Contemnunt Scauros, et castigata remordent ? Quæ tibi? ne pudeat dominum monstrare tabernæ : 35 40 35. Despise.] Hold them in the most sovereign contempt, for their impudence in daring to reprove others for being vicious. The feigned Scauri.] Æmilius Scaurus, as described by Sallust, bell. Jugurth. was a nobleman, bold, factious, greedy of power, honour, and riches, but very artful in disguising his vices. Juvenal therefore may be supposed to call these hypocrites fictos, as feigning to be what they were not-Scauros, as being like Æ. Scaurus, appearing outwardly grave and severe, but artfully, like him, concealing their vices. However, I question whether the character of Scaurus be not rather to be gathered from his being found among so many truly great and worthy men-Sat. xi. I. 90, 1. Pliny also represents him as a man summæ integritatis, of the highest integrity. This idea seems to suit best with fictos Scauros, as it leads us to consider these hypocrites as feigning themselves men of integrity and goodness, and as seeming to resemble the probity and severity of manners for which Scaurus was eminent, the better to conceal their vices, and to deceive other people. And being reproved, bite again.] Such hypocrites are not only despised by the most openly vicious for their insincerity, but whenever they have the impudence to reprove vice, even in the most abandoned, these will turn again and retaliate: which is well expressed by the word remordent, 36. Laronia. Martial, cotemporary with Juvenal, describes a woman of this name as a rich widow. Abnegat et retinet nostrum Laronia servum, By what Juvenal represents her to have said, in the following lines, she seems to have had no small share of wit. Did not endure.] She could not bear him; she was out of all patience. Sour.] Crabbed, stern in his appearance. Or torvum may be here put for the adverb torve-torve-clainantem. Græcism. See above, 1. 3, and note. From among them.] i. e. One of these dissemblers-one out of this hypocritical herd." 37. Crying out so often.] Repeating aloud his seeming indignation against vice, and calling down the yengeance of the law against lewdness and effeminacy. Despise the feigned Scauri, and being reproved, bite again? 35 Laronia did not endure a certain sour one from among them Crying out so often, "Where is now the Julian law? dost thou "sleep?" And thus smiling: "Happy times! which thee "Oppose to manners: now Rome may take shame: "A third Cato is fallen from heaven :-but yet whence 40 37. Where is the Julian law?] Against adultery and lewdness-(see l. 30, note) why is it not executed ?-As it then stood, it punished adultery and sodomy with death. Dost thou sleep?] Art thou as regardless of these enormities, as a person fast asleep is of what passes about him? 38. And thus smiling.] Laronia could not refrain herself at hearing this, and, with a smile of the utmost contempt, ready almost at the same time to laugh in his face, thus jeers him. Happy times! &c.] That have raised up such a reformer as thou art, to oppose the evil manners of the age! 39. Now Rome may take shame.] Now, to be sure, Rome will blush, and take shame to herself, for what is practised within her walls, since such a reprover appears. Irony. 40. A third Cato.] Cato Censorius, as he was called, from his great gravity and strictness in his censorship; and Cato Uticensis, so • called from his killing himself at Utica, a city of Africa, were men highly esteemed as eininent moralists: to these, says Laronia, (continuing her ironical banter,) heaven has added a third Cato, by sending us so severe and respectable a moralist as thou art. 41. Perfumes.] Opobalsama-oos Baλcaus-i. e. Succus balsami. This was some kind of perfumery, which the effeminate among the Romans made use of, and of which, it seems, this same roughlooking reprover smelt very strongly. 41-2. Your rough neck.] Hairy, and bearing the appearance of a most philosophic neglect of your person. 42. Don't be ashamed, &c.-] Don't blush to tell us where the perfumer lives, of whom you bought these fine sweet-smelling oint ments. Here her raillery is very keen, and tends to shew what this pretended reformer really was, notwithstanding his appearance of sanctity. She may be said to have smelt him out. 43. Statutes and laws are disturbed.] From that state of sleep in which you seem to represent them, and from which you wish to awaken them. The Roman jurisprudence seems to have been founded on a threefold basis, on which the general law, by which the government was carried on, was established--that is to say-Consulta patrum, or decrees of the senate-Leges, which seem to answer to our statute-laws--and jura, those rules of common justice, which Ante omnes debet Scantinia: respice primum 45 50 55 were derived from the two former, but particularly from the latter of the two, or, perhaps, from immemorial usage and custom, like the common law of England. HoR. lib. i. epist. xvi. 1. 41. mentions these three particulars : Vir bonus est quis? Qui consulta patrum, qui leges, juraque scrvat. Sce an account of the Roman laws at large, in Kennett's Roman Antiq. part ii. book iii. chap. xxi. and seq. 43. The Scantinian.] So called from Scantinius Aricinus, by whom it was first introduced to punish sodomy. Others think that this law was so called from C. Scantinius, who attempted this crime on the son of Marcellus, and was punished accordingly. 45. Examine the men.] Search diligently- -scrutinize into their abominations. These do more things.] They far outdo the other sex; they do more things worthy of severe reprehension. 46. Number defends.] This tends to shew how common that detestable vice was. (Comp. Rom. i. 27.) Such numbers were guilty of it, that it was looked upon rather as fashionable than criminal'; they seemed to set the law at defiance, as not daring to attack so large a body. Battalions joined, &c.] A metaphor taken from the Roman manner of engaging. A phalanx properly signified a disposition for an attack on the enemy by the foot, with every man's shield or buckler so close to another's, as to join them together and make a sort of impenetrable wall or rampart. This is said to have been first invented by the Macedonians; phalanx is therefore to be considered as a Macedonian word. 47. There is great concord. &c.] They are very fond of each other, and strongly connected and united, so that, attacking one, would be like attacking all. 49. Tadia-Flora, &c.] Famous Roman courtezans in Juvenal's time-bad as they were, the men were worse. "Ought before all to be stirred up. Consider first, "And examine the men: these do more things-but them "Number defends, and battalions joined with a buckler. 45 "There is great concord among the effeminate: there will not be "Trædia caresses not Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla : Hippo assails youths, and in his turn is assailed. "Do we plead causes? the civil laws "Do we know? or with any noise do we make a stir in "A few wrestle, a few eat wrestlers diet: 50 your courts? finished "You card wool, and carry back in full baskets your - 55 51. Do we plead, &c.] Do we women usurp the province of the men? do we take upon us those functions which belong to them? 53. A few wrestle.] A few women there are, who are of such a masculine turn of mind, as to wrestle in public. See sat. i. 22, 3, and notes; and Sat. vi. 245-57, and notes. Wrestler's diet.] Prepare themselves for wrestling as the wrestlers do by feeding on the coliphium-a zaλe e, membra robusta-a kind of dry diet which wrestlers used, to make them strong and firm-fleshed. See AINSW. 54. You card wool.] You, effeminate wretches, forsake manly exercises, and addict yourselves to employments which are peculiar to women. In baskets.] The calathi were little osier or wicker baskets, in which the women put their work when they had finished it, in order to carry it back to their employers. 56. Penelope.] Wife of Ulysses, who during her husband's absence, was importuned by many noble suitors, whose addresses she refused with inviolable constancy; but, fearing they might take her by force, she amused them, by desiring them to wait, till she had finished a web which she was then about: and to make the time as long as possible, she undid during the night what she had done in the day. Arachne.] A Lydian damsel, very skilful in spinning and weaving. She is fabled to have contended with Minerva, and being outdone, she hanged herself, and was by that goddess changed into a spider. Ov. Met. lib. vi. fab. i. By mentioning these instances, Laronia ironically commends the great proficiency of the men in carding and spinning: both these operations seem to be distinctly marked by the poet. 57. A dirty harlot.] Pellex properly denotes the mistress of a married man. This, and the Greek Taλλanıs, seem derived from Heb. wah pilgesh, which we render-concubine. Codex-from-caudex-literally signifies a stump or stock of a tree -of a large piece of which a log was cut out, and made an instru Notum est cur solo tabulas impleverit Hister Tu nube, atque tace: donant arcana cylindros. 60 65 ment of punishment for female slaves, who were chained to it on any misbehaviour towards their mistresses, but especially where there was jealousy in the case; and there they were to sit and work at spinning or the like. 58. Hister.] Some infamous character, here introduced by Laronia in order to illustrate her argument. Filled his will.] Tabula signifies any plate or thin material on which they wrote-hence deeds, wills, and other written instruments, were called tabulæ. So public edicts. See before 1. 28. 58-59. With only his freedman.] Left him his sole heir. 59. Why alive, &c.] Why in his life-time he was so very generous, and made such numbers of presents to his wife, here called puellæ, as being a very young girl when he married her but I should rather think, that the arch Laronia has a more severe meaning in her use of the term puellæ, by which she would intimate, that his young wife, having heen totally neglected by him, remained still-puella, a maiden; Hister having no desire towards any thing, but what was unnatural with his favourite freedman. It is evident that the poet uses puella in this sense, sat. ix. 1. 74. See note on sat. ix. 1. 70. 60. She will be rich, &c.] By receiving (as Hister's wife did) large sums for hush-money. Who sleeps third, &c.] By this she would insinuate, that Hister caused his freedman, whom he afterwards made his heir, to lie in the bed with him and his wife, and gave his wife large presents of money, jewels, &c. not to betray his abominable practices. 61. Do thou marry.] This apostrophe may be supposed to be addressed to the unmarried woman, who might be standing by, and listening to Laronia's severe reproof of the husbands of that day, and contains a sarcasın of the most bitter kind. 46 As if she had said: "You hear what you are to expect; such of you as wish to be rich, I advise to marry, and keep their husbands' secrets." Secrets bestow gems.] Cylindros-these were precious stones, of an oblong and round form, which the women used to hang in their ears. Here they seem to signify all manner of gems. 62. After all this.] After all I have been saying of the men, I can't help observing how hardly we women are used. |