conclusion of the Satire, which is a just and beautiful description of the origin of civil society (infinitely superior to any thing that Lucretius or Horace has delivered on the subject), founded not on natural instinct, but on principles of mutual benevolence implanted by God in the breast of man, and of man alone, does honor to the genius, good sense, and enlightened morality of the author.
Under a pretense of pointing out to his friend Gallus the advantages of a military life, Juvenal attacks with considerable spirit the exclusive privileges which the army had acquired or usurped, to the manifest injury of the civil part of the community.