an

since ceased to share. Juvenal was, as Hodgson says, impenetrable bachelor," and if, as he conjectures, he was jilted in his early youth, this fact would give additional bitterness to the rancour which in old age he would feel towards the sex by whom his personal happiness had been embittered, as well as the ruin of his native country precipitated. 5. If we are right in supposing that by Heliodorus, Juvenal meant Artemidorus Capito, (and the change in the name is both simple and readily suggested,) this would also bring down the date of this Satire to Juvenal's later years, as about A. D. 122 was the time when this court-physician of Hadrian had attained his greatest reputation. 6. In line 320, Saufeia is spoken of in similar terms to those employed in the eleventh Satire, which was confessedly the work of his later years. 7. Compare also the mention of Archigenes (1. 236) with the 98th line of the thirteenth Satire, written A. D. 118. 8.. The allusions to the importation of foreigners, with their exotic vices, would also refer to the same date. See Chron. A. D. 118.

The date of the seventh Satire will depend mainly on the question, Whom does Juvenal intend to panegyrize in his 1st line?

"Et spes et ratio studiorum in Cæsare tantum."

6

Gifford pronounces unhesitatingly in favour of Domitian, and his argument is very plausible. "The Satire," he says, “would appear to have been written in the early part of Domitian's reign; and Juvenal, by giving the emperor one honest line' of praise, probably meant to stimulate him to extend his patronage. He did not think very ill of him at the time, and augured happily for the future." Juvenal's subsequent hatred of Domitian was caused, he thinks, by his bitter mortification at finding, in a few years, this "sole patron of literature changed into a ferocious and bloody persecutor of all the arts. This opinion he supports by some references to contemporary writers, and by the evidence of coins of Domitian existing with a head of Pallas on the reverse, to symbolize his royal patronage of poetry and literary pursuits. But in almost every instance Gifford errs in assigning too early a date to the Satires; and one or two points in this clearly show that we must bring it down to a much later period. Domitian succeeded to the throne A. D. 81, and it could only have been in

the earlier years of his reign that even his most servile flatterers could have complimented him upon his patronage of learning. Now, 1. It was not till about ten years after this that the actor Paris acquired his influence and his wealth; and even allowing the very problematical story of the banishment of Juvenal having been caused by the offence given to the favourite by the famous lines (85-92) to be true, this would bring it down to a time subsequent to the banishment of philosophers from Rome; after which act Juvenal, certainly, would not have written the first line on Domitian. 2. Again, in a. D. 90, Quintilian was teaching in a public school at Rome, and receiving a salary from the imperial treasury; it could hardly therefore be so early as this date that he had acquired the fortune and estates alluded to in 1. 189. 3. In 1. 82, the Thebaid of Statius is mentioned. This poem was finished A. D. 94; and though it is true that Statius might, most probably, have publicly recited portions of it during its progress, it would have hardly earned the great reputation implied in Juvenal's lines, at a sufficiently early date to allow us to assign it to the first two or three years of Domitian's reign.

I should, therefore, rather suppose that by Cæsar we are to understand Nerva. The praise of Domitian is incompatible with Juvenal's universal hatred and execration of him. The opening of the reign of the mild and excellent Nerva might well inspire hopes of the revival of a taste for literature and the arts; and I would conjecture the close of A. D. 96 as the date of the Satire. Before the end of the year Statius was dead; but Juvenal's words seem to imply that he was still living. Again, Matho the lawyer has failed, and is in great poverty, (1. 129,) to which Martial alludes in lib. xi. Ep., part of which book was evidently written shortly before a. D. 97. But if we are right in supposing the first Satire to have been written about A. D. 100, the intervening years will have given Matho ample time to retrieve his fortune by his infamous trade of informing, and reappear as the luxurious character described Sat. i. 32.

Of the eighth Satire, if "Lateranus" be the true reading, (1. 147,) or if he be intended by "Damasippus," as I believe, we may assume the year A. D. 101 or 102 as the probable date: Lateranus had been consul A. D. 94, and in the year

A. D. 101 Trajan for the first time extended the arms of Rome beyond the Danube. Cf. 1. 169.

66

The plunder of his province of Africa, by Marius Priscus, was a recent event (1. 120 " nuper "); but, as we have said above, he was impeached by Pliny and Tacitus in the year A. D. 100. Ponticus, to whom the Satire is addressed, may be the person to whom Martial refers in his twelfth book, which was written A. D. 104.

There are two allusions by which we may form a conjecture as to the date of the ninth Satire. Crepereius Pollio is mentioned as nearly in the same circumstances of profligate poverty (1. 6, 7) as is described in the eleventh Satire, (1. 43,) which was undoubtedly written in Juvenal's later years; and he alludes (1. 117) to Saufeia, in very much the same terms in which he speaks of her in the sixth Satire, (1. 320,) which we suppose to have been written in his old age.

The internal evidence, supplied by the sustained majesty and dignified flow of language of the tenth (as well as of the fourteenth) Satire, without taking into consideration the philosophical nature of the subject of both, is quite sufficient to prove that they must have been the finished productions of a late period of a thoughtful life. We are therefore quite prepared to admit the conjecture that the allusion in line 136 is to the column of Trajan, erected in the year A. D. 113. The repetition of the line (226) also connects this with the first Satire, which it probably preceded only by a short interval.

The 203rd line of the eleventh Satire fixes its date to the later years of Juvenal's life. It breathes, besides, throughout the spirit of a calm and philosophic enjoyment of the blessings of life, that tells of declining age; cheered by a chastened appreciation of the comforts by which it is surrounded, but far removed from all extraneous or meretricious excitement, and utterly abhorrent of all noisy or exuberant hilarity. An additional argument is mentioned in the Chronology for referring it to the date A. D. 124.

The twelfth Satire contains nothing by which we can fix its date with any certainty. If, however, as the commentators suppose, the wife of Fuscus, in the 45th line, be Saufeia, it will be connected with the sixth, ninth, and eleventh Satires, and may probably be considered the work of his advanced age.

The thirteenth Satire is fixed by line 17 to the year A. D. 118, the 60th after the consulship of L. Fonteius Capito. This is the only Satire to which Mr. Clinton has assigned a date.

The argument applied to the tenth Satire will apply with nearly equal force to the fourteenth. We are therefore prepared to admit the plausibility of the conjecture, that 1. 196 refers to the progress of Hadrian through Britain, which would fix the date to A. D. 120; a very short time previous to the composition of the following Satire.

The event recorded in the fifteenth Satire occurred shortly after the consulship of Junius, 1. 27, "nuper consule Junio gesta." This was, in all probability, Junius Rusticus, who was consul with Hadrian A. D. 119. The 110th line also probably refers to the influx of Greeks and other foreigners into Rome, in the train of Hadrian, (to which we have alluded in discussing the date of the third Satire,) which took place in the preceding year.

The

The sixteenth Satire may have either been the draught of a longer poem, commenced in early life, (as 1. 3 may imply,) which the poet never cared to finish; or an outline for a more perfect composition, which he never lived to elaborate. mention of Fuscus may connect it with the twelfth Satire. But though there is quite enough remaining to warrant us in unhesitatingly ascribing the authorship to Juvenal, there is too little left to enable us to form even a probable conjecture as to the date of its composition.

It is hardly necessary to add, that, after a careful examination of the foregoing Chronology, it must be evident to every novice in scholarship, that the whole life of Juvenal, as usually given, is a mere myth, to which one cannot even apply, as in many legendary biographies, the epithet of poetical.

L. E.

ARGUMENTS

OF THE

SATIRES OF JUVENAL.

SATIRE I.

THIS Satire seems, from several incidental circumstances, to have been produced subsequently to most of them; and was probably drawn up after the author had determined to collect and publish his works, as a kind of Introduction.

He abruptly breaks silence with an impassioned complaint of the importunity of bad writers, and a resolution of retaliating upon them; and after ridiculing their frivolous taste in the choice of their subjects, declares his own intention to devote himself to Satire. After exposing the corruption of men, the profligacy of women, the luxury of courtiers, the baseness of informers and fortune-hunters, the treachery of guardians, and the peculation of officers of state, he censures the general passion for gambling, the servile rapacity of the patricians, the avarice and gluttony of the rich, and the miserable poverty and subjection of their dependents; and after some bitter reflections on the danger of satirizing living villany, concludes with a resolution to attack it under the mask of departed names.

SATIRE II.

This Satire contains an animated attack upon the hypocrisy of the philosophers and reformers of the day, whose ignorance, profligacy, and impiety it exposes with just severity.

Domitian is here the object; his vices are alluded to under every different name; and it gives us a high opinion of the intrepid spirit of the man who could venture to circulate, even in private, so faithful a representation of that blood-thirsty tyrant.

SATIRE III.

Umbritius, an Aruspex and friend of the author, disgusted at the prevalence of vice and the disregard of unassuming virtue, is on the point of quitting Rome; and when a little way from the city, stops short to acquaint the poet, who has accompanied him, with the causes of his retirement. These may be arranged under the following heads :-Th of Flattery and Vice are the only thriving arts at Rome; in these, espegacythe first, foreigners have a manifest superiority over the natives, amared. sequently engross all favour-that the poor are universally exr