SATIRA III. ARGUMENT. Juvenal introduces Umbritius, an old friend of his, taking his departure from Rome, and going to settle in a country retirement at Cuma. He accompanies Umbritius out of town; and, before they take leave of each other, Umbritius tells his friend Juvenal the reasons which had induced QUAMVIS digressu veteris confusus amici, Laudo tamen vacuis quod sedem figere Cumis Line 2. Cuma.] An ancient city of Campania near the sea. Some think it had its name from Kuμатα, waves: the waves, in rough weather, dashing against the walls of it. Others think it was so called from its being built by the Cumai of Asia. PLIN. iii. 4. Juvenal calls it empty in comparison with the populousness of Rome: it was now, probably, much decayed, and but thinly inhabited: on this account it might be looked upon as a place of leisure, quiet, and retirement; all which may be understood by the word vacuis. 3. The Sibyl.] Quasi σtov Bovλn, Dei consilium. AINSW. The Sibyls were women, supposed to be inspired with a spirit of prophecy. Authors are not agreed as to the number of them; but the most famous was the Cumæan, so called from having her residence at 10 Cuma. Umbritius was now going to bestow, donare, one citizen on this abode of the Sibyl, by taking up his residence there. See Virg. Æn. vi. 1. 10. et seq. 4. The gate of Baia.] Passengers from Rome to Baia were to pass through Cuma; they went in on one side, and came out on the other, as through a gate. -Baia.] A delightful city of Campania, of which HoR. lib. i. epist. i. l. 83. Nullus in orbe sinus Baiis prælucet amænis. Here were fine warm springs and baths, both pleasant and healthful: on which account it was much resorted to by the nobility and gentry of Rome, many of whom had villas there for their summer residence. It forms part of the bay of Naples. SATIRE III. ARGUMENT. him to retire from Rome: each of which is replete with the keenest satire on its vicious inhabitants. Thus the poet carries on his design of inveighing against the vices and disorders which reigned in that city. 5 THO' troubled at the departure of an old friend, 4. A grateful shore.] Gratum: grateful, here, must be understood in the sense of agreeable, pleasant. The whole shore, from Cuma to Baiæ, was delightfully pleasant, and calculated for the most agreeable retirement. See the latter part of the last note. 5. Prochyta.] A small rugged island in the Tyrrhenian sea, desert and barren. -Suburra.] A street in Rome, much frequented, but chiefly by the vulgar, and by women of ill fame. Hence MART. vi. 66. Famæ non nimium bonæ puella, Quales in media sedent Suburra. 6. For what so wretched, &c.] Solitary and miserable as any place may be, yet it is better to be there than at Rome, where you have so many dangers and inconveniences to apprehend. 7. Fires.] House-burnings, to which populous cities, from many various causes, are continually liable. 3. Falling of houses.] Owing to the little care taken of old and ruinous buildings. Propertius speaks of the two foregoing dangers. Præterea domibus flammam, domibusque ruinam. 8, 9. The fell city.] That habitation of daily cruelty and mischief. 9. And poets reciting.] Juvenal very humourously introduces this circumstance among the calamities and inconveniences of living at Rome, that even in the month of August, the hottest season of the year, when most people had retired into the country, so that one might hope to enjoy some little quiet, even then you were to be teazed to death, by the constant din of the scribbling poets reciting their wretched compositions, and forcing you to hear them. Comp. sat. i. l. 1—14. where our poet expresses his peculiar aversion to this. 10. His whole house, &c.] While all his household furniture and goods were packing up together in one waggon, (as Substitit ad veteres arcus, madidamque Capenam: rheda may here signify.) Umbritius was moving all his bag and baggage, (as we say,) and, by its taking up no more room, it should seem to have been very moderate in quantity. 11. He stood still.] He may be supposed to have walked on out of the city, attended by his friend Juvenal, expecting the vehicle with the goods to overtake him, when loaded: he now stood still to wait for its coming up; and in this situation he was, when he began to tell his friend his various reasons for leaving Rome, which are just so many strokes of the keenest satire upon the vices and follies of its inhabitants. -At the old arches.] The ancient triumphal arches of Romulus, and of the Horatii, which were in that part. Or perhaps the old arches of the aqueducts might here be meant. -Wet Capena.] One of the gates of Rome, which led towards Capua: it was sometimes called Triumphalis, because those who rode in triumph passed through it it was also called Fontinalis, from the great number of springs that were near it, which occasioned building the aqueducts, by which the water was carried by pipes into the city: hence Juvenal calls it madidam Capenam. Here is the spot where Numa used to meet the goddess Egeria. 12. Numa.] Pompilius, successor to Romulus. - Nocturnal mistress.] The more strongly to recommend his laws, and the better to instil into the Romans a reverence for religion, he persuaded them, that, every night, he conversed with a goddess, or nymph, called Ægeria, from whose mouth he received his whole form of government, both civil and religious; that their place of meeting was in a grove without the gate Capena, dedicated to the Muses, wherein was a 15 temple consecrated to them and to the goddess Egeria, whose fountain waters the grove; for she is fabled to have wept herself into a fountain, for the death of Numa. This fountain, grove, and temple, were let out to the Jews, at a yearly rent, for habitation; they having been driven out of the city by Domitian, and compelled to lodge in these places, heretofore sacred to the Muses. Delubra is a general term for places of worship. See AINSW. By the phrase nocturnæ amicæ constituebat, Juvenal speaks as if he were describing an intrigue, where a man meets his mistress by appointment at a particular place: from this we can be at no loss to judge of our poet's very slight opinion of the reality of the transaction. 14. A basket and hay, &c.] These were all the furniture which these poor creatures had-the sum total of their goods and chattels. This line has been looked upon as very difficult to expound. Some commentators have left it without any attempt to explain it. Others have rather added to, than diminished from, whatever its difficulty may be. They tell us, that these were the marks not of their poverty, but, by an ancient custom, of their servitude in Egypt, where, in baskets, they carried hay, straw, and such things, for the making of bricks, and in such like labours. See Exod. v. 7-18. This comment, with the reasons given to support it, we can only say, is very far fetched, and is not warranted by any account we have of the Jewish customs. Others say, that the hay was to feed their cattle. But how could these poor Jews be able to purchase, or to maintain, cattle, who were forced to beg in order to maintain themselves? Others, that the hay was for their bed on which He stood still at the old arches, and wet Capena; We descend into the vale of Ægeria, and into caves they lay; but neither is this likely; for the poet, sat. vi. 541. describes a mendicant Jewess as coming into the city, and leaving her basket and hay behind her; which implies, that the basket and hay were usually carried about with them when they went a begging elsewhere. Now it is not to be supposed that they should carry about so large a quantity of hay, as served them to lie upon when at home in the grove. It is clear that the basket and hay are mentioned together here, and in the other place of sat. vi. from whence I infer, that they had little wicker baskets in which they put the money, provisions, or other small alms which they received of the passers by, and, in order to stow them the better, and to prevent their dropping through the interstices of the wicker, put wisps of hay, or dried grass, in the inside of the baskets. These Jew beggars were as well known by baskets with hay in them, as our beggars are by their wallets, or our soldiers by their knapsacks. Hence the Jewess, sat. vi. left her basket and hay behind her when she came into the city, for fear they should betray her, and subject her to punishment for infringing the emperor's order against the Jews' coming into the city. Her manner of begging too, by a whisper in the ear, seems to confirm this supposition. The Latin cophinus is the same as Gr. Kopios, which is used several times in the New Testament to denote a provision-basket, made use of among the Jews. See Matt. xiv. 20. Matt. xvi. 9, 10. Mark vi. 43. Mark viii. 19, 20. Luke ix. 17. John vi. 13. 15. To pay a rent.] The grove being let out to the Jews, every tree, as it were, might be said to bring in a rent to the people at Rome. The poet seems to mention this as a proof of the public avarice, created by the public extravagance, which led them to hire out these sacred places for what they could get, by letting them to the poor Jews, who could only pay for them out of what they got by begging. 16. The wood begs, &c.] i.e. The Jews, who were now the inhabitants of the wood, (meton.) were all beggars; nothing else was to be seen in those once sacred abodes of the Muses, who were now banished. 17. We descend, &c.] Umbritius and Juvenal sauntered on, till they came to that part of the grove which was called the vale of Ægeria, so called, probably, from the fountain, into which she was changed, running there. 17, 18. And into cuves unlike the true.] These caves, in their primitive state, were as nature formed them, but had been profaned with artificial ornaments, which had destroyed their native beauty and simplicity. 18. How much better.] How much more suitably situated. 19. The deity of the water.] Each fountain was supposed to have a nymph, or naiad, belonging to it, who presided over it as the goddess of the water; Ægeria may be supposed to be here meant. -If, with a green margin, &c.] If instead of ornamenting the banks with artificial borders made of marble, they had been left in their natural state, simple and unadorned by human art, having no other margin but the native turf, and the rude stone (tophum) which was the genuine produce of the soil. These were once consecrated in honour of the fountain-nymph, but had now been violated and destroyed, in order to make way for artificial ornaments of marble, which Roman luxury and extravagance had put in their place. Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum? Ire, fatigatas ubi Dædalus exuit alas: Dum nova canities, dum prima, et recta senectus, Et Catulus: maneant qui nigra in candida vertunt, 21. Here then Umbritius.] Juvenal and his friend Umbritius being arrived at this spot, at the profanation of which they were both equally scandalized, Umbritius there began to inveigh against the city of Rome, from which he was now about to depart, and spake as follows. -Honest arts.] Liberal arts and sciences, such as poetry, and other literary pursuits, which are honourable. Comp. sat. vii. 1-6. Honestis artibus, in contradistinction to the dishonest and shameful methods of employment, which received countenance and encouragement from the great and opulent. Umbritius was himself a poet. See this sat. 1. 321, 2. 22. No emoluments of labour.] Nothing to be gotten by all the pains of honest industry. 23. One's substance, &c.] Instead of increasing what I have, I find it daily decrease ; as I can get nothing to replace what I spend, by all the pains I can take. -And the same to-morrow, &c.] This same poor pittance of mine will to-morrow be wearing away something from the little that is left of it to-day and so I must find myself growing poorer from day to day. Deteret is a metaphorical expression, taken from the action of the file, which gradually wears away and diminishes the bodies to which it is applied. So the necessary expences of Umbritius and his family were wearing away his substance in that expensive place, which he determines to leave, for a more private and cheaper part of the country. 24. We propose.] i. e. I and my family propose or proponimus for propono. Synec. 25, 6. Thither to go.] i. e. To Cumæ, where Dædalus alighted after his flight from Crete. 25. Greyness is new.] While grey hairs, newly appearing, warn me that old age is coming upon me. -Fresh and upright.] While old age in its first stage appears, and I am not yet so far advanced as to be bent double, but am able to hold myself upright. The ancients supposed old age first to commence about the 46th year. Cic. de Senectute. Philosophers (says Holyday) divide man's life according to its several stages. First, infantia to three or four years of age. Secondly, pueritia, thence to ten. From ten to eighteen, pubertas. Thence to twenty five, adolescentia. Then juventus, from twenty-five to thirty-five or forty. Thence to fifty, ætas virilis. Then came senectus prima et recta till sixty-five: and then ultima et decrepita till death. 27. While there remains to Lachesis, &c.] One of the three destinies: she was supposed to spin the thread of human life. The Parcæ, or poetical fates or destinies, were Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. The first held the distaff; the second drew out, and spun the thread; which the last cut off when finished. -And on my feet, &c.] While I can stand on my own legs, and walk without the help of a staff. 29. Let us leave, &c.] Let me, and |