mand. To remove such a man from his court must undoubtedly have been desirable to Domitian; and, as he was spoken 'intra brevissimum tempus' perierit." 164. Such is the manner in which Dodwell accommodates Suetonius to his own ideas: which seem, also, to have been those of a much higher name, Salmasius; and, while I am now writing, to be sanctioned by the adoption of the learned Ruperti. I never affected singularity; yet I find myself constrained to differ from them all but I will state my reasons. In his 7th Satire, after speaking of Quintilian, Juvenal adds, "Si fortuna volet, fies de rhetore consul: Si volet hæc eadem fies de consule rhetor." Which, taking it for a proverbial expression, I have loosely rendered, Fortune can make kings of pedants and pedants of kings. Dodwell, however, understands it literally. "Hæc sane cum Quintiliani causa dicat, vix est quin Q. talem ostendant è rhetore nimirum nobilem, senatorium, consularem,' et quidem illis divitiis instructum, quæ essent etiam ad censum senatorium necessariæ." 152. Now, as Pliny, who probably died before Trajan, observes that Quintilian was a man of moderate fortune, it follows that he must have acquired the wealth and honors of which Juvenal speaks at a later period. Dodwell fixes this to the time when Hadrian entered Rome, cxvIII., which he states to be also that of the author's banishment. It must be confessed that Juvenal lost no time in exerting himself: he had remained silent fourscore years; he now bursts forth at once, as Dodwell expresses it, recites all his Satires without intermission ("unis continuisque recitationibus"), celebrates Quintilian, attacks the emperor, and is immediately dispatched to Egypt! 162. Here is a great deal of business crowded into the compass of a few weeks, or perhaps days; but let us examine it a little more closely. Rigaltius, with several of the commentators, sees in the lines above quoted a sneer at Quintilian, and he accounts for the rhetor's silence respecting our author, by the resentment which he supposes him to have felt at it. As this militates strongly against Dodwell's ideas, he will not allow that any thing severe was intended by the passage in question; and adds that Quintilian could not mention Juvenal as a satirist, because he had not then written any satires. 160. I believe that both are wrong. In speaking of the satirists, Quintilian says that Persius had justly acquired no inconsiderable degree of reputation by the little he had written. Lib. x., c. 1. He then adds, "sunt clari hodieque, et qui olim nominabuntur." There are yet some excellent ones, some who will be better known hereafter. It always appeared to me, that this last phrase alluded to our author, with whose extraordinary merits Quintilian was probably acquainted, but whom he did not choose, or, perhaps, did not dare to mention in a work composed under a prince whose crimes this unnamed satirist persecuted with a severity as unmitigated as it was just. Quintilian had no political courage. Either from a sense of kindness or fear, he flatters Domitian almost as grossly as Martial does: but his life was a life of innocence and integrity; I will therefore say no more on this subject; but leave it to the reader to consider whether such a man was likely to startle the "god of his idolatry" by celebrating the Satires of Juvenal. of with kindness in the same Satire, which is entirely free from political allusions, the "facetiousness" of the punishment Nor do I agree with the commentators whom Dodwell has followed, in the literal interpretation of those famous lines. "Unde igitur tot," etc. Sat. vii., v. 188-194. Quintilian was rich, when the rest of his profession were in the utmost want. Here then was an instance of good fortune. He was lucky; and with luck a man may be any thing; handsome, and witty, and wise, and noble, and high-born, and a member of the senate. Who does not see in this a satirical exaggeration? Wisdom, beauty, and high birth luck can not give: why then should the remainder of this passage be so strictly interpreted, and referred to the actual history of Quintilian? The lines, "Si fortuna volet," etc., are still more lax: a reflection thrown out at random, and expressing the greatest possible extremes of fortune. Yet on these authorities principally (for the passage of Ausonius,* written more than two centuries later, is of no great weight) has Quintilian been advanced to consular honors; while Dodwell, who, as we have seen, has taken immense pains to prove that they could only be conferred on him by Hadrian, has hence deduced his strongest arguments for the late date of our author's Satires; which he thus brings down to the period of mental imbecility! Hence, too, he accounts for the different ideas of Quintilian's wealth in Juvenal and Pliny. When the latter wrote, he thinks Quintilian had not acquired much property, he was "modicus facultatibus:" when the former, "he had been enriched by the imperial bounty, and was capable of senatorial honors." Yet Pliny might not think his old master rich enough to give a fortune with his daughter adequate to the expectations of a man of considerable rank (lib. vi., 32), though Juvenal, writing at the same instant, might term him wealthy, in comparison of the rhetoricians who were starving around him; and count him a peculiar favorite of fortune. Let us bear in mind, too, that Juvenal is a satirist, and a poet: in the latter capacity, the minute accuracy of an annalist can not be expected at his hands; and in * "Q. consularia per Clementem ornamenta sortitus, honestamenta potius videtur quam insignia potestatis habuisse. In gratiar. act." Quintilian, then, was not actually consul: but this is no great matter-it is of more consequence to ascertain the Clemens by whom he was so honored. In the preface to his fourth book, he says, "Cum vero mihi Dom. Augustus sororis suæ nepotum delegavit curam," etc. Vespasian had a daughter, Domitilla, who married, and died long before her father: she left a daughter, who was given to Flavius Clemens, by whom she had two sons. These were the grandchildren of Domitian's sister, of whom Quintilian speaks; and to their father, Clemens, according to Ausonius, he was indebted for the show, though not the reality, of power. There is nothing incongruous in all this; yet so possessed are Dodwell and his numercus followers (among whom I am sorry to rank Dusaulx) of the late period at which it happened, that they will needs have Hadrian to be meant by Domitianus Augustus, though the detestable flattery which follows the words I have quoted most indisputa bly proves it to be Domitian; and though Dodwell himself is forced to confess that he can find no Clemens under Hadrian to whom the passage applies: "Quis autem fuerit Clemens ille qui Q. ornamenta illa sub Hadriano impetraverit, me sane fateor ignorare!" 165. Another circumstance which has escaped all the commentators, and which is of considerable importance in determining the question, remains to be noticed. the very period of which Dodwell treats, the boundaries of the empire were politically contracted, while Juvenal, whenever he has occasion to speak on the subject, invaria bly dwells on extending or securing them, At (though Domitian's was not a facetious reign) renders the fact not altogether improbable. Yet, when we consider that these reflections on Paris could scarcely have been published before LXXXIV., and that the favorite was disgraced and put to death almost immediately after, we shall be inclined to doubt whether his banishment actually took place; or, if it did, whether it was of any long duration. That Juvenal was in Egypt is certain; but he might have gone there from motives of personal safety, or, as Salmasius has it, of curiosity. However this may be, it does not appear that he was ever long absent from Rome, where a thousand internal marks clearly show that all his Satires were written. But whatever punishment might have followed the complaint of Paris,1 it had no other effect on our author, than that of increasing his hatred of tyranny, and turning his indignation upon the emperor the former as his object was to show the general discouragement of litcrature, he could not, consistently with his plan, attribute the solitary good fortune of Quintilian to any thing but luck. But why was Quintilian made consul? Because, replies Dodwell (164), when Hadrian first entered Rome he was desirous of gaining the affections of the people; which could be done no way so effectually as by conciliating the esteem of the literati; and he therefore conferred this extraordinary mark of favor on the rhetorician. How did it escape this learned man, that he was likely to do himself more injury in their opinion by the banishment of Juvenal at that same instant? an old man of fourscore, who, by his own testimony, had spoken of him with kindness, in a poem which did more honor to his reign than any thing produced in it! and whose only crime was an allusion to the influence of a favorite player! Indeed, the informers of Hadrian's reign must have had more sagacious noses than those of Domitian's, to smell out his fault. What Statius, in his time, was celebrated for the recitation of a Thebaid, or what Paris, for the purchase of an untouched Agave? And where, might we ask Dodwell, was the "jest" of sending a man on the verge of the grave, in a military capacity, into Egypt? Could the most supple of Hadrian's courtiers look on it as any thing but a wanton exercise of cruelty? At eighty, the business of satirizing, either in prose or verse, is nearly over: what had the emperor then to fear? And to sum up all in a word, can any rational being seriously persuade himself that the Satires of Juvenal were produced, for the first time, by a man turned of fourscore? But why should he complain at all? Was he ashamed of being known to possess an influence at the imperial court? Those were not very modest times, nor is modesty, in general, the crying vice of the "quality." He was more likely to have gloried in it. If Bareas, or Camerinus, or any of the old nobility, had complained of the author, I should have thought it more reasonable: but Domitian cared nearly as little for them as Paris himself did. himself, whose hypocrisy, cruelty, and licentiousness, became, from that period, the object of his keenest reprobation. He profited, indeed, so far by his danger or his punishment, as to recite no more in public; but he continued to write during the remainder of Domitian's reign, in which he finished, as I conceive, his second, third,' fifth, sixth, and perhaps thir 2 I hold, in opposition to the commentators, that Juvenal was known in Domitian's time, not only as a poet, but as a keen and vigorous satirist. He himself, though he did not choose to commit his safety to a promiscuous audience, appears to make no great secret of his peculiar talents. In this Satire, certainly prior to many of the others, he tells us that he accompanied Umbritius, then on his way to Cuma, out of the gates of Rome. Umbritius predicted, as Tacitus says, the death of Galba, at which time he was looked upon as the most skillful aruspex of the age. He could not then be a young man; yet, at quitting the capital, he still talks of himself as in the first stage of old age, nova canities, et prima et recta senectus." His voluntary exile, therefore, could not possibly have taken place long after the commencement of Domitian's reign; when he speaks of Juvenal as already celebrated for his Satires, and modestly doubts whether the assistance of so able a coadjutor as himself would be accepted. 66 This, at least, serves to prove in what light the author wished to be considered for the rest, there can, I think, exclusively of what I have urged, be little doubt that this Satire was produced under Domitian. It is known, from other authorities, that he revived the law of Otho in all its severity, that he introduced a number of low and vicious characters, "pinnirapi cultos juvenes, juvenesque lanistæ," into the Equestrian Order, that he was immoderately attached to building, etc., circumstances much dwelt on in this Satire, and applicable to him alone. 2 The following line, "Dacicus et scripto radiat Germanicus auro,” seems to militate against the early date of this Satire. Catanæus and Arntzenius say that Juvenal could not mean Domitian here, because "he did not think well enough of him to do him such honor; whereas he was fond of commending Trajan." I see no marks of this fondness; nor were the titles, if meant of Domitian, intended to do him honor, but to reprove his vanity. Whether medals were ever struck with the inscription of Dacicus and Germanicus in honor of Domitian, I am not qualified to determine. Certain it is, however, that he assumed both these titles; the latter, indeed, in common with his predecessors from the time of Germ. Cæsar; and the former, in consequence of his pretended success in the Dacian war, for which he is bitterly sneered at by Pliny, as well as Dio. It is given to him, among others, by Martial, who dedicates his eighth book, "Imper. Domit. Cæs. Augusto Germanico Dacico." Dodwell appropriates (as I do) the line to Domitian-a little inconsistently, it must bo confessed; but that is his concern. If, however, it be adjudged to Trajan, I should not for that bring down the date of the Satire to a later period Juvenal revised and enlarged all his works, when he gave them teenth1 Satires; the eighth2 I have always looked upon as his first. to the public: this under consideration, in particular, has all the marks of having received considerable additions; and one of them might be the line in question. 1 This satire has contributed as much perhaps as the seventh to persuade Lipsius, Salmasius, and others, that Juvenal wrote his best pieces when he was turned of fourscore. 66 Stupet hæc, qui jam post terga reliquit There were four consuls of this name. The first is out of the question; the second was consul A.D. 13, the third in 59, and the fourth in 68. If we take the second, and add any intermediate number of years between sixty and seventy, for Calvinus had passed his sixtieth year, it will just bring us down to the early part of Domitian's reign, which I suppose to be the true date of this Satire; for I can not believe, as I have already observed, that this, or indeed any part of Juvenal's works, was produced when he was trembling on the verge of ninety, as must be the case if either of the latter periods be adopted. But he observes, "Hæc quota pars scelerum quæ custos Gallicus urbis," etc. Now Rutilius Gallicus was præfect of Rome from the end of 85 to 88 (Domitian succeeded his brother in 81), in which year he died. There seems to be no necessity for mentioning a magistrate as sitting, who was not then in existence; nor can any reason be assigned, if the Satire was written under Hadrian, for the author's recurring to the times of Domitian for a name, when that of the "custos urbis" of the day would have better answered his purpose. It is probable that Gallicus succeeded Pegasus, who was præfect when the ridiculous farce of the turbot took place (Sat. iv.); this would fix it to 85, the year before Fuscus, who was present at it, was sent into Dacia. 2 This Satire is referred by the critics to the reign of Trajan, because Marius, whose trial took place under that prince, is mentioned in it. I have attributed it to an earlier period; principally moved by the consideration that it presents a faithful copy of the state of Rome and the conquered provinces under Nero, and which could scarcely have been given in such vivid colors after the original had ceased to affect the mind. What Rome was under Domitian, may be seen in the second Satire, and the difference, which has not been sufficiently attended to, is striking in the extreme. I would observe too, that Juvenal speaks here of the crimes of Marius-they might be, and probably were, committed long before his condemnation; but under Domitian it was scarcely safe to attempt bringing such gigantic peculators to justice. Add to this, that the other culprits mentioned in it are all of them prior to that prince; nay, one of them, Capito, was tried so early as the beginning of Nero's reign. The insertion of Marius, however (which might be an after-thought), forms a main argument with Dodwell for the very late date of this Satire; he observes that it had escaped Lipsius and Salmasius; and boasts cf it as "longe certissimum," etc. 156. |