Joy, Sorrow, Fear, Love, Hatred, Transport, Rage, (Gifford's Version of i. 84, 85.) Precisely similar is the disgust expressed by Martial at the mawkish mythological poetry of his day : Qui legis Oedipoden caligantemque Thyesten, Colchidas et Scyllas, quid nisi monstra legis? (Epp. x. iv. 1-2, 7-10.) Juvenal and Martial may thus be said to have developed a school of practical poetry. Just as Socrates is said to have called down the attention of men from the heavens to the earth, so did Juvenal and Martial call men from the barren repetition of mythological tales and fancies, and the no less barren field of rhetorical declamation, to describing the life of men as lived in their own time and city. Juvenal ends his 1st Satire with the announcement that he is not to follow the example of Lucilius in attacking his contemporaries; his shafts are to be directed, not against the living, but against the dead. This is not to be taken merely as a sign of caution on Juvenal's part, as though he were afraid of rousing resentments like those aroused by Lucilius, but is xlix rather an indication that his main purpose is to expose the vices and follies of the day, not to attack the individuals who had committed them. He is to be a preacher of morality, not a chastiser of persons. And this promise is to a large extent made good. Juvenal makes no effort to describe or ridicule individual characters, nor did he possess the special talent for the purpose. His subject, no doubt, requires him frequently to quote names; but such names are usually given merely as typical of some special kind of failing. They are taken either from books, or from persons who had in some way or other made themselves notorious; some of them may have been invented for the occasion. In no case do we recognise any special feeling of animosity against the person named; nowhere can we discover any trace of that personal vindictiveness which sharpens the point, and impairs the truthfulness, of so much of our most famous modern satire. And Juvenal's most exaggerated invectives are relieved by the feeling that they are the sincere outpourings of that saeva indignatio which has so often been coupled with his name. In his 2nd Satire Juvenal attacks false philosophers-men who, while exhibiting in public the stern looks and uncouth manners of Stoics, practise the worst vices in secret. It is characteristic of Juvenal that he quotes as instances of the worst 4 depravity the fact that a Roman noble wore clothes of almost transparent texture, and that the Emperor Otho used cosmetics and carried with him a mirror as part of his paraphernalia for war. The 3rd Satire, from an artistic point of view, is perhaps Juvenal's finest performance. It contains a brilliant picture of the living Rome of his day, of its sights and sounds, its physical dangers and annoyances, its luxury and its meanness, its wearisome social observances, and of the intolerable inequalities which made it impossible for a poor man with any self-respect to continue any longer to live in it. In lines 18-20 we find a charming indication of the poet's natural good taste when he exclaims how much nearer to us would be the spirit of Egeria "if her fountain were fringed by a margin of green grass, and there were no marble ornament to outrage the native tufa." The 4th Satire is of a lighter kind; it is in the nature of a skit upon the solemn importance with which an exacting emperor like Domitian might invest the most frivolous act of obsequious flatterers. A mullet of huge size is sent up as a present to the emperor, who at once summons a meeting of his cabinet council to consider how the fish is to be treated. The 5th Satire, in a tone of bitter irony, gives us the most perfect picture we possess of the manner in which a patron of the Imperial times might discharge the old historical duty of entertaining his clients. The picture is taken from the life; and we cannot doubt that Juvenal had experienced in his own person the humiliations which he describes. Nothing can be more revolting, nothing more repugnant to every idea of hospitality, than the manner in which the host Virro entertains his guest, who as a full reward for faithful daily service receives at length the long-hoped-for invitation to dinner. He sits, or rather reclines, at the same table, but on a lower couch. He is subjected to every kind of indignity at the hands both of the host and of his menial attendants. For every course a different and inferior dish is served to the client; so also with the drink. It is not that Virro grudges the expense of the entertainment; it is his deliberate object to insult his client, and he rejoices in his humiliation. The longest, the most elaborate, and the most brilliant of Juvenal's Satires is the 6th, which puts before us, in long procession, a Dream of Unlovely Women. What, Postumus? Are you, in your sober senses, going to take to yourself a wife? Do you not know that Chastity has fled this earth? She may have stayed with us in Saturn's time, and perhaps lingered awhile under Jupiter before he grew his beard, in the days when men still made their home in caves, and when wives spread couches of leaves and beast-skins on the mountain-side. But know you not that since the Silver Age came in adultery has been all the vogue? Are you actually thinking of making a marriage contract and presenting an engagement ring? By what Fury are you possessed? Have you no halter by you? is there no high window from which you can take a leap? (1-37.) And is Ursidius, once the most notorious of gallants, preparing to obey the Julian law and to rear an heir? ready to forgo all the turtles and mullets and other dainties which his childlessness now brings him in? Bleed the simpleton, ye doctors, if he thinks he can find a virtuous wife; if he finds one, let him sacrifice a heifer with gilded horns to Juno! Why, nowadays a wife would sooner be contented with one eye than with one husband! (38-59.) Can you, in all the tiers of the circus or the theatre, find a single honest woman? Women love the stage; if you marry a wife it will be to make a father of some harpist or flute-player. Or perhaps, like Eppia, the Senator's wife, she will run off to Egypt with a gladiator, leaving home and husband and sister, and brave all the perils of the deep. Had her husband bidden her go on board a ship, she would have deemed it an act of cruelty; no woman has boldness but for acts of shame! (60-135.) |