Part 25 (2/2)
C_ERE_RI. SACRVM D. _IV_NIVS. IVVENALIS _TRIB_. COH. _I_. DELMATARVM II. _VIR_. QVINQ. FLAMEN DIVI. VESPASIANI VOVIT. DEDICAV_ITQ_VE SVA PEC.[693]
If this inscription refers, as well it may, to the poet, it will follow that he served as tribune of the first Dalmatian cohort, probably in Britain,[694] held high munic.i.p.al office in his native town, and was priest of the deified Vespasian. But the _praenomen_ is wanting in the original, and the inscription may have been erected not by the satirist but by one of his kinsfolk. That he spent the greater portion of his life at Rome is evident from his satires. Of his friends we know little.
Umbricius, Persicus, Catullus, and Calvinus[695] are mere names. Of Quintilian[696] he speaks with great respect, and may perhaps have studied under him; of Statius he writes with enthusiasm, but there is no evidence that he had done more than be present at that poet's recitations.[697] Martial, however, was a personal friend, and writes affectionately of him and to him in three of his epigrams.[698] Unlike Martial, whose life was a continual struggle against poverty, Juvenal, though he had clearly endured some of the discomforts and degradations involved by a client's attendance on his rich _patronus_, was a man of some means, possessing an estate at Aquinum,[699] a country house at Tibur,[700] and a house at Rome.[701] At what date precisely he began to write is uncertain. We are told that his first effort was a brief poem attacking the actor Paris, which he afterwards embodied in the seventh satire. But it was long before he ventured to read his satires even to his intimate friends.[702] This suggests that portions, at any rate, of the satires of the first book were composed during the reign of Domitian.[703] Juvenal had certainly every reason for concealing their existence till after the tyrant's death. The first satire was probably written later to form a preface to the other four, and the whole book may have been published in 101. It is noteworthy, however, that Martial, writing to him in that year, mentions merely his gifts as a declaimer, and seems not to know him as a satirist. The second book, containing only the sixth satire, was probably published about 116, since it contains allusions to earthquakes in Asia and to a comet boding ill to Parthia and Armenia (l. 407-12). Such a comet was visible in Rome in the autumn of 115, on the eve of Trajan's campaign against Parthia, while in December an earthquake did great damage to the town of Antioch.
The third book (7-9) opens with an elaborate compliment to Hadrian as the patron of literature at Rome. As Hadrian succeeded to the princ.i.p.ate in 117 and left Rome for a tour of the provinces in 121, this book must fall somewhere between our dates. The fourth book (10-12) contains no indication as to its date, but must lie between the publication of the third book and of the fifth (after 127). Beyond these facts it is hardly possible to go in our reconstruction of the poet's life. As far as may be judged it was an uneventful career save for one great calamity. The ancient biographies a.s.sert that Juvenal's denunciation of actors embodied in the seventh satire offended an actor who was the favourite of the princeps. They are supported by Apollinaris Sidonius,[704] who speaks of Juvenal as the 'exile-victim of an actor's anger', and by Johannes Malala.[705] The latter writer, with certain of the ancient biographies, identifies the actor with Paris, the favourite of Domitian; others, again, say that the poet was banished by Nero[706]--a manifestly absurd statement--others by Trajan,[707] while our best authority a.s.serts that he was eighty years old when banished, and that he died of grief and mortification.[708] The place of exile is variously given.
Most of the biographies place it in Egypt, the best of them a.s.serting that he was given a military command in that province.[709] Others mention Britain,[710] others the Pentapolis of Libya.[711] Amid such discrepancies it is impossible to give any certain answer. But it is certain that the actor who caused Juvenal's banishment was not Paris, who was put to death by Domitian as early as 83, and almost equally certain that Domitian is guiltless of the poet's exile. It is, however, possible that he was banished by Trajan or Hadrian, though it would surprise us to find Trajan, for all the debauchery of his private life, so far under the influence of an actor[712] as to sacrifice a Roman citizen to his displeasure; while as regards Hadrian it is noteworthy that the very satire said to have offended the _pantomimus_ contains an eloquent panegyric of that emperor. Further, it is hard to believe the story that Juvenal was banished to Egypt at the advanced age of eighty under the pretext of a military command. The problem is insoluble.[713]
The most that can be said is that the persistence of the tradition gives it some claim to credibility, though the details handed down to us are wholly untrustworthy, and probably little better than clumsy inferences from pa.s.sages in the satires.
The scope of Juvenal's work and the motives that spur him are set forth in the first satire. He is weary of the deluge of trivial and mechanical verse poured out by the myriad poetasters of the day:
Still shall I hear and never quit the score, Stunned with hoa.r.s.e Codrus' Theseid, o'er and o'er?
Shall this man's elegies and t'other's play Unpunished murder a long summer's day?
... since the world with writing is possest, I'll versify in spite; and do my best To make as much waste-paper as the rest.[714]
He will write in a different vein from his rivals. Satire shall be his theme. In such an age, when virtue is praised and vice practised, the age of the libertine, the _parvenu_, the forger, the murderer, it is hard not to write satire. 'Facit indignatio versum!'[715] he cries. 'All the daily life of Rome shall be my theme':
quidquid agunt homines votum timor ira voluptas gaudia discursus nostri est farrago libelli.[716]
What human kind desires and what they shun, Rage, pa.s.sion, pleasure, impotence of will, Shall this satirical collection fill.
DRYDEN.
Never was vice so rampant; luxury has become monstrous; the rich lord lives in pampered and selfish ease, while those poor mortals, his clients, jostle together to receive the paltry dole of the _sportula_; that is all the help they will get from their patron:
No age can go beyond us; future times Can add no further to the present crimes.
Our sons but the same things can wish and do; Vice is at stand and at the highest flow.
Thou, Satire, spread thy sails, take all the winds that blow.[717]
And yet the satirist must be cautious; the days are past when a Lucilius could lash Rome at his will:
When Lucilius brandishes his pen And flashes in the face of guilty men, A cold sweat stands in drops on every part, And rage succeeds to tears, revenge to smart.
Muse, be advised; 'tis past considering time, When entered once the dangerous lists of rhyme; Since none the living villains dare implead, Arraign them in the persons of the dead.[718]
No better preface has ever been written; it gives a perfect summary of the motives, the objects, and the methods of the poet's work in language which for vigour and brilliance he never surpa.s.sed. The closing lines show us his literary parentage. It is Lucilius who inspires him; it is the fierce invective of the father of Roman satire that appeals to him.
Lucilius had scourged Rome, when the inroads of h.e.l.lenism and oriental luxury, the fruits of foreign conquest, were beginning to make themselves felt. To Juvenal it falls to denounce the triumph of these corroding influences. He has nothing of the almost pathetic philosophic detachment of Persius, nor of the easy-going compromise of Horace. He does not palter with problems of right and wrong, nor hesitate over his moral judgements; casuistry is wholly alien to his temper. It is indignation makes the verse, and from this fact, together with his rhetorical training, his chief merits and his chief failings spring. He introduces no novelty into satire save the almost unvarying bitterness and ferocity of his tone. Like Horace and Persius, he employs the dactylic hexameter to the exclusion of other metres, while, owing in the main to his taste for declamation, he is far more sparing in the use of the dialogue-form than either of his predecessors.
Before further discussing his general characteristics, it is necessary to take a brief survey of the remaining satires. The second and ninth are savage and, as was almost inevitable, obscene denunciations of unnatural vice. In the third, the most orderly in arrangement and the most brilliant in execution of all his satires, he describes all the dangers and horrors of life at Rome. Umbricius, a friend of the poet, is leaving the city. It is no place for a man of honour; it has become a city for Greeks; the worthless and astute _Graeculus_ is everywhere predominant, and, stained though he be with a thousand vices, has outwitted the native-born, and, by the arts of the panderer and the flatterer, has made himself their master. The poor are treated like slaves. Houses fall, or are burned with fire. Sleep is impossible, so loud with traffic are the streets. By day it is scarcely safe to walk abroad for fear of being crushed by one of the great drays that throng the city; by night there are the lesser perils of slops and broken crockery cast from the windows, the greater perils of roisterers and thieves. Rome is no place for Umbricius. He must go.
The fourth satire opens with a violent attack on the _parvenu_ Egyptian Crispinus, so powerful at the court of Domitian, and goes on by a somewhat clumsy transition to tell the story of the huge turbot caught near Ancona and presented to the emperor. So large was it that a cabinet council must needs be called to decide what should be done with it. This affords excuse for an inimitable picture of Domitian's servile councillors. At last it is decided that the turbot is to be served whole and a special dish to be constructed for it. 'Ah! why,'
the poet concludes, 'did not Domitian devote himself entirely to such trifles as these?'
In the fifth satire Juvenal returns to the subject of the hards.h.i.+ps and insults which the poor client must endure. He pictures the host sitting in state with the best of everything set before him and served in the choicest manner, while the unhappy client must be content with food and drink of the coa.r.s.est kind. Virro, the rich man, does this not because he is parsimonious, but because the humiliation of his client amuses his perverted mind. But the satirist does not spare the client, whose servile complaisance leads him to put up with such treatment. 'Be a man!' he cries, 'and sooner beg on the streets than degrade yourself thus.'
The sixth satire, the longest of the collection, is a savage denunciation of the vices of womankind. The various types of female degradation are revealed to our gaze with merciless and often revolting portrayal. The unchast.i.ty of woman is the main theme, but ranked with the adulteress and the wanton are the murderess of husband or of child, the torturer of the slave, the client of the fortune-teller or the astrologer, and even the more harmless female athlete and blue-stocking.
For vigour and skill the satire ranks among Juvenal's best, but it is marred by wanton grossness and at times almost absurd exaggeration.
The seventh satire deals with the difficulties besetting a literary career. It opens with a dexterous compliment to Hadrian; the poet qualifies his complaints by saying that they apply only to the past.
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