vires, the majority have bilis, which being coarser, is not less likely to be genuine. At XII. 92, the corrector and all the other MSS. but one have operatur festa; P. or his original did not see that Janua was the nominative, and so introduced an impossible plural to agree with festa. At XIII. 28, P. has nunc, which is flat, but needs no explanation, and looks like a correction of the difficult nona, which is supported by the variant nova, though this last must be later than nunc, as dating from an age when prosody was forgotten. At v. 208 P. has saeva voluntas, probably an inaccurate reproduction of scaeva voluntas, which is a perverse attempt to improve on sola, the reading of the great majority of MSS. Lastly, P. has not retained the original order of xv. and xvI., and its reading Junco at xv. 27, looks very like an attempt to improve metre at the expense of history. Though these instances may tend in some measure to prove that P.'s archetype was not written with uniform fidelity, I have not the least wish to set aside the judgment of such scholars as Jahn or C. F. Hermann on its general superiority. Perhaps it would be too much to say that the defects of Pithou's MS. illustrate the uncertainty of the guidance which the best scholars are compelled to trust, and that C. F. Hermann's old corrector may sometimes have had better materials than his critic. D. JUNII JUVENALIS SATIRARUM LIBER PRIMUS. SATIRA I. SEMPER ego auditor tantum? nunquamne reponam, Impune ergo mihi recitaverit ille togatas, Hic elegos? impune diem consumserit ingens I reponam] May be future or subjunctive. I prefer the latter. "Am I never to reply?" if so, impune recitaverit, "Is he not to be punished for having recited?" Any way the passage shews the very close affinity of the future tense to the subjunctive mood. 2 toties] It lasted so many recitations. Cordi, a stock character in Valgius, Virgil, Juvenal, and Martial. According to the Scholiast, he is spoken of as a contemporary in Valgius's lost elegies. 3 togatas] Sc. fabulas. The characters wore the toga, while in regular comedies they wore the Greek pallium: the best known writer was Afranius. Dicitur Afrani toga convenisse Menandro, Hor. Ep. ii. 1. 57. According to Seneca, Ep. 8. § 4, they stood half-way between tragedies and comedies. Horace, A. P. 286, speaks of them as shewing a laudable spirit of literary enterprise. S. J. 5 When one considers the immense naïveté of Plautus and the way in which he overloads his subject with morality, we may infer that where the support and restraint of Greek traditions were to a certain extent removed, there would be much dull preaching and little dramatic interest. Horace in the passage quoted gives the judgment of wholesale acquirers of antiquity. 5 Telephus] A king of Mysia wounded by the spear of Achilles and healed by its rust. He figured in a play of Euripides now lost with a piquant display of ostentatious poverty and fluent sophistry. He and Orestes are subjects of tragedy: the epics of the day are characterized, fr. 6-12. summi] As the margin (the feminine is found also in Licinius, Macer, Rabirius, and Vitruvius) at the end of the roll is full already, the poet writes on the back too, and I Scriptus et in tergo, nec dum finitus, Orestes? Nota magis nulli domus est sua, quam mihi lucus Vulcani. Quid agant venti, quas torqueat umbras has not done yet: et, even when 7 lucus Martis] "In quo Ilia peperit," Schol., would occur in a poem on Romulus: the rest, as far as Aeacus, suggests a 'rifacimento' of the Odyssey. Alius must be taken as indicating a transition to another legendary cycle, otherwise we might place the grove in Colchos, according to another guess of the Scholiast, and refer the rocks of Aeolus, in the modern Stromboli, and cave of Vulcan, in the modern Vulcano, to the Argonautic legend, on the authority of Ap. Rhodius (iv. 761). II quantas] The poetasters refine upon Ovid: "insani dejectam viribus Austri Forte trabem nactus." Monychus Mononychus, a cen taur. = 12 Frontonis] Pliny (Ep. ii. 1I, 3) praises the oratory of one Fronto Catius, who may have bequeathed to P. Cornelius Fronto, the tutor of M. Aurelius, the horti Maecenatiani, on the strength of which he claimed connexion with Horace. marmora] Mayor seems to take this of marble panels round the walls, shaken by the shouts of the audience, which is hardly consistent 10 15 with platani; Macleane, of the marble pillars, which makes columnae tautological. One is tempted to think of marble statues, cf. xiii. 115: as if the poet's friends told him his stirring verse was enough to make stones cry out, while Juvenal implies that they echoed the noise he made, which was enough to shake them on their pedestals. 13 assiduo ruptae lectore] Mayor follows Hand in thinking that the omission of ab marks the absence of voluntary agency. Hand admits that the omission only occurs in the poets and later prose writers, where it can be explained by metrical convenience, or a passion for brevity. Here we might explain the words as an ablative absolute, because there is a reader always leaning against them, because readers give them no rest; cf. viii. 137, hebetes lasso lictore secures. 15 ergo] This is to be taken in connection with the preceding line. All poets treat the same subjects; well, I am qualified to treat them too, inf. 19 tamen serves to contrast hoc with eadem. 16 dedimus] "We have given," is a present qualification for writing. Dormiret, the result contemplated, is naturally in the past, as the advice must have been decided on long ago. Cf. vii. 161; x. 167. Boys Dormiret. Stulta est clementia, quum tot ubique Cur tamen hoc potius libeat decurrere campo, began their rhetorical education with political suasoriae, and went on to legal controversiae. 20 Auruncae] Suessa Aurunca, where Lucilius was born. 23] Practising as a 'bestiaria,' in the costume of an Amazon. This profession, and that of gladiator, was opened to women under Nero, and closed to them by Severus. 25] Repeated (x. 226). 26 Canopi] Canopus was to Alexandria what Greenwich and Rotherhithe are to London, a town of sailors and their parasites, sometimes visited by pleasure-seekers from the capital, cf. xv. 46 n. 27 Crispinus] A favourite of Domitian, flattered by Martial, cf. iv. 24. According to the Scholiast he was raised to the senate by Nero, it would be natural however to take the next line as an allusion to his equestrian rank, cf. vii. 89, Semen 20 25 330 stri vatum digitos circumligat auro. 28] His fingers sweat under his light summer ring of plain gold. At the same time it probably refers to a personal peculiarity: the least thing made him perspire because he took no exercise, cf. iv. 108 n. 29 majoris gemmae] A gem of any size. 32 Causidici-Mathonis] Mathois a bankrupt (vii. 129); a braggart (xi. 34); and a standing butt of Martial. Causidicus is a mere hack pleader in Cicero, who wrote when advocates were still patrons, not mere servants of their clients. Tr. When councillor Matho comes by in his new litter, and his worship fills it. As it was not usual for two people to ride in a litter, ipso must be a sneer at Matho's dignity and cannot be taken as emphasising plena which is a sneer at his size. 34 rapturus de nobilitate comesa] |