Traxerat attonitos, et festinare coactos, Atque utinam his potius nugis tota illa dedisset 146. Astonished-compelled, &c.] Amazed at the sudden summons, but dared not to delay a moment's obedience to it. Comp. 1. 76. 147. Catti.] A people of Germany, now subject to the Landgrave of HesseSicambri, inhabitants of Guelderland. Both these people were formidable enemies. 149. An alarming epistle, &c.] Some sorrowful news had been dispatched post-haste from various parts of the empire. Little could the senators imagine, that all was to end in a consultation upon a turbot. 150 The satire here is very fine, and represents Domitian as anxious about a matter of gluttony, as he could have been in affairs of the utmost importance to the Roman empire. 150. And I wish, &c.] i. e. It were to be wished that he had spent that time in such trifles as this, which he passed in acts of cruelty and murder, which he practised with impunity, on numbers of the greatest and best men in Rome, nobody daring to avenge their sufferings. 153. But he perished, &c.] Cerdo signifies any low mechanics, such as cobblers, and the like. Cerdonibus stands here for the rabble in general. Had drawn astonished, and compelled to hasten, As if something concerning the Catti, and the fierce Sicambri He was about to say; as if from different parts of the world An alarming epistle had come with hasty wing. 150 And I wish that rather to these trifles he had given all those Times of cruelty, in which he took from the city renowned And illustrious lives with impunity, and with no avenger. But he perished, after that to be fear'd by cobblers He had begun this hurt him reeking with slaughter of the Lamiæ. While Domitian only cut off, now and then, some of the nobles, the people were quiet, however amazed they might be, (comp. 1. 77.) but when he extended his cruelties to the plebeians, means were devised to cut him off, which was done by a conspiracy formed against him. See ANT. Un. Hist. xv. p. 87. 154. The Lamia.] The Lamian family was most noble. See HoR. lib. iii. ode xvii. Of this was Ælius Lama, whose wife, Domitia Longina, Domitian took away, and afterwards put the husband to death. The Lamiæ here may stand for the nobles in general, (as before the cerdones for the rabble in general,) who had perished under the cruelty of Domitian, and with whose blood he might be said to be reeking, from the quantity of it which he had shed during his reign. He died ninety-six years after Christ, aged forty-four years, ten months, and twenty-six days. He reigned fifteen years and five days, and was succeeded by Nerva ; a man very unlike him, being a good man, a good statesman, and a good soldier. SATIRA V. ARGUMENT. The poet dissuades Trebius, a parasite, from frequenting the tables of the great, where he was certain to be treated with the utmost scorn and contempt. Juvenal then proceeds to Si te propositi nondum pudet, atque eadem est mens, Nulla crepido vacat? nusquam pons, et tegetis pars Argument, line 1. Parasite.] From Tapa, to, and σiros, corn; anciently signified an officer under the priests who had the care of the sacred corn, and who was invited as a guest to eat part of the sacrifice. Afterwards it came to signify a sort of flatterer, a buffoon, who was invited to great men's tables by way of sport, and who, by coaxing and flattery, often got into favour. See sat. i. 1. 139, and note. 1. Of your purpose.] Your determination to seek for admittance at the tables of the great, however ill you may be treated. 2. Highest happiness.] Summa bona. Perhaps Juvenal here adverts to the various disputes among the philosophers about the summum bonum, or chief good of man. To enquire into this was the design of Cicero in his celebrated five books De Finibus, wherein it is supposed all along, that man is capable of attaining the perfection of happiness in this life, and he is never directed to look beyond it: upon this principle, 5 this parasite sought his chief happiness in the present gratification of his sensual appetite, at the tables of the rich and great. -Another's trencher.] Quadra signifies, literally, a square trencher, from its form: but here, aliena vivere quadra is to be taken metonymically, to signify, living at another's table, or at another's expence. 3. Sarmentus.] A Roman knight, who, by his flattery and buffoonery, insinuated himself into the favour of Augustus Cæsar, and often came to his table, where he bore all manner of scoffs and affronts. See HOR. lib. i. sat. v. 1. 51, 2. 3, 4. The unequal tables.] Those entertainments were called iniquæ mensæ, where the same food and wine were not provided for the guests as for the master. This was often the case, when great men invited parasites, and people of a lower kind; they sat before them a coarser sort of food, and wine of an inferior kind. SATIRE V. ARGUMENT. stigmatize the insolence and luxury of the nobility, their treatment of their poor dependents, whom they almost suffer to starve while they themselves fare deliciously. If you are not yet ashamed of your purpose, and is the same, your mind That you can think it the highest happiness to live from another's trencher; If you can suffer those things, which neither Sarmentus at the unequal Tables of Cæsar, nor vile Galba could have borne, I should be afraid to believe you as a witness, tho' upon oath. I know nothing more frugal than the belly: yet suppose even that To have failed, which suffices for an empty stomach, Is there no hole vacant? no where a bridge? and part of a rug Shorter by the half? is the injury of a supper of so great value? 4. Galba.] Such another in the time of Tiberius. 5. Afraid to believe.] q. d. If you can submit to such treatment as this, for no other reason than because you love eating and drinking, I shall think you so void of all right and honest principle, that I would not believe what you say, though it were upon oath. 6. Nothing more frugal.] The mere demands of nature are easily supplied; hunger wants not delicacies. -Suppose even that, &c.] However, suppose that a man has not wherewithal to procure even the little that nature wants to satisfy his hunger. 8. Is there no hole, &c.] Crepido, a hole or place by the highway, where beggars sit. --A bridge.] The bridges on the high VOL. I ways were common stands for beggars. Sat. iv. 116. 9. Shorter by the half.] Teges signifies a coarse rug, worn by beggars to keep them warm. q. d. Is no coarse rug, or even a bit of one, to be gotten to cover your nakedness? Is the injury of a supper, &c.] Is it worth while to suffer the scoffs and affronts which you undergo at a great man's table? Do you prize these so highly as rather to endure them than be excluded, or than follow the method which I propose? Comp. 1. 10, 11. I should observe, that some are for interpreting injuria cœnæ by injuriosa cœna so Grangius, who refers to VIRG. Æn. iii. 256. injuria cædis-pro-cæde injuriosa; but I cannot think that this K Tam jejuna fames; cum possis honestius illic Quæris? habet Trebius, propter quod rumpere somnum comes up to the point, as the reader 10. Is hunger so craving.] As to drive you into all this, when you might satisfy it in the more honourable way of begging? More honestly.] With more reputation to yourself. -There.] At a stand for beggars. 11. Tremble.] Shake with cold, having nothing but a part of a rug to cover you, 1. 8, 9. Or, at least, pretending it, in order to move compassion. --Gnaw the filth, &c.] Far literally signifies all manner of corn; also meal and flour--hence bread made thereof. A coarser sort was made for the common people, a coarser still was given to dogs. But perhaps the poet, by farris canini, means, what was spoiled, and grown musty and hard, by keeping, only fit to be thrown to the dogs. The substance of this passage seems to be this, viz. that the situation of a common beggar, who takes his stand to ask alms, though half naked, shaking with cold, and forced to satisfy his hunger with old hard crusts, such as were given to the dogs, ought to be reckoned far more reputable, and therefore more eligible, than those abject and scandalous means by which the parasite subsisted. 12. Fix, &c.] Fix it in your hand, as a certain thing, in the first place. -To sit down at table.] Discumbere lit. means to lie down, as on a couch, after the manner of the Romans at their meals. 13. A solid reward.] Whatever services you may have rendered the great man, he thinks that an invitation to supper is a very solid and full recompence. |