Latin Verse Satire

by Miller, Paul Allen

  63–8. “In such a world, is it not pleasing to stand on the street corner and fill up notebooks with images of vice?” Ceras = “wax tablets,” on which poets wrote their first drafts.

  Quadrivio < quadrivium, –i: “an intersection of four streets.”

  Sexta cervice: the signator falsi is borne (feratur) on a litter (cathedra) carried by six slaves, a sign of opulence.

  Iam = “already,” soon he will have more slaves. The largest litters were carried by eight.

  Patens ac nuda paene cathedra: he does not travel with the curtains closed, but openly flaunts his luxury and shows no shame for the means through which he attained it. The cathedra was a woman’s chair.

  Multum = adverbial. Maecenate: Maecenas was known for his effeminacy and luxury. Naturally, this is not mentioned by Horace.

  Signator falsi = “the signatory of a forged document,” often a will, as can be seen from parallel usages (e.g., Juvenal 8.142).

  Gemma … uda: the signet ring was wetted to prevent the wax from adhering.

  69–72. “Now upper class matrons poison their husbands.” Molle Calenum: a light wine from Cales. This is the direct object of porrectura.

  Rubetam < rubeta, –ae: the bramble frog, whose liver was deemed poisonous.

  Instituit: she not only practices the dark art, she instructs her less knowledgeable relatives (rudes … propinquas).

  Melior Lucusta = “a superior Lucusta,” Nero’s preferred poisoner.

  Per famam et populum = “in the face of scandal and before the eyes of the people” (Duff 1970): a zeugma or nonparallel usage of the same construction. Per populum refers to the practice of funerals passing through the Forum on the way to burial sites outside the city walls.

  Nigros: from the effects of the poison.

  73–6. “Propriety is praised and punished.” Brevibus Gyaris = Gyara, a small island with poor water in the Aegean. It was used for deportations. Carcere dignum: prison was not a common means of punishment in Rome. Jail cells were used as holding areas before execution.

  Aliquid: the repetition adds a bitter ironic quality.

  Praetoria = “mansions, palaces.”

  Mensas = a common luxury item, much attacked in the literature of the period. The most expensive were made from a single slab of citrus wood.

  Vetus, –eris: an adjective in one termination, modifying argentum: silver plate worked by an old master.

  Stantem extra pocula caprum: a goat stands in high relief from the cup.

  77–8. Nurus = genitive singular, “daughter-in-law.”

  Sponsae = “fiancées.”

  Praetextatus = “wearing the toga praetexta.” This was worn before the toga virilis, which was normally donned between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. See Horace 1.2.16. This is one precocious adulterer!

  79–80. “If talent is lacking, indignatio will write my verse,” Juvenal’s most famous line. Cluvienus is otherwise unknown.

  81–126. Juvenal begins a second programmatic survey of vice. This second part concentrates on money and degraded social relations, especially between patronus and cliens.

  81–6. “Whatever men have done or desired since the time of the flood. This is my subject.” Ex quo: understand tempore.

  Nimbis tollentibus aequor = ablative absolute. “With rain-clouds raising the water (level)” (Braund 1996a).

  Poposcit < posco, –ere, poposci: “to ask, request.”

  Saxa: Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, were told that they could regenerate the human race after the flood by tossing the bones of their mother over their shoulder. They correctly surmised that the reference was to Mother Earth whose bones were stones. Mollia describes the stones as they come to life.

  Maribus nudas … puellas: Pyrrha plays the procuress. The rot goes deep. This is a recurrent theme in Juvenal. The present is fallen and decadent. The past was just as bad if not worse. The rhetoric allows for no real development, either narrative or moral, since there is no standard to which we can appeal.

  Farrago = “a mash of grain fed to cattle.” Juvenal here is clearly playing on the traditional explanations of the origins of the word satura [12–13].

  87–90. “When was there ever a better time to write satire?” Sinus = the fold in the toga used as a pocket.

  Alea = “dice,” understand sumpsit or a similar verb.

  Loculis comitantibus = “accompanying small money boxes,” as opposed to the arca of the following line.

  Itur = impersonal passive, “there is no going.” This is not small-time gambling for pleasure.

  Casum < casus, –us: “chance,” but also the literal throw of the dice, derived from cado.

  Tabulae = “the gaming table.”

  Posita … arca = ablative absolute: “with the treasure chest put down / staked.”

  Luditur = “the game is played.”

  91–3. An epic description of the battles surrounding the gaming table. Dispensatore = the slave in charge of the arca.

  Simplexne furor = “is it just madness?”

  Sestertia centum = 100,000 sesterces, one quarter of the equestrian census.

  Horrenti = “shivering.”

  Reddere = “to give as his due.” Cato, no great humanitarian, says a slave should receive a new shirt and blanket every two years. The flip side of excess is neglect of one’s social duties.

  94–6. The same people who build extravagant pleasure palaces and eat seven-course meals neglect the most basic care of their clientes. Compare lines 75–6.

  Quis: take with avus, a man of times past.

  Fercula = “courses.” The normal number was three.

  Secreto = “by himself.” This was not a dinner party, but pure personal indulgence.

  Sportula = originally a little basket of food left for one’s poorer clients, later money to buy food. Far from sharing his table with his dependents, the rich man sets their parva … sportula out on the primo limine. The sportula is the topic of lines 95–126, the most developed set of scenes in the poem.

  Turbae … togatae: dative of agent. These are Roman citizens.

  97–9. “Even so, he worries lest he spend an extra penny.” Suppositus = “added fraudulently.”

  Agnitus < agnosco, –noscere, –novi, –nitum: “to recognize.”

  99–101. Even the patricians are reduced to waiting in line at his door. Troiugenas = those claiming birth from the Trojans who accompanied Aeneas.

  Praecone < praeco, –conis: “herald, auctioneer.” See Horace 1.6.86.

  102–9. But the foreign freedman (libertinus) claims pride of place since he is richer than the noble-born Romans. Euphraten = the Euphrates, the great river of Mesopotamia, modern Iraq.

  Molles … fenestrae = “effeminate piercings.”

  Arguerint = “would prove,” potential subjunctive.

  Licet = “even though.”

  105–6. Quinque tabernae = “five shops.” This libertinus represents the kind of aggressive petty-bourgeois social climber that Cicero seeks to defend the traditional aristocracy against when he argues that only agriculture and large-scale mercantile ventures are fit sources of income for a bonus, a member of the senatorial or equestrian élite.

  Quadringenta = 400,000 sesterces, the equestrian census.

  106–9. Quid confert … optandum: “why does one wish for?” literally “what wished for thing does the purpura maior bring?” Purpura maior = the broad purple stripe on the tunic that indicates membership in the senatorial order.

  Laurenti = Laurentum, a town in Latium Pliny describes as good for grazing sheep.

  Conductas … ovis = “hired sheep.” Corvinus has been reduced to share-cropping. Corvinus = M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, scion of the family of the great Messalla who is cited as a model of eloquence by Horace (1.10.29, 85). Consul in 58 CE, he lived in such reduced circumstances that Nero granted him a pension.

  Pallante = Pallas, an immensely wealth freedman of Claudius, who certainly outstripped our friend by a good margin. Licini
s = people like Licinus, a Gaul captured by Julius Caesar. He served him as dispensator and was emancipated in his will. He was later procurator of Gaul (16–15 BCE) where he amassed an immense fortune.

  109–16. Wealth conquers all. Money is god. Expectent, vincant, and cedat = jussive subjunctives. Honori: see Horace 1.6.11.

  Pedibus … albis: foreign slaves put up for sale had their feet marked with chalk.

  Sanctissima divitiarum / maiestas: understand est. Note the elevated diction.

  Pecunia, in fact, was a minor goddess but did not have a temple.

  115. These are traditional abstract virtues that were personified as gods and possessed temples. This is almost certainly a parody of Horace’s “Carmen Saeculare” 57–60, iam Fides et Pax et Honos Pudorque / priscus et neglecta redire Virtus / audet, apparetque beata pleno / Copia cornu (Martyn 1979: 225).

  116. According to the scholiast, storks nested in the temple of Concordia at the entrance to the Capitoline. When a passerby would utter a traditional prayer of salutation, the storks would seem to answer by clattering (crepitat) with their bills.

  117–20. “How are those who just scrape by supposed to survive when even the consul (summus honor) counts on the sportula?”

  Rationibus = “accounts.”

  Fumus = “firewood.”

  120–2. “Even those who can afford litters come for the mere pittance that is offered.” Densissima … lectica = “a vast crowd of litters,” poetic singular for plural.

  Centum quadrantes: a quadrantis is a small copper coin worth one fourth of an as. An as is worth one fourth of a sesterce. The sum here is twenty-five asses, the traditional amount for the sportula.

  123–6. “One fine fellow even used an empty sedan chair (sellam), with the curtains drawn (clausam) to claim a double portion for an absent wife (coniuge).”

  Nota iam … arte = “a well known trick.”

  127–46. Like Horace in 1.6.111–31, Juvenal runs through a typical day, but his is a constant rush of unremunerated labor that ends with the satisfaction of the greedy patronus’ untimely death (line 144). We are far from Horace’s vita solutorum misera ambitione (1.6.129), but we are equally far from the life of republican commitment pictured in Lucilius.

  127–31. First are the salutatio and the morning’s legal business. Distinguitur = is divided.

  Sportula: here conflated with the salutatio, on which see Horace 1.6.101.

  Iurisque peritus Apollo: referring to the statue of Apollo in the Forum Augusti, the legal center of Rome.

  Triumphales: understand statuas, which is also the assumed antecedent of quas. The Forum Augusti was decorated with statues of famous generals lining the colonnade of the temple of Mars Ultor.

  Nescio quis … Aegyptius atque Arabarches: Arabarches (also Alabarches) = a customs official who collected taxes in Egypt and Judea. The person referred to is generally agreed to be Tiberius Julius Alexander, an apostate Jew who became a Roman eques and later prefect of Egypt. His father had held the post of Arabarches.

  Non tantum meiere: understand sed etiam cacare.

  Fas est implies divine sanction, whereas pissing on the statue of the emperor was a treasonous offense.

  132–4. We fast forward to the ninth hour and time for dinner at the great man’s house. Work normally ended at the seventh hour and the eighth was spent in exercise (Martial 4.8). The discontinuity between these lines and those that immediately precede them has been felt to be severe, and some posit a lacuna after line 131. Abeunt: they give up on their desires (vota) of receiving an actual dinner invitation.

  Caulis < caulis, –is m.: “cabbage,”

  Miseris = dative of agent with emendus (est).

  135–6. Rex horum: an ironic appellation for the greedy patronus who dines on delicacies by himself. Rex is never a complimentary term in Latin.

  137–8. “Although they are well equipped to feed many, they dine from a single table.” Pulchris et latis orbibus = “beautiful and broad round tables,” made from a single horizontal cut from the tree trunk. These were objects of great expense. See line 75.

  Comedunt: the switch from the singular to the plural indicates that it is the class of patroni in general who are being indicted.

  Patrimonia: not only are they ungenerous but they are prodigal, literally consuming their family fortunes in private orgies of gluttony.

  139. Parasitus = cliens.

  139–40. Luxuriae sordes: a wonderful oxymoron.

  140–1. Gula: note the grotesque reduction of the glutton to his gullet.

  142–3. Juvenal turns to direct address. “Your penalty awaits you in the bath.” Crudum pavonem = “undigested peacock,” a luxury dish.

  144. See Persius 3.98–106 on strokes triggered by gluttons taking hot baths.

  145–6. The patronus becomes nothing more than a nova fabula that circulates among the other dinners going on throughout the city, as his death is applauded by his erstwhile friends (plaudendum … amicis).

  147–71. The final section returns to the explicitly programmatic and generic concerns of the first part. Here Juvenal makes his famous vow to satirize only the dead.

  147–9. One of the most striking images in Juvenal. The thesis of this passage is: “We have reached the high point which is also our low point. The future holds no turning back. Everything will always be the same.” The very rhetorical structure of the passage imitates its semantic content. The enjambment of the first and second lines gives the impression of vice literally spilling over from one line into the next. “The limit has been reached and surpassed; the young will do and desire the same.” Normal vertical relations of value have become conflated. The minores (“the lesser ones” or “the younger ones”) are to be no less than their “betters,” the maiores, who are also their “elders.” The phrase eadem facient likewise recalls the beginning of the poem where Juvenal had warned expectes eadem a summo minimoque poeta (line 14). In short, one of the founding paradoxes of this poem is Juvenal’s thesis that “everything has become the same, only worse.”

  Ferguson (1979) explains the logic of the image as follows:

  omne in praecipiti vitium stetit: a vivid visual picture of a gang of vices standing on a high peak with a steep drop in front of them, but what does J mean to convey by it? (a) We should not lose altogether the idea that vice has “peaked”; it is implicit in the picture. Future generations cannot go higher … (b) But in praecipiti stresses the point that it has nowhere to go but down. This in turn links two ideas: (i) that vice leads to disaster … (ii) that it is there for the satirist to push it over the precipice. The picture is not quite a single one.

  The point that the picture is not single is well made. “In reaching the highest we have topped the lowest. There is no place to go but down.” Yet, this is not the sole reversal. For, if the satirist does push vice over the precipice, do we then reach the moral high ground by crashing to bottom, or just the abyss? Standards of measure and comparison are turned against one another (compare 3.6–9, and lines 22–3). Logical development is thus impossible; the only avenue open for expansion is the accumulation of examples, which is typical of Juvenal’s style.

  149–50. “Open wide the sails!” i.e., don’t hold back. Sinus here = “the belly of the sail.”

  150–7. Juvenal introduces the mandatory interlocutor in programmatic satires found in Horace 2.1 and Persius 1. As in both of those cases, the interlocutor warns the satirist of the dangers of his chosen genre. Illa modifies simplicitas. Juvenal here invites a double reading. On the one hand, the writers of old possessed a certain uncomplicated sincerity. On the other hand, he warns us that his satire is anything but simple.

  Priorum = predecessors in the genre. That they simply wrote whatever pleased them is clearly not true in the case of either Horace or Persius. That is how Horace portrays Lucilius, but he does so for his own purposes.

  153–4: “cuius … non”: while clearly meant to be read as a quotation from Lucilius, this sentence must be a p
araphrase, since the shortening of the final o in audeo is a feature of post-Augustan poetry.

  Mucius: see Persius 1.114.

  155–7. “Put Tigillinus in your verse and you’ll end up one of Nero’s party torches.” Tigillinus = C. Ofonius Tigillinus: Nero’s prefect of the praetorian guard, a notoriously bloodthirsty sexual monster. Otho forced him to commit suicide in 69 CE. On the juxtaposition of Tigillinus with Lucilius, see Freudenburg (2001: 244).

  Taeda = the tunica molesta or “robe of pain.” Nero and Tigillinus both had the habit of dipping those who incurred their displeasure, especially Christians, in pitch and other flammable materials and then using them as torches.

  Sulcum deducis harena: i.e., when you body is taken down and dragged through the sand. The manuscripts are divided between deducit and deducis, just as they are divided between lucebit and lucebis. If deducit is kept, a lacuna after 156 must be posited as Housman noted (1931). It is more economical to assume the same error in both locations.

  Fixo gutture = “pinned by the throat.”

  158–9. “Should poisoners therefore get off scot-free?”

  Aconita = “aconite,” a deadly poison, reputedly undetectable in wine.

  Pensilibus plumis = “on suspended feather pillows,” i.e. in a well-padded litter. Note the contemptuous alliteration of liquids, plosives, and sibilants.

  160–70. Once more, the interlocutor reminds Juvenal that discretion is the better part of valor.

  Cum veniet contra = “when you run into him.”

  Compesce < compesco, –pescere, –pescui: “to hold in, restrain.”

  161. “Hic est”: It is enough to simply point someone out to be labeled an accuser. See Persius 1.28.

  162–4. You can write epic in peace. Compare Persius 1 and Horace 2.1, as well as the opening panel of the present satire. Committas: “you can pit x against y.” Imaginary battles are the safest.

  Hylas: Hercules’s pederastic beloved in the Argonautica. He was stolen by water nymphs when sent for water (secutus urnam). Hercules left the Argonauts to search for him and did not return to them. The story is treated at length in Propertius 1.20 and mentioned as a topic for treatment by Gallus in Eclogues 6.43–4.