SATIRE IV.

v. 1—10.

ONCE
NCE more my voice (and oft shall I renew
Th' alarming strain) calls forth to public view
Crispinus; monster! in whose tainted heart

Not one atoning virtue claims a part :
Diseased, emaciate, weak in all but lust,
And whom the widow's sweets alone disgust.
Avails it then, in what long colonades

He tires his mules? through what extensive glades
His chair is borne? what vast estate he buys,
(Houses and lands,) that near the Forum lies?

VER. 3. Crispinus; monster! &c.] Crispinus has been already noticed in the notes to the first Satire. All that needs be added of him here is, that he continued in great favour during the whole reign of Domitian, and amassed immense riches; which he squandered in the gratification of the most vicious passions.

I am by no means satisfied with the usual explanations of the sixth line: "ostendit illum jucundiora tantum sectari adulteria, nam qui viduas sequebantur, id lucri gratia faciebant." I rather think the author means to insinuate that Crispinus would not indulge his lust, unless he could add to it a crime of some peculiar heinousness. To corrupt virgin innocence, to invade the sanctity of the marriage bed, was his delight: intrigues with widows had too little turpitude in them to gratify his singular depravity.

O! no: peace never sooths the guilty mind:
Least his, who incest to adultery join'd,
His, who deflower'd a Vestal; whom, dire fate!
The long dark night, and living tomb await.

Turn we to slighter crimes—and yet had these
In others, Seius, Titius, whom you please,

VER. 13. His, who deflower'd a Vestal, &c.] If a vestal violated her vow of chastity, she was interred alive. The solemnity is thus described by Plutarch. At the Colline Gate, within the city, in a subterraneous cavern, there were first placed a bed, a lamp, a pitcher of water, and a loaf. The offender was then bound alive upon a bier, and carried through the Forum with great silence and horror. When they reached the place of interment, the bier was set down, and the poor wretch unbound; a ladder was then brought, by which she descended into the excavation, when upon a signal given, the ladder was suddenly withdrawn, and the mouth of the opening completely filled up with stones, earth, &c.

It is doubtful, whether the Vestal debauched by Crispinus, really underwent this punishment. Juvenal's words do not necessarily imply so much; the participle in rus (like the other) involving the moral fitness of the future event, and not exclusively the certainty of its accomplishment: terram subitura, i. e. who ought to be buried alive. For the rest, the severity exercised by Domitian against the Vestals was so dreadful, (whether their guilt was proved or not,) that one of the Pontifices, Elvius Agrippa, is related to have expired through the terror of it.

The word incest, used by Juvenal, is applied to the same act by Suetonius and Pliny; and is, say the critics, the appropriate term for cohabitation with a Vestal. This, however, is a mistake, it is an improper term: but such was the respect for religion, that they transferred to it a word which was only appropriate, in other acceptations; and the violator of a Vestal virgin, was placed upon a par, in criminality, with the violator of all natural decorum.

VER. 16. Seius, Titius.] "It does not appear," says Madan, "who these were; but probably they were some valuable men who had been persecuted by the emperor for a supposed crime." These "valuable men" had, indeed,

The Censor roused; for what the good would shame,
Becomes Crispinus, and is honest fame.

But, when the actor's person far exceeds,
In native loathsomeness, his direst deeds,
Say, what can satire? for a fish that weigh'd
Six pounds, six thousand sesterces he paid,
For a sur-mullet! as they tell, whose care
Still magnifies the mighty things they hear.
Had this expense been meant,
meant, with well-timed skill,
To gull some childless dotard of a Will;

Or e'en to bribe some fashionable fair,

Who flaunts conspicuous in her splendid chair;

been persecuted for many a supposed crime; but, to give the devil his due, not by the Emperor. It is surprising the translator should not know that they were men of straw, fictitious personages, like our John Doe and Richard Roe, and, like them, inserted into all law-processes. Thus Plutarch, to quote no other, τοις δε ονομασι τετοις άλλως κεχρηνται κοινοις εσιν, ώσπερ οἱ νομικοι Γαΐον, Σηιον, καὶ Τίτιον. Quast. Rom. 30.

VER. 23. For a sur-mullet! &c.] So I have rendered mullus, and I believe properly. Barbel, which is the common translation, is a coarse fish, and could never be worth any thing. Mullet is still more incorrect: the proper word for that, being mugilis. For the rest, there is something extremely whimsical in the conduct of the Romans respecting their tables; sur-mullets, as it appears from the elder Pliny, were exceedingly plentiful, and consequently cheap; but then, they seldom weighed above two pounds. In proportion as they exceeded this, they grew valuable, till at last they reached the sum mentioned in the text, (about £50.) and even went beyond it.

One would think nature had fallen in with the caprice of the Romans, for the fish seems to have grown larger in the decline of the empire, as if to humour the extravagance of this degenerate people. Horace thought he had pretty well stigmatized the frantic folly of his glutton, by a mullus of three

'Twere not unworthy praise:-but no, he bought
The dainty for his own voracious throat.
This all past gluttony from shame redeems;

And now Apicius poor and frugal seems!
Didst thou, Crispinus, who cam'st here a slave,
Wrapt in the flags thy country's marshes gave,—

pounds weight, (Lib. ii. Sat. 11.) the next reign furnished one of four and a half;* here we have one of six pounds, and we read elsewhere of others larger still! How long the passion for these enormous fish continued, I do not know; but Macrobius, speaking with indignation of one that was purchased under Claudius, by Asinius Celer, for a greater sum than any we have mentioned, (£56. 10s.) adds, that in his time, such mad prices were happily unknown: pretia hæc insana nescimus.

VER. 34. Wrapt in the flags, &c.] The translators have clothed Crispinus in paper: he was not, I believe, quite so delicately drest. Pliny the Elder says that the Ægyptians manufactured the stalks of the papyrus, not only into mats and sails, but into garments, vela tegetesque, nec non et vestem. I once thought Crispinus might have obtained one of these, but I am now persuaded he was not so fortunate. He was girt, in short, round the middle with the papyrus coarsely strung or plaited together, as the savages of the new-discovered. islands are said to be, and as his countrymen are at this day. Rear-Admiral Perrée, who certainly had no intention of illustrating Juvenal, mentions this

*The story is in Seneca; it is curious, and as it seems to illustrate a passage in our author, I think it worth subjoining. Some one had presented Tiberius with a mullus of a prodigious size, (why should I not mention its weight, to make our gluttons' mouths water?) of four pounds and a half! The emperor ordered it to be carried to market, observing, at the same time, to his friends, that he should not be much surprised if it were bought either by P. Octavius or Apicius. His expectations were more than fulfilled, for these two gluttons bade one upon another for it. The victory fell at length to Octavius, who acquired a prodigious reputation among his acquaintance, for giving £40. for a fish which the Emperor sold, and which Apicius could not afford to buy! To this last circumstance Juvenal probably alludes, in v. 32.