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THE

LIFE OF JUVENAL.

DECIMUS

ECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS,* the author of the following Satires, was born at Aquinum, an inconsiderable town of the Volsci, about the year of Christ 38. He was either the son, or the

*Junius Juvenalis liberti locupletis incertum filius an alumnus, ad mediam ætatem declamavit, animi magis causa, quam quod schola aut foro se præpararet. The learned reader knows that this is taken from the brief account of Juvenal, commonly attributed to Suetonius; but which is probably posterior to his time; as it bears very few marks of being written by a contemporary author: it is, however, the earliest extant. The old criticks, struck with its deficiencies, have attempted to render it more complete by variations, which take from its authenticity, without adding to its probability.

+ I have adopted Dodwell's chronology. Sic autem (he says) se rem illam totam habuisse censeo. Exul erat Juv. cum Satiram scriberet xv. Hoc confirmat etiam in v. 27 scholiastes. "De se Juv. dicit, quia in Egypto militem tenuit, et ea promittit se relaturum quæ ipse vidit." Had not Dodwell been predisposed to believe this, he would have seen that the scholium "confirmed" nothing for Juvenal makes no such promise. Proinde rixæ illi ipse adfuit quam describit. So errour is built up! How does it appear that Juvenal was present at the quarrel he describes? He was in Egypt, we know; he had passed through the Ombite nome, and he speaks of the face of the country, as falling under his own inspection but this is all; and he might have heard of the quarrel, at Rome, or elsewhere. Tempus autem ipse designavit rixæ illius cum et "nuper" illam contigisse dicit, et quidem

+ This

nuper

is a very

convenient word. Here, we see, it sig

fosterson, of a wealthy freedman, who gave him a liberal education. From the period of his birth, till he had attained the age of forty, nothing more is known of him than that he continued to perfect himself in the study of eloquence, by declaiming, according to the practice of those days: yet more for his own amusement, than from any intention to prepare himself, either for the schools or the courts of law. About this time, he seems to have discovered his true bent, and betaken himself to poetry. Domitian was

Consule Junio." Jun. duplicem habent fasti, alium Domit. in x. Consulatu collegam App. Junium Sabinum A. D. lxxxiv; alium Hadriani in suo itidem consulatu 111 collegam Q. Junium Rusticum. Quo minus prior intelligi possit, obstant illa omnia quæ in his ipsis Satiris occurrunt Domitiani temporibus recentiora. Yet, such is the capricious nature of criticism! Dodwell's chief argument to prove the late period at which Juvenal was banished, is a passage confessedly written under Domitian, and foisted into a satire published, as he himself maintains, many years after that emperour's death! Posteriorem ergo intellexerit oportet. Hoc ergo anno (cxIx.) erat in exilio. Sed vero Roma illum ejicere non potuit Trajanus, qui ab anno usque cx11. Romæ ipse non adfuit; nec etiam ante cxvIII. quo Romam venit imperator Hadrianus. Sic ante anni CXVIII. finem, aut cxIx. initium, mitti vix potuit in exilium Juvenalis: erat autem cum relegaretur, actogenarius. "Proinde natus fuerit vel anni xxXVIII. fine, vel XXXIX. initio. Annal: 157-159.

I have made this copious extract from Dodwell, because it contains a summary of the chief arguments which induced Pithæus, Heminius, Lipsius, Salmasius, &c. to attribute the ba>nishment of the author to Hadrian. To me they appear any thing but conclusive; for, to omit other objections for the present, why may not the Junius of the fifteenth Satire be the one who was Consul with Domitian in 84, when Juvenal, by Dodwell's own calculation, was in his 47th, instead of his 80th, year.

nifies lately; but when it is necessary to bring the works of our author down to a late period, it means, as Britannicus explains it, de longo tempore, long ago.

now at the head of the government, and showed symptoms of reviving that system of favouritism which had nearly ruined the empire under Claudius, by his unbounded partiality for a young pantomime dancer of the name of Paris. Against this minion, Juvenal seems to have directed the first shafts of that satire which was destined to make the most powerful vices tremble, and shake the masters of the world on their thrones. He composed a few lines* on the influence of Paris, with considerable success, which encouraged him to cultivate this kind of poetry: he had the pru dence, however, not to trust himself to an auditory, in a reign which swarmed with informers; and his compositions were, therefore, secretly handed about amongst his friends. + By degrees,

* Deinde paucorum versuum satira non absurde composita in Paridem pantomimum, poetamque Claudii Neronis, (the writer seems, in this and the following clause, to have referred to Juvenal's words; it is therefore probable that we should read Calvi Neronis, i. e. Domitian; otherwise the phrase must be given up as an absurd interpolation,) ejus semestribus militiolis tumentem » genus scripturæ industriose excoluit. Suet.

† Et tamen diu, ne modico quidem auditorio quicquam commit→ tere ausus est. Suet. On this Dodwell observes: Tam longe ab erant illa a Paridis ira concitanda, si vel superstite Paride fuissent scripta, eum irritare non possent, cum nondum emanassent in publicum. 161. He then adds that "Martial knew nothing of his poetical studies, who boasted that he was as familiar with Juvenal as Pylades with Orestes!" It appears indeed that they were acquainted; but I suspect, notwithstanding the vehemence of Martial's assertions, that there was no great cordiality between minds so very dissimilar. Some one, it seems, had accused the epigrammatist to the satirist, not improbably, of making too free with his thoughts and expressions. He was seriously offended;

But how is this ascertained? Very easily; he calls him facundus Juvenalis. Here the question is finally left; for none of the commentators suppose it possible that the epithet can be

he grew bolder; and, having made many large additions to his first sketch, or perhaps recast it,

and Martial, instead of justifying himself, (whatever the charge might be,) imprecates shame on his accuser in a strain of idle rant not much above the level of a schoolboy. Lib. VII. 24.

But if he had been acquainted with his friend's poetry, he would certainly have spoken of it. Not quite so certainly. These learned criticks seem to think that Juvenal, like the poets he ridicules, wrote nothing but trite fooleries on the Argonauts and the Lapitha. Were the Satires of Juvenal to be mentioned with approbation ? and, if they were, was Martial the person to do it ? Martial, the most devoted sycophant of the age, who was always begging, and sometimes receiving, favours from the man whose castigation was, in general, the express object of them. Is it not more consonant to his character, to suppose that he would conceal his knowledge of them with the most scrupulous care?

But when Domitian was dead, and Martial removed from Rome; when, in short, there was no danger of speaking out, he still appears, continue they, to be ignorant of his friend's poetick talents. I am almost ashamed to repeat what the criticks so constantly forget-that Juvenal was not only a satirist, but a republican, who looked upon Trajan as an usurper, no less than Domitian. And how was it " safe to speak out," when they all assert that he was driven into banishment by a milder prince than Trajan, for a passage "suspected of bearing a figurative allusion to the times ? What inconsistencies are these !

applied to any but a rhetorician. Yet it is applied by the same writer, to a poet of no ordinary kind;

Accipe facundi Calicem, studiose, Maronis
Ne, nugis positis, arma virumque canas.

Lib. XEV. 185.

And, by the author himself, to one who had grown old in the

art:

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tunc seque suamque Terpsichoren odit facunda et nuda senectus."

Let it be remembered too, that Martial, as is evident from the frequent allusions to Domitian's expedition against the Catti, wrote this epigram (lib. v11. 91) in the commencement of that prince's reign, when it is acknowledged that Juvenal had produced but one or two of his Satires.

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