"Of those dainties ?"-O riches! he gives this honour to you Ye are brethren. But if a lord, and sovereign of a lord Eneas must play, nor a daughter sweeter than he. A barren wife makes a pleasant and dear friend. 140 But tho' your Micale should bring forth, and should pour Three boys together into the bosom of their father, he in the prattling Nest will rejoice; he'll command a green stomacher To be brought, and small nuts, and the asked-for penny, A mushroom to the lord; but such as Claudius ate 145 Virro will order to himself, and the rest of the Virros, those Apples to be given, with the odour alone of which you may be fed, 150 Such as the perpetual autumn of the Phæacians had, 144. The asked for penny.] The As was about three farthings of our money. We are to suppose the little ones, children-like, to ask Virro for a small piece of money to buy fruit, cakes, &c. which he immediately gives them. 145. As often as, &c.] Virro not only goes to see the children, but invites them to his table, where they never come but they wheedle and coax him, in order to get what they want of him. Hence the poet says, Parasitus infans. 146. Doubtful funguses.] There are several species of the mushroom-kind, some of which are poisonous, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them, therefore the eater cannot be certain that he is safe; hence Juvenal says, ancipites fungi. It is to be observed, that the poet, after his digression on the mean venality of such people as Virro, (who would pay their court to those whom they now use with the utmost contempt, if by any accident they became rich,) now returns to his main subject, which was to particularize those instances of ill treatment which the dependents on great men experienced at their tables, in order to dissuade Trebius from his present servile pursuits. 147. A mushroom.] Boletus signifies a mushroom of the wholesome and best sort. -But such as, &c.] They were not only of the best sort, but the best of that sort; such as regaled the emperor Claudius, before the fatal catastrophe after mentioned. 148. That of his wife.] Agrippina, the mother of Nero, and sister to Caligula, the wife of Claudius, who succeeded Caligula in the empire, destroyed her husband, by mixing poison in a mushroom which she gave him to eat. 149. The rest of the Virros.] i. e. The rest of the great men at his table, who, like Virro, were very rich, and of course much respected by him. 150. Apples.] Poma is a general name for fruits of all kinds which grow on trees, as apples, pears, cherries, &c. and signifies, here, some of the most delicious fruits imaginable, which poor Trebius was to be regaled with nothing but the smell of at Virro's table. 151. Phæacians.] A people of the island of Corfu, or Corcyra, in the Ionian sea, where there was feigned to be a perpetual autumn, abounding with the choicest fruits. 152. The African sisters.] Meaning the Tu scabie frueris mali, quod in aggere rodit Forsitan impensæ Virronem parcere credas : 155 160 Tu tibi liber homo, et regis conviva videris; Captum te nidore suæ putat ille culinæ : Nec male conjectat : quis enim tam nudus, ut illum Bis ferat, Hetruscum puero si contigit aurum, 165 Hesperides, Egle, Heretusa, Hespertusa, the three daughters of Hesperus, brotlier of Atlas, king of Mauritania, who are feigned to have had orchards in Africa, which produced golden fruit, kept by a watchful dragon, which Hercules slew, and obtained the prize. 153. The scab of an apple.] While Virro and his rich guests have before them fruits of the most fragrant and beautiful kinds, you, Trebius, and such as you, will be to enjoy scabby, specky, rotten apples, and such other fruit as a poor half-starved soldier in a fortress, who is glad of any thing he can get, is forced to take up with. 154. Fearing the whip.] Being under severe discipline. 155 Learns to throw, &c.] Is training for arms, and learning to throw the javelin. -From the rough Capella.] This was probably the name of some centurion, or other officer, who, like our adjutant or serjeant, taught the young recruits their exercise, and stood over them with a twig or young shoot of a vine, (which flagellum sometimes signifies,see AINSW.) and with which they corrected them if they did amiss. See sat. viii. 1. 247, 8. and note. The epithet hirsuto, here, may intimate the appearance of this centurion, either from his dress, or from his person. As to the first, we may observe, that the soldiers wore a sort of hair-cloth, or rough garment, made of goat's hair. VIRGIL, G. iii. 311-13. says, that the shepherds shaved the beards of the he-goats for the service of the camps, and for coverings of mariners : Nec minus interea barbus, incanaque menta Cyniphii tondent hirci, setasque comantes, Usum in castrorum, et miseris velamina nautis. Usum in castrorum may mean, here, coverings for the tents, but also (as Ruæus observes) hair cloths for the soldiers' garments, as well as for those of mariners. The roughness of his person must appear from the hairiness of its appearance, from the beard which he wore, from the neglected hair of his head, and, in short, from the general hairiness of his whole body. See sat. ii. 1. 11, 12. and sat. xiv. 1. 194, 5. Sed caput intactum buxo, naresque pilosas Annotet, et grandes miretur Lælius alas. This passage of Juvenal has been the occasion of various conjectures among commentators, which the reader may find in Holyday's note, who himself seems to have adopted the least probable. The reading hirsuto Capella as the name and description of some person appears to me, as it does to Marshal and others, the most simple and natural. 156. Perhaps you may think.] The poet, with much archness, and, at the same time, with due severity, concludes this Satire by setting the behaviour of the patron as well as that of the parasite, in its true light, and, from thence, endeavours to shame Trebius out of his mean submission to the indignities which he You will enjoy the scab of an apple, which in a trench he gnaws Who is covered with a shield and helmet, and, fearing the whip, Learns from the rough Capella to throw a dart. Perhaps you may think Virro spares expence: 155 He does this that you may grieve: for what comedy-what Mimic is better, than deploring gluttony? therefore all is done, If you know not, that by tears to pour forth vexation You may be compell'd, and long to creek with a press'd grinder. 160 You seem to yourself a free man, and a guest of the great man; He thinks you are taken with the smell of his kitchen, has to expect, if he pursues his plan of attending the tables of the great. A useful lesson is to be drawn from hence by all who affect an intimacy with their superiors, and who, rather than not have the reputation of it, submit to the most insolent treatment; not seeing that every affront which they are forced to endure is only an earnest of still greater. -Virro spares, &c.] Perhaps you will set all this down to a principle of parsimony in the great man, and that, to save expence, Virro lets you fare so ill; but you are mistaken. 157. He does this, &c.] All this is done, (ergo omnia fiunt, 1. 158.) first to vex you, and then to laugh at you. -For what comedy, &c.] There can be no higher comedy, or any buffoon or jester (mimus) more laughable, than a disappointed glutton (gula, lit. throat) bemoaning himself (plorante) with tears of anger and resentment at such ill fare, and gnashing and grating his teeth together, having nothing to put between them to keep them asunder. This, if you know it not already, I now tell you, to be the motive of Virro's treatment of you, when he sends for you to sup with him. 161. A free man, &c.] A gentleman at large, as we say, and think that you are a fit guest for a rich man's table, and that, as such, Virro invites you. 162. He thinks, &c.] He knows you well enough, to suppose that you have no other view in coming but to gormandize, and that therefore the scent of his kitchen alone is what brings you to his house in this he does not guess amiss, for this is certainly the case. Nidor signifies the savour of any thing roasted or burnt. 163. For who so naked, &c.] So destitute of all things, as after once being so used, would submit to it a second time? This plainly indicates your mean and sordid motives for coming. : It 164. If the Etruscan gold, &c.] The golden boss, or bulla, brought in among the Romans by the Etrurians, was permitted, at first, only to the children of nobles afterwards to all free-born. was an ornament, made in the shape of an heart, and worn before the breast, to prompt them to the study of wisdom; they left it off at the age of sixteen. See sat. xiii. 1. 33. 165. The nodus only.] A bulla or boss of leather, a sign or note of freemen, worn by the poorer sort of children, and suspended at the breast by a leathern thong. The meaning of 1. 164, 5. seems to be, that no man, one should think, could bear such treatment a second time, whatever situation of life he himself might be in, whether of a noble, or of a freedman's family. 166. The hope of supping well deceives.] Your love of gluttony gets the better of your reflection, and deceives you into a Semesum leporem, atque aliquid de clunibus apri : notion, that however ill-treated you may have been before, this will not happen again. 166. "Lo-now he will give, &c.] This is supposed to be their reasoning upon the matter. 167. An half-eaten hare.] "Now," say they," we shall have set before us "what Virro leaves of a hare, or part of "the haunches of a wild boar." 168. The lesser fat fowl.] A fat hen or 170 pullet, called minor altilis, as distinguishing these smaller dainties from the larger, such as geese, &c. 168. Then with prepared, &c.] Then, with bread ready before you, which remains untouched, as you reserve it to eat with the expected dainties, and ready cut asunder into slices, or, as some, ready drawn out-metaph. from the drawing a sword to be ready against an attack. 169. Ye are silent.] You wait in pa "An half-eaten hare, or something from the buttocks of a boar: "To us will now come the lesser fat fowl"-then with prepared, And untouched, and cut bread, ye are silent. 170 He is wise, who uses you thus: all things, if you can, tient expectation of the good things which you imagine are coming to you. 170. He is wise, &c.] Meanwhile, Virro does wisely; he treats you very rightly, by sending none of his dainties to your part of the table; for if you can bear such usage repeatedly, you certainly deserve to bear it. 171. With a shaven crown, &c.] q. d. You will soon be more abject still; like slaves, whose heads are shaven, in token of their servile condition, you will submit to a broken head; you'll not mind an hearty flogging. 173. Worthy these feasts, &c.] Thus you will prove yourself deserving of such scurvy fare as you are insulted with at Virro's table, and of just such a patron as Virro to give it you. |