Part 47 (2/2)

677. This is doubly offensive if addressed to the poor Cinna of viii. 19. Cp. the similar vii. 53, or the yet more offensive viii.

33 and v. 36.

678. More excusable are poems such as x. 57, where he attacks one Gaius, an old friend (cp. ii. 30), for failing to fulfil his promise, or the exceedingly pointed poem (iv. 40) where he reproaches Postumus, an old friend, for forgetting him. Cp. also v. 52.

679. See p. 252.

680. Cp. the elaborate and long-winded poem of Statius on a statuette of Hercules (_Silv._ iv. 6) with Martial on the same subject, ix. 43 and 44.

681. Cp. viii. 3 and 56.

682. Bridge and Lake, Introd., _Select Epigrams of Martial_.

683. The ancient biographies of the poet all descend from the same source: their variations spring largely from questionable or absurd interpretations of pa.s.sages in the satires themselves. The best of them, if not their actual source, is the life found at the end of the codex Pithoea.n.u.s, the best of the MSS. of Juvenal. It was in all probability written by the author of the scholia Pithoeana--to whom Valla, on the authority of a MS. now lost, gave the name of Probus--and dates from the fourth or fifth century.

684. L. 41. Cp. Plin. _Ep._ ii. 11.

685. xiii. 17 's.e.xaginta annos Fonteio consule natus'. xv. 27 'nuper consule Iunco'.

686. _Vita_ 1 (O. Jahn ed.): 1 a (Durr, _Das Leben Juvenals_). A life contained in Cod. Barberin. viii. 18 (fifteenth century), says _Iunius Iuvenalis Aquinas Iunio Iuvenale patre, matre vero Septumuleia ex Aquinati municipio, Claudio Nerone et L. Antistio consulibus_ (55 A. D.) _natus est; sororem habuit Septumuleiam, quae Fuscino nupsit._ This may be mere invention on the part of a humanist of the fifteenth century.

The life contains many improbabilities and the MS. is of suspiciously late date. But see Durr, p. 28.

687. _Vitae_ 2 and 3 'oriundus temporis Neronis Claudii imperatoris'.

_Vit._ 4 'decessit sub Antonino Pio'.

688. So Cod. Paris. 9345; Vossian. 18 and 64; Bodl. (Canon Lat. 41); Schol. Pith, ad _vit._ 1.

689. So all ancient biographies except 1. In _Sat._ iii, Umbricius, addressing Juvenal, speaks of _tuum Aquinum_: cp. also the inscription found near Aquinum and quoted later.

690. This is only conjecture, but the son of a rich citizen of Aquinum would naturally be sent to Rome for his education. For his rhetorical education cp. i. 15-17.

691. _Vita_ 1.

692. Cp. especially the whole of xvi; also i. 58, ii. 165, iii. 132, vii. 92, xiv. 193-7.

693. _C.I.L._ x. 5382.

694. _C.I.L._ vii, p. 85; Hubner, _Rhein. Mus._ xi (1857), p. 30; _Hermes_, xvi (1881), p. 566.

695. Satt. 3, 11, 12, 13. Trebius in 5 is perhaps an imaginary character.

696. vi. 75, 280, vii. 186.

697. vii, 82.

698. Mart. vii. 24, 91, xii. 18.

699. vi. 57.

700. xi. 65.

<script>