PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION.

My purpose in preparing this edition of the Satires

of Juvenal has been to make Mr. MACLEANE'S notes accessible to American undergraduates. The text is that of Mr. LONG's revision of Mr. Macleane's work, without alteration, except that three Satires are omitted. The greater part of the notes consists of an abridgment of those which are contained in the same work, the matter omitted being chiefly quotations from other classical authors and discussions as to readings and interpretations. In making this abridgment, the arrangement of sentences has been sometimes altered; and material has been freely incorporated into the notes from the new edition of Mr. MAYOR'S commentary (extending now to the end of the seventh Satire), from that of HEINRICH, and from other sources. Notes on construction have also been inserted; and, wherever they seemed necessary or desirable, references have been given to several of the Grammars in most com

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PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION.

mon use. The Life of Juvenal is from Macleane; and the arguments are based on his, but they have been entirely rewritten. I may add that I have procured from the English publishers their full consent to the publication of the work which is now submitted to American teachers and students.

TRINITY COLLEGE, July, 1873.

S. H.

LIFE OF JUVENAL.

THE character of Horace's mind was such, that his own experience and the events of his life come naturally into his writings, and a tolerably full and accurate biography of that poet has been gathered from his own pen. His poems form a gallery of contemporary portraits, including his own picture in every stage of life. It is not so with Juvenal. He had to deal with vice and folly more than a century older than the vice and folly of Horace's day, and a tyranny which Horace never witnessed. The playful personalities of Horace did not suit Juvenal's subject, and would not have represented his way of viewing it; nor did they suit the severe and defiant spirit in which he approached it. The consequence is that the traces of Juvenal's life in his Satires are very slight.

Adopting such data as appear to have any probability in them, the following may be laid down as a sketch of Juvenal's life, without pretending to accuracy, for which there are no materials.

His name was DECIUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS.

He was born possibly at Aquinum, in Latium, about the beginning of Nero's reign, that is soon after A.D. 54, of respectable parents, his father being a rich libertinus, and

he himself therefore ingenuus. He received the usual education of a Roman boy and youth. He took the 'toga virilis' about the beginning of Vespasian's reign, A.D. 70; and, having learnt rhetoric in the schools, he continued to practise it as a man, not professionally, but for his own amusement, through the reign of Vespasian and the greater part of Domitian's, that is till the year A.D. 94, in which year, or the next, he by some means offended Domitian, and was sent by him into Egypt with a military command, such as civilians often received during the Empire. In A.D. 96, Domitian was killed and Nerva succeeded him. Then, or soon afterwards, Juvenal was allowed to give up his command and return to Rome, being at the time of his return about forty years of age. An epigram of Martial proves that he was not altogether independent or comfortable about this time. Nerva reigned less than two years, and Trajan succeeded to the empire A.D. 98; and in the early part of his reign, soon after A.D. 100, Juvenal first published a volume of Satires (of which the first in our collection was one), having already recited them to large audiences. It is not unlikely that some of these, or parts of them, had been composed in the reign of Domitian, or even earlier, but that the poet had not ventured to make them public. He continued to write freely during Trajan's reign, which ended A.D. 117, when Juvenal was about sixty, and during the early years of Hadrian's reign, that is till about A.D. 120. During this reign he may have lived in comfort through the liberality of the emperor, though his household was on a frugal scale, as he tells us in Satire xi., from which we learn that he had property at Tibur. It is not impossible that he may have lived till the accession of Antoninus Pius, who succeeded