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Those whom, the surest, shortest way to rise,
The widow's itch, advances to the skies!
Not that an equal rank her minions hold :—
Just to their various powers, she metes her gold,
And Proculeius mourns his scanty share,

While Gillo triumphs, her's and nature's heir!
And let him triumph! 'tis the price of blood:
While, thus defrauded of the generous flood,
The colour flies his cheek, as though he prest,
With unsuspecting foot, a serpent's crest;
Or stood prepared at Lyons to declaim,
Where the least peril is the loss of fame. [brain,

Ye Powers!-What rage, what frenzy fires my When that false guardian, with his crowded train,

was, and ready to join in the destruction of the worthiest characters, not yet so firmly established in the Emperour's favour, but that he needed the protection of a more powerful villain.

Carus obtained more "victories," as Tacitus calls them, afterwards, and outlived his execrable master; when he fell into poverty and contempt. Of Latinus, or rather the mime represented by him, (for he himself had been put to death in a former reign,) I have nothing to relate with certainty.

VER. 63. Or stood prepared at Lyons to declaim, &c.—It was here that Caligula instituted games of oratory. The meed of the conqueror is nowhere mentioned, but the punishment of the vanquished was to obliterate what he had written with his tongue, to be ducked in the river, &c. &c. Tyranny, like Dullness, sometimes "loves a joke," and this was a most miserable one.

If Caligula himself were one of the candidates, and any other won the palm, his reward was certain death. Dio tells a curious story of Caligula's accusing Domitius Afer, the celebrated orator, in a set speech. Domitius wisely determined not to answer it; but throwing himself into an ecstacy at the beauty of the composition, he repeated parts of it here and there, affecting to be so enraptured, as utterly to forget that it was pronounced against himself. The artifice succeeded: his life was spared, because, when ordered to plead, he prostrated himself—και χαμαι κείμενος, ικετευσεν ὡς καὶ τον ρήτορα αυλον μαλλον η τον Καισαρα φοβεμενος. Lib. LIX. c. 19.

Chokes up the street, and leaves his orphan charge
To prostitution, and the world at large!

When, by a juggling sentence damn'd in vain,
(For who, that holds the plunder, heeds the pain ?)
Marius to wine devotes his morning hours,
And laughs, in exile, at the offended Powers:
While, sighing o'er the victory she has won,
The Province finds herself but more undone!

And shall I feel that crimes like these demand The Horatian lyre, and yet withhold my hand,

It should be added, that Caligula, sometime afterwards, joined him in the consulship with himself, an honour of which his vices made him not altogether unworthy. He was an informer.

The scene of these contests, which was at the confluence of the Soane and the Rhone, had been looked on as a sacred spot from the earliest ages. After the subjection of the country, the natives built a temple and altar here to Augustus, and established, or rather renewed, the ancient festival, to which there was annually a great resort. The happy thought of instituting oratorical games at this altar, is, as I have already observed, due to Caligula.

VER. 71. Marius, &c.] Proconsul of Africa: after the expira tion of his government, he was prosecuted by the province for extortion and cruelty, convicted on the clearest evidence, fined, and banished from Italy. "Yet," says Holyday," reserving the greater part of his former spoils, he lived in a wanton exile;"while the Africans returned home with the wretched consolation of having defrayed their own expenses, and seen the money levied on their oppressor, carried to the Roman treasury.

Juvenal observes, that Marius was damnatus inani judicio; that is, says the Scholiast, non ademptis bonis. Now Cæsar had made a law to prevent this kind of judgment. Panas facinorum auxit (Suet. Cæs. xlii), cum locupletes eò facilius scelere se obligárent, quod integris patrimoniis exulabant. It is true, this, with other good laws, was now grown obsolete; but the Scholiast's explanation is, nevertheless, unfounded: Juvenal uses the expression, inani judicio, in reference to the vast wealth of Marius, which could be little, if at all, affected by the paltry sum (not quite £6000.) exacted from him by way of punishment. I believe that we have here a tacit censure on Trajan, in the third year of whose reign this scandalous instance of lenity took place.

Yet check the avenging strain, and tell instead, Dull tales of Hercules, and Diomed,

Recount the flight of Dædalus again,

And the rash boy, plunged in the sounding main! When treasures, which the adulterer dares not leave The wife, by law, the wittol may receive,

VER. 81. When treasures, &c.] Adulterers were accustomed to bequeath their property to their mistresses: this opened a door to universal corruption, and occasioned so great a clamour amongst the injured relatives, that Domitian interfered,* and by an express law rendered such infamous women incapable of receiving any bequests whatever. The ingenious avarice of the Roman husbands, however, contrived to elude this wholesome restriction: they became panders to their own wives, and the legacies were, in consequence of it, transferred to themselves!

Αυτῳ τις γήμας πιθανην τῷ γειτονι ῥέγχει,
Και τρέφεται. Τουτ ην ευχολΘ εργασία.

Μη πλειν, μη σκαπλειν, αλλ' ευςομάχως απορεγχειν
Αλλοτριῳ δαπανη πλέσια βοσκομενον.

But this was not all. If the adulterer was old and wealthy, the husband slept and snored on; if not, he watched his opportunity, and took care to wake at a moment favourable to his views of extorting a compromise for an attempt to dishonour him.

Now I am on this subject, (far, indeed, from a pleasing one,) I will relate a little anecdote of Mæcenas. He was invited to supper by one Galba, who had a handsome wife. The minister was at this time all-powerful, and his protection, therefore, of consequence to his host, who remarked with joy his advances to his wife, and after supper, fell fast asleep. Mæcenas made use of his time; and a friend, whom he had brought with him, was proceeding to imitate him, when Galba, who had nothing to expect from this new competitor, gravely raised his head, and exclaimed, Non omnibus dormio! I don't sleep for every body! This was thought a good joke at Rome, where the expression passed into a proverb.

* Domitian's interference, however, obtains no credit with Xiphilinus. Sneering at his sudden and inconsistent starts of virtue, he says that he put to death several women for adultery whom himself had debauched ! Συχνοι δε και άνδρες και γυναίκες των πλεσίων επι μοιχεία εκολασθησαν, ὧν είναι και ὑπ' αυτν εμοιχεύθησαν. Lib. Lx VII c. 12,

Skill'd on the roof his vacant eyes to roll,
And snore, with wakeful nostrils, o'er the bowl!
When he presumes to ask a troop's command,
Who spent on horses all his father's land,
While, proud the experienced driver to display,
He mark'd with glowing wheels the publick way:-
For there, our young Automedon first tried
His powers, there loved the rapid car to guide,
While great Pelides sought superiour bliss,
And toy'd and wanton'd with his master-miss.

VER. 85. When he presumes, &c.] He probably alludes to Cornelius Fuscus, who fell in the Dacian war. (Sat. Iv.) Fuscus had assisted Nero in his mad follies, to the ruin of his patrimony; and on that founded his claim to promotion. Hence the indignation of Juvenal.

The two concluding lines of this paragraph have given the commentators some trouble:

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puer Automedon nam lora tenebat, "Ipse lacernatæ cum se jactaret amicæ."

If I understand Holyday, he refers ipse to Fuscus, and amica lacernata to his "warlike mistress:" but from the mention of Automedon, the charioteer of Achilles, it should seem as if ipse was meant of the Emperour, who, while Fuscus was showing his dexterity in driving, employed himself in exhibiting his talents in some other way, to one of his favourites.

If this be allowed, the amica lacernata must relate to Sporus, whom this monster of lust espoused in Greece, afterwards brought to Italy, and exhibited publickly in the streets of Rome, and elsewhere, as his wife. Hunc Sporum, augustarum ornamentis excultum, lecticaque vectum, et circa conventus mercatusque Græciæ, ac mox Romæ circa Sigillaria comitatus est, identidem exosculans. Suet. Nero. xxviii.

The end of Sporus is singular enough to deserve a line. A few years after this transaction, he was ordered by Vitellius (then Emperour) to personate a nymph, who, in some pantomime, was to be carried off by a ravisher: and this creature-branded in the face of the whole world with infamy of the deepest die, actually put an end to himself, to avoid appearing on the stage in the dress of a female!

Who would not, reckless of the swarm he meets, Fill his wide tablets in the publick streets, With angry verse? when, through the mid-day glare,

Born by six slaves, and in an open chair,

The forger comes, who owes his lavish state,
To a wet seal, and a fictitious date;

Comes, like the soft Mæcenas, lolling by,

And impudently braves the publick eye! [thirst Or the rich dame, who stanch'd her husband's With generous bowls, but-drugg'd them deeply Now, baffling old Locusta in her skill, [first! She shows her simpler neighbours how to kill, And bids them bear the spotted corpse along, Nor heed the curses of the indignant throng.

VER. 99. Comes, like the soft Mecenas, &c.] This great man was at once a beau and a sloven. Seneca says, he used to walk abroad with his tawdry tunick about his heels. He was so indolent, that when the præfect of the guards came to him for the countersign, or watchword, he generally received him half undrest. His effeminacy is again noticed in the twelfth Satire.

VER. 101. Or the rich dame, &c.] The person here alluded to, says Madan, was Agrippina, the wife of Claudius. It is not unusual (and I speak it for the sake of criticks of a much higher order than Mr. Madan) for a commentator to note what is immediately before him, without deigning to cast an eye to the right hand or the left. The husband, in the text, is poisoned by a draught of wine; Claudius was despatched by a mushroom! but it is needless to pursue the subject. Poisoning husbands, unluckily, was not so rare an event in those days, that we should set an author at variance with himself to appropriate it. Madan was probably misled by Britannicus: but I observe that Ruperti has fallen into the same errour, for such I still think it to be. On matrona potens he says, any poisoner," (I believe that some particular fact and some particular female were alluded to,) or rather Agrippina, who poisoned her

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husband, Claudius." Vol. II. p. 28.

66

VER. 103. Now, baffling old Locusta, &c.] This superannuated wretch, who seems to have reduced the art of poisoning to

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