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The Literary Substrata to Juvenal's Satires

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

G. B. Townend
G. B. Townend
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

In Roman poetry of the late Republic and the Augustan age, allusiveness was an essential element in poetic technique. In Virgil in particular there is an immense debt to earlier writers for words, phrases and rhythms, all contributing to the poet's effect; although the reader's understanding of the basic meaning of the lines suffers little from his limited awareness of the more erudite allusions. The same thing is true of Horace, with the added consideration that in satire, as in Athenian Old Comedy, burlesque and parody play an important part. Only occasionally is there reason to suspect that our ignorance of Lucilius or other lost writers, Greek or Latin, prevents us from recognizing the whole tone of a passage. It is difficult to ascertain whether Lucilius himself had made literary borrowing an essential element in the satirist's technique; but it must be accepted as such from Horace onwards.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 63 , November 1973 , pp. 148 - 160
Copyright
Copyright ©G. B. Townend 1973. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Critical Essays on Roman Literature: Satire (1963), 44–5.

2 For example in v, 4, ‘Vulnere seu Parthi ducentis ab inguine ferrum’, it would be pardonable to hesitate as to whether the Parthian is drawing back his bow to shoot or extracting an arrow (surely a paradox?) which has struck him; were it not for the close parallel of Hor., Sat. ii, 1, 15, ‘aut labentis equo describat vulnera Parthi’, in a passage similarly rejecting the claims of epic on contemporary themes.

3 Aen. ii 311–12.

4 xiii, 1–2.

5 AJP xix (1898), 193–209.

6 From Mart, v, 70, 5.

7 From Mart, viii, 59, 12.

8 ibid. v, 13; vi, 60; viii, 61; ix, 97; xi, 3, etc.

9 Juvenal the Satirist (1954), 5–9, 40–1, and passim; Mason in Sullivan's Satire, 129–30. Elsewhere (pp. 96–7, 117–18, 124–8, etc.), Mason is well aware of the derivative nature of Juvenal's material.

10 e.g. Rudd, N., Satires of Horace (1966), 54–6.Google Scholar

11 i, 49–50. Cf. PIR 1 ii, p. 348, M 239; Syme, Tacitus 70–1.

12 1, 155–7.

13 ibid. 170–1.

14 op. cit. 13–14, 111–12.

15 CL Phil. liv (1959), 100–8.

16 The traditional date of satire vii has been determined to some extent by reference to that of vi, forming the preceding book, where lines 407–11 have been taken (e.g. by Highet, 12–13, Syme, Tacitus 776) as indicating events in Trajan's Eastern campaigns in A.D. 113–16. In fact, there is no evidence that the Romans or Parthians observed the comets of 110 and 115 (cf. Highet's n. 14 on p. 236); whereas we are informed that the comet of A.D. 79 was referred by Vespasian specifically to the king of Parthia (Dio lxvi, 17, 3). One could take Juvenal's reference to the earthquake (vi, 411) more seriously and identify it with that at Antioch in 115, if it were not linked with the nonsensical flood in the preceding lines. For all that, books ii and iii of the satires may well be placed either late in Trajan's reign or early in Hadrian's.

17 v, 2, 125. The line starts with ergo age, just as iv, 20 starts with hoc agite.

18 It was brought to my notice by S. T. Chapman, B.A. of Grey College, Durham.

19 The reader can have been left in no doubt from the start that Caesare in line 1 could not be taken as referring to the reigning emperor, whether Trajan (whom the cap would hardly fit in any case) or Hadrian (whom it might). It was essential for the tone of the opening section to be unmistakeable; and this effect is achieved at once by the literary reminiscences.

20 Syme, 671–3.

21 vii, 20; viii, 7.

22 op. cit. 239.

23 The Dialogus points to a solution of the problem in Juvenal's text at vii, 139, where the MSS present variants in fidimus eloquio and ut redeant veteres, one of which at least must be a metrical gloss (hardly original variants, as Highet, p. 291). The latter phrase, while patently derived from Mart, xi, 5, 5, ‘si redeant veteres, ingentia nomina, patres’, for a comparison of Domitian's virtue with that of the ancient fathers, bears a close relationship to the discussion in Dial 17, 7, where Aper criticizes the labelling of Messala, pollio and Cicero as antiquos ac veteres (and so 15, 1). Juvenal, wishing to refer to the great republican orator, exploits the phraseology of Martial's piece of flattery together with the reminiscence of Tacitus' category of veteres. The ut was puzzling enough to make the late editors suggest a much easier, but untimely, alternative in fidimus eloquio. Eloquence as such has already been disposed of in lines 115 ff.

24 Wherever the two works have points in common, it seems to be the Dialogus which presents them in a more coherent form and which can be called upon to explain Juvenal, and not vice versa. Everything we know of the two writers suggests that Juvenal would readily adapt ideas from Tacitus, never Tacitus from Juvenal.

25 Proc. Class. Assoc. lxix (1972), 27. Suetonius arranged his sections according to a logical plan, which is not apparent in Juvenal's adaptation.

26 The account of Statius' financial difficulties in the years before A.D. 83, in lines 82–7, may well be derived from Suetonius' biography of the poet, if the series of poets in the de Viris extended so far.

27 xiii, 33 3.

28 Kajanto, , Latin Cognomina (1965), 179, 362Google Scholar, shows how rare both names are. The family of C. Vellaeus Tutor (cos. A.D. 27, as PIR 1 iii, V 233) may have produced a descendant to reach the praetorship but probably nothing higher. The name Numitor seems to have intruded from a reminiscence of Aen. vi, 768, et Capys et Numitor, where the name occupies the same place in the line.

29 Tacitus, 500, 776.

30 Epp. ii, 11, 12, with vi, 29, 9.

31 CQ N.S. xxii (1972), 378 ff.

32 Greece and Rome xvi (1969), 135.

33 cf. W. S. Maguinness in OCD 2, p. 774. Likewise see Dilke in Dudley, , Neronians and Flavians (1972), 231, n. 76Google Scholar, for the use of some of Statius' Silvae as models.

34 Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. N.S. 8 (1962, 30: ‘A declaimer's transition of the most palpable kind, an obvious and awkward device to conceal patchwork’.

35 Possibly itur ad Atriden in line 65, if the panegyrist was rash enough to equate Domitian with Agamemnon; but since Atrides implies one of a pair of brothers, the younger of whom was notoriously cuckolded by his queen, as Domitian was alleged to have been by Domitia, the compliment must have been in grave danger of misfiring. For another example of repeated quotation from a single work, cf. n. 52 below.

36 In particular, Juvenal's account of Gracchus as a male bride (ii, 117 ff.) is almost identical with that found in Tac., Ann. xv, 37, 4: Suet. Nero 29; Dio lxiii, 13, 2, of Nero himself. Juvenal could hardly have ignored the more famous reprobate if he had met the story in this connection. Nor could he well have omitted the charge of setting fire to Rome from his catalogue of Nero's vices (viii, 223 ff.) if he had encountered it in the form that it takes in the same three sources. These stories appear to have little circulation in Rome until Tacitus unearthed them (in Cluvius Rufus?), cf. CQ xxii (1972), 383.

37 The gerundive tacendae suggests ‘which ought not to have been repeated by the historian’, as ‘res memoranda novis annalibus’ in ii, 102 suggests ‘which the historian ought to have mentioned’—the detail of Otho's mirror being one from the tradition which emphasized Otho's effeminacy, which Tacitus for the most part ignores (cf. Hermes lxxxix (1961), 242; AJP lxxxv (1964), 369).

38 The scholiast, quoting Marius Maximus, says that he was expelled from the Senate by Vespasian, became a Stoic and informer, and was condemned after Domitian's death. He is probably ‘Seras the philosopher’ of Dio lxviii, 1, 2, executed as an informer under Nerva.

39 loc. cit. (above n. 34), 30–1.

40 AJP lxxvii (1956), 70.

41 Cat. 15, 1.

42 Nero 31, 1.

43 Nero himself was of course Claudius ultimus.

44 Suet., nero 41, 2.

45 N.H. xxx, 14.

46 Suet., Nero 45, 2, based apparently on the elder Pliny's, Histories (Hermes lxxxviii (1960), 108–9)Google Scholar.

47 On the other hand, the triteness of ‘the evil man is doomed to misfortune’ may be justified if this is in fact the theme of the whole satire, to be expanded as ‘self-indulgence extends from the venial to the mortal and leads to destruction’.

48 Except when the reference is tied to the immediate context (i, 111 ; xii, 16). So the one temporal use of modo in ii, 160–1, of the conquest of the Orkneys, refers back to the early years of Domitian's reign.

49 The phrase res vera agitur should not suggest that only what follows is historical. The claim is essentially burlesque, and assertions in the opening section are the stronger without it.

50 Evidently the one whose election in A.D. 62 (at the age of not more than ten, according to Gellius i, 12,1) is recorded by Tacitus (Ann. xv. 22, 4), presumably on account of her later notoriety. The only other Vestal appointment he records (Ann. ii, 86, 1) is significant because of the resignation of Occia after 57 years

51 Epp. iv, 11, 6.

52 ibid. 1–3, 11–14. Juvenal appears to quote Licinianus' apostrophe to Fortune in that same letter (‘facis enim ex senatoribus professores, ex professoribus senatores’), when he describes the rise of Quintilian in vii, 197–8 (‘si fortuna volet, fies de rhetore consul; si volet haec eadem, fies de consule rhetor’).

53 vii, 99; viii, 48.

54 lxvii, 14, 4, in the epitomes of Xiphilinus and Zonaras.

55 Epp. iv, 11, 15.

56 i, 2, 2.

57 Domitian's buildings in the centre of Rome appear not to have caused criticism (Suet., Dom. 5); though Plutarch criticized his mania (Poplic. 15, 5). The Flavian palace on the Palatine certainly rivalled Nero's in respect of the actual buildings.

58 Juv. iv, 95–6; Dio lxvii, 14, 2.

59 In addition, it may be assumed that Crispinus occupied a similar position in Statius' list of councillors, which presumably provided Juvenal with his list of names in the first place.

60 So in i, 26–9 Crispinus is attacked for his Egyptian birth, his purple clothing (as in Martial viii, 48), and his jewellery. The statement at the beginning of iv, ‘et est mihi saepe vocandus ad partes’, probably refers not to that satire but to his repeated appearance in iv itself.

61 Stegemann, , De Juvenalis dispositione (1913), 30 ff.Google Scholar (not available to me); Anderson YCS xv (1957), 68–80.

62 For the ainos, cf. Fraenkel, Horace 95, etc.

63 No solution is offered as to the difference of treatment between the two parts. The discursiveness of the first part is matched by the opening of Hor., Sat. i, 2 and 3, in both of which there is a discussion of Tigellius' character before the main theme is announced; the second part is constructed with a straightforward artistry which is probably unique in Juvenal, apart from the narrative of shipwreck in 12, 17–82, and is to be compared with Hor., Sat. ii, 6, 79–117; Epp. i, 7, 46–95. If this means that the ainos is to be considered more important than the section which it is supposed to explain, the same can fairly be said of Hor., Od. iii, 5, 13–56; 27, 25–76.

64 Unless the scabrous Ravola and Rhodope in the fourth line are meant to point us to some sub-literary production of the day—whether in the tradition of Petronius or a mime, where such sexual oddities appear to have been most at home.

65 Tacitus 777.

66 As it already has in the later part of satire viii, where line 211 switches from the almost completely Flavian scene of the earlier sections to a series of exempla containing Nero, Catiline, Marius, Decius, Brutus and Thersites (very much the same material as is handled in 10), steadily receding into the past as if Juvenal has decided to abandon his favourite period for good.

67 This should not be taken to support the dubious tradition that Juvenal was banished from Rome, at this point or any other. He was never dependent on a particular group of documents in the same way that Suetonius was, whose later Caesares probably show a decline precisely because he was deprived of the imperial letter-files (CQ N.S. ix (1959), 285–93).

68 Highet, 19.

69 Sheiwin-White, A.N., Letters of Pliny (1966). 27–41.Google Scholar

70 Highet, 181–8.