we entertain the view that Juvenal was the son or adopted son of a rich freedman, but, not having been provided for by his father,' had on that account reason for hating him and all freedmen. The fact that he received from his father an inheritance (6, 57) makes such a supposition anything but probable. We have found what we should have been surprised not to find in a statement that is part and parcel of the story about the poet's declamation. We should have been still further surprised to have gained the conviction that Juvenal's father, a freedman of wealth, contrary to custom (3, 153) and human nature, instead of wishing the man who bore his name to enjoy as high a social position as possible, allowed him to carry on for years, without assistance, a losing fight with poverty, and finally bequeathed to him but an insignificant estate.2 But it has been maintained3 that these statements, which we have rejected, bear the stamp of truth because they could not have been inferred from the Satires and because there is no conceivable reason why they should have been arbitrarily invented. And yet occasion enough for such inference and invention is easily discovered. It appears from the first Satire that Juvenal studied rhetoric in the schools (1, 15 sqq.) and that he had reached middle life at least (1, 25). The biographer, having no information of any military or professional career preceding that of satirist, inferred from this fact, it may be, and in a manner quite in keeping with his way of reasoning as revealed in the rest of the memoir, that Juvenal declaimed till middle life for pleasure. In that case he must have been in easy circumstances. Nothing more was needed to assign to him a rich father. But nothing was known about his father. It would follow, of course, that he was a nobody, perhaps a freedman. Had not Horace the satirist been a freedman's son? Had not the satirist Turnus been a freedman himself (Schol. ad 1, 20)? To be sure, he might just as well have been an adopted son. Between the two possibilities a decision was not made. Exactly this line of thought may not have been followed in detail, but that it was easy enough for the biographer to base his fancies on the subject-matter of the first Satire is manifest. 1 De Dompierre de Chaufepié, p. 29. 2 Cf. 6, 57: vivat Gabiis, ut vixit in agro, vivat Fidenis, et AGELLO cedo paterno. 3 Friedlaender, S. 4. The biography of younger date, betraying plainly its character, presents an easier problem. According to this biography the father, as we have seen, was named Junius Juvenal; the mother, Septumeleia. They were from Aquinum, and their son was born in the consulship of Claudius Nero and Lucius Antistius (55 A. D.). Dürr himself admits, what is quite evident, that almost everything in this life is invented or derived from the Satires, or taken from other sources and arbitrarily referred to Juvenal, and aptly concludes from the general tone and character of the production that it is the work of some humanist of the fifteenth century. To this extent the matter is not in controversy. The father's name also, it is plain, could have been transferred from that of the son. The name of the mother and sister, however, and the year of birth, it is thought, must have come from an old biography and had their source in good tradition. But first of all, though granting it as a remote possibility, we must nevertheless consider it strange that an old life containing these definite and important particulars should be in existence till the fifteenth century and not be known or used by any of the writers or revisers of the other lives. The chief characteristic of the memoir awakens still further suspicion. It shows clearly the tendency to designate by name all the prominent persons with whom Juvenal was in any way personally connected. In addition to his father, mother, sister, brother-in-law, and the consuls under whom he was born, are mentioned as his teachers or otherwise Probus of Berytus, Marcus Antonius Liberalis, Palaemon, Fronto, Lucius Gallus, and Volusius Bithynicus. That the Satires, Jerome, Martial, Macrobius or Gellius,' and the other lives furnish the material for these details is evident from the thought and expression. It is clear, too, that the writer, in seeking to connect Juvenal with these men, repeatedly states as a fact what is, as he must have been fully aware, an absolute falsification. Under such circumstances we are justified in surmising that what is said of Juvenal's mother and sister and the year of his birth may be of the same character. Only one thing stands in the way. It is declared that the date of birth harmonizes admirably with all else that we know of Juvenal's life, though this has been denied, and that nothing can be discovered in the Satires or elsewhere from which that date could have been inferred or which could have occasioned its adoption. But, in fact, it is not necessary to look far to discover what is 1 Dürr, S. 29. 2 Ib., S. 30. 3 Ib., S. 30. Friedlaender, S. 15. amply sufficient to have suggested to the uncritical and unscrupulous author of the memoir those very consuls. The first Satire contains a reference to an event of the year 100 A. D. (1, 49 sq.). When writing that Satire, Juvenal had ceased to be a iuvenis (1, 25). The age of the iuvenis extended, according to Varro,' to the forty-fifth year, and, if Juvenal ceased to be a iuvenis in 100 A. D., which was apparently the unwarranted interpretation of the biographer, he was born in 55 A. D., in the consulship of Claudius Nero and Lucius Antistius. We do not know the source of the name Septumeleia. It may have been seen associated in some way with Aquinum. But without ascertaining how the writer came by it, we are compelled, by what we know of everything else in the memoir, to ascribe the use of this name also to combination or falsification. By our examination, then, of the only parts of the biographies, older or younger, which have any appearance of being based on reliable tradition independent of the Satires, it has been shown that these parts are no more trustworthy than the rest. Nothing but blind credulity remains to support the theory of a kernel of truth. There is, indeed, an old nucleus in the memoirs, but it is a nucleus of old conjecture. The author of the original biography undertook to write a life of Juvenal in imitation, it seems, of Suetonius' lives of the poets. He did it, but his own conjectures and combinations furnished all his material. He had learned nothing at all from genuine tradition. If we search, as we should, in Juvenal's own words for information concerning his parentage, we shall find again that in his settled views of men and things are plain hints for our guidance. It is involved in the conclusions which we have already reached that he was the son of freeborn parents. His strong antipathy to foreigners, whose presence in the city made it in his eyes wellnigh unbearable (3, 60 sqq.) and whose customs brought in by wealth had undermined the old Roman virtue (6, 298 sqq.), precludes the idea that he and his parents were other than Roman citizens. They did not, however, belong to the aristocracy. Juvenal, in what he says about the sportula (1, 99 sqq.), expressly distinguishes himself from the Roman nobles of old extraction, and in his imaginary conversation with the noble Rubellius (8, 39 sqq.) he makes the latter address him and those of similar descent as men of low birth, and in reply recounts the valuable 1 Censorinus 14, 2. services rendered by the plebs, leaving no room for doubt that he belongs to this class of citizens. The tone in general of his extended laudation of worth over against birth, in which this conversation occurs, points in the same direction. Aquinum, which Juvenal mentions as his native place (3, 319), was accordingly the home of his parents. That they had moderate means, but were not rich, we have already seen in our discussion of the son's education, inheritance, and professional career. The Satires, then, should be interpreted as the utterances of a thorough Roman of humble birth but proud of his Roman nationality, educated by his parents but not freed by their wealth from the necessity of taking, as soon as he was able, a serious part in the affairs of life. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA. FRANK IVAN MERCHANT. VI. AN EPIC FRAGMENT FROM OXYRHYNCHUS. A negative indication of the value of the recent discoveries at Oxyrhynchus may be seen in the fact that the interesting epic fragment No. CCXIV seems to have escaped notice in the mass of comments that the publication of the Oxyrhynchus papyri has called forth. The papyrus which is referred by the editors "with little hesitation to the third century," contains parts of forty-three hexameters, and is, unfortunately, much mutilated. The editors translate only vv. 1-5, though the restoration of 10-13 is also complete. The editor's restoration of vv. 1-5 is sufficiently certain to permit the printing of the text in the usual manner, with indications of only the chief supplements at the end of each line: Ι ἐξαπίνης ἐπέδησεν ἀνωΐστο[ισι κλάδοισι οὔ κεν ἔτι ζώοντες ἐς Ἴλιον ἦλθον ['Αχαιοί· 5 Τήλεφος ἐξενάριξε πρὶν Εκτο[ρος ἀντίον ἐλθεῖν The remaining verses to v. 16 as published in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. II, p. 28, are as follows: αλλ οποσον μοι και τ[ο] αμυνέμεν ε[ χραισμήσαι δε μοι α[. . . . .] . α[ η και απ αργείοι <> λαχεν γεν[ος] ηρακληος 1ο [κλ]υτε μοι αθανατοι [ζ]ευς δ[ε π]λεον ον γενετήρα ακούω και τουτων φρασσασθε μαχων λυσιν ἴσα δε μυθοις 15 ξανθου φοινιξαντες ε[. . . .]με . . χευμα καικου For the first two of these lines I have no suggestion to make, except that perhaps we should read in v. 7 χραισμήσαι δέ μοι |