NE

JOHN CHILDS AND SON, BUNGAY.

PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR.

WHILE the poetical versions of Juvenal deservedly hold a very high place in the literature of this country, it is a curious fact that there exists no single prose translation which can stand the test of even ordinary criticism. Whether it be that the temptation to a metrical version of a poetical writer is too great with some, or whether the labour of faithfully representing the genius of confessedly the most difficult writer in the Latin language has deterred others, the fact is undeniable, that there is no prose version from which the unclassical reader can form any adequate idea of the writings of the greatest of Satirists.

Madan, though faithful, is utterly unintelligible to any one who has not the Latin before him. Sheridan is far too free, in every sense of the word, to be either a fair expositor of his original, or to suit the taste of the present day; and without any disparagement of the labours of Sterling, Nuttall, Smart, or Wallace, it was found impossible to adopt any one of them even as the basis of a version which should be worthy of a place in the present series.

The accompanying translation, therefore, is entirely original; and the translator is not aware of having copied a single line from any previous version. How far he has succeeded in giving a faithful transcript of the author, and in, at the same time, infusing some spark of the fire and spirit of the original, must be for others to determine; all that he dares venture to assert is, that he has brought to the task an enthusiastic admiration of his author, and a careful study of many years. The same remarks apply to the translation of Persius.

The notes are to a considerable extent original, and the English, perhaps even the classical, reader may not be displeased at the occasional introduction of passages from metrical versions in which the sense appeared to be the most forcibly given.

A Chronological Table has been added, which the labours of Mr. Clinton have enabled the Translator to present in a far more correct form than heretofore.

The poetical version by Gifford has been annexed, as having the
greatest hold on the public favour, and as being perhaps the best,
because the most equal; though, unquestionably, in all the Satires
which Dryden translated, he has immeasurably surpassed Gifford
in fire and spirit; as Hodgson has in elegance and poetic genius,
and Badham in taste, scholarship, and terse and vigorous rendering.
But Gifford is always equal, and generally faithful.

The remains of Sulpicia and Lucilius appear now for the first
time in English. Of the value of the latter, and of the propriety
of appending his Fragments to a translation of the great Roman
Satirists, no scholar-like reader of Juvenal and Horace can entertain
a doubt. The recent labours of foreign scholars have presented us
with the text in a purer form than almost any collection of Frag-
ments of the older Latin writers. In the Arguments prefixed to
the several Books, and in the notes, will be found the essence of the
criticisms of Jan. Dousa, Van Heusde, Corpet, Schoenbeck, Schmidt,
Petermann, and especially of Gerlach, whose readings have in ge-
neral been preferred.

THE LIFE OF JUVENAL,

BY WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.

DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS, the author of the following Satires, was born at Aquinum, an inconsiderable town of the Volsci, about the year of Christ 38.2 He was either the son,

1 "Junius Juvenalis liberti locupletis incertum filius an alumnus, ad mediam ætatem declamavit, animi magis causa, quam quod scholæ aut foro se præpararet." The learned reader knows that this is taken from the brief account of Juvenal, commonly attributed to Suetonius; but which is probably posterior to his time; as it bears very few marks of being written by a contemporary author: it is, however, the earliest extant. The old critics, struck with its deficiencies, have attempted to render it more complete by variations, which take from its authenticity, without adding to its probability.

2 I have adopted Dodwell's chronology. "Sic autem (he says) se rem illam totam habuisse censeo. Exul erat Juv. cum Satiram scriberet xv. Hoc confirmat etiam in v. 27, scholiastes. De se Juv. dicit, quia in Ægypto militem tenuit, et ea promittit se relaturum quæ ipse vidit.'" Had not Dodwell been predisposed to believe this, he would have seen that the scholium" confirmed "nothing: for Juvenal makes no such promise. "Proinde rixæ illi ipse adfuit quam describit." So error is built up! How does it appear that Juvenal was present at the quarrel which he describes? He was in Egypt, we know; he had passed through the Ombite nome, and he speaks of the face of the country as falling under his own inspection: but this is all; and he might have heard of the quarrel at Rome, or elsewhere. "Tempus autem ipse designavit rixæ illius cum et nuper'* illam contigisse dicit, et quidem Consule Junio.' Jun. duplicem habent fasti, alium Domit. in x. Consulatu collegam App. Junium Sabinum A. D. lxxxiv.; alium Hadriani in suo itidem consulatu III. collegam Q. Junium Rusticum. Quo minus prior intelligi possit, obstant illa omnia quæ in his ipsis Satiris

This "nuper" is a very convenient word. Here, we see, it signifies lately; but when it is necessary to bring the works of our author down to a late period, it means, as Britannicus explains it, "de longo tempore," long ago.

a

or the foster-son, of a wealthy freedman, who gave him a liberal education. From the period of his birth, till he had attained the age of forty, nothing more is known of him than that he continued to perfect himself in the study of eloquence, by declaiming, according to the practice of those days; yet more for his own amusement, than from any intention to prepare himself either for the schools or the courts of law. About this time he seems to have discovered his true bent, and betaken himself to poetry. Domitian was now at the head of the government, and showed symptoms of reviving that system of favouritism which had nearly ruined the empire under Claudius, by his unbounded partiality for a young pantomime dancer of the name of Paris. Against this minion, Juvenal seems to have directed the first shafts of that satire which was destined to make the most powerful vices tremble, and shake the masters of the world on their thrones. He composed a few lines on the influence of Paris, with considerable success, which encouraged him to cultivate this kind of poetry: he had the prudence, however, not to trust himself to an auditory, in a reign which swarmed with informers; and his compositions occurrunt Domitiani temporibus recentiora." Yet, such is the capricious nature of criticism! Dodwell's chief argument to prove the late period at which Juvenal was banished, is a passage confessedly written under Domitian, and foisted into a satire published, as he himself maintains, many years after that emperor's death! "Posteriorem ergo intellexerit oportet. Hoc ergo anno (cxix.) erat in exilio. Sed vero Roma illum ejicere non potuit Trajanus, qui ab anno usque cxII. Romæ ipse non adfuit; nec etiam ante cxvIII. quo Romam venit imperator Hadrianus. Sic ante anni CXVIII. finem, aut cxIx. initium, mitti vix potuit in exilium Juvenalis : erat autem cum relegaretur, octogenarius. Proinde natus fuerit vel anni XXXVIII. fine, vel xxxIx. initio." Annal. 157-159.

I have made this copious extract from Dodwell, because it contains a summary of the chief arguments which induced Pithæus, Henninius, Lipsius, Salmasius, &c. to attribute the banishment of the author to Hadrian. To me they appear any thing but conclusive; for, to omit other objections for the present, why may not the Junius of the fifteenth Satire be the one who was Consul with Domitian in 84, when Juvenal, by Dodwell's own calculation, was in his 47th, instead of his 80th, year.

"Deinde paucorum versuum satira non absurde composita in Paridem pantomimum, poetamque Claudii Neronis," (the writer seems, in this and the following clause, to have referred to Juvenal's words; it is, therefore, probable that we should read Calvi Neronis, i. e. Domitian; otherwise the phrase must be given up as an absurd interpolation,) " ejus semestribus militiolis tumentem: genus scripturæ industriose excoluit." Suet.