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 your mind

is the same,

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, 1 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.

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 8. Is there no hole, &c.] Crepido, a hole coena: 30 Grangius, who refers to VIRG. or place bythe highway, where beggars sit. n. iii. 256. injuria cædis-pro-cæde -A bridge.] The bridges on the high- injuriosa; but I cannot think that this

-Suppose even thut, &c.] However, suppose that a man has not wherewithal to procure even the little that nature wants to satisfy his hunger.

Tam jejuna fames; cum possis honestius illic
Et tremere, et sordes farris mordere canini?
Primo fige loco, quod tu discumbere jussus
Mercedem solidam veterum capis officiorum:
Fructus amicitiæ magnæ cibus: imputat hunc Rex,
Et quamvis rarum, tamen imputat. Ergo duos post
Si libuit menses neglectum adhibere clientem,
Tertia ne vacuo cessaret culcitra lecto,

Una simus, ait: votorum summa; quid ultra

Quæris? habet Trebius, propter quod rumpere somnum
Debeat, et ligulas dimittere; sollicitus, ne
Tota salutatrix jam turba peregerit orbem
Sideribus dubiis, aut illo tempore, quo se
Frigida circumagunt pigri sarraca Boötæ.

comes up to the point, as the reader
may see by consulting the passage, which
the Delphin interpreter expounds by
injuria cædis nobis illate; and so I con-
ceive it ought to be; and if sc, it is no
precedent for changing injuria cœnæ
into injuriosa cœna. However, it is
certain that this is adopted in the Vario-
rum edition of Schrevelius; Tantine tibi
est injuriosa et contumeliosa cœna; ut
propter eam turpissimum adulatorem
velis agere, et tot mala, tot opprobria et
contumelias potius perferre velis, quam
mendicare? LUBIN. To this purpose
Marshall, Prateus, and others. Doubt-
less this gives an excellent sense to the
passage; but then this is come at, by
supposing that Juvenal says one thing
ad means another: for he says, injuria
cœnæ, literally, the injury of a supper;
i. e. the injury sustained by Nævolus,
the indignity and affronts which he met
with when he went to Virro's table.
The poet asks, tantine injuria, not tan-
tine coena, meaning, as I conceive, a
sarcasm on the parasite for his attendance
where he was sure to undergo all man-
ner of contempt and ill treatment, ás
though he were so abject as to prefer
this, and hold it in high estimation, in
comparison with the way of life which
Juvenal recommends as more honour-
able. Hence the explanation of the
passage which I have above given ap-
pears to me to be most like the poet's
meaning, as it exactly coincides with his
manner of expression. I would lastly
observe, that Prateus, Delph. edit. in-
terprets, tantine injuria cœnæ? by, an
tanti est contumelia convivii?

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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 yon, 1.8, 9. Or, at least, pretending it, in order to move compassion.

11. 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.

Is hunger so craving, when you might, more honestly, there Both tremble, and gnaw the filth of dogs'-meat?

Fix in the first place, that you, bidden to sit down at table, Receive a solid reward of old services:

Food is the fruit of great friendship: this the great man reckons, And tho' rare, yet he reckons it. Therefore if, after two 15 Months, he likes to invite a neglected client,

Lest the third pillow should be idle on an empty bed,

"Let us be together," says he. It is the sum of your wishes --what more

Do you seek? Trebius has that, for which he ought to break
His sleep, and leave loose his shoe-ties; solicitous lest
The whole saluting crowd should have finished the circle,
The stars dubious, or at that time, in which the
Cold wains of slow Bootes turn themselves round.

Qualis cœna tamen? vinum quod succida nolit
Lana pati de convivâ Corybanta videbis.
Jurgia proludunt: sed mox et pocula torques
Saucius, et rubrâ deterges vulnera mappâ :
Inter vos quoties, libertorumque cohortem
Pugna Saguntinâ fervet commissa lagenâ?
Ipse capillato diffusum consule potat,
Calcatamque tenet bellis socialibus uvam,
Cardiaco nunquam cyathum missurus amico.
Cras bibet Albanis aliquid de montibus, aut de
Setinis, cujus patriam, titulumque senectus
Delevit multâ veteris fuligine testæ :
Quale coronati Thrasea, Helvidiusque bibebant,
Brutorum et Cassî natalibus. Ipse capaces

Sive est Arctophylax, sive est piger ille
Buötes.

-Nunquid te pigra Boöte

Plaustra vehunt. MARTIAL. The epithet piger, so often applied to Bootes, may relate to the slowness of his motion ronnd the north pole, his circuit being very small; or in reference to the slowness with which the neat-herd drives his ox-wain. VIRG. Ecl. x. 1. 19. Tardi venêre bubulci. See OVID. Met. lib. i. fab. i. 1. 176, 7.

-Turn themselves round.] Not that they ever stand still, but they, and therefore their motion, can only be perceived in the night-time.

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24. What sort, &c.] After all the pains which you may have taken to attend this great man's levee, in order to ingratiate yourself with him, and after the great honour which you think is done you by his invitation to supper, pray how are you treated? what kind of entertainment does he give you ?

Wine, &c.] Wine that is so poor, that it is not fit to soak wool, in order to prepare it for receiving the dye, or good enough to scour the grease out of new-shorn wool. See AINSW. Succidus.

25. A Corybant.] The Corybantes were priests of Cybele, and who danced about in a wild and frantic manner.

So this wine was so heady, and had such an effect on the guests who drank it, as to make them frantic, and turn them, as it were, into priests of Cybele, whose mad and strange gestures they imitated.

26. They begin brawls.] Or brawls begin. Proludo (from pro and ludo) is to flourish, as fencers do, before they begin to play in good earnest; to begin, to commence. Brawls, or strifes of

Yet, what sort of a supper? wine which moist wool
Wou'd not endure: from a guest you will see a Corybant. 25
They begin brawls; but presently you throw cups,
Wounded, and wipe wounds with a red napkin.
How often, between you and a troop of freedmen,

Does the battle glow, which is fought with a Saguntine pot?
He drinks what was racked off when the consul wore long hair,
And possesses the
trodden in the social wars,
grape
Never about to send a cup [of it] to a cholicky friend.
To-morrow he'll drink something from the Alban mountains,
Or from the Setine, whose country, and title, old age,
Has blotted out, by the thick mouldiness of the old cask. 35
Such Thraseas and Helvidius drank, crowned,

On the birth-day of the Bruti and Cassius. Virro himself