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The First Satire of Juvenal5

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

E. J. Kenney
E. J. Kenney
Affiliation:
Peterhouse, Cambridge
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Extract

Juvenal's First Satire is programmatic, a statement of why he proposes to write satire and what kind of satire he proposes to write. Obviously it is important for our understanding of Juvenal as poet and satirist to interpret it correctly. Much of what I have to say on the subject is not new, and I do not flatter myself that I am advancing a ‘solution’ in die sense of an answer that has eluded all other interpreters. My purpose is to suggest fresh emphases that may lead to a more just and satisfying appreciation. In particular I believe that the concluding section of die satire, vv. 147–71, stands in need of more careful appraisal, and it is my primary purpose to discuss that section. That I am considerably in the debt of previous writers on the subject will become clear as the discussion proceeds.

First, a few preliminary (and I fear somewhat polemical) remarks on method and principles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 8 , 1962 , pp. 29 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1962

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References

page 30 note 1 Martha, C., Les moralistes sous l'empire romain (1865), p. 316Google Scholar.

page 30 note 2 Marmorale, E. V., Giovenale (2 1950)Google Scholar.

page 30 note 3 See the sentiments on both sides quoted by Helmbold, pp. 47–8, Highet, pp. 219–32, Serafini, A., Studio sulla satira di Giovenale (1957), pp. 3–4, 97–102, 161–5 and (especially) 219–25Google Scholar.

page 30 note 4 Cf. p. 33, n. 4 below.

page 30 note 5 Helmbold, W. C. and O'Neil, E. N., ‘The structure of Juvenal IV’, A.J.P. LXXVII (1956), 68–73Google Scholar.

page 30 note 6 Certainly the impression given by Suet., Dom. 21Google Scholar is not that of a glutton.

page 30 note 7 By this I mean that the satire is better seen as an imaginative study in human degradation under tyranny: this, or something very like it, is the interpretation of Anderson (pp. 74, 78), though I think that he presses the details too closely. Its lack of historicity (cf. Crook, J. A., Consilium Principis (1955), p. 51Google Scholar) is neither here nor there: cf. Helmbold, p. 58.

page 31 note 1 Other touches there are, but the total effect is one of terror: cf. especially vv. 83–8. True, these were nugae (v. 150), but deadly serious for the participants.

page 31 note 2 Anderson is in my opinion no more successful, though it is due to him to say that he recognizes the real difficulty (p. 79) of vv. 1–36, as Helmbold and O'Neil do not.

page 31 note 3 Helmbold, W. C. and O'Neil, E. N., ‘The form and purpose of Juvenal's seventh Satire’, Class. Philol. LIV (1959), 100–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. [Cf. now W. S. Anderson, ibid. LVII (1962), 158, n. 17.]

page 31 note 4 Cf. for the sequence of tenses Ovid, , Rem. Am. 690Google Scholarut flerent, oculos erudiere suos, Seneca, , Thy. 891–2Google Scholarne quid obstaret pudor, ∣ dies recessit; Lucan VII, 91 testor, Roma, tamen Magnum, quo cuncta perirent, ∣ accepisse diem; and see R. G. M. Nisbet on Cic. In Pis. fr. 1, where he cites Kühner–Stegmann, , Lat. Gramm. II, 179Google Scholar.

page 31 note 5 Why did he not write poetas? Because to do so would have destroyed the point of his image. Rich men admire the colores and the lumina orationis of poetry, as boys admire the sheen and the spots of the peacock's tail. Disertos brings out the point that it is the more superficial aspects of poetry that attract these cut-price Maecenases.

page 32 note 1 Cf. p. 33, n. 4 below.

page 32 note 2 See p. 29, n. 5 above.

page 32 note 3 Anderson, p. 35: ‘he exaggerates his passion almost into bathos’. Another prologue, it may be remarked in passing, where the deliberately comic effect of Juvenalian hyperbole is not always recognized is that of the Sixth Satire (vv. 1–20). It is beside the point to admire these verses for their grandeur, as certain Italian critics have done: cf. Marmorale, op. cit. p. 112 ‘un quadro michelangiolesco’, echoed by Serafini, op. cit. p. 168. The attentive reader is warned by the first word of the satire, credo, that the poet is in sardonic vein.

page 32 note 4 Nettleship, quoted by Duff at p. 115 of his edition.

page 32 note 5 Highet, p. 50.

page 32 note 6 Cf. Anderson, p. 37: ‘[the arrangement of the vignettes] contributes formal order alone, while Juvenal's disorder suggests the effect of random observations’.

page 32 note 7 This technique of reserving the sting of a description or comment to the beginning of the following line is effective and characteristic: 34–5 rapturus de nobilitate comesa ∣ quod superest, 37–8 qui testamenta merentur ∣ noctibus, 49–50 fruitur dis ∣ iratis, etc.

page 33 note 1 I am inclined here to side with Highet against Anderson and Helmbold: see Anderson, p. 39, n. 11.

page 33 note 2 Harrison's excision of vv. 85–6 is rightly rejected by Anderson (39) against Helmbold (54), though I am not sure that I follow his reasoning. Possibly the best defence that can be offered of these verses is negative: (a) if Juvenal did not write them, who did?, (b) if Juvenal wrote them and they do not belong here, where do they belong?

page 33 note 3 Loc. cit. n. 1 above.

page 33 note 4 Especially in the Twelfth, which Helmbold valiantly but disastrously attempts to castigate in Class. Philol. LI (1956), 14–23Google Scholar (cf. Dornseiff, F. on ‘Metaphilologie’, Wiss. Zeitschr. der Univ. Leipzig, Gesell.- u. Sprachwiss. Reihe, 1951–1952, 3, p. 54Google Scholar). A characteristic parenthesis in the First Satire at vv. 42–4, which Helmbold (pp. 51–3) is quite wrong to delete. Verses 24–5, on the other hand, do seem almost indefensible (cf. Helmbold, p. 50). But the two passages are qualitatively quite different.

page 33 note 5 An instructive comparison by Marmorale, op. cit. pp. 90–1. Juvenal's aim is to extract the maximum effect from a hackneyed commonplace, and in this he is brilliantly successful; but how much superior is the cool and ironic detachment of the ‘unworldly’ Persius!

page 33 note 6 Cf. Anderson, p. 41 and the passages quoted by de Decker, J., Juvenalis Declamans (1913), p. 126Google Scholar.

page 33 note 7 Some allowance ought to be made for the probable lacuna after v. 131.

page 33 note 8 Cf. Anderson, p. 42.

page 34 note 1 Douza suggested that the words cuius…an non (vv. 153–4) are a quotation from Lucilius (or rather a paraphrase, since audeǒ cannot be Lucilian), and Friedländer, Housman and Clausen so print them. It seems to me better to follow Knoche in taking them as Juvenal's own words: Mucius stands for the satirist's target, as Lucilius (v. 165) stands for the satirist (cf. Persius, 1, 114–15).

page 34 note 2 Helmbold, p. 49. Cf. Highet, p. 245: ‘Apparently this satire is largely new and original’—a statement, I should add, that is in fact true in the context of Highet's discussion. Mayor (1, 89) and Labriolle-Villeneuve, , Juvénal (1957), p. 5Google Scholar, offer little beyond a bare reference to Horace and Persius.

page 34 note 3 A helpful discussion of this satire by Rudd, W. J. N., Hermathena, xc (1957), 47–53Google Scholar.

page 35 note 1 Fraenkel, E., Horace (1957), p. 147, n. 2Google Scholar.

page 35 note 2 Cf. Rudd, op. cit. p. 50: ‘the most brilliant piece of shadow-boxing in Roman literature’.

page 35 note 3 Ibid. p. 52.

page 35 note 4 I take this opportunity to remark that the division between speakers in the opening verses proposed by West, M. L., C.R. n.s. XI (1961), 204Google Scholar, is open to grave objections. This dialogue is undramatic and uncharacterized, and West's statement that ‘the one who puts the rhetorical question is surprised [my italics] to receive the answer Nemo’ can hardly be substantiated. More important, the speaker of quis leget haec? cannot ‘continue as orator in what follows’, for this makes nonsense of v. 44. The traditional arrangement is vital to the sense and the apologetic pattern.

page 36 note 1 The point is obscured in some editions, e.g. Scivoletto's, by inept treatment of v. 8, which must be read (with Clausen) nam Romae quis non—a, si fas dicere eqs.

page 36 note 2 Better, in view of Housman's sarcasm, not to say too much about Turnus; but one may risk the observation that we do not know how many other satirists may have exploited the idea before Juvenal and consequently limited his choice of approach.

page 36 note 3 See Smith, R. E., ‘The law of libel at Rome’, C.Q. n.s. I (1951), 169–79, esp. 177–8Google Scholar on Hor. Sat. 11, 1 (I owe this reference to Dr A. H. McDonald).

page 36 note 4 See Mattingly, H. B., ‘Naevius and the Metelli’, Historia, IX (1960), 414–39Google Scholar (a reference which I owe to Mr J. A. Crook).

page 37 note 1 Or to place a very literal interpretation on the words of Tacitus in the first chapter of the Histories, rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire guae uelis et quae sentias dicere licet. It all depended on who ‘you’ were, what you said, and about whom you said it. For a more realistic view cf. Lutz, pp. 117–18; Helmbold, p. 58; Syme, R., Tacitus (1958), p. 499Google Scholar.

page 37 note 2 Horace, , Sat. 1, 10, 48Google Scholar.

page 37 note 3 Op. cit. p. 152.

page 37 note 4 It may be that the attitude which Persius takes up derives from Lucilius: cf. Cic. De Or. 11, 25; De Fin. 1, 7.

page 37 note 5 ‘The names in Horace's Satires’, C.Q. n.s. x (1960), 161–78Google Scholar.

page 37 note 6 See Vita Persi, 56–9 Clausen, Σ Pers. 1, 121. The whole point of the First Satire would disappear if the reference were to Nero.

page 37 note 7 Cf. Lutz, p. 117.

page 37 note 8 Highet, pp. 57, 289–94.

page 37 note 9 Op. cit. p. 778.

page 37 note 10 Op. cit. p. 499, n. 3.

page 37 note 11 Martial, x, 33, 10.

page 38 note 1 Cf. Rudd, op. cit. pp. 173–4.

page 38 note 2 Or even to call his prudence ‘paradoxical’? Cf. Green, P. M., Essays in Antiquity (1960), pp. 176–7Google Scholar. There is nothing paradoxical in wanting to stay alive.

page 38 note 3 Cic. De Off. 11, 51; Ovid, , Rem. Am. 151Google Scholar; Quint., Inst. Or. XII, 7, 1Google Scholar.

page 38 note 4 Disputed by Highet, p. 96; but cf. C.R. n.s. v (1955), 279Google Scholar, and add to the evidence cited there Quint., Inst. Or. x, 5, 14Google Scholar, ‘declamationes…non tantum dum adulescit profectus sunt utilissimae… sed etiam cum est consummatus ac iam in foro clarus’.

page 38 note 5 Cf. Val. Max. 1, Praef.: ‘ut documenta sumere uolentibus longae inquisitionis labor absit’.

page 39 note 1 Helmbold and O'Neil (op. cit. p. 30, n. 5 above) are quite right to draw attention to the Domitianic tone of the satire, even though their interpretation must in my opinion be rejected as too far-fetched and not supported by the text.

page 39 note 2 Cf. for example House, H., The Dickens World (2 1942), p. 21Google Scholar: ‘the years between 1816, when he was four, and 1836, when he began to be successful, could bring his imagination to a state of such intense creative excitement that he was sometimes tempted to draw on that time mechanically when other capital failed’. A less obvious example is discussed by Orwell, G., ‘In defence of P. G. Wodehouse’, Critical Essays (1946), p. 166Google Scholar: ‘Bertie Wooster, if he ever existed, was killed round about 1915.’

page 39 note 3 The thesis proposed here agrees substantially with that of Highet (pp. 57–8); but I make no apology for restating it, since it seems to me that he does not press it strongly enough, and his point has not been taken by, for example, Anderson, who continues to write (p. 43) of Juvenal's ‘attacking the dead by name’.

page 39 note 4 Cf. Sat. 1, 4, 104 ff.

page 40 note 1 Lewis, J. D., D. Iunii Iuvenalis Satirae (2 1882), II, 24Google Scholar. Cf. Lutz, p. 118, who compares the lines with the modern ‘any resemblance is purely coincidental’ formula. The parallel must not be pressed: Juvenal could not have been so much concerned about the possibility of legal action as about other, more direct, forms of reprisal; and in neither case would his disclaimer have helped him very much.

page 40 note 2 ‘…though he may seem to be dealing in stock figures, his intent will be precisely the same as that of Lucilius. He means, in fact, that he is about to attack you, ungentle reader’ (Helmbold, PP. 57–8).

page 40 note 3 A formal gesture, because the public knew as well as the satirist himself what was and was not possible for him.