SATIRA VIII. INTRODUCTION. THE vice of aristocratic pretension is here represented with moderation and good sense. There is no idle declamation against hereditary honours, but the blindness of men belonging to an exclusive class, whose claims to distinction were founded upon the merits of the great and good of former generations and unsupported by any personal merits of their own, is shown in language which no one can object to, and reasoning which admits of no answer. The nobility of a man's ancestors, he says, only holds a torch up to his shame if he live unworthily of them. The more exalted is the guilty, the more conspicuous is his guilt. The only true nobility is virtue, and the virtuous nobleman is a nobleman indeed. The race-horse, if he show no signs of his descent, is set to grind or draw a cart. Among the despised plebeians there are those who have great gifts and virtues, and have rendered great services to the nobility and to their country. These are the commonplaces of the Satire, which also exposes some of the particular vices among the patricians of the day, among which were gambling, keeping low company at taverns, a passion for driving and for the stables, acting in public, hiring themselves for gladiators; but above all gross maladministration in the provinces, against which Juvenal takes pains to caution his friend, Ponticus, to whom the Satire is addressed in the form of an Epistle. He is one of the class against whose degenerate members the Satire is directed; and we may suppose he was a young man with what we should call good prospects. I think a real person must have been meant, and that the poem is not a mere declamation. Heinrich inquires whether the subject was suggested by real life or the rhetorical schools, and thinks the poem was drawn from both sources. There was enough in real life to suggest it, as there would be still and perhaps more; and we need not, I think, go to the schools for its inspiration. The pride of birth and the degeneracy of inherited nobility were not new features of society in Juvenal's time, and they have not grown so old in ours but that generations to come will complain as he did, and pour contempt, as he did not, on the inheritance of noble names, however virtuous their possessors may be. There are some severe lines on the Emperor Nero (211—226), and the Satire was written after his time, as the context shows; but how long it is impossible to say. ARGUMENT. What use are pedigrees, ancestral blood, statues and images, and noble names, if in the face of our great ancestors we live amiss-gambling all night and going to bed at dawn, when they were up and marching? What joy has Fabius of the Allobroges' victor, of the great altar, of his descent from Hercules, if he be covetous a fool, effeminate, if he bring shame on his rough ancestors, turn poisoner, and disgrace his house? Line your whole house with images, yet still virtue alone is true nobility. Be Paullus, Cossus, Drusus in your morals, and give them place before your images, ay, and your own lictors too. First I claim the goodness of your heart: be holy, just, in word and deed, and then I count you noble. Hail, Gaetulicus, or whatsoever stock you come from, your country may be proud of you, and all may cry as they do who have found Osiris. What man is generous if he be unworthy of his race, illustrious only for his name? We call a dwarf an Atlas, an Aethiop a swan, a crooked girl Europa, a mangy dog a pard, a tiger, or a lion. So you had better not affect great names. 66 V. 39. This is for you, Rubellius Plautus, swelling with your descent from Drusus, as if it were a merit of your own that you were born not of a poor weaver but of the great Iulus' blood. Low wretches (say you), ye who cannot tell your father's birthplace. I am a son of Cecrops!" Long may you live to enjoy your birth! But in that low rabble you will find a man of eloquence, who shall defend some noble blockhead, or solve the riddles of the law; and some brave soldiers too; while you are all Cecropian, as useless as a Hermes; the only difference is his head's of marble, yours has life in it. Tell me, O Trojan, who counts animals noble except they're brave? We praise a horse for speed who has won many races easily. Wherever he was reared we call him noble who beats the rest, while a mere herd to be put up and sold are the best bred if they but seldom win. There we have no respect for ancestry: they sell for little and go to draw a cart or grind a mill. So tell me something of your own to engrave upon your bust, besides the honours that we freely give to those to whom you owe all that you have. V. 71. Enough for him, who lacking common sense (rare in that state of life) is puffed with his relationship to Nero. But you, my friend, I would not have you valued upon the merits of your family, and you yourself do nothing for future time to praise. "Tis poor to rest upon another's fame; remove the pillar and the roof falls in; robbed of its elm the vine comes to the ground. Be a good soldier, honest guardian, upright judge, witness inflexible, count not your life before your character, your life before the cause for which you live. That man deserves to die, though he fare sumptuously and smell of all perfumes. V. 87. When you have got the province that you look for, put reins upon your temper and desires; pity the poor natives; the princes you will see have all the marrow sucked from out their bones. Think of the laws, the trust committed to you, the honours that await the good, the fate of those who were condemned for robbing the Cilicians. Not that such condemnation is worth much, when one takes what another leaves. Go, get an auctioneer to sell your clothes, Chaerippus, and straight say nothing; it were mere madness to throw away your fare besides. Those people suffered less when they were beaten first: riches were left them still, shawls and dresses, pictures and statues, and chased silver vessels; then came your governors and carried off more spoils from peace than ever graced a triumph. Now the little that they have they'll lose it all. You may despise perhaps the Rhodians and Corinth too; but take good care of Spain, of Gaul, Illyricum, the Africans who send us corn to feed our idleness. Besides they've nothing to repay you, Marius has robbed them. Take care you do no great wrong to the brave and poor: take all they have, you still will leave them arms. V. 125. This is no saw; believe the Sibyl speaks. Be your attendants righteous, no favourite sell your judgments, your wife no harpy, then you may trace your birth to Picus and the Titan brood, and claim Prometheus for your ancestor. But if ambition, lust, and cruelty carry you headlong, then your ancestors only hold up the torch to expose your shame. The sin is greatest in the greatest sinner. Why boast yourself to me, you who forge wills in temples which your grandsire built, before your father's statue, and steal by night to an adulterous bed? V. 147. Fat consul Lateranus drives his coach right past the ashes of his sires by night, but the moon and stars look on, and when his consulship is done he'll do it in broad day and meet his aged friend without a blush. He'll do grooms' work, and when he goes to sacrifice to Jove he'll swear by Epona and stable gods. And when he goes to taverns the greasy host comes out to meet him, and with an air salutes his lordship; while the officious hostess brings the wine. V. 163. "But we all did the same when we were young." Yes; but we've left it off. Such faults should be cut off with our first beard. Children may be excused; but he is old enough for the wars. Send him to foreign parts, O Caesar, but seek your legate in the eating-house: you'll find him there with cut-throats, sailors, thieves, runaway slaves and executioners and drunken priests and undertakers, all pot-fellows together. What would you do with a slave such as this? Of course you'd send him to the fields. But you excuse yourselves, ye Trojan-born. Brutus may do what would disgrace a cobbler. V. 183. Bad though this be, yet worse remains behind. His money spent, Damasippus goes upon the stage, and Lentulus too exerts himself and acts Laureolus not badly, deserving, as I think, a real cross. The people are to blame to sit and see patrician buffooneries. What price they sell their lives at matters not. No tyrant forces them, and yet they gladly sell themselves to the Praetor for his shows. And even if the choice were that or death, which should they choose? Does any one fear death so much that he should act with Thymele and Corinthus ? But noble mimes are not astonishing while a musician is our emperor. After all this, what shall we have but shows? This too doth shame the town; Gracchus with face uncovered casts his net, and failing flies the arena round in sight of all the theatre. We know him by his tunic and his cap. More shame it is than any wound for him who's set to fight a priest. V. 211. Were but the people free, who but would choose a Seneca before a Nero? The death of many parricides was due to him. His crime was like Orestes', but it differed in the cause. One bid by gods avenged his father's murder, but he slew not his sister or his wife: he poisoned no relations, never acted, never wrote a Trojan War. What greater crime had Galba, Vindex, and Verginius to punish? What crime so great did Nero in all his tyranny? These are the practices of a noble prince, who loved to sing in foreign theatres and earn the parsley crown from Greeks. Hang up your dresses and your masks and harp before the statues of your ancestors. V. 230. Catilina and Cethegus were high-born, and yet they would have fired the city, like savages, fit to be punished with the shirt of pitch. But our consul was awake; a new man and ignoble guarded the town and all the neighbourhood, and got more fame in peace than all Octavius won at Actium or Philippi. Rome was then free, and called our Cicero his country's Father. His townsman too followed the plough for hire, and bore the stick in the ranks. But he stood single-handed, and withstood the Cimbri and delivered Rome, and when the fight was over he was crowned before his colleague. The Decii were plebeians, yet were their lives offering enough for all the host; they were worth more than all the men they saved. A slave's son wore the crown of Romulus, and was our last good king. The consul's sons would have betrayed the city, a slave betrayed their purpose: he worthy to be wept by matrons, they deserved to die, the first condemned by righteous laws. V. 269. You'd better be Thersites' son and like Achilles, than like Thersites and Achilles' son. But go as far back as you will, you still come to the asylum, and whosoe'er was founder of your line a shepherd must have been or something worse. STEMMATA quid faciunt? quid prodest, Pontice, longo 1. Stemmata quid faciunt ?] This word 'stemma' seems not to have been used familiarly till the time of the empire. Pliny (xxxv. 2) explains it. He says the Romans had in their 'atria' waxen busts of their ancestors, which were carried in all funeral processions of the family. They had also tables of their pedigree, in which are Sanguine censeri pictosque ostendere vultus there were portraits with wreaths twined about them: "Stemmata vero lineis discurrebant ad imagines pictas." On these were inscribed the names and offices of the persons represented. Seneca (de Benef. iii. 28) speaks of those "qui imagines in atrio exponunt et nomina familiae suae longo ordine ac multis stemmatum illigata flexuris in parte prima aedium collocant:" and he further says these persons "noti magis quam nobiles," more known than worth knowing. The table itself came to be called 'stemma' from these wreaths. Suetonius says of Galba (vit. Galb. c. 2) that he was "haud dubie nobilissimus ut qui statuarum titulis Pronepotem se Q. Catuli Capitolini semper adscripserit; imperator vero etiam stemma in atrio proposuerit quo paternam originem ad Jovem, maternam ad Pasiphaen Minois uxorem referret." In Nero's reign Suetonius says (vit. Ner. c. 37) Cassius Longinus was put to death" 'quod in vetere gentili stemmate C. Cassii, percussoris Caesaris, imagines retinuisset" (see x. 16, n.). Martial says (iv. 40), "Atria Pisonum stabant cum stemmate toto" for their whole pedigree. See note on Persius, iii. 28: "Stemmate quod Tusco ramum millesime ducis." 'Pictos vultus' are the portraits on these genealogical trees, and correspond to the 'imagines pictas' of Pliny (1. c.) which are not to be confused with the 'imagines cereae' he also mentions. 2. Sanguine censeri] This construction of 'censere' with the ablative is not found in the writers before the empire. It is the ablative of value, and 'longo sanguine censeri' is to be valued at the worth of a long line of ancestors. Some MSS. have 'pictos without the conjunction. Jahn has it so [and Ribbeck]. 3. stantes in curribus] See S. vii. 125, n.; x. 59. The only historical Aemilianus when this was written was the younger Scipio, who was born of the Aemilia gens, an old patrician family (S. vii. 124). His father was L. Aemilius Paulus Macedonicus, but he was adopted by P. Cornelius Scipio, the son of the elder Scipio 5 Africanus. The full name of the younger after his adoption was P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, to which Africanus was afterwards added as an agnomen. The Curii were a plebeian family, of whom M. Curius Dentatus was the first distinguished member (see S. ii. 3, n.). Corvinus was a cognomen of the Valeria gens, a very old family (Hor. S. i. 6. 12, n.), among whom Horace's friend and patron, Messalla Corvinus, was the most illustrious (C. iii. 21). The Galbae belonged to the Sulpicia gens, which was patrician and of great antiquity (see note on v. 1). 'Jam dimidios' means that they are broken in half, as 'vultus dimidios' (xv. 56). Most MSS. have 'nasumque minorem Corvini.' P. and a Nürnberg MS. have 'umeros.' A Dresden MS. has humero,' which I think is right. The bust, which is of wax, is supposed to have lost an arm or to have a piece out of the shoulder. The editors have 'humeros.' [Ribbeck places vv. 4-8 at the bottom of his page as a clumsy interpolation.] 6. generis tabula] A great roll of his ancestors that the man is supposed to keep. The next line appears in P. and many Paris MSS. of Achaintre. It is noticed by the Scholiast, and is contained in one Nürnberg MS. and two quoted by, Lipsius, who first introduced it, with so much confidence "ut scelus sit dubitare de germanitate; neque enim de trivio versus est et ad rem nimis aptus" (Epist. Quaest. iv. 15). The Scholiast and he take 'virga' for the 'fasces,' and so does Forcellini. The commentators now are generally agreed in rejecting the verse. Heinrich, who does so, supposes by 'virga' the interpolator meant a broom to keep the busts clean, as in Ovid, Fast. iv. 736: "Unda prius spargat virgaque verrat humum." "Contingere' may have a little more meaning with this interpretation of virga,' but that word is very doubtful. Jahn (V. L.) mentions a reading 'deducere,' but in this case deducere' does not appear to give any sense. 'Post hunc' was, I think, the original reading, whether the verse be genuine or not, and I do not think it is; not, however, "because the Fumosos Equitum cum Dictatore magistros, 8. Fumosos Equitum] P. has this reading, but the great majority of MSS. have 'famosos.' No doubtfumosos' is right. In the middle of the atrium' was a 'focus' round which were the images of the Lares. The family chart would soon get smoked. A Dictator was in early times called 'magister populi,' as being elected by the 'populus' or 'curiae.' With the Dictator was always appointed another officer subordinate to him, who was called magister equitum,' for what reason is not certain. Niebuhr thinks it may have been "that he was elected by the centuries of plebeian equites, and that he was their protector" (v. i. p. 570). If so elected formerly, it was commonly left to the Dictator to choose his own colleague. 9. Si coram Lepidis] The Lepidi were a branch of the Aemilia gens (v. 3), a great number of whom held the first offices of the state, as may be seen by the Stemma Lepidorum given in the Dict. Biog. As to 'quo,' 'to what purpose,' see note on Hor. Epp. i. 5. 12, "Quo mihi fortunam si non conceditur uti?" and below, v. 142. As to 'alea' see S. i. 88, n., "alea quando hos animos ?" Numan tinus was an agnomen given to Scipio Africanus the Younger after the capture of Numantia, B. C. 133. The plural (in 11 and 13) is used as in S. ii. 3, "Qui Curios simulant" (where see note). There is a good example in Cic. pro P. Sestio, c. 68: "Quare imitemur nostros Brutos, Ca. millos," &c. 13. Cur Allobrogicis] Q. Fabius Maximus was surnamed Allobrogicus from his victory over the Gallic tribe Allobroges in the year of his consulship, B.C. 121. The Fabia gens were said to be descendants of Hercules: Νυμφῶν μίας λέγουσιν, οἱ δὲ γυναικὸς ἐπιχωρίας Ἡρακλεῖ μιγείσης περὶ 10 15 τὸν Θύμβριν ποταμὸν γενέσθαι Φάβιον, ἄνδρα πολὺ καὶ δοκιμὸν ἐν Ῥώμῃ τὸ Φαβίων γένος ἀφ ̓ αὑτοῦ παρασχόντα (Plutarch, vit. Fabii, c. i.). Ovid (Fast. ii. 237) calls them 'Herculea gens' ("natus in Herculeo Lare"); and writing to Fabius Maximus, his patron (Ex Ponto iii. 3. 99), he says: "Conveniens animo genus est tibi, nobile namque Pectus et Herculeae simplicitatis habes." The Ara Maxima, an altar near the Forum Boarium, was said to be that which Hercules built after he had killed Cacus. See Ovid (Fast. i. 581) : Hic ubi pars urbis de bove nomen habet." Other traditions made Evander the builder of it. See Livy i. 7; ix. 29. Virg. viii. 271. Tac. Ann. xii. 24: "igitur a foro boario sulcus designandi oppidi coeptus ut magnam Herculis aram amplecteretur." Tacitus says it was burnt down in Nero's great fire (Ann. xv. 41). Juvenal says, Why should any degenerate Fabius pride himself on his ancestor Allobrogicus and the altar of Hercules (in which he was especially interested as a descendant of Hercules) if he was avaricious, silly, softhearted, effeminate, a murderer ? 15. Euganea quantumvis mollior agna;] The Euganei were originally the occupiers of all the country which the Veneti afterwards possessed and gave their name to (Livy i. 1). The Euganei were driven further west and south to the Athesis (Adige), and beyond that river between the lakes Benacus (Lago di Garda) and Sebinus (Lago d'Iseo). We do not hear elsewhere of their flocks, but all that region was famous for its pastures; "pinguia Gallicis Crescunt vellera pascuis (Hor. C. iii. 16. 35). But Juvenal probably uses the name widely, and may have had in mind the wool of Altinum (a Vene |