Latin Verse Satire

by Miller, Paul Allen

  18 On the importance of “accent” in Bakhtin, see inter alia, Bakhtin 1981.276–77, 282, 288–94.

  19 Ferguson 1979 ad loc.

  20 Anderson 1960.260.

  21 Winkler 1991.24.

  22 Edwards 1993.174.

  23 Edwards 1993.63–64, 192–94; Richlin 1984; Kennedy 1993.31–33.

  24 Braund 1992a.76, 82.

  25 This much debated line is printed with brackets by Clausen 1959, accepted without comment by Ferguson 1979, bracketed by Friedlaender 1962, Knoche 1950, and Rudd 1992 (who prints it only in his notes), and dropped by Green 1974 and Labriolle and Villeneuve 1967 (orig. 1921). A good summary of the arguments on both sides can be found in Courtney 1980, who notes that it could have been deleted for reasons of prudery. Courtney advances the variant reading ac resupina as a remedy for the problematic continue, which is accepted by Rudd 1992. In the absence of compelling evidence for deletion, the line should be retained. The emendation to ac resupina is attractive.

  26 All translations are mine unless otherwise specified.

  27 See Richlin 1995.205: “In Roman thought, the use of makeup seems primarily to be connected with the idea that the female body is something that needs to be fixed. This idea appears to underlie both the real use of makeup by real women … and the references to makeup in the works of male authors … Disgust with the lower parts of the female body—what Bakhtin calls the ‘material lower bodily stratum’—is generalized to the whole body, dealt with palpably on the face …”

  28 Bakhtin 1984.125–27, 164.

  29 Wyke 1995.119–20, 126.

  30 Morford 1984.36.

  31 The translation of fractus as “effeminate” may not be immediately obvious. The poem as a whole is about effeminacy and in this passage the notion of being “broken” clearly means something like “powerless” or “impotent.” Quintilian, in a passage on corrupting music, uses fractus as a gloss on the adjective effeminatus (1.10.31). See the OLD; Conington 1874; Bramble 1974.76–77; Jenkinson’s translation, 1980; and Edwards 1993.81–82 on the Elder Seneca.

  32 Bramble 1974.72–75.

  33 Morford 1984.36.

  34 Bramble 1974.76–77; Barr 1987 ad loc.; Gowers 1993.183. On patro, cf. Porphyrion on Horace Satires 1.5.84, a passage to be discussed later.

  35 Bramble 1974.78–79; Barr 1987 ad loc.

  36 On 22’s auriculis as a pun on auri-culis, see Bramble 1974.95.

  37 Gowers 1993.182–85; Barr 1987 ad loc; Connington 1874 ad loc.; Bramble 1974. 84–85, 87.

  38 Bramble 1974.93

  39 “The connotations of the caprificus must be derived from the membrum virile,” Bramble 1974.93, although Adams 1982.113–24 notes that the ficus itself generally represents the site of anal penetration. Thus a thrusting fig is an oxymoron analogous to the oral/anal penetration discussed above. The caprificus is of course the wild fig.

  40 Bramble 1974.90–91.

  41 Morford 1984.52. There is disagreement on whether the character addressed at the end of the satire is Alcibiades or not. See for example Connor 1987.58–59.

  42 Vulvas is difficult. OLD lists this passage under its second definition, “the female sexual organ,” as the sole example of its use for a male homosexual. The plural is likewise difficult to explain except as a poeticism inapt for the plain speaking context and metrically unnecessary. Nonetheless the theme of effeminacy is a constant throughout Persius and this image merely takes it to its logical conclusion. Likewise, the manuscript tradition is unanimous. Thus I follow Bo 1967 and Forcellini et al. 1965 in understanding for vulva, “per similitudinem dicitur etiam de podice viri qui muliebria patitur.” See Juvenal’s use of the same term in 6.129 examined above. There he employs terms normally used for describing male sexuality, tentigo and rigidus, to portray Messalina’s overly aggressive sexuality, just as Persius here uses terms normally reserved for women to describe Alcibiades’ effeminized sexuality. See Adams 1982.103–04. I owe the translation “hollows” to my colleague, David H. J. Larmour.

  43 Cf. Martial 9.70. On the Catullan context of Martial’s recollection of the first Catalinarian, see Swann 1994.18–19.

  44 The word is used only twice more in Catullus, once in Horace, three times in Caesar, four times in Plautus, once in Terence, and three times in Petronius—all in neutral contexts. It is never found in Sallust, Tibullus, or Cicero’s letters and rhetorica, but oddly enough six times in his poetry and once in the Pro Sestio. Persius uses it only this once. Ovid is quite fond of the word, using it twenty-three times, but thirteen are set phrases about hair and the rest are equally innocuous. Likewise it is found thirty times in Vergil and frequently in Livy, but always in strictly neutral contexts.

  45 Persius’ line is in fact polyphonous, echoing, as Barr 1987 ad loc. notes, Vergil G. 2.239 and Horace S. 1.3.37 as well.

  46 As Richlin 1995.187–88 observes, woman’s forma, in its inculta state, is also compared to “sterile soil” and “toothed brambles” in the opening lines of Ovid’s Medicamina Faciei. Persius may have had this passage in mind.

  47 See Bo 1967, and Barr 1987. Gower 1994 has an excellent discussion of the themes of precocious and hence luxurious growth, failed harvest, and boiling, reduction, fermentation and rot in both Persius’ satires and contemporary depictions of Nero. Her analysis demonstrates that our reading of the present passage can be extended throughout the corpus of Persius. See also Malamud 1996.39.

  48 Connor 1987.61.

  49 Rudd 1982.54; on Horace’s decorum, see Gowers 1993.126.

  50 Heuzé 1988.119.

  51 This is not to say that Persius’ satire necessarily presents us with a single coherent point of view. Indeed, part of the difficulty, and part of the point, of Persius’ satire is to challenge the reader to (re)construct the poem’s speaker and in the process to (re)examine his/her own self-construction. See Henderson 1993.

  52 Gold 1987.134–35

  53 Fedeli 1992.49; Braund 1992b.19.

  54 On the difference between Persius and Horace, see Gowers 1994.132, “Persius’ satires are a special case, since satire is writing that, in theory, cannot exist without contemporary reference. And in this area comes the oddest Neronian ‘fulfilment’ of all: instead of Horace’s neutral compromise, which, most unsatirically, propped up the Augustan regime, we have Persius’ muzzled underground bark …”

  55 Gowers 1993.7, 121–22; O’Connor 1990.23; Berg 1996.142.

  56 Berg 1996.148–49.

  57 Berg 1996.147–48.

  58 Caston 1997.236–42.

  59 Braund 1992b.24–25; Baker 1988.226–27.

  60 Gowers 1993.156–57, 172; Benedetto 1981.48; Caston 1977.244.

  61 Bakhtin 1968.21–27; 1984.164.

  62 O’Connor 1990.27. Gowers 1993.173 sees an allusion to legacy hunting.

  63 Arrowsmith 1966.308. See also p. 309, “In the field of sexual appetite, satiety, indulgence to the point of debility, appears as impotence. As constipation stands to food, so impotence stands to sexuality; both are products of luxuria in a society which has forgotten its cultural modalities and which cannot recover life …”

  64 See Lejay 1966; Lambinus 1577; Cruquius 1597; Bond 1670, citing Oppian (Halieutica 1.554–79), Athenaeus (7.312e, in turn citing Nicander Theriaca 822–24), and Pliny the Elder (NH 9.23).

  65 Freudenburg 1993.234; Benedetto 1981.48–49.

  66 Edwards 1993.175.

  67 Carson 1990.133–45, 153–60.

  68 Irigaray 1977; Janan 1994. On Irigaray and feminism’s compatability with Bakhtin, see Herndl 1991.10–11; Schwab 1991.57–62; Nell 1995; and Nell forthcoming.

  69 Richlin 1983.57–80.

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  INDEX

  Accius, L. 14, 171, 206–7, 328, 342

  Achilles 161, 165, 170, 199, 234, 240, 269, 310, 318

  Actium 138, 156, 184

  Aeneas 155, 243, 248–9, 283, 295

  Agrippina 280, 281, 293–4, 402