In pious duty to the grateful soil, My humble offerings, honey, meal, and oil; fell to idolatry, such comminations lost their terrour, and legislators and priests were driven to other expedients. A god (Terminus) was created; and these mere-stones were converted into altars to his name, and invested with a sacred character: it was consequently an act of sacrilege to stir them from their places; and thus the divisions of land, were in a great measure, maintained. Of the innumerable superstitions of ethnicism, this was at once the most elegant and the most useful; it was also one of the most innocent: for the offerings which were usually made by the rusticks in procession, consisted of the produce of the soil, flowers, fruits, unguents, and the invariable concomitants of every sacrifice, wine and the salted cake. The fullest account of it is in Dion. Halicarnassus : Θεες τε γαρ ηγειται τις τερμονας, και θυάσιν αυτοις ετι των μεν εμψυχων εδεν 8 γαρ ὅσιον ἁιματλειν τες λίθες πελανες δε δημήρω, και αλλας τινας καρπών απαρχας. Lib. XI. 'This annual visitation, which was perpetuated, with the property it protected, from father to son, seems to have endeared the rite to the ancients, who speak of it with a degree of tenderness and affection, which they do not always express for those of a more publick and important nature: "Nam veneror, seu stipes habet desertus in agris, Tibul The institution is attributed to Numa, by Plutarch: the more probable fact is, that this prince brought to the rude and barbarous hordes, whom, happily for themselves, he was called to govern, the rites and ceremonies of a more refined and virtuous people. His denunciations against those who removed "the sacred landmark" are even more severe than those of the Hebrew legislator: "Qui terminum exarasit, ipsus et boveis sacrei sunto." The fathers are much offended at this superstition, which continued to a late period; and, was not given up without a struggle, as the husbandman persisted in connecting the idea of a prosperous year with the due observance of his rural ceremonies. Their fulminations at length prevailed, and Prudentius, who witnessed the desecration of these landmarks, observes with some degree of triumph over the superstitious fears of Term after Term I wait, till months be past, And Fuscus slips aside, to seek the pot; Add that the soldier, while his father lives, the rusticks, that sunshine and rain still visited the earth, which had yet lost nothing of its pristine fertility! "Si stetit antiquus, quem cingere sueverat error 66 Temperat aut pluviis qui culta novalia ventus." But in his time, and, indeed, long before the simplicity of the ancient worship had been corrupted: "Spargitur et cæsa communis terminus agna, Ovid. The blood of lambs and kids was now mingled with the primitive fruits and flowers; and, as property was secured by other means, its abolition was no less desirable than expedient. For what by pay is earn'd, by plunder won, VER. 71. For what by pay is earn'd, &c.] This law, which was introduced so early as the time of Julius Cæsar, was meant to encourage the soldiery, the attachment of whom was now become of importance to the ambitious chiefs who contended for the empire. The privileges which he granted, his successours were careful to extend, till about the time this Satire was probably written, nothing remained for them to bestow; and the distribution of favours-imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia—naturally changed hands. I know nothing of Coranus, who was probably a soldier of fortune:-but there is something ludicrous, amid the disgusting picture of avaricious depravity, in making a father, tottering on the verge of the grave, (jam tremulus,) pay servile court to a son, in the full vigour of life, in hopes to be named his heir! By the law, or rather the constitution of the republick, the power of a father over a son was unbounded; it extended not only to his property but his person, and terminated but with the death of one of the parties: yet it must be confessed that we do not find many instances in the Roman history, of its being abused Natural affection is an excellent corrector of the anomalies of tyranny. VER. 77. And every prudent chief &c.] O most lame and impotent conclusion! To have a bitter sarcasm on the abuses of a military despotism suddenly terminate in a dull panegyrick on a soldier, which old Coranus himself might have delivered, was little to be expected from any man of judgment, and least of all from Juvenal, whose genuine compositions (a fact which I strongly recommend to the reader's attention) invariably close with an epigrammatick smartness; and whom, therefore, I am desirous of exonerating from having written this Satire. |