No;-with their daughters' crimes they swell their stores, And thrive as bawds, when out of date as whores! Women support the BAR: the BAR: they love the law, And raise litigious questions for a straw. They meet in private, and prepare the Bill, Draw up the Instructions with a lawyer's skill, And dictate points for statement or reply. Nay more, they FENCE! who has not mark'd their oil, Their purple rugs, for this preposterous toil ?— A post! which, with her buckler she provokes, VER. 354. Suggest to Celsus &c.] An orator of those times, says the Scholiast, who left behind him seven books of Institutes. If by those times" be meant the age of Juvenal, there is a manifest errour, for Celsus died in the reign of Tiberius. He is now better known as a physician than a lawyer. 'There is, indeed, a Junius (Juventius) Celsus mentioned by Grangæus; and this, perhaps, may be the person to whom the Scholiast alludes. But as he flourished under Adrian, (somewhat too late a period for the date of this Satire,) I still incline to believe that our author gives, as is customary with him, the name of the well-known rhetorician, to some contemporary master of the art. VER. 357. Their purple rugs, &c.] I have already mentioned these rugs (endromida) in the third Satire. (p. 76.) They were usually put on after violent exercise. It only remains to note with what ingenuity the ladies contrived to make even their tilting pursuits subservient to their vanity. Their rugs are ornamental, and they grow cool in Tyrian purple! How happened it that this escaped Martial ? Till all the fencer's art can do she shows, VER. 365. the Floral Games ;] Flora, the Romans say, was a lady of pleasure, who, having acquired an immense fortune (at a time when a few pounds of brass constituted all the wealth of the state) in the honest way of trade, left it to the people, on condition that the interest of it should be annually laid out in a merry meeting, which was to be held on her birthday, and called, after her own name, Floralia. The senate took the money, and, out of gratitude (out of shame, Lactantius thinks) to so exquisite a benefactress, made her a goddess forthwith, and put the flowers under her protection! The people, good souls! made no objection to the promotion of their old friend, and kept her birthday, now her festival, more zealously than ever. Except the audacious claim put in by Greece, on behalf of Rhodope, (" a customer," like the former,) to the erection of one of the pyramids, which was built before that country had yet given shelter to a few naked savages; nothing was ever more impudently urged than this idle story. The flowers of Italy had a presiding Power, ages before Rome or her senate was heard of. Varro supposes Flora to have been a Sabine deity; and adds, that Numa first gave her a priest. Ovid puzzles himself sorely to account for the singular manner in which she was worshipped in his time, but is at no loss about the rest of her story. He translates her name into Greek, proves her to have acted as a midwife at the birth of Mars, &c. and has some beautiful verses on her marriage with Zephyrus, who gave her the charge of blossoms and flowers for a dowry.-But enough of this. The Floralia were first sanctioned by the government in the consulship of Claudius Centho, and Sempronius Tuditanus, (A. U. C. DXIII.) out of the fines then exacted for trespasses on the grounds belonging to the people: (this is Ovid's story :) even then they were only occasional; but about eighteen years afterwards, on account of an unfavourable spring, the senate decreed that they should be celebrated annually, as the most effectual method to propitiate the goddess of the season. This is the best account I can find of them: my own opinion is, that they had their rise in a very remote age, and, like the Lupercalia, were the uncouth expressions of gratitude of a rude and barbarous race, handed down by tradition, adopted by a Unless, with nobler daring, she aspire people as yet but little refined, and finally, degenerating into licentiousness, amidst the general corruption of manners. These games were celebrated on the last day of April, and the first and second days of May; and with an indecency hardly credible amongst a civilized people. Strumpets, taken from the dregs of the populace, appeared upon the stage, and exhibited a variety of obscene dances, feats of activity, &c. The people claimed a privilege of calling upon these miserable wretches, to strip themselves quite naked; which was regularly done with immense applause! Val. Maximus says, that when Cato once happened to be present at these games, the spectators were ashamed to call upon the ladies as usual; Cato, who, I suppose, expected it, asked his friend Favorinus why they delayed; and was answered, Out of respect to him; upon which he immediately left the theatre, to the great joy of the people, who proceeded to indemnify themselves for their reluctant forbearance. Martial has an epigram on this story, in which he puts a very pertinent question : "Why," says he to Cato, " since you knew the nature of these games, did you go into the theatre? was it merely that you might come out again!" A word more. Among the many puzzling circumstances in the Roman History, it is not one of the least, to account for the high character which Cato obtained from his countrymen. A parent without affection, a husband without attachment, a master without humanity, and a republican without political honesty, he has yet come down to us, as one of the most virtuous men of his age! I have frequently considered his actions; but found little more in them, than proofs of a hard heart, a wily head, and an impudence that would have scandalized a cynick. Holyday tells us, that these "vile impudent strumpets were wont to dance naked through the streets, to the sound of a trumpet, to which our poet here alludes more particularly." I cannot find it "so set down;" but they were certainly assembled by the sound of a trumpet; and, at any rate, the leader of this immodest band must have required all the impudence, and all the profligacy, which Juvenal sees in his female fencer. For there's a thing she loves beyond compare, And take her private lessons for the stage, Yet these are they, the tender souls! who sweat In muslin, and in silk expire with heat. Mark, with what force, as the full blow descends, She thunders "hah!” again, how low she bends Beneath the opposer's stroke, how firm she rests, Poised on her hams, and every step contests, How close tuck'd up for fight, behind, before, Then laugh to see her squat, when all is o'er! Tell me, ye daughters of Metellus old, Emilius, Gurges, did ye e'er behold Asyllus' wife, and be the truth confest, Tilt at a stake, thus impudently drest! 'Tis night; yet hope no slumbers with your wife; The nuptial bed is still the scene of strife: VER. 393. Tilt at a stake, &c.] We have now seen the ladies exhibiting as fencers, prize-fighters, gladiators, &c. Occupations so abhorrent from the nature of the sex, that the mere difficulty of conceiving it possible they should ever engage in them, has probably led many to imagine the whole to be the invention of the poet. But this is to be ignorant of the history of those times. We have but to open the pages of contemporary writers to be convinced that, far from inventing, he does not even exaggerate. There lives the keen debate, the clamorous brawl, prove, Of this most loving, this most jealous whore, What amorous lays, what letters would you see; Proofs, damning proofs, of her sincerity! But these are doubtful-Put a clearer case; Suppose her taken in a slave's embrace, Or even a knight's. Now, my Quintilian, come, And fashion an excuse. What! you are dumb? Then let the lady speak. "Was't not agreed "The MAN should please himself?" It was; proceed. "Then I've an equal right." Heavens!" Nay, no oath : "MAN is a general term, and takes in both.” When once surprised, the sex all shame forego, And more audacious, as more guilty grow. Whence shall these prodigies of vice be traced? From wealth, my friend. Our matrons then were chaste, |