Horace
62. Horace was not from aristocratic stock. As he says in Satires 1.6, his father was a freedman. Indeed, he insists on his father’s humble origins to such a degree that we may wonder to what extent this is a statement of fact and to what extent an artistic device. Bion too claimed to be the son of a former slave in his diatribes, and Horace’s father certainly was better off than the average libertinus, if he was able to afford to move to Rome and acquire for his son the finest education available (Freudenburg 1993: 205). Nonetheless, we can be sure that Horace was of relatively humble origins when compared to Lucilius, even if he has exaggerated his youthful poverty for effect.
63. Horace was born in the Apulian town of Venusia in 65 BCE. When he finished his rhetorical instruction in Rome, he went to Athens to study philosophy, the customary capstone of an upper-class Roman education. There he met Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar. He apparently impressed Brutus, for when Horace joined the army of the conspirators, he received a commission as a military tribune, a rank that required Horace either to have already attained or to be promoted to the rank of equestrian. After the defeat of the republican cause at Philippi in 42 BCE, Horace returned to Rome where he obtained the position of scriba quaestorius (treasury clerk). Such positions were relatively prestigious so Horace’s claims that he took up poetry out of poverty (Epistles 2.2.50–2) must be taken with a grain of salt. In the early thirties Horace made the acquaintance of Vergil and Varus. They approved of his poetry and in 38 BCE introduced him to Maecenas.
64. Maecenas played a key role in Horace’s life and his poetry. Satires 1.1, 1.5, 1.6, 1.9, 1.10, 2.3, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8 are all either addressed to, or make prominent mention of, Horace’s relation to his patron. Maecenas in some ways defines the first half of the Augustan era. An equestrian from an old Etruscan family, he never sought elective office. He was one of Octavian’s earliest supporters and fought with him at Philippi. He became his trusted friend and agent, assuming effective political control of the city when Octavian was away. He also functioned as his chief patron. Maecenas recruited Vergil, Varus, Horace, and, to a certain extent, Propertius to the new regime. He appears to have been neither overbearing nor inattentive as a patron. If one accepts what the poets say at face value—a dangerous thing to do—he encouraged the production of poetry that would reflect well on the emerging principate. Yet, it is clear that he gave those under his protection a great deal of leeway. He neither attempted to micromanage their productions nor to censor work that was frankly critical of the regime such as Propertius 2.7. As a result, some of the finest poetry in the history of the west was produced during the Augustan principate. This was no mere act of disinterested aesthetic patronage, but a shrewd investment in image management. It is largely as result of this poetry that the principate enjoys an image of peace, moderation, and prosperity to this day. That would certainly not have been the case if the only picture we had of Octavian was that of the young triumvir who allowed Marc Antony to slaughter Cicero in the proscriptions or the bloody victor at Perusia (Gold 1986; White 1993).
65. In 35 BCE, shortly after the publication of the first book of satires, Horace received the Sabine farm from Maecenas, a gift that gave the poet personal and financial independence. The first book of satires is in many ways very different from the work of Lucilius. Satires 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3, which borrow heavily from the tradition of diatribe, are the most Lucilian in tone. After 1.3, no living person of note is lampooned, and even in the opening satires there is no real political combat. As Coffey observes, “In the 30s it would have been dangerous, especially for a freedman’s son to write political lampoons” (1976: 90–1). What Maecenas and Octavian needed, and what Horace sought in satura, was a poetic form in which fundamental Roman values could be redefined for a new era. Horace produced a satire that is both politically and aesthetically disciplined, shorn of the republican excesses that, in the view of Octavian, Maecenas and their circle, had led the republic to collapse in blood and fire.
66. To this end, Horace relies more on paradox and self-deprecating irony than the full frontal assault of traditional invective. In 1.5 he is oblivious to the great political events surrounding him. In 1.9, he subtly pays a compliment to Maecenas while portraying himself as the hapless victim of a tasteless boor. In 2.1, which introduces the second book of satires, published in 30 BCE, Horace presents a new more dialogic style. In this book, he will seldom be the only speaker in the poem, and rarely its central protagonist. In 2.6, he thanks Maecenas for the gift of the Sabine farm, while the rustic Cervius regales Horace’s guest with the tale of the city mouse and the country mouse, a fable that gently criticizes the very search for luxury for which Maecenas himself was renowned (Muecke 1997: 228). Finally in 2.8, he contrasts Maecenas’s well-tempered urbanity with the pretentious bombast of the would-be gourmet, Nasidienus, through a story recounted by the comic poet, Fundanius.
Persius
67. Aulus Persius Flaccus was born in 34 CE at Volterrae, an Etruscan hill town. He was a wealthy equestrian who never took part in politics and died at the age of twenty-eight of a stomach ailment. He left his mother and sisters a considerable fortune. His father died when he was six, and his life was devoted to poetry, philosophy, and the care of his female relatives. On his death he left his library, which contained over 700 volumes of the Stoic Chrysippus, to his philosophical mentor, Cornutus.
68. In many ways, Persius’s satires are the least characteristic of the genre. Published posthumously by the poet, Caesius Bassus, to whom Satire 6 is dedicated, Persius’s poems make up one slim tome of 664 lines. His satires are the only ones to espouse a position based on the teachings of a single philosophical school, the late Stoa. According to the ancient “Life of Persius,” at sixteen the poet entrusted himself to Cornutus, whom he describes in his fifth satire as providing moral and aesthetic guidance. Yet, by far the most unusual characteristic of Persius’s satires is his language. Where Lucilius writes in a loose, conversational style, which Horace refines into a sophisticated literary instrument, and where Juvenal offers mock-epic grandeur, Persius eschews the grand style, writing an idiosyncratic Latin removed from daily conversation. He uses low colloquial terms, forms neologisms, and gives common words a sharp new turn. He creates a demanding style of diction that defies translation and that in large part accounts for why he is so little read today. All the same, Persius could not have seemed as difficult in his day as he does to us. He was immediately popular and rapidly became a school text. Nonetheless, even in antiquity he was recognized as a demanding author. Thus, although Persius’s work remained popular throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, in part because of its consistent moral message, from ancient times commentators have remarked on his obscurity (Knoche 1975: 132–7).
69. Persius’s practice of linguistic invention is part of a deliberate rhetorical strategy. At 5.14, Cornutus admonishes his young charge, verba togae sequeris iunctura callidus acri [“You stick to the words of the toga, clever at the sharp juxtaposition”]. This line is at once an explanation and instantiation of Persius’s style. If we examine the initial half of the phrase, the most difficult task is to unfold what is meant by “the words of the toga.” It appears to refer to a preference for pure Latin diction. The toga, after all, could only be worn by Roman citizens. Hence, “sticking to the words of the toga” would denote a rejection of the common practice in Neronian poetics of using a highly artificial, Greek-influenced vocabulary, for which Persius criticizes his contemporaries in Satire 1. In that same first satire, the poet also equates poetic style and personal character, so that the poets who write in this artificial, Greek style are portrayed as morally soft and sexually perverse. Consequently, Persius’s refusal of what he deems an overly refined and unnatural Greek poetic diction, in turn, implies the rejection of a decadent lifestyle associated with the Hellenistic east in favor of the rough and ready virtues of the traditional Roman in the mold of Cato. The toga, nonetheless, was not the everyday dress of
the soldier or farmer, but the garb worn on formal and official occasions. Associated with it are the qualities of solemnity, seriousness, and the class-consciousness of the ruling strata of Roman society (Persius in Satires 3, 4, and 5 shows his low regard for the uneducated masses). We are not talking about common speech but weighty and, by implication, educated speech. The moral gravity of this refined plain speech is portrayed in deliberate contrast to the inflated diction and hollow subject matter dominating contemporary poetic style.
70. The fact that so much can be extracted from this careful placement of two ordinary words in turn serves as an illustration of the second half of the line under examination, “clever at the sharp juxtaposition.” The phrase is a reworking of Ars Poetica 47–8 “You will have spoken distinctively, if clever juxtaposition will have made a known word new.” Persius thus practices a poetic style that is selfconsciously intertextual and possessed of a keen cutting edge. He both imitates Horace and sharpens him. Such a style is appropriate for a corpus whose announced aim is to attack vice and promote virtue. Thus, Satire 1 attacks contemporary poetry. Satire 2 exposes the foolish and often evil requests people make in prayer. The third satire begins by lampooning the habits of a young philosophy student (probably Persius) who oversleeps owing to the previous night’s debauch and finishes with a sermon on the value of philosophy for diseases of the soul. Satire 4 begins with a dialogue in which Socrates admonishes Alcibiades for his vanity and ends with a diatribe on the virtues of self-knowledge. Satire 5 begins with Persius’s praise of Cornutus, and then defends the Stoic thesis that only the wise man is free, while Satire 6 advocates the position that you should enjoy your wealth and not worry about your heirs. In each case, there is a clear target at which Persius’s satire is aimed and the “sharp juxtaposition” is his weapon of choice. Moreover, this imagery of the sharp, the keen, and the cutting is a recurring motif found throughout the corpus. One of the most common words in the Satires is radere, “to shave or scrape,” commonly referring to the healthy abrasive function of philosophy and satire on the human soul (1.85, 1.107, 2.66, 3.50, 3.114, 5.15). In contrast, the poets of whom the satirist disapproves are “soft,” “fluid,” “effeminate,” or “trivial.”
71. A good example of Persius’s style may be found in the prologue. The poem begins with a rejection of the Greek mythological trappings used to describe poetic inspiration and finishes with the claim that poets only write to feed their bellies. The first line features the phrase fons caballinus or “nag’s spring,” an irreverent translation of the Greek Hippocrene, the sacred spring of the muses. By using the vulgar Latin caballinus, Persius shows his contempt for those who ape the Greek tradition, even as he demonstrates his knowledge of it. His use of a low level of diction opposes him to his over-refined contemporaries, but his erudition lifts him above the masses. Five lines later, he claims to be a semipaganus, a “half rustic.” The word itself is a neologism coined specially for the occasion and should not be taken literally: for, even as it proclaims the poet’s lack of sophistication, it demonstrates his wit. Persius may be half rustic, but in matters that count (virtue, honesty, philosophical penetration), he far surpasses his rivals.
72. Persius’s satires make great demands on the reader. His work cannot be simply browsed, but requires focused, self-critical engagement. His rhetoric forces us to be active participants in the creation of meaning. It scrapes away our illusions of self-mastery and sophistication and forces us to see the world through its sharpened lens.
Juvenal
73. Little is known of Juvenal’s life. His name is generally accepted to be Decimus Junius Juvenalis. His birth date is disputed, though it is agreed to fall between 50 and 70 CE. He was probably from a prosperous family since his satires reveal him to have received an excellent rhetorical education as well as formal instruction in philosophy. He never mentions a patron. In Satire 3, Umbricius indicates that Aquinum was his hometown. A lost inscription from the same town, a dedication to Ceres, indicates that a Junius Juvenalis held local office. Whether this was the satirist himself or a relative is impossible to tell. Martial addresses two epigrams and a letter to the satirist (7.24, 7.91, 12.18), which date from the nineties. He refers to Juvenal as eloquent and portrays him as performing the thankless duties of a client, a picture that accords well with the image found in the satires. His satire is marked by the trauma of Domitian’s reign (81–96 CE), to which numerous references are made, but he also features monsters from the time of Nero and even Tiberius. After his death, his work was largely neglected until it was rediscovered by Christian writers of the fourth century.
74. Juvenal published five books of satires. Book 1 contained Satires 1–5 and was published sometime after 100 CE. Book 2 was wholly devoted to Satire 6, “On Women,” and it can be dated to some time after 115 CE. His third book contained Satires 7–9 and can be dated to the period after Hadrian’s accession to the throne in 117. Book 4 consists of Satires 10–12. Book 5, which is made up of Satires 12–16, can be dated to some time after 127 CE. The last poem is unfinished and so posthumous publication is presumed.
75. The pose of the Juvenalian satirist in the first two books is that of the irate conservative, hostile to all forms of social change. When asked how he is able to write satire adequate to the enormity of the crimes he witnesses, he answers facit indignatio versum [anger makes the verse] (1.79). The causes of his indignation are legion but can be grouped under several dominant headings: the breakdown of traditional gender and social roles; the tide of immigrants that threatens to make Romans a minority in their own city; and the neglect of traditional patron–client relations. It is a world turned upside-down, where Roman virtues bring only shame and degradation:
aude aliud brevibus Gyaris et carcere dignum
si vis esse aliquid. Probitas laudatur et alget.
[Dare something worthy of exile on Gyara or prison if you want to be something. Goodness is praised and causes pain.]
(1.73–4)
Juvenalian indignatio is not the pose of the Stoic sage or self-possessed Epicurean, but of the irate declaimer whose anger renders him incoherent with rage. “It is the impression of incoherence which is of prime importance” (Braund 1988: 9).
76. Juvenal creates this impression of “indignation unbound” through the concentrated deployment of the tools and themes of the rhetorical tradition. Yet, as one recognizes the calculated use of those rhetorical devices, the nature of his indignatio as a pose becomes unmistakable. It is not a question of the sincerity of Juvenal’s anger, which need be neither doubted nor affirmed, but rather of his inclusion of the angry speaker within the scope of the satire itself. The only thing as ridiculous as the world of matronly gladiators and moralizing perverts in which the subject of satire lives is the satirist himself. The highly wrought form of the Juvenalian satura—its deployment of paradox, aphoristic sententiae, hyperbole, and the striking image—ensures that there is always an ironic distance separating the satire from its subject. There is, in fact, something consciously excessive in the satirist’s self-presentation.
77. In Books 3–5, this pose alters somewhat. Irony comes to predominate over indignatio. The satirist becomes increasingly detached from his subject matter. The change is not total, and the violence of the imagery and invective of Satire 9 recalls that of the preceding books. However, the speaker for much of the poem, Naevolus, is clearly separated from the satirist. This is not unprecedented. In Satire 3, the speaker is Umbricius. But where Umbricius is a caricature of the stern traditional Roman moralist—i.e., a satirist in the Lucilian mode—Naevolus is a male prostitute. The level of ironic distance between speaker and satirist has clearly widened.
78. In the last two books, this trend toward detachment is only increased. As Conte observes:
A marked change in tone is observed in the second part of Juvenal’s work, that is in the last two books, in which the poet expressly renounces violent indignatio and assumes a more detached attitude, which aims at the
apatheia of the Stoics. In this he is returning to that diatribe tradition of satire from which he has drastically departed […] And yet this façade of impassability cracks open here and there, showing the old fury, and the undying rage sometimes breaks out again.
(1994: 477)
The subject of Latin verse satire thus comes to an end with the attempt to construct the internal libertas of the sage. It is a freedom shielded both from his internal anger and from the external vicissitudes of an authoritarian political universe in which the values of Lucilius no longer have any purchase. The ironic detachment from which that shield is constructed ideally yields to the reader a benign bathos and a melancholy pathos. The construction of this citadel of the self, however, remains a tenuous affair, which the sheer stupidity and viciousness of human desire, both within the satirist and without, constantly threaten to overturn.
Select bibliography
Adams, J. N. 1982. The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Albrecht, Michael von. 1997. A History of Roman Literature from Livius Andronicus to Boethius with Special Regard to Its Influence on World Literature. Two vols. Rev. by Gareth Schmeling and Michael von Albrecht. Trans. by Michael von Albrecht and Gareth Schmeling with the assistance of Ruth R. Caston, Frances and Kevin Newman, and Francis Schwartz. Leiden: Brill.
Anderson, William S. 1982. Essays on Roman Satire. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Anthon, Charles. 1886. The Works of Horace. New York: Harper and Brother.
Bakhtin, M. M. 1968. Rabelais and His World. Trans. by Hélène Iswolsky. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Berg, Deena. 1996. “The Mystery Gourmet of Horace’s Satires 2.” Classical Journal 91: 141–52.
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