his son the usual education of a Roman boy of good family. This included training in the schools of the grammaticus and the rhetor (1. 15-17). In rhetoric Juvenal probably had the instruction of Quintilian, who taught in Rome from A.D. 70 to 90 and whom he mentions several times with great respect. That he kept up his rhetorical studies for many years is shown both by the statement of the vitae and by the rhetorical style of the satires. 8. Juvenal belonged to the middle class. Any expressions in his writings that seem to imply that he was of low rank (as 1. 101; 4. 98; 8. 44–46) evidently mean no more than that he was connected with the client class and not with the wealthy aristocracy. He had a house in the city (11. 190; 12.87), an ancestral estate (6. 57) at Aquinum, and a farm at Tibur (11.65) from which his table at Rome was well supplied (11.65–76). Though he lived frugally (11. 131-148), he does not anywhere imply that he had not enough to satisfy his wants, or that, in his later years at least, he was not contented with what he possessed. Moreover, he could not have held high civil and priestly office in his native Aquinum if he had not had, for a country town, a large income.1 MILITARY SERVICE 9. The inscription, if it was put up by the poet, furnishes evidence of his military experience, and there are passages in the satires that make such service seem probable. He criticises (1.58; 7.92) the elevation of unworthy men to high position in the army through the influence of powerful friends, and laments (14. 197) the slow advancement of 1 The duoviri quinquennales were the highest officials in a municipium. They were elected every fifth year, and their duties corresponded to those of the censors at Rome. deserving men through the regular channel of promotion. He shows in Satire 16 a personal knowledge of the daily life of a soldier in camp. He had been in Egypt, as he himself says (15. 45), and knew the habits and peculiarities of its people from his own observation. He displays great familiarity with Britain also (2. 161; 4. 127, 141; 10. 14), and it is not unlikely that a military experience of some years had given him the opportunity to visit these and other distant countries. If he practised declamation till middle life he could not have risen to a tribunate by long service as a common soldier or centurion. It is more probable that, like Agricola (Tac. Agr. 5), he got his first military experience as aide to some general, and on the basis of this was appointed to the command of an auxiliary cohort. POLITICAL AMBITION 10. The general tone of the earlier satires makes it well-nigh certain that Juvenal had once been ambitious for political advancement at Rome, and had been deeply disappointed in his efforts to secure the influence of wealthy patrons in his favor. His hatred of the rich and powerful, which is a most prominent characteristic of the first three books, and his bitterness toward foreigners who secure the places that belong to native Romans, seem to have been prompted by personal experience, and betray the conviction that he had not received the recognition that he thought his due. BANISHMENT II. That Juvenal suffered banishment in some form is stated in all the vitae. These likewise agree that the occasion of his banishment was three verses on the influ ence of histriones in securing appointments in the army, composed against Paris, an actor. According to the vita of the codex Pithoeanus these verses were not at first published, but being afterwards inserted in his writings (7. 9092) they were thought to be directed against an actor of the day whose friends were receiving promotion, and in consequence Juvenal was sent at the age of eighty, under the form of a military command, to the extremity of Egypt, where he soon died. Upon what foundation any part of this story rests, it is impossible to say. It must have been well known in the fifth century, since Sidonius Apollinaris, a Christian writer of that time, thought Juvenal sufficiently described by the expression "irati histrionis exsul." Paris, on whom the verses are said to have been written, was a celebrated actor under Domitian, and died in 83. As Satire 7 was published in Hadrian's reign, the actor who is said to have been offended by them at the time of their publication must have lived in the reign of that emperor; and following this account we must believe that Juvenal in his old age was sent to a remote military post as prefect of a cohort by Hadrian. An emperor who banished for his sarcastic criticism and afterwards put to death the architect who had built Trajan's forum, may have banished Juvenal for a slight offense given even in a satire which begins with a flattering compliment to himself; but it is highly improbable that a man too old for service should have been intrusted with an important military command. If the banishment took this form, it is far more likely that it occurred under Domitian, and it has been suggested that Juvenal's bitterness against Crispinus would be explained if we suppose that he was the instrument of its execution. The whole story does not seem like an invention. There is nothing in the satires to have suggested it, though the statement that he was sent to Egypt may have been an inference from Satire 15. That he suffered exile in some form at some period of his life may be accepted as probable, and it may have been for the reasons given; but it is also quite possible that, if he was exiled, the reason quickly passed out of mind, or perhaps had not been generally known even in his own day, and the explanations that have been handed down to us may be due simply to later attempts to find in the satires some occasion for his banishment. THE SATIRES 12. The satires of Juvenal deal largely with social life at Rome in his own day, and express the feelings of one who had evidently long been familiar with the city. They are worthy of study, not only as unsurpassed examples of personal satire, but also for the vast amount of information which they furnish regarding the manners, morals, and beliefs of that period. Beyond other ancient writers Juvenal had the power to draw vivid pictures from real life, sometimes introducing all the details, as in the description of the distribution of the sportula (1. 95–126), more often condensing everything into a few lines. It must be admitted that his purpose seems to be rather to condemn the evils of his day than to reform them. Indeed he writes as one who saw no hope of reform. Indignation at the corrupt state of morals drove him to satire (1. 79); disappointment had embittered his feelings, and he naturally exaggerated the evils that he saw around him, and looked at things on their darkest side, but he seems honest in his hatred of sin, and nowhere depicts vice in order to make it alluring. 13. The last two books lack the strength and earnestness of the earlier satires. In them he deals no longer with the life of the period, but with general topics, and draws his illustrations from history and mythology. But some of the finest passages are found in these books, and Satires 10 and 13 are generally considered worthy of being ranked with the best. Moreover, most of the general characteristics of Juvenal's style are found as frequently in the last two books as in the first three, and the tendency to employ declamation, which has been urged as a ground for suspecting the genuineness of the later books, is by no means absent from the earlier ones. The theory of Ribbeck, that, with some exceptions, these books are not the work of Juvenal but of an inferior writer who tried to imitate his style, has not been received with favor. These satires belong to a later period of the poet's life, when his bitter and intolerant spirit had been subdued by lapse of time, and when his natural powers had lost their former vigor. MORAL STANDARD 14. Juvenal had one standard with which he compared the men and morals of his own age and found them wanting. This standard was the austere and simple life of the ancient Romans. He despises foreigners both because they are not Romans and because their influence has debased the old national life. This explains his disgust with the Romans of his own day. They have hopelessly degenerated from this ancient standard of simplicity and abstinence, and the old Roman spirit has vanished. He is filled with indignation at the rich nobleman who is given over to gambling, forgery, and every vice, who drives on a public road and spends whole nights in dissipation, because he has lost the honest manhood of his ancestors. When he condemns flattery, avarice, luxury, and gluttony, it often seems to be not so much because they are wrong and mean, as because they are characteristic vices of foreigners and of the degenerate nobility. |