If three disciples should speak against the table of Sylla? 30 To all, and even to be dreaded by Mars and Venus themselves: And thus smiling: "Happy times! which thee However, I question whether the character of Scaurus be not rather to be gathered from his being found among so many truly great and worthy men, Sat. xi. 1. 90, 1. Pliny also represents him as a man summæ integritatis, of the highest integrity. This idea seems to suit best with fictos Scauros, as it leads us to consider these hypocrites as feigning themselves men of integrity and goodness, and as seeming to resemble the probity and severity of manners for which Scaurus was eminent, the better to conceal their vices, and to deceive other people. And being reproved, bite again.] Such hypocrites are not only despised by the most openly vicious for their insincerity, but whenever they have the impudence to reprove vice, even in the most aban. doned, these will turn again and retaliate: which is well expressed by the word remordent. 36. Laronia.] Martial, cotemporary with Juvenal, describes a woman of this name as a rich widow. Abnegat et retinet nostrum Laronia ser vum, Respondens, orba est, dives, anus, vidua. By what Juvenal represents her to have said, in the following lines, she seems to have had no small share of wit. -Did not endure.] She could not bear him; she was out of all patience. -Sour.] Crabbed, stern in his appearance. Or torvum may be here put for the adverb torve-torve clamantem. Grecism. See above, 1. 3. and note. From among them.] i. e. One of 40 these dissemblers; one out of this hypocritical herd. 37. Crying out so often.] Repeating aloud his seeming indignation against vice, and calling down the vengeance of the law against lewdness and effeminacy. Where is the Julian law?] Against adultery and lewdness; (see 1. 30. note;) why is it not executed? As it then stood, it punished adultery and sodomy with death. -Dost thou sleep?] Art thou as regardless of these enormities, as a person fast asleep is of what passes about him? 38. And thus smiling.] Laronia could not refrain herself at hearing this, and, with a smile of the utmost contempt, ready almost at the same time to laugh in his face, thus jeers him. -Happy times! &c.] That have raised up such a reformer as thou art, to oppose the evil manners of the age! 39. Now Rome may take shame.] Now, to be sure, Rome will blush, and take shame to herself, for what is practised within her walls, since such a reprover appears. Irony. 40. A third Cato.] Cato Censorius, as he was called, from his great gravity and strictness in his censorship; and Cato Uticensis, so called from his killing himself at Utica, a city of Africa, were men highly esteemed as eminent moralists; to these, says Laronia, (continuing her ironical banter,) heaven has added a third Cato, by sending us so severe and respectable a moralist as thou art, Hæc emis, hirsuto spirant opobalsama collo Quæ tibi? ne pudeat dominum monstrare tabernæ : Ante omnes debet Scantinia; respice primum Novimus? aut ullo strepitu fora vestra movemus ? 41. Perfumes.] Opobalsama-oros Baλoanov-i. e. Succus balsami. This was some kind of perfumery, which the effeminate among the Romans made use of, and of which, it seems, this same rough-looking reprover smelt very strongly. 41, 2. Your rough neck.] Hairy, and bearing the appearance of a most philosophic neglect of your person. 42. Don't be ashamed, &c.] Don't blush to tell us where the perfumer lives, of whom you bought these fine sweet-smelling ointments. Here her raillery is very keen, and tends to shew what this pretended reformer really was, notwithstanding his appearance of sanctity. She may be said to have smelt him out. 43. Statutes and laws are disturbed.] From that state of sleep in which you seem to represent them, and from which you wish to awaken them. The Roman jurisprudence seems to have been founded on a threefold basis, on which the general law, by which the government was carried on, was established; that is to say, Consulta patrum, or decrees of the senate-Leges, which seem to answer to our statute-laws-and jura, those rules of common justice, which were derived from the two former, but particularly from the latter of the two, or, perhaps, from immemorial usage and custom, like the common law of England. 45 50 55 HOR. lib. i. epist. xvi. 1. 41. mentions servat. See an account of the Roman laws at large, in Kennett's Roman Antiq. part ii. book iii. chap. xxi. et seq. 43. The Scantinian.] So called from Scantinius Aricinus, by whom it was first introduced to punish sodomy. Others think that this law was so called from C. Scantinius, who attempted this crime on the son of Marcellus, and was punished accordingly. 45. Examine the men.] Search diligently: scrutinize into their abominations. -These do more things.] They far outdo the other sex; they do more things worthy of severe reprehension. 46. Number defends.] This tends to shew how common that detestable vice was. (Comp. Rom. i. 27.) Such numbers were guilty of it, that it was looked upon rather as fashionable than criminal; they seemed to set the law at defiance, as not daring to attack so large a body. -Battalions joined, &c.] A metaphor taken from the Roman manner of engaging. A phalanx properly signified a disposition for an attack on the enemy by the foot, with every man's shield or buckler so close to another's, as to join "Do you buy these perfumes which breathe from your rough "Neck? don't be ashamed to declare the master of the shop: "But if the statutes and laws are disturbed, the Scantinian Ought before all to be stirred up. Consider first, 66 45 "And examine the men: these do more things-but them "Number defends, and battalions joined with a buckler. "There is great concord among the effeminate: there will "not be any 66 Example so detestable in our sex: "Trædia caresses not Cluvia, nor Flora Catulla : "Hippo assails youths, and in his turn is assailed. "Do we plead causes? the civil laws 50 "Do we know? or with any noise do we make a stir in your "courts? "A few wrestle, a few eat wrestlers' diet: 55 "You card wool, and carry back in full baskets your finished) "Fleeces; you the spindle, big with slender thread, "Better than Penelope do twist, and finer than Arachne, "As does a dirty harlot sitting on a log. them together and make a sort of impenetrable wall or rampart. This is said to have been first invented by the Macedonians; phalanx is therefore to be considered as a Macedonian word. 47. There is great concord, &c.] They are very fond of each other, and strongly connected and united, so that attacking one would be like attacking all. 49. Tadia-Floru, &c.] Famous Roman courtezans in Juvenal's time-bad as they were, the men were worse. 51. Do we plead, &c.] Do we women usurp the province of the men? do we take upon us those functions which belong to them? 53. A few wrestle.] A few women there are, who are of such a masculine turn of mind, as to wrestle in public. See Sat. i. 22, 3. and notes; and Sat. vi. 245-57. and notes. osier or wicker baskets, in which the women put their work when they had finished it, in order to carry it back to their employers. 56. Penelope.] Wife of Ulysses, who during her husband's absence was im portuned by many noble suitors, whose addresses she refused with inviolable constancy: but, fearing they might take her by force, she amused them, by desiring them to wait till she had finished a web, which she was then about; and to make the time as long as possible, she undid druing the night what she had done in the day. Arachne.] A Lydian damsel, very skilful in spinning and weaving. She is fabled to have contended with Minerva, and, being outdone, she hanged herself, and was by that goddess changed into a spider. Ov. Met. lib. vi. fab. I. By mentioning these instances, Laronia ironically commends the great proficiency of the men in carding and spinning both these operations seem to be distinctly marked by the poet. 57. A dirty harlot.] Pellex properly denotes the mistress of a married man. This, and the Greek raλλanıs, seem derived from Heb. Wa pilgesh, which we render, concubine. Codex, from caudex, literally signifies Notum est cur solo tabulas impleverit Hister a stump or stock of a tree-of a large piece of which a log was cut out, and made an instrument of punishment for female slaves, who were chained to it on any misbehaviour towards their mistresses, but especially where there was jealousy in the case; and there they were to sit and work at spinning, or the like. 58. Hister.] Some infamous character, here introduced by Laronia in order to illustrate her argument. -Filled his will.] Tabula signifies any plate or thin material on which they wrote; hence deeds, wills, and other written instruments, were called tabulæ. So public edicts. See before, 1. 28. 58, 9. With only his freedman.] Left him his sole heir. 59. Why alive, &c.] Why in his lifetime he was so very generous, and made such numbers of presents to his wife, here called puellæ, as being a very young girl when he married her but I should rather think, that the arch Laronia has a more severe meaning in her use of the term puellæ, by which she would intimate, that his young wife, having been totally neglected by him, remained still, puella, a maiden; Hister having no desire towards any thing, but what was unnatural with his favourite freedman. It is evident that the poet uses puella in this sense, sat. ix. 1. 74. See note on sat. ix. 1. 70. 60. She will be rich, &c.] By receiving (as Hister's wife did) large sums for hush-money. Who sleeps third, &c.] By this she would insinuate, that Hister caused his 60 65 70 freedman, whom he afterwards made his heir, to lie in the bed with him and his wife, and gave his wife large presents of money, jewels, &c. not to betray his abominable practices. 61. Do thou marry.] This apostrophe may be supposed to be addressed to the unmarried woman, who might be standing by, and listening to Laronia's severe reproof of the husbands of that day, and contains a sarcasm of the most bitter kind. As if she had said, "You hear what "you are to expect; such of you as wish "to be rich, I advise to marry, and keep "their husbands' secrets." -Secrets bestows gems.] Cylindrosthese were precious stones, of an oblong and round form, which the women used to hang in their ears. Here they seem to signify all manner of gems. 62. After all this.] After all I have been saying of the men, I can't help observing how hardly we women are used. -A heavy sentence, &c.] Where we are concerned no mercy is to be shewn to us; the heaviest sentence of the laws is called down upon us, and its utmost vengeance is prescribed against us. 63. Censure excuses ravens, &c.] Laronia ends her speech with a proverbial saying, which is much to her purpose. Censura here means punishment. The men, who, like ravens and other birds of prey, are so mischievous, are yet excused; but, alas! when we poor women, who are, comparatively, harmless as doves, when we, through simplicity and weakness, go astray, we hear of nothing but punishment. "It is known why Hister filled his will with only "His freedman; why alive he gave much to a wench : "She will be rich, who sleeps third in a large bed. "Do thou and hush-secrets bestow gems. marry, "After all this, a heavy sentence is passed against us: "Censure excuses ravens, and vexes doves." 60 Her, proclaiming things true and manifest, trembling fled The Stoicides-For what falsehood had Laronia [uttered]? 65 But what Will not others do, when thou assumest transparent garments, O Creticus, and (the people wond'ring at this apparel) thou declaimest Against the Proculæ and Pollineæ? Fabulla is an adulteress : Let Carfinia too be condemned if you please: such A gown, condemned, she'll not put on. "But July burns- 70 64. Her, proclaiming, &c.] We have here the effect of Laronia's speech upon her guilty hearers; their consciences were alarmed, and away they flew, they could not stand any longer they knew what she said to be true, and not a tittle of it could be denied: so the faster they could make their escape, the better: like those severe hypocrites we read of, John viii. 7-9. Cano signifies, as used here, to report, to proclaim aloud. 65. The Stoicides.] Stoicidæ. This word seems to have been framed on the occasion with a feminine ending, the better to suit their characters, and to intimate the monstrous effeminacy of these pretended Stoics. The Stoics were call ed Stoici, from aroa, a porch in Athens, where they used to meet and dispute. They highly commended apathy, or freedom from all passions. Juvenal, having severely lashed the Stoicides, or pretended Stoics, now proceeds to attack, in the person of Metellus Creticus, the effeminacy of certain magistrates, who appeared, even in the seat of justice, attired in a most unbecoming and indecent manner, and such as bespake them in the high road to the most horrid impurities. 66. Will not others do, &c.] q. d. It is no marvel that we find vice triumphant over people that move in a less conspicuous sphere of life, when plain and apparent symptoms of it are seen in those who fill the seats of justice, and are actually exhibited by them, before the public eye, in open court. 66. Transparent garments.] Multicia, quasi multilicia, of many threads. These were so finely and curiously wrought, that the body might be seen through them. 67. O Creticus.] This magistrate was descended from the family of that Metellus, who was called Creticus, from his conquest of Crete. Juvenal, most probably, addresses Metellus by this surname of his great ancestor, the more to expose and shame him, for acting so unworthy his descent from so brave and noble a person. Thou declaimest.] Passest sentence in the most aggravated terms-perores. The end of a speech, in which the orator collected all his force and eloquence, was called the peroration: but the verb is used in a larger sense, and signifies to declaim and make an harangue against any person or thing. 68. Procule and Pollinea.] Names of particular women, who were condemned, on the Julian law, for incontinence, but so famous in their way, as to stand here for lewd women in general. He could condemn such in the severest manner, when before him in judgment, while he, by his immodest dress, shewed himself to be worse than they were. 68, 69. Fabulla-Carfinia.] Notorious adulteresses. 69, 70. Such a gown, &c.] Bad as such women may be, and even convicted of |