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Juvenal VI. 1–20, and Some Ancient Attitudes to the Golden Age1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

David Singleton
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Extract

Juvenal's sixth Satire begins with a prologue describing the Golden Age which, for the light it sheds both on ancient attitudes to the Saturnian myth and on the Juvenalian concept of satire, is sufficiently important to justify extended analysis, an analysis that may begin with a reference to a discussion by Professor W. S. Anderson, who sums up the meaning of the first twenty lines of the satire: ‘Juvenal represents man's degeneracy through a double withdrawal: that of mankind from direct relation with Nature, that of the goddess Pudicitia from the earth.’ The age of Saturn, therefore, represents a moral ideal from which civilized man has degenerated. However, Anderson sees a certain ambiguity in the satirist's attitude to the Golden Age, particularly to the women of the Golden Age: ‘The attitude toward the aboriginal woman was ambivalent. She was morally upright, physically uncouth.’ There is respect for her ‘stern moral attitudes’ but a realization that her ‘stern dishevelled aspect is not at all alluring’

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , October 1972 , pp. 151 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1972

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References

page 151 note 2 CP li (1956), 73–94.Google Scholar

page 151 note 3 Ibid. 75.

page 151 note 4 Ibid. 81.

page 151 note 5 Ibid. 77.

page 151 note 6 Ibid. 75.

page 151 note 7 ‘Is Juvenal a Classic?’, Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Satire (London, 1963), 93–176.Google Scholar The quotation occurs on page 137.

page 151 note 8 Ibid. 138.

page 152 note 1 ‘The Line of Wit’, Revaluation (London, 1936), 17–41.Google Scholar

page 152 note 2 Cf. Anderson, op. cit. 75.

page 154 note 1 This is the earliest treatment of the myth, though there are earlier treatments of a related theme, namely that of the idealization of remote and primitive peoples. One of them, interestingly enough, may be sceptical; see Walcot, P., Greek Peasants, Ancient and Modern (Manchester, 1970), 85–6Google Scholar, on Od. ix. 106 ff.

page 154 note 2 Wilkinson, L. P., The Georgics of Virgil: A Critical Survey (Cambridge, 1969), 137.Google Scholar

page 154 note 3 See Edelstein, Ludwig, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore, 1967), 8–9.Google Scholar This essay relies a good deal on Edelstein's book.

page 155 note 1 See Reinhardt, K., Hermes xlvii (1912), 492–513Google Scholar, Lovejoy, A. O. and Boas, G., Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1935)Google Scholar, and Taylor, Margaret, AJP lxviii (1947), 180–94.Google Scholar

page 155 note 2 See Taylor, op. cit. 181.

page 155 note 3 See fr. 5 Diels-Kranz.

page 155 note 4 See Edelstein, op. cit. 22 ff.

page 155 note 5 Plato, Prt. 321 d-e.

page 155 note 6 Edelstein, op. cit. 29.

page 155 note 7 Aesch. Pr.V. 442 ff.

page 156 note 1 271 c-272 b.

page 156 note 2 368 e ff.

page 157 note 1 See above, p. 156.

page 157 note 2 See Dudley, D. R., A History of Cynicism (London, 1937).Google Scholar

page 157 note 3 See Edelstein, op. cit. 59.

page 158 note 1 For Diogenes on animals see Chrysostom, Dio vi. 26 ff.Google Scholar

page 158 note 2 See Chrysostom, Dio vi. 28 ff.Google Scholar

page 158 note 3 See Porphyry, , De Abstinentia iv. 1. 2Google Scholar, and Edelstein, op. cit, 134–5.

page 158 note 4 See Porphyry, op. cit. ii. 21. 5 ff.

page 158 note 5 See Edelstein, op. cit. 138.

page 159 note 1 Cf. Taylor, op. cit.

page 159 note 2 See especially lines 8–18.

page 160 note 1 The description is, of course, reminiscent of the fourth Eclogue, which according to Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford, 1957), 51Google Scholar, following Snell, Bruno, Hermes lxxiii (1938), 237 ff.Google Scholar, Horace had in front of him while composing the Epode.

page 160 note 2 See Norden, E., Die Geburt des Kindes (Leipzig, 1924)Google Scholar, Rose, H. J., The Eclogues of Virgil (Berkeley, 1942)Google Scholar, and Putnam, M. C. J., Virgil's Pastoral Art (Princeton, 1970).Google Scholar

page 160 note 3 ‘Descriptions of a past Golden Age are quite frequent in Greek literature since Hesiod, and became so conventional that writers of Old Comedy used parodies of the concept. But there is nothing in Greek or Roman literature before Virgil that resembles this description.’ See Williams, Gordon, Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), 276.Google Scholar

page 160 note 4 The dyeing of wool is a common symbol of luxury. See Ovid, , Ars Am. iii. 169 ff.Google Scholar

page 161 note 1 See Putnam, op. cit. 164–5.

page 161 note 2 See Virgil, A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford, 1963), 144–214.Google Scholar

page 162 note 1 Note especially that ‘ante Iovem … in medium quaerebant’. The reign of Jove involves the introduction of private property, which leads to avarice, which, as we know, and as the Romans knew—see Seneca, , Contr. ii. 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 21Google Scholar, and 25-is the root of all evil.

page 163 note 1 Early fifteenth century, quoted from Chambers and Sidgwick, , Early English Lyrics (London, 1907).Google Scholar

page 164 note 1 See Pryor, A. D., AUMLA xviii (1962), 167–80.Google Scholar

page 165 note 1 See above, page 151.