Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Part 27

scinduntur tunicae sartae modo, longa coruscat serraco veniente abies, atque altera pinum plaustra vehunt, nutant alte populoque minantur (iii. 243).

The press before him stops the client's pace; The crowd that follows crush his panting sides, And trip his heels; he walks not but he rides.

One elbows him, one jostles in the shoal, A rafter breaks his head or chairman's pole; Stockinged with loads of fat town dirt he goes, And some rogue-soldier with his hob-nailed shoes Indents his legs behind in b.l.o.o.d.y rows.

See, with what smoke our doles we celebrate!

A hundred guests invited walk in state; A hundred hungry slaves with their Dutch-kitchens wait: Huge pans the wretches on their heads must bear, Which scarce gigantic Corbulo could rear; Yet they must walk upright beneath the load, Nay run, and running blow the sparkling flames abroad, Their coats from botching newly brought are torn.

Unwieldy timber-trees in waggons borne, Stretched at their length, beyond their carriage lie, That nod and threaten ruin from on high.

DRYDEN.

Even in the later satires, where with the advance of age this pictorial gift begins to fail him and he tends to rely rather on brilliant rhetorical treatment of philosophical commonplaces, there are still flashes of the old power. The well-known description of the fall of Seja.n.u.s in the tenth satire is in his best manner, while even the humbler picture of the rustic family of primitive Rome in the fourteenth satire shows the same firmness of touch, the same eye for vivid and direct representation:

saturabat glaebula talis patrem ipsum turbamque casae, qua feta iacebat uxor et infantes ludebant quattuor, unus vernula, tres domini, sed magnis fratribus horum a scrobe vel sulco redeuntibus altera cena amplior et grandes fumabant pultibus ollae (166).

For then the little glebe, improved with care, Largely supplied with vegetable fare, The good old man, the wife in childbed laid, And four hale boys, that round the cottage played, Three free-born, one a slave: while, on the board, Huge porringers, with wholesome pottage stored, Smoked for their elder brothers, who were now, Hungry and tired, expected from the plough.

GIFFORD.

His handling of the essential weapons of satire, scathing epigram, and impetuous rhetoric, contribute equally to his success. He has the capacity of branding a character with eternal shame in a few terse trenchant lines. Who can forget the Greek adventurer of the third satire?--

grammaticus rhetor geometres pictor aliptes augur schoen.o.bates medicus magus, omnia novit Graeculus esuriens; in caelum miseris, ibit (iii. 76);

A cook, a conjurer, a rhetorician, A painter, pedant, a geometrician, A dancer on the ropes and a physician; All things the hungry Greek exactly knows, And bid him go to heaven, to heaven he goes.

DRYDEN.

or the summary of Domitian's reign with which he dates the story of the gigantic turbot?--

c.u.m iam semianimum laceraret Flavius...o...b..m ultimus et calvo serviret Roma Neroni (iv. 37);

When the last Flavius, drunk with fury, tore The prostrate world, which bled at every pore, And Rome beheld, in body as in mind, A bald-pate Nero rise to curse mankind.

GIFFORD.

or the curse upon the legacy-hunter Pacuvius?--

vivat Pacuvius quaeso vel Nestora totum, possideat quantum rapuit Nero, montibus aurum exaequet, nec amet quemquam nec ametur ab ullo (xii. 128).

Health to the man! and may he thus get more Than Nero plundered! pile his s.h.i.+ning store High, mountain high: in years a Nestor prove, And, loving none, ne'er know another's love!

GIFFORD.

Not less mordant in a different way is the savage and sceptical melancholy of the conclusion of the second satire, where he contrasts the degenerate Roman, tainted by the foulest l.u.s.ts, with the n.o.ble Romans of the past, and even with the barbarians, newly conquered, on the confines of empire (149):

esse aliquos manes et subterranea regna et contum et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras atque una transire vadum tot milia c.u.mba nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aere lavantur.

sed tu vera puta: Curius quid sent.i.t et ambo Scipiadae, quid Fabricius manesque Camilli, quid Cremerae legio et Cannis consumpta iuventus, tot bellorum animae, quotiens hinc talis ad illos umbra venit? cuperent l.u.s.trari, si qua darentur sulpura c.u.m taedis et si foret umida laurus.

illic heu miseri traducimur. arma quidem ultra litora Iuvernae promovimus et modo captas Orcadas ac minima contentos nocte Britannos, sed quae nunc populi fiunt victoris in urbe, non faciuut illi quos vicimus.

That angry Justice formed a dreadful h.e.l.l, That ghosts in subterranean regions dwell, That hateful Styx his sable current rolls, And Charon ferries o'er unbodied souls, Are now as tales or idle fables prized; By children questioned and by men despised.

Yet these, do thou believe. What thoughts, declare, Ye Scipios, once the thunderbolts of war!

Fabricius, Curius, great Camillus' ghost!

Ye valiant Fabii, in yourselves an host!

Ye dauntless youths at fatal Cannae slain!

Spirits of many a brave and b.l.o.o.d.y plain!

What thoughts are yours, whene'er with feet unblest, An unbelieving shade invades your rest?

Ye fly, to expiate the blasting view; Fling on the pine-tree torch the sulphur blue, And from the dripping bay dash round the l.u.s.tral dew.

And yet--to these abodes we all must come, Believe, or not, these are our final home; Though now Ierne tremble at our sway, And Britain, boastful of her length of day; Though the blue Orcades receive our chain, And isles that slumber in the frozen main.

But why of conquest boast? the conquered climes Are free, O Rome, from thy detested crimes.

GIFFORD.

In the same bitter spirit, Umbricius is made to cry:

quid Romae faciam? mentiri nescio; librum, si malus est, nequeo laudare et poscere; motus astrorum ignoro; funus promittere patris nec volo nec possum; ranarum viscera numquam inspexi; ferre ad nuptam quae mitt.i.t adulter, quae mandat, norunt alii; me nemo ministro fur erit, atque ideo nulli comes exeo tamquam mancus et extinctae, corpus non utile, dextrae (iii. 41).

What's Rome to me, what business have I there?

I who can neither lie nor falsely swear?

Nor praise my patron's undeserving rhymes, Nor yet comply with him nor with his times?

Unskilled in schemes by planets to foreshow, Like canting rascals, how the wars will go; I neither will nor can prognosticate To the young gaping heir his father's fate; Nor in the entrails of a toad have pried, Nor carried bawdy presents to a bride: For want of these town-virtues, thus alone I go conducted on my way by none; Like a dead member from the body rent, Maimed and unuseful to the government.

DRYDEN.

This bitterness Juvenal seasons at times with saturnine jests of a type that is all his own. Virro gives rancid oil to his poor guests as dressing to their salad:

illud enim vestris datur alveolis quod canna Micipsarum prora subvexit acuta, propter quod Romae c.u.m Boccare nemo lavatur, quod tutos etiam facit a serpentibus atris (v. 88).

Such oil to you is thrown, Such rancid grease, as Afric sends to town; So strong that when her factors seek the bath, All wind and all avoid the noisome path.

GIFFORD.

When the blind _delator_, Catullus Messalinus, is summoned to give his advice concerning the gigantic turbot:

nemo magis rhomb.u.m stupuit; nam plurima dixit in laevom conversus, at illi dextra iacebat belua. sic pugnas Cilicis laudabat et ictus et pegma et pueros inde ad velaria raptos (iv. 119).

None dwelt so largely on the turbot's size, Or raised with such applause his wondering eyes; But to the left (O treacherous want of sight) He poured his praise;--the fish was on the right.

Thus would he at the fencer's matches sit, And shout with rapture at some fancied hit; And thus applaud the stage machinery, where The youths were rapt aloft and lost in air.

GIFFORD.

Grimmest of all is the jest on the mushrooms set before Virro:

vilibus ancipites fungi ponentur amicis, boletus domino, sed quales Claudius edit ante illum uxoris, post quem nihil amplius edit (v. 146).

You champ on spongy toadstools, hateful treat!

Fearful of poisons in each bit you eat: He feasts secure on mushrooms, fine as those Which Claudius for his special eating chose, Till one more fine, provided by his wife, Finished at once his feasting and his life!

GIFFORD.

But Juvenal is not always bitter, nor always angry. His indignation is never absent, but takes at times a graver and a n.o.bler tone. At times he preaches virtue directly, instead of doing so indirectly through the denunciation of vice. He has no new secret of morality to reveal, no fresh lights to throw upon problems of conduct; his advice is obvious and straightforward; neither in form nor matter is there anything paradoxical. He was no student of philosophy,[730] though naturally familiar with the more important philosophic creeds and disposed by temperament to fall in with the views of the stern Stoic school. The conclusion of the tenth satire quoted above owes much to the Stoics.

'Leave the ordering of your fortunes to the powers above. Man is dearer to them than to himself. The wise man is free from all desire, all anger and all fear of death.'[731] 'Revenge is an unworthy and degrading pa.s.sion.'[732] 'Fate[733] and the revolution[734] of the stars in heaven rule all with unchanging law.' All these maxims have their counterpart in the Stoic creed. But there is no need of the philosophy of the schools to guide man to the paths of virtue.

numquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit (xiv. 321).

Nature and wisdom never are at strife.

GIFFORD.

Philosophy has its value, but the good man is no less good for not being a philosopher:

magna quidem, sacris quae dat praecepta libellis, victrix fortunae sapientia, ducimus autem hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda vitae nec iactare iugum vita didicere magistra (xiii. 19).