Juvenal: Satires, book V 9781789622171, 9781789622188, 9781800345737, 1789622174, 1789622182

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Preface
Introduction
I. What is satire?
II. Satire before Juvenal
III. Juvenal’s Satires – spleen and ideal
IV. Juvenal and his times
V. Style
VI. Do these poems have a purpose?
VII. The metre
VIII. The transmission of the text
Bibliography
Juvenal Satires Book 5
Satire 13
Satire 14
Satire 15
Satire 16
Commentaries
Satire 13
Satire 14
Satire 15
Satire 16
Index

Citation preview

Aris and Phillips Classical Texts

JUVENAL

Satires Book 5

Edited with a Translation and Commentary by

John Godwin

LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS

First published 2020 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk Copyright © 2020 John Godwin The right of J. Godwin to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available ISBN 978-1-78962-217-1 hardback ISBN 978-1-78962-218-8 paperback ISBN 978-1-80034-573-7 epdf Typeset by Tara Montane

Cover image: Dancer, detail of mosaic from the Domus of Stone Carpets, Ravenna. iStock.com/seraficus.

CONTENTS

Preface Introduction I What is Satire? II Satire before Juvenal III Juvenal’s Satires – spleen and ideal IV Juvenal and his times V Style VI Do these poems have a purpose? VII The metre VIII The transmission of the text Bibliography

vii 1 1 2 5 9 12 20 24 27 30

Juvenal Satires Book 5 Satire 13 Satire 14 Satire 15 Satire 16

45 46 66 92 108

Commentaries Satire 13 Satire 14 Satire 15 Satire 16

114 201 306 359

Index

377

To Heather uxori dilectissimae

PREFACE Juvenal wrote some of the most famous phrases in Latin. He was the one who asked us ‘who guards the guards?’ and he it was who coined the contemptuous phrase ‘bread and circuses’. He depicts life in the teeming heat of imperial Rome, making us see, hear and smell the world around him, and he deploys arguments to colour our attitudes towards his material with all the fiery eloquence of an accomplished orator. His attitudes are not always politically correct – indeed his views on race, gender and class would probably have him arrested if he were writing them now in English – and yet he writes it all with such comic verve and articulacy that we cannot help wondering just how seriously he means any of this. His Latin sometimes reads as if it were spat onto the page with impetuous venom, and yet there is nothing at all random about the way he uses the Latin language and the hexameter metre in which he composed. We know little about his life, but that matters little when we have a text as glowing with fire, energy and elegance as this to work on. Juvenal’s early work makes him come across as a raging, sneering underdog, but there is a definite shift in poetic attitude between that ranting voice of Satires 1–6 (Books 1–2) and the later poetry. These later poems are for the most part more measured and philosophical; they force us to reconsider our desires, face our realities and perhaps be more content with our lot, without losing any of the energy and the élan of the earlier work – or his lifelong ability to persuade and to entertain. This is the poet we meet in the later books (3, 4 and 5) and the purpose of this present volume is to try to help readers to enjoy reading this poetry, to understand the ideas being discussed and also to appreciate the literary quality of the Latin in which these ideas are expressed. The commentary is keyed to the English translation

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and I have attempted to make the explanations comprehensible (wherever possible) to readers who have little (or even no) Latin. This is demanding the impossible, of course – poetry of its very nature demands to be read and re-read in the original, and Juvenal is no exception to this rule – but my hope is that even those with little Latin may (with the help of the facing translation) be able to work out what is going on in the text and see from the commentary some of the ways in which this poetry is worth studying and enjoying. The translation is as close to the Latin as I could produce while keeping the sense and the flow of the sentences. My text, apparatus and sigla are based on those of Clausen and Willis, and readings which differ from the OCT are discussed in the commentary notes. I am greatly indebted to the giants of scholarship who have trodden this path before me: I have constantly consulted the commentaries of earlier scholars and found them inspiring and informative in equal measure, even when I found that I disagreed with their findings. I have enjoyed the personal assistance of many people who have gone beyond the call of duty in doing so: Martin Goodman, Susan Treggiari, Stephen Anderson advised me on matters great and small, while Chris Collard and James Uden read and commented on major sections of the commentary with typical generosity. I have above all enjoyed the unstinting editorial help of Clare Litt and her team at Liverpool University Press and in particular the series editor Professor Alan Sommerstein who has read the whole manuscript from cover to cover: it has gained hugely from his perceptive eye for detail and his remarkable ear for poetry. All mistakes which remain are (alas) my own. John Godwin Shrewsbury, January 2020

INTRODUCTION I. What is satire? Roman Satire is a peculiar genre. It purports to tell its audience things which the audience ought to hear, in the manner of an old-testament prophet, but it does so with jeering mockery more in the manner of a stand-up comedian. The satirist often sounds therefore like a moralist in a bad mood with a good sense of humour. The genre can be intensely conservative, deploring any changes in society and manners and longing for the good old days: equally it often preaches the delights of the idyllic country life to an audience living in the city, while being predominantly an urban art-form. It rails against the topsy-turvy world where the first are last and the last are first, where the ex-slaves, the chalk still on their feet from the slave-market, are running Rome while the scions of old Roman families go begging to upstart freedmen. Satire often seems to be urging a return to decency in an age of decadence, decrying luxury and greed and appealing for old-style austerity of life and behaviour. Its targets are traditionally folly (where people are misguided in their choices), and vice (where they deliberately outrage public morals): but above all it loves to unmask the hypocrite who affects virtue while indulging his real vices in private. Satire in all its forms is a literary genre – or even a ‘supergenre’ in that it envelops and exploits other available genres, as Jones argues1 – but satire in verse is especially self-conscious of its own status as an art-form and uses poetry to mock poetry, debunking poetic affectation with its own brand of poetic parody but not above using poetic language to enhance the vividness of the scene being described. It claims the high ground in morals but often speaks from the worm’s eye view of the common man, engaging in inverted snobbery whereby the rich and powerful are pathetic and vice-ridden while the poor lad from the hills is a finer specimen of humanity: satire disapproves of sexual immorality and lavish luxury but describes these vices in prurient lip-smacking terms which suggest that the poet is rather enjoying his disapproval. It places itself with one foot in the camp of ‘truth-telling’ 1  See Jones (2007) 153–54.

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Introduction

and another in the camp of ‘entertainment’, as famously epitomised in Horace’s (Satires 1.24) description of himself as ‘telling the truth with a smile’ (ridentem dicere uerum). It differs from comedy in that it is not solely seeking to amuse, although satire is often amusing: it differs from philosophy (which seeks to establish the truth for its own sake) by being an art-form which draws attention to itself and which seeks to entertain as well as to instruct, although some philosophers can be amusing as well as instructive. It is a mongrel, born of two very different parents, and it is in many ways a parasitic genre in that it latches on to other genres for its parodistic inspiration: it is also an encyclopaedic genre in that nothing is incapable of being included in its voluminous maw, from the vulgar details of life on the streets to the finest reaches of religion and philosophy. As Juvenal himself (1.85–6) sums up: quidquid agunt homines, uotum, timor, ira, uoluptas gaudia, discursus, nostri farrago libelli est (‘whatever men do, prayers, fear, anger, pleasure, joys, running around – this is the mixed meal of my little book’) The culinary term ‘mixed meal’ (farrago) is a key to one major theme of Roman satire – food. farrago is derived from far (‘grain’) and means ‘a mixed crop of inferior grains grown for animal feed’, while the generic term satura is probably derived from the lanx satura – ‘mixed dish’ or ‘sausage’. The point is twofold: satire in these Roman hands is not haute cuisine but rough food, and it is a mixture of contrasting ingredients cooked into a single dish. II. Satire before Juvenal2 satura quidem tota nostra est. ‘Satire is entirely our own’, said Quintilian (10.1.93) and it seems to have been a Roman recipe, even though it helped itself to some very Greek ingredients. The first to compose saturae in Latin was Ennius (239–169 BC) who wrote plays and poetry as well as at least one prose work: what remains of his Saturae in six books is concerned with everyday life in Rome composed in a variety of metres including some epic-sounding hexameters (e.g. fragments 3–4W, 23W) 2  See on this: Muecke (2013); Coffey (1976).

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which admit of the possibility that he was sending up (his own?) epic language. The next great figure in the history of Roman satire was Gaius Lucilius (180–102 BC): 30 books of Saturae were composed in a variety of metres, showing a sharp line in wit and a caustic ability to attack his contemporaries. He attacked people by name and recounted his own sexual exploits; he denounced gluttony and political chicanery, and borrowed philosophical ideas while also mocking philosophical jargon. ars est celare artem: Lucilius often reads as if he is improvising his lines but there is a good deal of conscious artistry at work in the ribald and raucous polemic, although Horace was later to call his work ‘a muddy river from which much should have been removed’ (Satires 1.4.11). He also presents himself in a more or less ironic manner as the hero or anti-hero of his own narrative, and thus introduces a very personal voice into the poetic language. Lucilius had fixed on the hexameter as the rhythm of satire by his final book: but Varro (116–27 BC) who wrote voluminously on matters of agriculture and language also produced 150 books of ‘Menippean Satires’ which are a blend of prose and verse, described by Cicero (Acad. 1.8) as ‘a bit of philosophy with a dash of humour and dialogue’. Their name and their inspiration come from the Greek 3rd century Cynic philosopher Menippus of Gadara, and the mixture of prose and verse in satire was to be imitated much later by Seneca (in his Apocolocyntosis) and Petronius (in his Satyricon). This hybrid form of satire, using both prose and verse, derived to some extent from the Greek ‘diatribe’ (διατριβή). This was an ethical ‘sermon’ of popular philosophy delivered in the manner of a travelling speaker, which sought to make people think and change their ways. The tone was one of hectoring banter directed at vice and folly, couched in vivid and aggressive imagery. The term and the form seem to have arisen from a certain Bion of Borysthenes (see OCD s.v. Bion (1)) who made a name for himself as an itinerant Cynic speaker rejecting the pretensions of the human mind and of society – and Roman satire certainly has more than a whiff of the Cynic (and the cynic) about it. The tradition of satire was continued in a more polished form by Horace (65–8 BC), although he called his satirical poems sermones (‘conversations’, the first book of which was published in about 35 BC) rather than saturae. His is a gentler sort of satire after the savagery

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Introduction

of Lucilius, and he comes over as an ironic self-satirist as much as a harpooner of other folk. He famously (1.5) tells of his hoping for sex with a servant-girl, only to be stood up by her after which he ends up ‘staining his bedclothes’; and his account of how he tried to free himself from a boring social-climber in 1.9 is a study in how good manners can cause us grief. He links his mode of writing with the ribald comedy of 5th century Athens (1.4) and he certainly speaks frankly and crudely about sex (1.2) and food (2.2) in language worthy of an Aristophanes, but he avoids overt political satire and so (for instance) his account of the journey to Brundisium – where the fate of the world was to be decided with a treaty between Mark Antony and Octavian – avoids making much of the politics and concentrates instead on incidentals in an arch and ironic manner. His targets are ones which Juvenal also shares – such as hypocrisy and ambition – and the set-piece descriptions of events such as the dinner-party (2.8) give us a vivid glimpse into the social world in which Horace, the freedman’s son, always (no doubt) felt himself to be something of an outsider. He made good use of a variety of styles in his poems: parody of epic, philosophical discourse in the manner of a didactic poet, vivid raconteurish descriptions of Roman life, and even animal fables such as the famous tale of the town mouse and country mouse (2.6). He clearly found the composition of this sort of accessible verse philosophy congenial and went on to compose a second book of Sermones (published in 30 BC), his first book of hexameter Epistles in 20 BC and the final three Epistles (Book 2 and the Ars Poetica) sometime after that. The Octavian who was going to meet Antony at Brundisium in Horace’s Satire 1.5 was to be Rome’s first emperor, of course, and the world Horace was born into was to be transformed from a republic into the Roman Empire. Writing under the emperor Nero (who ruled from AD 54–68), the satirist Persius (AD 34–62) composed only six satires – a meagre 650 lines in all – but took the genre in a new direction with his use of Stoic philosophy as the inspiration for his work. His poetry is involved and obscure but deals with the stock themes – food, poetry, sex, power, gods – and offers a more engaged and assertive model of satirical argument after the relaxed voice of Horace. Also writing in the age of Nero were two major literary figures: Petronius and Seneca. Petronius wrote a picaresque novel Satyricon

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which is a form of Menippean satire, making use of prose and verse, narrative and direct speech, ideas and the life of the streets. Its title is not in fact to do with ‘satire’ but rather with the fabled half-men half-goats known as Satyrs who were servants of the god Bacchus, often drunk and always disorderly, and the plot centres around the lives of young men finding their way in a debauched and decadent social world. Petronius3 is usually linked to the man of that name who was a courtier of Nero until his enforced suicide in AD 66. The philosopher, dramatist and essayist Lucius Annaeus Seneca was tutor to the young emperor Nero until he too was forced to commit suicide in AD 65 on suspicion of his involvement in the Pisonian conspiracy. His spoof on the deification of the previous emperor Claudius – the Apocolocyntosis or ‘Pumpkinification’ of Claudius – is (like the Satyricon) a Menippean mixture of prose and verse and is one of the most effective pieces of comic literature to have survived from the ancient world. III. Juvenal’s Satires – spleen and ideal Juvenal is in many ways the culmination of this process of development. He has the anger of a Persius and a Lucilius married to the poetic skills of a Horace, the philosophical and ethical concern of Horace and Persius with the acute eye for detail of Lucilius, Seneca and Petronius. He manages to keep the best of them all while also forging his own unique style of rhetoric, humour and serious thought. The division into five books is almost certainly that of the author and it is fascinating to look at the ordering and the choice of satirical targets in each of the five books. It is commonplace to argue that the first two books (Satires 1–6) express a rage at the world around which the last two books of poems (10–16) largely replace with a more ‘ironic detachment’4 and acceptance of the way things are in the manner of the laughing philosopher Democritus.5 Book 3 (Satires 7–9) is somewhere in the middle,6 a transition phase between ‘anger’ and ‘assessment’, or perhaps a switch from ‘vice’ to ‘folly’ as the target of his verse. This is 3  4  5  6 

See OCD s.v. ‘Petronius Arbiter’. Braund (1996) xiii. See 10.31–2. Braund elegantly entitled her 1988 study of Book 3 Beyond Anger.

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of course too neat to be accepted without qualification – in book V there is abundant anger directed at the cannibalistic Egyptians for instance, and (besides) variety of tone and target is important in any book of poems. Book V starts calmly enough with a mock-consolatio on the need to control anger for personal self-preservation (13), before moving to the need to promote good behaviour in family and society in 14 – both reasonable positions and based on enhancing good behaviour as much as castigating what is not, leaving us in a mood of souci de soi. Then, however, the poet suddenly flips back into angry mode7 with his snarling and violent attack on Egypt in 15, the violence described being mirrored in the violence of its description. The final poem is even more reminiscent of the earlier poems as the poet once again adopts the worm’s-eye stance of being on the receiving end of soldierly jack-boots.8 The final poem is ironic to the extent that it purports to be extolling the life of the military while in fact it is attacking the abuses which this entails, but the poet is of course not going to sign up – whatever he claims in 16.2–4 – and he is the victim and not the hero here. The final poem thus enacts a form of ring-composition, looking back to the start of the first satire and showing that little has changed either in society or (alas) in this personal response to it. There is no evidence that any ancient unfinished text was intended to be left unfinished, but it is still tempting to read the fragmentary nature of 16 as a prompt to go back to the beginning of Satire 1 and start reading all over again. A summary of the sixteen poems will give some idea of the range of his targets and the areas of his interest: Book 1 (Satires 1–5) was probably published in or around AD 1159 and establishes the poet as a man of ‘savage indignation’ railing against the evils of the city around him and the appalling behaviour of his contemporaries. The poems may be summarised thus:



1: J. denounces bad poetry and expresses the need to write satire to expose the vicious and unfair world he lives in: society needs the satirist rather than the derivative epic poet, and there is so much wrong with Rome that ‘it is difficult not to write satire’. 2: J. here exposes hypocrites who pretend to be austere Stoic

7  Courtney (1980) 12: ‘Fifteen has something in common with Juvenal’s earlier manner’. 8 16.14. 9  For more on the dating of the different books see Uden (2015) 219–26.

Introduction





7

philosophers but who love perverted sex in private and who even carry out gay marriages to the disgust of the ghosts of great dead Romans in the Underworld. 3: The poet speaks with Umbricius who is leaving Rome. Much of the poem is put into the mouth of Umbricius who criticises the city of Rome as a cesspit of noise, violence, rudeness as contrasted with the decent air of the Italian countryside. 4: A description of the absurd council summoned to discuss the problem of cooking the enormous turbot presented to the emperor Domitian – a fish which will not fit any of the available dishes. 5: A description of the the humiliation of the poor when they attend dinner-parties given by their rich patrons.

Book 2. (Satire 6) was published after AD 117 (this poem refers to events from the years 113–117 and so must postdate the events: it is possible that books 1 and 2 were published simultaneously) and is one long single poem. The text is a diatribe against women, couched in terms of advice seeking to dissuade a young man from getting married. The poem goes through all the different types of women and concludes that happiness will be impossible with any of them. Book 3. Satires 7–9 published around AD 120 (early in the reign of Hadrian) marks a slight lightening of the angry tone:



7: A description of the decline of literary professions, such as poets, speech-writers and teachers. 8: What’s the good of noble family trees? The poet denounces the base currency which is aristocratic blue blood: old aristocrats debase themselves these days, and the only nobility that counts is nobility of character. 9: A poem on the theme of patron and client: the poor man Naevolus (‘Mr Warty’) earns his handouts from his patron by satisfying the lust of both his patron and his patron’s wife.

Book 4. Satires 10–12 published sometime between AD 120 and AD 127: there are no internal markers of precise years and this text may have been written over a long period of time. These poems deal with ethical concerns rather than simply scandalised exposure of folly and vice for their own sake, as follows:

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10: ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes’: if we seek worldly success in terms of wealth, power, sex, or long life we will end up bitterly disappointed. The poet recommends seeking health of body and mind (mens sana in corpore sano). 11: An invitation to dinner contained in a lesson about living within one’s means and enjoying the simple things of life rather than luxuries. 12: J. welcomes his friend back after an arduous sea-voyage and describes the storm at sea in lurid epic terms: the poem ends with a plea that he is not motivated by any desire to profit from his friend’s legacy after death.

Book 5, Satires 13–16 published after AD 127: for more on the dating see notes on 13.16–18, 14.196, 15.27. This final book, showing ‘the old lion roaring away with a new access of vigour’,10 deals with the two false gods of money and power, promoting people over property and urging us to educate ourselves, our children and each other in habits of friendship and love rather than selfish greed while also exploring the ugly side of human nature to a degree not seen since the early poems.

13: A consolation to a friend who has been cheated of money; such fraud is commonplace in Rome and the crook will pay for it with a guilty conscience, urges the poet. 14: The influence of parents over their children, especially in their attitude towards money: parents need to set a good example against avarice. 15: A violent and lively critique of the Egyptians, culminating in a description of an incident of cannibalism. 16: J. discusses the privileges of the military and their abuses (incomplete).

Some key targets of Juvenal’s satire are clear even from this rapid summary: (a) the hypocrisy of people pretending to be morally superior when they keep their vices hidden from view (explored especially in 2) (b) the folly of people who pursue goals such as money and power and end up paying the ultimate price for their misguided greed (10, 14) 10  Highet (1954) 138.

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(c) the state of contemporary Roman society, full of violence and the inability to trust others as everyone is only out for themselves (1, 3, 9, 12, 13, 16) (d) the parlous state of sexual morality in Rome and in particular the amoral attitude of women (1, 2, 6, 10, 11) (e) the topsy-turvy world where decent professions are paid almost nothing but the big money goes to the well-heeled crooks living on oysters (3, 7, 11, 16) (f) Greed for money, food, power, patronage, as seen in legacy-hunting and in the cultivation of patronage from the rich and powerful (9, 12, 13) (g) Foreigners and their appalling ways (3, 15) IV. Juvenal and his times Almost nothing is known about the life of Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, the man who wrote some of the most memorable phrases in Latin. There is an inscription from Aquinum (CIL 10.5382) which lists a ‘Juvenal’ as being a tribune of a cohort of Dalmatian troops and a priest of the cult of the deified emperor Vespasian, but serious doubt has been cast11 on whether this can refer to ‘our’ poet or be genuine. Three poems by his contemporary Martial are addressed to him as a friend (7.24.1) and as ‘eloquent’ (facundus 7.91.1) or living the life of a city cliens (12.18) so we know that he was known to other poets – but witty ironic epigram is not the most reliable of historical sources on the poet’s actual life and circumstances. He does not dedicate his work to a patron (unlike (e.g.) Virgil and Horace) and so we can surmise that he was rich enough not to need financial support. Syme12 investigates the poet’s name and origin and concludes that ‘Juvenalis’ suggests low class or foreign origin: he ventures to suggest first that Spain offers the richest number of families called ‘Iunius’ – in a later article13 he argued for the possibility that the poet originated in Africa. He was born somewhere between 55 and 68 AD, and I am tempted by Syme’s suggestion of 67 as his year of birth14. 11  12  13  14 

Syme (1979) 1–5. Syme (1958) 774–76. Syme (1979). For discussion see Syme (1958) 774–75.

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There was an old tradition that Juvenal was exiled to Libya by the emperor Domitian for lampooning his lover Paris (7.90–2) and that he composed his poetry in exile: this tradition no doubt arose because (a) the poems mention Egypt and it seems the poet had first-hand knowledge of the area (see 15.44–46n.) and (b) he expresses distaste and dislike for the people there – somewhat like Ovid’s attitude to the people of Tomis – which may be the fruit of his enforced exile. The weakness of this argument is obvious: satire is not much good if it does not express some distaste and dislike and there was also a long tradition of (often xenophobic) fascination with Egypt going back to Cleopatra and before.15 None of it proves that Juvenal lived there. The general consensus is that the kind words addressed to the emperor at the start of Satire 7 refer to Hadrian, who succeeded Trajan in 117, which would date Book 3 after that year: there are chronological markers in Book 5 to the year 127.16 There is nothing in Book 4 which helps us to date it, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that it was composed in the period around AD 120. There are, then, a few datable references in his poetry which support the idea that he published his five books of Satires between 110 and 130 AD, and the clear links between Juvenal’s poems and the Annals of the historian Tacitus suggest that Juvenal knew the historian’s work and alluded to key individuals in it such as Bruttidius (10.82–3: cf. Annals 3.66.4). The poet refers in his work to a house in Rome (11.171, 190) which was an inheritance (12.87–9) and also to a small farm in Tibur (11.65). Beyond that, we have little to go on in discovering the man behind the work. As is often the case, there is a temptation to reconstruct the ‘life’ from the ‘art’ – and plenty of scholars17 have regarded the saturae as in some ways ‘fragments of a great confession’ in Goethe’s phrase.18 Literary fashions change, and it is more to modern taste to focus on the poetry rather than on the biography of the poet himself. Modern methods of literary analysis of satire draw more attention to the place and use of role-play, of irony, and of creative imagination in the forming of literary artefacts from the raw material of life. Juvenal was writing for an audience who would not be interested in him as a person but only in 15  See e.g. Dalby (2000) 172–77. 16  See notes on 13.16–18, 14.196, 15.27. 17  Highet (1954) is perhaps the most eloquent of these. 18 Goethe Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit Book II, Chapter 7.

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what he wrote: his poems are addressed to us all and the poet maintains his anonymity19 through his manipulation of style and language even when – especially when – he seems to be most open about his feelings. There is also a need to exercise caution when using the text of a poet such as Juvenal in reconstructing details even of the times in which he lived. It is axiomatic that this author is not composing for an audience such as ourselves, but for his contemporaries, who would not need to be informed of aspects of Roman life with which they were already familiar but rather entertained: similarly, they would not need a commentary to understand the references made. Nonetheless, this text has been found useful by historians both for the detail furnished where Juvenal refers to groups of people such as Jews (14.96–106), Egyptians (15 passim), soldiers (16), or where he appears to throw light on religious practice (14.262–3), sexual habits (14.25–30), the legal system (16.42–50), the legends of great philosophers (Pythagoras 15.171–4: Thales 13.184–5 etc.) and allusions to legal restrictions such as the lex Roscia theatralis which barred all but equites from the front rows of theatres (14.323–4). There are some vivid vignettes of crime (agricultural imperialism at 14.145–9: daring thieves making off with the helmet from the statue of Mars in his temple (14.261–2) or scraping the gold leaf from a statue of Hercules (13.151–2)) and punishment (e.g. 13.155–6: the parricide tied into a sack with a dog, a snake and a monkey). We hear of everyday life in such areas as haute cuisine (14.7–9), after-dinner entertainment in the form of acrobats (14.265–7), property development (14.86–90), the preparation of a sacrifice to Jupiter (13.116–8) and medical care (16.12). We also hear of extraordinary people doing extraordinary things (Diogenes the Cynic in his pot (14.308–14) or Egyptians who will not eat some vegetables or animals but will eat people (15.9–13)). Allusions to what was everyday life give us some flavour of the times in which this poet lived and worked, and we also have prose historians such as Tacitus whose work often bears out Juvenal’s words, but we have to remember at all times that the poet is writing for effect and not for information. When it comes to naming individuals, Juvenal has a policy (1.170–1) of only attacking the dead as it is dangerous to attack the living (1.160– 70), but he does name a large number of people in these poems and his audience simply has to know or guess who they were. There are famous 19  For this theme of anonymity in Juvenal see now Uden (2015); Geue (2017a).

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Introduction

names from history such as Alexander the Great (14.311), the emperor Claudius and his freedman Narcissus (14.329–331), the philosopher Socrates (14.320), Catiline (14.41) and the noble Brutus (14.43): and then there are the racial slurs and stereotypes (13.162–73, 15.44–6), routine misogyny (6 passim, 13.191–2) and anti-semitism (14.96–106). There are thumbnail sketches of the ‘donkey-brained ranter’ Vagellius (16.23), the barrister Fuscus emptying his bladder in preparation for a long speech (16.46), the compulsive builder Caetronius (14.86–95), the doctor Philippus (13.125) and Faesidius supported by his baying mob of hangers-on (13.32–3). The poems are not, then, reportage which lifts the lid on contemporary life in the manner of an investigative journalist; but in the course of framing his argument the poet is happy to make use of any evidence which comes to hand. The journalist, of course, will – like the satirist – simplify and exaggerate, but unlike the poet he has to remain within the realms of the plausible and the possible. Juvenal, the poet and satirist, has carte blanche to let his imagination take over where the facts are insufficient, and it would be rash to rely too much on these poems for hard evidence of the times in which they were composed.20 V. Style We would probably not be interested in Juvenal if he were not a great master of the Latin language and a great writer of satire, and his poetry makes use of a wide range of modes and methods in order to focus our minds and to keep us constantly entertained and bemused by his words. Often, as with Lucilius, the style is artfully unadorned, and the words read as if they came tumbling out of the poet’s head, but of course the artistry is no less acute for being concealed. Some of his methods of doing this could be summarised thus: (a) Irony. This term is much discussed21 and its meaning can be slippery and elusive, but, in a literary context such as satire, one common feature is the poet’s assumption of a mode of address which presents himself as a character within his own text, often espousing views 20  For a lively and convincing account of the milieu in which Juvenal lived see Danziger and Purcell (2005); see also Marache (1989). 21  See Muecke (1970).

Introduction

13

which are ridiculous or absurdly exaggerated in order to present the speaker himself as a target for his own satire – effectively putting quotation marks around his words. The poems in this book all present us with a ‘Juvenal’ who is giving advice to the reader/addressee, but there is ample scope for seeing the ‘Juvenal’ speaking as a fictive persona who may even be part of the joke rather than simply its mouthpiece: the poems are sometimes read as tracts delivered by a poet speaking for himself, when in fact they are conversations in which the character of the speaker may be being sent up as much as his quarry. This is particularly so with sexual matters: Satire 6, for instance, shows an excess of misogyny and a prurient fascination with sex which belies its own prudish disapproval, rather like the poet’s rejection of the hideous cannibalism in Satire 15 which he nonetheless describes with lip-smacking prurience. The irony often depends on the reader being alert to the fun being had either by the speaker’s sarcastic turn of phrase (as at 14.281) or else at the speaker’s expense (such as the ‘good old days’ clichéd counsel of the old men of the old Italian tribes at 14.179–89 or the dropping of great names at 14.43, where the language is both the means and the target of the satire). This ironic way of reading the text is hugely important as it relies on the judgement of the individual reader to be aware of the satirical nuances and to be less ready to swallow the lines uncritically, but (by the same token) it is a way of reading a passage which will provoke disagreement as to the sense and the meaning which the ironic text both conveys and conceals. For the larger questions surrounding the persona theory, see below (VI ‘Do the Poems have a Purpose?’). (b) Parody. This is the humorous imitation of an art-form in which the salient characteristics of the target are exaggerated and so rendered comic. The obvious example in this book is the mock-consolatio which is Satire 13: the genre of ‘consolation’22 was well known in the ancient world,23 but was usually reserved for the loss of life rather than the loss of cash. Juvenal’s adoption of the form and the argumentation of this genre serves to send up the miser for whom money matters more than people. This counts as satire as there is 22  See Scourfield (2013). 23  See introductory remarks to Satire 13.

14

Introduction implied criticism of the original in the distorted caricature of its obvious shape and habits. Parody of style is frequent in Juvenal. Classical epic was written in the same metre as these satires, and so it is easy for the satirist to slip into a higher register (e.g. 13.130–1 where the lines are a parody of Virgil) and so send up the genre by allowing the satirical persona to speak like a Lucan or a Statius. Juvenal is master of this: he makes use of the epic periphrasis (13.99, where the ‘hungry branch of the Pisan olive-tree’ refers to the garland awarded to the winner in the Olympic games and reduces the glory by bathos: cf. also 13.184) and epic allusions (14.114), he mocks the superstitious Romans quoting their imported quasi-scientific Greek terms (14.248) and calls Ulysses an aretalogus (15.16) in mockery both of his style and his self-congratulating stories. When the poet is creating a scene of conflict he can make bathetic use of epic battle-scenes (15.62–6) but with the parodic element supported by devices such as the bathos of the unpoetic word coxam for Aeneas’ ‘hip’ (15.66).

(c) The ‘grand style’ (genus grande).24 The poet of the satires had clearly enjoyed a rhetorical education as he himself tells us (1.15–17) and his use of the ‘grand style’ of oratory is shown in such literary devices as: (i) his use of rhetorical questions (often at the beginning of his poems as at 13.5–6, 15.1–2, 16.1–2) adds a touch of high drama and forensic interrogation to the text. In telling us that animals do not attack their own kind in 15.159–64, J. gives us a sequence of five sentences, with two pithy generalised statements followed by two rhetorical questions followed by one longer statement, and the effect of the questions is to mock the absurdity of the position being questioned (even though in this case the speaker’s assumption is false). Earlier in the same poem (15.16–23) J. ventriloquises this technique into the mouths of the Phaeacians who are angry at Ulysses’ insult to their intelligence with his tall tales. They deliver one central statement framed by two rhetorical questions, ending with the final rhetorical question: ‘did he think the Phaeacian people to be so empty-headed?’ 24  See De Decker (1913), Braun (1989), Santorelli (2016).

Introduction

15

The rhetorical question is a good tool to strengthen a tone of moral outrage: see for instance 14.177–8 (‘But what respect for the laws, what apprehension or decency do you ever find in an impatient miser?’). The device is also good at mocking anybody who does not agree with the speaker (e.g. 14.25: ‘Do you expect – you moron – that Larga’s daughter is not going to commit adultery?’). There is a similar sequence towards the end of Satire 13 (lines 239–249) where a pithy generalised statement (people do not change their nature) is followed by a powerful trio of rhetorical questions (‘for who .… when … who...?) in lines 240–244, followed by a confident assertion of the fate awaiting ‘our cheat’, beginning with a strong future indicative verb (dabit) and going into some prurient detail of the criminal’s suffering and ending with an equally confident prediction of the victim’s own joy (gaudebis (247)). (ii) apostrophe, where the poet addresses a character in his own narrative. J. uses this device to add variety to his account of the perjuring thief at 13.81, where the address to Neptune enacts the personal address to the deity which the oath requires and presupposes: a similar use is found at 15.85–7 where Prometheus is addressed and congratulated. (iii) sententious one-line generalisations summing up the argument in a memorable and pithy phrase, often with vivid use of language. See for instance 14.224 (having described the fate of the rich bride who is strangled for her dowry J. sums up with ‘there is no hard work involved in large-scale crime’) or 13.100 (‘The wrath of the gods may be great but it is certainly slow’). These can sound almost like old school mottos: see for instance 14.47 (‘The greatest respect is owed to a child’) and J. can sometimes produce such a sententia in ironic quotes as he does at 14.205–7:

‘This is the mantra which should never leave your lips one worthy of the gods and even of Jupiter himself (if he were a poet): “nobody is asking where you got it from, but get it you must.”’

16

Introduction (iv) the balanced word-order known as the ‘golden line’, where a central verb (V) is framed by a pair of nouns (AB) and a pair of adjectives (ab). J. varies this device and we find a-b-V-A-B (13.137) but also A-b-V-a-B at 15.137. (v) pointed antitheses, where stark contrasts are drawn for enhanced effect, such as the tart comment (15.8) that in Egypt ‘it’s the dog which whole towns worship – but nobody (worships) Diana’ or the scathing statement (13.105) ‘That man gets crucified as payment for his crime, this one gets a crown’. In Satire 14 (41–3) the poet contrasts the ease of finding a ‘Catiline’ with the difficulty of finding a ‘Brutus – or his uncle’. Sometimes the contrast is verbal as at 13.19 where ‘great’ wisdom is found in ‘little’ books. (vi) diminutive forms of nouns and adjectives, lending a homely, almost intimate tone to the language such as 13.40 where Juno is reduced to a uirguncula (and cf. 14.29 for this effect) and 15.12 where Egyptians are forbidden to slaughter even the ‘young’ of a ‘little goat’ (capellae). The form is effective in adding emphasis as at 13.14, where the enjambed diminutive form of pars (particulam – a ‘speck’) adds an extra layer of tininess after leuium minimam exiguamque of the line before. J. makes good use of a diminutive to enhance contrast at 14.169 where the uernula (‘little slave’) is followed by the magnis fratribus (‘big brothers’) and of course the diminutive is much used in passages advocating the simple life (14.166 glebula (‘a little clod of earth’) and 14.179 (live in ‘little cottages’ (casulis)). The diminutive adds to the theme of degeneration in 15.70, where it is stated that the earth now brings forth men who are ‘wicked and weedy’ – with the diminutive form pusillos an effectively strong word to end the line. (vii) anaphora or rhetorical repetition of important words to raise the oratorical temperature as at 13.130, 13.144–147, 14.42, 14.111–2, 14.120, 14.256–7, 15.94, 15.99, 16.9–10, 16.24–5, 16.31, 16.43–4. At 14.294 the anaphora of nil is made more forceful by placing of the word, at the start of the line and again immediately after the caesura:

Introduction

17

nil color/ hic cae/li// nil /fascia/ nigra mi/natur.

The device is especially useful in rhetorical questions such as 14.177–8, 15.103. (viii) hyperbole25 or comic exaggeration: at 13.62–3, for instance, the rare case of honesty is described in language which is hyperbolic in its admiration, while later in the same poem (211–222) the thief is envisaged suffering massively over-drawn symptoms of distress and guilt. Simple hyperbole is found at 14.12 (no child could need ‘one thousand tutors’), 14.28 (on the length of the list of a mother’s lovers): sometimes (14.66 perfusa) the hyperbole is a focalisation of inner panic, while elsewhere (as at 14.114, 14.271) the poet ironically contrasts the low-level reality with heroic and mythical26 material. (ix) the appropriation of epic material for persuasive effect. Epic language was often used by Juvenal for ironic and parodistic effect (see above), but there are also moments when he could be seen as using the stories and the language of epic to enhance the force of his narrative: look for instance at the wonderful riff on Ulysses’ tales at 15.13–26, where the poet imagines the incredulous Phaeacians listening to Ulysses’ fabulous tales of cannibalism:

When Ulysses was telling of a felony of this kind to a dumbstruck Alcinous over dinner, it was wrath or mirth perhaps that he aroused in some of them as if he were a lying big-mouth. ‘Is nobody throwing this man into the sea? He deserves a real-life Charybdis, and a savage one at that, for inventing his giant Laestrygonians and Cyclops. For I would sooner believe in Scylla, or the clashing Cyanean rocks and the bags full of storm-winds or Elpenor, struck by Circe’s flimsy blow and grunting with the oarsmen pigs. Did he think that the Phaeacian people were so emptyheaded?’ This is how somebody might have spoken, and rightly so: somebody not yet drunk who had only taken a tiny drop of booze from the Corcyraean flagon: for this

25  See Fredericks (1979). 26  On this topic see Bellandi (1991).

Introduction

18

was what the Ithacan recited to them, all by himself, with no witnesses to back him up.

The comedy here is slick and relies on the audience knowing the Homeric original:27 and while the point being made only needs to make mention of the man-eating Laestrygonians and Cyclops, J. throws in all the other tales so that he can work his satirical magic on them too – see in particular line 22 on Elpenor where the men begin the line as oarsmen and end the line as pigs (porcis). Look also at 13.38–52, where the poet produces a burlesque of mythology imagining the age of Saturn with pint-sized gods and happy shades. The battle in Egypt begins in excellent epic style (15. 51–76), and in the course of it J. makes explicit comparisons with the ‘real’ epic fighting scenes in Homer and Virgil (65–71). J. calls (72) this a ‘diversion’ (deuerticulum) but it is clearly part of the satirical purpose to ridicule these latter-day Egyptian ‘heroes’ for the monstrous cannibals they were. Elsewhere (14.45–6) J. uses high epic language for bathetic effect, as when the Sybils’s stern warning to the uninitiated (Virgil Aeneid 6.258: ‘keep away, o keep far away you who are not initiated’ procul o procul este profani) is rewritten:



procul, a procul inde puellae/ lenonum et cantus pernoctantis parasiti.



(‘Get away with you, get away from here, girls of pimps and the singing of the all-night party-crawler’). (x) Rhetorical exclamations. Everybody knows Cicero’s famous exclamation o tempora o mores! (literally: ‘o times, o way of life!’: cf. in Verrem 2.4.56). This oratorical method is found also in J. when he (like Cicero) waxes most indignant: see for instance 15.10–11, 13.140.

To illustrate some of the above, look at the final lines of poem 14 to see the poet in action. 27  Which is also required for the use of epic periphrasis (e.g. 16.6).

Introduction

19

si nondum impleui gremium, si panditur ultra, nec Croesi fortuna umquam nec Persica regna sufficient animo nec diuitiae Narcissi, indulsit Caesar cui Claudius omnia, cuius 330 paruit imperiis uxorem occidere iussus. ‘If I have still not filled your lap with that, if it gapes wider still, then neither the riches of Croesus nor the kingdoms of Persia will ever satisfy your heart – nor the wealth of Narcissus, the man to whom Claudius Caesar gave everything he wanted, and whose commands he obeyed when he was ordered to kill his wife’. Here we see the anaphora of si … si..., with the two phrases in asyndeton to add urgency to the words: there is the balanced pair of verbs impleui … panditur as we see the appetite for money both negatively (‘not yet sated’) and positively (‘gaping open’). J.’s coda uses human exempla in a tricolon crescendo of enormous power and ironic intent, with anaphora of nec and variation of the ‘wealth’ term (fortuna … regna … diuitiae). He begins with that byword for fabulous wealth to this day – Croesus – and then ups the ante even more with Persica regna (hinting at power (regna) as well as cash): but the final and climactic exemplum is from closer to home and to his own times – the freedman Narcissus. The name is placed for effect at the end of line 329 in a fifth-foot spondee which forces the reader to slow down on this weighty individual who out-trumps even the Persians. The poem might have ended there – but the final two lines add moral turpitude to the theme of unrestrained wealth with the murder of a wife and the topsy-turvy state in which the emperor takes orders from his servant: the rhetorical effect is heightened by the harsh alliteration of Caesar cui Claudius, the anaphora of cui … cuius, the framing of the final line with words denoting obedience (paruit … iussus) and the placing of the wife in the centre (uxorem). The reader may wonder why the poet chose to end this poem with this vignette, and here one can see the playful way in which life and literature mingle in these poems: the ‘wife’ being killed was Messalina, who was herself a byword for immorality on a massive scale (Dio Cassius called her ‘the most whorish (πορνικωτάτη) of women’ (see note on 14.331)) and who has been one of J.’s most effective characters in his denunciation of the female sex (see 6.114–32). More

Introduction

20

pertinently, the picture harks back to an age where weak emperors were pushed around by upstart freedmen, and it is worth stressing that from Domitian onwards freedmen were never regarded as more than mere servants.28 J. can safely fulminate against Narcissus as the emperor of his own day had no such staff: and of course J. can add another dig at the upstart freedmen whom he has been abusing since Satire 1.102–9. The poem ends with what amounts to a recap of themes in earlier books while also reminding the reader that the greed for money has many disastrous effects on family and society. VI. Do these poems have a purpose? In Satire 15 Juvenal describes the cannibalism of one Egyptian tribe and then made reference to other cases where cannibalism was practised by men who were starving and so had no choice: all very repellent. He then broadens the discussion with a general statement abour our human capacity for empathy and our genuine grief at the suffering of others:

naturae imperio gemimus, cum funus adultae uirginis occurrit uel terra clauditur infans et minor igne rogi. quis enim bonus et face dignus arcana, qualem Cereris uolt esse sacerdos, ulla aliena sibi credit mala? (15.138–142) (‘It is by nature’s orders that we howl, when we meet the funeral of a grown-up unmarried girl, or when a little child is buried in earth not yet old enough for the funeral pyre. For who is there who is good, who is worthy of the secret torch, living as the priest of Ceres wishes, who thinks that other people’s misfortunes do not concern him?’) Grief is built into our very nature, and the examples chosen elicit exactly the sort of human fellow-feeling which he is espousing as ‘the best part of our sensibility’ (15.133). Notice the choice of a girl old enough to marry but still unwed (adultae uirginis) and then the ghastly detail of the earth closing over the dead infant’s body, with line 139 framed by the key words virginis … infans in this short catalogue of misery. He 28  See CAH2 xi. 209–11.

Introduction

21

then puts the issue into a sharp rhetorical question (quis...?), with the tart mention of the divine imperatives also at work but leading up to the ‘no man is an island’ conclusion. Few readers would be unmoved by these lines and few would disagree with them, although the poet offers no such empathy to the merchant facing death at sea (14.295–302) who is to him ‘better than theatre’ (14.256–7) as entertainment. The problem is partly that the examples chosen are perhaps overdone,29 and then the tone is slightly undercut by the naming of the ‘priest of Ceres’ – it was not coincidental that the emperor Hadrian had been personally initiated into the Greek cult and the reference, complete with the detail of the ‘secret torch’ creates a slightly jarring edge which distances a genuine piece of emotive imagery into a ritual framework. The conclusion (‘who thinks that other people’s misfortunes do not concern him?’) is a banal phrase with a long history in Latin literature (see 15.142n.). It is as if the poet has briefly voiced what (he thinks passes for) genuine emotion to come to the fore in lines 138–40, only to close down the tear-ducts with a return to more stiff upper-lip language. It may (after all) be all an act. What is the poet doing? Is he actively seeking our agreement with an ethical proposition or is he just using an ethical dilemma to show his poetic and rhetorical powers as a writer? Is he serious or is he a poseur? When elsewhere (Satire 3) he tells us of the living conditions in poor parts of Rome or (in Satire 7) the rotten life lived by the intellectuals of his age, or warns us of the lengths to which legacy-hunters (Satire 12) or foreign savages (Satire 15) will go, does it matter whether we can believe him? In the last century Anderson in a ground-breaking work30 urged that the poet is a performer and that he is creating a character who is the narrator and the speaker of the words being uttered: this ‘character’ is referred to by Anderson as a persona (which literally means ‘mask’ and alludes to the theatrical nature of the text) and is the creation of the poet and is not therefore to be taken as identical with the man writing the words on the page. Just as we do not demand total sincerity on the part of a songwriter who may express feelings in a song which he does not personally have, so also this poet may be conjuring up what are more or less set-piece declamations which are delivered ‘in character’ 29  See Jenkyns (1982) 188 + n. 25. 30  Anderson, W. S. (1982) esp. 293–339.

22

Introduction

behind the mask of savage indignation or shocked humanitas which is the satirist’s stock in trade.31 Clearly this sort of judgement has to be made in reading many works of literature. When a Horace or a Catullus expresses love, we can choose to read the poem as an expression of the poet’s real feeling for real persons, or else we can read it as a love-poem in the tradition of love poetry and with no need for a referent in the ‘real’ world. If the writer has done a good job then readers are often led to think that the writer is bursting to express genuine emotions (‘feelings in search of a form’) when it may in fact be the other way round (‘form in search of a feeling’) as the artist, working with a form (such as a sonnet), or a particular metre, will find that feelings emerge from his emotional depths and colour his work with emotion which is itself freely invented. Writers have (after all) to write about something, and there is always the strong possibility that writers produce what the public will enjoy rather than what they are burning personally to impart. This argument is more acute perhaps in discussing other poets such as Horace. After all, there is no doubt that Juvenal exaggerates wildly and risks his credibility by his hyperbole. His lines on premature death (quoted above) are moving, but a few lines later (15.147–58) he is back in didactic mode with a mini-lecture on social anthropology and he then follows this up with a ludicrous argument (15.159–64) that animals never attack their own kind which is blatantly false and had been contradicted centuries before by Hesiod (Works and Days 276–28032). The tender emotion of grief is thus seen as part of a role being played, an emotion being spun by this master-rhetorician who can both summon up our own feelings and then calm them down, and who can thus dazzle us with his own self-characterising display as a sententious and wrong-headed ranter. The same line of reasoning could also be used to get the poet off the hook in the eyes of many modern readers. Satire 6 is a sustained attack on women – all of them. It purports to give advice to a certain Postumus to avoid getting married as all the different classes of women are hideous. The poet runs through the different sorts of women and creates vividly offensive pictures to put Postumus off all of them. This sort of misogyny 31  On the persona theory see also Keane (1989), Braund (1996), Schmitz (2019) 11–30. 32  See West (1978) 227 for further examples.

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23

is not without parallel in the ancient world,33 but it is still pretty strong stuff and it is a difficult poem to read without feeling readerly revulsion. If, however, one were to see it as ironic mockery of misogyny rather than the real thing – assuming that the poet, in other words, adopts a ‘mask’ (persona) of ‘woman-hater’ and then writes a poem which such a man would deliver – then the purpose of the poem becomes the very opposite of what it appears to be. Far from espousing these revolting ideas, Juvenal is exposing the attitudes he expresses to ridicule as they are so obviously distorted and hyperbolic. It makes no sense to accuse Euripides of hating women because his character Hippolytus does34 even though the contemporary comic poet Aristophanes invents characters who think exactly that.35 The ‘indignation’ which ‘drives’ him to verse (1.79) and which makes it difficult not to write satire (1.30) is itself perhaps a pose to lure the reader in, and the enraged old-testament prophet is in fact enjoying working his audience with the power of his rhetoric and his poetic skill, where the audience may choose to laugh either with or at the speaker so long as they enjoy the poem. There is much to be said for this. Juvenal is writing in a tradition of epideictic oratory (where the point was to demonstrate oratorical subtlety rather than to prove a specific case) and with the memory of his own rhetorical training as a composer of suasoriae or ‘set-piece speeches’ such as he mocks in 1.17–18. James Uden36 has explored the oratorical and intellectual world of the Second Sophistic in which Juvenal lived, and it would be a dull reader who did not realise this. Furthermore, in a fascinating pair of recent books,37 the stylised form of speech has recently been examined as a study in anonymising the author – a process whereby he hides behind his own text and does not allow us to glimpse his reality behind the tissue of the words. This is not, however, the last word by any means. The persona which the poet adopts is not co-extensive with the poet himself, but it is the 33  E.g. Semonides Fr. 7W. 34 Euripides Hippolytus 616–68. 35  Thesmophoriazuai 85. 36  Uden (2015) esp. 129–35. 37  Uden (2015), Geue (2017a): see Godwin (2017) and Schmitz (2019b) for some qualifications of this theory.

24

Introduction

poet who chooses which persona to adopt and there is still scope for reading the text as in some ways revelatory of the mind of the writer and his readers in the time at which the work was composed. Some of the points being made are over-stated but still resonate with us today and continue to haunt our thinking – what is worth dying or killing for? is there any value in money? – while others let us glimpse a world in which social values of ‘nobility’ and masculinity are questioned and discussed in language which is unparalleled for its frankness and power to make us think. Readers must simply read the poems and decide the extent to which they are tongue-in-cheek or hand-on-heart, whether they are ironic parodies of rhetoric or else examples of genuine emotion captured in expressive language. There is, after all, no single way to read a poem. Roman literature was created with generic and metrical propriety, such that epic was always in hexameters and generally avoided vulgarities, while love-poetry tended to be in elegiac couplets and certain stock figures recur: but there is also a marked resistance to this restraint on the part of many writers who at all times need to avoid the tedium of predictability and who seek to foil the expectations of their audience. Juvenal obviously wrote within the tradition of verse satire, but beyond that he resists categorisation. The one area where he is totally devoted to a single purpose is as a writer, and he uses the many skills of his trade to keep the readers on their toes and to surprise us with his skill. When he makes points which are facetious or plain wrong, then we end up admiring the style even when the content is less impressive and it is then that the mask slips to reveal the grinning manipulator behind it. Ultimately, when all around the poet is bad, mad, and sad, then at least we have the consolations of the poetry itself in which the views are so vividly and eloquently expressed. VII. The metre Latin poetry is written in a fairly rigid system of metres, all of which in turn rely on the ‘quantity’ of each syllable as being either heavy or light which in turn often depends on the length of the vowel. A long vowel is reckoned to take twice as long to pronounce as a short vowel. A syllable is reckoned to be a vowel sound, followed either by nothing

Introduction

25

(an ‘open’ syllable) or by a consonant (a ‘closed’ syllable): usually a single consonant following a vowel is reckoned to be the first consonant of the following syllable (e.g. ca-li-gi-ne) and does not affect the length of the preceding syllable; but where two or more consonants follow a vowel, whether in the same word or in different words, the first one is included in the first syllable (men-sa) which is thus ‘closed’ and becomes lengthened – the exceptions being combinations of mute and liquid consonants within the same word (b, c, g, p, t followed by r, and c, p, t, followed by l) where both letters may optionally be considered as belonging to the following syllable (ma-tris) and need not lengthen the preceding one. Diphthongs (ae, eu, au, etc.) are always long by nature: single vowels may be long or short in length and may vary with inflection (e.g. the final -a of mensa is long by nature in the ablative case, short in the nominative).



— ∪ x //

means a heavy syllable means a light syllable means a syllable which may be either heavy or light means the caesura (word-end in the middle of a foot of a hexameter).

The hexameter is the ‘epic’ metre used by Homer and all later epic and didactic poets: it also became (after Lucilius) the metre of all verse satire. The line is divided into six ‘feet’, each of which is either a dactyl (a heavy syllable followed by two light syllables (—∪∪ in conventional notation)) or a spondee (two heavy syllables (— —)). The last foot is always dissyllabic, and the last syllable of all may be either heavy or light. The metrical analysis of a line is called ‘scansion’ and a typical hexameter line (16.4) may be scanned thus:

—∪∪/ — ∪∪/—// —/ — ∪∪/—∪∪/ — —/ sīdĕrĕ/ plūs ĕtĕ/nīm// fā/tī uălĕt/ hōră bĕ/nīgnī where the // sign shows the ‘caesura’ – the word-break in the middle of a foot – which occurs in the third foot or (less often) the fourth (e.g. 14.216, 15.150). It may also occur between the two short syllables of a dactyl in the third foot and then be followed by a further caesura in the fourth, as at 14.305, 15.171. In cases where a word ending with a vowel (or a vowel + m such as iustam) is followed by a word beginning with a vowel

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26

or h, the two syllables usually merge (‘elide’) into a single syllable, as at 15.30 where quamquam omnia is scanned as quamqu(am) omnia (four syllables), or 16.9 where immo etsi is read imm(o) etsi (three syllables). Latin also had a stress accent, whereby most words were stressed on the penultimate syllable, or on the antepenultimate if the penultimate was a short vowel. Thus the first line of Satire 14 would be spoken: plúrima súnt Fuscín(e) ét fáma dígna sinístra and scanned metrically as: plúrima/ súnt Fus/cín(e) ét/ fáma/ dígna si/nístra In this line the speech accent and the metrical ictus or ‘downbeat’ coincide throughout. More often there is a clash of the two forms of stress, as at 14.3 where the speech accents are: quæ monstrant ipsi pueris traduntque parentes but the metrical scansion is: quæ mōns/ trānt īp/sī pŭĕ/rīs trā/dūntquĕ pă/rēntēs This is especially effective when the poet uses the same word twice with different stresses as at 14.43: sēd nēc/ Brūtŭs ĕr/īt Brū/tī nĕc ău/ūncŭlŭs/ ūsquam. Quite how the two ways of reading Latin verse blended or competed is unclear: in hexameters there is a tendency for the stress accent and the metrical ictus to collide in the earlier and middle parts of the line (as in line 14.3) but to coincide at the end – a tendency which is however abruptly broken when the line ends with a monosyllable as at 13.26, 13.95. One strength of the hexameter is its versatility in the variation of quick and slow rhythms and also its readiness to vary the ending of the phrases and resist the urge to end the phrase with the ending of the line – a device known as enjambement. To see some of this in action look at the lines describing the father barking at his son in 14.189–93: haec illi ueteres praecepta minoribus; at nunc pōst fīn(em) aūtūmnī media de nocte supinum 190 clāmōsūs iŭuĕnēm pătĕr ēxcĭtăt: ‘āccĭpĕ cērās,

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27

scribe, pu/er, uigil/a, caus/as age, /perlege /rubras maīōrūm lēgēs. (‘These are the teachings which those men of old handed to the young, but these days once autumn has ended, when the son is flat on his back in the middle of the night his barking father wakes up the young man: “get your tablets, write, boy, do not fall asleep, prepare lawsuits, study closely the red-lettered laws of our ancestors”.’) The metre supports the meaning well here: the opening words of 189 merely recap the previous lines, but the two final monosyllables (at nunc) begin the process of finger-jabbing which is to follow. We see the young man drowsy on his back (supinum) and the spondees of 190 help to convey the image of him asleep in the dark nights of winter. Line 191 has the bellowing father described with suitably heavy syllables (clāmōsūs) and the metre at once wakes up (as the youth does) with a string of four dactyls. Line 192 has a sequence of four stabbing imperatives and this line is noteworthy for the repeated clash of ictus and accent – the accent is marked with underlining above. This is ideal to convey the rapid fire of instruction which is being hammered into the sleepy youth’s brain. The sequence ends with the father’s stately enunciation of traditional legislation in the heavy syllables of maīōrūm lēgēs.38 VIII. The transmission of the text39 It is possible to view Juvenal as something of a literary loner in his own time. Unlike writers such as Virgil who quickly became widely read and widely admired, Juvenal went largely unnoticed amongst his contemporaries and only the roughly contemporary poet Martial mentions him by name. This obscurity changed in the latter half of the fourth century, when an edition of his poetry was produced, and he is mentioned and quoted by Servius (the great commentator on Virgil) and the Christian apologist Lactantius (240–320) who cites 10.365–6 approvingly. It is not surprising that the more sententious and censorious lines of Juvenal were music to the ears of anti-pagan Christians. More impressive still, he 38  For more on this topic see Kenney in Braund and Osgood (2012) 124–36. 39  For fuller information on the manuscript tradition see Parker in Braund and Osgood (2012) 137–61, Griffith (1968), Tarrant in Reynolds and Wilson (1984)..

28

Introduction

began to be admired and imitated by poets such as Ausonius (AD 310–94) and later on Paulinus and Prudentius – who all saw the poetic worth as well as the proto-Christian potential of the poems and who borrowed and adapted some of Juvenal’s best phrases. Christian apologists such as Jerome and Augustine used his satirical venom as ammunition against pagan immorality, while the historian Ammianus tells us (28.4.14) that he was the poet read by people who do not read poetry – a sentiment which rings true when one reads the opening of Satire 1 with its condemnation of (other) poets’ pretentious poetry. The earliest commentary on a text of the poet was produced sometime between AD 350 and 420, and after that time the survival of Juvenal was never in doubt. The transmission of ancient literature was done by laborious and highly fallible copying out by scribes. Errors and variant readings crept into the system and by the time of our earliest manuscript (P) from the ninth century many lines had been corrupted, emended, interpolated or omitted. Interestingly, all the manuscripts of Juvenal break off suddenly at 16.60 and this suggests either that the poet died with his last poem incomplete or else that all the surviving manuscripts rely on one single version of the text which lacked its final pages. There are over 500 extant manuscripts of the poet – a number which shows how much he was read – and they are usually grouped into these categories: Pithoeanus (P) named after the 16th century scholar Pithou (who wrote his name on it) and housed in the Medical School at Montpellier. This is regarded as the most reliable (that is, least prone to error) of the manuscripts. A large number of manuscripts of lesser reliability derive from a different source and are usually referred to as Φ. The central dilemma for any editor of this text is to decide whether to follow P over Φ (as at 14.11, 14.51, 15.61) or Φ over P (as at 13.28, 13.125, 15.18): or sometimes whether they are both wrong and one should adopt a newer reading (e.g. 13.141, 15.104). I have preferred in this edition to produce a readable text wherever possible and indicated in the apparatus criticus where the text printed is the fruit of modern judgement rather than more ancient sources. Interpolations are also common in ancient poetry: sometimes marginal notes in a text were inserted into the text by the scribe copying it and then found themselves part of the text: this is plausible in passages such as 13.90, 13.153, 14.117. Some

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modern scholars40 would excise more than others and I have marked up the relevant passages with square brackets but left them in place for readers to make their own judgement. The discovery in 1899 of the ‘Oxford fragment’ of 34 hitherto undiscovered lines from Satire 6 is still argued over: was this a page of real Juvenal which had fallen out of the archetype or was it the work of a skilled forger? For this edition I have relied heavily on the textual work of others. The text is largely that of Clausen, with such emendations as I have thought preferable to his readings. I have made use of the sigla which appear in the OCT throughout this book.

40  See Tarrant (1987) 297; Courtney (1975).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbreviations AG CAH CIL K-S KRS LS LSJ OCD OLD

Allen, J. H. and Greenough, J. B., New Latin Grammar (New York, 2006). The Cambridge Ancient History (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2000). Corpus Inscriptionum Latinorum (1853–). Kühner, R. and Stegmann, C., Ausführliche Grammatik der Lateinischen Sprache (Hannover, 1971). Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E. and Schofield, M., The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1983). Long, A. A. and Sedley, D. N., The Hellenistic Philosophers (2 vols, Cambridge, 1987). Liddell, H. G. and Scott, R., A Greek-English Lexicon (9th edn, Oxford, 1968). The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edn). The Oxford Latin Dictionary.

Editions of Juvenal consulted Braund, S. M. (1996) Juvenal Satires Book 1 (Cambridge). Braund, S. M. (2004) Juvenal and Persius (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library)). Clausen, W. V. (1992) A. Persi Flacci et D. Iuni Iuvenalis Saturae (Oxford Classical Text). Courtney, E. (1980, repr. 2013) A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (California). Duff, J. D. (rep. 1975) Juvenal Satires (Cambridge). Ferguson, J. (1979) Juvenal the Satires (London). Godwin, J. (2016) Juvenal Satires Book IV (Liverpool). Hardy, E. G. (1963) The Satires of Juvenal (London). Housman, A. E. (1931) D. Iunii Iuvenalis Saturae (Cambridge). Mayor, J. E. B. (1886–89) Thirteen Satires of Juvenal (London). Ramsay, G. G. (1918) Juvenal and Persius (London). Stramaglia, A. (2008) Giovenale, Satire 1, 7, 12, 16. Storia di un poeta (Bologna, Pàtron Editore). Willis, J. (1997) Iuuenalis Saturae (Stuttgart, Teubner).

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JUVENAL SATIRES BOOK 5

SATIRE XIII [exemplo quodcumque malo committitur, ipsi displicet auctori. prima est haec ultio, quod se iudice nemo nocens absoluitur, improba quamuis gratia fallaci praetoris uicerit urna.] quid sentire putas homines, Caluine, recenti de scelere et fidei uiolatae crimine? sed nec tam tenuis census tibi contigit, ut mediocris iacturae te mergat onus, nec rara uidemus quae pateris: casus multis hic cognitus ac iam tritus et e medio fortunae ductus aceruo. ponamus nimios gemitus. flagrantior aequo non debet dolor esse uiri nec uolnere maior. tu quamuis leuium minimam exiguamque malorum particulam uix ferre potes spumantibus ardens uisceribus, sacrum tibi quod non reddat amicus depositum? stupet haec qui iam post terga reliquit sexaginta annos Fonteio consule natus? an nihil in melius tot rerum proficis usu? magna quidem, sacris quae dat praecepta libellis, uictrix fortunae sapientia, ducimus autem hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda uitae nec iactare iugum uita didicere magistra. quae tam fausta dies, ut cesset prodere furtum, perfidiam, fraudes atque omni ex crimine lucrum quaesitum et partos gladio uel pyxide nummos?

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1–4  deleuit Reeve, post 195 transposuit Richards 4 fallaci: PG Seruius in Aeneid vi.431: fallacis Φ: urna PSU Seruius ibid: urnam Φ: fallacem…urnam Markland 5 homines U, Ribbeck: omnes PΦ 13 malorum PAGKTU: laborum FHLOZ 18 an PSAGU: at Φ: ut K  proficis Φ: proficit PSΣ. usu PΦ: usus KVat.2810 Σ 19  quidem PAFGU: equidem Φ 23 fausta Markland: festa codd.: furtum Nisbet: furem codd.

SATIRE XIII [Anything which is done which sets a bad example does not please the one who does it. This is the first punishment: nobody who is guilty is acquitted in his own judgement, even though the wicked favour of the praetor has prevailed by means of a lying urn.] What, Calvinus, do you think people feel about the recent crime and the charge of trust abused? But then you happen to have an estate which is not so tiny that the burden of a moderate loss would sink you, and we see that what you are suffering is not a rare occurrence. This misfortune is well-known to many people and is by now a threadbare subject taken from the middle of fortune’s pile. Let us set aside excessive moaning. A man’s pain ought not to be more fiery than is right, nor be bigger than the injury itself. You can scarcely bear a tiny, minuscule speck of misfortune, however light it is, as you blaze inside with guts bubbling up, all because a friend is not giving back to you a sum entrusted to him which was under divine protection. Is this a source of astonishment to one who has put sixty years behind him, one born in the consulship of Fonteius? Or do you derive no benefit from the experience of so much life? Great indeed is Philosophy – who gives us instructions in her sacred little books – the lady who overcomes fortune, but we reckon these men also to be fortunate, who have learned from their teacher Life to bear life’s discomforts without throwing off the yoke. What day is so auspicious that it gives up on uncovering theft, treachery, deceit – and gain pursued by means of every crime, cash generated by the sword or the drug-box?

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rari quippe boni, numera, uix sunt totidem quot Thebarum portae uel diuitis ostia Nili. nona aetas agitur peioraque saecula ferri temporibus, quorum sceleri non inuenit ipsa nomen et a nullo posuit natura metallo. nos hominum diuomque fidem clamore ciemus quanto Faesidium laudat uocalis agentem sportula? dic, senior bulla dignissime, nescis quas habeat ueneres aliena pecunia? nescis quem tua simplicitas risum uulgo moueat, cum exigis a quoquam ne peieret et putet ullis esse aliquod numen templis araeque rubenti? quondam hoc indigenae uiuebant more, priusquam sumeret agrestem posito diademate falcem Saturnus fugiens, tunc cum uirguncula Iuno et priuatus adhuc Idaeis Iuppiter antris; nulla super nubes conuiuia caelicolarum nec puer Iliacus formonsa nec Herculis uxor ad cyathos et iam siccato nectare tergens bracchia Volcanus Liparaea nigra taberna; prandebat sibi quisque deus nec turba deorum talis ut est hodie, contentaque sidera paucis numinibus miserum urguebant Atlanta minori pondere; nondum imi sortitus triste profundi imperium Sicula toruos cum coniuge Pluton, nec rota nec Furiae nec saxum aut uolturis atri

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Satire XIII

Good men are few, you see. Count them, they are hardly as many as the gates of Thebes or the mouths of the rich Nile. The ninth era is now being acted out, an age worse than the times of iron – and nature herself does not discover a name for the wickedness and has laid it against no specific metal. Yet we call on the trust of men and gods with the sort of loud shout with which the bellowing hand-out recipients voice praise of Faesidius as he pleads in court? Old man (who has not outgrown your child’s toys), tell me, do you not know the pull of other folk’s money? Do you not know what mirth your naiveté stirs in the common people, when you demand of anybody that he should not break his oath and should think that there is some divine power in any temples and the reddening altar? At one time the natives lived in this way, before Saturn put down his diadem and took up the farmer’s sickle as he fled, in those days when Juno was a little virgin and Jupiter was still a nobody in the caves of Ida. No banquets of the heaven-dwellers above the clouds then, no Trojan boy nor comely wife of Hercules at the cups nor Vulcan draining the nectar first and then cleaning his arms, black from his Liparaean shop. Each god took his lunch by himself and there was no crowd of gods such as we have today; the stars were content with just a few divinities and pressed down on poor Atlas with a lighter weight. Stern Pluto had not yet drawn as his lot the dismal kingdom of the lower deep along with his Sicilian wife, and there was no wheel there, nor Furies nor the rock nor the punishment

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poena, sed infernis hilares sine regibus umbrae. inprobitas illo fuit admirabilis aeuo, credebant quo grande nefas et morte piandum si iuuenis uetulo non adsurrexerat et si barbato cuicumque puer, licet ipse uideret plura domi fraga et maiores glandis aceruos; tam uenerabile erat praecedere quattuor annis primaque par adeo sacrae lanugo senectae. nunc si depositum non infitietur amicus, si reddat ueterem cum tota aerugine follem, prodigiosa fides et Tuscis digna libellis quaeque coronata lustrari debeat agna. egregium sanctumque uirum si cerno, bimembri hoc monstrum puero et miranti sub aratro piscibus inuentis et fetae comparo mulae, sollicitus tamquam lapides effuderit imber examenque apium longa consederit uua culmine delubri, tamquam in mare fluxerit amnis gurgitibus miris et lactis uertice torrens. intercepta decem quereris sestertia fraude sacrilega. quid si bis centum perdidit alter hoc arcana modo, maiorem tertius illa summam, quam patulae uix ceperat angulus arcae? tam facile et pronum est superos contemnere testes,

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54 quo P: quod Φ: quom Knoche 55 adsurrexerat Φ: adsurrexerit FGUO 57 fraga P Vat.Pal 1701: farra Φ 58 tam Φ: tum P 59  par adeo Φ: cara adeo G: pars adeo codd. nonnulli: sacrae Φ: serae Markland 65 hoc PSGU: ut Φ miranti Φ: mirantis G: mirandis PA: liranti Gataker: rimantis Scholte 68 examenque Φ: examenue Markland 70 miris Φ: diris Buecheler: niueis Guyet: nigris Schrader: alii alia 71 intercepta Φ: interuersa Scholte 73 illa PGHU: ille Φ 74  ceperat angulus codd.: ceperit ambitus Markland

Satire XIII

by the black vulture, but only cheerful shades without any nether-world kings. In that era wickedness was a source of astonishment. They thought it a great outrage and one deserving of the death penalty if a young man had not stood up for an old chap – or a boy for anyone with a beard even if the boy could see more strawberries and bigger heaps of the acorn in his own home. So much respect was awarded to anyone one four years older and the first chin-fluff was as good as venerable old age. These days, if a friend does not deny that money has been deposited with him, if he gives you the old purse complete with all the rust, then it is seen as marvellous trustworthiness, worthy of the Etruscan books and something that must be atoned for with a garlanded lamb. If I see a man of outstanding integrity, I compare this prodigy to a boy with double limbs, to fish discovered beneath an astonished plough and to a pregnant mule; I am as worried as I would be if a rain-shower has poured down stones and a swarm of bees in a long cluster has settled on the roof of a shrine, as if a river has flowed into the sea with amazing floods, pouring in with a cataract of milk. You complain that 10,000 sesterces has been sequestrated in an act of unholy fraud? What if somebody else has lost a secret 20,000 in this way, what if a third man has lost a greater sum than that – a sum which the corner of his expansive treasure chest had scarcely contained? It is as easy as falling off a log to despise the witnesses above

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si mortalis idem nemo sciat. aspice quanta uoce neget, quae sit ficti constantia uoltus. per Solis radios Tarpeiaque fulmina iurat et Martis frameam et Cirrhaei spicula uatis, per calamos uenatricis pharetramque puellae perque tuum, pater Aegaei Neptune, tridentem; addit et Herculeos arcus hastamque Mineruae, quidquid habent telorum armamentaria caeli. si uero et pater est, ‘comedam’ inquit ‘flebile nati sinciput elixi Pharioque madentis aceto.’ sunt in fortunae qui casibus omnia ponant et nullo credant mundum rectore moueri natura uoluente uices et lucis et anni, atque ideo intrepidi quaecumque altaria tangunt. [est alius metuens ne crimen poena sequatur.] hic putat esse deos et peierat, atque ita secum: ‘decernat quodcumque uolet de corpore nostro Isis et irato feriat mea lumina sistro, dummodo uel caecus teneam quos abnego nummos. et pthisis et uomicae putres et dimidium crus sunt tanti. pauper locupletem optare podagram nec dubitet Ladas, si non eget Anticyra nec Archigene; quid enim uelocis gloria plantae praestat et esuriens Pisaeae ramus oliuae? ut sit magna, tamen certe lenta ira deorum est; si curant igitur cunctos punire nocentes, quando ad me uenient? sed et exorabile numen fortasse experiar; solet his ignoscere. Multi

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82 Mineruae codd.: Mineruae et Jortin 86 in SGU: om. P. Vat.Pal. 1701: qui in Φ. qui PSAGU: iam Φ: casibus Φ.: lapsibus FZ. ponant Φ: ponunt KL 90  deleuit Jahn 92 decernat Φ: decernit F: decernet LZ 93 irato codd.: aurato Scholte 97 nec PSΦ: ne FGOU Ladas PSGZΣ: laudas Φ 101  deleuit Nisbet. curant Φ: curent GLU

Satire XIII

if no human being shares the knowledge. Look at how loudly he denies it, the fixed nature of his lying face as he swears by the rays of the sun, by the Tarpeian thunderbolts, the lance of Mars and the arrows of the Cirrhaean prophet, by the darts and the quiver of the girl huntress, by your trident, O Neptune father of the Aegean sea; he also includes the bow of Hercules and the spear of Minerva – whatever weapons the heavenly weapon-chests have. If he is also a father, then he says ‘may I eat the weeping head of my son boiled and dripping with Egyptian vinegar!’ There are men who attribute everything to the accidents of fortune, who do not believe that the world moves because of any guiding hand, as nature turns the wheels of the day and the year. These men are therefore fearless in touching any altars. [Another man fears that punishment may follow his crime.] This man however does believe in the existence of gods and still perjures himself, telling himself this: ‘let Isis decide whatever she wishes to do with my body, let her strike my eyes with her angry rattle, so long as I can keep hold of the cash I am denying – even if I am blind. Tuberculosis, festering sores and losing half a leg are all worth it. Ladas, if he were poor, would not hesitate to wish for the rich man’s gout, if he is not in need of Anticyra or Archigenes. For what glory does a swift foot offer, and the famished branch of an olive from Pisa? The wrath of the gods may be great but it is certainly slow; therefore if they make it their business to punish every guilty man, when will they come to me? Anyway I will possibly find that the divine power can be swayed by prayer – it does tend to forgive sins like this. Many men

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committunt eadem diuerso crimina fato: ille crucem sceleris pretium tulit, hic diadema.’ sic animum dirae trepidum formidine culpae confirmat, tunc te sacra ad delubra uocantem praecedit, trahere immo ultro ac uectare paratus. nam cum magna malae superest audacia causae, creditur a multis fiducia. mimum agit ille, urbani qualem fugitiuus scurra Catulli: tu miser exclamas, ut Stentora uincere possis, uel potius quantum Gradiuus Homericus, ‘audis, Iuppiter, haec nec labra moues, cum mittere uocem debueris uel marmoreus uel aeneus? aut cur in carbone tuo charta pia tura soluta ponimus et sectum uituli iecur albaque porci omenta? ut uideo, nullum discrimen habendum est effigies inter uestras statuamque Vagelli.’ accipe quae contra ualeat solacia ferre et qui nec Cynicos nec Stoica dogmata legit a Cynicis tunica distantia, non Epicurum suspicit exigui laetum plantaribus horti. curentur dubii medicis maioribus aegri: tu uenam uel discipulo committe Philippi. si nullum in terris tam detestabile factum ostendis, taceo, nec pugnis caedere pectus

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105  sceleris pretium PSAFGU: pretium sceleris Φ 107  confirmat Sang.FGLUZ: confirmant PSAHKOT: confirmans coni. Hermann 108 uectare Nisbet: uexare codd. 109  damnauit Knoche 115 debueris Φ: debueras AK 119 Vagelli PSFGUΣ: bacilli vel bathylli Φ 123 suspicit PFGU: suscipit Φ 125 uenam Φ: ueniam PU

Satire XIII

commit the same offences with widely different outcomes. That man gets crucified as payment for his crime, this one gets a crown.’ This is how he strengthens his spirits, trembling as they are with fear of a dread accusation; and then, when you are summoning him to the holy shrine, he gets there first, more than ready to pull you there of his own accord, or to drive you there himself. For when a bad case is backed up by a lot of brass neck, then many people find confidence convincing. He is acting out a comedy, like the runaway joker of witty Catullus while you bawl out laments enough to be able to drown out Stentor or rather as loud as Mars in Homer: ‘do you hear this, Jupiter? You don’t move your lips although you should have said something, even if you are made of marble or bronze? Why else do we put our pious incense, once the paper has been unwrapped, on your charcoal along with a cut calf’s liver and a pig’s white caul? As I see things, there is no difference to be drawn between your statues and the image of Vagellius.’ Take on board now what forms of consolation a man would be able to bring you in response: not a man who has read the Cynics or the Stoic precepts – Stoics who differ from the Cynics only in the tunic – nor who looks up to Epicurus, happy among the seedlings of his little garden. Let sick people who are in a critical condition be looked after by the greater physicians – entrust your pulse even to a student of Philippus. If you can point to no other deed on earth which is so disgusting as this, then I will be quiet and will not stop you from beating your breast

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te ueto nec plana faciem contundere palma, quandoquidem accepto claudenda est ianua damno, et maiore domus gemitu, maiore tumultu planguntur nummi quam funera; nemo dolorem fingit in hoc casu, uestem diducere summam contentus, uexare oculos umore coacto: ploratur lacrimis amissa pecunia ueris. sed si cuncta uides simili fora plena querella, si deciens lectis diuersa parte tabellis uana superuacui dicunt chirographa ligni, arguit ipsorum quos littera gemmaque princeps sardonychum, loculis quae custoditur eburnis, ten, o delicias, extra communia censes  ponendum. quid? tu gallinae filius albae, nos uiles pulli nati infelicibus ouis? rem pateris modicam et mediocri bile ferendam, si flectas oculos maiora ad crimina. Confer conductum latronem, incendia sulpure coepta atque dolo, primos cum ianua colligit ignes; confer et hos, ueteris qui tollunt grandia templi pocula adorandae robiginis et populorum dona uel antiquo positas a rege coronas; haec ibi si non sunt, minor exstat sacrilegus qui

131 dolorem PAGKU: dolores Φ 132  hoc casu PSGOU: occasu Φ diducere PHKOT: deducere Φ. 134  uersum delebat Heinrich 136 parte PSAFGU: in parte Φ 137 ligni codd.: lini Salmasius, Heinsius 139 sardonychum PGU Sang.: sardonicus Φ 140  ten o PA: te nunc Φ: ten et Manso 141  quid? Heinrich: quia codd.: albae codd.: Afrae Rupertius 142 uiles PAGOU: uilis Φ pulli PA: populi GU: populus Φ 143 ferendam codd: ferenda P 146 dolo codd.: oleo Markland 147 ueteris codd: ueteres P  qui tollunt codd.: tollunt qui HO 150–153  deleuit Willis.

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with your fists or slapping your face with a flat palm; since now that the loss has been suffered the house must be shut up, as the cash is lamented with greater groaning, greater distress of the 130 house, than deaths would be. Nobody feigns grief in this situation, happy just to rend the edge of his cloak and to rub his eyes with forced tears. Lost money is cried over with tears that are real. But if you see all the courts packed full of similar grievances, 135 and if (once the other side has read through the documents ten times over) the other side say that the signature is worthless and the tablet a waste of wood – even though they are proved wrong by the handwriting and the stone (a prince among sardonyx) which is kept safe in ivory boxes – you – oh you special case – you think that you deserve to be considered 140 outside the common run of people? What? Are you the son of a white hen while we are the cheap grey chicks born of unpromising eggs? What you are suffering is only modest and should be endured with a moderate amount of wrath if you could only turn your eyes to greater crimes. Compare the hired mugger, the fires started with sulphur 145 and with malice, when the door catches the first flames. Compare those men also who steal the imposing chalices from the old temple – objects of venerable rust and gifts of nations, along with coronets put there by a king many years ago. If things like this are not available, then there is a small-fry temple-robber 150

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radat inaurati femur Herculis et faciem ipsam Neptuni, qui bratteolam de Castore ducat; [an dubitet solitus totum conflare Tonantem?] confer et artifices mercatoremque ueneni et deducendum corio bouis in mare, cum quo clauditur aduersis innoxia simia fatis. haec quota pars scelerum, quae custos Gallicus urbis usque a lucifero donec lux occidat audit? humani generis mores tibi nosse uolenti sufficit una domus; paucos consume dies et dicere te miserum, postquam illinc ueneris, aude. quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus aut quis in Meroe crasso maiorem infante mamillam? caerula quis stupuit Germani lumina, flauam caesariem et madido torquentem cornua cirro? [nempe quod haec illis natura est omnibus una.] ad subitas Thracum uolucres nubemque sonoram Pygmaeus paruis currit bellator in armis, mox inpar hosti raptusque per aera curuis unguibus a saeua fertur grue. si uideas hoc gentibus in nostris, risu quatiare; sed illic, quando eadem adsidue spectantur proelia, ridet nemo, ubi tota cohors pede non est altior uno. ‘nullane peiuri capitis fraudisque nefandae poena erit?’ abreptum crede hunc grauiore catena

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153  deleuit J. D. Lewis. dubitet Φ: dubitat F. solitus codd.: solitumst Munro: stolidus H. Valesius: solus Leo: solidum Bailey. 154  artifices PAGKU: artificem Φ 158 occidat PAGKU: occidit Φ 164 Germani codd.: Germanus Willis. flauam codd.: flauam et Guyet 165  madido…cornua cirro codd.: madidos in cornua cirros Salmasius 166  del. Markland, Pinzger; secl. Braund, Housman, Willis, Clausen 170 hoc codd.: haec U 171  quatiare sed Φ: quatiere sed GKU: quatiaris et FLOZ 172  susp. Ruperti: quando Jacobs: quanquam codd. spectantur AFGKU: spectentur PHLOTZ 174 peiuri SA: peiori P: periuri Φ

Satire XIII

to scrape the thigh of gilded Hercules and the actual face of Neptune and to strip the gold-leaf from Castor. [Or would he check himself, a man who is in the habit of melting down the whole of the Thunderer?] Compare too the manufacturers and the trader in poison and also the man who deserves to be chucked into the sea in a bull’s hide, having the innocent ape locked up with him and suffering his adverse fate. What fraction is this of the crimes which Gallicus, the guardian of the city, listens to from sun-up right until light dies? You wish to learn about human behaviour? One house is enough. Spend a few days there and – when you have come back from there – dare to call yourself unfortunate then. Who is amazed at a swollen throat in the Alps, or who [is amazed at] a breast in Meroe bigger than its fat infant? Who is surprised at a German’s blue eyes and yellow hair spinning horns with its wet curls? [this is because all these folk have this single nature.] A Pygmy warrior in his tiny armour runs against the sudden noisy cloud of Thracian birds, but is no match for the foe and is quickly whipped up through the air by their crooked talons and carried off by the savage crane. If you were to see this in our country, you would shake with laughter: but in that country the same battles are watched constantly and so nobody laughs. There the whole platoon is no taller than a foot. “So is there to be no punishment for the perjurer and his unspeakable deception?” Just think that he has been hauled off at once with

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protinus et nostro (quid plus uelit ira?) necari arbitrio: manet illa tamen iactura nec umquam depositum tibi sospes erit, sed corpore trunco inuidiosa dabit missus solacia sanguis. ‘at uindicta bonum uita iucundius ipsa.’ nempe hoc indocti, quorum praecordia nullis interdum aut leuibus uideas flagrantia causis. [quantulacumque adeo est occasio sufficit irae.] Chrysippus non dicet idem nec mite Thaletis ingenium dulcique senex uicinus Hymetto, qui partem acceptae saeua inter uincla cicutae accusatori nollet dare. [plurima felix paulatim uitia atque errores exuit, omnes prima docens rectum, sapientia.] quippe minuti semper et infirmi est animi exiguique uoluptas ultio. continuo sic collige, quod uindicta nemo magis gaudet quam femina. cur tamen hos tu euasisse putes, quos diri conscia facti mens habet attonitos et surdo uerbere caedit occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum? poena autem uehemens ac multo saeuior illis quas et Caedicius grauis inuenit et Rhadamanthus, nocte dieque suum gestare in pectore testem. Spartano cuidam respondit Pythia uates haud inpunitum quondam fore quod dubitaret

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178 sed codd.: si Weidner et Markland 179 missus Wakefield: minimus codd.: solum Housman: nimium Vianello: socius Courtney: calidus DeJonge: saliens dub. Nisbet 183  del. Jahn, Heinrich 184 dicet Φ: dicit FLU Thaletis codd.: Cratetis Jessen 187–189  plurima – sapientia del. Guyet 188 exuit Φ: exuet U 189 docens Φ: docet PU 193 putes Φ: putas FHZ 195 quatiente Φ: quatiens FOZ

Satire XIII

very heavy chains and on our own decision killed (what more could anger wish for?); the loss still remains as it was, nor will the invested money ever be safe and sound, but instead the blood let from his decapitated corpse will offer you consolation which brings hatred. “But vengeance is a good thing which is sweeter than life itself.” Very well, the uneducated say this – people whose vitals you could see burning up sometimes for no good reasons or for merely flimsy ones. [in fact any opportunity, however tiny, is good enough for rage]. Chrysippus will not say the same, nor the gentle mind of Thales and the old man who lived next to sweet Hymettus – the man who refused to give to his accuser any part of the hemlock he had received amidst his cruel chains. [Blessed philosophy bit by bit strips off most vices and all errors of judgement, being first to teach what is right.] Vengeance is, you see, the pleasure of a diminished, weak and tiny mind. Work this out at once for yourself from the fact that nobody rejoices at revenge more than a woman. But why do you think that these men have got away with it when their consciousness of their grim deed, keeps them dumbstruck and flogs them with its unheard blows, the mind torturing them as it wields the unseen whip? Their punishment is violent and much more brutal than the punishment which grim Caedicius and Rhadamanthus can devise; they have to carry around a witness against themselves night and day within their breast. The Pythian priestess made a response to a Spartan that one day he would be punished for even thinking about

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depositum retinere et fraudem iure tueri iurando. quaerebat enim quae numinis esset mens et an hoc illi facinus suaderet Apollo. reddidit ergo metu, non moribus, et tamen omnem uocem adyti dignam Phoebo ueramque probauit extinctus tota pariter cum prole domoque et quamuis longa deductis gente propinquis. has patitur poenas peccandi sola uoluntas. nam scelus intra se tacitum qui cogitat ullum facti crimen habet. cedo si conata peregit? perpetua anxietas nec mensae tempore cessat faucibus ut morbo siccis interque molares difficili crescente cibo, Setina misellus expuit, Albani ueteris pretiosa senectus displicet; ostendas melius, densissima ruga cogitur in frontem uelut acri ducta Falerno. nocte breuem si forte indulsit cura soporem et toto uersata toro iam membra quiescunt, continuo templum et uiolati numinis aras et, quod praecipuis mentem sudoribus urguet, te uidet in somnis; tua sacra et maior imago humana turbat pauidum cogitque fateri. hi sunt qui trepidant et ad omnia fulgura pallent, cum tonat, exanimes primo quoque murmure caeli, non quasi fortuitus nec uentorum rabie sed

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205 Phoebo Jacobs: templo codd.: adyto dignam templi Markland probauit Φ: probabit P. 208  uersum damnavit Weidner. sola GKTU: saeua PAHO: scaeua FLZ uoluntas AFGUΣ: uoluptas PΦ 209 tacitum codd.: tacitus coni. Scholte 210  cedo si codd.: quod si Markland 212 ut PAU: et Φ 213 Setina Herelius et Withof: sed uina codd. 215 melius codd.: mulsum Scholte 216 Falerno codd.: Falisco Nisbet 223 fulgura codd.: fulmina recentiores nonnulli

Satire XIII

hanging on to a sum deposited with him and for shoring up his deceit with an oath. He was inquiring about the attitude of the divinity and whether Apollo was urging this deed on him. He gave the money back, but out of panic rather than principle and all the same he proved every word of the shrine to be worthy of Phoebus and true when he was wiped out together with all his offspring and home and relatives however distantly linked to him. Simply wanting to do wrong incurs these punishments; as anyone who thinks about any crime in his head without speaking it aloud carries the charge of the deed with him. What, then, if he has carried out his efforts? His anxiety is incessant and does not let up even at dinner-time. His throat is dry as if with plague and the indigestible food swells up inbetween his molars. The poor man spits out Setian wine, and doesn’t like the costly antiquity of old Alban either. Show him something better and a packed set of wrinkles is riven into his forehead, pulled tight by the Falernian [wine] just as if it were sour. If by any chance his anxiety has allowed him a short sleep, and his limbs, after tossing all over the bed are now resting, then at once he sees the temple and the altars of the abused deity, and also – something which harasses his mind with superlative sweating – he sees you in his dreams. Your ghost, god-given and larger than anything human, distresses the fearful man and compels him to confess. These are the men who tremble and go pale at every stroke of lightning, who, when it thunders, go faint at even the first rumbling of the heavens, as if this is not mere chance nor something caused by the madness of the winds but is

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iratus cadat in terras et iudicet ignis. illa nihil nocuit, cura grauiore timetur proxima tempestas uelut hoc dilata sereno. praeterea lateris uigili cum febre dolorem si coepere pati, missum ad sua corpora morbum infesto credunt a numine; saxa deorum haec et tela putant. pecudem spondere sacello balantem et Laribus cristam promittere galli non audent; quid enim sperare nocentibus aegris concessum? uel quae non dignior hostia uita? [mobilis et uaria est ferme natura malorum.] cum scelus admittunt, superest constantia; quod fas atque nefas tandem incipiunt sentire peractis criminibus. tamen ad mores natura recurrit damnatos fixa et mutari nescia. nam quis peccandi finem posuit sibi? quando recepit eiectum semel attrita de fronte ruborem? quisnam hominum est quem tu contentum uideris uno flagitio? dabit in laqueum uestigia noster perfidus et nigri patietur carceris uncum aut maris Aegaei rupem scopulosque frequentes exulibus magnis. poena gaudebis amara nominis inuisi tandemque fatebere laetus nec surdum nec Teresian quemquam esse deorum.

226 iudicet codd.: uindicet Courtney 230 ad mss: in Nisbet 236  del. Jahn 237 quod PΦ: quid U Vat. 3288 239 recurrit Φ: cucurrit O 242 ruborem Φ: pudorem HO 247–248  amara nominis codd.: aperta numinis Jessen 249 surdum codd.: Drusum Courtney, Willis

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rather a case of angry fire falling to earth and judging us. If that storm did no harm, the next one is feared with greater anxiety as if it were deferred by this calm weather. What’s more, if they begin to suffer a pain in the side accompanied by insomniac fever, they think this is a disease sent to their bodies by an angry divinity; they regard these as the rocks and spears of the gods. They don’t dare to pledge a bleating beast to a shrine or to promise the crest of a cockerel to the household gods; for what hope is allowed to guilty people when they are sick? or which sacrificial victim is not more deserving of life? [As a rule, the nature of bad men is fickle and changing.] When they are committing a crime they have plenty of resolve; they finally begin to feel what is right and wrong when the crimes have been carried out. Yet their nature rushes back to the ethical standards which they have rejected, as their nature is in fact fixed and does not know how to change. For who ever set a limit to his own criminality? When did he ever welcome back the blush of shame when once it has been removed from his brazen brow? Is there any man alive who you will see to be content with just one crime? Our cheat will put his feet into the trap and he will endure the hook in a dark prison or the cliff and rocks of the Aegean sea now crowded with famous exiles. You will crow over the unpleasant punishment meted out to this hateful individual and you will finally admit in your joy that not one of the gods is deaf or a Tiresias.

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SATIRE XIV plurima sunt, Fuscine, et fama digna sinistra [et quod maiorum uitia sequiturque minores] et nitidis maculam haesuram figentia rebus, quae monstrant ipsi pueris traduntque parentes. si damnosa senem iuuat alea, ludit et heres bullatus paruoque eadem mouet arma fritillo. nec melius de se cuiquam sperare propinquo concedet iuuenis, qui radere tubera terrae, boletum condire et eodem iure natantis mergere ficedulas didicit nebulone parente et cana monstrante gula. cum septimus annus transierit puerum, nondum omni dente renato, barbatos licet admoueas mille inde magistros, hinc totidem, cupiet lauto cenare paratu semper et a magna non degenerare culina. quid suadet iuueni laetus stridore catenae, quem mire adficiunt inscripta, ergastula, carcer? mitem animum et mores modicis erroribus aequos praecipit utque animas seruorum et corpora nostra materia constare putet paribusque elementis, an saeuire docet Rutilus, qui gaudet acerbo plagarum strepitu et nullam Sirena flagellis

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1 plurima mss.: plurime Sangallensis 1A  om. PFU, del. Calderinus  uitia mss.: uitio AGK  sequitur codd.: sequimur K 3 haesuram POT: ac rugam Φ: esuram O 7 concedet F: concedit Φ 9  ficedulas mss.: ficellas Lachmann 11 puerum PAU: puero Φ 23–24  ante 15 posuit Housman. 24 inscripta codd.: inscripti Richards 16 animas PAFU: animo Φ.  utque putet Buecheler: atque…putat codd.: atque…pari Wakefield 18 Rutilus P2OTU: rutilis P1: rutulus cett. 19 strepitu codd.: crepitu Broukhusius

SATIRE XIV Fuscinus, there are very many things which both deserve a bad reputation [because the younger generation follow the vices of their elders] [1A] and which will stick a black mark on a brilliant life – things which parents themselves demonstrate and hand on to their children. If an old man enjoys pernicious gambling, then his heir plays too while he’s still a child, and shoves the same dice in his tiny shaker. 5 Nor will a young man let any of his relatives have any higher hopes for him if he has learned to scrape truffles, to marinade mushrooms and to sink fig-peckers, swimming in the same jus, following the example of his useless father and his white-haired gullet. When his seventh year has 10 passed the boy by, and all his teeth have not yet regrown, you can bring in a thousand bearded tutors for him on this side and on that – he will still always want to dine in sumptuous style and not let his standards slip from your haute cuisine. What sort of influence is exercised over a youth by someone who loves the clanking 23 of chain,who finds branding, holding cells, prison all very much to his taste? 24 Is it a gentle spirit and a way of life which is proportionate towards minor offences 15 which he teaches him? and that he should think that slaves’ bodies share our own make-up and are made of equivalent atomic elements? or rather is it brutality which Rutilus teaches as he takes his pleasure in the painful noise of beatings and cannot find a Siren to compare to the song of the lash,

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conparat, Antiphates trepidi laris ac Polyphemus, tunc felix, quotiens aliquis tortore uocato uritur ardenti duo propter lintea ferro? rusticus expectas ut non sit adultera Largae filia, quae numquam maternos dicere moechos tam cito nec tanto poterit contexere cursu ut non ter deciens respiret? conscia matri uirgo fuit, ceras nunc hac dictante pusillas implet et ad moechum dat eisdem ferre cinaedis. sic natura iubet: uelocius et citius nos corrumpunt uitiorum exempla domestica, magnis cum subeant animos auctoribus. unus et alter forsitan haec spernant iuuenes, quibus arte benigna et meliore luto finxit praecordia Titan, sed reliquos fugienda patrum uestigia ducunt et monstrata diu ueteris trahit orbita culpae. abstineas igitur damnandis. huius enim uel una potens ratio est, ne crimina nostra sequantur ex nobis geniti, quoniam dociles imitandis turpibus ac prauis omnes sumus, et Catilinam quocumque in populo uideas, quocumque sub axe, sed nec Brutus erit Bruti nec auunculus usquam. nil dictu foedum uisuque haec limina tangat intra quae pater est. procul, a procul inde puellae lenonum et cantus pernoctantis parasiti. maxima debetur puero reuerentia, si quid

25 expectas Φ: expectat F. 30 moechum PU: moechos Φ 33 subeant Φ: subeunt P Vat.Pal.1701  animos Φ: animis P1 38–39 damnandis…est del. Braund 38  damnandis huius enim POU: damnis huiusce etenim Φ 43 usquam Φ: umquam PSU 45 pater PΦΣ: puer A  est codd.: es Cramer  inde codd.: ite Markland

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Satire XIV

he the Antiphates and the Polyphemus of his trembling household, only happy at those times when the torturer has been summoned and somebody is being burned with the blazing iron for the sake of two towels? Do you expect – you moron – that Larga’s daughter is not going to commit adultery? This girl can never list her mother’s lovers so fast nor string them together at such a pace that she does not need to draw breath thirty times. While still unwed she was her mother’s go-between. At her mother’s dictation she now fills up the wax-tablets and hands them over to the same perverts to give to her own lover. This is what nature commands: bad role-models at home corrupt us more speedily and quickly, since they come from powerful influences to steal into our souls. One or two young men might reject this behaviour perhaps – young men whose hearts were fashioned with kindly skill and from superior mud by the Titan – but the rest are led along in the footsteps of their fathers – a course which they ought to flee from – and the wheel-rut of bad behaviour which has been shown us for years drags us along its path. For this reason you should resist behaving badly, and there is one convincing reason why – to stop those we give birth to from following our offences, since we are all of us impressionable in copying what is immoral and base. You could see a Catiline in any race of people, under any sky, but there will nowhere be found a Brutus or a Brutus’ uncle. Let nothing vile in word or sight touch the threshold which has a father inside. Get away with you, get away from here, girls of pimps and the singing of the all-night party-crawler. The greatest respect is owed to a child. If you are planning anything

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turpe paras, ne tu pueri contempseris annos, sed peccaturo obstet tibi filius infans. nam si quid dignum censoris fecerit ira quandoque et similem tibi se non corpore tantum nec uultu dederit, morum quoque filius et qui omnia deterius tua per uestigia peccet, corripies nimirum et castigabis acerbo clamore ac post haec tabulas mutare parabis. unde tibi frontem libertatemque parentis, cum facias peiora senex uacuumque cerebro iam pridem caput hoc uentosa cucurbita quaerat? hospite uenturo cessabit nemo tuorum. ‘uerre pauimentum, nitidas ostende columnas, arida cum tota descendat aranea tela, hic leue argentum, uasa aspera tergeat alter.’ uox domini furit instantis uirgamque tenentis. ergo miser trepidas, ne stercore foeda canino atria displiceant oculis uenientis amici, ne perfusa luto sit porticus, et tamen uno semodio scobis haec emendat seruulus unus: illud non agitas, ut sanctam filius omni aspiciat sine labe domum uitioque carentem? gratum est quod patriae ciuem populoque dedisti, si facis ut patriae sit idoneus, utilis agris,

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48 ne Ruperti: nec codd. pueri codd.: teneros Courtney: parui conj. Markland 49 obstet PU: obstat K: obsistet T: obsistat Φ 51 quandoque P: quandoquidem Φ 52 quoque PFTUΣ: tibi Φ qui PTU: cum Φ 54–55  del. Guyet 55 ac codd.: aut PKV 59 cessabit Φ: cessaret U: cessarit Housman 61 descendat codd.: descendet L descendit OZ 62 leue PSAU: lauet Φ 63 furit PSA: fremat Φ 66 ne PSΦ: neu P, Housman 67 scobis PSOUΣ: scrobis Φ. emendat codd.: emundat UL 71 patriae ΦΣ: patria PS: ciuis Housman: paci Nisbet. agris codd.: armis Nisbet

Satire XIV

immoral, do not fail to take account of the boy’s immature years, but let an infant son stop you from doing wrong. For if he ends up doing something which merits the censor’s wrath, and when he proves that he is like you not just in his body and facial appearance, but that he is also the son of your character, a lad who commits worse crimes in every case for following in your footsteps, then I expect you will chide him and tell him off with ear-splitting yelling – and then later on you will set about changing your will. What’s with the knit brow and fatherly outspokenness, when you do worse things yourself as a old man? It’s your head which is empty of brains and has been needing a windy cupping-glass for a long time. If a guest is coming, none of your staff will get any rest. ‘Sweep the floor, show off the gleaming columns, get that dried-up spider down with all its web. This man must wipe the smooth silver, another man is to do the embossed vessels.’ The master’s voice rages wildly as he stands over them, stick in hand. So you are miserable and anxious in case the hallway is soiled with dog shit and offends the eyes of your friend on his arrival, in case the colonnade is drenched with mud – and yet just one little slave could sort this all out with one half-measure of sawdust: but you do not stir yourself to make sure that your son should see your house as virtuous, lacking any moral stain and free of vice? It is praiseworthy that you have produced a citizen for the fatherland and the people, so long as you make him qualified for the state, useful in the fields

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utilis et bellorum et pacis rebus agendis. plurimum enim intererit quibus artibus et quibus hunc tu moribus instituas. serpente ciconia pullos nutrit et inuenta per deuia rura lacerta: illi eadem sumptis quaerunt animalia pinnis. uoltur iumento et canibus crucibusque relictis ad fetus properat partemque cadaueris adfert: hic est ergo cibus magni quoque uolturis et se pascentis, propria cum iam facit arbore nidos. sed leporem aut capream famulae Iouis et generosae in saltu uenantur aues, hinc praeda cubili ponitur: inde autem cum se matura leuauit progenies stimulante fame festinat ad illam quam primum praedam rupto gustauerat ouo. aedificator erat Caetronius et modo curuo litore Caietae, summa nunc Tiburis arce, nunc Praenestinis in montibus alta parabat culmina uillarum Graecis longeque petitis marmoribus uincens Fortunae atque Herculis aedem, ut spado uincebat Capitolia nostra Posides. dum sic ergo habitat Caetronius, inminuit rem, fregit opes, nec parua tamen mensura relictae partis erat. totam hanc turbauit filius amens, dum meliore nouas attollit marmore uillas. quidam sortiti metuentem sabbata patrem nil praeter nubes et caeli numen adorant, nec distare putant humana carne suillam, qua pater abstinuit, mox et praeputia ponunt; Romanas autem soliti contemnere leges Iudaicum ediscunt et seruant ac metuunt ius,

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Satire XIV

73

and useful in engaging in the business of war and peace. What will make the greatest difference is the sort of skills and behaviour you train him in. The stork feeds her chicks on a snake and on the lizard she finds throughout the secluded countryside: 75 those chicks go looking for the same animals when they have taken up their wings. The vulture quits the cattle, the dogs and the crucifixions and rushes to her offspring, bringing a chunk of a dead body: for this is also the food of the adult vulture when it feeds itself when is at the stage of making a nest in its own tree. 80 The noble birds which are the servants of Jupiter go hunting for hare or deer in the glades – that’s where the prey come from which is served up in the eyrie; in turn, when the young are grown-up and have flown the nest as hunger spurs them on they rush after that same prey which they had first tasted when their egg was smashed open. 85 Caetronius was a builder, now on the rounded shorelines of Caieta, now on the topmost refuge of Tibur, now in the hills of Praeneste putting up lofty gabled villas with marble both Greek and sourced far afield and outdoing both the temple of Fortune and that of Hercules, 90 just as the eunuch Posides outdid our Capitol. As Caetronius maintained this sort of housing, he reduced his substance, he broke up his fortune – but he still left behind no small amount of an estate. His crazy son frittered all that away in the course of putting up new villas with even better marble. 95 Some sons are given a father who venerates the sabbath and worship nothing but the clouds and the sky-god, thinking that there is no distinction between human flesh and pork which father abstained from – and in due course they cast off their foreskins. They tend to despise Roman laws 100 and learn, keep and respect the Jewish code of law –

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tradidit arcano quodcumque uolumine Moyses: non monstrare uias eadem nisi sacra colenti, quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere uerpos. sed pater in causa, cui septima quaeque fuit lux ignaua et partem uitae non attigit ullam. sponte tamen iuuenes imitantur cetera, solam inuiti quoque auaritiam exercere iubentur. fallit enim uitium specie uirtutis et umbra, cum sit triste habitu uultuque et ueste seuerum, nec dubie tamquam frugi laudetur auarus, tamquam parcus homo et rerum tutela suarum certa magis quam si fortunas seruet easdem Hesperidum serpens aut Ponticus. adde quod hunc de quo loquor egregium populus putat adquirendi artificem; quippe his crescunt patrimonia fabris sed crescunt quocumque modo maioraque fiunt incude adsidua semperque ardente camino. et pater ergo animi felices credit auaros qui miratur opes, qui nulla exempla beati pauperis esse putat; iuuenes hortatur ut illa ire uia pergant et eidem incumbere sectae. sunt quaedam uitiorum elementa, his protinus illos inbuit et cogit minimas ediscere sordes; mox adquirendi docet insatiabile uotum.

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103–4  post 100 collocabat Scaliger 111 laudetur PU: laudatur Φ 115 adquirendi PU: atque uerendi Φ 117  del. Jahn 119  damnauit Housman || et codd.: hic Guyet: qui Courtney | felices Φ: felicis HTU 120 qui qui codd.: cum…cum Weidner | miratur P: mirantur Φ | qui PU: hi Φ 121 putat PKU: putant Φ | iuuenes codd.: iuuenesque Housman | hortatur PΦ: hortantur LOZ | illa PFU: illam Φ Prisc. 122 uia PFU: uiam Φ Prisc. | pergant Φ Prisc.: peragant P 123 illos codd.: illis P: ille Weidner 124 minimas PAFGU: nimias Φ | ediscere codd.: educere Scholte 125  damnauit Jahn

Satire XIV

whatever Moses handed down to them in his mystical book: not to give directions to anyone not respecting the same sacred rites and to lead only the circumcised to the spring they are looking for. The father is to blame, the man for whom every seventh day is one of sloth, with no contact with any other part of his life. Young men imitate other vices of their own accord. It’s only avarice which they are ordered to practise even if they do not want to. The reason? It’s a con, this vice which has the semblance and the shadow of a virtue. Because it is miserable in outfit, looks and dresses austerely and as the miser is unanimously praised as if he were a man of thrift like a frugal man, one who keeps guard over his property with a surer hand than if those same riches were being protected by the dragon of the Hesperides or the one of Pontus. Furthermore, people think that this man I am speaking of is a consummate creator of wealth: Estates grow in the hands of this kind of worker – they grow in any way possible and get bigger – as the anvil is never at rest and the forge chimney is always ablaze. This is how a father thinks that misers are happy in spirit. Anyone who admires money, who thinks that there are no cases of the happy poor man – he encourages the young men to go down that path and apply themselves to that code of behaviour. Vices have some basic elements: he at once baptises these kids with these and forces them to master their child’s portion of shabbiness. next he teaches them an unquenchable longing for riches.

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seruorum uentres modio castigat iniquo ipse quoque esuriens, neque enim omnia sustinet umquam mucida caerulei panis consumere frusta, hesternum solitus medio seruare minutal Septembri nec non differre in tempora cenae alterius conchem aestiuam cum parte lacerti signatam uel dimidio putrique siluro filaque sectiui numerata includere porri. inuitatus ad haec aliquis de ponte negabit. sed quo diuitias haec per tormenta coactas, cum furor haut dubius, cum sit manifesta phrenesis, ut locuples moriaris, egentis uiuere fato? interea, pleno cum turget sacculus ore, crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia creuit, et minus hanc optat qui non habet. ergo paratur altera uilla tibi, cum rus non sufficit unum et proferre libet finis maiorque uidetur et melior uicina seges; mercaris et hanc et arbusta et densa montem qui canet oliua. quorum si pretio dominus non uincitur ullo, nocte boues macri lassoque famelica collo iumenta ad uiridis huius mittentur aristas nec prius inde domum quam tota noualia saeuos in uentres abeant, ut credas falcibus actum. dicere uix possis quam multi talia plorent et quot uenales iniuria fecerit agros. 127 neque PΦ: nec U 128 mucida codd.: omnia Schurzfleisch: frusta codd.: frustra PFGU 131 conchem PSUΣ: concham Φ | aestiuam PAU: aestiui Φ 134 negabit Φ: negauit PS: negabat O 139 creuit FTU: crescit Φ 141 cum…non…unum codd.: cui…nunc…unum? Weidner 144 oliua codd.: oliui G 145  pretio dominus PU: dominus pretio Φ 147 mittentur PATU: mittuntur Φ 149 abeant A: habeant PΦ 150–151  damnauit Heinrich

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He chastises the slaves’ stomachs with unfair rations and even goes hungry himself, as he cannot bear ever to eat up all the mouldy lumps of blue-green bread. He always keeps yesterday’s mince in the middle of September, and what’s more in summer he stores up for the next dinner his beans, locked up with a chunk of mackerel or half a rotten catfish and he counts the shreds of chopped leek before locking them away. Anyone invited to this meal will refuse – even a beggar from the bridge. But what is the point of money gathered by this sort of torments? Is it not manifest madness, or obvious insanity to live like a poor man must so you can die rich? In the meantime, when your purse swells with its mouth full, the love of cash grows as much as the money has grown, and the man who has none wants it less. That is how another villa is acquired for you, since one country pile is not enough and it is nice to extend your boundaries. Next-door’s cornfield looks bigger and better, so you buy this one too, along with the vineyards and a moutain which is grey with packed olive-trees. If their owner cannot be won over by any amount of money then one night some thin cattle, famished pack beasts with exhausted necks, will be sent into this man’s lush corn and will not come home again until all his fields move into their savage bellies, making it look as if the deed had been done with scythes. You would not easily be able to say how many people make this sort of complaint and how many estates go on the market because wrongdoing forces them to.

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sed qui sermones, quam foede bucina famae! ‘quid nocet haec?’ inquit ‘tunicam mihi malo lupini quam si me toto laudet uicinia pago exigui ruris paucissima farra secantem.’ scilicet et morbis et debilitate carebis et luctum et curam effugies, et tempora uitae longa tibi posthac fato meliore dabuntur, si tantum culti solus possederis agri quantum sub Tatio populus Romanus arabat. mox etiam fractis aetate ac Punica passis proelia uel Pyrrhum inmanem gladiosque Molossos tandem pro multis uix iugera bina dabantur uulneribus; merces haec sanguinis atque laboris nulli uisa umquam meritis minor aut ingratae curta fides patriae. saturabat glebula talis patrem ipsum turbamque casae, qua feta iacebat uxor et infantes ludebant quattuor, unus uernula, tres domini; sed magnis fratribus horum a scrobe uel sulco redeuntibus altera cena amplior et grandes fumabant pultibus ollae. nunc modus hic agri nostro non sufficit horto. inde fere scelerum causae, nec plura uenena miscuit aut ferro grassatur saepius ullum humanae mentis uitium quam saeua cupido inmodici census. nam diues qui fieri uolt, et cito uolt fieri; sed quae reuerentia legum, quis metus aut pudor est umquam properantis auari? ‘uiuite contenti casulis et collibus istis, 152 foede PGH: foedae Φ: foeda ea Döderlein 153 haec PFGU: hoc Φ: om. T 158 posthac PA: post haec Φ 162  gladiosque Molossos codd.: gelidosque Molossos Scaliger 164 haec P: ea Φ 165 nulli FU, Heinrich: nullis PSΦ | aut PFOU: haud Φ 175 saeua mss.: caeca coni. Markland 176 inmodici PA: indomiti Φ 178 metus mss.: modus Herelius

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But what of the gossip? How repellent is the trumpeting of nasty rumours! ‘What harm does that do?’ he replies. ‘I prefer to hang onto my lupin pod than to have the neighbourhood in the whole village praise me as the man who harvests the pathetic grain of a tiny estate.’ You will of course be free from diseases and infirmity, you will escape grief and anxiety, and long life will be granted you with better fortune after this, if you only gain possession of as much farm-land in sole ownership as the Roman people used to plough when Tatius was king. In later times men who were broken by age, who had endured Punic battles, the brutal Pyrrhus and the Molossian swords finally were given as reward for their many injuries barely half a hectar of land. This payment for their blood and toil never seemed to any of them less than they deserved or insufficient loyalty from a thankless state. A little clump of earth like that would overface the father himself and the mob in his cottage, where lay his pregnant wife and children playing: four in all – one of them a slave born at home, three of them masters. Their big brothers would come home from ditch or furrow, and a second meal bigger than the first met them, and massive pots smoked with porridge. These days this allotment of land is not enough for our garden. That is often the cause of crime, and no disorder of the human mind concocts more poisons or wields the knife on the streets more often than the brutal lust for limitless wealth. For the man who wants to get rich wants to get rich quickly. But what respect for the laws, what apprehension or decency do you ever find in an impatient miser? ‘Live contented with small cottages and those hills,

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o pueri,’ Marsus dicebat et Hernicus olim Vestinusque senex, ‘panem quaeramus aratro, qui satis est mensis: laudant hoc numina ruris, quorum ope et auxilio gratae post munus aristae contingunt homini ueteris fastidia quercus. nil uetitum fecisse uolet, quem non pudet alto per glaciem perone tegi, qui summouet euros pellibus inuersis: peregrina ignotaque nobis ad scelus atque nefas, quaecumque est, purpura ducit.’ haec illi ueteres praecepta minoribus; at nunc post finem autumni media de nocte supinum clamosus iuuenem pater excitat: ‘accipe ceras, scribe, puer, uigila, causas age, perlege rubras maiorum leges; aut uitem posce libello, sed caput intactum buxo narisque pilosas adnotet et grandes miretur Laelius alas; dirue Maurorum attegias, castella Brigantum, ut locupletem aquilam tibi sexagesimus annus adferat; aut, longos castrorum ferre labores si piget et trepidum soluunt tibi cornua uentrem cum lituis audita, pares quod uendere possis pluris dimidio, nec te fastidia mercis ullius subeant ablegandae Tiberim ultra, neu credas ponendum aliquid discriminis inter unguenta et corium: lucri bonus est odor ex re qualibet. illa tuo sententia semper in ore

184 homini PATU: homines Φ 192 vigila codd: vigil ac AGFLZ 194 sed codd: nam Weidner 198 aut codd.: at AGHKV 199 trepidum P: trepido Φ

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Satire XIV

boys’: the old man from the Marsi, the Hernici and the Vestini would say this long ago. ‘Let’s get our bread with the plough, bread enough for the tables. This is what the gods of the countryside applaud and it was by their aid and assistance that – after the gift of the welcome corn-ear – men picked up a distate for the old acorn. That man will have no urge to commit what is forbidden, if he is not embarrassed to protect himself in the ice with high boots, who deflects the east winds with his skins turned inside-out: purple cloth, whatever it is, foreign and strange to us, leads us to crime and wickedness.’ These are the teachings which those men of old handed to the young, but these days once autumn has ended, when the son is flat on his back in the middle of the night his barking father wakes up the young man: ‘get your tablets, write, boy, do not fall asleep, prepare lawsuits, study closely the red-lettered laws of our ancestors: or else go after the vine-staff with a letter of petition, and let Laelius notice your head (untouched by the comb) and hairy nostrils; make sure he admires your broad shoulders; pull down the Moors’ huts, the forts of the Brigantes so that your sixtieth year will bring you the eagle of riches: otherwise, if you find the enduring of lengthy toil in army camps unappealing, and if the horns liquefy your nervous bowel when heard with the trumpets, then get hold of what you can sell with a profit of 50%. Don’t turn your nose up at any goods which need to be moved the other side of the Tiber, and don’t go thinking there is any distinction between perfumes and tanned hide: profit has a good smell, whatever it comes from. This is the mantra which should never leave your lips,

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uersetur dis atque ipso Ioue digna poeta: “unde habeas quaerit nemo, sed oportet habere.”’ [hoc monstrant uetulae pueris repentibus assae, hoc discunt omnes ante alpha et beta puellae.] talibus instantem monitis quemcumque parentem sic possem adfari: ‘dic, o uanissime, quis te festinare iubet? meliorem praesto magistro discipulum. securus abi: uinceris, ut Aiax praeteriit Telamonem, ut Pelea uicit Achilles. parcendum est teneris; nondum impleuere medullas maturae mala nequitiae. cum ponere barbam coeperit et longi mucronem admittere cultri, falsus erit testis, uendet periuria summa exigua et Cereris tangens aramque pedemque. elatam iam crede nurum, si limina uestra mortifera cum dote subit. quibus illa premetur per somnum digitis! nam quae terraque marique adquirenda putas breuior uia conferet illi; nullus enim magni sceleris labor. “haec ego numquam mandaui” dices olim “nec talia suasi.” mentis causa malae tamen est et origo penes te. nam quisquis magni census praecepit amorem et laeuo monitu pueros producit auaros [quippe et per fraudes patrimonia conduplicari] dat libertatem et totas effundit habenas curriculo; quem si reuoces, subsistere nescit 206 poeta PS: poetae Φ 208–9  del. Jahn. 208  uetulae pueris P: pueris uetulae Φ  repentibus Sang: petentibus F: repetentibus U: poscentibus Φ  assae codd.: assem FHKLU 216 ponere Markland: pectere codd. 217 longi Φ: longae P 218  falsus erit testis codd.: falsus testis erit O. 219 pedemque codd.: facemque Scholte 223 adquirenda codd.: anquirenda Stewechius 229  om. Φ.  quippe et Amyx: et qui P

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one worthy of the gods and even of Jupiter himself (if he were a poet): ‘nobody is asking where you got it from, but get it you must.’ (Old dry-nurses point this out to kids still learning to walk, this is what all girls learn before they do their ABC.) I could say to a parent who was pushing this sort of advice: ‘tell me, you fatuous fool, who is telling you to hurry? Take it from me, the pupil has better prospects than his teacher. Go away and stop worrying. You will be outclassed, like Ajax outclassed Telamon, like Achilles topped Peleus. Go easy on the young. They have not yet had their bone-marrow filled with the evils of adult criminality. When he has started to have his beard cut and to let the long knife-blade get to it, then he will be a lying witness, he will sell his false oaths for a tiny sum, even when he is touching the altar and the foot of the statue of Ceres. Regard any daughter-in-law as already dead if she comes over your threshold with a fatal dowry. What fingers will he use to strangle her as she sleeps! Whatever you think is worth finding over land and by sea – a shorter route will bring him all that to him. For there is no hard work involved in large-scale crime. ‘I never told him to do these things’ you will say one day ‘nor did I urge such a course.’ The cause and the source of his insanity lies with you. Whoever has drilled a love of great wealth into them with his twisted guidance – he brings up miserly children, since he gives them the freedom to get their inheritance doubled by fraud and lets slip the reins on their chariot totally. If you call him back he has not learned how to stop

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Juvenal

et te contempto rapitur metisque relictis. nemo satis credit tantum delinquere quantum permittas: adeo indulgent sibi latius ipsi. cum dicis iuueni stultum qui donet amico, qui paupertatem leuet attollatque propinqui, et spoliare doces et circumscribere et omni crimine diuitias adquirere, quarum amor in te quantus erat patriae Deciorum in pectore, quantum dilexit Thebas, si Graecia uera, Menoeceus, in quorum sulcis legiones dentibus anguis cum clipeis nascuntur et horrida bella capessunt continuo, tamquam et tubicen surrexerit una. ergo ignem, cuius scintillas ipse dedisti, flagrantem late et rapientem cuncta uidebis. nec tibi parcetur misero, trepidumque magistrum in cauea magno fremitu leo tollet alumnus. nota mathematicis genesis tua, sed graue tardas expectare colus: morieris stamine nondum abrupto. iam nunc obstas et uota moraris, iam torquet iuuenem longa et ceruina senectus. ocius Archigenen quaere atque eme quod Mithridates composuit: si uis aliam decerpere ficum atque alias tractare rosas, medicamen habendum est, sorbere ante cibum quod debeat et pater et rex.’

232 metis Φ: meritis PA 234  indulgent ipsi mss: indulget ipse U 241–3  uersus damnauerunt Knoche, Markland 245  late et PΦ: et late AHK 247  in cauea P:  in caueam Φ 248 graue mss: caue Scholte 255 debeat mss: debeant PA.  et…et…Ambr., Sang., aut…aut…Φ: et…ut Housman

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and just races on, ignoring you and leaving the turning-posts well behind. Nobody thinks he is breaking the rules enough if he only does so as much as you let him: people give themselves much more latitude. When you tell a young man that it is a stupid thing to give to a friend, to lighten a relative’s poverty and put him back on his feet, you are then teaching him to rob, to defraud and to use all manner of crime to acquire wealth. You have as much love of wealth in you as there was love of the fatherland in the heart of the Decii, as much as Menoeceus loved Thebes (if Greece is not lying). In Theban furrows legions were born from the dragon’s teeth with their shields already on them, and they engage in dreadful battles at once, as if the trumpet-player had risen up with them. The result is that you will see the fire, whose sparks you provided for him personally, blazing over a wide area and destroying everything. Nor will any leniency be shown to you, you pathetic creature, and the lion cub will murder the trembling tamer with a massive roar in his own den. Your horoscope is well known to astrologers, but it is boring to wait for the slow spindles. You will die before the thread is snapped off. You are already in his way, you are delaying his hopes for the future and your long and stag-like old age is already torturing the young man. Go and find Archigenes, quickly, and buy the stuff that Mithridates concocted. If you want to pick another fig and handle other roses, then you need to have the drug which both the father and the king must swallow before eating.

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monstro uoluptatem egregiam, cui nulla theatra, nulla aequare queas praetoris pulpita lauti, si spectes quanto capitis discrimine constent incrementa domus, aerata multus in arca fiscus et ad uigilem ponendi Castora nummi, ex quo Mars Ultor galeam quoque perdidit et res non potuit seruare suas. ergo omnia Florae et Cereris licet et Cybeles aulaea relinquas: tanto maiores humana negotia ludi. an magis oblectant animum iactata petauro corpora quique solet rectum descendere funem quam tu, Corycia semper qui puppe moraris atque habitas, coro semper tollendus et austro, perditus ac uilis sacci mercator olentis, qui gaudes pingue antiquae de litore Cretae passum et municipes Iouis aduexisse lagonas? hic tamen ancipiti figens uestigia planta uictum illa mercede parat, brumamque famemque illa reste cauet: tu propter mille talenta et centum uillas temerarius. aspice portus et plenum magnis trabibus mare: plus hominum est iam in pelago. ueniet classis quocumque uocarit spes lucri, nec Carpathium Gaetulaque tantum aequora transiliet, sed longe Calpe relicta audiet Herculeo stridentem gurgite solem. grande operae pretium est, ut tenso folle reuerti inde domum possis tumidaque superbus aluta, Oceani monstra et iuuenes uidisse marinos. 264 ludi mss: ludis U 265 oblectant mss: oblectent Markland 269  uersum deleuit Hermann. ac uilis PU: articulis Nisbet:  ac siculis Φ, Housman: axiculis Leo. 270 pingue PAFTU, Ambr.: pingui  Φ 271 aduexisse PΦ: adduxisse Ambr. lagonas P lagoenas Φ 272  figens mss: fingens KL ante 283 uersum excidisse putauit Markland

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I am showing you outstanding entertainment here. You could not match it in any theatres or in the podia of the posh praetor: if you just watch how much people risk their lives for – increases to their estate, the fat bag of cash in the bronze-lined money chest and the money which needs to be put under Castor’s watchful eye ever since Avenging Mars lost even his helmet and could not look after his own belongings. So you may leave aside all the stage-curtains of Flora, Ceres and Cybele: human interactions make so much better entertainment. Or is the heart more delighted by bodies thrown up from a springboard and a man who makes a living walking down a taut rope rather than you on your Corycian boat, always hanging about and even living there, always liable to be chucked around by winds from north-west and south, desperate and abject, a trader of the stinking sack who is overjoyed to have imported sticky raisin-wine from the shores of ancient Crete along with flagons which are compatriots of Jupiter? He places his steps with hesitant foot and gets his livelihood with that trade, and dodges cold and hunger with that rope of his: while you risk everything for a thousand talents and a hundred country-houses. Look at the ports and the sea, filled with giant vessels. By now the majority of the human race is on the sea. A fleet will come to wherever the hope of gain calls it, it will leap over not just the Carpathian and Gaetulan seas but will leave Gibraltar far behind and hear the sun hissing in Hercules’ flood. It is ample reward for your hard work to be able to go back home with a swollen sack, proud that your flaccid leather is now tumescent, and to have seen the wonders of the Ocean and the young men of the sea.

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non unus mentes agitat furor. ille sororis in manibus uoltu Eumenidum terretur et igni, hic boue percusso mugire Agamemnona credit aut Ithacum. parcat tunicis licet atque lacernis, curatoris eget qui nauem mercibus implet ad summum latus et tabula distinguitur unda, cum sit causa mali tanti et discriminis huius concisum argentum in titulos faciesque minutas. occurrunt nubes et fulgura: ‘soluite funem’ frumenti dominus clamat piperisue coempti, ‘nil color hic caeli, nil fascia nigra minatur; aestiuum tonat.’ infelix hac forsitan ipsa nocte cadet fractis trabibus fluctuque premetur obrutus et zonam laeua morsuque tenebit. sed cuius uotis modo non suffecerat aurum quod Tagus et rutila uoluit Pactolus harena, frigida sufficient uelantes inguina panni exiguusque cibus, mersa rate naufragus assem dum rogat et picta se tempestate tuetur. tantis parta malis cura maiore metuque seruantur: misera est magni custodia census. dispositis praediues amis uigilare cohortem seruorum noctu Licinus iubet, attonitus pro electro signisque suis Phrygiaque columna atque ebore et lata testudine. dolia nudi

285 terretur mss: torretur PLOZ 287 lacernis PFLOTU: lacertis Φ 289 distinguitur mss: defenditur Guyet: unda AGOUP uda FLZ una HT 293 piperisue PAGTU piperisque Φ: coempti mss: coemptor A Prisc. 295 hac U: ac P: at Φ: an FOZ 296 cadet Φ: cadit PA 297 morsuque mss. morsuue Heinrich

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Satire XIV

It not just one sort of madness which stirs up men’s minds. That man, in the hands of his sister, is terrified by the face and the fire of the Furies, while this one has battered a bull and thinks it is Agamemnon or the Ithacan who is the one lowing. He might spare his tunics and his cloaks, but anyone who fills his ship with merchandise right up to the top of the sides, who is kept apart from the waves by a plank – that man needs a guardian. The reason for so much trouble, for this critical venture is silver cut up to show wording and tiny pictures. Clouds and thunderbolts come rushing over: ‘untie the mooring rope’ shouts out the master of the corn and the pepper he has bought. ‘This colour of the sky is nothing, the black strip of cloud is nothing to worry us. It’s summer thunder.’ This very night perhaps this unhappy man will fall from his shattered beams and be swallowed up and engulfed in the waves clinging on to his money-belt with his left hand and his teeth. Not so long ago gold was not enough to satisfy his desires, the gold which is rolled down the Tagus and Pactolus with its red sand: now he will be happy with rags covering up his ice-cold crotch and a bit of food. His ship is sunk, he’s a castaway begging for pennies and keeping himself alive by doing paintings of the storm. Things which have needed so much trouble to procure are protected with greater unease and anxiety. Keeping guard over great wealth is a dismal process. Licinus the plutocrat stations his fire-buckets and orders a cohort of slaves to stay up all night. He’s scared stiff about his amber and his statues, his Phrygian columns, along with this ivory and his plated tortoise-shell. The pots of a naked

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non ardent Cynici; si fregeris, altera fiet cras domus atque eadem plumbo commissa manebit. sensit Alexander, testa cum uidit in illa magnum habitatorem, quanto felicior hic qui nil cuperet quam qui totum sibi posceret orbem passurus gestis aequanda pericula rebus. nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia: nos te, nos facimus, Fortuna, deam. mensura tamen quae sufficiat census, si quis me consulat, edam: in quantum sitis atque fames et frigora poscunt, quantum, Epicure, tibi paruis suffecit in hortis, quantum Socratici ceperunt ante penates; numquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit. acribus exemplis uideor te cludere? misce ergo aliquid nostris de moribus, effice summam bis septem ordinibus quam lex dignatur Othonis. haec quoque si rugam trahit extenditque labellum, sume duos equites, fac tertia quadringenta. si nondum impleui gremium, si panditur ultra, nec Croesi fortuna umquam nec Persica regna sufficient animo nec diuitiae Narcissi, indulsit Caesar cui Claudius omnia, cuius paruit imperiis uxorem occidere iussus.

310 atque mss: aut AGU ut Ambr. 315–16 delebat Guyet: cf. 10.365–6.  habes PΦ abest mss. 316 nos PΦ: te AG 321 dicit mss: dicet FLZ 325  trahit extenditque mss: trahis extendisque F 330–331  deleuit Herwerden

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Satire XIV

Cynic do not burn. If you break one, another home for him to live in will be made tomorrow – or the same one will last longer, sealed up with lead. Alexander realised, when he saw in that pot its great dweller, how much happier this man was who had no desires at all than the man who demanded the whole world for himself, who would suffer dangers on the same scale as his achievements. You have no divine power, provided there is forethought: it is we who make you a goddess, Fortune. If anyone asks my advice, I will tell them what amount of wealth is enough: just enough as thirst, hunger and cold demand of you, as much as was enough for you, Epicurus, in your little gardens, and as much as the home of Socrates contained. It is never the case that Nature says one thing and philosophy another. Do you think I am cramping you with models which are harsh? If so, add in something from our own culture and create the amount which Otho’s law thinks right for the fourteen rows of seats. If this also wrinkles your brow and pushes out your lip then take two knights – make that three lots of 400,000. If I have still not filled your lap with that, if it gapes wider still, then neither the riches of Croesus nor the kingdoms of Persia will ever satisfy your heart – nor the wealth of Narcissus, the man to whom Claudius Caesar gave everything he wanted, and whose commands he obeyed when he was ordered to kill his wife.

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SATIRE XV Quis nescit, Volusi Bithynice, qualia demens Aegyptos portenta colat? crocodilon adorat pars haec, illa pauet saturam serpentibus ibin. effigies sacri nitet aurea cercopitheci, dimidio magicae resonant ubi Memnone chordae atque uetus Thebe centum iacet obruta portis. illic aeluros, hic piscem fluminis, illic oppida tota canem uenerantur, nemo Dianam. porrum et caepe nefas uiolare et frangere morsu (o sanctas gentes, quibus haec nascuntur in hortis numina!), lanatis animalibus abstinet omnis mensa, nefas illic fetum iugulare capellae: carnibus humanis uesci licet. attonito cum tale super cenam facinus narraret Vlixes Alcinoo, bilem aut risum fortasse quibusdam mouerat ut mendax aretalogus. ‘in mare nemo hunc abicit saeua dignum ueraque Charybdi, fingentem inmanis Laestrygonas et Cyclopas? nam citius Scyllam uel concurrentia saxa Cyaneis plenos et tempestatibus utres crediderim aut tenui percussum uerbere Circes et cum remigibus grunnisse Elpenora porcis. tam uacui capitis populum Phaeaca putauit?’ sic aliquis merito nondum ebrius et minimum qui 2 Aegyptos P: Aegyptus Φ 4–8  uersus Guieto suspecti 5 dimidio…Memnone Φ: dimidium Memnona frag.Bob.: Memnonie P: Memnoni Duff 7  illic aeluros U:  illic caeruleos Φ: illicaeruleos P 9  et frangere PA: ac frangere Φ 17 saeua codd.: Scylla coni. Schrader 18 et Φ: atque PSAT 20 Cyaneis PU: cyanes Φ 23  tam uacui capitis codd.: sic uacuum cerebri Prisc.G.L.K. iii.218

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SATIRE XV Who does not know, Volusius of Bithynia, what sort of monsters crazy Egypt worships? This group reveres the crocodile while that one shudders at the ibis stuffed full of snakes. A golden image of the sacred long-tailed ape gleams in the place where the supernatural strings sound out of Memnon chopped in half 5 and ancient Thebes with its hundred gates lies razed to the ground. Cats in one place, the river-fish in another, and in a third place it’s the dog which whole towns worship – but nobody worships Diana. It’s a sin to abuse and chew to pieces a leek or an onion (oh what pious folk, with these gods being born in their 10 gardens!) – no dinner table partakes of woolly beasts, and it’s a sin to slit the throat of a goat’s kid in that country: but they are allowed to eat human flesh. When Ulysses was telling of a felony of this kind to a dumbstruck Alcinous over dinner, it was wrath or mirth perhaps that he aroused in some of them 15 as if he were a lying big-mouth. ‘Is nobody throwing this man into the sea? He deserves a real-life Charybdis, and a savage one at that, for inventing his giant Laestrygonians and Cyclops. For I would sooner believe in Scylla, or the clashing Cyanean rocks and the bags full of storm-winds 20 or Elpenor, struck by Circe’s flimsy blow and grunting with the oarsmen pigs. Did he think that the Phaeacian people were so empty-headed?’ This is how somebody might have spoken, and rightly so: somebody not yet drunk

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de Corcyraea temetum duxerat urna; solus enim haec Ithacus nullo sub teste canebat. nos miranda quidem sed nuper consule Iunco gesta super calidae referemus moenia Copti, nos uolgi scelus et cunctis grauiora coturnis; nam scelus, a Pyrrha quamquam omnia syrmata uoluas, nullus apud tragicos populus facit. accipe nostro dira quod exemplum feritas produxerit aeuo. inter finitimos uetus atque antiqua simultas, inmortale odium et numquam sanabile uulnus, ardet adhuc Ombos et Tentura. summus utrimque inde furor uolgo, quod numina uicinorum odit uterque locus, cum solos credat habendos esse deos quos ipse colit. sed tempore festo alterius populi rapienda occasio cunctis uisa inimicorum primoribus ac ducibus, ne laetum hilaremque diem, ne magnae gaudia cenae sentirent positis ad templa et compita mensis peruigilique toro, quem nocte ac luce iacentem septimus interdum sol inuenit. horrida sane Aegyptos, sed luxuria, quantum ipse notaui, barbara famoso non cedit turba Canopo. adde quod et facilis uictoria de madidis et

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25 duxerat codd.: produxerat A: deduxerat Φ 27 Iunco A: iunpo P: iunio Φ: uino OU 32 produxerit codd.: produxerat AK 35–38  summus…colit sed del. Francke 35 Ombos PSU: combos Φ 36 uolgo PU: uulgi Φ 40 uisa codd.: uis H 43  nocte ac luce PAU: luce ac nocte Φ  iacentem codd.: calentem coni. Plathner 44 interdum PSATU: interea Φ 44–48 horrida…titubantibus del. Francke 45 Aegyptos PU: aegyptus Φ: est Coptus coni. Markland 46 cedit codd.: cedet A. turba PT: ripa ΦΣ

Satire XV

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who had only taken a tiny drop of booze from the Corcyraean flagon: 25 for this was what the Ithacan recited to them, all by himself, with no witnesses to back him up. I will tell a tale of events which are amazing but which are recent, from the consulship of Iuncus, and from beyond the walls of boiling Coptus. I will tell of the misdeed of a mob, an event more serious than any tragedy: for even if you unfurled all the trailing robes from Pyrrha onwards, you will find that 30 no whole people perpetrates a misdeed in tragedy. Listen while I tell you of a case of what appalling savagery has committed in our own times. Between the neighbouring peoples of Ombi and Tentyra there burns to this day an old and long-standing feud, an enduring hatred and a sore which can never be healed. On both sides the greatest degree of 35 rage in the mob arises over the fact that each of the two areas hates the divinities of their neighbours. Each one thinks that the only gods to be counted as gods are the ones which it personally worships. But when one tribe held a time of religious festival, then all the chiefs and leaders of their enemies decided to snatch the opportunity, to stop them from 40 being aware of a happy and cheerful day, or the joys of a massive banquet with their tables set up at temples and crossroads, on a couch which does not sleep and which lies there night and day and is then sometimes found by the seventh sunrise. Egypt is certainly rough, but (as I have noticed for myself) the foreign mob there 45 is a match for disreputable Canopus in terms of over-indulgence. Consider this too: it was an easy victory over men who were drunk and

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blaesis atque mero titubantibus. inde uirorum saltatus nigro tibicine, qualiacumque unguenta et flores multaeque in fronte coronae: hinc ieiunum odium. sed iurgia prima sonare incipiunt; animis ardentibus haec tuba rixae. dein clamore pari concurritur, et uice teli saeuit nuda manus. paucae sine uolnere malae, uix cuiquam aut nulli toto certamine nasus integer. aspiceres iam cuncta per agmina uoltus dimidios, alias facies et hiantia ruptis ossa genis, plenos oculorum sanguine pugnos. ludere se credunt ipsi tamen et puerilis exercere acies quod nulla cadauera calcent. et sane quo tot rixantis milia turbae, si uiuunt omnes? ergo acrior impetus et iam saxa inclinatis per humum quaesita lacertis incipiunt torquere, domestica seditioni tela, nec hunc lapidem, qualis et Turnus et Aiax, uel quo Tydides percussit pondere coxam Aeneae, sed quem ualeant emittere dextrae illis dissimiles et nostro tempore natae. nam genus hoc uiuo iam decrescebat Homero, terra malos homines nunc educat atque pusillos; ergo deus, quicumque aspexit, ridet et odit. a deuerticulo repetatur fabula. Postquam subsidiis aucti, pars altera promere ferrum audet et infestis pugnam instaurare sagittis.

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52  interpunxit Markland 56 agmina codd.: agmine PU 58 ossa codd.: ora Markland (qui plenosque quoque coni.) 60 nulla codd.: nuda U 61 quo PO: quod Φ 64 seditioni Hadr. Valesius et Σ: seditione PΦ: seditionis Markland 65  hunc lapidem codd.: hos lapides coni. Guyet.  qualis et P: quales et O: qualis se F: quali se Φ: qualem uel UO 67 quem codd.: quos Guyet 69–71  uersus damn. De Jonge 71  fortasse delendum censuit Knoche

Satire XV

slurring their words, staggering around from the umixed wine. On one side was a men’s dance, with black piper, there were some sort of perfumes, flowers and lots of garlands on their heads. On the other side was ravenous hatred. Taunts are the first things which begin to sound: with hearts on fire this is the trumpet-call of the spat. Then they run at each other with matching roar. Instead of a weapon the unarmed hand rages. Few jawbones are not wounded, hardly anyone in the whole skirmish keeps his nose intact. Look through all the ranks and you would now see faces ripped in half, appearances changed, bones gaping out of shattered cheeks, fists filled with the blood from eyes. The actual combatants think it is a game, however, and a boyish mock-battle exercise, because they are not treading on dead bodies. They are right: what is the point of a scrapping mob of so many thousands if they are all still alive? So the fighting gets harsher and now they start to look for stones on the ground, bend back their arms and fling them – home-grown weapons for a riot. This was not the sort of stone which Turnus and Ajax used, nor the one that the son of Tydeus used to batter the hip of Aeneas with its weight, but rather the sort that hands, very different from those, have the strength to hurl – hands born in our own times. For this race was declining even while Homer was still alive, and the earth brings forth wicked and weedy men now. Any god who has cast an eye on us laughs and scorns us. Let my tale resume after this digression. Once they had been reinforced with extra forces, one side has the nerve to produce steel weapons and to renew the fighting with arrows pointed at the enemy.

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terga fugae celeri praestant instantibus Ombis qui uicina colunt umbrosae Tentura palmae. labitur hinc quidam nimia formidine cursum praecipitans capiturque. ast illum in plurima sectum frusta et particulas, ut multis mortuus unus sufficeret, totum corrosis ossibus edit uictrix turba, nec ardenti decoxit aeno aut ueribus, longum usque adeo tardumque putauit expectare focos, contenta cadauere crudo. hic gaudere libet quod non uiolauerit ignem, quem summa caeli raptum de parte, Prometheu, donasti terris; elemento gratulor, et te exultare reor. sed qui mordere cadauer sustinuit nil umquam hac carne libentius edit; nam scelere in tanto ne quaeras et dubites an prima uoluptatem gula senserit, ultimus ante qui stetit, absumpto iam toto corpore ductis per terram digitis aliquid de sanguine gustat. Vascones, ut fama est, alimentis talibus usi produxere animas, sed res diuersa, sed illic fortunae inuidia est bellorumque ultima, casus extremi, longae dira obsidionis egestas. [huius enim, quod nunc agitur, miserabile debet

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75 fugae POT: fuga Φ.  praestant instantibus Ombis O: praestant instantibus omnes U: praestant instantibus orbes LZ: praestantibus omnibus instans PFGK: praestantibus omnibus instant AHT. 76 palmae codd.: pampae Salm. 77 hinc PO: hic Φ 79 frusta codd.: frustra OU 85 Prometheu Griffith: Prometheus Φ: promethea P 86 donasti Griffith: donauit codd. 86–87 elemento…reor del. Orelli et Hermann 88 nil PAFOT: nihil Φ: mihi Z 90 ante Lond.mus.Brit. Add. 11997 sicut coni. Housman: autem PΦ 91 stetit codd.: uenit Guyet 93 alimentis Φ: elementis P. usi Φ: olim PFOTU 97–98  del. Guyet, Francke 97  huius enim codd.: cuiuis nam Weidner

Satire XV

While the Ombites chase them down, the men who dwell in the neighbouring Tentyra with its shady palm-trees turn their backs in a swift retreat. Somebody from this side, running flat out in a state of excessive nervous panic, slips and is captured. He gets chopped into lots of little chunks and fragments, so that one corpse can be enough for many people. The victorious mob gnaws at his bones and eats him all up. They did not boil him first in a burning bronze pot or roast him on spits – they thought that was so long and tedious a process to wait for the hearth-fire and were happy with raw corpse. We can be happy here that they did not pollute the fire which you, Prometheus, stole from the summit of heaven and gave to the earth; I congratulate the substance itself and I believe that you are glad too. The man who could bring himself to chew on a corpse never ate anything with more relish than this meat: for in a criminal case of such seriousness, so you don’t ask or wonder whether only the first gullet felt the pleasure, the man who was just before standing at the back of the line, now that the whole body has been consumed, draws his fingers across the earth and gets a taste of the blood. Vascones, as the story has it, made use of this sort of foodstuff and extended their lives – but that is a different case. There it was the hostility of fortune and the extremities of war, the ultimate misfortune, the dreadful starvation brought on by a long siege. [The incident which is now in play is a case which ought to arouse

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exemplum esse cibi, sicut modo dicta mihi gens.] post omnis herbas, post cuncta animalia, quidquid cogebat uacui uentris furor, hostibus ipsis pallorem ac maciem et tenuis miserantibus artus, membra aliena fame lacerabant, esse parati et sua. quisnam hominum ueniam dare quisue deorum uentribus abnueret dira atque inmania passis et quibus illorum poterant ignoscere manes quorum corporibus uescebantur? melius nos Zenonis praecepta monent, [nec enim omnia quidam pro uita facienda putant] sed Cantaber unde Stoicus, antiqui praesertim aetate Metelli? nunc totus Graias nostrasque habet orbis Athenas, Gallia causidicos docuit facunda Britannos, de conducendo loquitur iam rhetore Thyle. nobilis ille tamen populus, quem diximus, et par uirtute atque fide sed maior clade Zacynthos tale quid excusat: Maeotide saeuior ara Aegyptos. quippe illa nefandi Taurica sacri inuentrix homines, ut iam quae carmina tradunt digna fide credas, tantum immolat; ulterius nil aut grauius cultro timet hostia. quis modo casus inpulit hos? quae tanta fames infestaque uallo

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98 cibi PΦ: tibi G. sicut codd.: si cui coni. Housman 102–133 deest Z 104 uentribus Hadr. Valesius: uiribus Φ: urbibus P: fortibus dub. Markland. abnueret POTU: abnuerit Φ 105 illorum codd.: ipsorum U 106 uescebantur codd.: uescantur sed A 107–108 nec…putant del. Francke.  omnia cuiquam / pro uita facienda putat coni. Griffith 107 quidam PFOU: quaedam Φ 113 diximus codd.: dicimus F 114 Zacynthos P: saguntos uel saguntus Φ: sacynthos U 116 Aegyptos P: Aegyptus Φ 117 carmina codd.: carmine O 119 quis POTU: qui Φ

Satire XV

pity in you, just like the people recently mentioned.] After eating all the plants, after all the animals – whatever the rage of an empty belly drove them to – when even their enemies were pitying their pale skins, their skinny bodies, their scrawny limbs, then they began to tear at other men’s bodies out of hunger, ready to eat even their own. Who – of men and of gods – who would refuse to grant pardon to bellies which had suffered dread horrors and whom even the spirits of the men whose corpses they were feeding on could pardon? The teachings of Zeno offer us better advice (for some people think that not everything is worth doing for the sake of life), but how could a Cantabrian be a Stoic, especially in the days of Metellus of old? Nowadays the whole world has the Greek Athens and our own equivalent and articulate Gaul has taught British lawyers their job, while Thyle is talking about hiring a public orator these days. That people which we have discussed is noble. Zacynthus was every bit as good for courage and keeping their word but they excelled in suffering calamity and can excuse something similar: but Egypt is more brutal than the altar of Maeotis. For that woman of Tauris who invented the unspeakable ritual – assuming that you regard as worth trusting those things which poems hand down – she only sacrifices people. The victim fears nothing more extreme or more serious than the knife. What crisis drove these men in the recent events? What hunger was so great? Were weapons pointed at their

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arma coegerunt tam detestabile monstrum audere? anne aliam terra Memphitide sicca inuidiam facerent nolenti surgere Nilo? qua nec terribiles Cimbri nec Brittones umquam Sauromataeque truces aut inmanes Agathyrsi, hac saeuit rabie inbelle et inutile uolgus paruula fictilibus solitum dare uela phaselis et breuibus pictae remis incumbere testae. nec poenam sceleri inuenies nec digna parabis supplicia his populis, in quorum mente pares sunt et similes ira atque fames. mollissima corda humano generi dare se natura fatetur, quae lacrimas dedit. haec nostri pars optima sensus. plorare ergo iubet causam dicentis amici squaloremque rei, pupillum ad iura uocantem circumscriptorem, cuius manantia fletu ora puellares faciunt incerta capilli. naturae imperio gemimus, cum funus adultae uirginis occurrit uel terra clauditur infans et minor igne rogi. quis enim bonus et face dignus arcana, qualem Cereris uolt esse sacerdos, ulla aliena sibi credit mala? separat hoc nos a grege mutorum, atque ideo uenerabile soli sortiti ingenium diuinorumque capaces atque exercendis pariendisque artibus apti

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124 Cimbri codd.: Cambri Sang.  Brittones AHL: britones PGKT: bristones F: bistones OU: Teutones Markland 125 que PSOTU: ue Φ 127  fictilibus codd.: sutilibus coni. Schrader 134–5 causam…rei del. Knoche 134  causam dicentis codd: casum lugentis Wakefield. amici codd.: amictus Courtney 139 clauditur codd.: conditur Guyet 142 credit PAOU: credat Φ 143 ideo codd.: adeo Nisbet 145  fortasse spurium censuit Nisbet 145 pariendisque OU: ***iendisque P: rapiendisque Vat.Reg. 2029: capiendisque ΦΣ

Satire XV

defences and so forced them to bring themselves to commit so abominable an atrocity? If the land of Memphis were bone dry, was there another way of shaming the Nile which was refusing to rise? Never have the terrifying Cimbri nor the Britons, nor the bloodthirsty Sauromatae nor the inhuman Agathyrsi raged with the madness of this unwarlike useless mob who like to hoist tiny sails on their clay boats and lean to the little oars of the painted pot. You will not discover a punishment for their crime, nor will you make these peoples suffer as they deserve – peoples in whose minds anger and hunger are of equal value and look the same. Nature claims that she gave us our softest hearts when she gave us tears. This is the best part of our sensibility. So she tells us to weep at the shabbiness of a friend who is in court pleading his case, the ward who is summoning his defrauding guardian to court: his face is streaming with tears and his girlish hair make his gender a matter of uncertainty. It is by nature’s orders that we howl, when we meet the funeral of a grown-up unmarried girl, or when a little child is buried in earth, not yet old enough for the funeral pyre. For who is there who is good, who is worthy of the secret torch, living as the priest of Ceres wishes, who thinks that other people’s misfortunes do not concern him? This is what marks us off from the herd of dumb animals. That is why we alone have been allotted a mind worthy of respect, we who are capable of grasping the divine and fitted for the practising and the creation of the arts.

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sensum a caelesti demissum traximus arce, cuius egent prona et terram spectantia. mundi principio indulsit communis conditor illis tantum animas, nobis animum quoque, mutuus ut nos adfectus petere auxilium et praestare iuberet, dispersos trahere in populum, migrare uetusto de nemore et proauis habitatas linquere siluas, aedificare domos, laribus coniungere nostris tectum aliud, tutos uicino limine somnos ut conlata daret fiducia, protegere armis lapsum aut ingenti nutantem uolnere ciuem, communi dare signa tuba, defendier isdem turribus atque una portarum claue teneri. sed iam serpentum maior concordia. parcit cognatis maculis similis fera. quando leoni fortior eripuit uitam leo? quo nemore umquam expirauit aper maioris dentibus apri? Indica tigris agit rabida cum tigride pacem perpetuam, saeuis inter se conuenit ursis. ast homini ferrum letale incude nefanda produxisse parum est, cum rastra et sarcula tantum adsueti coquere et marris ac uomere lassi nescierint primi gladios extendere fabri. aspicimus populos quorum non sufficit irae occidisse aliquem, sed pectora, bracchia, uoltum crediderint genus esse cibi. quid diceret ergo

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153 domos codd.: domus U 154 limine Φ: limite PA 163 rabida codd.: rapida AGK 166 et PAOTU: ac Φ 167  uersum damnauit Nisbet 168 nescierint PAG: nescierent U Vat.Urb.342: nescirent FLOTZ extendere PAT Sang.: extundere Φ: excudere LO 171 cibi codd.: tibi U

Satire XV

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We alone have drawn down a heart which has been sent from the heavenly realm, something which beasts, which walk on all fours and gaze at the earth, lack. At the beginning of the world the common creator gifted them souls but nothing else. To us he also gave a heart, so that reciprocal affection would impel us to seek and offer help, 150 to bring scattered people into tribes, to move away from the old grove and to abandon the woodland inhabited by our ancestors, to build homes, to join up another house to our own home – with the intention that collective self-confidence could give us sleep which is safe thanks to our neighbour’s doorway, to use weapons 155 to protect the man who has fallen or the citizen who is tottering with a serious injury, to sound the alarm on a shared trumpet, to find defence in the same turrets and to be held safe with a single key for the gates. As things are, there is more agreement among snakes. Beasts do not attack other beasts with spotted markings like their own. When did a 160 stronger lion rob another lion of its life? In which grove did a boar ever breathe its last, killed by the teeth of a bigger boar? The Indian tigress maintains unbroken peace with the furious tigress: savage bears live in agreement amongst themselves. But for human beings it is not enough to have produced 165 death-dealing steel on an unspeakable anvil, although the first blacksmiths used to forge only rakes and hoes, wearying themselves with mattocks and ploughshare and not knowing how to knock out swords. We are looking at peoples whose anger is not satisfied with just having murdered somebody, but who think that his chest, arms 170 face are a type of food. What would Pythagoras say, where would he

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uel quo non fugeret, si nunc haec monstra uideret Pythagoras, cunctis animalibus abstinuit qui tamquam homine et uentri indulsit non omne legumen?

Satire XV

not rather flee, if he were here to see these abominations now? He abstained from eating all living things as if they were human and did not even give his belly a treat with every sort of bean.

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SATIRE XVI Quis numerare queat felicis praemia, Galli, militiae? nam si subeuntur prospera castra me pauidum excipiat tironem porta secundo sidere. plus etenim fati ualet hora benigni quam si nos Veneris commendet epistula Marti et Samia genetrix quae delectatur harena. commoda tractemus primum communia, quorum haut minimum illud erit, ne te pulsare togatus audeat, immo, etsi pulsetur, dissimulet nec audeat excussos praetori ostendere dentes et nigram in facie tumidis liuoribus offam atque oculum medico nil promittente relictum. Bardaicus iudex datur haec punire uolenti calceus et grandes magna ad subsellia surae legibus antiquis castrorum et more Camilli seruato, miles ne uallum litiget extra et procul a signis. ‘iustissima centurionum cognitio est’ inquis ‘de milite, nec mihi derit ultio, si iustae defertur causa querellae.’ tota cohors tamen est inimica, omnesque manipli consensu magno efficiunt curabilis ut sit uindicta et grauior quam iniuria. dignum erit ergo

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1. Galli PU: Galle Φ 2 subeuntur PF: subeantur Φ post 2 lacunam intellexit Jahn. 2a suppleuit exempli causa Housman 8  ne te PAO: nec U: si te Φ 10  audeat excussos codd.: excussos studeat Nisbet: gaudeat excussos Markland. 12 oculum PU: oculo F: oculos Φ. relictum FU: relictos Φ 18  deleuit Nisbet. est inquis Housman: est igitur codd.: exigitur Buecheler: agitur Kilpatrick: est inquis Housman, Willis 21  efficiunt PF: officiunt Φ.  curabilis ut sit PSAFU: plorabilis ut sit Guyet, Cramer: ut cura tibi sit Housman: curabitis Φ 22 et PAFTU: omisit Φ

SATIRE XVI Who could count, Gallus, the rewards of successful military service? For if the camp that you join is thriving then there is nothing that the gods can give you that is more desirable. So I would let the gate receive me, a nervous recruit, with the stars on my side. For the hour of a benevolent destiny is more powerful than any letter of recommendation to Mars from Venus and from his mother who loves the sand of Samos. First let’s deal with the benefits shared by all [soldiers], of which not the least significant will be this one – that no toga-clad citizen would dare to thump you. In fact, even if the citizen is the one getting thumped, he would hide it and not dare to show to the praetor his knocked out teeth the black swelling on his face with the blue lumps and the one eye left him (the doctor is not making any promises). If he wants redress for this he gets a judge – a soldier’s boot and massive lower legs sitting at the huge benches as the ancient laws of military service and the custom of Camillus is preserved – no soldier is to go to court outside the camp and far from the standards. ‘The verdict of centurions is the height of justice in the case of a soldier’, you say, ‘and I will not miss out on vengeance, if the case which is brought is one of a justified complaint.’ But the whole cohort is against you and all the units with overwhelming consensus see to it that your redress will need the doctor and be more serious than the wrong done to you. It will be

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declamatoris mulino corde Vagelli, cum duo crura habeas, offendere tot caligas, tot milia clauorum. quis tam procul adsit ab urbe praeterea, quis tam Pylades, molem aggeris ultra ut ueniat? lacrimae siccentur protinus, et se excusaturos non sollicitemus amicos. ‘da testem’ iudex cum dixerit, audeat ille nescio quis, pugnos qui uidit, dicere ‘uidi,’ et credam dignum barba dignumque capillis maiorum. citius falsum producere testem contra paganum possis quam uera loquentem contra fortunam armati contraque pudorem. praemia nunc alia atque alia emolumenta notemus sacramentorum. conuallem ruris auiti improbus aut campum mihi si uicinus ademit et sacrum effodit medio de limite saxum, quod mea cum patulo coluit puls annua libo, debitor aut sumptos pergit non reddere nummos uana superuacui dicens chirographa ligni, expectandus erit qui lites incohet annus totius populi. sed tum quoque mille ferenda taedia, mille morae; totiens subsellia tantum sternuntur, iam facundo ponente lacernas Caedicio et Fusco iam micturiente parati digredimur, lentaque fori pugnamus harena.

23 mulino PSΣ: mutinensi ΣΦ: mutinensis GKTU 24  caligas, tot codd. recentiores: caligatos PΦ 25 adsit Collins: absit PΦ: sit F 29 cum PFU: quem Φ 30  qui uidit PTU: uidit qui Φ 38 et PFU: aut Φ 39 patulo PFOU: uetulo Φ 41  cf. xiii.137 42 incohat codd.: inchoat PU: inchoet Φ, Servius in Aen. ii.102 43 tum Φ: tunc PAFG 45 lacernas PFU: lucernas Φ

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the sort of thing you expect of the donkey-brained ranter Vagellius, since you have two good legs, to run up against so many boots, so many thousand hobnails. Besides, who would turn up so far from the city? Who would be such a Pylades as to come beyond the mass of the Embankment? Let the tears be dried at once, and let’s not harass friends who will just make their excuses anyway. When the judge says ‘bring your witness’, if somebody dared – any one who had seen the fists flying – to say ‘I saw it’, I would think him up to the standard of the beard and the long hair of our ancestors. It is quicker to bring out a witness who will lie against a civilian than one who will tell the truth against the wealth and the honour of a man in armour. Let us now mark up other rewards, other payments that come with the military oaths. If a wicked neighbour has taken a glen or a field from my family country estate and dug up the sacred stone from the middle of the boundary – a stone which my annual food-offering of polenta honoured with its flat cake; or if a debtor insists on not giving back to me the cash he took, claiming that the signature on the worthless document is a fake, there will be a wait until the time of year to begin proceedings brought by all and sundry. Even then we will have to put up with a thousand exasperations, a thousand delays; so many times are the benches cushioned but no more than that – and now the learned Caedicius is taking off his cloak and now Fuscus is taking a piss. We are ready to start, but we disperse, and fight our battle on the sticky sand of the Forum.

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ast illis quos arma tegunt et balteus ambit quod placitum est ipsis praestatur tempus agendi, nec res atteritur longo sufflamine litis. solis praeterea testandi militibus ius uiuo patre datur. nam quae sunt parta labore militiae placuit non esse in corpore census, omne tenet cuius regimen pater. ergo Coranum signorum comitem castrorumque aera merentem quamuis iam tremulus captat pater; hunc fauor aequus prouehit et pulchro reddit sua dona labori. ipsius certe ducis hoc referre uidetur ut, qui fortis erit, sit felicissimus idem, ut laeti phaleris omnes et torquibus omnes

48 illis AHKT: illi PΦ 49 ipsis PFTU: illis Φ 56 fauor Ruperti: labor PΦ

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But men who have their bodies covered in weapons with a sword-belt around them – they are personally offered a time of court action to please them, they do not find their property wasted away with the lengthy drag of the case. Furthermore, it is only soldiers who are given the right to make a will while their father is alive. For it has been decided that all the property gained in the toil of soldiering is not considered part of the family estate which father keeps total control over. That is why Coranus, following the standards and earning the military salary, finds himself courted by his own father who is by now doddering. Fair favour promotes him and gives its gifts to his glorious work. It seems to be a matter of great importance to the emperor himself that a man who will be brave should also be blessed with fortune, that all be delighted with medals, all with decorations

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COMMENTARY SATIRE XIII The addressee is a certain Calvinus who is elderly (17) and not a man of meagre means (6–8). He has given a sum of money to an unnamed man for safe keeping and the man has sworn an oath to do so faithfully: when Calvinus tried to get his money back the man denied having it and so Calvinus is outraged at the theft and the perjury. Summary of the poem 1–18 J. expresses surprise that Calvinus is so upset at being defrauded of a relatively modest sum of money 19–74 J. shows how such fraud is common in Rome and Calvinus’ indignation is only showing his naiveté (simplicitas 35) in becoming so angry over such a small sum. 75–111 people find it easy to swear false oaths and can justify doing so in their own minds 112–19 you call on the gods for vengeance 120–73 but your case is not that bad compared to far worse crimes 174–5 ‘So is the criminal going to get away with it?’ 175–92 Revenge is small-minded and petty 193–249 and the criminal will suffer the pains of guilt and anxiety and give you your revenge himself. This satire operates on several levels but the central theme is anger. First and most obviously it mocks the mean rich man who is making a great fuss about losing what is (to him) a small sum: so it is satire of the rich and pampered. There is wonderful irony at work here: Calvinus exaggerates the loss he has suffered, and J. humours him mercilessly, making him at one point (221–2) literally larger than life and ending the poem promising him joy (gaudebis … laetus 237–8) which the rest of the poem has argued against. Secondly it is a parody of the literary form known as consolatio (on which see below), the high-flown language applied to a small pecuniary loss making its hyperbole comically inappropriate while also mocking the absurd pretensions of Calvinus. The target of the satire ends up being the consoler

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as much as (or more than) the consolee, as our narrator overeggs his pudding even more than Calvinus exaggerates the damage of his loss. Both of them are (as has been said of Richard II in Shakespeare) characters in a history who act as if they are characters in a tragedy and, as the poem progresses, the consoler himself becomes more and more of a fantasist. He is seen as projecting bizarre quixotic imagery of the inner damage occasioned in the man who has filched the cash and (in doing so) ends up as vindictive as Calvinus himself: the consoler ends up being effectively as vengeful as the addressee and this poem ends up a suasoria in reverse, a consolatio which fails to console and a piece of advice which ultimately reverses itself. There is a long tradition in ancient literature of the consolatio (λόγος παραμυθητικός: see OCD s.v. ‘consolatio’ and esp. Cicero Tusc.Disp. 3.76– 83), usually about the death of a loved one: Priam and Achilles, for instance, weep together over their losses and Achilles consoles the older man (Homer Iliad 24.507–51), and Pericles’ Funeral Speech (Thucydides 2.34–46) is in many ways an outstanding public consolatio. Prose authors developed this genre with help from the philosophical and rhetorical schools: famous examples include Servius Sulpicius’ letter to Cicero (ad Fam. 4.5) on the death of his daughter Tullia, Cicero’s letter to Titius (ad Fam. 5.16), Seneca’s consolatory letters to Lucilius (63) and to Marullus (99), and his essay to Marcia on the death of her son (Dial.6). Cicero tells us (ad Att. 12.14.3) that he had written his own consolatio on the death of Tullia – a text which has not survived – and Plutarch wrote a wonderfully affecting Consolatio ad uxorem. Cicero (Acad. Prior. 2.135) tells us that ‘we all read Crantor on grief … it should be learned by heart’ alluding to the influential περὶ πένθους of the Academic Crantor (325–275 BC). Poets also produced wonderful laments which acted as poetic consolations such as: Catullus 101, Horace Odes 1.24, Propertius 3.7, 3.18, 4.11, Ovid Amores 3.9. These are of course all serious works dealing with death, and there was always scope for parody, beginning with Catullus’ lament for his girlfriend’s sparrow (Catullus 3) becoming Ovid’s lament for his girlfriend’s parrot (Amores 2.6). Juvenal takes common elements of the genre in this poem but his tone is largely one of mockery of this pampered drama-queen whose suffering is small (143) rather than any real concern for his loss, and the style is therefore burlesque pastiche rather than philosophical argument. The form, then, is consolatory, but the satirical target is anger and the way we deal with it in the context of wrongdoing suffered by ourselves and others. Anger is (after all) not considered a vice in the ancient world when it

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expresses righteous indignation at wrongs done which go unpunished. The first word of Homer’s Iliad is ‘anger’ (μῆνιν) and that poem explores (inter alia) the ways in which anger is (or is not) the right response to injustice and cruelty, especially when it seems to bring more suffering in its wake: Greek tragedy is filled with men and women who act out of anger and rightly so (Euripides’ Heracles is obviously seen as right to kill Lycus in order to protect his family, for instance) or perhaps less rightly so (Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra has motivation and reason to kill her husband but the Oresteia shows how this is not enough). Philosophers such as Plato (Laches) discuss the concept of courage (uirtus, ἀνδρεία) and Aristotle would argue that the correct virtue is midway between the opposing vices of cowardice on the one hand and aggression on the other (see e.g. Nicomachean Ethics 1125b26–1126b10 and for the whole topic Hobbs (2000) 50–112). Anger is a huge theme in Juvenal – indeed he claims (1.79) that ‘anger makes me write poetry’ (facit indignatio uersum) – but here we have an examination rather than an expression of anger. The shadowy figure of the speaker is as elusive as ever. Is he a concerned friend, anxious about Calvinus’ state of mind? Could he even be the person who defrauded him? The anger certainly moves both ways: the argument moves from mockery of Calvinus’ puny loss to (almost) excusing the wrongdoing with the consideration that such crimes are normal now that we have long outgrown the silly tales of the mythical past (the argument that ‘you are not the only one to suffer crime’ (19–70) can also be applied to criminals (e.g. Herodotus 6.68)) – and he even suggests (189–92) that revenge is the act of an idiot or a woman. The final section, with its prurient gloating over the neurotic suffering of the criminal, is a form of mockery of the vindictive state of mind which would derive joy from it. Our speaker is no healer of minds, but rather a cruel teacher leading a foolish man by the nose through a variety of arguments to a conclusion which both humours and rebukes him. For further recent analysis of this poem see: Pryor (1962); Fredericks (1971); Edmunds (1972); Morford (1973); Braund (1997); Keane (2007) 31–35; Geue (2017a) 203–27; Jones (1993); Uden (2019). 1–18  J. expresses surprise that Calvinus is so upset at being defrauded of a relatively modest sum of money 1–4  The wicked man’s guilty conscience gives him no pleasure in his crime unless he is given the opportunity to cleanse himself by legal punishment. This paradox – that being punished is better for the criminal than going scot-free – is

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drawn from Plato Gorgias 472e4–7, Republic 392a–c, Laws 660e–662c, 728c: cf. especially Plato Gorgias 477e7–479e9 for the ‘medical’ view that legal punishment restores the mental health of the delinquent. This contrasts with the common concept of the adikos eudaimon who exults in his criminality and was envied for the pleasure this afforded him, as discussed (and dismissed) in Plato Gorgias 470c9–471d2. Reeve ((1983) 30) argues that the lines are not genuine: “Even though Housman’s note salvages sense from 1–6, the punishment of conscience can hardly be used as the premise of an a fortiori argument at the beginning of the poem when J. is going to produce it like a rabbit from a hat in 192–239. H. Richards (Classical Review 13 (1899) 20) wanted to put the lines after 195, but a self-contained passage is less likely to have wandered than to have been composed from scratch or imported from another work; perhaps, like 1.85–6, it was designed as a programmatic tag (cf. also 14. 1b, a makeshift versification of the simple summary quod maiorum uitia sequuntur minores). Without it the poem opens in the same way as 8, 15, and 16”. This line of argument is less compelling when we compare the opening lines of poems 10 and 16 which are also of this pseudo-philosophizing kind. Furthermore, as James Uden reminds me (per litteras), ‘the very specificity of the reference to a corrupt praetor suggests that there is some situation behind this opening which would have been known to J.’s contemporaries’. 1  Nobody is acquitted: You can escape the law but not your conscience and the wicked despise themselves: cf. Seneca (Ep. 42.2) ‘nor is there any greater punishment for wickedness than the fact that one disgusts oneself and one’s family and friends’ and (Ep. 97.14): ‘the first and the greatest punishment of sinners is the fact that they have sinned’. exemplum often indicates an act which is used as a role-model to others for good – such as we find in 10.49, 10.24, Livy 22.60.14.3, and Cicero Philippics 14.34.5 and used of a good example of thrift in Horace Satires 1.1.33 – or bad precedents and models of how not to behave (Horace Odes 4.11.26, Martial 1.27.5). At 14.120 Juvenal alludes to the rich man who thinks there are no instances (exempla) of a ‘happy poor man’. exemplum thus denotes behaviour which is memorable and significant, for fame or for infamy. Satire trades on the publishing of examples of folly and vice, such as those which Horace’s father would point out to him (Horace Satires 1.4.106), and nobody wishes to become a byword for vice. sets a bad example: exemplo malo is ablative of attendant circumstances. done: committitur: see OLD 17b for the sense ‘to commit an offence, do something wrong’ and cf. 104n.

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2  does not please: even the agent of the act does not find it pleasing (let alone anyone else). displicet is emphasised in enjambement and sandwiched between ipsi and auctori. The word displicet denotes both aesthetic distaste (14.65, equivalent to odi at Horace Odes 1.38.1–2), or moral disapproval as at 2.26, Tacitus Annals 3.37.2. The hyperbolic term ultio (punishment) is less ambiguous and is a feeling of which the poet elsewhere disapproves (13.191: cf.16.17–9n.). quod + a phrase in the indicative indicates ‘this (haec) … namely that…’ (OLD 2b). 2–3  nobody … guilty … judgement: se iudice nemo nocens absoluitur is a strong combination of legal terms. If the sinner is his own ‘judge’ then nobody who is guilty (nocens) is ever acquitted as he cannot fail to judge his own guilt. This point is picked up and amplified at line 192 (where see notes) and assumes that the criminal always feels moral guilt and remorse and cannot therefore be happy, an assumption made strongly at 4.8 (nemo malus felix: ‘nobody is wicked and fortunate’): Epicurus is on stronger ground when he argues (Κ.Δ. 35 = Diogenes Laertius 10.151) that the criminal will always be anxious of being detected and punished for breaking the law. The Greeks had already questioned the possibility of the ‘fortunate criminal’ (ἄδικος εὐδαίμων) such as Archelaus of Macedon who seemed to enjoy happiness because of (or despite) his wickedness: see on this Hesiod Works and Days 270–3, Plato Gorgias 470c9–471d2 with Dodds (1959) ad loc. Socrates would have argued that ‘no one can lead a life satisfactory to himself unless he obeys certain natural moral laws: cf. Plato Apology 30cd’ (Dodds (1959) 241). The pious sentiment with which this poem opens is undercut as the argument proceeds and the poet lists the vast array of (apparently successful) criminals doing much worse things than that suffered by Calvinus. in his own judgement: se iudice is an ablative absolute with ‘being’ implied. 3–4  even though the wicked favour of the praetor has prevailed by means of a lying urn: gratia denotes ‘favour’ and is a key term in political relationships in Rome (see Gelzer (1969) 75–7) as it denotes the favour commanded and exercised by the politician: it can mean ‘favouritism’ or partiality (OLD s.v. ‘gratia’ 3) and here the descriptive term improba (cf. 6.86, 9.63, 10.305, 16.37, Mynors on Virgil Georgics 1.145–6 and see below on 13.53) shows that this is reckless and wicked misuse of favour. A guilty man acquitted must have cheated the system somehow: Servius

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(in his commentary on Virgil Aeneid 6.431) suggests that it refers to the ballot to determine the order in which cases would be heard and Ferguson adds that ‘this might in the long run lead to the case being adjourned sine die’ and so explain the acquittal. J. however does not refer to corruption preventing the trial taking place at all but rather the granting of a favourable verdict (uicerit) – which requires a trial. The urna had two relevant uses in a trial: it was used to select (at random) the jurors from the full panel and so if rigged would deliver the right (i.e. bribed) men, which suits the sense of fallaci and the mention of the wicked favour of the praetor who will have been the presiding officer. The other use of the urna was to receive verdicts, suggesting that the presiding praetor could deliberately miscount. For the selection process of jurors cf. Cicero pro Milone 21–2. The Φ group of mss. reads improba/ gratia fallacis praetoris uicerit urnam which makes fallacis agree with praetoris and the urnam become the victim of the improba gratia. Tempting though this is, Servius (on Aeneid 6.431) quotes this line with fallaci … urna. 5  Calvinus: J. now speaks to his addressee by name (as he does in the opening lines of 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16) and sets up a contrast between the global community of people (homines) over against Calvinus alone. For homines meaning ‘human society’ cf. 31, 1.85, 3.153, 6.12, 9.32, 10.346, 15.70. Calvinus is asked to ‘think’ about what people ‘feel’, and the two verbs are juxtaposed for emphasis: for sentire in the sense of emotional feelings see OLD 1b, 4b. recent helps to account for Calvinus’ feelings as the anger is still fresh. For the phrase recenti crimine cf. Ovid Heroides 9.53, Tacitus Histories 4.41.10. PΦ read omnes but homines (U Laur. 34.30 and Ribbeck) has more sense as omnes would have to mean ‘everybody apart from you’. 6  crime … abused: J. accumulates ‘crime’ words: scelere…crimine sandwich the fidei uiolatae which defines the offence. uiolo is a strong word (cf. 219, 11.116) denoting religious profanation (OLD s.v. ‘uiolo’ 1) and raises the level of offence to that of sacrilege (cf.11.116, 13.219, 15.9, 15.84, OLD s.v. ‘uiolo’ 1), especially as the Romans worshipped Fides as a god (Livy 1.21, Cicero de natura deorum 2.61). J.’s purpose in this line is presumably to exaggerate the perceived level of wickedness so that the truth when it comes (71–2) will be bathetic, a judgement hinted in line 7 with the description of the moderate loss (mediocris iacturae). fidei has to be scanned fĭdĕī as at Manilius 2.605, 630. 6–7  But then you: The speaker enhances his words by the jabbing series of monosyllables (sed nec/tam) and the alliteration of ‘t’ and ‘c’. census

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is one’s ‘estate’: Romans were assessed on the basis of their accumulated wealth and the ‘census’ put them in one of the property-bands. nec tam tenuis is a nice litotes to indicate that his estate was in fact large: for tenuis used of estates cf. Horace Epistles 1.7.56. contigit suggests that Calvinus’ wealth ‘befell him’ as if by chance (OLD s.v. ‘contingo’ 8: cf. 5.164, 6.49) and so what he acquired by fortune could also be lost by misfortune too. The poet ends the line with the key consideration that the loss was not large (mediocris). 8  burden … would sink you: the image is one of drowning at sea. Throwing overboard (iactura derives from iacto cf. 12 52) of cargo would actually save a real ship in a storm, as at 12.30–61, and so here the throwing away of the dead weight should save rather than drown him. J. uses the nautical metaphor to ridicule the way in which Calvinus is taking the loss so badly. iactura is used later (177) simply to mean ‘loss’ and mergere is used in a similarly metaphorical sense at 10.57. 8–10  well-known…threadbare: crime is common, as is stressed by the sequence nec rara …multis followed by the description of the casus…tritus in lines 9–10. Let us: the poet brings Calvinus into the argument with the first-person plural verbs uidemus and later ponamus (11). 9  misfortune: casus is literally a ‘fall’ (from cado) and comes to mean ‘that which befalls’ us. Commonly it connotes risk (12.17) or disaster (as in 132, 3.273, 15.95, Ovid Amores 1.12.1) and Juvenal elsewhere uses it in both senses when describing houses collapsing disastrously (3.214). Here the sense of ‘bad luck’ is uppermost as in 13.86 (where see note). For the phrase multis cognitus cf. 12.26. 10  threadbare: tritus (from tero) means ‘rubbed away’ and so ‘trite’ or ‘commonplace’: the term is used of a well-thumbed book at 6.573. taken from the middle of fortune’s pile: this continues the theme of what Courtney calls ‘the lottery of fortune’ and recalls the use of words denoting chance so far (contigit … casus) through the additional hint that Calvinus has such a pile of cash that he could easily afford to lose something taken from the centre of it. For aceruus used (satirically) of a heap of cash (OLD s.v. ‘aceruus’ 1b) cf. 6.364, 8.100, Horace Satires 1.1.51, Epistles 1.2.47. Virgil Georgics 1.158, Horace Odes 2.2.24 (and cf. Aristophanes Plutus 269–70). Braund translates the line as ‘plucked at random from fortune’s heap’, which assumes that medio means ‘from the middle of the pile’ without choosing anything in particular. The philosophers used the image of the ‘heap’ (σωρός) to frame an intriguing argument called the ‘sorites’ which

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argued that a small change does not change the ‘heap’ (D. L. 2.108, Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Scepticism 3.80) so that (e.g.) a single grain does not make a heap, and neither do two grains: at what point can we say that x is a heap but x-1 is not a heap? This line of reasoning is relevant to Calvinus as if his loss were only modest then he still has enough money to be said to be rich. For satirical use of the sorites see Freudenberg (2001) 28–31. 11–12  Let us: J. allies himself with Calvinus with the first person plural verb ponamus. gemitus indicates vocal expression of pain, as at 130, 6.271, 8.98, Lucretius 4.1015. Such cries are here described as exaggerated (nimios) and flagrantior aequo: flagrans indicates ‘intense’ or ‘passionate’ (OLD s.v. ‘flagrans’ 3c) and is used of love (Horace Odes 1.25.13) and anger (182, 1.152). bigger than the injury: uolnere maior is wonderfully economical – the pain should be proportionate to and no bigger than the injury which gives rise to it, an appeal to common sense which allows for human feelings but urges us to see the bigger picture: cf. Seneca Ep.63.1 plus aequo dolere te nolo, Cicero ad Fam. 5.16.5. Archilochus suggests that our ability to endure grief helps us to recover from it (fr. 7.5–7; cf. Pindar Pythian 2.9.93–4, Horace Odes 1.24.19–20): for dolor of mental distress cf. 131, 9.90, 10.315, 11.52. The linking of dolor and uolnere intensifies both: for uulnus used of a mental agony cf. Virgil Aeneid 4.2 (uulnus alit uenis). The conventional wisdom that grief should be expected and borne with resignation (e.g. Euripides Medea 1018, Helen 253–4, Cicero ad Fam. 4.5) is here made a matter of gender with the word uiri suggesting both the ethical value of uirtus and pointing a contrast to the unrestrained weeping of women (cf. 191–2, Seneca Ep.99.2, Edmunds (1972) 64n.11). In this case a man like Calvinus should be able to restrain his passions and exercise masculine self-restraint: see 192 where J. accuses women of being more vindictive than men and Seneca Epistles 107.7, Cicero ad Fam. 5.16.6. J. makes extensive use of the idea that women are more prone to irrational emotion than men such as rage (see 6.268–71, 413–17) – an idea found in other sources (e.g. Euripides Medea 266). Lines 11 and 12 both begin with strong verbs and are enhanced by alliteration and by identical patterns of scansion, giving the phrasing emphasis and rhetorical force. 13–15  tiny, minuscule speck … light: the insignificance of the loss is well brought out by the series of words leuium minimam exiguamque … particulam, while the agony of the victim is enhanced by the hyperbolic phrasing spumantibus ardens/uisceribus with its fire and liquid imagery denoting the rage inside him. particulam is the diminutive of pars. The

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uiscera denote the inner organs and it was widely thought in the ancient world that the abdomen in general and the liver in particular were the seat of anger: cf. 1.45, 6.648, Watson (2003) on Horace Epodes 5.37. The more prosaic phrase uix ferre potes is possibly quoting the word of Calvinus himself who may well have said this on learning of his loss: ferre is equivalent to φέρειν in (e.g.) Euripides Medea 1018 and is apt with the term leuium (‘light’) and the following discussion at 21–2. spumantibus (literally ‘foaming’) is reminiscent of foaming at the mouth in tragic rage in cases such as that of a Heracles (Euripides Heracles 934), an Orestes (Euripides Iphigenia in Tauris 308) or an Agaue (Euripides Bacchae 1122): see Bond (1981) 930–1009n. and Parker (2016) 116–7). J. here is however referring to the digestive tract which is affected by excessive emotion such as anger: the Greek word for the gullet (στόμαχος) transliterated into Latin was viewed as the seat of anger: see OLD s.v. ‘stomachor’, ‘stomachosus’, ‘stomachus’ 4, Horace Odes 1.6.6. 1.16.16. 15  under divine protection: sacer indicates ‘inviolable’ (as in tribunician sacrosanctitas which guaranteed the physical safety of a tribune of the plebs) and sacrum agrees with depositum at the end of the sentence, enhanced by its enjambement. The sum was presumably entrusted to somebody for safekeeping and then withheld (71n.) when Calvinus asked for its return: the crime appears in a list of such crimes of ‘cheating’ (adultery, fraud, theft etc) in Pliny Letters to Trajan 96.7 and is also mentioned in Horace Satires 1.3.94–5 at the more serious end of the scale of offences which an amicus could commit. reddat is subjunctive as it is quoting the stated reason for Calvinus’ anger. 16–18  sixty … Fonteius: you are old enough to know better, J. tells Calvinus, although he uses a generalising third-person (to one who has…) for the verb rather than an aggressive second-person singular. The lines are useful for setting a dramatic date for the text: a Fonteius was consul in the three years 58, 59 and 67 AD. It used to be held that if a year was dated by the name of only one of the consuls, then it must refer to the consul whose name appears first in the fasti, but this has been strongly refuted by Astbury (1977). The ‘date’ of this poem therefore is either 118, 119 or 127, the last of which is rendered more likely by the reference to the consulship of Iuncus in 15.27 (where see n.). This does not prove when the poem was written, of course, as it may be set in the past and the dating may be for the convenience of being able to give Calvinus a nicely round age of 60. behind him: post terga relinquere is a nice metaphor for having sixty

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years ‘behind one’s back’: the phrase is common in epic (Ovid Met. 2.187, 10.670 , Lucan 1.369, 2.628, 4.353) and here has the sense of ‘the journey of life’ (Courtney). Line 17 is heavily spondaic and enhances the feeling of Calvinus’ maturity and grauitas by the heavy syllables and the expansive phrasing. 17  Sixty was seen as too old to produce children (Suetonius Claudius 23.1) and was the age of retirement for many: cf. 14.197, Seneca Dialogues 10.3.5, Censorinus de die natali 14). The number had its comic application also: Catullus in poem 17 applied literally to one particular old fool the ancient custom of throwing sixty-year-olds off a bridge, and Cicero (pro Roscio 100) can also raise a laugh by reference to this custom (cf. Varro in Non. p.523M, Ovid Fasti 5.621–2). Old age was seen as a time of wisdom by some ancients: see e.g. Homer Iliad 3.108–110, Euripides Phoenissae 528–530, Aeschines Timarchus 24 (50), Cicero Tusc. 1.94, Sallust Catiline 6.6, but J. took the opposite view in 10.188–288 where he argued vividly that old age is something to be avoided as a time of suffering and bodily and mental decline. 18  no benefit: nihil here is adverbial (’not at all’). rerum usus means ‘experience of life’, the quantity of which is enhanced by tot (to be taken with rerum), but rerum primarily means ‘property’ (OLD s.v. ‘res’ 1) and so the suggestion is that a man with so much experience of handling property must expect losses from time to time. usus has a legal meaning too (of ‘leasehold’: see OLD s.v. ‘usus’ 4 and cf. Lucretius 3.971 where life itself is ‘given to nobody freehold but to all of us on lease (usu)’ which again casts doubt on Calvinus’ wisdom in expecting to keep hold of his property for ever. The primary manuscripts read proficis usu addressed to Calvinus: later mss. read proficit usus which suits the third-person verbs stupet…reliquit (‘does the experience of so much life produce no benefit?’) but the direct rhetorical question addressed to Calvinus makes a more powerful ending to the paragraph. 19–74  J. shows how such fraud is common in Rome and Calvinus’ indignation is only showing how naive he is (simplicitas 35) in becoming so angry over such a small sum 19–22  Philosophy has plenty of answers for coping with life’s setbacks, but ‘the university of life’ can also teach us how to be happy in adversity: there is a strong contrast between the instructions (praecepta) handed down by philosophy (sapientia) on the one hand and the practical education

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at the hands of Life herself. For this contrast of theoretical versus practical wisdom – a distinction which is examined by Aristotle in NE book 6 – cf. Virgil Georgics 2. 490–494, and for the type of ‘natural philosopher’ in satire cf. Ofellus in Horace Satires 2.2.3. 19  Great: magna is probably to be taken with sapientia, while sacris neatly picks up sacrum in 15. The diminutive libellis is perhaps faintly scornful (cf. 1.86, Catullus 1.1, Horace Epodes 8.15) and certainly sets up an ironic contrast of ‘great’ advice given by ‘small books’. sacred: sacris has the sense of ‘not to be touched’ or ‘sacrosanct’ (see 15n.) and also suggests that the wisdom being handed down is divinely produced (Horace Epistles 1.3.27, Cicero de Natura Deorum 2.147, Seneca Ep. 66.12). 20  sapientia is usually translated ‘wisdom’ but here means philosophy – cf. 10.28 where the philosophers Heraclitus and Democritus are termed sapientibus. For the contempt of philosophy for fortune cf. 10.52–3 (where Democritus showed the goddess Fortune the middle finger) and also 10. 365–6 where the poet laments the deification of Fortune as a goddess. For the purpose of philosophy of all schools as a means to train us to endure whatever life brings and thus ‘defeat Fortune’, cf. the figure of Regulus who returned to Carthage (and certain death by torture) rather than break his word, as told by Horace Odes 3. 5 (with Nisbet and Rudd ad loc.), Seneca Epistles 71.30 and Epicurus’ remark that the truly wise man can be content even when being roasted in the bronze bull of Phalaris (Cicero Tusc.2.7.17: cf. 8.81–2). Overcoming fortune by virtus was a key component of Stoic ethics: cf. Seneca Epistles 71.30, Oedipus 86, Dial. 2.15.3.5, Manilius 1.797. ducimus here means ‘we regard’ (OLD s.v. ‘duco’ 30). 21  fortunate: felix does not denote material good fortune but the inner state of mind of one who is enviably free of care: cf. Horace Satires 1.1.12, Virgil Georgics 2.490, Aeneid 6.669. For the phrase life’s discomforts (incommoda uitae) cf. Valerius Flaccus Argonautica 4.86: Lucretius 3.2 has the opposite term (commoda uitae) to describe the positive benefits shown to us by Epicurus. 21–2  bear … throw off: ferre is contrasted with iactare iugum (throwing off the yoke) – an image from agriculture in which the oxen refuse to accept the yoke on their backs. There is also a nice juxtaposition of learning and teaching in didicere magistra. The phrase ferre iugum is common in cases of marital dependency: cf. 6.208, Catullus 68.118, Horace Odes 2.5.1–2. 23–5  theft, treachery, deceit: J. lists three forms of criminal dishonesty together (furtum/ perfidiam, fraudes) and then broadens the scope to every

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crime as a rich source of gain (lucrum), which is then in turn glossed and expanded in the more vivid word nummos used as the object of more specifically violent crime. 23  auspicious: the mss. read festa (‘festival’), which at 11.83 indicates ‘festival days’ which are holidays, and, if the reading is correct, the point is perhaps that criminals never take the day off, a reading helped by the phrasing cesset prodere with its hint of ‘relaxing’ in cesset (see 11.185, OLD s.v. ‘cesso’ 4). Suetonius Tiberius 61 makes a similar statement (Tiberius did not desist from punishing criminals even on religious days) and this may be close to the point here in that crimes continue to be ‘uncovered’ even on holy days. fausta is the emendation of Markland: the word goes better with tam (cf. Silius Italicus 8.305) and the point is again a sardonic one that even ‘auspicious’ days produce the (highly unwelcome) crimes, so that no amount of divine favour can protect the victim: for the ancient ideas of ‘auspicious days’ see Hesiod Works and Days 765–828 with West (1978) 348–9. prodere is here used in the sense ‘to reveal the existence of, uncover, betray’ (OLD s.v. 8) as of betraying secrets at 9.115. furem (‘thief’) is the reading of the mss: but the other accusatives refer to crimes rather than the perpetrators and I have followed the emendation of Nisbet ((1995) 25–6) furtum (theft). 23–4  theft … cash: the long catalogue of criminality (furtum/ perfidiam, fraudes…crimine) – whose length is emphasised by the asyndeton – ends with the short climactic word lucrum at the end of 24, matched by nummos at the end of 25. J. has elsewhere (10.23–7) stated that money is the goal of all human endeavour: here he asserts that money is the object of all crime: a bold and over-generalised statement which would not explain (e.g.) crimes of passion. It fits well however with his stance elsewhere (especially 10.12– 22) that wealth makes us a target for crime. 25  sword or the drug-box: two methods of committing murder, the one open and the other more clandestine. Both methods were practised in the imperial family: one recalls the murder of Nero’s mother with a knife (Tacitus Annals 14.8) and that of his stepbrother Britannicus with poison (Tacitus Annals 13.16). There is a subtle point in the cash being generated by the sword as the word partos (from pario) primarily means ‘given birth to’ (and so in the context suggests something like a brutal caesarian section) but it also means (OLD s.v. ‘pario’ 5c) ‘gained’ or ‘saved up’ in a financial sense. drug-box: pyxis (from the Greek word πύξος meaning ‘boxwood’) means a box or casket with a tightly fitting lid in which medicines (2.141, Seneca Ep.

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95.18, Pliny NH 21.137), cosmetics (Ovid Ars Am. 3.210, Petronius 110.2), poisons (Cicero pro Caelio 61) and even one’s first beard (Suetonius Nero 12.4) could be kept. nummos refers to hard cash and coin as in 10.319. 26–7  Good men are few: a bleak estimation of human moral worth. To illustrate the generalisation J. uses two famous examples of the number seven, with their names framing line 27, with the strong statement that the number seven was greater than the number of good men. Thebes famously had seven gates, and the river Nile had seven mouths: both are sufficiently well known for J. to be able to use them as a point of reference here in his hyperbolic statement. Thebes was the site of legendary heroes who defended their seven gates against attack in the battle known as the ‘Seven Against Thebes’, while Egypt was well known as rich (diuitis), not least because of its plentiful harvests assisted by the irrigation of the Nile. The comparison of the seven mouths of the Nile with the seven gates of Thebes is found in Statius (Thebaid 8.358–62) and the epic reference marks a harsh contrast between the heroic exoticism of Thebes and Egypt and the sordid reality of everyday Rome. For the folk-tale motif of ‘theoxeny’ (whereby gods visit mortals and observe the shortage of good men and the mass of human wickedness) cf. Homer Odyssey 17.485–7 (with Kearns (1982)), Ovid Metamorphoses 8.626–9. J. himself enacts his own pessimistic assessment of his fellow-men throughout the satires: cf. e.g. his epic reference to the divine judgement enacted by the flood and the modern state of Rome at 1.81–6. Note the peremptory imperative numera (‘count them!’ for si numeres). 28–30  Hesiod (Works and Days 109–201) described the degeneration of mankind in terms of ‘ages’: the idyllic golden age, followed by the silver, then bronze, then heroic, then (his own) iron age. J. seems to be stating that we now live in an age which is several ages below Hesiod’s ‘times of iron’, with the witty remark that its wickedness is beyond what nature can name and there is no metal base enough to act as a label. His mention of metals (ferri … metallo) makes it clear that he is referring to this catalogue of human degeneracy. It is not obvious why J. chose the number ninth and the reading has been suspected: nona is the reading of Φ, while P reads nunc and FK read non. Markland reasonably suggested quinta (‘fifth’ as Hesiod only names four ages prior to his own). Housman speculates that the original reading was aere aetas (‘an age worse than the bronze…’) and that this word fell out by haplography, leaving a gap which a scribe then filled: this leaves peior (from peiora) to be understood with aetas – or else replace agitur with gravior (as

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Weidner suggests) – and would certainly simplify the sentence: ‘the present age is worse than bronze and worse than the days of iron and Nature has no metal to define it’. It also leaves line 28 framed by the two words for the two metals. Additional force has however been given to ‘nine’ by the suggestion of McGann (1968) that it might hint at the Sibylline prophecy that Rome would fall in the ninth century of its history. Claudius had declared that the 8th century ended in 47 AD, leaving Juvenal’s Rome in the 9th. Dio Cassius mentions the prophecy that Rome would fall after 900 years, and the Sibylline oracle in AD 19 and 64 had foretold that Rome would perish from civil war and Sybaritic luxury (Dio Cassius 57.18.3–5, 62.18.3). 29–30  does not discover: the present tense verb inuĕnit shows nature trying (and failing) to name the age, while the past tense posuit explains that it has run out of metals for names (see OLD s.v.’pono’ 16b cf. Horace Satires 1.3.42) to give to the wickedness (sceleri (dative)): a with the ablative is used here in the sense of naming the era ‘after’ a metal (see OLD s.v. ‘ab’ 15b). For cultural degeneration as a theme in ancient thought cf. Dodds (1973) 1–26. Nature is here personified (see OLD s.v. ‘natura’ 4: cf. Lucretius 1.629, 3.931–63, 2.168 (with Fowler ad loc.)). 31  we: nos gracefully allows that the poet might be as gulty as Calvinus. hominum diuomque (of men and gods) sounds like a parody of epic language (used by Ennius in his Annales 6.203, 8. 284; Venus is addressed by Lucretius as hominum diuomque uoluptas at DRN 1.1 (as is Calliope at 6.94) and Zeus is regarded (Homer Iliad 1.544) as πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε (‘father of men and gods’)). The intensity of the cry is increased by the alliteration of ‘c’. The whole line is caricaturing the overblown howls of righteous protest. 32–3  handout … Faesidius: the howls are shown up as less righteous indignation and more sycophantic self-interest. The poet brings the outrage bathetically down to earth with the topical detail of Faesidius and then with the climactic word sportula (in enjambement taking the place of a word like turba (mob)). Faesidius is not otherwise known but agentem strongly suggests that he was an advocate (cf. 7.122, OLD s.v. ‘ago’ 44): he was clearly a man who had followers and influence. The vividness of the sentence is helped by the juxtaposition of laudat uocalis and also the application of the adjective uocalis to the inanimate (and inarticulate) sportula. 33  hand-out: The sportula (literally ‘a small basket’) was a payment given to clients/supporters (clientes) by a wealthy patron. Originally it

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was a basket of food but later on usually amounted to a cash payment of 100 quadrantes (the quadrans being one quarter of an as and the smallest Roman coin: for the sum cf. Martial 1.59.1). For the sportula in J. see 1.95, 3.249, 10.46. Pliny tells us that it was paid out in the courtroom to the claque of supporters (Epistles 2.14.4). dic is a peremptory imperative (cf. 26) and the lack of respect for the older man is expressed by the insulting vocative senior bulla dignissime. The bulla was a child’s locket (see 14.4–5n.) and the phrase is tantamount to calling Calvinus naïvely childlike. The joke is enhanced by the oxymoronic juxtaposition of senior bulla followed by the sardonic dignissime. For respect granted to older men simply because they are older see 54–59. There is also a satirical point to the incredulous question nescis (repeated in the same position in the following line) addressed to this old man. For the notion that old people enter a second childhood cf. 10.199– 200, 10.230–2 (with my notes ad loc.), Otto (1890) s.v. ‘senex’ 1. 34  pull: Venus was the goddess of love and sexual desire: the word ueneres could also stand for ‘loveliness’ or ‘attraction’ (cf. Seneca de ben. 2.28.2, Catullus 86.6, OLD s.v. ‘Venus’ 3b). Elsewhere in satire the love of money is mocked (e.g. Horace Satires 1.1.28–107, Juvenal 10.23–27) and the devious ways people seek to acquire it, such as legacy-hunting (12. 93–130, Horace Satires 2.5) and exploitation of the old (1.39). 35  naiveté … common people: Calvinus’ simplicitas and belief in human and divine justice (31) make him a laughing stock to the ‘mob’ (uulgo). There is something surprising about J. invoking the authority of the mob as the sophisticated arbiter of what is right: the crowd is often in Roman literature seen as fickle (Livy 24.31.14, Horace Odes 3.2.20, 23), as unholy (Horace Odes 3.1.1), as superstitious (the mob ‘saw’ Caesar’s soul ascending as a comet to the heavens after his assassination), as cruel (3.36–7), as undiscriminating (Catullus 72.3, Cicero pro Roscio 29). The point is that insult is added to injury in the case of Calvinus and that the insults come from a loud and obnoxious source. Alternatively, uulgo could be read as an adverb meaning ‘all over town’ (see OLD s.v. ‘uulgo1’). naiveté: simplicitas denotes simple-mindedness (εὐήθεια, OLD s.v. 4) or single-mindedness (6.203. OLD s.v. 2) or outspoken frankness (OLD s.v. 5: cf. 1.153). In this context Calvinus shows all three sides of the word: he is obsessed and outspoken in his naive complaining. The juxtaposition of simplicitas risum underlines the instant derision which Calvinus provokes, and the syncopated rhythm of uulg/o moue/at cum at the end of the line perhaps suggests the fits of laughter and the scorn in the words.

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36  break his oath: perjury was (and is) a serious crime and in a world with no real forensic science a man’s oath had to be binding and sanctioned by divine laws – which is why it is easy for J. here to move straight from the concept of perjury to the divine power in temples and altars. Evidence of oath-breakers incurring divine justice abounds in the ancient world: see Hesiod Works and Days 282–5 (an argument easily mocked by Aristophanes (Clouds 397–400) and Lucretius (6.379–422)): cf. Demosthenes 33.13–14. The two indirect commands are alliteratively juxtaposed, with one negative (ne peieret) and the next one positive (putet, with ut implied as at 16.9). quoquam (from quisquam) makes the remark forceful: you cannot ask anybody at all to share your beliefs. 36–7  any: ullis goes with templis and the word numen is contained in the phrase verbally as in the real temples. numen derives from nuo and indicates the power of the divine ‘nod’ and is often used in connection with the gods’ power to protect and safeguard oaths (cf. Catullus 76.4, Virgil Aeneid 6.324) as well as simply divine power itself (13.102, 6.568, 10.365, 14.97). aliquod is from the adjectival aliqui and agrees with numen (‘some numen or other’) and not from the noun aliquis (AG §149, 151e) which would give aliquid in the neuter. The reddening altar is a striking phrase: the animal was held over the altar while it was being sacrificed and so its blood flowed onto the altar, before the vow was taken: see Ovid ex Ponto 3.2.53–54, Lucan 2.103, Livy 1.24.5–9 and cf. Lucretius 5.1201–2. Wine was used in similar fashion as a libation to guarantee oaths in Homer Iliad 3.295–301. 38–59  J. now produces a wonderfully comic account of the idealised Golden Age when Saturn was king and crime (such as that suffered by Calvinus) was unknown. The lines form a burlesque of the ‘youth of the gods’ when Juno was a teenage girl, Jupiter not yet ruler, there were no Vulcan or Hebe or Hercules and no underworld torments to worry the smiling ghosts. This passage owes something to Ovid (e.g. Metamorphoses 3.316–338), in its treatment of the anthropomorphic gods in banal situations, their grandeur stripped away, the emperor without his clothes. 38  At one time: the poet continues the theme of the degeneration of mankind (see 28–30n.) and harks back ironically to the ‘golden age’ of Saturn when the natives (indigenae) lived a moral and carefree life. Saturn was the Italian god who came to Latium and taught the natives agriculture (cf. agrestem 39) and so the period of his reign is seen as one of pastoral utopia: cf. Tibullus 1.3.35, Virgil Eclogue 4.6: Hesiod (Works and Days 109–120) has the same myth in Greek terms, with Cronos the benevolent

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ruling god. Virgil (Aeneid 8.324–5) has Evander tell the story of how Saturn taught the indigenae Fauns, nymphs and ‘men born from trees’ to live a life of law-abiding peace. Jupiter ousted him from his throne and this marked the transition from the Golden to the Silver age according to Ovid (Met. 1.113–5). The Epicureans had also developed their own version of this sort of Golden Age, arguing that (e.g.) early man was stronger as he would not have survived (let alone reproduced) if he had been as soft as we are (Lucretius 5.925–87, Gale (1994) 164–65), and that crime only came in with the advent of wealth (Lucretius 5.1113–1160) which in turn brought about laws (see on this Gale (1994) 156–82 and Gale (2009) 176–77) – a Kulturgeschichte which goes back to earlier thinkers such as Plato (e.g. Pol.272a, Laws 3.679d–e). quondam here is picked up by nunc at line 60. 39–40  fled: the idyllic opening is darkened with both the flight of Saturn from Jupiter but also with the strong hints at Saturn’s own ‘back-story’ in farmer’s sickle (agrestem falcem) as this was the implement with which Saturn (Kronos in Greek) castrated his own father Uranus when seizing power from him (see Hesiod Theogony 162, 175, 178–82) – there is no other reason why J. should mention the sickle in telling this story. The juxtaposition diademate falcem (for diadema see 105n.) is effective in showing the immediate transfer of control. The back-story continues in line 41. 40–1  J. begins a lively riff on the theme of ‘gods before they were famous’ here with Juno (daughter of Saturn) described as a a little virgin. Sommerstein ((1989) 23) well points out that ‘the gods … were conceived and born, passed through infancy and childhood, came to maturity and (in most cases) produced children. And they developed mentally as well as physically: repeatedly in Prometheus Bound the tyrannical behaviour of Zeus is explained, and sometimes excused, by the fact that he is young and new to power.’ J. reflects this idea here with a view of young gods and early man living in a state of peace and innocence. little virgin: uirguncula is the diminutive of uirgo, found also in Petronius 18.7.3, 20.8.2: for the derogatory diminutive suffix cf. homunculus (insignificant man: Cicero ad Fam. 4.5.4.8, de natura deorum 1.123.9), rogatiuncula (a small legal proposal: Cicero de finibus 1.39.4), ambulatiuncula (a little walk: Cicero ad Fam. 2.12.2). Juno is regarded in epic as a formidable queen of the gods (e.g. Virgil Aeneid 4.693, 10.685) and this caricature sketch of her as a teenager is humorous and something of another reminder to Calvinus that the pompous can be sent up. There is added point in that uirgo generally indicates an ‘unmarried girl’ and Juno

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was to marry her brother Jupiter. Notice the ellipse of a verb such as erant in lines 40–1 and at 46–7. 41  nobody: Jupiter is similarly cut down to size with the adjective priuatus which indicates that he was then a mere subject as opposed to the ruler of gods and men which he was to become (cf. 31n., Virgil Aeneid 1.229–30). For this meaning of priuatus cf. 1.16, 4.66, 6.114, 12.107, Tacitus Agricola 39.3.2, Histories 1.85.3. Mention of the caves of Ida recalls the rest of Saturn’s back-story: he was told that he would be supplanted by a child of his and so ate all the babies which his wife Rhea produced. She finally tricked him into eating a stone in place of the infant Jupiter and the child was reared on Mount Ida in Crete by nymphs. J.’s point in alluding to the gruesome side of Saturn is to undercut the idyllic tone of the lines. 42  heaven-dwellers: caelicola is a compound word for ‘god’ (from caelum-colere (to inhabit the heavens)) and the long alliterative phrase conuiuia caelicolarum adds a strong epic flavour to the line: Ennius calls Juno optima caelicolum (Annales 292W) and Catullus uses the term at the close of poem 64 (286). above the clouds alludes to the belief that the gods dwell in an aetherial atmosphere of their own as described by Homer Odyssey 6.42–26 and Lucretius 3.18–22. 43 The Trojan boy was Ganymede – whose name gives us the English word ‘catamite’ – abducted by Jupiter to be his personal cup-bearer (Homer Iliad 20.232–5, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 202–206: cf. 5.59, 9.47–8, Martial 9.73.6, Horace Odes 3.20.15–16), while the comely wife of Hercules refers to Hebe, a goddess born of Jupiter and Juno who served nectar to the gods and who epitomised eternal youth. Heracles/Hercules was cremated alive after being subjected to agonizing pain by the misadventure of his wife Deianeira (as told in Sophocles’ Trachiniae) but the gods granted him marriage to Hebe after his death which had the effect of an apotheosis for the hero (see OCD s.v. ‘Heracles’). formonsa is an archaic alternative to the more common formosa (derived from forma) and is to be taken with Herculis uxor after nec. The archaism (as with toruos in 50) continues the mood of epic antiquity. 44–45  cups: a cyathus (κύαθος) was a ladle for measuring liquids: Hebe stands ‘by the ladles’ (OLD s.v. ‘ad’ 13) as does the boy in Horace Odes 1.29.8 and Lygdamus in Propertius 4.8.37. The imagery of Vulcan in his shop (i.e. cave) on the Aeolian island of Lipara (north of Sicily) is traditional (cf. 1.8, Callimachus Hymn 3.46–9, Virgil Aeneid 8. 416–422). siccato nectare reads well as an ablative absolute straight after mention of the cups: Vulcan

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‘drained’ (i.e. drank down in one gulp: OLD s.v. ‘sicco’ 5c, Petronius 136.11) the nectar: this gives a picture of Vulcan hot and thirsty (cf. 10.130–132), draining his cup before even wiping himself clean. The alternative is to read the ablative as instrumental: Vulcan cleaned himself with nectar – in which case Schurtzfleisch’s emendation saccato (‘strained’ ‘refined’) would be preferable. Vulcan/Hephaestus himself figures incongruously and comically as an inelegant server of drinks in Homer (Iliad 1.596–600) and the image of his wiping his dirty sweaty arms after his work is also Homeric (Iliad 18.414). taberna is another swipe: a Roman craftsman had his ‘shop’ attached to his workshop (officina) and Vulcan is thus brought down to street level. 46  lunch: prandebat continues the mockery of the young gods: whereas mature gods have full-blown conuiuia, these youngsters ‘take lunch’ alone: cf. 6.101 (where the word denotes snacking with sailors), 10.178. 46–7  no crowd of gods: very few in fact, since Jupiter and his brothers and sister were not ruling and so the pantheon would only consist of Saturn and Rhea. Note again (see 40–1n.) the ellipsis of a verb such as erat. 47–9  Atlas was the Titan who lives at the world’s end and holds up the heavens on his shoulders (Hesiod Theogony 517–20), a task which would make anyone miserum, as J.comically hints. Deified people were often fixed among the stars (a process known as catasterism (καταστερισμός) and seen in e.g. Catullus 66), and so an increase of gods would cause the weight of the heavens to increase, a process brought out by the parallel words paucis and minori ending lines 47 and 48. The stars of old enjoyed an austere life of being ‘content with little’ and the key word numinibus (see 36–7n.) is placed in enjambement for emphasis. 49–52  As there were no sinners, there was no need for punishment of sinners after death. 49–50  Pluto was one of the three sons of Saturn and Rhea (along with Jupiter and Neptune) and the three sons drew lots (sortitus) to decide which of them governed heavens, sea and underworld (according to Homer Iliad 15.187–93: Hesiod (Theogony 73–4, 881–5) has Jupiter allocate the roles). Pluto drew the underworld. Sicilian wife: Pluto famously abducted his niece Proserpina (the daughter of Ceres) as she was plucking flowers in Sicily (Ovid Fasti 4.419–462, Homer Odyssey 10.491). He is described as stern (toruos) to suit the kingdom he inhabits. The ending -os rather than -us was the original form of the 2nd declension nominative form and was retained after ‘u’ until the end of the Republic: see AG §46 n.1, K-S I. 439–41. The effect here is one of archaism – see below on uolturis and cf. 43n.

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imi is the suggestion of Housman (comparing Ovid Met. 4.444) to replace the mss reading aliquis which (as Courtney points out) would point towards Neptune, whose realm (the sea) would not fit the adjective triste. 51–2  wheel … Furies … rock … vulture: J. alludes here to the traditional eternal punishments of the wicked dead in Tartarus as listed in (e.g.) Homer Odyssey 11.575–600, Virgil Aeneid 6.562–627, Horace Odes 3.11.21–2, Ovid Met. 4.457–63, Propertius 3.5.42–4, Cicero Tusc. 1.10, Seneca Epistles 24.18. He does not need to name any of the sinners so punished as they were well known, and his purpose is simply to make the point that no sinners existed to deserve these punishments at that time. The fiery wheel was used to punish Ixion – a king of Thessaly who killed his father-in-law Eioneus, and later on tried to rape Juno; Jupiter substituted a fake woman made of cloud to protect his wife and the raped cloud gave birth to the first Centaur (a name derived from Greek and meaning ‘Poke-wind’). His tale is recounted fully in Pindar Pythian 2.21–48 and was sufficiently well known in Rome for Propertius (1.9.20) also to be able to allude to it without naming Ixion. The Furies are also a stock feature of Tartarus: see most memorably the figure of Tisiphone (‘Death-avenger’) and her sisters in Virgil Aeneid 6.570–2, 605–7, armed with blazing torches (cf. Suetonius Nero 34.4) and see further Finglass on Sophocles Ajax 835–7. They are linked with Cerberus (the three-headed dog of the Underworld) at Lucretius 3.1011 (and cf. Horace Odes 3.11.17–18 where Cerberus’ ‘fury-like head’ is wreathed with snakes like theirs. For their snaky hair cf. Aeschylus Choephoroi 1049–50). The Furies were primarily agents of vengeance (Catullus 64.192–4) especially for blood-guilt (as in Aeschylus’ Eumenides) and also for perjury (Homer Iliad 19.259–60, Hesiod Works and Days 803–4: see OCD s.v. ‘Erinyes’). The rock was another form of eternal punishment used in two different myths. Sisyphus was a consummate trickster (Pindar Olympian 13.52) and the king of Corinth who cheated death in a variety of ways – such as persuading the gods of the underworld to let him leave Hades and then not returning as he had promised (Alcaeus 38.A 5–10, Theognis 703–4, 711–2, Sophocles Philoctetes 448–9) – or else tying up the god Death (Thanatos) and so preventing anybody from dying until Ares/Mars released him. His punishment was to push a rock up a hill only for it to roll back down again (Homer Odyssey 11.593–600). Lucretius (3. 1100–1102) allegorises him and his punishment as the man on an eternal quest for political success who is doomed to perpetual disappointment: on which see also Camus Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Sisyphus was used as the material for several Greek satyric dramas

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by writers such as Aeschylus and Critias – see Dillon and Gergel (2003) 250–53 for the fascinating fragment of Critias’ Sisyphus in which religion is explained as an early form of moral and political control. The second myth involving a rock was that of Tantalus, the king of Sipylus and son of Zeus. As such, he was invited to dine with the gods and abused their hospitality either by stealing the ambrosia and nectar which they ate or else by serving up to them his own son Pelops as a test to see if they would detect the human flesh, as told by Pindar Olympian 1.55–64. His punishment was to have a rock suspended over his head which looked as though it would fall on him at any moment (Lucretius 3.980–1). The black vulture ate the liver of the giant Tityus as punishment for his assaulting of Leto (Homer Odyssey 11.576–81). The liver would regenerate and so provided an eternal source of pain for him and food for the bird as in the similar case of the Titan Prometheus (Ovid ex Ponto 1.2.39–40): see Horace Odes 3.4.77–9, 3.11.21, Virgil Aeneid 6.595–600, Seneca Thyestes 9–10 (with Boyle ad loc.). Lucretius (3.984–994) allegorises the myth as referring to the man eternally crazed by lust. The colour-term atri adds a suitably funereal tone (cf. OLD s.v. ‘ater’ 7). The spelling uolturis (for uulturis) is, like toruos in 50, another archaism. It is not unusual in earlier Latin (cf. 14.77, 79): after consonantal ‘u’ it was common to find ‘o’ rather than ‘u’ until the middle of the 1st century AD, and J. often uses this spelling as with uolnus (13.12, 15.54, 156) for uulnus, uoltus (13.77, 15.56, 7.238, 8.205), for uultus, diuom (13.31) for diuum, aestiuom (14.295) for aestiuum (cf. AG §6a, KS I. 68–9 §8). – 52  cheerful shades is a deliberate paradox, as the world of the dead was universally regarded as a place of gloom and the phrase with no netherworld kings conjures up an image of ghosts able to enjoy their time as they were not being faced with cruel tyrants. The kings in question were Pluto and his queen Proserpina. There may be a political dig in that ‘kings’ were something which the Roman Republic had eliminated with the expulsion of Tarquin in 510 BC: Tacitus contrasts reges and libertatem in the opening words of his Annals 1.1.1. The period J. refers to was before the age of the kings and so was one of freedom and laughter (hilares). 53  wickedness: improbitas as an abstract noun is rare in verse (cf. 10.305, Manilius 5.498) and the description of it as admirabilis makes this a very ponderous line dominated by polysyllabic words. improbe is common as a term of reproach to another – cf. Lucretius 3.1026, Virgil Aeneid 4.386, 412, Propertius 1.3.39, Ovid Ars Am.1.665, Statius Thebaid 12.766 – and

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the term was also used at 13.3 above, 6.86 and 9.63 to denote a state of amoral ruthlessness. a source of astonishment: admirabilis is provocative – it often means ‘worthy of admiration’ (OLD s.v. 2) and so is striking when combined with the pejorative term improbitas: for the sense of ‘astonishing’ cf. admiratio in 6.646. 54–5  The couplet is cleverly structured, with the crime (nefas) and the potential punishment (death (morte)) stated before the details are revealed bathetically in 55. 54  outrage: the offence is nefas (as at 2.127, 8.83, 14.188, 15.9, 12: a crime against the gods rather than merely a civil offence) and one of serious importance (grande: see OLD s.v. ‘grandis’ 4) which ought to face the death-penalty. For the phrase morte piandum (hyperbolic in this context) cf. Ovid Met. 8.483 Virgil Aeneid 2.140, Statius Thebaid 9.60. The death penalty was often carried out by decapitation: more extreme crimes could be punished with crucifixion, burning or being thrown to the beasts in the arena. Parricides could face being sewn into a sack with a dog, monkey, cockerel and a snake and being thrown into the river Tiber (155–6, 8.213– 4). Such punishments were usually public events: see Crook (1967) 273–4, Hopkins (1983) 2–3). piare means to ‘expiate an offence’ and has religious significance in terms of propitiating a deity: cf. 12.120. quo picks up illo from line 52. Knoche reads quom comparing 3.37. 55–6  death penalty: the capital offence is one of disrespect for one’s elders, with a jab at the 60-year-old Calvinus (16–17) as uetulo…barbato. uetulus is the diminutive form of uetus and is usually derogatory (cf. 1.139, 6.194 (with Watsons ad loc.), 10.195, 10.268, Horace Odes 3.15.16) in tone, making the point sardonic with the contrast of the young man and the old chap brought out by juxtaposition, as with barbato … puer in the following line: cuicumque (anyone) draws attention to the fact that age alone (as evinced by the presence of a beard) is sufficient to make the young stand up. adsurgo is the mot juste for standing up in respect for the elderly (cf. Cicero de inuentione 1.48, Seneca de ira 2.21). For this sort of respect cf. Aristophanes Clouds 993, Xenophon Memorabilia 2.3.16, Herodotus 2.80, Cicero de senectute 63, Tacitus Annals 3.31. J. here as elsewhere idealises the modesty and the humility of the ideal youth, as he had at 11.151–60. barbato has been used as evidence for the assertion that Romans kept a (close-clipped) beard until they were 40 and shaved only after that age (cf. 6.105–6, Cicero ad Att. 1.14.5.3–4, pro Caelio 33: see Balsdon (1969) 20, Paoli (1990) 108–10). This is not necessarily so in this period as Hadrian

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had brought the beard into fashion either as part of his philhellenism (see CAH xi 975, Anderson (1955)) or to cover his own facial blemishes (HA Hadr 26.1: for the fashion cf. Dio Chrysostom 36.17), and J. elsewhere assumes shaving as a regular activity for younger men (1.25, 10.225–6). The assumption of venerable elders wearing shaggy beards is not uncommon – see e.g. Appius Claudius Caecus at Cicero pro Caelio 33 and cf. Juvenal 5.30 – and J. uses the trope to enhance the vividness of his imagery: in an age when many men would be bearded when old enough to grow facial hair, the contrast of beardless youth respecting bearded older man is obvious and effective. 56–7  strawberries…acorn: J. envisages a golden age before the invention of coined money (cf. Lucretius 5.1105–1135, Propertius 3.13.25–6), and so differences in wealth are measured in terms of crops and foodstuffs. These foods are ones which grow spontaneously in keeping with the legend of golden age ease: wild strawberries are eaten at Virgil Eclogues 3.92 and acorns were seen as the staple food for primitive man: cf. 6.10, 14.184, Lucretius 5.939, Virgil Georgics 1.148, Tibullus 2.1.22, although they first appear as pig-fodder in Homer (Odyssey 10.242, 13.409: see West on Hesiod Works and Days 233). For the combination with fraga cf. Ovid Met. 1.104–6 and note how Lucretius (5.965) has primitive men using ‘acorns, berries and selected pears’ as gifts to be exchanged for sexual favours. The superior wealth of the young man is brought out by the verb uideret (he can see the obvious difference) and the words plura and aceruos framing line 57, the first one being general and the second one more specific: for aceruus in relation to wealth see 10n. glandis is a collective singular (K-S II.1.67– 71: cf. 3.142, 6.150, 10.155, 362, 12.38, 14.144, 307, 15.76). even if: licet here functions as a concessive conjunction followed by the subjunctive (AG §527b, K-S II.443–4). 58–59  Just being four years older than another is enough seniority, and any amount of a first beard (prima … lanugo) will qualify the older male for as much respect as if he were a venerable greybeard, the alliteration of ‘p’ and ‘s’ and the specificity of the word lanugo all adding to the rhetorical flourish. praecedere is a substantival infinitive defined by tam uenerabile and qualified by the time expression quattuor annis (‘by four years’). For the meaning of adeo here as ‘so true is it that…’ cf. 11.131 and see OLD s.v. ‘adeo2’ 5. chin-fluff: for lanugo as fluffy first beard cf. Lucretius 5.889, Virgil Aeneid 10.324, Lucan 10.135, Ovid Met.9.398: the word is used as a synecdoche for youth itself at Propertius 3.7.59 and Ovid Heroides 15.85.

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lanugo is etymologically linked to lana (wool: see Eyben (1972) 693). venerable old age: sacrae senectae is an interesting term. sacer is primarily a religious term (cf. 107, 6.Ox4, 6.536, 12.86) but often has the sense of ‘revered’ (as at 13.19, 11.29) or ‘awe-inspiring’ (as at 13.221) and even ‘dreadful’ (see OLD s.v. ‘sacer’ 2c). 60–70  These days … trustworthiness: Having explored the legendary moral paradise of early man in 38–59, J. now turns to the corrupt present in a manner reminiscent of his earlier satires. 60  These days: the initial nunc marks a sharp return from the golden age (quondam line 38) to the present. The language of depositum … amicus recalls lines 15–16. non infitietur is a highly effective litotes (‘does not disavow’ = ‘repays’: reddat in 61). For the legal language of infitior see OLD s.v. ‘infitior’ 2b, Gaius Digest 9.2.2.1. The decisive word non is emphasised by its position as a monosyllable immediately after the caesura. 61  if he gives you: J. as often repeats the sense of the previous line with added colour: the bland depositum of line 60 is depicted as an old purse (ueterem … follem) with all its rust (aerugine) intact. follem here means a ‘purse’ (OLD s.v. ‘follis’ 1b) and so denotes a bag which holds much less than a chest (arca: see 10.25) would, suggesting that the depositum was relatively small and certainly easily portable. Mention of the rust serves many purposes: on the one hand it shows that the trustee has not used and then replaced Calvinus’ money as it has clearly been left alone to gather rust, and on the other hand it suggests that this money is not in itself a precious metal (Pliny N.H.33.62) and is by now unattractive (see Horace Satires 1.4.101, Ars Poetica 330 with Brink (1971) ad loc.) and clearly not needed (for the image of the miser adoring his money but not spending it cf. Horace Satires 1.1.63–73). Above all it gives us a surprising and comic picture of the much-valued purse containing all its – rust (for this sort of joke cf. Catullus 13. 8). For cum meaning ‘complete with’ see 6.171, 14.61, OLD s.v. ‘cum’ 3c. 62–3  trustworthiness … Etruscan books … a garlanded lamb: a neat tricolon crescendo of hyperbolic amazement, with (a) prodigiosa fides (b) Tuscis digna libellis and (c) quaeque … agna. The poet’s open-mouthed excitement is also connoted by the ellipsis of a verb meaning it is seen as (or some such). 62  marvellous: prodigiosa looks ahead to the marvels which he lists in lines 65–70 and denotes something which is so out of the ordinary as to have portentous importance as a sign of divine feelings: for the exaggerated use of this word cf. 4.97. There may also be a play on prodigus in the sense of

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‘wasteful, extravagant’ as the fides is letting slip an opportunity to enrich the trustee. Fides was itself deified by the Romans: see OLD s.v. ‘fides’ 6d, Livy 1.21.4 (with Ogilvie (1965) 103), Horace Odes 1.24.7, 1.35.21–2, Carmen Saeculare 57. The Etruscans were the original haruspices – a class of priests who developed the art of divining the future from lightning, prodigies (as here) and from the internal organs of beasts (a process known as extispicy). They would be summoned to Rome when portents needed explanation: they would provide a formal verbal explanation and suggest a religious remedy (Cicero de legibus 2.21, de natura deorum 2.11, de haruspicum responso). The Etruscan books were the repository of such wisdom and were said to have been dictated by the legendary Etruscan Tages (see OCD s.v. ‘Tages’ and Wood (1980)). J. elsewhere mocks the reliance on soothsayers of any kind (see the image of the credulous emperor Tiberius at 10.93–4 and the spoof list of portents at 2.121–3) as did Lucretius (6.86, 6.381–2) and others (see OCD s.v. ‘divination, Roman’, Beard (1986), Schofield (1986)). For the whole large topic see Ogilvie (1981) 53–69, Rawson (1978). For the diminutive form libellis applied to wisdom books cf. 19n. 63  atoned for: lustratio was a process of ritual cleansing and lustrari here means to ‘expiate’ (OLD s.v. ‘lustro’ 1c) an offence. J. is drawing out the paradox that in this topsy-turvy world goodness (rather than wickedness) is something which needs expiation. Animals (or humans) which were about to be sacrified usually had chaplets or garlands placed on their heads (see 12. 118, Lucretius 1.87, Virgil Georgics 3.486–7, OLD s.v. ‘uitta’ 2b) and here the animal in question is a lamb as at Homer Odyssey 17.240–242, Cicero de diuinatione 2.39. debere means primarily to ‘owe’ money (see OLD s.v. debeo’ 1) and so here we have another paradox that this repaid financial debt itself incurs a religious debt. 64–70  prodigy: the catalogue of prodigies is a parody of such tales but such events are elsewhere attested. Roman historians often (e.g. Livy 24.10, Dio 40.17, 56.29, Appian B.C. 2.36, 4.4.14, Tacitus Annals 12.43.1) provide a list of portents reported, although they often also express personal scepticism: e.g. Livy 21.62.1, 24.10.6 (but see also Walsh (1961) 63–64), Sallust Catiline 30.2, Tacitus Annals 1.28.1, Histories 2.78.2: see Syme (1958) 322, 522–23, Damon ((2003) 273–80 on Tacitus Histories 1.86. Epic enjoys such tales of the supernatural – see (e.g.) Virgil Georgics 1.464– 88, Ovid Metamorphoses 15.783–98, Manilius 1.906–9, Lucan 1.522–83, Statius Thebaid 7.412–21, Apollonius Rhodius 1284–7 – and J. enjoys producing a pastiche like this of faux epic astonishment.

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64  boy with double limbs: a standard feature of such portents: cf. Livy 27.11.5, 31.12.8, Tacitus Annals 12.64.4, 14.12.2, Lucan 1.562, Manilius 4.101–3. The meaning of bimembri is disputed. Green translates ‘ a boy with a double member’; OLD glosses it as ‘part man, part beast’ such as centaurs (Virgil Aeneid 8.293, Ovid Heroides 9.99, Statius Thebaid 1.457) and the closest we get to that is Livy’s account (27.11) of a boy born with the head of an elephant (i.e. with neurofibromatosis). Livy also records in the same chapter that another child was born with the sex organs of both genders, and so Braund is perhaps wise to leave the translation ambiguous (‘mutant’). There is added point to the reference to Centaurs: they were renowned for their brutal and aggressive behaviour and so there is absurdity in comparing a man of outstanding integrity to one such. 65  The rhythm of this line is as ungainly as its contents: there is a hiatus between puero and et (on which see 14.49n., 15.126n.) and syncopation at the end of the line. The scholia on Statius Thebaid 1.457 reads ut (‘as if’) here, as do several important mss. 65–6  fish beneath … plough: a sight recorded by Livy (42.2.5), discussed by Seneca (NQ 3.16.5–17.3) and dismissed as impossible by Lucretius (3.785). Horace (Odes 1.2.9) and Ovid (Met. 1.296) both use the image in their narratives of the flood and earlier writers used it as an example of the adynaton (‘proverbial impossibility’): Archilochus 74.7–9, Herodotus 5.92a1, Lycophron Alexandra 83–4, Virgil Eclogues 1.59–60, Horace Epode 16.34 (with Hollis (1998)), Propertius 2.3.5–6. The reading miranti of Φ is a nice personification of the plough itself (astonished at what lies beneath it), and is for that reason better than the less striking emendations suggested such as mirandis (PA). 66  pregnant mule: another topos of the adynaton figure (see Herodotus 3.151.3–4, Suetonius Galba 4) and one which Livy (26.23.5, 37.3.3) and Herodotus (7.57.3 (more extreme: a donkey gave birth to a foal with both sets of genitals)) report as having happened (discussed by Pliny N.H. 8.69 §173). For the short final -o on comparo cf. 94, 3.2, 3.59, 10.81, 12.121. 67  rain-shower … stones: a shower of stones was presumably a more plausible occurrence in a volcanic country: cf. Livy 26.23.5, 34.45.8, 35.9.4, Cicero de divinatione 1.98 and see Pliny’s description (Ep. 6.16.14–16, 20.16) of the shower of stones and ash which accompanied the eruption of Vesuvius. worried: sollicitus refers back to the 1st person subject of comparo. 68  swarm of bees: Another unsurprising event and one with parallels in

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the historians (Livy 24.10.11, 34.45, 35.9.4 (just after his comment on the stone-shower), Tacitus Annals 12.64.3–4). For the portentous significance of a swarm of bees see Cicero de har. resp. 25.8, de diuinatione 1.73.9, Virgil Aeneid 7.64–70, Livy 21.46.2–3. A swarm of bees was often seen as portending disaster: cf. Lucan 7.161–4 (where a swarm covers Pompey’s standards as an ill omen before Pharsalus) or Appian Civil Wars 4.134 (where swarms of bees keep landing on the doomed camp of Brutus and Cassius). Elsewhere bees are seen as kindly and positive creatures: see e.g. Virgil Georgics 4.3–5. The bees’ lingering on the shrine shows that they are conveying the divine message: cf. also Hyginus Fabulae 136. longā is to be taken with uuā in the ablative of manner (‘in a long cluster’): uua more commonly means ‘bunch of grapes’ and perfectly depicts the bees hanging in this way, with the word neatly balancing examen at the beginning of the line. 69–70  J. makes us wait for the omen here: all rivers flow into the sea, and torrens is hardly unusual, but flowing with milk is a sign of divine agency: see Livy 34.45.7, Julius Obsequens 27a, 43 and cf. Euripides Bacchae 142–3. uertex means a whirlpool or eddy (and also means a ‘highest point’ (OLD s.v. ‘uertex’ 3) matching culmine), and torrens agrees with amnis, as the river is ‘rushing with a whirlpool of milk’. The full spate of the milky river is brought out by the accumulation of ‘liquid’ words mare … amnis / gurgitibus … lactis uertice torrens. 71–85  Other people have lost far larger sums than you: and these days people are shameless in their oaths of denial. ‘Others have suffered worse’ or ‘it could have been worse’ are common enough themes in consolation and can be applied to the sufferers themselves (e.g. Virgil Aeneid 1. 199, Horace Odes 1.7.30–1) or refer to others worse off than oneself (cf. Cicero Tusc. 3.57, Seneca Ep. 107.5). See introductory remarks to this poem. 71–2  fraud: the deception (fraude) is bad enough, but the word sacrilega (stressed in enjambement) makes the offence a religious as well as a civil matter, as has already been suggested in line 15 (sacrum). The gods’ involvement was secured by the oath which accompanied the transaction (see 201–2, 6n., 15n., 75). The word sestertium indicates a sum of 1000 sesterces (cf. 1.92, 2.117, 4.16, 7.186, 9.41): 10,000 sesterces was not a fortune – it was the price of one mullet according to Suetonius (Tiberius 34.1) – but it was too big a sum to ignore. 400,000 sesterces was the property qualification for equites, while the unskilled labourer would be lucky to earn

Commentary

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1000 sesterces a year, and a soldier in Julius Caesar’s army would earn 900 sesterces a year with free food. intercepta here means simply ‘stolen’ (see OLD s.v. ‘intercipio’ 4a). 72–3  Things would be worse if the pledge were not witnessed (see OLD s.v. ‘arcanus’ 1a) or if the sum lost were much greater. somebody else: alter is pointed – if somebody else lost a fortune Calvinus would (presumably) be less concerned than he is at his own (more modest) loss. arcana (neuter plural agreeing with sestertia understood with bis centum) is also wellchosen both to suggest that the anonymous alter keeps his grief private rather than moaning to all and sundry (for this sense of arcanus cf. Persius 5.29) and also to look ahead to arcae in line 74. 73–4  A nameless third man (tertius) has hypothetically lost a greater sum than that (illa is ablative of comparison) – a huge sum which would only with difficulty fit into the ‘corner’ of his ‘spreading’ money-box. The point of angulus arcae is that the money could hardly be crammed into the corners of the box, large though it is (patulae is concessive). J. conveys the size of the fortune in visual terms with the imagery of the packed strong-box rather than simply stating a figure. ceperat here means ‘had contained’ (for the sense see OLD s.v. ‘capio’ 25: cf. 10.148, 11.171), in the pluperfect tense as the chest had held the money before somebody stole it. 75–111  People find it easy to swear false oaths and can justify doing so in their own minds 75–6  despise the witnesses above: a cynical remark on the pointlessness of religious oaths. For the phrase facile et pronum cf. 9.43. pronum in the sense ‘easy’ (OLD s.v. ‘pronus’ 7b) is an extension of the primary sense of ‘falling forward’ and is opposite to arduum which would mean an uphill struggle: virtue is often seen in such terms – cf. Hesiod Works and Days 289–92, Horace Odes 3.24.44 (with Nisbet-Rudd ad loc.), Plato Republic 2.364c–d. pronum is also ironic in this context as this word is also used of the prostrate pose adopted by worshippers of the gods: see 6.48, Ovid Met. 1.375–6. ‘Despiser of the gods’ is a stock phrase for anti-heroes such as Mezentius (Virgil Aeneid 7.648 etc.), Pentheus (Ovid Met. 3.514) or Capaneus (Statius Thebaid 3.602, 9.550). J. argues that these days such despising of the gods is the norm rather than the exception (6.342–5, 11.111; cf. Petronius Sat. 44). Swearing oaths by the gods was an important part of social life, especially important in an age with less reliance on written documents: see 36n.

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76–7  human being: it is humans who will provide the only sanctions: and humans are consummate liars. Notice how J. commands Calvinus to look (aspice) as he proves his point with hard evidence of hearing (quanta uoce) and of sight (ficti constantia uoltus). The firm voice and the fixed pokerface are of course vital to the liar who is persuading his hearers that he is speaking truthfully: cf. 237, Ovid Amores 1.4.70, Tacitus Histories 2.13.2. (For the archaic spelling uoltus (for uultus) cf. 51–2n.) 78–83  The perjurer swears by a succession of divine weapons with the implicit acceptance that any or all will be turned on him if he is found to be swearing falsely: cf. Ovid Amores 3.3.27–30, Lucan 7.145–50. See Schmitz (2019) 65 for discussion of this passage as a bathetic parody of the ‘catalogue’ trope found in epic. 78  Calling on the rays of the sun is common in oaths as the sun sees and hears everything and so is the best arbiter of truth and justice: cf. Homer Iliad 3.103–4, 277, 19.259, Euripides Medea 1327, Cicero de officiis 2.28, Ovid Fasti 4.581–2. The sun is also regarded as a potential messenger of the truth (cf. Homer Odyssey 8.270–1, Ovid Ars Am.2.573–4, Aeschylus Agamemnon 575–6, Sophocles Ajax 845–9) or as the agent who uncovers crime (Tacitus Annals 15.74): here the rays of the sun are mentioned as a potential instrument of punishment as in the mythical case of Phineus and the historical case of Regulus (Gellius 7.4.3, Nisbet and Rudd on Horace Odes 3.5.49–50). The temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill was said to be near to the Tarpeian Rock (though see Wiseman (1979) 41–5 for discussion of this point), and so Tarpeian commonly means ‘Jupiter’s’ (6.47, 12.6, Propertius 4.1.7, Ovid Fasti 6.34). The wording also hints at the Tarpeian Rock’s use as a place of execution (see OCD s.v. ‘Tarpeian Rock’) and so amounts to a challenge to face the death penalty if found to be lying. For the superstition that thunderbolts were divine punishments see (e.g.) 13.223, 3.145, Hesiod Theogony 820–80, Aeschylus Agamemnon 468–70, Seven against Thebes 444–5, Herodotus 7.10, Varro Atacinus fr.10 (Morel), Horace Odes 1.3.39–40, 3.4.41, Virgil Aeneid 12.200: the idea is debunked by Aristophanes (Clouds 397–402) and Lucretius (6.379–422). Zeus Horkios was the principal god associated with oaths in ancient Greece. 79  lance: the framea was a spear used by the Germani (Tacitus Germania 6.1: there is a good illustration of the weapon in Anderson ((1938) 63) which had a short blade and which could be used either at close quarters or at a distance. This is the only passage in extant Latin poetry where the word occurs and J.’s imaginary perjurer presumably intends to create a stronger,

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more distinctive image of Mars as a ferocious Germanic deity. For Mars and his spear cf. 11.106–7. The word Cirrhaean (Cirrhaei) alludes to Cirrha, the port near Delphi, and so points unmistakably to Apollo the god of prophecy whose oracular seat was located there: cf. 7.64. Apollo is often termed the ‘far-shooter’ in Homer (Iliad 7.83, 15.231, 20.295) and elsewhere (Homeric Hymn to Apollo 1–4) and it is his darts which bring the plague to the Greek camp at the opening of Homer’s Iliad (1.43–52). 80 The girl huntress is the goddess Diana, sister of Apollo, who used darts (calamos) to subdue her quarry. After two lines in which the speaker swore by two different deities in each, line 80 is entirely devoted to Diana. Strictly speaking the quiver is not a weapon and so is not directly relevant to the oath: the elegant line shows the oath-taker now waxing more forcefully with alliteration of ph … p and the strong use of the noun uenatrix with adjectival force: cf. 4.62, 5.21, 6.40, 15.81. 81  O Neptune: the crescendo continues with the device of apostrophe, whereby the narrator addresses (in the 2nd person) a character being described: cf. 10.166–7, 15.85–6, Homer Iliad 16.843, Odyssey 14.55. This is more apt here as the god would be addressed in the oath anyway and so it enacts the oath it is describing. Neptune (Greek Poseidon) was a brother of Jupiter and god of the sea and his image showed him wielding a trident (cf. Virgil Aeneid 1.145). Aegaei refers to the Aegean Sea: Poseidon as god of the sea was obviously linked to the Greeks’ own sea, and the association was easily applied to Neptune. pater here is an honorific title (OLD s.v. ‘pater’ 6) on a par with pater Appenninus (Virgil Aeneid 12. 703) and Father Tiber (Virgil Georgics 4.369) and Father Ocean (Virgil Georgics 4.382), but there is also the sense of ‘master’ (OLD s.v. ‘pater’ 4b, Catullus 21.1, Horace Odes 1.3.3, Satires 2.8.7). Willis rightly puts a semi-colon at the end of this line: there needs to be a break before the next phrase. 82  addit et suggests that the (already lengthy) list is not quite enough and so the oath-taker includes more, putting the two names chiastically around their weapons. The bow of Hercules was a formidable item: it was a gift to Hercules from Apollo (Apollodorus II.4.11.9, Diodorus Siculus 4.14.3) which was required for the capture of Troy and whose arrows were unerring in their aim (cf. Sophocles Philoctetes 105, 197–8, Trachiniae 265). Greeks commonly swore by Heracles for protection (e.g. Aristophanes Frogs 298, Clouds 184) and Hercules was seen as a member of the divine dinnerparty even though he only acquired immortality after a very painful human death (see 43n.). Minerva was the Roman equivalent of the warlike Greek

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virgin goddess Athena. For her retributive use of the spear see Homer Iliad 5.745–7(= Odyssey 1.99–101): for her anger cf. Sophocles Ajax 757 and for her role as judge of moral issues see Aeschylus Eumenides 681–710. The Roman Minerva was more commonly seen as a deity of wisdom and artistry (3.219, 10.115–6, OLD s.v. ‘Minerva’). 83  whatever weapons: the line sums up and offers a conclusion to the mythological armoury. weapon-chest: armamentarium is a prose word (only used here in verse) for an arsenal (e.g. Tacitus Histories 1.80: see Bishop and Coulston (1993) 199–201 for what is known about such buildings). telorum is a partitive genitive with quidquid. 84–5  father … vinegar: J. rounds off the insincere oaths with a ‘domestic anti-climax which is as ridiculous as it is disgusting’ (Green (1998) 204). J. similarly at 12.118–120 rounded off a list of sacrificial victims with similar murder of one’s child. There was a convention of swearing an oath by one’s own head – i.e. one’s own life, inviting the gods to kill the perjurer – as at Apollonius Rhodius 3.151, Ovid Tristia 5.4.45, Virgil Aeneid 4.357, 9. 300. This is developed here into an outrageous scene of infanticidal cannibalism. head: the speaker uses the rare culinary word sinciput (from semi+caput and usually referring to an animal’s head as food as at Novius Atellanae 13, Persius 6.70 (pig’s cheek), Petronius 135.4, 136.1, Pliny NH 8.209) for the expected word caput. What makes the passage truly grotesque is the lip-smacking relish of the weeping (flebile) head as boiled and dripping (madentis) with Egyptian vinegar. Here, as Gowers ((1993) 200 n.318) well points out, the word flebile ‘becomes conflated with madentis … the boy’s tears are provoked by the acidity of the vinegar’. Duff argues that the language is ludicrous as ‘the perjurer would not have added these picturesque details himself’ but this is surely wrong: the point is to exaggerate the confidence with which the perjurer can swear falsely by having him make what is already a strong oath even stronger with attendant details. boiled: for boiling as a method of cooking cf. 3.294, Petronius 59.6, Horace Satires 2.2.73–4 (where it is contrasted with roasted (assus)). Phario (‘Pharian’) is relatively common (cf. Statius Thebaid 6.278) to mean simply Egyptian owing to the fame of the lighthouse at Pharos off Alexandria in Egypt – a structure which was built in the 3rd century BC, stood at over 100 metres in height and was numbered among the seven wonders of the ancient world. acetum can also mean cheap wine (3.292, Martial 11.56.7) but here the epithet assures us that it was sharp Egyptian vinegar (cf. Cicero Hortensius fr. 89, Athenaeus 67c), looking forward to the exploration of

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Egyptian cannibalism which is to come in Satire 15. J. is notoriously hostile to the Egyptians: see 1.26–7, 130, 6.82–4 and Satire 15 passim. 86–9  There are men: what sort of people could swear falsely with so much confidence? J. first mentions whose who have no fear of swearing falsely as they do not believe in any divine forces ruling the world. Epicureans accepted the existence of gods but denied any form of teleology in the world (see e.g. Lucretius 2.167–83, 1052–1104, 4.823–57, 5.156–234, Cicero de natura deorum 1.18–23, 52–3, Lucan 7.445–7) as everything is produced by random atomic movement (cf. Epicurus Letter to Herodotus 43–4, Lucretius 2.80–124). Prayer is therefore pointless (Lucretius 4.1233–9) – a waste of a fine animal (Lucretius 2.352–4) or even a child (Lucretius 1.84–101). Oaths taken as a by-product of prayer are also pointless as the ‘blessed gods’ will not disturb their own peace of mind (ataraxia) to hear them (Lucretius 1.44–9), which also means that they will not care if we perjure ourselves in their name. 86–7  everything … not … any: the point is made clear by sharp contrast, emphasised by the balance of omnia … nullo: belief that everything is a matter of chance (fortunae … casibus) implies that we believe in no guiding hand moving the world (mundum rectore moueri). The choice between determinism and indeterminism is explored at Tacitus Annals 6.22. fortune: fortuna is a slippery concept but here has the sense of impersonal ‘chance’ (OLD s.v. ‘fortuna’ 5) strengthened by the double sense of casibus as both ‘chance events’ (OLD s.v. ‘casus’ 3) and also ‘the falling ’ in Epicurean atomic theory (see e.g. Lucretius 2.184–215). fortuna also means ‘what will happen to us’ in all its threatening uncertainty (see 10.52, OLD s.v. 8) and by surprising extension our ‘fortune’ in the sense of our destiny (OLD s.v. 1), personified as the goddess Fortune who directs events (OLD s.v. 3). From there it is a short step to the word meaning ‘good fortune’, personified as the mischievous (improba 6.605, Virgil Aeneid 2.80) agent of unexpected success (6.602–9) whereby a lucky man was called ‘the son of Fortune’ (see Otto (1890) s.v. ‘fortuna’ 10). sunt qui + generic subjunctive means ‘there are (the sort of people) who…’ (cf. 6.73, 480). For ponere in + ablative in the sense of ‘make dependent on’ see OLD s.v.’pono’ 23a. The text is uncertain here: Φ reads sunt qui in fortunae iam casibus omnia ponant which adds an unnecessary iam and which also misses the hyperbaton of sunt in fortunae qui casibus which itself suggests the random motion of the Epicurean atoms. 87  guiding hand: rector (from rego) is primarily used of a helmsman of a ship (12.33, OLD s.v. ‘rector’ 1) but it was a standard term for the god

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who controlled the universe (Seneca Ep. 16.4.2, Thyestes 1077 (with Boyle (2017) ad loc.)). mundum can mean ‘sky’ (OLD s.v. ‘mundus’ 1a: see Nisbet and Hubbard on Horace Odes 1.12.15) and the following line supports this, but the context shows that J. is thinking of the world as a whole. nullo rectore is an ablative absolute construction (as is natura uoluente in 88), and moueri is to be understood as meaning ‘to move’ in the intransitive sense of the Greek middle voice. 88  nature turns: natura mundi is a common enough phrase in Latin for ‘the way the world really is’ (see Fowler (2002) 259–60 for examples) and allows the Epicurean to have his cake and eat it, endowing brute matter with a productive force without compromising the indeterminacy of the universe (cf. natura gubernans at Lucretius 5.77 with Gale (2009) ad loc.). wheels: uices denotes the ‘turns’ (as in the phrase vice versa) whereby light (lucis) becomes dark and the seasons (anni) change. The verb uoluere is well chosen for the rotation of the heavenly bodies in orbit (see OLD s.v. ‘uoluo’ 1a, Virgil Aeneid 3.376, 4.524, Lucretius 5.514) and the sequence of daily (lucis) and yearly (anni) motion is pleasing: anni is perhaps surprising as we may be expecting noctis. 89  touching any altars: a solemn gesture to reinforce the oath: cf. 14.219, Livy 21.1.4, Virgil Aeneid 4.219, 6.124, 12.201, OLD s.v. ‘tango’ 1c. The line has emphatic assonance of ‘i’ and later ‘a’. intrepidi (used here in the same way as uacuus at 10.22, where the empty-handed (uacuus) traveller has no money to be stolen and so fears no robbers) makes the key point that he will swear with no fear of divine retribution. quaecumque has a nice generalising tone (‘whatever altars you like’: cf. 10.359) showing his total disdain for the superstition. 90  Another … crime: This line was deleted by Jahn and only Duff of modern editors prints it as genuine. As it stands, it seeks to link the fearless atheist perjurers of 86–9 with the fearful theists of 91–4 by providing a contrast to sunt qui in est alius and a contrast to intrepidi in metuens. If accepted it would have to be read as the first line of the sentence 90–94 and not as the last line of 86–90: but (as often with these one-line interpolations: cf. 101 (with Nisbet (1995) 28), 11.99, 161) the sense runs better without this hand-holding explanation. See Housman (1931) xxxiv. 91  This man: sunt qui (86) is now contrasted with a new character (hic) who manages to believe in gods and still (et) commit perjury. Understand a verb of ‘reasoning’ or ‘speaking’ with ita secum (and for the ellipsis cf. Virgil Aeneid 1.37) as J. dramatises the man’s reasoning into a soliloquy.

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92–3  Isis: It is interesting that the first example of religious faith shows a man with belief in the Egyptian goddess Isis rather than a Roman deity, but the cult of Isis was strong in the Roman world at this time (see CAH XI.994– 6) and was described at the climax of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Isis, whose worship had been encouraged by Domitian (see OCD s.v.’Isis’ and my note on 12.28), was a fertility goddess (linked to Demeter by Herodotus 2.59, 156.5) who was regarded (according to the aretalogy of Isis from Cyme: see Walsh (1970) 252–3) as an upholder of justice (§14 in the text printed by Walsh) and the sanctity of an oath (§31). J.’s choice of the Egyptian god may be to indulge his generally sneering attitude towards all things Egyptian (see above 84–5n. and Satire 15 passim). 92  let Isis decide … let her strike: decernat and feriat are both concessive iussive subjunctives. decerno has the sense of ‘make a judgment’ (OLD s.v. ‘decerno’ 3) and also to ‘decree’ (OLD s.v. 5b). 93  Isis is emphasised by enjambement and her weapon ends the line in juxtaposition to the lumina which it may strike. The sistrum was the rattle (from Greek σείω) which accompanied her worship as a musical instrument (Ovid Met. 9.784, Lucan 8.832), a symbol (Apuleius Met. 2.28) and (as here) a potential weapon to match those of other deities in lines 78–83. The oath is made especially forceful by the image of the rattle hitting the eyes as they were commonly referred to as the most precious of our organs (Catullus 82: cf. Otto (1890) s.v. ‘oculus’ 1). Propertius tells us that his lover Cynthia would swear falsely ‘by her eyes’ to be telling the truth (1.15.33–38) and Ovid (ex Ponto 1.1.51–4) claims to have seen someone blinded for outraging the divinity of Isis and attests to her reputation as a fearsome goddess (ex Ponto 37–8): a short poem by Nicarchus in the Palatine Anthology (11.115) includes Isis among those gods who render people blind. This was a relatively common punishment in mythology – especially for sacrilege – as in the tale of Tiresias and also that of Pheros in Herodotus (2.111); and the god of healing (Asclepius) can both cure blindness and inflict it as in the case of Hermon (Epidaurus Insciptions stele B 22: reprinted in Lloyd (2003) 76–77). Persius (5.186–7) describes the priestess of Isis as one-eyed. It may be relevant to note that both Onchocerciasis (river blindness) and Chlamydia Trachomatosis are especially common near rivers in Africa and are infections which can cause sudden blindness. J.’s specific reference to the sistrum in on a par with his mockery of Fremdwörter elsewhere: see 3.67–8, 14.196. Scholte rejected the transferred epithet irato (how can a rattle be angry?) and suggested emending to aurato (gilded).

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94  blind: The perjurer does not care even if the damage to his eyes is total and permanent. keep hold of: teneam is pointed – he may not be able to see the money but he can (and must) keep hold of the cash (nummos). For the urge to own money for its own sake – a common theme in satire – cf. Lucilius 278–81W, Horace Satires 1.1.28–107. The final ‘o’ of abnego is scanned short: see 66n.: the word has the sense of ‘I deny ever having received’ (OLD s.v. ‘abnego’ 2a). dummodo + subjunctive means ‘on the condition that’, ‘only so long as’ (AG §528). 95  Tuberculosis … sores … losing half a leg: the line lists three major forms of infection which might be seen as the work of an angry god: pthisis is a direct transliteration of the Greek term (φθίσις, literally ‘wasting’) for pulmonary tuberculosis (Hippocrates Epid.1.1.2, Airs Waters Places 10, Herodotus 7.88, Seneca Epistles 75.12). Lucretius (4.1167) lists the girl who is ‘almost dead with coughing’ as one of the inferior women whom only their lovers adore. A uomica (sore) is an abscess and Celsus (de medicina 2.8.24) links pulmonary abscesses to the fatal form of phthisis as well as stating that such infections need finally to be lanced (de medicina 3.27.4a6: cf. Cicero de natura deorum 3.70.7 where a sword drains an abscess ‘which doctors could not cure’). Certainly suppurating sores would smell foul and appear disgusting (putres) as did that of Philoctetes in Sophocles Philoctetes 473–4, 482–3, 889–92. In an age with little effective daily personal hygiene skin infections must have been a common occurrence and the image was used metaphorically (see Otto (1890) s.v. ‘ulcus’, Suetonius Augustus 65.4, Lucretius 4.1068–70). It is possible that he is thinking in this line of Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) which can manifest itself in obvious skin lesions and loss of limbs (see Celsus 3.25), and this disease (under its Greek name elephantiasis) was known in ancient Italy (Pliny NH 20.52). half a leg: dimidium crus literally means ‘a half leg’: cf. 15.56, 8.4, Martial 10.2.10. dimidius is formed from dis-medius, the dis- prefix signifying separation and dispersal (as in dissoluo, discedo, diffugio) and so meaning ‘split at the middle’. The rhythm of the last two words in this line (with the final monosyllable causing clash of ictus and accent: see Introduction on metre) nicely mirrors the limping leg. 96  podagra is gout which has often been seen as a rich man’s disease as it may be brought on (or exacerbated by) consumption of meat, seafood and other foods not available to the poor: Aristophanes (Plutus 558–561) has Poverty claim that she produces better men than Wealth as wealth makes people suffer from gout; there is also a neat poem by ps-Lucian in the Greek

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Anthology (11.403) addressed to Gout which tells us that it (gout) ‘loves to come to the feet of wealth’. locupletem (‘wealthy’) is here applied to the gout itself, transferring the epithet from the man who has it to the disease itself (for the device cf. irato sistro in 93, 99, 6.658, 12.82, 14.260, 15.43) which is personified as at Horace Satires 1.9.32 and Catullus 71.2. For the disfiguring effects of gout cf. Tibullus 1.9.73, Seneca Ep. 67.3. Satire elsewhere associates rich living with ill health: see 1.142–4, Persius 3.98– 106, Horace Satires 2.2.70–79. tanti is a genitive of value (cf. 3.54, 5.9, 6.178, 10.97, 343, AG §417). 96–7  poor … rich: the juxtaposition of pauper locupletem is effective as the poor man wishes to make the instant switch to wealth, and the subsequent juxtaposition of optare podagram is paradoxical: would anyone ‘wish for gout’? Ladas was the famous Spartan Olympic runner who died in the moment of his victory (Pausanias 3.21.1); his name was proverbial in Rome for speed (see Cicero ad Herrenium 4.4, Catullus 58b2, Seneca Ep. 85.4, Otto (1890) s.v. ‘Ladas’). pauper has conditional force: ‘if Ladas were poor’, followed by a genuine condition (and if he were not mad). Anticyra may refer to either of two towns of that name (in Phocis and Malis) both of which produced hellebore and became bywords for the drug (see Persius 4.16, Horace Satires 2.3.82, 166, Ars Poetica 300 (with Brink ad loc.), Otto (1890) s.v. ‘Anticyra’). Hellebore was used as a treatment for madness (cf. Plutarch Moralia 693a-b, Aristophanes Wasps 1489). 98  Archigenes was a Syrian doctor contemporary with J. (cf. 6.236, 14.252) who was cited by Galen (Lopez Ferez (2010) 366 n.17) as having written on the dosage of hellebore: see OCD s.v. ‘Archigenes’. 98–9  for what…?: the point is made emphatic by the use of the rhetorical question, the plosive alliteration and enjambement of plantae/praestat, the transferred epithet (see 96n. above) of the famished branch (esuriens ramus), and the bathetic reduction of Olympic glory to a matter of an olive from Pisa. Pisa was a town in Elis to the East of the Olympic plain and so Pisaeus was used to mean ‘Olympic’ (e.g. Ovid Amores 3.2.15: see OLD s.v. ‘Pisaeus’). The victor was rewarded with a crown of wild olive (oliua) cf. Ovid Tristia 4.10.95 and see OCD s.v. ‘Olympian Games’. There may also be a pun here on the two meanings of planta in Latin: the gloria plantae (glory of foot) is rewarded with the gift of a plant (see 3.227, OLD s.v. ‘planta’ (2)). 100  wrath of the gods…is…slow: the sentiment here is the reverse of the proverbial wisdom (Homer Iliad 4.160–1, Horace Odes 3.2.31, Statius Thebaid 5.689, Otto (1890) s.v. ‘deus’ 11) that the punishment of god may

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be slow but will be great and better avoided. This is closer to the equally proverbial suggestion that the gods have slow feet (Otto (1890) s.v. ‘deus’ 10, OLD s.v. ‘lanatus’ 1c): a similar thought lies behind the ‘Litai’ passage in Homer Iliad 9.502–12, and J. closely imitates Homer Iliad 9. 497 in line 102. ut here is concessive: even though it may be great, nonetheless (tamen) it is slow. See 10.240, OLD s.v. ‘ut’ 35. 101–2  every … when?: all the sinners in the world would form a very long queue and the gods will not get to me for long time – if at all. 101  Nisbet suggested deleting this line as being ‘the sort of explanation that an interpolator would have provided’ (Nisbet (1995) 28) and the passage would gain in pace if it were omitted. The line is not without its merits, however: there is a jingling euphony in curant igitur cunctos and emphatic alliteration of ‘c’. More importantly it lightly alludes to the Epicurean stance that the ‘blessed’ gods cannot be subject to cura of any kind if they are enjoying their beatific ataraxia. For Epicurean theology see 86–9n., LS 1.139–149, Rist (1972) 146–63, Lucretius 6.68–79, Cicero de natura deorum 1.43–9. 102–3  swayed by prayer: J. changes tack from the Epicurean indifference of the gods to the possibility of exoneration. The sentiment that the gods can be moved by entreaty is taken from Homer Iliad 9.497 (quoted at Plato Republic 2.364d–e), echoed by Propertius (2.30.11) of the god Amor and is part of the motivation (along with averting misfortune) which lies behind the practice of purification, prayer and sacrifice (see Ogilvie (1981) 24–53). It is not one which commanded universal agreement: cf. Hesiod Works and Days 282–5 (with West (1978) ad loc.) Aeschylus Agam. 68–71, Supp. 386– 7, Plato Laws 905d–907b. Stoicism (see LS i.323–394) argued on the one hand that wisdom does not countenance forgiveness (Cicero pro Murena 61) and on the other that our sins are part of divine providence and so not our fault (Plutarch On Stoic Self-contradictions 1050c–d, Cicero de fato 39–43, LS 1.386–94). Here the speaker cannot guarantee divine forgiveness as is brought out by the tentative fortasse emphasised in enjambement. 103  sins like this: his must mean ‘actions of this kind’ and so refers to perjury and theft, with perhaps the self-justifying hint that crimes involving property are of a lower order than ones of (e.g.) blood-guilt – and that the god tends to forgive them. For the gods’ failure to punish perjurers cf. Aristophanes Clouds 397–400 and the laments of the abandoned Ariadne at her oath-breaking lover Theseus (Catullus 64.132–5, Ovid Heroides 10.73– 6). This is the same issue of the ‘justice of Zeus’ which is also lamented at

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(e.g.) Euripides Heracles 339–47, 1087–8 (see further Adkins (1960) 62– 70, Dodds (1951) 33–36). 103–5  Many … outcomes: the speaker gives his confidence a cynical political twist: successful criminals can find themselves enjoying power and eminence (see 2–3n. on the archetypal ἄδικος εὐδαίμων figure of Archelaus King of Macedon (Plato Gorgias 470c9–471d2: for a different view of him see Thucydides 2.100.2)) while the unsuccessful ones face punishment. Rulers, in other words, are bandits who do extremely well: cf. Cicero de republica 3.25, Seneca Epistles 87.23, Hercules Furens 255–6. The tale of Gyges and his ring makes the same point with even greater edge (see Plato Republic 359d–360d7). 104  same … different: the disparity and confusion of the outcome is brought out by the interlocking word order of eadem diuerso crimina fato. fato here means ‘outcome’ rather than ‘destiny’ but there may be a hint at the Stoic debate about providence and its impact on ethical issues (see above 102–3n. and cf. the tale of Zeno flogging a slave for stealing. ‘I was fated to steal’ pleaded the slave – ‘and to be flogged’ said Zeno (Diogenes Laertius 7.23)). diuersae is the exact word to use for roads heading in different directions (Catullus 46.11). For committo in the sense of 'commit' a crime see OLD s.v. ‘committo’ 17b and cf.1. 105  payment for his crime: the Φ group of manuscripts read pretium sceleris: but the reading of P and other mss sceleris pretium is metrically identical but makes better sense as it juxtaposes the crime and the punishment and leaves the neutral ‘reward’ word central to the line, looking forward and back. Crucifixion was originally only used to execute slaves and noncitizens but under the empire it came to be used on ‘humbler citizens’ (OCD s.v. ‘crucifixion’). At all times and places it was a shameful and public death: cf. 14.77n., 6.219–220, Horace Satires 2.7.47: Cicero (Verrines 2.5.162) fulminates at its use on a Roman citizen in Sicily. crown: the diadema was the symbol of supreme power (cf. 13.39, 8.259) and was the ‘kingly crown’ (Shakespeare Julius Caesar Act III. sc.2.97–8) which Marcus Antonius tried in vain to put on Caesar’s head at the Lupercalia (Cicero (Philippics 3.12) glosses it as regni insignia). In Plutarch’s account of that incident (Life of Antony 12.3) the same word (διάδημα) is used of this crown (see Pelling (1988) ad loc. and Rawson (1975) 156–7). payment (pretium) is the perfect word to place here as it means both a positive reward (OLD s.v.’pretium’ 1a) and also a penalty or punishment (ibid. 1b). The cynical (see 121n.) point – that rulers are successful criminals – is neatly encapsulated.

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106  This is how: sic sums up the arguments in lines 92–105 and the state of mind is well captured in the line: the words denoting fear (trepidum formidine) are juxtaposed for reinforcing effect and the line ends with the guilty verdict of culpae (cf. 1.167, 6.540, 7.158; 8.119 has the phrase dirae … culpae as here). 107  strengthens: confirmat is emphasised by the enjambement and the punctuation. The word is only found here in Juvenal: for its use as psychological shoring up of a fearful mind see OLD s.v. ‘confirmo’ 3a. then: tunc marks a change in tactic, as the quarry now turns into the hunter. Summoning to the sacred shrines shows that the victim feels that he has the gods behind him and that the offence was one of sacrilege (71–2n.) as well as simple theft, because it involved breaking an oath. 107–8  summoning … first: the victim of crime is summoning the criminal (te … uocantem) – only to find in the next line that the criminal is getting there first and is ready and waiting. praecedit is stressed in enjambement for its surprise value, and the whole sentence is couched in a vivid present tense, suggesting that the criminal is arriving first while you are still speaking his summons. The word praecedit is well chosen: it has the simple meaning of ‘getting to the shrines before you’ (OLD s.v. ‘praecedo’ 1) but it also has the sense of ‘to be superior’, ‘to surpass’ or to ‘rank before’ (cf. OLD s.v. 4,5) as at 13.58, 8.23, and making the point that the underdog has somehow turned into the aggressor. immo shows the reversal, and ultro indicates that he is acting spontaneously. The mss read uexare (‘to jostle’) but Nisbet’s uectare (‘to convey’) is much better: ‘the trickster walks in front of you to the temple: he actually pulls you along; best of all, he is ready to provide transport in his litter’ (Nisbet (1995) 26). 109  For when … neck: this line, like 101, is one which could be omitted without damaging the argument and Knoche believed that it was an interpolation. The line is not without force, however, shown in the effective golden-line word order of magna malae superest audacia causae with its central verb framed by balanced pairs of adjectives and nouns. The theme of the powerful crook is enhanced by juxtaposing magna malae. superest is drawn from legal language: OLD s.v. ‘supersum’ 8 has it as ‘(of an advocate) to be at the service (of a client)’ and this fits the legal word causae well, although it also bears the sense of ‘there is a surfeit of’ as at 237. There is also a neat contrast of audacia and fiducia – what is reckless and brazen behaviour can be seen as self-confidence.

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110  confidence convincing: there is a neat balance in the phrase, with the words for belief (creditur) and self-belief (fiducia) framing the people (multis) duped. comedy: the Roman ‘mime’ was a lowbrow form of comic theatre involving farcical and erotic elements and being acted by both men and women (see OCD s.v. ‘mime, Roman’), some of whom became famous. It was a major influence on the storylines and the style of some forms of satire (e.g. Petronius Satyricon). The pause before the fifth foot of this line (‘bucolic diairesis’) and the syncopation of ictus and accent (mīm(um) agit īlle) contribute to the impression of rough drama. 111  joker: the scurra was a professional buffoon (see Corbett (1986)), a ‘republican cultural composite of threatening socialite, tasteless joker and pushy freeloader’ (Gowers (2012) on Horace Satires 1.1.23–4) and is mentioned also at 4.31. At 8.190 J. coins the intensive term triscurria (triple-buffoonery). Catullus was a mime-writer (see OCD s.v. ‘Catullus’ (2)), famed for his mime Phasma (‘The Ghost’) and thought to have been active during the reign of Caligula (if the Laureolus (mentioned by Suetonius Caligula 57.4 as being performed just before Caligulas’s assassination in 41 AD) is by the same author). Martial (5.30.3) describes him as facundi – as J. calls him urbani. T. P. Wiseman ((1985) 192–98, 258) argues strongly for the identification of this Catullus with Valerius Catullus the republican poet, but this cannot be proved. The scholiast on this line suggests that the runaway slave turned the tables on his master and forced him to swear an oath that he was free-born. This line features heavy assonance of ‘u’. 112–19  Calvinus is mocked for calling on the gods for vengeance 112  you: the personal pronoun tu marks the contrast between the clever adversary and the bawling of Calvinus. Stentor was a Greek hero in the Trojan War, proverbial for his loud voice (Aristotle Politics 1326b6–7, Lucian On Grief 15). Homer (Iliad 5.785–6) tells us that his voice was ‘as great as that of fifty men’. One story recorded in the ancient commentators on Homer has it that he died after being defeated in a shouting competition against the god Hermes (OCD s.v. ‘Stentor’), although here uincere is more like ‘drown out’ as at Horace Satires 1.6.44. It is possible that the name is derived from the Greek verb στένω (‘I lament’) which would neatly fit the phrase miser exclamas. 113  Mars in Homer: Homer (Iliad 5. 859–61) tells us that, after being wounded by Diomedes, ‘Brazen Ares then shouted as loud as nine or ten thousand men roar when they join the strife of Ares in war’ – a degree of vocal

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power which he shares with Poseidon (Iliad 14.148–9) and which is twenty times as great as Stentor (hence potius). Gradiuus is a title for the god Mars – the Greek god Ares – which Varro (L.L. 5.85) stated was derived from the verb gradior and so refers to the ‘stepping’ of the priests of Mars known as Salii, but Ogilvie (1965) in his note on Livy 1.20.4 states that the name is imported from Illyria or Thrace. The title is used regularly in epic verse: cf. Virgil Aeneid 3.35, 10.542, Lucan 1.660, Statius Thebaid 4.639, Valerius Flaccus 3.498, Silius Italicus 3.702 – and J. uses it in a state of anguished outrage at 2.128. The howling vowels of audis make a powerful way to begin the call to the divine witness, here placed for emphasis at the end of the line. 113–5  You don’t … bronze: the protest is eloquent. If the gods hear and see what is happening and they obviously could help us, then it is obvious that they are choosing not to do so: this is a complaint found throughout ancient literature: see (e.g.) Homer Odyssey 20.201, Iliad 3.365, Euripides Heracles 339–47, Virgil Aeneid 4.206–218, Griffin (1978). The god is castigated for not (nec) moving his lips even though (cum) he ought to (do more than that and) let his voice sound. The phrase move your lips (labra moues) contributes to the burlesque treatment of the gods (on which see 38–59n.). For the phrase uocem mittere to denote a targeted and directed utterance cf. OLD s.v. ‘mitto’ 11, Lucilius 1102, Horace Epodes 5.86, Ars Poetica 390. Romans sometimes took out their anger on the gods when disaster struck: at the death of Germanicus temples were stoned and altars overthrown (Suetonius Caligula 5), and Augustus removed Neptune’s statue from a procession when a fleet had been lost (Suetonius Augustus 16). cum with the perfect subjunctive here has a concessive force and means ‘even though you ought to have…’. 115  marble or bronze: uel marmoreus uel aeneus is a wonderful touch. Statues of gods were generally made of marble or bronze and so the rhetorical conceit is that the god ought to speak even if he were only a statue: for a similar joke (at the expense of doctors) cf. Anth. Pal. XI. 113. ‘Marcus the doctor laid hands on the stone statue of Zeus. Even though he was stone, and though he was Zeus, his funeral is today.’ The uel … uel formula is familiar in ancient religion where the god is addressed by a variety of names (often with the catch-all ending ‘or by whatever name you wish to be called’) to ensure that the prayer reaches its addressee: e.g. Aeschylus Agamemnon 160–2, Euripides Trojan Women 884–7, Catullus 34.21–2, Horace Carmen Saeculare 15, Satires 2.6.20, Odes 3.21.5–6, Athenaeus 8.334b, CIL II.1823, Ogilvie (1969) 25–26. For full discussion of this see Pulleyn (1994).

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115–118  why else…?: the speaker threatens to stop worshipping the gods if the rewards are not forthcoming: a good example of the do ut des attitude behind much ancient religious worship (cf. Persius 2.29–30: ‘with what bribe are you buying the ears of the gods? lung-meat and greasy offal?’) and an outspoken confrontation with the deity as shown by the jabbing monosyllables of aut cur and the climactic enjambed term omenta. For this sort of question cf. 2.126–32, Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus 895–6. It is also found in comedy (Aristophanes Birds, Ploutos 1113–7, Dover (1972) 30– 33) and more seriously in history (Thucydides 2.53 mentions that piety was no use against the plague) and didactic: Lucretius mocks the impotent man who pointlessly sacrifices and prays for the power to impregnate his wife (4.1233–41) and Epicurean theology rests on the principle that the ‘blessed gods’ are indifferent to our needs (cf. 86–9n., 101n.). This is the counter-side to the argument that disaster strikes because the gods are being neglected by us (Petronius Satyricon 44.17–18). 116  pious incense … charcoal: the word order is expressive as the incense is verbally as well as literally inside the paper: and there is neat transfer of epithet in calling the incense pia – a term which really describes the people. Incense was carried in paper (made from papyrus: cf. Horace Epistles 2.1.269–70, Persius 1.43, Martial 3.2.5) by the purchaser and then put onto burning charcoal (carbone: cf. 10.131) as an offering to the god: cf. Lucilius 206, Persius 5.120, Horace Odes 3.8.2–4, Tibullus 1.8.69–70, [Tibullus] 3.11.9 and see OCD s.v. ‘incense’. 116–8  caul: the omentum was properly the membranous caul which covered the beast’s intestines (Pliny NH 11.204), as offered to gods at Catullus 90.6, Persius 2.47 and as a synonym for the fat belly of a priest (Persius 6.74). This and the liver were examined for good or bad omens (and to ensure that they were acceptable to gods) once the victim has been killed (see the extispicy scenes in Seneca Oedipus 353–70 and Lucan (1.616–29)): then they were offered to the gods (cf.10.354–5, Virgil Georgics 2.194), while the worshipping public ate the rest of the beast (Ogilvie (1969) 49–10). For this to happen the organs had to be cut out and sliced up (sectum). Liver was not always regarded as second-rate food – a stuffed goose-liver is haute cuisine at 5.114, Horace Satires 2.8.88, Martial 13.58, Athenaeus 9.384c, Pliny NH 10.27.52 – but here the combination with the tripe-like pork omenta is less appetising. For the Roman eating of pork see OCD s.v. ‘food and drink’, Gowers (1993) 69–75, Balsdon (1969) 53. The calf (uitulus) was a choice sacrificial animal: see 12.5–9, Lucretius 2.352–4, Tibullus 1.1.21, Virgil Georgics 4.547, Aeneid

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5.772–3, Horace Odes 1.36.2. The pork-caul is described as white, which is apt for sacrificial animals (cf. 12. 72–3, 6.177, Virgil Aeneid 8.81–5) and can mean ‘propitious’ or ‘favourable’ (OLD s.v. ‘albus’ 7, Persius 1.110). 118–19  your: the word uestra is surprisingly plural after the singular address to Jupiter (113–5) and the pronoun tuo (116): it may mean ‘belonging to all you gods’ or else be colloquial plural for singular as at Catullus 39.20, 99.6, OLD s.v. ‘uester’ 2c. The plural is in any case effective as it points up the (lack of) contrast between the plural effigies and a single statuam of Vagellius. Vagellius is mentioned as a stupid orator at 16.23 (where see note) and Courtney surmises that a grateful client may have given him a statue: the point seems to be that one can always get a verbal response from Vagellius but his statue is as frustratingly silent as the god (see Geue (2017) 215). Certainly the man’s name is placed for maximum bathetic effect at the end of the line and the speech and the line has pleasing assonance of ‘e’ and ‘a’. ut uideo means ‘as I see things’ (OLD s.v. ‘uideo’ 14d cf. Cicero Phil. 7.16.6, ad Atticum 7.2.6.3, Seneca Medea 492) similar to quod uideo at 6.395. discrimen habere inter + accusatives is ‘to draw a distinction between’ or ‘to tell apart’ (see OLD s.v. ‘discrimen’ 2). 120–73  Your misfortune is less bad than many far worse crimes 120–125  not a man who has read: J. here introduces his own nonphilosophical, man-in-the-street consolation to Calvinus. It was (and is) something of a topos to claim no special knowledge when starting a speech and to present oneself as a ‘moderate citizen’ rather than an expert (cf. Lysias 19.1, Demosthenes 27.2, 55.2) and the ‘ironic’ disclaiming of any great ability is also something J. has done in terms of poetry (1.79–80: cf. Catullus 1.8–9) and is a standard opening to a speech on a big theme (see Isocrates Panegyricus 13). This is all intended to win over the audience (captatio beneuolentiae: see Cicero de oratore 2.115), a device mocked at Aristophanes Wasps 650–1. J. here, however, is doing something different. Far from mouthing ironic protests of his inability to do justice to the theme, he is claiming that he can do so without needing to consult the experts and uses an interesting medical analogy to put his own slant on things, as he had at 10.356 (cf. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 3.76–83). For the swipe here at philosophers cf. Horace Satires 1.1.120–1 and for the sentiment that philosophy is not in itself a protection against suffering see Horace Epode 15.21. In fact all three philosophies would have refuted Calvinus’ anger neatly and all three dismissed the power of misfortune to spoil our

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lives: for the Cynic, property as such was unnecessary (D.L. 6.37) and the wise man availed himself of whatever he wanted (D.L. 6.73): for the Stoic, passions such as anger were to be ignored and removed (LS 1.410–423): and Epicureans would similarly not allow their ἀταραξία (‘serenity’) to be disturbed by so trivial a matter as the loss of money, especially since Epicurus argued (Vatican Sayings 25), that wealth was great poverty and poverty great wealth. J. himself has already urged (10.12–22) that wealth renders its owner a terrified target. 120  Take on board: the singular imperative accipe is a didactic feature (cf. 15.31, 7.36, Lucretius 1.269, 4.722) found also in Lucilius (30.1032) and Horace (e.g. Satires 1.4.38, 2.2.70, 2.5.10) and similar to aspice at 76, 14.275, 6.261. J. neatly introduces the topic of ‘what consolations one would be able to bring’ in this line, thus allowing himself the three following lines to list the different philosophies not needed for the act. ualeat is a good choice of word for ‘to be able’ as it means ‘to be strong’ (OLD s.v. ‘ualeo’ 1,2) and links with the theme of health and strength which J. will pursue in lines 124–5. 121 The Cynics (‘the canines’: the Greek word derives from the word for ‘dog’) argued that we should live in accordance with nature: their founder Diogenes (c. 412/403–324/321 BC) famously lived in a jar and refused to accept social norms, but played up scandalously to his nickname of ‘dog’ by (e.g.) urinating on men who so mocked him (Diogenes Laertius VI.2. 46: see OCD s.v. ‘Diogenes (2)’). His acid wit also gained Cynics their reputation for cynicism: see D.L. VI.2.45 (imitated by J. at 13.105, where see n.) and see OCD s.v. ‘Cynics’. The Stoic school was founded by Zeno of Citium (335–263 BC) and was hugely influential in Roman life and society, being the most politically engaged of the three schools mentioned here: see OCD s.v. ‘Stoicism’, Sandbach (1975) 140–48. The words Stoica dogmata are a direct transliteration of their equivalent Greek words and denote ‘Stoic tenets’ or ‘beliefs’: the use of Greek terminology can express xenophobic distaste (see 3.58–125 with Braund ad loc., 6.16) or else terminological exactness as at Cicero Lucullus 27.10, Seneca Epistles 95.10.2, a practice used and also excused by Lucretius (1.830–833). 122  J. lumps the Cynics and Stoics together, claiming that their only difference was the fact that the former rejected the tunic (χίτων) and wore instead a double cloak (ἱμάτιον) as mentioned by Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 4.30) and Epictetus (4.8.31). This sort of over-simplification is the stuff of satire and comedy (cf. e.g. Aristophanes lumping together

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Socrates and the Sophists in Clouds: see Dover (1968) lii–liii) and suits the purpose here of one who is dismissing all such schools alike. For the actual points of contact and difference between the two schools see Cicero de officiis 1.128, Epictetus 3.22, Morford (2002) 6–8. 122–3  Epicurus (341–270 BC) developed the atomist philosophy of Democritus and Leucippus and was as famous for living in a garden (cf. 14.319) as the Stoics were for their stoa or colonnade. He was contented with the simple life and avoided all public attention (λάθε βιώσας – (‘live unnoticed’) was his motto) but he also enjoyed the company of his friends: see OCD s.v. ‘Epicurus’, Rist (1972). The concept of the ‘life of slender means’ (uictus tenuis) became a topos in Latin literature – see (e.g.) Lucretius 2.20–61 (with Fowler (2002) ad loc.), Horace Satires 2.2, Virgil Georgics 2.458–74 – and emerges in J. as a stated distaste for luxury (see e.g. 6.292– 305, 11.90–116). Just as in the previous line, J.’s satirical style boils down the essence of the philosophical school into a matter of being happy with seedlings – a form of reductio ad absurdum, and the smallness of scale is emphasised with the choice of words – plantaria (properly ‘cuttings’ (cf. Persius 4.39) rather than full plants) and exigui (little). suspicit here means to admire or esteem (OLD s.v. ‘suspicio’ 2, Martial 11.56.2). 124–5  critically sick: J. draws a sharp distinction between those who are critically sick (dubii aegri) and Calvinus himself (tu emphasised in enjambed juxtaposition). dubius here means ‘in a critical condition’ (OLD s.v. ‘dubius’ 9b) as at Ovid Ex Ponto 3.4.8: cf. the use of res dubiae to indicate ‘crisis, emergency’ at (e.g.) Virgil Aeneid 6.196, Horace Odes 4.9.36. medicis maioribus (dative of agent (cf. 6.45, 11.191, AG §374–5)) confirms that there were in Rome doctors of greater or lesser standing and repute (Paoli (1990) 207–220). Eminent physicians included Democedes in Herodotus (3.129–31), or Antonius Musa (see OCD s.v. ‘Antonius Musa’) who cured the emperor Augustus of a grave illness and was rewarded with a statue of himself erected next to that of the legendary healer Asclepius (Suetonius Augustus 59): another was the Charicles who tried to take Tiberius’ pulse without the emperor noticing (Tacitus Annals 6.50). Rome was well supplied with Greek doctors: see Scarborough (1969) 110–112. For J.’s jaundiced view of doctors see 10.221, 16.12n. and cf. Anth. Pal. 11.113, 114, 118, 121, Petronius 42.5, Martial 1.47, 6.53, Pliny NH 29.11. 125  entrust your pulse: uenam committe means either ‘let him take your pulse’ (Persius 3.107, Celsus 3.6, 3.19.1, Pliny NH 11.219, Quintilian 7.10.10, Tacitus Annals 6.50) or ‘give him a vein [for blood-letting]’. Blood-

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letting (missio sanguinis) was used to rid the body of diseased or excess blood (Celsus 2.6–11) or even to treat madness (6.46, Suetonius Caligula 29.2, Petronius 90.4). Philippus is otherwise unknown as a physician, and so his ‘student’ will be even less of a celebrity and it is possible that J. is making the point (‘you don’t need a doctor’) more pointed by telling Calvinus to trust an anonymous student of an unknown physician. 126–7  If you can…: this is of course a rhetorical challenge, as there are enormous numbers of crimes worse than that suffered by Calvinus. For the phrase in terris denoting ‘anywhere in the world’ cf. 10.1. ostendis is stressed in enjambement – Calvinus has to point to the evidence – and also by juxtaposition with taceo: – ‘as soon as you show me, I will then stop speaking’ (cf. Horace Satires 2.3.41–2). disgusting: the word detestabile is well chosen in the context, suggesting the legal bearing of witness (testatio) which well suits the challenge to provide evidence in the verb ostendis. ostendis, taceo and ueto (in 128) are all present tense verbs denoting future intention (AG §468, KS II.1.119–120 (§31.7)), a form common in conditional sentences such as this one (cf. e.g. Cicero ad Att. 1.4.3, 2.9.1). 127–8  beat your breast … slapping your face: J. mentions two typical self-harming gestures to express anger and grief: beating the breast (cf. e.g. Homer Iliad 19.285, Catullus 64.351, Virgil Aeneid 1.481, 4.673 (=12.871), 11.86, Ovid Heroides 10.15, Ars Am. 1.535, Petronius 111, Seneca Apoc. 12.3.30, OLD s.v. ‘plango’ 2) and hitting the head and/or tearing the hair (cf. e.g. Homer Iliad 22.33, Ovid Met.10.722–3, Cicero ad Att.1.1.1, Seneca Ep. 99.16). The two are often mentioned together (e.g. Ovid Met. 5.472–3, 10.722–3, Seneca Troades 113–9, Lucan 2.38–9, Quintilian 2.12.10) and both are regarded as the sort of behaviour more appropriate to women than to men: Cicero Tusc.Disp. 3.62 (‘womanish tearing at the cheeks, breasts, legs, hitting of the head’: on this see Erskine (1997)). Lucian (de luctu 8) mocks the women (often hired) at funerals who ‘beat their breasts, tear their hair and scratch their cheeks until they bleed’ – the practice of cheek-tearing was forbidden in the Twelve Tables (10.4) but clearly went on. For more signs of grief see 132–3 and for the whole topic of grief at funerals see Hopkins (1983) 217–20. The lines show some pleasing literary effects: the beating of the breast and head is enhanced by the alliteration of ‘p’ and ‘t’ and (in 128) the assonance of ‘a’. The words plana palma spread over the line give the visual image of the flat hand to contrast with the clenched fists (pugnis) of 127. 129  house must be shut up: J. caps his permission to show grief by

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adding that it will all be behind closed doors anyway. The main door of a rich Roman’s house would be opened early for the morning salutatio (see OCD s.v. ‘salutatio’ and cf. Cicero Cat. 1.10 for the failed attempt to abuse this custom to kill Cicero). The door was then left open (and guarded by a slave) during the day, but was left closed all day if the family had suffered a bereavement as at Livy 35.15.7, Tacitus Annals 2.82, [Ovid] consolatio ad Liuiam 183. For quandoquidem cf. 1.112, 10.146: the second syllable is scanned short in verse. 130  greater … greater: note the obvious anaphora of maiore…maiore and the effective mournful assonance of ‘u’ in this line. 130–1  groaning … distress: the lines are (as Courtney points out) a parody of Virgil Aeneid 2.486–7, where Pyrrhus has just broken into the palace of Priam and is about to butcher the king. The epic language adds a further note of mockery of the pretensions of the mourners as their epic lamentation is bathetically attached to mere cash (nummi) – a travesty of the situation in Virgil’s original. There is a similar effect when J. quotes Virgil Eclogue 2.69 in mockery of Naevolus in Satire 9.102. tumultus here primarily carries the sense of ‘mental agitation’ (see OLD s.v. ‘tumultus’ 5 and cf. Horace Odes 2.16.10, Seneca Ep. 56.5) but there is also a suggestion of vocalised inner turmoil as at 6.420, Lucretius 6.218. 131  lamented: plangere means ‘to beat, strike’ as in breast-beating (see 127–8n.) and by extension to ‘mourn for’ or ‘bewail’ (6.534, OLD s.v. ‘plango’ 3, used (as here) transitively in the passive at: Tacitus Agricola 46.1, Petronius 42.6: see also ploratur at 134). funus is here used in the sense of ‘death’ (as at 6.565) – elsewhere (10.259, Virgil Aeneid 9.491, Propertius 1.17.8, OLD s.v. 2) it means ‘corpse’ or else ‘funeral’ (4.109, OLD s.v. 1). The conceit that coins are lamented more than deaths, with the implicit imagery of cash being given a funeral, is redolent of J.’s sardonic reading of the lust for money at 10.12–27 – a theme common in satire (cf. e.g. Horace Satires 1.1.28–107, Persius 2.52–60, 6.75–80). 131–4  Nobody feigns: other forms of grief are faked, but Romans weep for money with real tears: the long sentence ends with a climactic word ueris. For the satirical exposure of hypocrisy cf. 2.1–63 (Stoic sodomites) 3.74–108 (Greeks) 6.268–85 (women) and cf. Gellia at Martial 1.33.1–2 who weeps for her deceased father only when people are watching. Ariadne in Catullus 64.198 feels it necessary to protest that her laments are uerae and so not feigned. For casu cf. 9n. 132  rend … cloak: Rending one’s garment is another sign of grief and

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anger (see 127–8n.) as shown in 10.262, Latinus in Virgil Aeneid 12.609, Aeschylus Choephoroe 27–8, Gospel of Matthew 26.65. It is something of a topos for a distraught woman to expose herself in the process: see e.g. Ariadne at Catullus 64.63–70, Andromache in Homer Iliad 22.468–70. Here the garment-rending is clearly a token exercise as only the edge is split – presumably because the garment was expensive and the mourner loved money too much to spoil it – and the limited nature of the grief is well brought out by the juxtaposition of summam/contentus and the ironic adjective contentus (he is actually happy and not very upset). 133  forced tears: umore coacto refers to tears forced out of the eyes to feign grief, as is claimed of the Greeks at 3.101–2 (cf. the Greek liar Sinon at Virgil Aeneid 2.196 with his lacrimis coactis) and of the shrewish wife at 6.273–5 (cf. Ovid Ars Am. 3.291–2, Terence Eunuchus 67–8, Propertius 1.15.40, Ovid Amores 1.8.83). A fine modern example of this can be found in the chapter ‘Im Zwiebelkeller’ in Grass (1959) 642–61. 134  real: for the dropping of pretence and the sudden appearance of true feelings cf. Lucretius 3.55–58. Horace (Epistles 1.17.56–7) tells us how people who feign grief are ultimately not trusted even when their pain is real. The lost money (amissa pecunia) is wrapped in the real tears (lacrimis ueris) which has the effect of juxtaposing pecunia ueris which thus highlights the point being made. For the transitive passive ploratur cf. planguntur at 131. 135–41  you special case: if your case is not unique then why do think you are a special case? This is one of the topoi of consolatory literature – ‘all men must die’ – and is found at Sophocles Electra 153–5, Euripides Helen 464, Alcestis 416–9; 892–3, Andromache 1041–2, Cicero ad Fam. 4.5.4, Tusculan Disputations 3.79, Seneca Ep. 99.8, Otto (1890) s.v. ‘solus’ 2. A stronger form (‘greater men than you have died’) is found at Homer Iliad 18.117–8, Lucretius 3. 1025–1052, Horace Odes 1.29.7–15 (see Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) ad loc.). 135  courts: a forum was an open space used for legal and commercial business. By the time of J. there were five such in Rome: the forum Romanum, forum Caesaris, forum Augusti, forum Neruae and the forum Traiani (see OCD s.vv.). For these places as lawcourts (OLD s.v. 6) see 1.128, 2.52, 6.68, 16.47: for the other sense of ‘market-place’ (OLD s.v. 3) cf. 7.132, 10.25, 11.50. As this was a financial crime both senses of the word are relevant, although the following lines make it clear that there is a legal dispute going on. The grievances swamp the courts verbally as the sandwiching wordorder of simili fora plena querela makes clear.

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136  documents: a tabella or tabula was a flat piece of wood (ligni 137) with many uses: such wooden tablets were sometimes coated in wax and threaded together to form a secure document which could be sealed with wax and then imprinted with a personal signet-ring (cf. Plautus Curculio 347, OLD s.v. 6, Fordyce (1961) on Catullus 42.5 and 50.2). Such tabellae were often used for love-letters (9.35–7, Horace Epode 12.2) and at 2.119 and 6.200 the word represents a marriage contract, while Catullus (who also terms them codicilli and pugillaria) speaks (42.5, 42.11, 50.2) of using them for composing and sending poems. The ones referred to here are important documents recording the transfer of the cash (cf. Martial 9.102.1) and have been read through ten times (deciens is the frequentative form of decem) by the other side – i.e. by the trustee who goes on (in line 137) to declare the document a forgery. For the phrase diuersa parte as meaning ‘on the other side’ cf. 7.156. For this sense of diuersus see OLD s.v. 7: elsewhere (104, 3.268, 4.148, 6.257, 10.263, 15.94) it has its more common meaning of ‘different’. 137  say that … wood: this fine line is repeated almost verbatim at 16.41 and is a good example of a ‘golden line’ with its balanced structure of two adjectives followed by a central verb and ending with two nouns in abVAB form. The chirographum (Greek χειρόγραφον – ‘written by hand’) denotes a signed document and the phrase suo chirographo usually means ‘written in one’s own handwriting’ as at Cicero ad Fam. 10.21.3.2, ad Att. 2.20.5.7 (where Cicero mentions his seal as well as his signature). The two terms for ‘useless’ (uana superuacui) are juxtaposed: both uanus and uacuus denote ‘empty’ (OLD s.vv.) and the latter is strengthened by the super- prefix to strengthen the notion that the document is a waste of wood. 138–9  littera here means handwriting as at Ovid Heroides 10.140, 17.144: for the use of handwriting to identify a writer cf. Cicero ad Att. 7.2.3, Cicero Phil. 2.8.8, Brutus 277.3 Gellius 14.2.7.4. The gemma made of sardonyx was inlaid into the ring which was used to imprint the wax seal on the tablet: J. enhances the uniqueness of the ring (and therefore the veracity of the document) by the effective metaphor princeps (prince among sardonyx). For sardonyx (a variety of the onyx gemstone) as a part of ostentatious Roman jewellery cf. 7.144, Martial 5.11.1, Persius 1.16. Its value – and the wealth of its owner – are confirmed by its being kept safe in an ivory case: for the use of ivory in lavish Roman settings see 8.103, 11.122–7, Horace Odes 1.31.6, 2.18.1, Ovid Met. 8.701–2, OCD s.v. ‘furniture’. boxes: loculi (plural of loculus) refers to a ‘box divided into compartments and used

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for storing valuables’ (OLD s.v. ‘loculus’ 3a: cf. 1.89, 10.46, 11.38, Ovid Amores 2.15.19). The antecedent of quos is the people who are the subject of dicunt, with the relative pronoun delayed until after the caesura: ‘they claim … people whom their very own handwriting convicts…’. 140–1  you special case: o delicias (an accusative of exclamation (cf. Cicero’s infamous hexameter quoted 10. 122, AG §397d)) denotes the inflated self-importance of Calvinus exactly as at 6.47 (see OLD s.v. ‘delicia’ 5). deliciae elsewhere denotes ‘a gourmet, voluptuary’ (4.4, Martial 8.48.6, OLD s.v. 6) and this meaning is not far away here. common run: communia points the sharp contrast between the affected superiority of Calvinus and the experience of ‘ordinary’ people. J.’s rhetoric is fiery at this point: the high exclamatory emotion of o, the rhetorical questions, the oratorical quid? interjected into the sentence, the jabbing personal pronouns (ten … tu). Far from being a sympathetic consoler of Calvinus, J. is here skewering him like a hapless defendant in court. (This is made more lively with Heinrich’s emendation quid? for quia (accepted by Willis and Braund, but not by Clausen). The rhetorical question quid? is common in indignant moments in Cicero such as de leg. agr. 2.73.2: Verrine 2.4.127–8 has a flurry of four such uses in seven lines). ten is shortened for te-ne (‘is it you?’) and is placed for maximum emphasis as the start of the line: take it with ponendum (sc. esse). 141–2  son of a white hen: the point being made is that Calvinus thinks that he is a rare bird while (he thinks that) the rest of us are common poultry. In this case ‘white hen’ must have a special meaning as such birds are not in fact rare: Otto (1890) s.v. ‘gallina’ 2 states that ‘white is the colour of good fortune’ citing Columella 8.2.7 and so it may denote a bird of good omen (as at 12.65). Courtney picks up on the scholiast’s comment (‘vulgar proverb meaning noble’) and suggests that it refers to the flock of white hens descended from the one which gave a good omen to Livia (Suetonius Galba 1) and so means ‘an aristocratic imperial hen’. Ruperti’s suggestion Afrae is an attempt to solve this problem: ‘the gallina Africana (guinea fowl) was an expensive delicacy domesticated by the Romans (Pliny NH 10.132)’ (Watson (2003) on Horace Epode 2.53). This would however ruin the pun on albae – pulli (see 142n.). 142  chicks: pullus as a noun means a chicken, and as an adjective it means ‘dark-coloured, dun’ (as at Horace Satires.1.8.27, Epodes 16.46), and so there is a neat pun here: Calvinus thinks he is son of a ‘white hen’ while we are cheap grey chicks. Dark fleeces are associated with the underworld (e.g. Virgil Aeneid 6.243, 249–51) and this fits with infelicibus: an arbor

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infelix was used to crucify criminals (Seneca Ep.101.14, OLD s.v. ‘infelix’ 2c) and the term remains in (e.g.) Catullus 36.8. The meaning of infelix is essentially ‘unproductive’ (OLD s.v. 1) and therefore ‘ill-starred’ (OLD s.v. 3) or ‘unsuccessful’ (OLD s.v. 5), which is the dominant sense here. Poor eggs produce cheap chicks. A remarkable number of manuscripts read populus or populi in this line when the correct reading must be pulli to complete the contrast. Some scribes no doubt abbreviated populus and later scribes may have thought they were dealing with such an abbreviation (see Reynolds and Wilson (1967) 201–203). 143  modest … moderate: this sentence is a continuation of the consolatio theme (135–41n.) that Calvinus’ plight is moderate compared with the much greater sufferings of others, just as ‘greater men have died before us ordinary folk’ (see 135–41n.). The line is neatly ordered, with the two words for ‘moderate’ central (suggesting the instantaneous consequence whereby modicam requires mediocri) and the line framed by rem … ferendam. wrath: bilis is originally the ‘bile’ secreted by the liver (OLD s.v. 1) but then comes to stand for the anger which causes it to erupt (as at 5.159, 6.433, 11.187, 15.15) and the terminology came to be synonymous with ‘anger’ as at Horace Satires 1.9.66, Odes 1.13.4, Epistles 1.19.20, Epodes 11.16, Persius 1.12, Martial 5.26.3. 144  if you could: the subjunctive flectas picks up the gerundive ferendam: ‘this is something which should be borne … if you could just turn…’ and adds a further note of serious doubt on J.’s part: setting his problems in perspective is not something which Calvinus easily does. J.’s choice of words is encouraging: instead of asking Calvinus to expend effort (on close inspection) he merely asks him to ‘turn his eyes’ in a glance. maiora is contrasted with modicam et mediocri in the previous line. There is an effective pause before confer which launches the start of his list (145–56) of serious offences, each beginning with repeated confer (147, 154) and following a balanced sequence of: larceny and arson (145–6) – theft on a grand(er) scale (147–53) – poisoning and parricide (154–6). 145 A latro was what we might call a mugger, who steals with violence: see 10.22 (‘the empty-handed traveller will sing in the face of the latro’), Cicero pro Milone 55 (‘a traveller is not always killed by a latro; sometimes the latro is killed by the traveller’). This mugger is hired rather than freelance, adding an extra hint of menace in that he is a professional rather than an opportunistic amateur. 145–6  fires: J. here refers to arson with the pleasing syllepsis of sulpure …

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atque dolo (with sulphur and with malice): for this sort of combination of pairs of elements cf. 167, 3.211, 5.77–8, 6.84, 8.251, 14.9–10. The sylleptic combination of physical and psychological elements adds to the surprise and the force, a force which would be ruined by Markland’s suggested emendation oleo (‘oil’ as used in lamps) for dolo. For sulphur’s use as a fireaccelerator cf. Pliny NH 35.177. J. has already described the perils of fire in the poor man’s insula (3.197–211): and mention of arson is reminiscent of Tacitus’ chilling remarks (Annals 15.38) about men forbidding other men from extinguishing the fire of Rome in 64AD either so they could go looting or else on orders (from above) – with the sinister suspicion that the emperor Nero profited from the fire (see below 147–9n). The door is mentioned as this was both entrance and exit and so burning it would sentence those inside to death, as at 9.98, and it makes sense for the arsonist to light the outside door and then flee. For colligit ignes in the sense of ‘catch fire’ see OLD s.v. 7b, Virgil Georgics 1.427. 147–9  Compare: confer is repeated in anaphora from 144 as J. now brings in temple-robbing as another serious crime: cf. 14.260–2. chalices… coronets: J. lists the valuable items being stolen and emphasises their antiquity (ueteris…rubiginis…antiquo) in terms which are both laudatory and bathetic: antiques can be works of veneration but J. elsewhere (11.100– 108) speaks more highly of the philistine soldier than of the amoral aesthete in connection with Greek art. With a cynical eye he sees the antiquity proved by the oxidising of the metal into rust and points out the irony of revering what is ugly and decaying, the term adorandae rubiginis being a genitive of description with pocula. The coronets were placed on the statues of gods (see OLD s.v. ‘corona’ 1c) by a king now long dead. The chalices are grandia … pocula (‘massive cups’) gifted by foreign peoples in a bid to placate the imperial power, all reminiscent of J.’s tart comment at 105 (where see note) and recalling the scandalous and sacrilegious abuse of the provinces exposed at 8.100–123. The fire-raising and temple-robbing is all very reminiscent of the emperor Nero (see 12.129, Tacitus Annals 15.45, Suetonius Nero 32, Pausanias 5.25.8), as is the melting down of whole statues (153: Suetonius Nero 32.4). 150–153  These lines are deleted by Willis, and they weaken the run of the argument with what seems only a tangential remark: 153 in particular is a very weak and puzzling line (see n.). 150  temple-robber: sacrilegus (used as an adjective at 72, here used as a noun) was applied to Verres the rapacious governor of Sicily in the 70’s

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BC (see 8.106, Cicero Verrines 2.1.47) and J. conjures up the image of a smaller-scale (minor) thief who handles smaller amounts of precious metal. 151–2  gilded: ancient statues were often made of wood or metal and then gilded with gold-leaf (inaurati) to give the impression of being golden throughout: for the distinction see Cicero de oratore 3.129 and cf. inargentatus for the same effect using silver. For the crime cf. Martial 8.33.5–6. There is a nice crescendo of crime here: this minor thief only succeeds in scraping the gold off Hercules’ thigh, but he then manages to reach the actual face of Neptune (ipsam showing that this was for him an achievement) before removing the gold leaf from Castor. Castor and Pollux were the brothers of Helen and Clytemnestra and were regarded as semidivine by Greeks and Romans (see OCD s.v. ‘Dioscuri’ for the complex saga). The aedes Castoris (‘Temple of Castor’) in the Forum Romanum was erected in gratitude for their help at the battle of Lake Regillus in 484BC (see OCD s.v. ‘Castor and Pollux’, Dionysus of Halicarnassus 6.13.1–2, Ogilvie (1965) 287). 153  This line has been deleted by Clausen, Willis and Braund, and the only sense which can be made of it is that the poet is saying that a man who is in the habit of melting down whole statues of the greatest of the gods would not hesitate to commit such minor sacrilege as scraping Hercules’ thigh if there are no statues around to steal (haec ibi si non sunt 150). Jupiter the Sky-god is often termed ‘The Thunderer’ in Latin (e.g. Horace Odes 3.5.1, Epode 2.29, Ovid, Heroides 9.7, Lucan 1.196, 3.320, Manilius 1.767 and cf. the Greek equivalent ὑψιβρεμέτης applied to Zeus). Augustus dedicated a temple to Jupiter Tonans on the Capitol in 22 BC (Suetonius Augustus 29.3) and the cataclysmic outrage of the heavens melting is well conveyed by the juxtaposition of conflare Tonantem. 154–6  poison: J. now returns to crimes against the person (as at 145–6) but on a much bigger scale. 154  The use of poison as a way of murdering people had its attractions in an age with little forensic science to convict the poisoner (e.g. Lucretius 5.1009–1010) and the most famous practitioners were women such as Locusta (1.71–2, Tacitus Annals 12.66, 13.15) and Martina (Tacitus Annals 2.74, 3.7) as well as the emperor Claudius’ wife Agrippina who cleverly used a lethal mushroom (knowing that these fungi can naturally be poisonous: see 5.146–8. Tacitus Annals 12.66–7, Suetonius Claudius 44.2). There were even tales that the emperor Augustus was killed with poisoned figs prepared by his wife Livia (Tacitus Annals 1.5, Dio Cassius 56.30.2). J. develops this theme of the female

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poisoner in typical misogynistic style in the chilling coda of satire 6 (610–661), adding his voice to the considerable tradition that women used poison while men used brute strength to murder people (e.g. Homer’s Circe (Odyssey 10), Euripides’ Medea (787–9), Euripides Ion 616–7, Quintilian 5.10.25). Making, selling and administering poisons features significantly elsewhere in J.’s account of Rome (e.g.1.158, 8.17, 8.219, 9.100, 10.25–6, 14.173) and was another (see 147–9n.) crime of which the emperor Nero (8.219–220) was guilty as he tried to poison his mother Agrippina (Tacitus Annals 14.3) and succeeded in poisoning his step-brother Britannicus (Tacitus Annals 13.15–16) as well as his aunt Domitia (Suetonius Nero 34). 155–6  chucked into the sea: Roman law (Justinian Digest 48.9.9.1) stated that anyone who murdered his father should be flogged and executed by being sewn up into a bag with a variety of animals (dog, cock, ape and snake) and drowned in the sea (see OCD s.v. ‘parricidium’, Radin (1920), Cicero pro Roscio 62–73). This elaborate punishment was designed, says Cicero (pro Roscio 70–1) to deter men from this most abhorrent crime and also to prevent earth, air, fire and water from being polluted by this execrable human being. The choice of animals was based on the notion that they were all ones which attacked their own kin. Augustus exercised clemency in this respect (Suetonius Augustus 33.1) but Claudius was fond of enforcing it (Seneca de Clementia 1.23.1 tells us that he sewed more men into the sack than all the previous ages before him). Nero was deemed to deserve this punishment (8.211–14, Suetonius Nero 45.2, Dio 61.16) because of all the relatives he had killed (see 154n.). 155  bull’s hide: the conventional word for the ‘sack’ (culleus: see OLD s.v. 3) is here replaced with the more vivid corio bouis (‘in the hide of an ox’) as at [Cicero] ad Herennium 1.23. Juxtaposed with deducendum (a word often used of launching a ship: see OLD s.v. ‘deduco’ 7) and given that early ships would have been covered with hides and skins, the phrase suggests that the miscreant is simply being sent away to sea, until the following line brings home the full extent of the penalty. 156  ape: The line makes no mention of the dog, the cock and the snake which were also sewn into the bag with the parricide (155–6n.) and J. is the first source to mention the monkey. There is mock-heroic grandeur applied ironically to the innocent animal who suffers because of adverse fate – unlike the criminal who is guilty and fully deserves it all. The distinction is pointed as apes are more similar to humans than the other animals in the sack (see 10.195, Cicero de natura deorum 1.97, citing Ennius).

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157  Gaius Rutilius Gallicus was a man of consular rank and became City Prefect (see OCD s.v. ‘praefectus urbi’) from 89–92 under the emperor Domitian who ruled from 81–96 AD. Tacitus (Annals 6.10.11) tells us that attaining the rank of city prefect was the climax of a long senatorial career and he presided over his own court of justice as well as controlling law and order in the city (see Statius Siluae 1.4) during Domitian’s absence from Rome on his second Dacian campaign. J. speaks here of this man as if he were still alive, when he had been dead for about forty years at the time of composition of this poem: for this habit of J. cf. 3.238, and see Courtney on 8.39. For quota pars (‘in which proportion to the total’: OLD s.v. ‘quotus’ 3b) cf. 3.61, Lucretius 6.652, Livy 37.58.8, Lucan 1.284 Ovid Heroides 12.89, Ex Ponto 2.10.31. 158  sun-up … dies: Roman courts tended to sit from (at most) the second to the tenth hour (Martial (4.8.2) tells us that they were busy at the third hour and Asconius (In Milonem 41C) adds that Milo’s trial began early in the second hour). Obviously in an age without artificial light little business could be conducted in darkness, although some writers attest to cases and senatorial business going on right up to night-fall (Suetonius Augustus 33, Pliny Ep. 4.9.9) and even beyond (Pliny Ep. 4.9.14): the point here is that there are so many cases that every moment (usque) of daylight is needed to hear them all, recalling 23–27. ‘From dawn to dusk’ is poetically expressed with forceful repetition in lucifero … lux and with the high poetic language of lux occidat (cf. Catullus 5. 5, Ennius Annales 16.416, Lucretius 3.414) raising the register in rhetorical form (cf. Seneca Oedipus 741–2 for a similar expression). 159–60  One house is enough: all human (low) life is here: grammatically the sentence runs: ‘one house is enough for you (tibi) if/as you wish (uolenti) to get to know…’ and J. chooses to promote the explanation (‘you wish to learn’) before the fact. He is casting his net wide – humani generis includes all human beings (male and female) and mores denotes all their characteristic behaviour – forcing Calvinus to face the seamy side of human nature which his naive outlook finds shocking. domus is vague and could be taken to mean ‘any household’, and this level of misanthropy, while extreme, is not untypical of J. (see Satire 14 passim and cf. Quintilian Inst. 1.2.6). Most editors assume that domus means Gallicus’ ‘office’ (‘by the Temple of Tellus’ (Courtney), although no parallels for this meaning can be found in OLD) and we have perhaps to imagine Gallicus at home being pestered by plaintiffs and defendants in his role as city prefect. The lines

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have added force by emphasising paucos after the caesura (‘just a few days would be quick enough…’) and the metrical syncopation of consume dies et at the end of the line, suggesting perhaps ‘a sense of tedium’ (Ferguson) with their reducing word-lengths (another hint (see 158n.) towards Catullus 5.5). 161  dare: the peremptory imperative aude is placed for emphasis at the end of the line and the sentence as J. rebukes his interlocutor, rather as Nature rebukes the old man at Lucretius 3.931–63 and as Horace rebukes his (miserly) interlocutor in Satires 1.1. The word miserum is well chosen for the self-pitying wretchedness of Calvinus, as at 112. 162–73  Who is amazed … taller than a foot: Freeman (in an unpublished thesis of 1978) thought that these lines are irrelevant to the argument, but they are fully in J.’s exuberant and vivid style of comparison covering a wide range of geographical areas and climates and complete with exotic details. The point he is making is one of proportion and relativity – when in Rome, expect what the Romans do – and the detail of the argument is similar to that voiced by Seneca’s de ira 3.26 (‘The colour of an Ethiopian is not remarkable among his own folk, nor does red hair curled into a knot disgrace a man in Germany. You cannot call anything peculiar or disgraceful in any individual if it is the general characteristic of his nation.’) The point is not however consistent with the run of the argument: he has told us that he is showing universal human behaviour (humani generis mores (159)) but here merely lists regional variations: J. is dealing with criminal acts but here points to aspects of people’s appearance which are not matters of choice. He is, in other words, conflating nomos and physis, and this point is a further reason why line 166 (natura) is wrong. 162–3  swollen: the first two images are ones of swellings. The swollen throat refers to a goitre – a swelling of the thyroid gland common in iodinedeficient parts of the world (Pliny (NH 11.179.1, 37.45.1) associates this with local water). The deformity is brought out by the repetition of sounds in tumidum guttur miratur. The second involves the large-breasted women in Meroe (a place also mentioned at 6.528), an island formed by the branches of the Nile (Vitruvius 8.2.6.14) and part of ancient Ethiopia (Propertius 4.6.78). The word order is effective here as the fat child (crasso … infante) is verbally enclosed by the maiorem mamillam. There may even be a deft etymological touch as infans derives from in-fans and means essentially ‘unable to speak’ – and the child is being smothered by the breasts and so rendered dumb. For crassus in the sense of ‘fat’ see OLD s.v. ‘crassus’ 2. 164  German’s: J.’s contemporary Tacitus had composed an ethnographical

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study of the Germans (Germania) in 98 AD and he commented there (Germania 4: see Anderson (1938) 55) on their ‘wild blue eyes and red hair’. For this stereotypical image of Germans cf. Horace Epodes 16.7, Plutarch Marius 11.3 (blue eyes) and Lucan 2.51, 10.129–31, Manilius 4.715, Tacitus Histories 6.61, (red hair). The Roman fascination with the Germanic character is also shown in Caesar Gallic Wars 6.21–4, and there emerged a tendency to both idealise (Tacitus Germania 19.5, Syme (1958) 126) and to vilify (Tacitus Histories 4.61) the Germans. Rome’s relations with the Germans had been one of warfare since the Germanic tribes of Cimbri and Teutones destroyed two Roman legions at Arausio in 105 BC: under the reign of Augustus the Roman army had suffered the loss of three legions in the clades Variana in 9 AD, leading to the emperor urging his successor Tiberius not to try to push Roman frontiers across the Rhine (Tacitus Annals 1.11.4). For a balanced and thorough account of Germany in the early Empire, see CAH XI.496–513. This line is neatly framed with ‘colour’ words caerula and flauam. stupuit is a good example of the ‘gnomic’ perfect tense referring to a universal truth (cf. 3.160, 14.174, Horace Ars Poetica 412, AG §475). 164–5  wet: madido alludes to the German habit of using a form of dye to colour their hair: this spuma Bataua (‘Batavian foam’ glossed in OLD s.v. ‘Batavus’ as ‘a pomade’) is mentioned by Martial (8.33.20, 14.26), Pliny (NH 28.191) and Tacitus (Histories 4.61). cornua (literally ‘horns’) alludes to the typical German way of wearing the hair in ‘knots’ (nodi: see Tacitus Germania 38 with Anderson (1938) 178–80 (and figures 21–25 for illustration), Seneca de ira 3.26.3, Ep. 124.22, Martial 5.37.8). In a society lacking easy ways of cutting the hair neatly it would be advantageous to find ways of bunching it up: cf. Homer Iliad 11.385, Archilochus fr.117 West. The construction here is as follows: the hair (caesariem) is ‘spinning’ the horns (OLD s.v. ‘torqueo’ 1b) using the ‘wet curl’ (cirro is here ‘collective’ singular for plural (cf. 14.307, 3.142), and ablative of instrument). 166  This is … nature: this line is almost certainly a scribal interpolation explaining the argument. As Housman vigorously explains ((1931) xxxii) the line could only stand in the text if the nempe were emended to nemo so that the poet answers his own question: – ‘who is surprised at…? – Nobody (nemo), as they all share the one nature’. 167–73  Pygmy: J. ends his catalogue of features which are common abroad (but would be astonishing to Romans) with a vignette of Pygmies being attacked by birds. Greeks and Romans were fascinated by the Pygmies

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(see 6.506, OCD s.v. ‘pygmies’). Herodotus (2.32.6, 4.43.5) describes them simply as ‘small men’ and their fierce temperament might explain their name (the word πυγμή means ‘fist’: the Greek word also however means ‘cubit’ (LSJ s.v. II) and so may rather be referring to their height). Philodemus On Signs 2.3 mentions a man in Alexandria who is ‘half a cubit high’ but ‘with a massive head’), while ps-Longinus On the Sublime 44.5 mentions ‘cages in which dwarves and pygmies are kept’ supporting the idea that such abnormalities were exhibited to the public (see Friedländer (1968) iv.6 and cf. Suetonius Augustus 43.3 for the dwarf Lycius with his Stentorian voice) and kept as possessions: Pliny (NH 7.16.tells us that Augustus’ grand-daughter Julia had two dwarves Conopas and Andromeda kept as pets (in deliciis). A particular form of dwarf was the ‘idiot-dwarf’ or morio (Greek μωρίων) who acted as a jester at banquets (Pliny Ep.9.17): they were expensive to purchase and not such idiots in fact (see e.g. Martial 8.13.1, 12.93.3). Dwarf-slaves were given joke names (8.32 has one such called sarcastically ‘Atlas’, while Propertius (4.8.41–2) mentions one called ‘Magnus’: cf. how giants were called ‘tiny’ (Pliny NH 7.16.75)) and were part of the Roman market in human oddities (Plutarch de curiositate 10.520c). The battle of the Pygmies and the cranes is used in a simile in Homer Iliad 3.3–6 and accepted by Aristotle (Hist. Animalium. 8. 597a4 where he also describes the Pygmies as cave-dwellers as does Pliny NH 7.27.2) but regarded as fiction by Strabo (15.1.711) who coins the term γερανομαχία (‘crane-battle’ 2.1.9). Ovid refers to a tale that a Pygmy was transformed into a crane (Metamorphoses 6.90–92) and compelled to wage wars on her former kind: and the hostility between the cranes and pygmies is a common assumption (e.g. Ovid Fasti 6.176, Priapea 46.3, Mela 3.81) owing to the large size of the birds and the small size of the men. 167  J. calls the cranes Thracian birds – as Ovid (Ars Am. 3.182) and Virgil (Georgics 1.120, Aeneid 10.265, 11.580) term them ‘Strymonian’ – because the birds were seen to stop at the river Strymon in Thrace on their migration path from Africa to Northern Europe (see Thompson (1936) 68–75). The noisy flocking of the birds and the vast extent of their collected mass is vividly brought out by the extended hendiadys of Thracum uolucres nubemque sonoram as the birds instantly form a ‘cloud’ of undifferentiated noise. 168–70  The (to us) patronising image of the pygmy warrior in his tiny armour running at the birds and then being snatched up and carried off in their talons is viewed as potentially comic (risu quatiare 171). The effect is

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brought out by the detail: the pitching of a singular pygmy against a single bird, the ironic use of bellator for a war between men and birds, the pathetic detail of the paruis…armis, all no match for the hooked unguibus (talons (as at 8.129–30) but primarily meaning ‘toenails’ (OLD s.v. ‘unguis’ 1), the word stressed in enjambement). There is vivid detail of the man taken through the air and wonderful bathos as the identity of the savage foe is left to the end of the sentence with the bathetic word grue – a word as little (to us) as the pygmy is in its eyes – forming the two short syllables of a fourth-foot dactyl. 169  no match for: inpar (‘not par') is ideal for this context: it means ‘inferior in size’ (OLD s.v. ‘impar’ 2,3) and also ‘unequal to a task’ (OLD s.v. 5). The phrasing and the use of the word hosti to describe a bird lends this an ironic mock-epic tone (cf. Livy 10.43.6). 170  If you were to see: the bucolic diaresis and the syncopated rhythm of si uideas hoc add to the effect of comic incongruity. uideas and quatiare in 171 are both present subjunctives in an unreal future conditional. 171  our own country: gentibus in nostris marks a geographical rather than a racial distinction (see OLD s.v. ‘gens’ 3): such battles of cranes and pygmies were not witnessed in Italy. risu quatiare means more than ‘you would laugh’: for the physical shaking of excessive laughter cf. 3.101, Horace Epistles 2.2.84: for more examples of ‘bursting’ and ‘dying’ with laughter see Otto (1890) s.v. ‘risus’ 1. 172  and so: The mss reading quamquam is odd, in that familiarity with a comic situation reduces its comic value and so ‘although’ makes little sense; on the other hand the force of the line could be placed on assidue (‘even though they stare constantly at this event, nobody laughs’). Jacobs suggested quando in the sense ‘seeing that, since’ (OLD s.v. ‘quando’ 3), which also requires following those mss which read spectantur, a reading which Willis prints. I have followed Willis in this, with some misgivings. 173  taller than a foot: this line gives force to the idea that ‘pygmy’ derives from the Greek word for a ‘cubit’ (but see 167–73n.). cohors usually refers to a group of soldiers or guards – a sense which makes sense here – but cf. 6.515 (where it means a group of singers). This line has a strong framing contrast of tota…uno for comic/rhetorical effect: cf. Catullus 5.3, Cicero pro lege Manilia 7.5–6, Lucretius 2.787, Virgil Aeneid 2.102, Silius Italicus 4.423–4.

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174–249  The poem’s final section deals with the purpose of punishment and revenge 174–5  So is there to be…?: Calvinus is reported as asking whether J. is therefore giving up on any possibility of punishment: for this sort of exasperated objection from the interlocutor cf. 10.346, Horace Satires 1.1.101–2. The indignation is well brought out by the promoting of nulla and poena to the beginning of successive lines and by the concentration of ‘crime’ words in periuri … fraudisque nefandae. capitis (literally meaning ‘head’) is here used for the person as a whole (OLD s.v. ‘caput’ 7) with the added sense of ‘opprobrious designation’ (OLD s.v. ‘caput’ 12b) found at e.g. Plautus Pseudolus 132, Rudens 1099 where periuri caput amounts to ‘source of perjury’. unspeakable: nefandus (like infandus) is the negation of fandus (from for, fari (‘I speak’)) and so means ‘not to be spoken of’ or ‘unspeakable’: cf. 15.116, 165. The term is perhaps ironic here as Calvinus is constantly speaking of it. For the use of the genitive with poena to indicate ‘punishment for an offence’ cf. 6.478, Cicero pro Caelio 59, Virgil Aeneid 8.668, Livy 25.31.4 (J. uses the dative in this sense at 6.537 and 15.129). 175–92  Revenge is small-minded and petty 175–9  Even if the offender is executed, Calvinus has still lost his money and the dead man will not repay the sum. This begins a thoughtful and lively inquiry into the purpose of punishment where it fails to make good the offence and is undertaken merely for purposes of revenge. 175–6  hauled off … killed: the punishment is to be imagined (crede) and J. demonstrates the cruelty involved with qualifying terms. abreptum is commonly used for ‘hauled away for punishment’ (Austin on Virgil Aeneid 4.600, comparing Terence Andria 786, Cicero Philippics 3.31) and the phrase grauiore catena suggests that ‘normal’ chains are not enough and so we use ‘heavier’ ones. The summary nature of the execution is enhanced by the key terms protinus and necari framing the line, as with poena…catena in 175. The parenthetic question (‘what more could anger wish for?’) is nicely placed both to make the point that the motive is simply ira and also to juxtapose this word with necari in a chain of instant cause and effect. Bloodthirsty types love the noise of chains (14.23) and J.’s Rome is full of them (3.309–11): they will watch a Sejanus being dragged off ‘by a hook’ (10.66) before running to trample him underfoot (10.86), and this trope of cruel degeneration of culture will culminate in the treatment of cannibalism and the coda to Satire 15 (159–74). nostro seems to include the poet in the baying crowd.

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177  on our own decision: nostro arbitrio suggests here that the verdict is a snap decision taken on a whim, although the word arbitrium properly means a serious decision with legal force: for this use of arbitrium see OLD s.v. ‘arbitrium’ 7, Horace Odes 3.2.20, and for the sort of lynch-justice envisaged cf. (e.g.) the execution of the generals after Arginusae in 406 BC (Xenophon Hellenica 1.7.4–34, esp. 13–14). iactura was the word used at line 8 of the financial loss and the word manet is well chosen: even if the criminal is hauled off the loss still stays behind, a point repeated in other words in the following line. 178  invested money: the phrasing reminds us of how the loss was incurred: depositum is the word which is used at lines 16, 60 and 201 for the placing of the money with one who has sworn to take care of it and return it on demand. 178–9  but instead: Weidner and Markland suggest reading si for the mss reading sed (your money will be lost ‘even if he is beheaded’) but this is surely not necessary. There is a pointed rhetorical contrast here of safety versus death: the money will never be sospes (safe and sound: cf. Horace Odes 1.37.13, 3.8.14, Virgil Aeneid 11.56) even though the criminal has been hacked to pieces and is now just a corpore trunco whose blood has been shed; but there is also a tart remark that ‘you will have lost your money but you will now earn hatred for cruelty’ which is better served with sed. decapitated corpse: the phrase corpore trunco is brutal (cf. Seneca Hercules Furens 1025, Tacitus Annals 13.35, 14.17) and plays into the imagery of Pompey the Great who was famously beheaded in Egypt (Plutarch Pompey 80, Lucan 8.667: cf. Juvenal 10.286) which in turn looks back to the death of King Priam (Virgil Aeneid 2.557–8: iacet ingens litore truncus/ auulsumque umeris caput et sine nomine corpus (‘he lies on the shore, a massive torso, a head ripped from his shoulders and a body with no name.’) on which see Bowie (1990), Hinds (1995) 47–48). 179  blood … hatred: this is a problematic line textually but the overall sense is clear. inuidiosa is emphasised at the start of the line and bears the sense of ‘arousing hatred, odious’ (OLD s.v. ‘inuidiosus’ 1, Ovid Amores 1.8.55) and creates the meaning: ‘you will get your consolation but people will hate you for doing so’. The problem is the word minimus (read by both P and Φ) agreeing with sanguis: ‘tiny amount of blood’ is not relevant to the sense (unless you read it as Knoche does, meaning ‘you will earn resentment from everyone just for a tiny drop of blood’, which is absurd in the context of decapitation) and the word may be borrowed ineptly from 10.217 where

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it refers to a cold old man’s minimal blood-circulation. Nisbet ((1995) 286) points out that ‘one expects an adjective or participle to balance trunco’ and proposes saliens (‘leaping’) which is attractive but not palaeographically likely. Martyn ((1974) 341–43) argues strongly for nimius (which is easily mistaken for minimus) as pointing up the excessive nature of the revenge and compares nimios at line 11 as typifying Calvinus’ response to the offence. Courtney’s suggestion socius (‘blood from an associate’) reminds us of the personal relationship of Calvinus and his (former) trustee (and has palaeographical plausibility with the repetition of socius solacia) but it seems to me that Wakefield’s missus (‘shed’ or ‘let’: see OLD s.v. ‘mitto’ 6c) as accepted by Willis and Braund makes the best sense of the mss. reading. 180 ‘But vengeance…’: Calvinus retorts that getting revenge is a positive good thing (bonum) and is supremely pleasurable. uindicta (OLD s.v. ‘uindicta’ 2) means ‘redress’, ‘vengeance’ as at 16.22 (after a thrashing) and is seen as providing satisfaction (in both senses of the word) here as at 191, Ovid Amores 1.7.63, Tacitus Annals 6.32. It was a common idea in the ancient world that retributive justice was both right and pleasing: cf. Seneca Dialogi 4.32.1 (‘it is sweet to inflict pain’), Homer Iliad 18.108–110, and the honour of a man demanded ‘restitution’ where wrong had been inflicted, sometimes to an excessive degree as in the conclusion of Homer’s Odyssey (see Odyssey 22.35–41 with Adkins (1960) 54–55). Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics 4.5 1125–6b10) acknowledges that anger is praiseworthy when justified and refusal to get angry in such cases is wrong as it reveals a man who will not defend himself: but he also points out that the excessively angry man gets ‘pleasure instead of pain’ (cf. iucundius here) when he expresses his wrath (1126a22) and so is motivated by selfish emotion rather than principles. Tragic plots such as that of Aeschylus’ Oresteia are built on the necessity of revenge for wrongs done to family and the exaction of revenge can also elicit sweet laughter over one’s defeated enemies (Sophocles Ajax 79: cf. 302–4) just as epic heroes taunt their dying foes with cruel relish (e.g. Homer Iliad 14.501–2, 21.122–4, Virgil Aeneid 2.547–50, 10. 491–2). Calvinus has already (174–5) hinted that he is seeking justice as well as the pleasure of revenge, but here the jingle of uindicta … uita … ipsa sounds a note of triumph and delight. 181  Very well: nempe (cf. 166) has something of a concessive force in limited agreement: ‘well it is true that the indocti [say so]’. uneducated: indocti (indocti – ‘untaught’: cf. 2.4, 3.87, 8.49) refers to people who have not had a philosophical education. J. assumes that a lack of education is linked with

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a tendency to lose one’s temper for little or no reason, and this theme of the ‘consolations of philosophy’ is one which he picks up further at 184–92. Anger over important things is not irrational and can be the right emotion to have as it is used in the interests of justice, whereas anger over small things indicates emotional incontinence, pleasure in inflicting punishment and an inability to see things in perspective – and so is the mark of irrational and unschooled types. praecordia (from prae-cor) is originally a medical term denoting ‘the lower chest in front of the heart’ (OLD s.v. ‘praecordia’ 1b) and more loosely ‘the vital organs’ (Pliny NH 30.42) or ‘stomach’ (Horace Satires 2.4.26–7, Seneca Ep. 95.25). It is used of the heart itself at 6.621 and seems to be the site affected by poison (Horace Epodes 3.5, Cicero Tusculan Disputations 1.96). Here as often (and cf. the Greek equivalent φρένες ) it denotes the inner organs as ‘the seat of feelings, etc’ (OLD s.v. 3) such as guilt (1.167 it ‘sweats with silent guilt’), courage (Virgil Aeneid 2.367), fear (Seneca Ep. 74.3) or just emotion in general (Horace Satires 1.4.89) and cf.14.35 which merges the physical and the emotional meanings together (see note ad loc.). 182  burning: the feelings at work here are clearly those of anger: flagrantia is literally ‘blazing’ (as at 3.139, Virgil Aeneid 2.685): for fire imagery to depict anger cf. 11, 14–15, 1.145, 1.152, 6.647–8. uideas is obviously elliptical: we do not see the actual inner organs aflame, but only the behavioural evidence of this. 183  in fact … rage: this line adds little to the argument and the passage could perhaps run better without it, but it is not without interest. quantuluscumque (=quantulus+cumque) is a stronger form of the diminutive quantulus (for which cf. 6.254, 10.173), often applied in deprecating terms (e.g. Tacitus Dialogus 7.1) and here is attached to occasio, adding to the sentiment that people rage for ‘little or no’ reason with this diminutive. adeo connotes ‘in fact’ and adds further emphasis to the preceding word, so that J. is saying ‘little or no reason … in fact any occasio however tiny…’. occasio (from the root cado – to fall) denotes here an ‘opportunity’ (OLD s.v. ‘occasio’ 1) and suggests that the belligerent man is happy to use any excuse to express his rage, especially as sufficit here has the sense (OLD s.v. ‘sufficio’ 6) of ‘meets the needs of’ as at 5.7, 7.187, 10.32, 14.298–302. 184–7  Chrysippus, Thales and Socrates are listed in a tricolon crescendo of philosophers who will all fail to concur with the indocti: cf. 15.106–7. The passage emerges as a piece of unwitting self-ridicule on the part of the speaker whose own knowledge of philosophers is superficial and inadequate, for all the elegance of his language: see notes following.

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184  An impressive line, framed by the two key names and using an epic periphrasis for Thales. Chrysippus (280–207 BC) was the third head of the Stoic school after Zeno and Cleanthes. He often used poetry to illustrate his thinking (D.L. 7.180) and ensured the survival of Stoicism as a creed (D.L. 7.183) not least because of his voluminous writings. If Chrysippus did not say it, then it was not Stoic philosophy (cf. Horace Satires 1.3.127 (‘you clearly do not know what father Chrysippus says…’ and see further 2.5, Horace Epistles 1.2.4., D.L. 7.179–202, OCD s.v. ‘Chrysippus’). Three manuscripts read dicit rather than dicet. dicit makes more obvious sense: dead authors may be said to ‘say’ something (e.g. Horace Epistles 1.2.4 of Homer, Quintilian 8.3.36.1 of the dead Cicero) but they can never be ‘going to say’ anything again and so to say ‘Chrysippus will not say’ something is jejune. Courtney however well compares 1.126 for the idiomatic use of the future indicative (‘if you look up the works of C., you will find that he says’: cf. K-S II.143 §36.2, Plautus Asinarius 734, Terence Phormio 801). 184–5  Thales of Miletus was regarded as one of the ‘seven sages’ of Ancient Greece. He lived in the 7th–6th centuries BC and was said (Herodotus 1.74.2) to have predicted a solar eclipse which in fact occurred in 585 BC. Only fragments of his writings survive, often quoted in unreliable doxographers (see Barnes (1982) 13–14), but he was cited as the archetypal geometer in Aristophanes (Birds 1009) and the butt of a joke about impractical scientists (D.L. 1.34) rather than any sort of ethical pioneer. Diogenes Laertius (1.35– 7) quotes his ethical remarks, none of which relate directly to J.’s theme here: the nearest is his recommendation (D.L. 1.36) to deal with misfortune by watching enemies suffering worse – not something which would qualify him for the adjective mite here and part of the reason for Jessen’s suggestion that we should read Cratetis here as the Cynic philosopher Crates fits the description better (see OCD s.c. ‘Crates (2) of Thebes’). It has been argued that J. was himself insufficiently schooled in philosophy to know or care about such distinctions (or that he ‘takes the first names that come into his head’ as Duff suggests) but it is far more likely that the persona speaking here is characterised as one who is himself indoctus chiding the indocti. The speaker is once again the unwitting and ironic butt of his own ignorant superiority. For the epic periphrasis (‘the gentle mind of Thales’ standing for ‘Thales the gentle-minded’) cf. 4.39, 81, 10.75–6, 207, 12.32–3, Lucretius 4.681, Virgil Aeneid 4.132, Homer Iliad 23.720).

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185–7  The speaker does not need to name this most famous of ancient philosophers: the location (Hymettus), the poison (hemlock), the age (senex) and the absence of vindictiveness in face of execution all mark out Socrates (469–399 BC). For this sort of teasingly allusive style (‘who am I speaking about?’) of naming through description cf. 5.45, 10.168. Socrates was condemned to death at the age of 70 by the Athenians in 399BC on the charges of ‘not believing in the gods of the city’ and ‘corrupting the young’ and he was given poisonous hemlock to drink. For the tale of his last conversations and his philosophical death see Plato Phaedo 115b–118a17. J. seems to be alluding here to an anecdote or saying in which Socrates refused to give any of the poison to his accuser, but he is probably mixing up two stories: on the one hand, the exchange with the executioner where Socrates asks if he may pour some (partem) of the poison away as a libation (Plato Phaedo 117b), and on the other the tale of Theramenes who (according to Xenophon Hellenica 2.3.56) threw the dregs of his hemlock towards his accuser (accusatori) Critias in an ironic version of the wine-throwing game of kottabos which was popular in Greek symposia. Socrates no doubt would not have poisoned anyone, even one who was unjustly accusing him: see e.g. Plato Theaetetus 173a–b where it is taken as axiomatic that lawyers who ‘return wrong for wrong’ are less developed as moral agents than philosophers, and Socrates himself states (Apology 41d) that he bears no ill will to his accusers. The clearest statement of the Platonic position that one should never repay evil with evil is found in Crito (49a–d) and it is is also dealt with in Republic 1 (331e–332) where Socrates challenges Polemarchus’ view (Plato Republic 332b) that justice consists in hurting our enemies. Once again the speaker’s knowledge of Socrates is limited to well-attested facets of his life such as his old age (he was 70 at the time of his trial) and where he lived. Mention of Hymettus allows him to add the witty adjective dulci as Mt. Hymettus was famous for its delicious honey (cf. Horace Odes 2.6.14–15 with Nisbet and Hubbard (1978) 102, Satires 2.2.15) and the term became proverbial (Otto (1980) s.v. ‘Hymettus’). 186  cruel chains: the phrase saeua inter uincla conjures up a very unpleasant image of the prison conditions and so makes Socrates’ refusal to seek revenge all the more astonishing. Socrates’ imprisonment was in fact anything but harsh, if we are to believe Plato (Crito, Phaedo) who tells us that the prisoner could have escaped if he had chosen to, that he had access to all his friends and family and that he even won the admiration

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of the executioner (Phaedo 116c). cicuta is the hemlock plant: the toxic ingredient is known as cicutoxin and is released when the plant is ground up and suspended in liquid. Ingestion of this can induce seizures which bring on respiratory failure and ventricular fibrillation (see Gill (1973) 25–26) but different forms of the plant may cause death more gently (see Sullivan (2001) who points out that it was used as a form of suicide (cf. Aristophanes Frogs 1051)). The ancient world commonly reported that hemlock causes the person to suffer progressive paralysis described as a growing coldness in the limbs (see e.g. gelidas … cicutas at 7.206, Plato Phaedo 118a2, Aristophanes Frogs 125, Ovid Amores 3.7.13). 187  refused: the tense of nollet is surprising (we expect the unmetrical noluisset) and may be perhaps influenced by the future tense dicet (184) and mean ‘[if he were still alive] he would refuse…’. dare is the correct term for administering a medicine (OLD s.v. ‘do’ 9b). 187–9  The lines have been condemned by Guyet and Courtney (‘a vapid sentence’) and they read as a generalising remark about the use of philosophy which distracts from the precise topic of revenge. The subject of the two verbs exuit and docet is felix … sapientia and the asyndeton makes the sentence read less than easily and has prompted some of us to read docens (found in Φ) rather than P’s docet. Putting a comma after exuit so that omnes is the object of docet makes the sentiment plainly wrong (as wisdom does not teach ‘everyone’), and applying felix to sapientia (with the attendant hyperbaton) as ‘wisdom which makes men happy’ is too big a stretch for many editors, although it is conceivable that J. is simply suggesting that having the right mental state of informed happiness is enough to remove wickedness when this is guided by philosophy. The sentiment seems to be that philosophy removes most vices by teaching what is right: a form of ‘virtue is knowledge’ of which Plato would have approved. The lines are not without elegance: exuit is an effective metaphor (see OLD s.v. ‘exuo’ 1) from stripping off clothing (as at 3.25, 6.Ox25, 10.320: although it also means ‘uncovering’ in the sense of ‘exposing’ which is also relevant here), and is also used of ‘setting aside’ one’s cares (11.190). Line 188 neatly couples uitia atque errores in the centre of the line as the two forms of trouble – deliberate wickedness (uitia) and lapses in judgement (errores: cf. 10.4, 8.165 (the folly of youth), 14.15). Philosophy cannot eradicate all vices (hence plurima rather than cuncta) but it can potentially alert us to all (omnes) forms of cognitive error. The sentence ends with the powerful fourword phrase which begins line 189 and allows the whole to end with what

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is both the active teacher (docens) and also the end-result of the lessons – sapientia. For the sentiment cf. Horace Epistles 1.1.41–2. 189–91  Vengeance … mind: minuti est animi is a good example of esse + genitive to indicate defining characteristics: see K-S II.§86 1b (p. 453) and cf. 2.104, Cicero de oratore 2.117, 2.333; the point here is that ultio is the sort of pleasure which belongs to a small mind. diminished, weak and tiny: the speaker here expresses a stream of disapproval as the pejorative adjectives (minuti … infirmi … exigui) accumulate (cf. 10.331–2, 15.47–8). exiguus is a variant on the word minutus and both are possibly denoting the man who is pusillanimous (μικρόψυχος ) as contrasted with the man who possesses ‘magnanimity’ (μεγαλοψυχία). Aristotle’s discussion (Nicomachean Ethics 4 1123a34–1125a39) of the Greek terms leaves us with a definition of pusillanimity as closer to diffidence than mindless vengefulness, but the word as used in the orators (e.g. Demosthenes On the Crown 269, 279, On the False Embassy 293, Isocrates 5.79) denotes a ‘meanness of spirit’ which suits J.’s purpose here and is closer to the Latin usage of parui animi (cf. Cicero pro Archia 30.1, de officiis 1.68.5, Horace Satires 1.2.10) and angusti animi (Cicero in Pisonem 57.3) as contrasted with the financial sense of magnanimus (‘big-spender’) at Persius 6.21–2, Catullus 58.5. pleasure: the word uoluptas recalls iucundius at 180: the small-minded see ultio not as a matter of ethical principle but as a source of Schadenfreude, a statement which is strengthened by the juxtaposition over the line-end of uoluptas/ ultio. 191–2  Work this out: the speaker now invites us to infer (collige: cf. 11.198, Horace Satires 2.1.51, OLD s.v. ‘colligo’ 11) the truth of his remarks from the (to most people) wholly specious argument that: small-minded people love revenge [women are all small-minded] therefore women love revenge. at once: the adverb continuo suggests that this is an open and shut case (see OLD s.v. ‘continuo’ 2) for him, adding an extra layer to the misogyny of the passage. Ancient mythology and literature have their fair share of especially vindictive women: female gods are merciless in revenge (see e.g. Aphrodite/Venus arranging for the death of Hippolytus, Hera/Juno’s hostility towards all Trojans and especially Aeneas because of the judgement of Paris) and women like Medea gain vicious vengeance on the men who abandon them by committing murder (including infanticide). The emperor’s

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wife Messalina will have her lover killed if he rejects her (10.339: see on this Nappa (2010)). For the generalisation that women are irascible cf. 11– 12n., Seneca de ira 1.20.3 (‘anger is mostly a vice of women and boys’) de clementia 1.5.5 (‘it is a female attribute to rage in anger’). Plutarch (On Restraining Anger 8.457a–b) sees anger as a sign of inner weakness (μικρόψυχος cf. 189–91n.) and that the weaker the mind, the stronger the anger: ‘for this reason women are more irascible than men, sick people more than healthy, old men more than men in their prime, those faring badly more than the prosperous’. J. elsewhere (6.268–285) compounds the misogyny with the claim that the anger is often put on or exaggerated to hide women’s own misdeeds. Women in the ancient world are frequently said to suffer a relative inability to control emotions – cf. e.g. Aristotle HA 9.1.4 (‘women are more jealous and querulous, more fond of arguing and more contentious…more mindful of injury’): in Homer (Iliad 16.7–10) Achilles rebukes Patroclus for weeping like a little girl, thus compounding the insult. In this case, however, the woman is ‘rejoicing’ in her revenge, which suggests a more controlled exercise of power such as we find in the tale of Medea. For the didactic use of the singular imperative collige cf.26, 120. Lucretius 2.335, 4.111. 192–235  The criminal will suffer the pains of guilt and anxiety and give you your revenge anyway Calvinus need not seek punishment as the guilty person is his own judge, jury and executioner: cf. 1–4. The argument at 192–8 is that the criminal faces his own verdict and suffers more for being unpunished by the state – a form of argument which is voiced often in Plato (Gorgias 472e4–7, 476a2–477e6, Republic 392a–c, Laws 660e–662c, 728c) and which invokes a conception of mental health which requires moral health to be effective (see Dodds (1959) 254–55, citing Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1104b17). 192  But why do you: the four short (mostly monosyllabic) words ending the line continue the hectoring tone of the passage with finger-jabbing power. 193  got away with it: euado here has the sense of ‘escape punishment’ (as at 9.65, 12.18, 35, 122 Horace Satires 2.7.68: OLD s.v. ‘euado’ 5). conscius (from where our word ‘conscience’ comes) denotes an awareness of (usually criminal) secrets and commonly takes a genitive of the thing known (here facti: cf. 6.271, 339) and a dative of the criminal concerned (14.28). 193–5  consciousness … whip: J. nicely separates the mind (mens) from

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the person and allows the former to torment its owner with a very painful conscience. The passage is strongly reminiscent of Lucretius 3.1018–9 (‘but the mind aware (conscia) of its misdeeds (factis) feels fear in anticipation, goads itself and terrifies itself with its whips (flagellis)’) and Seneca Epistles 97.15 (‘we should agree [with Epicurus] that wicked deeds are whipped by conscience and that his worst of punishments is the fact that anxiety constantly nags and slaps him’). J. focuses here on the secrecy of the pain which is neither heard (surdo) nor seen (occultum) by others: cf. 1.166–7 (‘his heart sweats with silent guilt), Persius 3.39–43, Cicero Pro Roscio 67. 194  dumbstruck: attonitos literally means ‘struck by lightning’ but here denotes a state of being rendered speechless with anxiety (strengthened by the juxtaposition with surdo). For attonitus as ‘dumbstruck with fear’ cf. OLD s.v. ‘attonitus’ 2c–d, 8.239, 11.199, 14.306; for the perceived link between divine thunderbolts and dumb stupefaction cf. Ovid Tristia 1.3.11–12 and for thunder as divine punishment see below on 223–8. unheard: surdo is a good choice of word here: it means ‘deaf’ (see 9.150, OLD s.v. ‘surdus’ 1–2) but (just as caecus (‘blind’) can also mean ‘unseen’) here means ‘unheard’ rather than ‘unhearing’ (OLD s.v. ‘surdus’ 4, Pliny NH 19.20) as at 7.71. There is also a hint of the original sense of the word as the torturing mind is inflicting blows on the criminal and is deaf to any protests as she ‘flogs’ him (caedit is painful: cf. 127 (breast-beating), 2.13 (pile surgery), 6.447, 7.156, 10.60 (slaughtering animals), 6.483–4 (the whipping of slaves), 11.141 (carving meat)). keeps them: for the construction of habet (‘keeps them in a state of…’ OLD s.v. ‘habeo’ 15c) cf. 10.296, Tacitus Annals 2.65, Cicero ad Fam. 2.16.1. 195  mind … whip: a highly elegant line, with the central three-word phrase quatiente animo tortore framed by the occultum … flagellum which it is wielding. The key words indicating pain inflicted (tortore flagellum) are left to the end of the line for effect, with tortore acting adjectivally with animo. torturing: tortor (from torqueo) denotes the person employed (see 14.21) to inflict torture on others (usually slaves: cf. 6.O29, 6.479–80). The whip (flagellum) was ‘an essentially servile instrument of punishment…; of the various types of uerbera, the flagellum was certainly the worst: cf. [Horace] Satires.1.3.117–21.’ (Watson (2003) on Horace Epode 4.11). For its use as a ‘scourge’ cf. also 14.19. Throughout this passage J. uses the language of masters punishing slaves for the internal torture of conscience, reminding us that slaves were expected to be tortured into providing evidence (see Jones (1972) 114–15; Crook (1967) 274–75) and regarding the criminal as a slave of his own misdoings. For this metaphorical sense of inner slavery

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to vices cf. Seneca Epistles 47.17, and cf. how the word flagellum was used by Horace (Odes 3.26.11–2) of the lash of Venus inducing helpless love in her victim. 196–7  J. contrasts the real punishment of inner turmoil inflicted by the conscience with that inflicted by others. 197  Caedicius is not known (the medieval commentators suggest that he was ‘the most cruel of the courtiers of Nero’ but this is not verified) but reappears at 16.46. His name may be significant (cf. caedit 194n., 6.483– 4) like Persicus (11.57), Naevolus (9.1), Corvinus (12.1) and suggests a Judge Jeffreys figure who enjoys inflicting pain (for grauis in this sense of ‘harsh’ see OLD s.v. ‘grauis’ 11; and inuenit suggests that he was creative in devising punishments). Rhadamanthus by contrast, is well-known. His name is pre-Greek (see Heubeck, West and Hainsworth (1988) 227) and he was said to be the son of Zeus and Europa (Homer Iliad 14.321–2: see Janko (1992) 204)). He was named as one of the judges in the Underworld (Plato Apology 41a). He was a Cretan and said by Plato (Gorgias 524A) to judge the dead from Asia: he and his brother and fellow-judge Minos are termed inexorabiles by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. 1.10.6). Virgil (Aeneid 6.566–71) tells us that Rhadamanthus gets sinners to confess their unexpiated crimes and then ‘at once’ (continuo) the Fury Tisiphone applies her whip (flagello) to them – language which is close to that of this passage. Rhadamanthus was also the first person to live in Elysium (Homer Odyssey 4.564). There is a provocative use of Plato at work here: Socrates in his Apology (41a) tells the ‘men who claim to be judges here’ who are sentencing him to death that in the underworld he will discover the ‘real judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus…’ who will know his innocence of any wrongdoing. J. therefore is promoting conscience to the point where even the eschatological Rhadamanthus is a less terrifying judge than we are to ourselves. 198  within their breast: there is a grotesque caricature here of carrying the prosecution witness inside one’s own chest almost like a second person within the body (OLD s.v. ‘gesto’ 4: cf. the English word ‘gestation’), developing an idea of Seneca who argues that if our deeds are honourable then we should let everyone know: if they are not, then there is no point in keeping them secret ‘if you know it yourself do not despise that witness’ (Ep. 43.5). suum means both ‘belonging to him’ and also ‘against himself’ where the possessive adjective acts as an objective genitive (OLD s.v. ‘suus’ B 1d). For the use of nocte dieque cf. 3.105, 7.61, Lucretius 2.12, 3.62, Virgil Aeneid 6.127.

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199–210  a Spartan: the tale of Glaucus, son of Epikydes, as told in Herodotus (6.86) is parallel to the situation of Calvinus’ trustee. Glaucus was approached by a Milesian who told him that – such was the level of immorality and corruption in Ionia (in terms similar to J.’s own words at 23–30) – he had liquidated half of his assets and was asking Glaucus to look after the cash as ‘Glaucus of Sparta’ was known even as far away as Ionia as a man of utmost integrity (δικαιοσύνη). The sons of the Milesian many years later came to ask for the family money and proved the deposit with tokens which had been exchanged at the time, but Glaucus told them that he had no recollection of having received any money and sent them away for three months while he investigated. It was at this point that he asked the oracle of Apollo to tell him what would happen if he reneged on the loan: and was told by the Pythia that false oaths would benefit him in the short term but that his whole family and household would be wiped out in due course. He apologised for his immoral question but the Pythia added that testing the god’s approval of a crime was as bad as doing it. He returned the money after all but the Pythia’s words came true as his family were indeed annihilated. The tale has been widely criticised here as irrelevant to J.’s argument about conscience but Courtney neatly points out that the sequence of thought is a fortiori: conscience is the worst of punishments (192–8) and just thinking of doing wrong can be disastrous as with Glaucus (199–210) so just think how much worse a man would suffer if he actually went through with the crime (210). It could be objected here (and in Herodotus) that if wanting a sin is as bad as doing it, then why not go ahead and do it if the gods are going to ruin you after just entertaining the thought? Furthermore the man who told the tale in Herodotus (Leotychidas the Spartan) is no paragon of moral probity himself – he was himself involved in corrupting the Pythia (Herodotus 6.66). He uses the tale of Glaucus to try to persuade the Athenians to return some Aeginetan hostages, but they take no notice (and get away with it) while Leotychidas for all his fine sentiments here was later on ruined for his bribery and corruption (Herodotus 6.72). In similar manner, the use of this tale here tells us a good deal about the character of the narrator as a man too naive to see that his moral tale in fact cuts both ways, seeking to condemn even the thought of robbery but in fact offering a version of ‘may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb’. In thematic terms, however, this tale offers a vision of divine insight into our thoughts which will be picked up at the ending of the poem (249) – and a picture of moral probity which (like the mythological reminscence of 38–59) belongs firmly in the past if lines 71–119 are to be trusted.

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199  J. does not name Glaucus but simply refers to him as a Spartan (Spartano cuidam cf. 8.218) assuming knowledge of the name and also suggesting that the identity of the man was irrelevant to the moral point being made – or else characterising the speaker as someone who is less than fully informed. Similarly, Herodotus does not name the Milesian who lodges the money with Glaucus. The Pythia was the priestess at the Delphic Oracle of Apollo who would go into a prophetic trance and utter words which the prophetai then shaped into intelligible responses (see OCD s.v. ‘Delphic oracle’ and cf. Virgil’s similar account of the prophetic process at Aeneid 6.42–101). 200  punished: haud inpunitum (‘not unpunished’) is a threatening litotes for punitum and goes with the ominous quondam (sometime in the future: cf. 100n.). dubitaret denotes uncertainty and hesitant doubt (as at 97, 153, 1.103, 3.136, 8.194, 8.212), and then comes to mean ‘to consider doing something’ (OLD s.v. ‘dubito’ 4) as here. The point is that a man of real principle would have no doubt at all of the right thing to do. 201–2  hanging on to … shoring up: the Spartan pleads his case as well as he can. depositum retinere does not sound much of a crime – ‘keeping hold of a sum of money’ is surely what he was asked to do in the first place (contrast Calvinus’ very different description of the act at 15–16) – and tueri is a positive action of safeguarding in most circumstances (see OLD s.v. ‘tueor’ 7 for its meaning here). iure by itself means ‘legally’ or ‘rightly’ (see 2.34, 11.23, OLD s.v. ‘iure’). The crime is given away in two words: fraudem and the enjambed iurando. The oath referred to here was the oath with which Glaucus swore that he did not have the money in question, not the oath taken as a guarantee of its return as at 36. 202–3  attitude: mens is also the word used of the savage agent of conscience at 194 and here denotes ‘the thinking’ in the sense of ‘the opinion’ and ‘intention’. The question appears to be open to begin with (‘what is the deity’s opinion?’) but the second half of line 203 shows the answer desired by Glaucus in the form of Apollo actually urging (suaderet) this course of action (hoc … facinus). illi is surprising: we expect sibi as the person referred to is the subject of the main verb quaerebat (but see K-S I.610 §117 Anmerkung 5 for other examples of this usage), and it is almost as if the questioner is already distancing himself from his questioning. For the practice of using the words and deeds of the gods to excuse human immorality cf. Aristophanes Clouds 1079–82, Euripides Trojan Women 948– 50, Hippolytus 451–61, Heracles 1316–21, Gorgias Encomium of Helen 6,

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19, Terence Eunuchus 591 – this was one of the reasons why Plato wished to banish poets from the ideal republic (Republic 391e). Apollo himself is often regarded as a selfish and cruel divinity (see e.g. the words of Cassandra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (e.g. 1080–2 where she plays on the derivation of Apollo from ἀπόλλυμι (‘I destroy’)), and also the figure of Apollo as presented in Euripides Ion and in Ovid Metamorphoses (1.438–567). 204  panic … principle: the alliterative contrast of the two opposing motives for returning the money (metu non moribus) is powerful and effective. mores simply denotes a way of life (as at 159, 239, 14.52, 2.170, Cicero’s famous exclamation o tempora o mores (e.g. In Catilinam 1.2.1)), but is used without qualifying adjective of bad behaviour (e.g. 1.147, 2.39) and also of moral decency as here (cf. 2.12). 205  shrine: the adytum (a transcription of Greek ἄδυτον) was the innermost sanctuary of a temple and was regarded as a place reserved only for priests and not for the profani (cf. Caesar Civil War 3.105.5, Virgil Aeneid 2.297, used metaphorically of the inmost heart at Lucretius 1.737 where he sardonically contrasts the real insights of philosophers with the bogus declarations of the Pythia (1.738–9)). Phoebus is a common name for Apollo, god of prophecy and the sun-god (cf. e.g. Horace Odes 4.6.29, Virgil Aeneid 6.35) and is the emendation of Jacobs for the mss. reading templo which, as Willis points out, would give us the meaningless remark that the voice of a shrine was worthy of a temple. The utterances come from inside the adytum (adyti is genitive singular) and are ‘worthy of Phoebus’ (dignus + ablative meaning here ‘worthy of’ as at 12.45, 114, Lucretius 3.322), supporting the idea that the oracular responses are a byword for truth, here made clear by the addition of ueram. For similar phrasing cf. Lucan 9.565. 205–6  home and relatives: Leotychidas tells the Athenians (Herodotus 6.86) that the Pythia had predicted the seizure and destruction of ‘all a man’s offspring and household’ (γενεὴν καὶ οἶκον ἅπαντα) and that consequently ‘today there is no household which is considered as stemming from Glaucus’. The phrase ‘offspring and household’ denoting a man’s entire estate is also found at Horace Carmen Saeculare 47 and the destruction of a man’s family for his personal crime is not uncommon in ancient literature and clearly reflected life in a vengeful age (see e.g. Homer Iliad 3.298–301, 4.162, Hesiod Works and Days 282–4). Swearing oaths often involved applying this curse to oneself if perjury were being committed (see Antiphon 5.11, Andocides 1.98, Demosthenes 23.67, 54.38, Lysias 12.10, 32.13, Aristophanes Frogs 587–8): see further Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) on Horace Odes 1.28.30,

Commentary

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Fraenkel (1950) on Aeschylus Agamemnon 535f. The subject of probauit is Glaucus himself (understood) but extinctus (‘annihilated’) explains the way in which the oracle was proved right in the so-called ab urbe condita construction, meaning ‘his annihilation proved…’. For the construction cf. 1.163, 6.8, 12.127. 206–7  relatives: J. sticks close to the Greek words in the oracle (tota cum prole domoque) in line 206, with effective alliteration and assonance of pariter cum prole domoque, – and then adds a further line to expand and explain prole as embracing any degree of temporal or spatial closeness. quamuis is to be taken with longa and longa gente is an ablative of degree of distance (see AG §414, K-S II.1.391–2) going with deductis (‘derived’ or ‘descended’: OLD s.v. ‘deduco’ 13). There is a nice irony in one’s propinqui (‘nearest’) being deducti (literally ‘taken far away’) and longa can mean ‘long’ in both time (OLD s.v. ‘longus' 9) and space (OLD s.v. 1). 208  Simply wanting…punishments: as often, J. sums up the previous lines with a self-contained gnomic line packed with forceful alliteration; cf. 134, 2.60, 10.22. All modern editions (including this one) print has patitur poenas peccandi sola uoluntas, but there is a fair degree of variation amongst the manuscripts. P and Φ read uoluptas (‘pleasure’) instead of uoluntas (‘wishing’) and sola is elsewhere read as saeua (‘brutal’) or even scaeua (‘misguided, perverse’). For the adverbial sense of sola as ‘acting alone’, i.e. ‘uoluntas by itself’ cf. OLD s.v. ‘solus’ 4. uoluntas here is an abstract noun (the act of wishing) standing for the person who is wishing, a feature of J.’s style found also at 10.75 but here with added point that the simple thought or intention has the capacity to incur penalties. After all, even Glaucus (199–210n.) was not punished simply for ‘wishing’ but rather for ‘testing the god’ (πειρηθῆναι τοῦ θεοῦ (Herodotus 6.86)) which is never recommended in ancient culture where gods over-react to any implied slight to their power: see inter multa alia the tale of Niobe at Homer Iliad 24.596–620 or that of the Judgement of Paris where gods were put to the test with disastrous consequences. What this line seems to propose is something closer to the Christian injunction (Gospel of Matthew 5.27–8) that even desiring a woman is as bad as committing adultery with her, and this is something which is inconsistent with other non-Christian classical texts where the determining factor is usually to ascertain who is ‘to blame’ (αἴτιος) for the deed, irrespective of intention: Agamemnon (for instance) does not deny that he committed the deed of girl-taking and is more than ready to make recompense even though he also tries to argue that the agency at work was divine (Homer Iliad 19.86–90: see Dodds (1951) 1–27). Premeditation

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was not in itself a crime if no crime were committed. There are also, however, many texts where either gods are given the power to read minds (e.g. D.L. 1.36, Xenophon Memorabilia 1.1.19) or else people whose intentions are wicked are criticised (e.g. Ovid Amores 3.4.4–5, Seneca de Ira 1.3.1, Gellius 11.8.23). 209–210  qui here means is qui (anyone who) and the sentence is built on the parallel verbs cogitat and (crimen) habet. thinks about: cogitat must here mean ‘plans’ (OLD s.v. ‘cogito’ 5). without speaking: scelus tacitum more commonly refers to something done and now concealed (cf. 1.167, 11.187, Propertius 2.25.30) rather than to a future crime merely contemplated in silence, but the following words make it clear that J. is still thinking of intentions rather than actions. 210  what then: cedo is an imperative (plural cette) which usually means ‘give me’ as in the merciless centurion in Tacitus (Annals 1.23) whose nickname was cedo alteram (‘give me another [vine-branch as a scourge]’). In this passage with si it means ‘give me your opinion of what [would happen] then, if…?’ as in 6.504. The punctuation of Latin texts is not usually part of the textual paradosis and the text printed here is that which seems to make best sense of the words. The description of symptoms in lines 211–222 is the answer to the question posed in this line and so a question mark (as supplied by Braund) makes the meaning clear. conata is from conor (a deponent verb) but here has the passive meaning of ‘things tried out’ like meditata at 6.539 (see K-S II.1.111.7). The juxtaposition of conata peregit is effective in showing the quick transition from attempt to success. 211 The incessant nature of the anxiety is unpacked in typical style in the coming lines covering meal-times (211–16) and sleep (217–22) in hyperbolic terms of sickness. dinner-time: for the synecdochic use of mensae (literally ‘table’) to mean ‘meals’ (served on tables) cf. OLD s.v. ‘mensa’ 7. 212–3  throat: the stress of his guilt causes the criminal to suffer a dry mouth (faucibus siccis) which in turn makes the food difficult to masticate and swallow – symptoms which are expressed in two ablative absolute constructions dealing with drink and food respectively. Dry mouth (xerostomia) and raging thirst are also a symptom of major diseases such as the Athenian plague of 430–426 BC (Thucydides 2.49.5, Lucretius 6.1176). morbo brings out this connection between the actual cause and the comparable pathology of disease and reminds us of the interaction between physical, mental and moral health in the individual (192–35n.) whereby mental states can be as physically devastating as organic diseases. Difficulty

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in eating food when under stress is of course normal and described in similar terms by Seneca (Ep.82.21). Here the language is vivid and powerful: the food should be reduced by chewing but only swells up (crescente: nicely glossed by Green ((1998) 103) as telling us that it is ‘choking’ him. For the verb cf. Ovid Heroides 15.122). This is despite the efforts of the biggest teeth in the mouth (molares – a word which also means ‘millstones’) which in turn conjures up the image of the raw corn being ground between the mill-stones as an implicit simile for the dry food in the mouth. For this use of difficilis as indigestible cf. Horace Odes 1.13.4. 213–6  Setian … Alban … Falernian: from food to wine, as the choicest wines arouse nothing but repulsion in him. Notice here the emphatic phrasing as each of lines 214–6 begins with a strong verb. 213–4  Setian wine was even said to aid digestion (Pliny NH 23.35–6) which would give it more point here as it is imbibed along with food (note the juxtaposition of cibo Setina) only to be spat out in the enjambed verb expuit. misellus is high pathos, being used elsewhere of a girl’s dead sparrow (Catullus 3.16) or of the lovesick (Lucretius 4.1096 (where it is contrasted with the ability to eat and drink), Catullus 45.21) or of the pathetic (Catullus 40.1, 80.7). Here the effect is condescending and critical rather than to elicit sympathy for the hapless victim of his own criminality. Most manuscripts (followed by Housman and Clausen) read sed uina which has the virtue of clarity in introducing the change of subject. Many recent editors, however, have printed Setina, a conjecture of Herel and Withof which would replace the bland ‘but wines’ with a specific type of wine which was a byword for being expensive (see 5.34, 10.27). 214  Alban wine was linked with Setian at 5.33–4: it was produced, like Setian, from Alba Longa: cf. 6.O15. The periphrastic (and pleonastic) phrasing of Albani ueteris pretiosa senectus (literally: ‘the expensive old age of old Alban’) is all building up the marketing of the product to make the enjambed displicet all the more bathetic and shocking. For the periphrastic use of abstract nouns for adjectives (Albani … senectus) cf. 184–5n.. Wine improves with age, which helps to explain the pleonasm of ueteris … senectus: for the snobbery surrounding old vintage wines cf. Petronius Satyricon 34. 215  Show him: Willis claims not to understand what it means to ‘show’ a wine but the phrase has a visual power evoking a vignette whereby the appearance of the bottle alters the appearance of the man’s forehead. The mss. reading melius has been suspected by some, but it continues the theme

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of relentless fastidiousness: the wines mentioned so far are excellent, and yet even better than these will not please him. The construction is a mixed conditional with subjunctive in the protasis (ostendas) and indicative (cogitur) in the apodosis, as at 10.123, 205–6, Virgil Aeneid 6.358, AG §517b. For the use of the singular superlative densissima to indicate a packed plurality cf. 1.120, Ovid Tristia 5.10.19 and see also 14.144. 216  riven into: cogitur (OLD s.v. ‘cogo’ 8e) has the sense of ‘compressing’ and goes well with densissima as a packed set of wrinkles are thus squeezed onto his forehead. pulled tight: ducta (from duco) indicates ‘tracing’ lines (OLD s.v. ‘duco’ 12: cf. 14.325 rugam trahit). Falerno is the reading of the mss and refers to Falernian wine, ranked by Pliny (NH 14.59–65) as second only to Setian in quality. uelut acri (as if it were sour) is interesting: this wine was certainly better when old (Cicero Brutus 287, Pliny NH 23.34, Horace Satires 2.3.115) and when mixed with honey (Horace Satires 2.4.24): and Horace describes it as seuerum (Odes 1.27.9: see Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) ad loc.) – and yet it was classed as a choice wine (4.138) and functions as such here. Nisbet ((1995) 258–59) argues that Falerno is wrong because we expect the poet to name an inferior wine, and Falernian is choice: he proposes Falisco as being Etruscan and less attractive. This is however to miss J.’s point: the misellus man is so sick with anxiety that he regards even Falernian as sour (when it is not) – with the additional joke that of course it could be acri on occasion and honey helped, and also that if this expensive wine had gone sour then the disappointment was all the greater. Alternatively, uelut acri ducta Falerno is to be taken all together (as if ‘puckered up by some Falernian turned sour’ (Ramsay (1918) 263). 217  If … short sleep: he is lucky if he gets any sleep at all (si forte) and even then it is only short (breuem). The phrase owes something perhaps to Theocritus who tells (21.4–5) us that as a result of poverty ‘evil cares do not allow a man to sleep, and if he closes his eyes for a small part of the night, his anxieties suddenly rise up and disturb his sleep’. indulsit (see OLD s.v. ‘indulgeo’ 5) is sarcastic, suggesting that what should be normal and natural is for this man a luxury (cf. 2.164–5, 6.384). The second half of the line has pleasingly somnolent assonance and sibilance (indulsit cura soporem – an effect like that of Virgil Aeneid 4.81). 218  tossing all over the bed: the sleeper is restless (for the imagery of tossing and turning in emotional turmoil cf. Homer Iliad 24. 3–11 (where Achilles is grieving for Patroclus, alluded to explicitly by J. at 3.279–80), Catullus 50.9–15 (where toto … lecto / uersarer is similar to J.’s toto uersata

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toro), Propertius 1.14.20–1, 2.22.47. now: iam marks the beginning of rest after the agitation of uersata, and quiescunt is in a vivid present tense which makes the visions of 219–222 all the more immediate – a device enhanced by the enjambed continuo in 219. 219  at once he sees: the sleeper goes at once into dream sleep and has a vision of temples and the altars by which he swore his false oath (cf. 89 for the touching of altars). Note here how the divinity (numinis) is enclosed verbally within his templum et … aras (cf. 36–7n.). abused: for uiolati cf. 6n. 220 For sweating as a sign of guilty anxiety cf. 1.167. Describing these sweating fits as praecipuis is striking: at 4.19 the word is used in the legal sense of ‘the privileged position in the legacy before distribution of the remainder (OLD s.v. 1b)’ (Braund (1996) ad loc.) and its usual sense of ‘privileged’ (cf. 6.532, 557) or ‘special’ (9.120) which could describe the wealthy criminal is here transferred to his nocturnal perspiration. harasses: urguet continues the theme of unwelcome pressure which we see in cogitur and later in turbat and cogit, and is perfect in this line. It combines a sense of ‘weighing down’ (cf. 13.48: the word is often used in a context of sleep as here cf. OLD s.v. ‘urgeo’ 3b) and also of ‘squeezing’ (OLD s.v. 1a) the sweat from the criminal. quod introduces the whole clause (‘the thing which urguet … is that he sees’). 221  you … your: The incredulous shock is brought out by the rhetorical repetition of te…tua at the start of each half of the line. Seeing visions of people (often dead) about whom we feel guilty is as old as Homer (Iliad 23.65–107, where the ghost of Patroclus appears to Achilles in sleep) and sometimes the living vow to come back after death to haunt the dreams of their persecutors as in Ovid Heroides 2.136, Horace Epodes 5.92–6, Virgil Aeneid 4.385–6. It is equally (as Pryor ((1962) 178) points out) a part of the consolatio that the bereaved will see the dead again in dreams (e.g. Propertius 4.11.81–4), which makes this passage odd as here the consolee is going to be the vision in the dreams of the criminal who has caused the loss in the first place. This passage is closer in spirit to the tales told of (e.g.) the emperor Nero who spent a sleepless night while the murder of his mother was being carried out and then admitted that he was ‘plagued by the ghost of his mother, by the whips of the Furies and their blazing torches’ (Suetonius Nero 34: Tacitus (Annals 14.10) has him hear a ghostly trumpet and laments from her tomb). 221–2  larger than anything human: the vision of the victim here is larger than life – something which is seen in the case of dead people (e.g.

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the dead Creusa (Virgil Aeneid 2.773) or Romulus (Ovid Fasti 2.503)) and ghosts (Tacitus Histories 4.83.1, Suetonius Claudius 1.2, Pliny Epistles 7.27.2, Herodotus 8.38). Calvinus is not, of course, dead and so J.’s use of the trope as part of his robber’s punishment is somewhat premature, but the mockery is obvious in that J. is ‘bigging up’ his consolee and inflating his importance. The language here is packed with significance: sacra (godgiven) denotes a supernatural origin for the vision and shows a reliance on the divine which is a theme in this poem (see 15, 19, 59, 72, 107). pauidum (fearful) is elegantly placed to show that the vision is both the cause and the effect of his fear: he was already nervous (perpetua anxietas 211) but the placing of the word after the verb turbat also denotes that the vision leaves him trembling. cogitque fateri tells us that he confesses in his sleep like the dreamer who does the same and ‘gives away his own deed’ (indicioque sui facti) in Lucretius 4.1018–19. 223–228  lightning … thunders: the guilty man is paranoid about meteorological events, and Calvinus is invited to enjoy the poet’s scathing account of his mindless terror as a form of punishment for his offence. Many, or even most, people in the ancient world had no difficulty believing that the world was full of gods (Cicero On the Nature of the Gods 2.70–72) and that god ‘moved through all things, lands and the tracts of the sea and the deep sky’ (Virgil Georgics 4.221–2). Religion only becomes personal and troubling when people believe that the divinity cares about human morality, and this is something which J. has already alluded to (91–6) as a calculated risk for the perjurer. The interpretation of omens (such as thunder and earthquakes) was ubiquitous in the ancient world, and Tacitus (Annals 14.12) tells us that among the bad omens following the death of Agrippina were those of a woman killed by a lightning strike during sex, a solar eclipse and ‘the fourteen districts of the city being struck by lightning’. Events such as eclipses of sun and moon were often regarded as supernatural and could well change the course of a battle (see e.g. Thucydides 7.50.4 (lunar), Herodotus 1.74.1 (solar), OCD s.v. ‘eclipses’): but the superstitious interpretation of thunder and lightning had been questioned from early times: see e.g. Anaximander 130 KRS, Aristophanes Clouds 374–381 and especially Lucretius 6.379–422. Cicero tells us (de haruspicum resp. 62–3) that earthquakes are a way for the gods to communicate with us. These are the men who: hi sunt qui introduces a ‘type’ of person and the following lines give a satirical sketch of such a person’s behaviour, allowing J. to tap into the comic potential of the superstitious neurotic as

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he had in the case of pious women (6.508–47): for similar diatribes against excessive superstition see Theophrastus Characters 16, Hippocrates On the Sacred Disease 1, Plutarch On Superstition 164e–171e. Diggle ((2004) 349) cites a Peripatetic treatise (see Stobaeus 2.7.25) which located true religion (εὐσέβεια) as midway between the vices of indifference to the gods (ἀθεότης) at one extreme and superstition (δεισιδαιμονία) at the other: and the figure of the ‘superstitious man’ became a topic of comedy (Menander composed a comedy called Δεισιδάιμων and see also Cicero de oratore 2.251) and scathing critique (e.g. Livy (7.2.3): Polybius (6.56.7–8) tells us that this quality of the Romans was criticised by other peoples). Horace (Satires 2.3.79) calls superstition tristi (‘gloomy’) and Lucretius naturally devotes a good part of his poem to attacking the fear of the gods, although he also gives eloquent expression (5.1218–25) to exactly the sort of guilty fear of thunder which J. is here describing. Ordinary people were regarded as more superstitious in this regard than the intelligentsia: cf. Tacitus Annals 1.28 (soldiers), 13.17 (the mob). 223–4  go pale … go faint: the fear produces fainting and paleness, an image repeated for each of the two phenomena: they pallent at the sight of lightning (fulgura) and they become exanimes on hearing even the first (primo quoque) sound of thunder rumbling. Lightning was regarded as a weapon used by Jupiter to punish wrongdoers (especially perjurers) as at 78, 3.145, Aristophanes Clouds 397, Pindar Pythian 3.57–8, Virgil Aeneid 2.647–9; and rumbling of thunder could indicate divine interest in what was going on and inspire panic: see e.g. Homer Odyssey 20.102–4 and especially 21.412–4 where the thunder of Zeus is accompanied by the draining of colour from the faces of the guilty suitors. Similar panic is reported of the emperors Caligula (Suetonius Gaius 51) and also the astrologically inclined Tiberius (Suetonius Tiberius 69): the emperor Augustus’ anxiety in the face of thunder was rational rather than superstitious (Suetonius Augustus 90): see also Ovid Fasti 3.369–70, Cicero de consulatu suo 2.23–4. 225–6  not mere chance: the Epicurean view was that all events are caused by the random grouping together of atoms in the void, and fortuitus suggests that this philosophy is the correct alternative to the superstitious terror. This adds to the narrator’s Schadenfreude, as the criminal is (in fact) worrying for nothing. Many ancient writers argued that thunder is not of divine origin: Tacitus (Annals 14.12) calls such events inrita (meaningless) and goes on to prove that they do not show divine displeasure by the fact that Nero continued his imperium et scelera (‘reign and wicked acts’) for

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many years afterwards. Lucretius (2.1100–4 and more fully at 6.83–422) gives a detailed naturalistic explanation, and Horace (Satires 1.5.97–103) is thoroughly sceptical that gods have any hand in sending anything miraculous from their house in the heavens (a view he purports to renounce in Odes 1.34 on hearing thunder in a clear sky, although he gives agency at the end of this poem to fortuna (cf. fortuitus here)). 225  The rhythm of this line is deliberately odd. fortuitus is scanned as three syllables (fortvitus), with the central ‘u’ being pronounced as a consonant rather than a vowel, a device known as synizesis. The line ends with the monosyllable sed which causes a strong clash of ictus and accent (nec uentórum rábie séd) and helps to create the picture of the rowdy winds. For raging winds as the cause of the storm see Epicurus Letter to Pythocles § 100, Lucretius 6.96–141 (esp.111 (furit) 124 (ualidi uenti conlecta procella) and 137 (ualidi uis incita uenti)), Aristophanes Clouds 404–7. 226  angry fire: the line is nicely framed by iratus…ignis and the two verbs (cadat and iudicet) are also balanced around the central destination in terras. The personal nature of the punishment is enhanced by the pathetic fallacy of having a fire actually judging (iudicet). The verbs are in the subjunctive as this is a very unreal conditional: ‘as if (quasi) the fire were falling in judgement (but it is not)’; the key words here are iratus and iudicet, as everything else is true. For the apparent anger of thunderbolts cf. Horace Odes 1.3.40, Propertius 2.16.52. Courtney objects to iudicet on the grounds that ‘one can hardly conceive the lightning sitting in deliberation’ and prefers the reading uindicet but the superstitious paranoid is perfectly capable of believing anything and iudicet has both abundant manuscript authority and also conveys the speaker’s increasingly feverish imagination at work. 227–8  that one, the next: even if one thunderbolt has not hurt them (nocuit) they cannot rest but are all the more anxious (cura grauiore) fearing that the next one (proxima) will hit home. There is urgent parataxis of nocuit… timetur and also expressive word-play again here: nihil nocuit is ironic, as it may apply to the thunder but not to the criminal who is certainly nocens (3, 101, 234), and there is a balanced and ominous contrast between tempestas and sereno (here (as at 7.179) used as a noun meaning ‘calm [weather]’). dilata (from differo: see OLD s.v. 4) connotes the idea that the criminal has a stay of execution: the storm has only been deferred by this period of calm and will soon strike. 229–232  pain … fever … disease: from meteorological paranoia to superstitious hypochondria. For the view that disease and suffering are

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sent by the gods to punish wrongdoing see (inter alia) Homer Iliad 1.8–12 (where Apollo sends plague), 16.384–91 (Zeus wastes the fields with rain in anger), Hesiod Works and Days 238–241; and see also the rationalist debunking of this idea explicitly by Hippocrates (On the Sacred Disease 2) and implicitly by Lucretius (6.1090–1286). Gods are credited with causing sicknesses such as impotence (Phoenix in Homer Iliad 9.453–7, Aegeus in Euripides Medea 671, a concept mocked in Lucretius 4.1233–9), blindness (Tiresias (Ovid Metamorphoses 3.334–5)) and lameness (Anchises (Virgil Aeneid 2.647–9)); and the emperor Nero was sure that his sudden bout of ill-health was the result of divine anger (Tacitus Annals 14.22). There consequently emerges the figure of the ‘healer’ who is often descended from a god or who is close to the gods (e.g. Asclepius (Pindar Pythian 3.47–53) and his son Machaon (Homer Iliad 2.732)) who can work miraculous cures (see OCD s.v. ‘Asclepius’, Lloyd (2003) 52–57, Parker (1983) 235–256). 229  insomniac: uigil and its derivatives properly describe a person or thing which does not sleep (cf. 3.232, 15.43) but also indicates something which makes one sleepless and so here applies both to the disease (which does not itself ‘rest’) and its insomniac sufferers who could not sleep even before the onset of pain (217): it also has the sense (OLD s.v. ‘uigil’ 2) of ‘watching over’ or ‘vigilant’ (cf. 3.275, 14.260) and this adds a touch of menace to the disease which is aiming its pain at them. The unspecified ‘pain in the side’ could well be pleurisy as suggested by some commentators (OLD s.v. ‘latus’ 1d, citing Celsus 4.13.1: cf. also Horace Satires 1.9.32 with Gowers (2012) ad loc.) but the phrase is vague: the criminals are jumping to metaphysical conclusions to diagnose the cause of their pain on the less than comprehensive evidence of high temperature and local pain (febre dolorem are juxtaposed in the line as in the body). Lucilius (Frag.incert. 1314) alludes to lateralis dolor as ‘the most certain messenger of death’. 230  begin: the instant rushing to ascribe reasons is well brought out by the use of coepere (as soon as they ‘start’ to feel pain they think that what presents as cum febre dolorem (229) is in fact a morbum sent by the gods. Nisbet ((1995) 233) doubts ad and prefers in which is certainly more physiologically apt for an internal disease. 230–2  disease … sent … angry: the divine agency is spelled out with increasing power: this disease was no accident (pace Lucretius 6.655–64) but sent (missum) to their bodies by a hostile (infesto) deity: these things (i.e. diseases) are the gods’ rocks and spears. The speaker puts clear distance between himself and the sick man with the words credunt … putant, while

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also voicing their superstition with the repetition of words for ‘god’ (numine … deorum) in 231. tela reminds us of Apollo’s arrows at Homer Iliad 1.45–6. saxa … et tela are part of the conduct of heroic fighting, whereby men began by throwing spears at each other, then (if these did not succeed) flung rocks, before finally coming to hand-to-hand fighting with swords: see 15.65–7n., cf. Homer Iliad 7.244–272 and contrast the duel of Aeneas and Turnus at Virgil Aeneid 12.887–952 where the saxum is thrown first (896–918) and then the telum (919) before the final dénouement with the sword (950). The foes being faced here are divine, which raises the stakes considerably and puts the criminal unwillingly into playing a role like that of Diomedes who fought Ares in Homer Iliad 5.846–863. The sick criminal is envisaged as seeing himself as part of a heroic struggle against divine forces in epic warfare. 232–5  pledge a … beast: it was normal practice for the sick (or their relatives) to offer lavish sacrifices for the restoration of health, a practice which J. has explored at length in the case of captatores (12.99–114). J. continues to mock the character of the wrongdoers by saying that they do not dare (non audent stressed at the end of the sentence and with emphatic enjambement) to do this even in private (sacello…laribus) and even with humble offerings such as sheep and cockerels. 232–3  bleating beast: The bleating animals are lambs (cf. Persius 5.167 for lambs used as offerings). The allusive ‘kenning’ phrase has an epic and archaic ring (cf. Ennius Annales 6.169, Tragedies fr. 54, Cicero de diuinatione 1.42.5, Lucretius 2.369, Virgil Georgics 1.272 (balantum gregem), Aeneid 7.538, Ovid Met. 8.376 (saetiger)) which may ‘be alluding … to the language of ritual’ (Hollis (1970) 83). It is noteworthy that the defining term balantem is postponed until the beginning of the next line, and pecudem may have led readers to expect something much more extravagant (cf. Lucretius 3.52: the word by itself can denote ‘any animal, bird etc included under the heading of livestock of a farm’ (OLD s.v. ‘pecus’ 1)) leading to the bathetic onomatopeia of balantem. Similarly, to promise the cristam galli is (apparently) to sell the gods short: the epic periphrasis whereby ‘the crest of a cockerel’ stands for ‘a crested cockerel’ (see 184–5n: for the use of the crest as the typical marker of the bird cf. Ovid Met. 11.597, Martial 9.68.3) could (if taken literally) suggest a very small sacrifice indeed: for the cockerel as a stereotypically cheap sacrifice see 12.96. The term sacello is also a diminutive term (cf. 10.354) and when paired with Laribus (the household gods: cf. 8.110, 9.137–8, 12.113, 15.153) suggests that his sacrifice will be inside the home and kept private for reasons of secrecy.

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234–5  For what … or which?: a wonderfully tart pair of rhetorical questions: prayers do not work in the case of the guilty and the animal deserves to live more than the criminal. Cockerels were in fact sacrificed to Apollo and Asclepius (both credited as healers) most famously as suggested by the dying Socrates (Plato Phaedo 118a: cf. also Anth. Pal. 6.155); a practice which Diogenes the Cynic found repellent (Diogenes Laertius 6.28). aegris here functions as a noun (‘sick people’) as at 124. The strong suggestion here is that (a) sickness is divine punishment for human wrongdoing and (b) it is no good trying to appease the gods. Homer’s Iliad begins with a scene in which the theft of a priest’s daughter has caused the gods to send plague, at which the Greek priest Calchas tells the wrongdoers that they must return the girl and also conduct a hecatomb to appease their wrath (Iliad 1.97–100): simply carrying out the hecatomb would not (it seems) do the trick. The point that the animal deserves to live more than the criminal is the ultimate in condemnation of the criminal as lower than the humblest animal in worth. 236  [As a rule … changing.]: this line was condemned by Jahn and is excluded by many modern editors on the grounds that it is inconsistent with line 240: here the speaker suggests that wicked men may change (understanding malorum as masculine), while in 240 their nature is said to be ‘fixed and does not know how to change’. The point is however more subtle: ferme (‘as a general rule’ cf. 8.73) excuses the generalisation about criminals changing their mood from one of arrogant sureness to pitiful timidity – a generalisation which J. will alter to bring in a further element of the consolatio in lines 239–49 and which goes on to prove that for all the superficial fickleness of their oscillation between crime and remorse, their nature is in fact fixed. Our speaker is also himself mobilis et uaria and so the line acquires ironic value. The phrasing is a pleasing pastiche of Mercury’s famous line about women in Virgil (Aeneid 4.569–70) uarium et mutabile semper/ femina and (combined with the light quotation of Horace in 239–40) contributes to the characterisation of our speaker as a man in search of a topos. 237  committing a crime: scelus admittere is to ‘commit a crime’ (see 10.340, OLD s.v. ‘admitto’ 13) and superest here has a similar sense to that in 109 (‘to be available’ cf. OLD s.v. ‘supersum’ 7, 8) with the ominous hint that constantia is still in place when the crime is being committed (but will run out soon when remorse sets in). constantia usually denotes unchanging resolution or confidence (see 77, OLD s.v. ‘constantia’ 3) but here the words

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which follow make it clear that it has the sense of being free from specifically moral and ethical scruples. 237–9  when … carried out: only once the crimes have been perpetrated (peractis criminibus is an ablative absolute in the perfect tense) do the criminals even begin finally to feel what is right and wrong (understanding sint with quod fas atque nefas). fas and nefas (see 54n.) are terms denoting that which is sanctioned by divine rather than civil law and so tie in neatly with the superstitious fear described in 219–35. 239–40  nature rushes back: the phrasing is reminiscent of Horace’s dictum (Epistles 1.10.24) naturam expelles furca tamen usque recurret (‘if you drive Nature out with a pitchfork, she will come running back of her own accord’): and the word-order also well expresses the inconsistency. The criminal’s nature is fixa et mutari nescia yet runs back to mores which have been condemned (damnatos) but which he now embraces. The condemnation of morality as a recipe for weakness and poverty recalls the mocking blunt realism of lines 33–70 (with its echoes of the brazen immorality of a Thrasymachus (Plato Republic 1 336b–342e) or a Callicles (Plato Gorgias 481b–522e)). The concept of human nature as fixed and immutable is something of a theme in the ancient world: cf. Horace Epistles 1.11.27, Thucydides 3.82 (civil war in Corcyra produced a moral revolution which is nonetheless consistent with human nature) and is here being used to introduce the final argument (240–244) in the poem, that leopards do not change their spots and Calvinus’ robber will reoffend, no matter how anxious his guilt (211–32), and one day be caught. 240–44  Who … when … is there any?: the argument is couched in a tricolon crescendo of rhetorical questions all expecting negative answers. 241  set a limit: for finem ponere with a genitive of action and a dative of person cf. Lucan 5.314, 10.42, Cicero de finibus 4.43.11. The phrase nam quis peccandi finem begins with two stressed monosyllables and is heavily spondaic suggestive of the sustained finger-jabbing tone of the speaker. 241–2  blush of shame: the second question is inventive and highly vivid. For blushing as a sign of modesty and decency see OLD s.v. ‘rubor’ 2a and cf. 11.54–5, 1.166, Horace Epistles 2.1.267, Ovid Amores 1.14.47, Aristophanes Clouds 992. removed: eiectum (literally [‘having been thrown out’) recalls the language of Horace Epistles 1.10.24 (see 239–40n.). It is juxtaposed strongly over the enjambed line-end with recepit and gives us a surprising image of a criminal welcoming back (see OLD s.v. ‘recipio’ 1,2,3,4) something which he has previously thrown out. brazen: attrita is

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from attero (‘to rub, grind down’) and denotes here ‘hardened, brazen’ (OLD s.v. ‘attritus (1)’ 2) as at Martial 8.59.2 (also describing a thief). The contrast here between the attrita fronte and the ruborem is close to the language of Catullus 42.16–17 where the contrast is of ruborem (‘blush’) and ferreo (‘brassy’): in both poems there is the ἀδύνατον figure of finding blood in a stone. The phrase as a whole is similar to the idiom (see Otto (1870) s.v. ‘facies’ 1) perfricui faciem (‘to put on a hard face’, ‘abandon shame’ OLD s.v. ‘perfrico’ b: Pliny NH praef.4, Quintilian 11.3.160, Cicero Tusc. 3.18., Martial 11.27.7, Seneca Ep.40.13). For the frons as the indicator of shame or lack of it cf. 8.189, 11.204, Persius 5.103–4, OLD s.v. ‘frons’ 3b. 243–4  any man alive: the -nam suffix on quisnam adds a touch of impatience (see OLD s.v. ‘nam’ 7b) appropriate in the third and final question in this tricolon. Line 243 reads like many other statements of human dissatisfaction with slender means and the word flagitio (crime: emphasised by its enjambed position at the end of the question) is bathetic and shocking. For the sentiment, that a hardened criminal will never be content with one crime, see Cicero Verrines 2.1.40.7 (‘the nature of a man (Verres) who has committed a crime of this order cannot be content with one offence: of necessity he is always engineering something new of this kind…’), Philippics 12.23.7: the same sort of language is also used of the uniuira (a woman married to only one husband) and of people who do not fit this description: cf. 6.53–4, Catullus 68.135, Horace Epodes 14.15–16, Terence Eun. 122. 244–5  crime … trap: crime is followed at once by punishment in this speculation as the juxtaposition of flagitio dabit makes clear. noster is a colloquial usage (see OLD s.v. ‘noster’ 4c, Petronius 63.7), but also marks a shift in perspective as the wrong was done to Calvinus and not to J. and so for him to share ownership of the offender is something of a change from the harsh tone of the early part of the poem (e.g. 33). 244–7  trap … prison … exiles: the available forms of punishment are detailed with prurient relish and form a sequence of (a) being trapped (244), (b) being imprisoned (245) and finally (c) being exiled (246–7). The key terms are found in combination elsewhere: Suetonius (Tiberius 54) tells us of an executioner frightening a man into suicide by showing him the laqueos et uncos (instruments of capital punishment), while Lepidus is reported (Tacitus Annals 3.50) as saying that neque carcer neque laqueus will be enough to punish Clutorius Priscus; and J. challenges us (1.73) to ‘dare to commit a deed deserving of cramped Gyara and the dungeon (carcere)’. A laqueus was a snare or trap for catching animals (cf. OLD

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s.v. ‘laqueus’ 2, 7.50, 10.314, Horace Odes 3.24.8, Epistles 1.16.51, Ovid Ars Am. 1.646) and was also a garotte for strangulation (cf.10.53, Horace Epistles 1.16.37, OLD s.v. ‘laqueus’ 1). The imagery here is of the criminal as an animal being lured into a trap with a bait, with dabit … uestigia well evoking the animal walking to its capture. Sejanus is memorably described (10.66) as being ‘dragged along by the hook’ although that was probably after he had been executed. prison: Rome did not have a permanent system of incarceration (criminals were punished with ‘fines, deportation, exile and execution’ (Braund (1996) 92–93) and the carcer was more of a holding-cell to stop criminals escaping their exile or execution. One famous example of a carcer was the Tullianum (see OCD s.v. ‘Tullianum’) which was an underground dungeon deserving of the epithet nigri. cliff and rocks: the rocky outpost in the Aegean refers to the punishment of relegation from Rome to a remote island such as Gyara (1.73) or Seriphos (6.563–4), places which were uncomfortable to live in (Tacitus Annals 4.21, 14.48) and small (breuibus 1.73, parua 6.564). The harshness of the landscape is well brought out here by the hendiadays of rupem scopulosque focussing on the rocks, with the added criticism that these places are also uncomfortably crowded (frequentes) with ‘great exiles’: cf. Tacitus Histories 1.2 who refers to the sea as ‘full of exiles’. The exiles are magnis in the sense of ‘distinguished’ (OLD s.v. ‘magnus’ 12) but there is the additional cartoon image of large men on small rocks: for a similar effect see the caricature of the emperor with his Chaldaean flock on Capri at 10.93–4. 247–8  you will: J. addresses Calvinus one final time with reassurance expressed in a confident future indicative tense with emphasis on the joy he will experience (gaudebis … laetus) at the unpleasantness (amara) of the punishment. For the use of nomen as referring to the man along with his reputution see OLD s.v. ‘nomen’ 10, 12. Tacitus Histories 2.53.1, Annals 14.13.1: and the word also has a legal usage almost meaning ‘case’ (OLD s.v. 20c) which suits this context. inuisi means primarily ‘resented’ or ‘hated’ (OLD s.v. ‘inuisus’ (1) but there may also be a joke whereby the inuisus man in prison or exile is now literally inuisus (‘out of sight’ OLD s.v. ‘inuisus (2)’). 248–9  finally: tandem picks up the same word from 238 and marks a nice note of closure at the end of this poem: it is obvious by now that ‘the vengeful addressee has managed to influence his consoler’s agenda’ (Keane (2007) 34). Tiresias was the famous blind prophet and so to call somebody ‘Tiresias’ simply meant ‘blind’: cf. 10.318 (Endymion) and Catullus 74.4, 102.4 for the same metonymic device used of Harpocrates. Morford ((1973) 34) points

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out that Tiresias ‘had appeared most conspicuously in Roman satire as the interlocutor and teacher of Ulysses in Horace Satires 2. 5’ where Ulysses had asked how to recover his lost property, only to be met with laughter. The manuscripts read surdum (deaf), which balances the blindness of Tiresias, but Courtney and Willis both think surdum should be Drusum (cf. 3.238 where Druso is read as surdo by some mansucripts), understanding the name as referring to the late emperor Claudius who was allegedly hard of hearing – and whose reception into the company of the gods was hilariously sent up in Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis. One problem with this is that Drusus was not an uncommon name in the imperial family and so the reference would be less than obvious to many readers. In all events, the poem ends with a pious note of faith in divine justice – a faith which is itself highly dubious.

SATIRE XIV This is the longest poem in the book and has attracted some criticism for what may be seen as its wordy rambling manner, but the text is in fact a tightly controlled and powerful indictment of the pursuit of money to the ruin of family and state. The poet’s voice is ironic and probing, and it could be seen that even the length of the poem is a poetic example of the ‘nothing is ever enough’ (nil satis est) which the poem explores. The structure can be summarised as follows: A Parents and children – learned behaviour 1–58 Parents need to set a good example to their children. 59–85 but they usually do not 86–95 in cases such as Caetronius the builder 96–106 or Jewish parents B The pursuit of wealth 107–22 avarice is actually recommended by parents 123–209 in many different ways 210–255 with sometimes disastrous results for fathers 256–302 people take enormous risks for money 303–16 and it is not worth the risk and the effort 317–331 as no amount will ever be enough.

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Critics find this bipartite division irritating (‘the connection between the two is but slight’ says Duff) but the division is more apparent than real: the natural tendency of the ancient poet towards didacticism lends itself easily to the theme of education and from then on to the broader theme of moral improvement and degeneration. For analysis of this poem see Corn (1992), Geue (2017a) 227–242, Highet (1954) 145–148, O’Neill (1960), Schmitz (2019) 147–153, Stein (1970). 1–58 Parents need to set a good example to their children if they wish their children to grow up into moral citizens. Fathers in ancient literature are commonly cast as paradeigmatic role-models for their sons, even when they are absent from the scene as in the case of Odysseus to Telemachus in Homer’s Odyssey. Sons feel the need to live up to their famous fathers, and famous fathers naturally act as mentors to their sons, although sometimes they do not wish their sons to be greater than themselves (Sophocles’ Ajax (Ajax 550–551) tells his small son to ‘be more fortunate than your father, but in all else his equal’, a line imitated in Latin (Accius Armorum Iudicium 156, Virgil Aeneid 12.435–6)). Horace (Satires 1.4.105–126) tells us of his father pointing out the vice and folly of others in order to educate his son in what not to do, and he later (in his self-styled role as ‘priest of the Muses’ (Musarum sacerdos)) directs his ‘Roman odes’ (Odes 3.1–6) at other people’s children (uirginibus puerisque). J. of course inverts this trope and tells us that mothers train their daughters in sexual wickedness (6.231–41, 14.25–30). For the moral responsibility of fathers in teaching good behaviour to their sons see e.g. Plato Laws 5.729a2–c5: ‘Let nobody seek wealth for the sake of his children, so that he may leave them as wealthy as possible; for that is not better either for them or the State. Young people need to be endowed with the necessities of life but not with such wealth as would attract sycophantic followers: this is the most harmonious and best wealth of all, a way of life which is harmonious and concordant and which renders life totally pain-free. A man ought to bequeath respect, not money, in large measures to his children. We generally think that we should be hard on children when they are showing disrespect if we wish to bequeath respect; but this is not achieved simply by telling them, as people do these days, that ‘young people must respect everyone’. The wise lawmaker will prefer to tell the older people to respect the young, and above all to avoid any

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of them being seen or heard by young people doing or saying anything shameful; for where the old behave shamelessly, there the young must also be shameless. A superior method of training the young – as well as the old – is found not by telling them what to do, but by visibly putting into practice throughout one’s life the instructions which we would give to others’. Plutarch, writing in the age of Juvenal, wrote (On the Education of Children (20: 14a–b)): ‘Above all fathers should make themselves a role-model for their children by not committing any wrong deed but by doing everything which ought to be done, so that the children can look at their fathers’ life as at a mirror and thus turn away from disgraceful deeds and words. Fathers who censure their sons for faults which they themselves fall into unwittingly condemn themelves in their sons’ name. If they lead a life which is wholly immoral then they do not have the right to censure their slaves, let alone their sons. Furthermore they might become mentors and teachers of bad behaviour. Wherever you find shameless old men, there must also be found the most shameless young men too.’ 1  very many: plurima is an adjective acting as a noun (OLD s.v. ‘plurimus’ 1c). Fuscinus is otherwise unknown and is probably a significant name (fuscus means ‘dark’ and so this man is ‘shady’ (cf. Umbricius in Satire 3 for a similar meaning: J. uses significant names in 11 (Persicus suggesting ‘Persian (luxury)’), 12 (Corvinus is ‘Mr Crow’), and 9 (Naevolus is ‘Mr Warty’)). fama digna could be a positive judgement (‘worthy of renown’) but is overturned with the pejorative line-end sinistra – the behaviour taught by the parents will cause the children to suffer hostile gossip: for this sense of sinister see 10.129, Persius 5.164–5 (‘or should I shatter my inheritance at [a girl’s] filthy doorway by getting a bad reputation (rumore sinistro)?’) OLD s.v. ‘sinister’ 4. 1–2  both … and…: et … et… introduce two parallel defining phrases which both effectively say the same thing (damaging their reputation) in different terms. 1A  This line is not found in PFU and has been deleted by most modern editors. Housman quotes Lipsius ((1577) 155–56) conjecturing that this was a ‘rehash of the title’ (Parker (2012) 152): the title ran something like: de institutionibus, quod mala institutio in naturam uertit et quod maiorum uitia sequuntur minores. 2  black mark: maculam ac rugam (‘stain and wrinkle’) is the reading of Φ and makes sense, adding the furrowed brow to the metaphorical signs of disapproval (cf. 13.215); but the line reads better with the reading of PT

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haesuram (future participle of haereo: ‘to stick to’) which intensifies the metaphor rather than varying it and which is itself intensified in juxtaposition with figentia. Notice the metrical effect as the dactyls of the first part of the line are suddenly slowed down as the stain ‘sticks’ and also the oxymoronic juxtaposition of nitidis maculam. brilliant: nitidus essentially means ‘shining bright’ as at 60, 6.8, OLD s.v. ‘nitidus’ 1–2, and so is a perfect foil for the black mark (maculam): elsewhere it means ‘smart’ or ‘chic’ (3.157, 11.178, Horace Epistles 1.7.83, OLD s.v. ‘nitidus’ 6b) and this sense is perhaps focalising the self-image of the young people concerned. 3  parents: parentes is postponed to the end of the line for surprise effect: young people are commonly said to be led astray by Roman society, by bad company (e.g. Sallust Bellum Jugurthinum 8) or teachers (as was said of Socrates according to Plato (Apology 24b8) and Xenophon (Memorabilia 1.1) – but here it is the parents themselves (ipsi) who are corrupting their own offspring. The order of the two verbs is important: monstrant suggests demonstration (cf. 10, 37 below) of habits and could be done by anybody, while tradunt can have the specific sense of ‘leaving as a legacy’ or ‘handing down to’ (OLD s.v. ‘trado’ 4) and goes perfectly with the following word parentes. For the metaphor of ‘bequeathing’ morals as part of a legacy see Plato Laws 5.729b (παισὶν δὲ αἰδῶ χρὴ πολλήν, οὐ χρυσὸν καταλείπειν: ‘one ought to bequeath great modesty, and not gold, to one’s children’) and see next n.. The word is also used of training young people in vice at 6.239. 4–5  If an old man: J.’s couplet echoes the words of Plato Laws 5.729c (‘where the old behave shamelessly, there the young must also be shameless’, ὡς ὅπου ἀναισχυντοῦσι γέροντες, ἀνάγκη καὶ νέους ἐνταῦθα εἶναι ἀναιδεστάτους) which were themselves echoed by Plutarch On the Education of Children 20:14b. J. makes the sentiment vivid with the picturesque details of gambling, a vice which is chosen (in preference to other vices) as it looks forward to the financial avarice which is the focus of much of the rest of the poem (107–331: for the immediate linking of auaritia and alea cf. 1.88–9). alea was gambling with dice, while the fritillus was a box in which the dice were shaken and from which they were then thrown out: the Greek term for such a box (φιμός: see LSJ s.v.III) was in use in Rome as we see in Horace (Satires 2.7.17). For details of how such games were played see Balsdon (1969) 154–56, Paoli (1990) 234–36. alea turpis (‘gambling is a disgrace’) says J. elsewhere (11.176), pairing it with adultery as a social evil, and gambling was certainly regarded as

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an evil by the legislators throughout Roman history who only allowed it to happen during the holiday of the Saturnalia (Martial 5.84). The statutes declared that the penalty for gambling was to be four times the sum wagered (ps-Asconius on Cicero Caecil. 24) and civil rights were withheld until the offender had paid up (Cicero Philippics 2.56), while the praetor would not chase up gambling debts or offer legal redress to those who ran gambling dens (Digest 11, 5, 1, 2: Crook (1967) 271). The law was difficult to enforce when emperors themselves were keen on gambling: Suetonius tells us that Claudius was a gambler as a young man (Diuus Claudius 5) and as emperor, and was even said to have written a book on the game (Diuus Claudius 33.2); and other emperors were equally keen (see Suetonius Augustus 71.1, Caligula 41–2, Domitian 21), with Caligula even gaming during his sister’s funeral (Seneca Dial. 17.4–5). J. disapproves of gambling as a waste of time and cash (damnosa, cf. 8.10 cf. Ovid Tristia 2.484) and a vile habit (turpis 11.176). It is seen, often in assocation with excessive drinking and sexual promiscuity, as a sign of dissipation by Cicero (Philippics 2.67, 3.35, de Officiis 3.91, Catilinarians 2.23) and Quintilian (Inst. Or.2.4.22) and was especially linked with theft and debt as gamblers always need more money than they have (Justinian Digest 21.1.1.19.1, Horace Epistles 1.18.21–5, Odes 3.24.58–64): Sallust tells us firmly that Catiline’s supporters were found from ‘any debauched man, glutton or gambler who had, with his hand, his belly, or his penis torn up his ancestral fortune’ (Sallust Cat. 14.2) For the moral disapproval of gambling see Edwards (1993) 190–91 and especially Purcell (1995) 6–16. Old men are seen as spending their time at the gaming tables (perhaps as they are too old to do anything more productive) in Euripides Medea 68 (and cf. Suetonius Augustus 71), but one may surmise that they are there playing games of skill (such as draughts) rather than ruinous gambling: Plato (Republic 374c) seems to distinguish such games of skill (πεττευτικός) from simple dicing (κυβευτικός) as being a skill (Plato Gorgias 450d: Laws 7.820c, Phaedrus 274c–d). The word damnosa here indicates that J. is thinking of reckless gambling for high stakes. The couplet is constructed to compare and contrast the old man and his heir, the one old enough to know that gambling is ruinous (damnosa) and the other still a child and equipped with a suitably pint-sized (paruoque) dice-box. The imitation is instant, as is shown by the close succession of the verbs iuuat alea ludit. 5  still a child: the bulla was a locket or charm (see 5.164 and 13.33 with note) which was worn by boys along with the toga praetexta until they came

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of age (Persius 5.30–31, Macrobius Sat. 1.6.9–14, Balsdon (1969) 119): the passive participle bullatus in the sense of ‘wearing the bulla’ is not unknown (Scipio Aemilianus (quoted at Macrobius Sat. 3.14.6) speaks of a puerum bullatum) but is less common than the equivalent praetextatum (e.g. 10.308, Catullus 61.175, Cicero in Verrem 2.5.81.4, OLD s.v. ‘praetextatus’ 1b, 2): for the use of such terms to indicate precocious vice cf. praetextatus adulter (‘teenage adulterer’) at 1.78. The line is framed by the vivid terms bullatus and fritillo, the latter word sounding suitably diminutive (although it is not in fact a diminutive form) and having an onomatopoeic ring for the rattling dice-box. The serious competition and the lethal losses involved in gambling are evoked in mouet arma (cf. proelia … armigero used of gambling at 1.91–2, Ovid Tristia 4.1.32) which is a serious military metaphor (see OLD s.v. ‘arma’ 5c) in this context. 6–10  truffles … mushrooms…: J. moves from wasting money on gambling to wasting money on exotic food as the bullatus child is now envisaged becoming a young man (iuuenis) who is no better (nec melius) at offering his family any hope of becoming a decent adult. The cultivation of expensive tastes in young people will cause them to need more money than they would otherwise need, which (like gambling) looks ahead to the theme of avarice later on in the poem. Nisbet ((1995) 26) suggests that one ought to remove the full-stop after fritillo and put one after iuuenis in 8, making the words nec melius … iuuenis refer back to the gaming rather than forward to the haute cuisine. As the text stands the general remarks about the grim moral future of the boy once he has grown up refer both ways, however and the reader is unlikely to hear the start of a sentence with qui radere. 6–7  young man: the subject of the sentence is the iuuenis who will not allow (concedet) any of his relatives to entertain hopes (sperare) about him. For this sense of concedo see 1.170, 12.115, OLD s.v. 9. 7  let: concedet is the reading of F and the future tense is more obviously preferable to the present tense concedit which is the reading of Φ. tubera terrae are truffles, a fungal delicacy (cf. Martial 13.50) enjoyed as a dessert by Virro after his main meal of goose, capon and boar (5.116) and which were said to be especially rife after thunder (Pliny NH 19.33–5: hence the Greek word κεραύνιον for ‘truffle’). scrape: radere suggests that they were peeled before being cooked and/ or eaten and the fact that the youth is taught to do this for himself is a mark of how expensive such items were – given the risks of allowing a clumsy chef to remove too much of the precious fungus. The Roman cookery author

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Apicius has recipes for truffles (7.319–324). The word tuber has a sinister association both with excessive consumption and also with medical tumours (cf. OLD s.b. ‘tuber’ 1): see further Gowers (1993) 216. 8 The boletus was a delicious type of mushroom, set alongside truffles in Apicius Book 7 (316–8) and a fatally favourite dish of the emperor Claudius (5.147, 6.621, Suetonius Claudius 44.2, Tacitus Annals 12.67). Its name here derives from the Spanish town of Boletum and the dish was prized by gourmets (Seneca Ep. 95.24, Martial 3.60.5). condire means here to marinade (OLD s.v. ‘condio’ 1) and was evidently a process to render the fungus (even) more palatable: cf. Cicero ad Fam. 7.26.2. jus: ius is ‘a liquid obtained by boiling meat fish … broth, sauce or sim’ (OLD s.v. ‘ius’1) and is presumably the origin of our modern culinary term: here the fig-peckers (ficedulas) are swimming ‘in the same (i.e. mushroom) sauce’. For the metaphor natantis (literally swimming as at 10.257, Lucretius 2.342 and more appropriate to birds than to fungi) cf. Persius 5.183, Horace Satires 2.8.42 (where it is shrimps ‘swimming’ around a lamprey on a platter). 9  sink: the meaning of mergere has been disputed: some (e.g. Duff) translate it as ‘gulp down’ but it is more likely, in this context of the preparation (rather than the consumption) of food, to continue the theme of condire and mean ‘to drown’ (cf. OLD s.v. ‘mergo’ 1b) – a meaning which has added piquancy in juxtaposition with natantis as the young man ‘drowns’ the birds as they ‘swim’. The reading ficedulas is suspect owing to the prosody: only here would it be scanned fīcĕdŭlas (contrast Lucilius 978 and see OLD s.v. ‘fīcēdula’). Lachmann suggested ficellas but this word does not exist in extant Latin and would have to be read as a syncopation of ficedulas. The fig-pecker (or beccafico) was a small bird served whole as a delicacy at Roman dinner-tables: see Lucilius 978M, Gellius 15.8.2, Macrobius Sat. 3.13.11–12, Petronius 33.8, Martial 13.5. 9–10  useless … gullet: there is an effective hendiadys here: the ‘useless parent and his white-haired gullet’ is vivid language for ‘the greedy wastrel old parent’. The word nebulo (literally ‘fog-man’) denotes a man who is useless and is not uncommon in Roman vituperative language: cf. Cicero pro Roscio 128.6, ad Atticum 1.12.2.8, 2.9.1.11, Horace Satires 1.1.104, 1.2.12, Epistles 1.2.28. 10 The gula is the gullet or throat (OLD s.v. ‘gula’ 1) used here by extension for the appetite which fed it: elsewhere it keeps more of its literal meaning (e.g. 1.140, 5.94, 5.148, 11.39, 15.90) but here the imagery is a grotesque caricature as the gullet is ‘white-haired’ (cana, i.e. belonging to an old man:

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cf. 10.207) and it is somehow ‘demonstrating’ the recipes. monstrante picks up monstrant from 3. 10–11  The seventh year is personified as ‘passing by’ the boy (OLD s.v. ‘transeo’ 10b) and is chosen as the point when formal education usually began (Quintilian 1.1.14–18, Balsdon (1969) 93). This age acted as something of a dividing line between infancy and childhood in ancient societies which liked to divide life up into seven-year periods (hebdomadeis: see Tazelaar (1967), Eyben (1973) 228, Finch (2010) 362–64). We read in Solon (fr. 27 West), for instance, that human life is divided into seven-year periods and his language is close to this passage: ‘In seven years the half-grown boy sheds his first teeth which he cut as a child’; his demarcation of hebdomadeis was used later on by Hippocrates (de hebdomadibus, on which see West (1971)). The poet here presumably mentions teeth simply because they are of great importance to the child who is by now a connoisseur of fine food and so nondum omni adds a hint of impatience as the child awaits his second set of gourmandising teeth. For the loss of infant teeth at this age cf. Pliny NH 7.68, Plautus Menaechmi 1116, Dover (1993) on Aristophanes Frogs 418. puerum (PAU) is the reading adopted by editors in place of puero (Φ). 12  tutors: at the age of seven the boy would normally be passed on to a professional teacher or ludi magister for elementary education, before graduating to the grammaticus and later on the rhetoricus for more specialised education (see OCD s.v. ‘Education, Roman’ 3). The methods of the ludi magister could be brutal if Horace’s teacher (‘flogger’ Orbilius in Epistles 2.1.70–71) is typical (cf. Martial 9.68). Education was not free in ancient Rome and teachers were paid by the parents: J.’s hyperbole here of a thousand tutors being brought in to re-educate the child continues the prodigality of expense already voiced in the lavish food described. Bearded is more than a vivid epithet here: wearing a beard was the mark of a Greek (see Balsdon (1979) 216) and/or a philosopher. Cynics and Stoics in particular wore beards and Epictetus even offered to die rather than to lose his beard (Discourses 1.2.29: cf. Pliny Epist. 1.10.6 , Persius 1.133, 4.1, Horace Satires 1.3.133, 2.3.35 (where ‘to grow the wise beard’ means ‘to become a philosopher’, but simply having the beard did not make one a philosopher according to Gellius 9.2.1–4), Paoli (1990) 110) and such tutors were often Greek slaves: see 13.55–6n. for the facial fashions of J.’s day and the impact of Hadrian. 12–13  thousand: for the use of mille to indicate an unfeasibly large number see OLD s.v. ‘mille’ 1b and cf. Catullus 5.7–10, 16.12, 35.8, Horace

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Epistles 1.6.19. mille inde/hinc totidem is a neat chiastic correlative phrase with variatio in mille … totidem (rather than saying mille … mille). J. might have simply said mille magistros and left it at that: the words inde and hinc totidem add little to the sense of the sentence but the extended phrasing conveys the effect of the protracted search for teachers. 13–14  sumptuous: lautus derives from lauatus (‘washed’) and is used of extravagant and wealthy people and things (cf. 257, 7.175, 3.221, 11.1, 11.140, 14.257, OLD s.v. ‘lautus’ 3): Trimalchio is so described at Petronius Sat. 26.9.2, as are the hors d’oeuvre at his feast (gustatio ualde lauta 31.8.1). style: paratus properly denotes the ‘preparation’ of something but has the specialised sense here (OLD s.v. ‘paratus’ 2c) of ‘the service of the dinner table’ as at Ovid Met. 4.763, Valerius Flaccus 2.652. always: semper is stressed with enjambement – the boy wishes to dine like this all the time, not just on feast days. degenerare means to ‘decline from a standard’ (OLD s.v. ‘degenero’ 1b) and has the sense of ‘degenerate’ which would possibly describe the fastidious and precious youth being considered. haute cuisine: he will long not to fall short of the magna culina: culina literally means ‘kitchen’ but also by synecdoche it means the food prepared there (OLD s.v. ‘culina’ 2, Horace Satires 1.5.38): for the phrase magna culina cf. Martial 5.44.8. 23–4  Housman (followed by Braund, Willis but not Clausen) transposed these lines here, arguing that ‘first the general question is raised about what such a father would teach, then whether he would teach a gentle spirit: the mss inverted this ordering’. The transposition also makes for pleasing ringcomposition as the poet begins and ends this section (15–24) with gruesome details of pain inflicted on slaves. 23  influence: the subject of the verb suadet is the man described here as laetus, whose tastes are listed in line 24 (quem … carcer). It is not specified (but understood) that this person is the father of the young man (iuueni), as at 121, 191, 235, 251, 3.158, 10.310. clanking: stridor is not usually a pleasant sound and unlikely to make most people laetus: the word indicates ‘ a shrill scream like that of a bird’ (Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) on Horace Odes 1.34.15) and is used of the whining of a saw (Lucretius 2.410), the howl of a storm (Virgil Aeneid 4.443), the squeal of ropes in a sea-storm (Virgil Aeneid 1.87), the whistling of a flying weapon (Virgil Aeneid 11.863) or the dread noise made by an arriving Fury at Virgil Aeneid 12.869. The phrasing here is aptly reminiscent of Virgil Aeneid 6.558 (stridor ferri tractaeque catenae) where the damned are being tortured in the underworld, noises

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which cause Aeneas to be gripped with fear: J.’s use of such well-known epic language is ironic in the case of this prurient psychopath. The use of the chain to punish slaves was common (e.g. Plautus Captiui 722, 729–30, Columella de re rustica 1.8.16) and it is this meaning which is uppermost here: for criticism of the conventional view that rural slaves worked in chain-gangs see Roth (2011). 24  branding … taste: this line expands and continues the point of line 23 with more vivid detail and variation of vocabulary, as laetus becomes mire adficiunt. adficiunt here has the meaning ‘excite’ or ‘move (emotionally)’ as at 7.85, OLD s.v. ‘afficio’ 6, and together with mire comes to mean ‘stir with admiring emotion’: elsewhere adficio is used by J. of the inflicting of blows (8.267–8). The rest of the line gives a breathless asyndetic list (cf. 10.64) of slave-punishments: inscripta (passive participle of inscribo) means ‘branded marks’ (see OLD s.v. ‘inscriptum’ 1 and cf. the Greek word stigma also used with this meaning at 10.183) such as were burnt onto the skin of slaves (see Quintilian 7.4.14, Martial 3.21.1, 12.61.11, Seneca de Ben. 4.37.3): runaway slaves for instance were branded with the letters FUG (for fugitiuus), while those who stole were branded with the word for ‘thief’ (FUR). Branding was often done with hot metal rods called laminae (cf. 6.624, Plautus Asinarius 548, Cicero Verrines 2.5.163, Lucretius 3.1017, Seneca Ep. 78.19, Horace Epistles 1.15.36–7). holding-cell: the ergastulum (cf. 6.151, 8.180) has been described as a ‘kind of prison where recalcitrant slaves were punished with hard labour’ (Paoli (1990) 71) and from which the slaves would emerge during the day to work, while the carcer (literally a prison) in this context may denote little more than enclosed unpleasant slave-accommodation: Livy puts the terms together (7.4.4: in opus seruile, prope in carcerem atque in ergastulum). The point here is that the slaveowner gets abundant aesthetic pleasure from these routine arrangements to prevent slaves from absconding. 15–22  Is it a gentle … two towels: in this long rhetorical question J. opposes two types of slave-owner: the ‘enlightened’ philosophical master who believes that slaves and free-born are all made from the same human material contrasted with the sadistic master (whom we met in 23–4) now written up as a Homeric monster. Ancient attitudes towards slavery were varied, although few people questioned the need for slavery as an institution and one ancient society (Sparta) based much of its social and economic life on the serfdom inflicted on their Helots. Aristotle (Politics book 1: esp. 1254b) justifies slavery on

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grounds of nature and of expediency and refers (Politics 1253b) to the slave as a ‘living tool’ (ὄργανον ἔμψυχον): he states that there are people who are slaves by nature who have bodies more capable of ‘necessary work’ than the politically adept but physically more feeble freemen (see Smith (1983)), and that the use of slaves differs little from the use of animals as working beasts: later on Christianity did not challenge the institution of slave-ownership per se. There were some questioning voices, however, such as the Sophists (see Guthrie (1971) 155–60, a view qualified by Kerferd (1981) 156) – but one has to wait for the Stoics to hear any real empathy with the slaves as human beings: Seneca states forcefully (Ep. 47.10: see also Griffin (1976) 256–85, 458–60) that slaves are no less human than freeborn people, while Epictetus (who had himself been a slave) saw no reason to get angry with one’s slaves (Discourses 1.13) and the elder Cato used to dine with his slaves (Plutarch Cato Maior 3). These Stoic ideas passed into the arena of non-philosophical language: that great ex-slave of Roman fiction Trimalchio spouts the Stoic clichés (‘slaves are people who have drunk the same milk as us, even though a bad destiny has crushed them’ Petronius Sat. 71) and J. elsewhere (6.222) has a capricious wife mouthing the same sentiment in incredulous indignation (see Bradley (1994) 132–40). Epicureans, on the other hand, prized catastematic pleasure as the summum bonum: and J.’s imaginary sadist who derives sensuous delight from the pain of others is not therefore the pinnacle of wisdom: they also were famed for seeking the natural life of quiet austerity and so would be less than likely to own large estates of slaves anyway. There is also something of a philosophical and ethical distaste for Schadenfreude in the ancient world – Aristotle links it (ἐπιχαιρεκακία) with murder and adultery as an unmitigated evil (Nicomachean Ethics 2.6.18: 1107a) – but there is also good evidence that it was a widespread human trait (see Fowler (2002) 37–41). Within Rome the spectrum of attitudes towards slaves was huge: at one end a Vedius Pollio who had a slave thrown into a pool of man-eating lampreys for breaking a crystal cup (Seneca de clementia 1.18.2, de ira 3.40.2–5), at the other end a Cicero whose slave Tiro was in many ways his closest companion. 15  The notion of the gentle spirit is helped by the mild ‘m’ alliteration; Horace had earlier argued that we ought to avoid being overcritical to faults in others and assumed this sort of indulgence towards minor faults as being the mark of a father (Satires 1.3.43–8); and so it is mildly ironic that J.’s sadistic father here is training his son in his own ruthless ways. The language of this line is all positive: aequus (proportionate) means ‘fair’ or ‘just’ (cf.

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13.11, 16.56) while errores are by definition ‘mistakes’ (cf. 10.4, 13.188, Ovid Met. 3.142) rather than overt vices – and these ones are minor anyway. 16–17  share our own: the sentiment of the lines is thorough-going Stoicism (Seneca Epistles 47.10, Epictetus Discourses 1.13.3, Quintilian 3.8.31) but whereas Seneca uses the language of the Stoics (seminibus… spirare recalling the notion that all men have a share in the universal πνεῦμα: see Costa (1988) 167), J. here adopts the language of Epicurean atomism in a pastiche of Lucretian language: the word materia originally meant ‘timber’ but was used by philosophers to mean ‘the basic substance of the universe’ (OLD s.v. ‘materia’ 4: cf. e.g. Lucretius 2.62 and see Fowler (2002) 148) and elementis is a common word for ‘atoms’ (OLD s.v. ‘elementum’ 2a: e.g. Lucretius 2.393, 2.411, 2.463, 3.244, 3.374): furthermore the foursyllable word elementis ending line 17 is in Lucretius’ metrical style (1.913, 2.393, 2.463, 3.244, 5.456 etc). Epicureans argued strongly (as part of their demonstration that the soul dies with the body (e.g. Lucretius 3.167)) that the body and the soul are both equally atomic in composition and so there is wry humour at work here: this putative father is getting his philosophers muddled up and blending the Epicurean argument about the material nature of soul and body (animas et corpora materia constare … paribusque elementis) with the Stoic statement of the equality of slaves and ‘us’: the single word nostrā (ablative singular agreeing with materiā in the following line) inserts the Stoic ethical theory into this otherwise Epicurean argument. This particular father is not educating his son in such ethical views – but his use of words suggests that he would not make a very good teacher anyway. Buecheler rightly spotted that the MS reading atque … putat is probably incorrect as it matters not what the father thinks but rather what the son is to think, and so many modern editors print utque … putet (‘so that [the son] might think that…’). 18  brutality: the philosophical curriculum extended over three counterfactual lines (15–17) is replaced now by the grim truth stated in the single word saeuire. The emphasis on ‘teaching’ is brought out by docet, picking up praecipit (16). A man called Rutilus appears as a token poor man at 11.2: such a pauper would be unlikely to own enough slaves to build up a name for cruelty to them and so the two are not thought to be the same person. The name may be significant (cf. 13.197n.): as an adjective rutilus means ‘glowing red’ (cf. 299) and could well describe a red-faced regular user of hot irons (ardenti ferro 22). gaudet acerbo is a powerful oxymoron, and the line is framed by words of harshness.

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19  The heavy spondaic rhythm of plāgārum evokes the rhythm of the beating (cf. Lucretius 3.812=5.357 for this effect) and the line is framed with words of whipping. 19–20  J.’s sadistic slave-owner is portrayed as using names and key stories from Homer’s Odyssey: the Sirens were the captivating bird-females whose voices lured sailors to their death (Homer Odyssey 12.39–46. 165– 200), while Antiphates was the leader of the cannibalistic Laestrygonians (10.80–132) and Polyphemus was the (equally cannibalistic) Cyclops (9.105–566). The comparisons are well-made: the man considers the sound of the lash more attractive than the irresistible song of the Sirens, with the word flagellis having its own cruel resonance (see 13.195n., Virgil Aeneid 6.570), while his focalised self-image as gigantic man-eating ogre is put into ironic context with the qualifying term trepidi laris: the Lares were the household gods and so, although the word is here synecdochic for household (as at 3.110, 15.153, see OLD s.v. ‘Lar’ 2, OCD s.v. ‘Lares’), the descriptive term trepidi suggests that his rage is enough to make even a god tremble. For the use of conparat here cf. 12.121–2. The final four-syllable name to end the line is not unusual in J. (see e.g. 41, 252, 13.197) and Homer also ends lines with this very name (Odyssey 9.407, 446) Tales from the Odyssey appear a good deal in Roman satire and discursive verse: cf. 15.13–26, 9.149–50, Horace Sat. 2.3.14, Epistles 1.2.23 (Sirens) 9.64–5 (Polyphemus), 2.56, Horace Sat. 2.5.76, 81, Martial 1.62.6 (Penelope): see Mordine (2013), Gowers (2012) 183 (on Horace Sat.1.5). It is clear from (e.g.) Horace Epistles 1.2 and Ars Poetica 145 that Roman readers were expected to be familiar with the Greek tales (see on this Edwards (1992) 83–85). 21  torturer has been summoned: this epic tormentor does not do the dirty work himself but hires a tortor for the purpose: tortores or carnifices were slaves employed by the state who were paid to punish and even execute other slaves (6.479–80, 6.O29, 8.175, 13.195 Plautus Captiui 597, Lucretius 3.1017) and were regarded as disgusting (Catullus 97.12, Martial 2.61.3– 4: Pompey the Great as a young man was given the insulting soubriquet ‘teenage torturer’ (adulescentulus carnifex: Valerius Maximus 6.2.8.21)). aliquis is pointed: it does not matter who is suffering so long as somebody is in pain: and tunc suggests that he is not happy unless this is going on. 22  two towels: the reason for the branding is trivial: lintea may refer to linen which the slave has allowed to be stolen at the baths (as at Petronius 30.7–11). For the use of lintea in bathing cf. 3.263, Petronius 28.2.2, and

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for the anger at their loss cf. Catullus 12, 25. For the burning of slaves with blazing iron see 24n. and cf. 6.624, Cicero Verr. 2.5.163, Horace Epistles 1.15.36–7. 25–30  adultery: J. now turns to sexual immorality as learned behaviour, a topic he has already rehearsed at 6.231–41 (where the young wife has been schooled by her mother in the ways of the wicked) and which is described also by Ovid (Ars Am. 3.611–66) and hinted at by Horace (Odes 3.6.21–4). The mother inducts her daughter both by telling her about her lovers (and she has too many lovers for the daughter to name them without drawing breath thirty times), and also by teaching her what to write in the love-letters which she (the daughter) now sends to her lover using the same cinaedis go-betweens as her mother does/did. In this instance it is the mother who is teaching her daughter (whereas in 4–24 it was fathers teaching sons) and the expected maternal role-model behaviour is replaced with the sort of erotodidaxis which we find elsewhere provided by older prostitutes instructing their daughters who are newcomers to the game (see Watson and Watson (2014) on 6.231–41, comparing Melaenis in Plautus’ Cistellaria and Cleareta in Asinaria) although the mother in this case is not expecting to pimp out her daughter for money (as does the immoral husband with his wife at Horace Odes 3.6.22–32). For the corrupting influence of the older prostitute (lena) on innocent girls cf. Ovid Amores 1.8, 3.5, Propertius 4.5, Tibullus 1.5. 25  moron: rusticus means ‘of the countryside’ and came to be a pejorative term for unsophisticated and boorish behaviour in life and literature (see OLD s.v. ‘rusticus’ 5,6,7: and for discussion of the snobbery attendant on such language see de Ste. Croix (1981) 9–19): it connotes a person who is naive in matters of sex at e.g. 6.66, Ovid Amores 1.8.44, 2.8.3, 3.4.37 (‘anyone who is hurt when his wife is unfaithful is just too rusticus’), and the concept is also used to denigrate literature which is clumsy and boorish at Catullus 36.19. expectat is the reading of F and is presumably drawn from Horace Epistles 1.2.42. 25–6  Larga is another significant name (‘Mrs Free-with-her-favours’: see 10.223 where it is applied to the vigorous fellatrix Maura and see OLD s.v. ‘largus’ 1). 26–8  list: J. is inventive in conveying unfeasibly large numbers: sometimes he uses the adynaton figure as at 10.220–224 (part of which (220) mentions ‘the number of adulterous lovers Oppia has had’), while here he paints a vivid picture of the girl gasping for breath as she recites a catalogue of infamy.

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26  lovers: a moechus (from Greek μοιχός) was technically a man who commits adultery with a married woman (see Nisbet and Hubbard on Horace Odes 1.25.9) but came to mean simply ‘illicit lover’ as at Catullus 11.17, 37.16, 68.103: and Catullus (42.3) also applies a feminine form of the term (moecha) as an abusive term to a woman whose offence (stealing notebooks) is not at all sexual (see Adams (1982) 133). There is no doubt in this line (and in 30) that J. intends the word to convey the full sexual sense of the Greek term (as at e.g. Plato Symposium 191d, Aristophanes Clouds 1076). 26–7  list … string them together: J. uses two terms for the recitation: dicere (in the sense of to ‘name’ (OLD s.v. ‘dico’ 9) or even to ‘tell of’ (OLD s.v. ‘dico’ 7b) and then the more interesting phrase contexere cursu. contexo is to ‘weave together’ (con + texo) and so here means to ‘join together’ in a sequence (OLD s.v. ‘contexo’ 3b), while cursus (from curro (‘I run’)) has the sense of ‘rapid speaking’ (OLD s.v. ‘cursus’ 4). tam cito is picked up and amplified with tanto … cursu and the extension of the sentence enacts the lengthy list being spoken by the girl. It may be relevant that running and weaving would be normal activities for a girl and J.’s point is that her childhood has been perverted. 28  thirty: ter deciens has been taken to mean ‘three times ten times’ (= ‘30 times’) just as ter nouiens means ‘27 times’ at Ovid Met. 14.58: but terdeciens printed as a single word (as by Housman and Willis) means ‘thirteen times’ (see AG §138, K-S 1.§147, §151.2–3 and cf. Cicero Verrines 3.80.184, Augustus Res Gestae 1.29 (where Augustus is referring to the number of consulships he has held and so ‘thirteen’ must be correct), and cf. also quater deciens at Cicero Verrines 2.1.100 and ter et vicies (= ‘23 times’) at Suetonius Augustus 43). Where the compound number is made up of a cardinal + adverbial number (as bis septem (=14) at 14.324, decem deciens (=100) at Ovid Tristia 2.1.94 or bis septem (=14) at Virgil Aeneid 1.71) the meaning is a straight multiplication of the terms, but there seems to be real ambiguity about pairs of adverbial numerals and the ambiguity is heightened by the fact that the two words would be pronounced together in this case. Similar problems in writers less prone to hyperbole could be argued from plausibility, but J. is not known for being plausible and so other factors must be considered: Courtney points out that there is a precedent for the number 13 as meaning ‘an indefinite number of times’ in Greek and refers to Postgate (1905) for examples, but J. is presumably happy to leave the meaning unclear with the possibility that the number of breaths could be as many as thirty. Translators are divided on this and the overall

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meaning of the sentence is not affected. respiret here means ‘take a breath’ while speaking a long passage, as at Quintilian 8.5.14.1, 11.3.63.4, OLD s.v. ‘respiro’ 2 (used metaphorically of the winds at Lucretius 6.568–70). 28–9  unwed … mother: the closeness of the mother and daughter is brought out by the juxtaposition of the words matri/ uirgo in enjambement, and conscia is perfectly chosen to denote the guilt-by-association brought about by the girl being aware of the misdeeds of the mother: for this word in this sexual sense see 6.271, Horace Odes 3.6.29–30, Satires 1.2.130: for its meaning of ‘accomplice’ see 3.49 and see note on 13.193. 29  The line sets up a temporal contrast of uirgo … nunc: when she is unmarried the girl is merely aware of what her mother is doing, whereas now that she is herself older she receives active instruction (hac referring to the mother). The wax tablets are described with the pathetic diminutive pusillas which makes obvious sense as such love-notes would need to be concealed: but the diminutive also suggests that the girl is not fully yet grown-up (cf. 1–78 for J.’s reference to the praetextatus adulter (‘schoolboy adulterer’)) as is shown by her need for a lesson in seduction from the mother. dictation: dicto means (OLD s.v. ‘dicto’ 2c) to dictate words to be written down. Wax tablets made useful vehicles for short notes (cf. 191, 1.63) especially love-letters (6.233, Ovid Amores 2.5.5) and such missives had the advantage of being able to be erased instantly upon reading. 30  fills up: the enthusiasm of the mother (and the girl) is brought out by the verb implet (stressed in enjambement) which shows that she has plenty to write on these tablets. If the mother has an astonishing catalogue of lovers, then the daughter is unlikely to be satisfied with one moechum, which makes the singular form the lectio difficilior, supported by Housman (‘the true lection moechum is in P and U, though Priscian quotes moechos of Φ four times and was already current in the 6th century’). perverts: cinaedus, like moechus, is a Greek word (κίναιδος, meaning originally ‘dancer’) and conveys genuine disgust at what is perceived as abnormal (see e.g. 4.106, Plato Gorgias 494e4–8) and while (again like moechus) it could be used without direct sexual force (as at Catullus 10.24), there is no doubting the sexual force here when the two words are placed close together in the same line: Lucilius even merged the two terms into an inventive abusive compound moechocinaedi (Saturae 30.1058M). For discussion of the precise connotations of the Greek term see Davidson (2007) 55–50, 443–5: in J. such men were confidants in immorality for the married woman according to 6.O17–34.

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31–3  nature commands: the lines form an impressive rhetorical flourish: there is the personification of nature and the peremptory phrase (sic natura iubet) barking out the plain simple fact, followed by the universal gnomic statement about ‘us’ enhanced by the pleonasm of uelocius et citius to intensify the rhetorical force of the generalisation (cf. 13.214n., 2.34 (iure et merito), 6.147–8 (exi/ ocius et propera)) and the well-chosen word auctoribus (conveying both ‘authority’ (OLD s.v. ‘auctor’ 2–4) and also ‘parents’ (OLD s.v. ‘auctor’ 14b) to end the sentence. There is a slight oxymoron in domestica magnis (the small-scale home attached to what is ‘great’) which focalises the picture to a child’s-eye view (to which parents are indeed ‘large’). 31  nature: the anthropomorphic personification of natura as an authority is not uncommon in J.: cf. (e.g.) 321, 1.79 (si natura negat), 2.140, 10.152, 10.301, 10.358–9, 12.79, 13.239, 15.132. The syncopated rhythm of the end of this line leading to the enjambement adds to the effect of speed in citius. 32  corrupts: corrumpunt is a strong verb and the spondaic rhythm adds extra force – for the meaning here (‘deprave’) see OLD s.v. ‘corrumpo’ 4 – and the juxtaposition with uitiorum (OLD s.v. ‘uitium’ 4) further enhances the idea of wickedness. For the range of meanings of exempla see 13.1n and cf.15.32. 33  steal into: subeant is often used of mental states ‘coming upon’ us (202, 7.34, OLD s.v. ‘subeo’ 12) but in this context of corruption there is also perhaps a metaphor of aggression at work as the word also means to ‘attack’ (Virgil Aeneid 9.344, OLD s.v. ‘subeo’ 7) or ‘invade’ (OLD s.v. ‘subeo’ 10). 33–4  one or two: unus et alter (‘one or two’ (OLD s.v. ‘unus’ 1c): literally ‘one and another one’) is common by itself for a small number of people and can take a singular verb (Cicero Verrines 2.75 Ovid Tristia 1.3.16): when used as a plural (or when joined to a plural noun (as iuuenes here) it takes the number of the noun and so here has a plural verb (cf. Ovid Amores 2.5.22, Remedia 364). Here the term is going to contrast the tiny number of unaffected young people with reliquos in 36 and the unfeasibility of this is enhanced further by the promotion of forsitan (perhaps) in enjambement. 34–5  These unlikely lads are made from superior stuff. The Titan in question is Prometheus who (according to some legends (see 15.85–6n., 15.146n., OCD s.v. ‘Prometheus’ and cf. Horace Odes 1.16.13–14, Ovid Met.1.82–3) made the first men out of clay, a tale alluded to at 4.133, 6.13. In Plato Protagoras 320d2–3 the gods fashioned all living things out of a mixture of earth and fire and then instructed Prometheus and his brother

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Epimetheus to endow them with gifts and talents, a process which left mankind lacking the animals’ superior physical attributes of hides, speed, strength etc but having both ‘technical cleverness’ (ἔντεχνον σοφίαν) and fire (321d2): Prometheus is often seen as being kindly towards mankind (φιλάνθρωπος [Aeschylus] Prom.11: see Griffiths (1983) 9 and cf. benigna here) but his earlier image in Hesiod was more that of a grinning rogue (Theogony 546–7) and the source of human misery in his misguided efforts to outwit Zeus (see Griffiths (1983) 166–68). mud: Horace (Odes 1.16.14) uses the word limo (‘clay’) for the material but J. prefers the lower register term luto (‘mud’): see Otto (1890) s.v. ‘lutum’ 4 and cf. Martial 10.39.4. For J.’s bathetic use of slang or low-register language cf. 3.118. hearts: praecordia means literally ‘the parts below the heart’ and usually denotes ‘the vital organs’ as at 6.621 and often denotes the heart as the seat of moral and emotional feelings (see 13.181n. and cf. OLD s.v. ‘praecordia’ 3): here the word means both the flesh itself and the finer feelings found in this part of the body, and J. is making the wry point that (whatever the rest of their bodies was made of) their hearts were made of the ‘better sort of mud’. 36–7  course … path: for the thought of the moral life as a path cf. Seneca Epist.94.54 (‘travelling by the straight road is not permitted: parents and slaves drag us (trahunt) into error’: cf trahit 37). 36  The preponderance of dactyls in 36 well suggests the act of running away. uestigia (literally ‘footsteps’) is not uncommon in the metaphorical sense of behaviour which is to be imitated (or not, as in this case): see OLD s.v. ‘uestigium’ 5c. Here there is an effective contrast of fugienda and ducunt. 37  The theme of the path continues with orbita (wheel-rut: properly a wheel-track) which is the subject of the verb trahit: the extended (diu … ueteris) exposure to bad behaviour (culpae) has removed our ability to behave otherwise. For traho in this sense of inevitability cf. Seneca’s saying (Epist. 107.11.5) ducunt uolentem fata, nolentem trahunt (‘fate leads the willing man along and drags the unwilling’ – in other words fate will win out whether we agree or not). 38–9  behaving badly … why: Braund wishes to delete damnandis … ratio est but the lines run better with us being told what we are to abstain from and damnandis is thus safe. The language of line 38 is forceful with the second-person singular abstineas (addressed to Fuscinus but also drawing in the reader) and the ponderous spondees of the gerundive damnandis and the meaning of the terms makes the short sentence a truism. The subjunctive abstineas is jussive (cf. Virgil Aeneid 6.109, K-S II.§47.6c). POU have

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the text printed here while Φ has damnis huiusce etenim which Housman ((1931) xxv) explains as ‘interpolation, consequent on the absorption of -and- by amn.’. 38–9  The rhythm of huius én/im uél is awkward with clash of ictus and accent, as if the speaker is improvising at this point of the argument. reason why: For ratio as justification for a type of behaviour cf. 6.95, 6.223, 10.4, OLD s.v. ‘ratio’ 5: for potens as ‘cogent’ see OLD s.v. ‘potens’ 6b. The force of uel una is to limit the arguments to ‘at least one’: there are of course many good reasons for avoiding misconduct – this one applies to parents in particular. 39–40  following: the justification (ratio) for keeping away from disreputable behaviour is ‘to prevent our children following our misdeeds’. For sequantur in the sense of ‘imitate the example of’ see 1A, OLD s.v. ‘sequor’ 9b: crimina here means ‘crimes’ as at 13.104, OLD s.v. ‘crimen’ 4. 40–41  we … us: the poet includes all of us in the generalisation (nobis … omnes sumus). turpibus and prauis are both neuter adjectives and the gerundive imitandis is a dative with dociles (so OLD s.v. ‘docilis’ 1) or else ablative of instrument (‘able to be taught by means of imitation’: for the ablative with docilis cf. Pliny N.H. 10.120.5). immoral and base: turpis is a term of direct moral and aesthetic disapproval (J. uses it and its cognates 25 times) while prauus is a metaphor whose primary meaning is ‘crooked’ (as at 8.33, Lucretius 4.513, Horace Satires 1.3.48) whose moral application (‘corrupt, debased’ OLD s.v. ‘prauus’ 2) does not hide the primary sense here of children imitating what is visibly wrong (cf. Virgil Aeneid 4.188). 41–3  The names are highly charged in Roman history and the contrast of Catiline and Cato is made also at Virgil Aeneid 8.668–70. L. Sergius Catilina (see OCD s.v. ‘Sergius Catilina, Lucius’) aspired to consular rank and (when unsuccessful) organised a conspiracy against the senate in general and one of the two consuls of the year 63 BC, Cicero, in particular: Cicero eventually persuaded his fellow-senators to have the conspirators executed, and Catiline himself died in battle. Cicero regarded his own actions as having saved the state (see 10.122 for his notorious poetic self-aggrandisement on this) while his enemies later used it as a reason to have him exiled. Catiline passes into history as a villain: he finds a place on the shield of Aeneas where he is depicted in Tartarus, ‘hanging on a threatening rock, trembling at the faces of the Furies’ (Virgil Aeneid 8.668). J. assumes knowledge of the historical facts here as at 2.27, 8.231, 10.287–8. A different sort of conspirator was

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Brutus – Marcus Junius Brutus (see OCD s.v. ‘Iunius Brutus (2), Marcus’) – who was a leading assassin of Julius Caesar on March 15th 44 BC and who was motivated by political idealism (and a form of Platonic philosophy: see Sedley (1997)) to murder the dictator. Brutus is presumably used to contrast with Catiline because both engaged in conspiracies against the government and the only difference was one of moral virtue (cf. Lucan 6.792–3). Brutus’ uncle was Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis (see OCD s.v. ‘Porcius Cato (2), Marcus’), another staunch republican who took his own life (in grisly fashion) after the defeat of the senatorial forces at Thapsus in April 46 BC rather than accept a pardon from Julius Caesar. He too appears in Virgil’s depiction of the shield of Aeneas ‘dispensing laws to good men’ (8.670) and was regarded as the iconic Stoic, a man of noble principles proven in a noble death (see Horace Odes 1.12.35–6 (with Nisbet and Hubbard ad loc.), 2.1.24, Seneca Epistles 11.9–10). As with Catiline, J. expects his readers to know their history: cf. 2.40, 11.90–91. The sentiment (that a Cato is rarer than a villain) is found also in Seneca (Ep.97.10: ‘every age will produce men like Clodius, not every age will produce a Cato’) and Manilius 4.86–7: for the imperial reception of Cato’s story see Syme (1939) 320, 506–507. J. chooses to allude to Cato with the periphrasis (Bruti … auunculus), rather than to name him directly, so as to allow him the chance to repeat the name (Brutus … Bruti) in forceful anaphora (cf. 42) and also (as Courtney states) to suggest that virtue runs in this family – a point very relevant to this poem. 42  any … any: there is heavy pleonastic anaphora here in quocumque … quocumque (cf. 3.230) joining the parallel phrases in populo and sub axe which together mean effectively ‘anywhere’. For axis used of a ‘specified part of the heavens’ and therefore here ‘sky’ see OLD s.v. ‘axis’ 5b, 6.470, 8.116. The second person singular verb uideas picks up the direct address of abstineas (38) but the subjunctive here is not jussive (as are abstineas (38) and tangat (44) but conditional: ‘you would see’. 44  Let nothing: the poet indulges in a broad generalised command in elevated tones expressing the common idea that children imitate the language and behaviour which they see and so require protection. dictu and uisu are both ablatives of the supine to qualify foedum (‘foul in speaking or to look at’), a device used in epic poetry (cf. 11.56, Virgil Aeneid 1.439, 2.174, 7.64, Ovid Met. 14.406) which lends a touch of grandeur to the didacticism. dictu foedum presumably refers to foul language (such as the content of the cantus (46)) while uisu denotes actions, obscene works of art or people (such as the puellae in 45) which the child ought not to see. The sentence is highly metaphorical –

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words and sights do not ‘touch’ the ‘threshold’ – and the choice of synecdochic words adds emphasis to the injunction as these sins are not even to ‘touch’ (let alone enter) just the ‘threshold’ (let alone the inside of) the child’s home. For this sort of synecdochic use of tango cf. Catullus 64.171–2 (‘if only their poop-decks had not ‘touched’ the Cretan ‘shores’’). 45  The ancient scholia gloss the word pater with ‘where you have sons’ and this (along with the second-person verbs in this passage) prompted Cramer to read es for est: while one manuscript (A) reads puer for pater. The third-person makes for a better gnomic utterance, and it is fully in the style of J. to make his point indirectly (with pater) than obviously (with puer): for this use of pater cf. 9.86, 13.84, Ovid Met. 8.231. 45–6  Get away … get away: the epic tone continues with the pastiche of religious language here, suggesting that the innocence of the child has a religious purity; Virgil’s Sybil (possibly drawing on Callimachus Hymn to Apollo 2 (ἑκὰς ἑκὰς ὅστις ἀλιτρός)) called out procul o procul este profani (‘get far away, far away, you who are not initiated’ Aeneid 6.258), a line imitated at 2.89, Ovid Met. 15.587, Statius Silvae 3.3.13. The poet here enjoys rich bathos as the expected word profani is replaced by puellae/ lenonum. For these girls of pimps – i.e. female prostitutes – cf. 6.127. A leno (pimp) was a manager of prostitutes working in a brothel (or in taverns and bath-houses): he could well be a slave himself and in most cases acted as a middle-man running a business whose investments and profits belonged to ‘people rather better placed in Roman society than himself’ (Flemming (1999) 51): he was a common character in Roman comedy (e.g. Cappadox in Plautus Curculio) and even if freeborn himself was certainly regarded as infamis along with gladiators, actors, criminals, soldiers disgracefully dismissed and prostitutes (cf. 6.216, Digest 3.2.1: see Edwards (1993) 123–26). For moral indignation at freeborn youths and women mixing with prostitutes cf. Cicero Phil. 2.105.7 (‘freeborn boys were there (i.e. in Antony’s villa) with rent-boys, prostitutes amongst respectable ladies’). For the use of puella in the sense ‘prostitute’ see Adams (1983) 344–48. party-crawler: a parasitus is another stock figure of Roman comedy drawn from Greek (see OCD s.v. ‘parasite’) who attends on and flatters somebody more important than himself for the purpose of getting free meals: for the relationship in action see e.g. Curculio in Plautus’ Curculio. In J. the parasitus is virtually synonymous with the cliens, earning the favour of his patronus by any means available: see e.g. 1.139, 5.145, Damon (1995) 191–95. This type of parasite is a party-animal who spends all night in

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drunken dissipation (as at 8.10–12) and J. reserves specific criticism for his cantus (encompassing playing an instrument and also singing), as this was regularly associated with wine as part of the symposium (see Horace Epodes 13.17 with Watson (2003) ad loc.). For the tinge of moral disapproval in the term all-night cf. Catullus 88.2 (peruigilat). 46  The line is heavily spondaic and alliterative, and the syncopated final four-syllable Greek word disturbs the rhythm and adds a touch of contempt as at (e.g.) 3.70, 3.120, 5.59, 6.110. 47  The greatest … child: a gnomic utterance worthy of a school motto. reuerentia (deriving from the same root as uereor (‘I fear’)) includes ‘respect’ and ‘honour’ (cf. 177, Martial 11.5.1, Quintilian 11.1.66 and compare Greek use of αἰδώς (LSJ s.v. 2)) and also ‘deference’ – complementing passages such as 11.151–60, 13.54–59 with their idealised portrait of how young people ought to show respect to their elders (cf. Ovid Fasti 5.57, Martial 9.37.7); at 2.110 reuerentia mensae means (in effect) ‘table manners’ (cf. 5.72). For reuerentia as checking misbehaviour cf. Seneca Ep. 94.44.1. puero contrasts with the corrupting puellae of 45. 48  immoral: for turpe see 40–41n.: the second-person verb paras continues the direct address to the reader (see 38n.). The poet uses annos (literally ‘years’) to mean ‘youthful innocence’ (cf. Lucan 8.496, OLD s.v. ‘annus’ 6c): the phrase ‘to despise one’s years’ would more commonly apply to contempt for the elderly (see OLD s.v. ‘annus’ 6d). ne + perfect subjunctive is a common form of prohibition (see AG §450). The manuscript reading pueri has been suspected as it may have been taken from puero in the previous line, and Courtney suggests teneros as having been ousted by what was a marginal gloss. Repetition of such a key word is however effective in this piece of moralising rhetoric. 49  stop you: there is a hiatus between peccaturo and obstet (‘corrected’ by Φ’s reading obsistat) which assists the heavy spondees in making the line forceful and effective: for J.’s use of hiatus cf. 10.281, 3.70, 6.274, 6.468, 10.281, 11.57, 12.110, 13.65, 15.126. There may be an implicit myth at work in this line: the image of the infans put in the way of a man about to take an erroneous action recalls the tale of Odysseus feigning madness to avoid going to Troy and being detected when his infant son Telemachus was set in front of his plough by Palamedes (Hyginus Fab. 95.2, OCD s.v. ‘Palamedes’): J.’s addition of the qualifying word infans (deriving from infans and meaning a child not yet able to speak) is otherwise redundant and inconsistent with puero above.

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50  censor’s wrath: the censorship was a republican office charged with updating the senatorial roll and removing the names of the dead and disgraced: in J.’s own time no censors were appointed, their functions having been absorbed by the emperor. J.’s point therefore is to refer to behaviour which the censors of old would have rebuked (as he says explicitly at 9.142 and 11.90–92 where the historical setting is clear: cf. 2.121). irā is ablative case going with dignum (‘deserving of anger’). 50–53  The syntax is slightly strained and elliptical: if he does (fecerit) something … and shows himself (dederit) to be like you not only (non tantum) in physical form [but] also [shows that he is] the son of your way of life, [i.e. a boy] who commits…’. 51–2  proves: for se dare in the sense of ‘show yourself as’ see OLD s.v. ‘do’ 21. The phrasing here is lively and vivid: there is apt juxtaposition of tibi se indicating the mirror-image closeness of father and son, there is the tricolon of corpore … uultu … morum and the powerful metaphor of morum filius (literally ‘the son of your way of life’), phrasing similar to 6.239–41 (and cf. 13.141). quandoque is indefinite (‘at some time or other’ as at 2.82, 5.172, OLD s.v. ‘quandoque’ 2). 53  worse … footsteps: deterius … per uestigia recalls Medea’s agonised lament uideo meliora proboque/deteriora sequor (‘I see what is better and I approve of it, but I follow what is worse’ Ovid Met. 7.20–21). For the phrasing see OLD s.v. ‘deterior’ 3 and cf. 36n. for uestigia. The rhetorical point of the comparative deterius is clear: this son enjoys even greater success in villainy than his father had, a nice immoral reversal of the parental wish for children to outdo their parents in their greatness, found for instance in Hector’s prayer over his son (Homer Iliad 6.479–81) that ‘someone should say “this boy is much greater than his father” when he comes back from battle…’. omnia is an internal neuter plural accusative with peccet (Braund translates it well as ‘in every case’) and peccet must here be a generic subjunctive (‘the sort of boy to commit…’). 54–5  you will chide…: retribution is harsh and conveyed in a harsh alliterative tricolon crescendo of verbal rebuke (corripies … castigabis acerbo/ clamore) followed by threat of direct action (post … parabis). chide: corripio (from rapio) has the primary sense of ‘grasp hold of’ and while its meaning in this context is more ‘to rebuke, find fault with’ (OLD s.v. ‘corripio’ 6) there is more than a hint of the father taking hold of his son as he does so. tell him off: castigo is well-chosen to describe the old reproving the young: cf. Horace Ars Poetica 169–74. changing your will: ‘Changing the tablets’ (tabulas mutare)

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means ‘changing your will [to his disadvantage]’: for this use of tabulae cf. 2.58, 4.19, 12.123, OLD s.v. ‘tabula’ 8b. nimirum is sardonic: you are to blame for all his future sins but ‘I suppose’ you will still blame the boy rather than yourself, a point he spells out in 56–8. 56  what’s with…?: unde means literally ‘from where’ and we need to supply a verb such as parabis (from the previous line): for this sort of ellipsis with unde cf. 1.150–3, 2.127, 9.8, 15.108–9, Horace Sat. 2.5.102, Ovid Heroides 12.84. The word often (as here) has the sense of ‘how comes it that? what explains?’ as in 4.98, 7.88. knit brow … outspokenness: frontem libertatemque is a good juxtaposition of the physical and the psychological elements involved in harsh criticism combined in a hendiadys: frons (literally ‘forehead, brow’) is emotionally neutral in itself (but carries inter multa alia the meaning ‘grave or solemn mien’ (OLD s.v. ‘frons’ 2c)) and the word only acquires its full meaning here with libertatem (‘outspoken freedom of speech’ as at 2.112, OLD s.v. ‘libertas’ 7). Parents were expected to discipline their children (Balsdon (1969) 116–21) and Seneca lists the options clearly in terms relevant to the discussion here (de Clementia 1.14): ‘[The ruler’s duty] is that of good parents, who tend to rebuke their children sometimes gently, sometimes with threats and on occasions even punish them with a flogging. No sane man disinherits a son for his first offence.’ The range of punishments available to a father extended in theory to execution but this was rare: see Seneca de Clementia 1.15.1. 57  worse: the old man is a hypocrite for rebuking a son while committing worse sins (peiora) himself: hypocritical double-standards are a familar target for Roman satirists such as Horace (cf. e.g. Satires 1.3) and J.: see especially Satire 2, where the theme (2.8) of frontis nulla fides (‘you cannot trust a man’s appearance’: see Braund (1996) 168–72 for full discussion) bears some relation to this passage. 57–8  J.’s point is that the old man is insane and he states this with a typically witty reference to one ancient method of relieving madness. Patients would have incisions made in the scalp and then have a cupping-glass placed over it. A burning piece of linen inside the glass created a vacuum which would draw (more) blood from the head and thus relieve the congestion thought to be causing the madness: see Petronius Sat. 90, Celsus 3.18.16.1, 4.13.2.5, Pliny NH 32.123, Heller (1985) 77–78. The cucurbita (‘gourd’: σικύα in Greek) was the same shape as the cupping-glass and so the vegetable came to stand for the glass: as the vegetable was also used as medicine in itself (Pliny NH 20.16–17), Latin adds the adjective uentosa to distinguish the

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object from the food and this word uentosa (‘operating by means of wind’ OLD s.v. ‘uentosus’ 2b: cf. French ventouse), rather than cucurbita, became the preferred term for the object. The joke here is clever, as Ferguson points out: cucurbita also means in slang ‘blockhead’ (OLD s.v. ‘cucurbita’ 3, Petronius Sat. 39.12, Apuleius Metamorphoses 1.15, Heller (1985) 68–69, Eden (1984) 3–4) and so we are applying a cucurbita to a cucurbita: and the vacuum which is needed in the cup is already there in the dolt’s head. empty of brains: uacuus here takes the ablative case ‘denoting what a thing is devoid of’ (OLD s.v. ‘uacuus’ 1; cf. Tacitus Annals 1.34 where the old soldiers showed their toothless mouths (uacua dentibus) to their officers). For cerebrum meaning ‘head’ cf. 3.269: here it denotes ‘intelligence’ as at OLD s.v. ‘cerebrum’ 3. There was disagreement in the ancient world about whether the mind was located in the head (as here and at 6.49, 15.23, Horace Satires 5.21) or (like the Greek φρένες – see LSJ s.v. ‘φρήν’ 3) in the breast (as at 35, 7.158–60, Lucretius 3.140). 59–85  You clean your house when visitors are coming, but you do not keep your house free of moral pollution to protect your children. It is laudable that you produce children to be citizens, but you should see to it that they are capable of good behaviour: their adult selves are moulded by you, just as full-grown animals eat the food they are fed when young. 59–69  A lively vignette of busy slaves obeying a frantic master which could be taken from comedy: see e.g. Plautus Asinaria 424–30, Ballio at Plautus Pseudolus 161–5. 59  guest is coming: hospite uenturo is an ablative absolute well placed at the start of the sentence, setting up the reason for what follows: tuorum is masculine assuming a word like seruorum (‘slaves’). 60  sweep … show off…: the orders are uttered in two parallel imperative clauses. nitidas is predicative as ‘show them gleaming’ as the end-result of the cleaning being ordered. The pauimentum is often made of marble (as at 11.175, Cicero de legibus 2.2.3) and was certainly solid enough to shatter most cups dropped onto it (cf. Petronius Sat.51.2.3): this household also has columns like that shown at 307, 7.182, Lucretius 4.400. 61–2  The verbs descendat and tergeat are jussive subjunctives, varying the style of command from the direct imperatives of 60. 61 spider … web: aranea means here ‘spider’ (OLD s.v. ‘aranea’ 2) while tela its web (OLD s.v. ‘tela’ 2): the line-ending aranea tela (with its neat juxtaposition of the spider and its web) is found also in Catullus 68.49, Ovid Met. 6.145, Martial 8.33.15. The irritation of the master at the over-

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due nature of the cleaning is brought out by arida (‘dry’) suggests that this spider has been there a long time and cum tota tela suggesting that the web is substantial, as at 13.61, 6.171, Martial 8.50.8. Note also the powerful assonance of ‘a’ and ‘e’ to add emphasis. 62  This household has precious metal objects both smooth (leue) and embossed (aspera), a form of conspicuous wealth which J. rejected at 11.109 but which was expected in rich dining-rooms: see 7.133, 12.43, Seneca Helv.11.6, Martial 6.50.4, 11.70.8: Trimalchio even had a chamberpot made of silver in his dining room (Petronius Sat.27.3.3). The silver here comprised items which were purum as at 9.141, 10.19 and also embossed (caelatum) as at 1.76, 5.37–8, 12.47. Once again the master delivers his orders in elegant Latin: the line is framed by hic … alter (‘this one is to … while the other is…’) and leue argentum uasa aspera form a neat chiasmus of adjectives and nouns, leaving the precious objects juxtaposed for effect. 63  stands over: instans (from insto) is well chosen for the master ‘pressing’ his slaves to work: cf. 210, Virgil Aeneid 10.657, OLD s.v. ‘insto’ 5. He holds a stick as a weapon as does the harsh slave-owner at 6.479, Seneca Ep. 47.3, a harsh provincial governor (8.136, Cicero Verr.2.5.162.7: cf. Livy 2.55.5.1) and of course harsh school masters (7.210, cf. Horace Epistles 2.1.70–1). 64–67  The powerful master is in fact himself frightened (trepidas), the man of wealth is in fact wretched (miser) with anxiety about the filth which his ‘friend’ might see (and presumably report to others): the apparently powerful man is in fact weak in the face of dog faeces and a deluge of mud, and depends on one little slave with a half-measure of sawdust. 64–5  dog-shit: Romans used dogs as guards, and such animals would naturally foul the area they patrolled which was the entrance-hall (atrium): for dogs as part of everyday life see 6.415–18, 9.104. Romans also kept lapdogs as pets (cf. 6.654, Petronius Sat. 64, Martial 1.109, Toynbee (1973) 108–22, Toynbee (1948) 34–36). The horror of the mess is emphasised by the cumulative juxtaposition of stercore foeda canino. stercus simply means ‘excrement’ from beast or human (see Adams (1982) 235) but usually refers to that of animals (e.g. crocodile dung at Horace Epodes 12.11) and J. adds the defining term canino to make the picture specific. The phrase uenientis amici recalls and picks up hospite uenturo at 59. 66  Housman prefers to adopt P’s reading neu but the repetition of ne is effective in reproducing the nagging fears in the master’s mind (cf. 3.310– 11, 7.239–40, 15.40–41,, 12.93, Persius 6.76). The porticus in a Roman villa

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was the peristyle or colonnade, a covered walkway (cf. 7.178) which was open to the elements and so liable to become muddy. drenched: perfusa (from perfundo) is hyperbolic and focalises the irrational fear of the houseowner as to the scale of the problem. 66–7  and yet: et tamen introduces the easy answer, and the small effort required is brought out by the ending of both lines with one (uno … unus), the diminutive seruulus (a small seruus) and the fact that he does not even need a full measure of sawdust but only a half-measure (semodio). Sawdust (scobis) was scattered on the floor and then swept out. It is used by Horace as a byword for cheapness (Sat 2.4.81–2) and Trimalchio ensures that his sawdust is mixed with saffron and vermillion (Petronius Sat. 68.1). A semodius (semi-modius) was one half of a modius which was the basic unit of dry goods and the word only occurs in verse in J. and Martial: the prosaic word and the sibilance of the line enhance the effect of bringing the pretentious master down to earth with simple advice. 68  stir yourself: agitas is a strong verb (cf. 1.52, 6.251, OLD s.v. 16) connoting an aggressive drive towards a goal (cf. 284): here it takes the accusative illud which is then unpacked in the ut + subjunctive phrase which follows. sanctam (virtuous: cf. 8.24, 13.64, OLD s.v. ‘sanctus’ 4) is applied to the house itself. 68–9  see: aspiciat picks up the image of seeing from 65 and maintains the continuity with what has gone before. The poet dwells on the idea of ‘faultlessness’, and omni sine labe and uitioque carentem are almost a tautology; but the two nouns have different semantic ranges, as labes has the primary sense of ‘landslip’ (from labor: a meaning which has extra point in connection with a house) and only comes to mean ‘disgrace’ as a metaphor (OLD s.v. ‘labes’ 5), whereas uitium is more primarily a ‘defect’ or ‘flaw’. J. chooses to write omni rather than ulla presumably because he is stressing the ‘total’ purity of the household: for sine + omni cf. Plautus Aul. 606, Terence Andria 391, Cicero de Oratore 2.5.4. 70  praiseworthy: gratum est means ‘we owe you thanks’ (OLD s.v. ‘gratus’ 2d) and the point here is that to produce the next generation of citizens is itself laudable: the force of the line is enhanced with the plosive alliteration, and the feeling that childbirth is a patriotic act is emphasised also with the repetition of patriae in 71. Augustus famously criticised the selfishness of Roman citizens who refused to undertake the responsibilities of parenthood (Dio 54.16, Syme (1939) 444–45) and the rearing of legitimate children was regarded as a patriotic duty

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(e.g. Cicero Verrines 3.161) celebrated in the Augustan regime (see e.g. Horace Carmen Saeculare 13–20) and rewarded with political advantages and exemption from other duties (see OCD s.v. ‘ius liberorum’, Treggiari (1991) 66–80). ciuem is simply a Roman citizen and for the phrase ciuem dare (‘produce a fellow citizen’) cf. 3.3. The combination of patriae … populoque is reminiscent of Horace Odes 3.6.20, Ovid Met.15.572: the two terms are not synonymous but together accumulate the sense of patriotic belonging as in Seneca Contr. 7.1.18.8 (and cf. the similar phrase populusque patresque as in Lucilius Saturae 1146W, Virgil Aeneid 9.192, Ovid Met. 15.486, Martial 8.49.7, Silius Punica 10.634). 71–2  qualified … useful: having children is deserving of thanks: but J. raises the stakes by commenting on the even greater thanks due to producing ‘good’ children. Notice here the tricolon of worthy attributes (idoneus, utilis … utilis) with variation of word order so that idoneus utilis are juxtaposed while the third colon takes up the whole of line 72; and note also the epanalepsis of utilis…/utilis (for this epic device cf. e.g. Lucretius 5.950–1, Virgil Aeneid 1.108–9, 2.405–6, 6.495–6). Line 71 has a pleasing chiasmus of patriae … idoneus utilis agris. make him: facio ut + subjunctive (OLD s.v. ‘facio’ 15) is common in the sense of ‘to see to it that…’. idoneus here has the sense qualified (OLD s.v. ‘idoneus’ 1b) in a general manner, while utilis bears more of the practical ability of the child to wield tools and weapons. The emphasis on being utilis recalls Horace’s famous description (Odes 1.12.42) of M’.Curius Dentatus as utilem bello, to which Nisbet and Hubbard ((1970) ad loc.) compare Epistles 2.1.124 (where the poet is seen as ‘lazy and poor in military service, but useful to the city (utilis urbi)’). 73–4  What will make…: line 73 is inelegant metrically, with the two early elisions (plurim(um) en(im) intererit) and the two monosyllables to end the line, giving the impression of archaic poetry to espouse archaic values of decency: moribus is emphasised in enjambement and returns to the key theme of the passage (cf. morum at 52 (see 51–2n.). 74–84  J. uses an analogy from nature, assuming that human children are reared in the same way as birds and also assuming that physiological feeding habits can be equated to psychological moral choices. The list is in ascending order of length of description: the stork (3 lines), the vulture (4 lines) and finally the eagle (5 lines). 74 The stork (ciconia alba, πελαργός) was said to be a model of good relations between parents and chicks (Aristophanes Birds 1355–6, Thompson (1936) 128) and was renowned for eating snakes (Virgil Georgics 2.320), for

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which benefit they were a protected species in Thessaly (Pliny NH 10.62). The juxtaposed word order of serpente ciconia pullos is ‘cinematographic’ as we see the serpent next to the stork and then the stork next to her chicks. 75  lizard … secluded: this line adds colourful detail to the imagery: per deuia rura adds emphasis to the zeal of the bird in going to the middle of nowhere (per deuia rura: cf. Propertius 2.19.2, Ovid Met. 1.676, 3.370), which sets up a surprise ending to the line as the lizard (lacerta) is abundantly common in Italy and Greece (cf. Horace Odes 1.23.7, Virgil Eclogues 2.9, Theocritus 7.22): cf. 3.231 for a similar line-ending with this word. The lizard is another favourite prey of the stork (Seneca Ep. 108.29). 76  taken up … wings: the phrase sumptis pinnis (cf. 3.80) recalls toga sumpta (e.g. 3.172, Propertius 4.2.24, Ovid Tristia 4.10.28) which indicates the entry of the young man into manhood. 77–8  The stork has established the principle of parental influence over food: J. now turns to the vulture to prove it. Carrion from cattle, dogs and dead criminals is disgusting but chicks which have been trained to eat it will enjoy it. The vulture (γύψ: see Thompson (1936) 47–50) is described as feeding on corpses throughout ancient literature (e.g. 4.111, Homer Iliad 4.237, 11.162, Lucretius 4.680, Ovid Ibis 168–9) and the word is metaphorically used to describe legacy-hunters who await a corpse to inherit its wealth (e.g. Catullus 68.124, Seneca Ep. 95.43, Martial 6.62.4). 77  cattle … dogs … crucifixions: the food is listed here in descending order of acceptability: cattle, then dogs, and finally human flesh – referred to with the grim metonymy of ‘crosses’ and enhanced with assonance and alliteration. cattle: iumenta (from *iug- (yoke)) essentially indicates beasts of burden such as mules, horses, oxen (see OLD s.v. ‘iumentum’). Dogs are more often the eaters than the eaten (see e.g. Homer Iliad 1. 5–6, 24.211, Sophocles Antigone 206, Catullus 108.6) and only the most callous scavenger would eat a scavenger. Crosses were used to crucify those sentenced to death (see OCD s.v. ‘crucifixion’): this was a gruesome form of execution reserved for slaves and non-citizens (see 13.105n.) although in the later empire it came to be inflicted on ‘humbler’ citizens (contrast Cicero Verrines 2.5.162.9 for a case of a man pleading citizenship being nonethless crucified). There is evidence that crucifixion was carried out as part of the Roman games (see Cook (2012)) but it was more commonly enacted outside the city, as in 71 BC when 6000 of the slaves who had revolted under Spartacus were crucified along the Appian Way (Appian Civil Wars 1.120). The corpses of the crucified made a perfect meal for the birds (cf. Horace

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Epistles 1.16.48, Petronius Sat. 58, Aristophanes Thesmophoriazuai 1027, Otto (1890) s.v. ‘corvus’ 3), as did the living body of the crucified Tityon (Homer Odyssey 11.578, Virgil Aeneid 6.595–600). 78  offspring: fetus can mean ‘embryo’ (OLD s.v. ‘fetus’ 3d) as well as ‘litter’ and so there is a pleasing balance in the line between the newly born and the newly dead (cadaueris), along with plosive alliteration and framing of the line with similar-sounding words (ad fetus … adfert). J. manages to create beautiful poetry out of the ugliest of subject-matter. 79–80  adult: the emphasis here is on magni quoque (i.e. ‘also when it is (grown) big’) and the increased size of the bird is suggested by the overspilling of the sentence into line 80 with the emphatic se/ pascentis. 80  making a nest: the chick has left home and now has its own (propria) tree for its own nests, the words arbore nidos juxtaposed in verse as in life. Vultures do not in fact nest in trees, but in rocks (Thompson (1936) 48, Aristotle H.A. 6.5.563, Aeschylus Suppliants 796). 81–85  noble birds: J. does not need to name the eagle and makes use of epic language and allusion to convey its identity. Eagles are commonly regarded as the servants of Jupiter (Homer Iliad 24.311, Pindar Pythian 1.6, Aeschylus Suppl. 212, Horace Odes 4.4.1, Virgil Aeneid 5.255, 9.564 (seizing a hare as here)) and bearers of omens from him (Homer Iliad 12.200–209) and so deserve the epithet generosae (just as the eagle was glossed the ‘king of birds’ by Pindar (Olympian 13.21) and Aeschylus (Agamemnon 115)). The details in J.’s language here are reminiscent of epic similes such as Homer Iliad 22.308–311 (Hector swoops at Achilles ‘like a high-flying eagle who moves towards the earth through the dark clouds to snatch either a tender lamb or a cowering hare’) or Iliad 15.690–4 (Hector is like an eagle snatching up geese, cranes and swans), Virgil Aeneid 11. 751–6. For the impossibility of eagleparents not rearing fierce chicks cf. Horace Odes 4.4.31–2. 81  hare … deer: the poet begins by itemising the prey before naming the parents. Hares are targeted by eagles and hawks frequently in poetry (e.g. Virgil Aeneid 9.563–4, Horace Odes 1.37.17–19, Ovid Metamorphoses 6. 516–8, Homer Iliad 22.308–11, Aeschylus Agamemnon 114–120) and ‘hare-killer’ (λαγωφόνος) is the name of a species of eagle (Aristotle HA 618b28). Hare is also a delicacy of the Roman dinner-table (5.123–4, 167), as is deer (11.142). Deer are linked with hare as a species to be hunted (Varro RR 3.3.3.8, Ovid Fasti 5.372): their predators are commonly lions (Virgil Aeneid 10.723–5), wolves (Horace Odes 1.33.8, Epodes 12.26) and dogs (Homer Iliad 22.189–190) but eagles take up young deer in some

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famous passages in epic poetry such as Homer Iliad 8.247–9; and Aristotle (HA 618b20) has a sub-species of eagle called ‘fawn-killer’. J. is speaking here of the largest of the many species of eagle, and the epithet generosae might be a light linguistic allusion to the term gnesios (γνήσιος: ‘genuine’) applied to this eagle by Aristotle (HA 619a8), who describes its careful chick-rearing habits in some detail (HA 619a). 82  in the glades: in saltu contrasts with per deuia rura in 75 and denotes the glades in which the eagle flies. saltus may derive from saltare (‘to leap’) and hence often means ‘valley’ but it also comes to mean estates both managed and wild: see OLD s.v. ‘saltus’, Harvey (1979) 329–30 n.3 and cf. 10.194, 11.126. hinc in this line primarily denotes the prey (hares and deer) which is the source of the praeda rather than a geographical reference to the glade (see OLD s.v. ‘hinc’ 7b). eyrie: the primary meaning of cubile is of a bed for human beings (as at 6.118, Catullus 29.7) but the word is also used in Virgil’s Georgics of the resting places of animals and birds such as crows (Georgics 1.411), moles (1.183), bulls (3.230) and bees (4.45, 4.243), just as here it indicates the eyrie (see OLD s.v. ‘cubile’ 3). Thomas (1988, on Virgil Georgics 1.411) comments that ‘the word brings the animal world closer to that of man’. 83  served up: ponitur is stressed in enjambement and by the pause which follows it and is a term borrowed comically from haute cuisine (1.141, 5.51, 5.85, 5.146, OLD s.v. ‘pono’ 5) which creates a caricature of the parent bird serving up the food. se leuauit here has a literal sense as the chicks will ‘raise themselves up’ when they have learned to fly. 84  hunger spurs them on: stimulante fame is a touch of vivid language recalling the epic similes where a beast is driven on to kill by ‘mad hunger’ (Homer Odyssey 6.133, Virgil Aeneid 9.340, 10.724): and the ‘f’ alliteration adds further emphasis. The final vowel of famē is long (as at 6.424, 15.102, Virgil Georgics 4.318, Aeneid 6.421, where see Norden (1957) ad loc.) 85  prey: the poet repeats praedam from line 82, thus showing the repetition of the feeding habits in his choice of words. rupto gustauerat ouo is well written: eating-habits are traced back to the very first taste (gustauerat) at the moment it first left the egg. 86–95  builder: J. now describes the passion for building, at ruinous expense, as another example of learned behaviour which can bankrupt one’s heirs. Real estate in ancient Rome was scarce and the population-density was high for an ancient city (see Morley (2013) 35–36 for qualification of this): this meant that the ability to build large properties was a marker of extreme wealth and so attractive to the status-hungry. Builders in the city

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itself built ever higher (cf. alta 88), while the rich made sure that they had coastal or suburban villas to which they could retreat. The mania for building became a target for satire (cf. 14.275, 1.94, 7.182) and adverse comment in e.g. Horace (Odes 2.18 (with Nisbet-Hubbard (1978) 287–92), 3.1.33–8 (with Nisbet and Rudd (2004) 16–17)), Seneca Epistles 86.6 and Pliny NH 36.48–50: see also Balsdon (1969) 209. When the emperor Nero built his infamous Golden House on the site cleared by the fire of Rome in 64 AD, Suetonius comments that ‘he was more ruinously prodigal in building than in anything else’ (Nero 31.1) and the historian Sallust had earlier contrasted (Cat. 12.3) the modest temples of the past with the current ‘houses and villas built up like cities’ (see Dewar (2014) 74–5). The target of J.’s mockery here is both vice and folly: in the first place he mocks the conspicuous consumption whereby the builder wastes so much money on his projects, just as he mocks prodigality elsewhere (e.g. 11.46–9), and in the second place he attacks the folly of building more houses than any one individual can live in easily. This second point recalls Lucretius’ sketch (3.1060–1070) of the rich Roman who drives to his country villa and then at once back to Rome, permanently discontented and always ‘running from himself’ (3.1068), as well as Horace’s self-description (Epistles 1.8.12 ‘fickle as the wind, when in Rome I long for Tibur, then in Tibur I long for Rome’, a theme raised again in Satires 2.7.28–9): this is combined with Horace’s miser (Satires 1.1.41–100) who stores up vast sums of cash which he will never spend. J. has also warned us (10.12–18) that large estates make the rich into targets. The locations of the three villas are interesting: Caieta (modern Gaita) is 173km from Rome, while Tibur (modern Tivoli) and Praeneste (modern Palestrina) are much closer (34km and 41km respectively) and were paired elsewhere (e.g. Horace Odes 3.4.23, Suetonius Augustus 72.2). 162km – a journey which would have taken Caetronius about five days to make – separates Tibur from Caieta in life, and so the juxtaposition of the two places in a single line (87) is sardonic, all the more because the buildings go from sea-level to hill (from litore to summa … arce) in a few words. 86  The identity of this Caetronius is unknown. There was a Caius Caetronius who was legate of the first legion in Germany and who dealt with the mutinous troops on the Rhine in AD 14 (Tacitus Annals 1.44) and another commander Caetronius Pisanus in AD 70 (Tacitus Histories 4.50), and a house in Pompeii (VI, 9, 7: see McKay (1998) 47) is said to have belonged in 30 BC to a certain Cn. Caetronius Eutychus – all of which shows that the name (and its variant Cetronius found on inscriptions (e.g. CIL 6.25015))

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was not uncommon. aedificator is a word only found here in Latin verse and seems to have had something of a grandiose sense (it is used of the divine demiurgos in Plato’s Timaeus by Cicero (de natura deorum 1.18.5) and is used of the prodigiously wealthy Atticus (Nepos Atticus 13.1.1). 86–7  Caieta was supposedly named after the nurse of Aeneas who died there (Virgil Aeneid 7.1–2: just as Cape Palinurus was named after his helmsman (Aeneid 6.381)). Its desirability as a place to live is mentioned by Martial (5.1.5, 10.30.8) and Statius (Silvae 1.3.87–8). The haste with which the villas are created is brought out by the sequence of modo…nunc…nunc. The lofty citadel of Tibur is also mentioned at 3.192 (where see Braund (1996) ad loc.). 88–90  Praeneste (at 450m. above sea-level) was rightly called ‘cool’ (3.190, Horace Odes 3.4.22) and the spondaic rhythm of line 88 perhaps indicates the laborious climb to the town: the theme of ‘lofty’ is conveyed in the adjective alta and also in the specification of culmina (literally ‘roofs’) as being the end-result aimed at – the term here both being synecdochic for ‘buildings’ while also keeping our eyes on their height. White marble of good quality was quarried in Etruria in Italy, but this builder imports his marble from Greece, presumably preferring the coloured forms which could be obtained from there at much greater expense: transporting the materials over long distances (longeque petitis) was hugely expensive and the plural form of the noun (marmoribus) suggests the quantity being used. Coloured marble was sourced from Phrygia (307, [Tibullus] 3.3.13, Pliny NH 36.102.5), Numidia (7.182, Horace Odes 2.18.4) and especially from Greece (11.175): the marble from Sparta (Lacedaimonium) was especially famed for its quality, often being distinctively dark green with lighter green speckling (see Pliny N.H. 36.55, Statius Siluae 2.2.90–91, Martial 1.55.6, 6.42.11), while that from Hymettus was a pleasant grey-blue colour (Pliny NH 17.6.4, 36.7, Valerius Maximus 9.1.4). Seneca remarks (in similarly moralistic terms) on the growth of luxuria as shown in walls gleaming with marble brought over the sea (Epistles 114.9). 90  outdoing: uincens here (as at 2.143) has the sense of ‘outstripping’ both in grandeur and perhaps in height: Caetronius creates buildings near to existing ones and outdoes them, the contrast being obvious to the observer. Praeneste was famous for its temple of Fortuna Primigenia built by Sulla and mentioned by Cicero (de divinatione 2.85–6). The temple was huge, extending laterally over 400 metres and rising 137 metres up the hill: it contained two reservoirs which supplied water both for a fountain and for

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the town itself (see Mariano and Iacono (2016)). Tibur had a sanctuary of Hercules Victor (dimension: 3000m2) which housed a massive statue of the hero as well as a library (Gellius 9.14.3, 19.5.4): for details and illustrations of both places see Kleiner (2018) 40–43. The order of temples is the reverse of the order of their locations as listed in line 88: and there is a nice irony in this builder being superior both to Fortune and to Hercules – a superiority which is at once brought down to earth with the bathos of line 91. 91  Posides was a wealthy freedman eunuch (spado) who was a favourite of the emperor Claudius (Suetonius Claudius 28) and who built baths at Baiae (Pliny NH 31.2.5) as well as (apparently) a house near to the temple of Capitoline Jupiter: he is one of a long line of Greeks named by J. with contempt (see Watts (1976) 99–102). The line is a masterly sneer which undercuts the previous five lines in best bathetic sarcasm: the appetite for building big is equated to that of a castrated freedman, and this foreign parvenu is clearly no match in fact for ‘our’ (nostra) Capitol, for all his efforts. The line is neatly constructed, being framed by the eunuch (spado … Posides), juxtaposing him with the large structure of Capitolia nostra and conveying the effort involved with the heavy spondees and the imperfect tense of uincebat. eunuch: spado is a highly pejorative term for a man: cf. 1.22, Horace Epodes 9.13, Livy 35.15.4, Seneca Ep. 66.53, Tacitus Histories 2.71 and see OCD s.v. ‘eunuchs’: Watson ((2003) 323) points out that the word denotes ‘one whose testicles had been ‘dragged’ (σπάω) from the scrotum’. Eunuchs were a presence in some rich households such as that of Maecenas (Seneca Ep. 114.6: Seneca elsewhere (114.6) comments that the eunuchs were ‘more men than he (Maecenas) was’) and J. elsewhere (6.376–8) comments on their sexual uses. For the treatment and uses of eunuchs in imperial court politics see Hopkins (1978) 172–196, Murison (2004) 348–55, Tougher (2002). 92–94  he still left behind: Caetronius spent massively on his building programme and yet (tamen) still left his heir enough for him to do the same: J. weakens the waste of money by the father in order to allow the point that the son inherits the craze for building along with the cash in the legacy. The phrasing is balanced and rhetorical, with two staccato parallel clauses (imminuit rem/ fregit opes) in asyndeton leading to a third longer phrase revealing the true extent of the inheritance still remaining despite the expense of Caetronius. 92  As: dum commonly means ‘while’ in a temporal sense, but here (as at 95) the word has a more causal flavour as at 1.60, 6.176, Lucretius 1.659

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(OLD s.v. ‘dum’ 4). habito here bears the intransitive sense of ‘to be housed’ (cf. 268, 1.114, OLD s.v. ‘habito’ 4). imminuit rem: the final monosyllable conveys the (relatively) tiny amount of the initial wealth left behind: for this word ending of the line cf. 3.305, 6.629, 8.215, Horace Epistles 1.1.65–6. 93  broke up: fregit (from frango) is a powerful verb to denote both ‘breaking up’ the wealth (OLD s.v. ‘frango’ 3: cf. 7.219, Lucretius 1.552) and also ‘exhausting’ it (OLD s.v. ‘frango’ 8: cf. 161, 6.299, Horace Satires 1.1.5). 93–4  no small: the litotes nec parua is appropriate here as we expect the legacy to be very small after the strong verbs imminuit … fregit and so nec … tamen is needed with strong adversative sense to correct this assumption. mensura … partis here (as at 1.41, 11.101) refers to the ‘size of the share’ of a legacy: see OLD s.v.’pars’ 8. 94–5  The vignette of Caetronius and his son ends with a superb caricature of the crazy (amens) son as he ‘raises up’ new villas made with ‘better marble’. totam hanc assumes partem. The father broke up (fregit) his wealth, and the son duly frittered away (turbauit) his share. For turbo in this financial sense see OLD s.v. ‘turbo’ 5c and cf. Plautus Bacchides 1091, Seneca Thyestes 224: conturbo often has the intransitive sense of ‘to go bankrupt’ (cf. 7.129, Petronius 81.5.4, Fordyce (1961) on Catullus 5). amens (‘lacking in mens’) is a strong adjective used in epic for irrational behaviour (e.g. Virgil Aeneid 2.314) and also found in satire (cf. Horace Satires 2.3.107). 95  J. tellingly picks on the detail of the marble as the visible mark of the superior villa (see 88–90n.) and juxtaposes the key attributes (meliore nouas) for effect. attollit (like erexit uillas at 1.94) makes the process look quick and easy: see OLD s.v. ‘attollo’ 4. 96–106  Some sons…: Jewish fathers educate their children in Jewish ways, and Jewish children have no choice but to be reared in what is a distinctive way, thus demonstrating J.’s general thesis of parental influence. Jews feature a fair amount in Roman satire (3.14, 3.296, Horace Sat. 1.5.100, 1.9.68–71, Persius 5. 179–84) as a fairly easy target because of their distinctive beliefs and practices. For the position of Jews in Roman religion and society see the useful collection of sources in Beard, North and Price (1998) vol. 2, 320–29. Lane Fox ((1986) 428) encapsulates the feeling behind this passage: ‘The Jews were exclusive “atheists”… [Jewish] rites were insulted, mere “pig worship” and their circumcision was thought ridiculous.’ For more on the contempt of Roman writers for the Jews see Whittaker (1984) 117–24 and for detailed background on this whole passage

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see Bell (1992). Jews were regarded as fierce proselytisers: see Horace Satires 1.4.143, Cicero pro Flacco 66, Gospel of Matthew 23.15. Tacitus (Histories 5.2–5) has a lengthy excursus on the Jews which mirrors J.’s attitudes in these lines – in particular the imputation of base motives behind the customs and observances mentioned. Tacitus claims (Hist.2.5) that their distinctive Laws in general (and circumcision in particular) were designed to make Jews different, and he also suggests (Hist. 2.4) that Jewish fondness for idleness (as shown in their Sabbath) leads them to make every seventh year one ‘devoted to inactivity’ (drawing presumably from the agricultural injunction to leave the fields fallow every seven years in Exodus 23.12). 96  Sabbath: J. expects his readers to understand the term Sabbata (a Hebrew word: see below 105–6n.): elsewhere (6.159–60) J. has ‘barefoot kings keeping the Sabbath and being kind to old pigs’. For more on this subject see Goldenberg (1979), Bell (1991) 84 and cf. Horace Sat. 1.9.69, Ovid Rem. Am. 219–20, Seneca Ep. 95.47, Petronius fr. 47 (Buecheler), Persius 5.184, Pliny HN 31.24, Suetonius Augustus 76.2, Tiberius 32.2. Elsewhere the term is glossed as ‘the seventh day’ as at 105 below: see e.g. Tacitus Histories 5.4.3, Ovid Ars Am. 1.76, 1.416. The words metuentem (literally ‘fearing’) and metuunt (at 101) need to be taken in the sense of ‘reverent towards’ or ‘feeling respect for’ (see OLD s.v. ‘metuens’ 2; and contrast 5.154 where the word bears its literal sense). 97  worship nothing: ‘You shall have no gods except me’ said God to Moses in Exodus 20 and Jews were in Roman eyes ‘atheists’ as they gave no respect to Roman deities. Jews were forbidden to make images of god or even to use the name of God and often substituted the word for ‘sky’ (οὐρανός in Greek) for ‘God’: see Strabo 16.2.35.761, Diodorus Siculus 40.3.4 (‘Moses did not erect images of gods at all as he believed that god was not of human form, but that the sky surrounding the earth is the only divinity and is lord of all things’). This could have had a certain plausibility as the supreme god for Romans was the sky-god (Jupiter), but J. naturally turns the habit into ridicule with mention of ‘clouds’ which recalls Aristophanes’ (Clouds 264–6) use of the figures to show the nebulous and highly atypical deities of his Thinkery. Tacitus (Histories 5.5) refers to the unum numen of the Jews and describes it well as summum illud et aeternum neque imitabile neque interiturum (‘that highest eternal being, not to be portrayed and immortal’): for numen see 13.36–7n. 98  The Jewish refusal to eat pork is familiar from Leviticus 11.7, 2 Maccabees 6.18. Tacitus (Histories 5.4) ascribes this to a fear of catching

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the sort of skin-disease suffered by pigs and the injunction is turned by J. into the comic trope that they regard pig-flesh as being as unpalatable as human flesh: Augustus wittily said (using a pun on the Greek words ὗς (pig) and ὑιός (son)) that he would rather be Herod’s pig than his son (Macrobius Saturnalia 2.4.11). The faint hint of cannibalism here conveyed in the juxtaposition of humana carne suillam is going to be magnified in the very different Egyptian setting of Satire 15. Pork was the commonest form of meat in ancient Rome, where peasants kept pigs (Varro de re rustica 2.4.3, OCD s.v. ‘food and drink’), where cows were working animals and where sheep and goats were too useful for milk and wool to be eaten: see 11.82, Ovid Fasti 6.169–82, Balsdon (1969) 53, Gowers (1993) 69–75). suillus is the adjective from sus (‘pig’) and here understands the word carnem: it is a word used in comedy and in prose writers but occurs only here in Latin verse. 99–100  foreskins: circumcision as a Jewish ritual goes back to Abraham in Genesis (17.10–14) and is mocked by Horace Satires 1.5.100 (where Apella may be a nickname deriving from a-pellis (‘lacking in (fore)skin’: see Gowers (2012) ad loc)). Hadrian banned the practice and the Historia Augusta (Hadrian 14.2) blames this edict for the ‘Bar Kochba War’ or Jewish Revolt of 132–135 AD: but Dio’s claim (69.12.1–2) that the emperor’s decision to make Jerusalem into a pagan city called Aelia Capitolina is perhaps a more plausible explanation for the revolt and the (short-lived) ban on circumcision may well have been enacted as a punishment for the revolt rather than its cause (see CAH xi.671–4, Smallwood (1959) 339). This sort of uncertainty makes it difficult to use this reference as a terminus ante quem for the poem: it is also unlikely that J. would have any qualms about claiming that these devout Jews persist in performing acts which were (by then) illegal. mox (‘after that’) and the active verb ponunt is an interesting use of words here as it suggests that the young men are the agents in their own circumcision, making it clear that the younger generation, not content with the weaker form of their parents’ Judaism, become fully-fledged Jews of their own accord, even voluntarily undergoing genital mutilation: gentiles who followed some but not all of the Jewish practices were known as ‘godfearers’ (Beard, North and Price (1998) ii.326) while full converts were called ‘proselytes’. Circumcision was performed on a boy when he was one week old in Jewish tradition (Genesis 17:12). The plosive alliteration in the line comically imitates the snipping taking place. 100  despise Roman: Romans were tolerant of foreign cults but the

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foreigners were not thereby exempt from obeying Roman laws, and Jewish intense devotion to their own code (cf. 6.544) was regarded as heinous and a sign of their ‘hostile hatred towards all other races’ (Tacitus Histories 5.5). Roman emperors could react angrily to this: Caligula ordered a statue of himself to be erected in the temple at Jerusalem until he was talked down (Tacitus Histories 5.9), while his successor Claudius banished all Jews from Rome (Acts 18.1–18, Suetonius Claudius 25: see Bruce (1962)). 101  learn, keep and respect: J. here mimics paratactic biblical language in his string of three verbs, framed by the all-encompassing Iudaicum … ius. The final monosyllable gives the line a syncopated rhythm: cf. 13.95n., 13.225n.. The three verbs denote a sequence of piety: being inducted into the knowledge of the faith (ediscunt), observing it in practice (seruant) and then being sure to keep revering it (metuunt); and the whole line well evokes the devotion of the Jews to the leges Solymarum (6.544). 102  whatever (quodcumque) suggests an uncritical attitude on the part of the Jews to the tradition: arcano … uolumine refers to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible which was written on a single outsize scroll (uolumen) and stored in a special chest (arca), a text attributed to Moses (Moyses) the leader who brought the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt to their ‘promised land’ in Palestine. He is credited with receiving the decalogue (the ten commandments) from God on Mount Sinai and thus laying the foundation for the Jewish moral code. mystical: arcano (literally ‘secret’ as at 2.61, 9.116) is misleading as the Hebrew texts were available to be read: at 6.543 and 13.73 it means simply ‘private’ and here means rather ‘mystic’ (as at 2.125 and 15.141: see OLD s.v. ‘arcanus’ 3) The word also has a strong sense of mystery and magic (as pointed out by Watson (2003) on Horace Epode 5.52) which is apt here in the context of Jewish exclusiveness: but here there may also be a play on the word arca (‘wooden chest’) as the volumen was stored in such a vessel. 103–4  not to give directions…: J. interprets Jewish exclusiveness here, as Tacitus does (Histories 5.5), as going against common humanity and all ancient traditions of guest-friendship (ξενία), taking two commonly used examples of basic help for strangers (cf. Cicero de Oratore 1.203, Seneca de Ben. 4.29.1). Proverbs 5.15 gives support to a literal reading (albeit contradicted by Jospehus Antiquities 4.8.31), but the words may also perhaps have metaphorical force: ‘showing the way’ (monstrare uias) meaning ‘granting access’ to people seeking to share the Jewish wisdom if they will make the necessary sacrifices (e.g. circumcision), and the fontem may be

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an allusion to washing rituals. eadem goes with sacra, and the infinitives (monstrare and deducere) are explanatory of ius in 101. 104  to lead … to the spring: the heavy spondees of the line create a sense of struggle as the strangers seek the water – only for the line to end with the bathetic word uerpos. uerpus is the adjectival form of the offensive noun uerpa and indicates a state in which the glans of the penis is exposed whether due to arousal or (as here) circumcision (Greek ψωλός). Adams ((1982) 13) observes that ‘the Jews were considered to be well-endowed and lustful: Martial 7.35.4, 7.55.6’ which adds extra force to the epithet: and for its use to denote a particularly lustful erection cf. Catullus 28.12, 47.4, Priapeia 34.5, Martial 11.94. The word uerpa was used in a derogatory sense (‘prick’) in graffiti: see e.g. CIL. IV. 1655. 105  The father is to blame: the preceding lines have suggested that the sons take the parental example to extremes, but here J. insists on laying the blame with the fathers nonetheless. in causa esse means ‘to be responsible’ (OLD s.v. ‘causa’ 11b: cf. Martial 3.46.7, 4.87.4). 105–6  seventh day: the word sabbata derives from the Hebrew word ‘shabbat’ which comes from the verb shavat (‘to rest from work’) and harks back to God’s resting on the seventh day after his creation of the world (Genesis 2). The strictures on sabbath-observance were strong and there are tales of Jews being killed rather than fighting on the sabbath (1 Maccabees 2.29–38). The Sabbath was also (at least in popular culture) seen as the time in the week when Jews had sex (see Jacobson (1977)). The alleged idleness of the Jews is evoked with the sluggish spondees in this line. 107–137  J. moves from Judaism to avarice, and modern forms of antiSemitism could suggest that the link is there because Jews were accused of meanness. Tacitus (Histories 5.5) alludes to the swelling coffers of Jewish wealth but links this with their growing numbers and with their refusal to interact with other groups. An impression of great wealth might also be given by the large amounts collected each year for the voluntary tax paid by Jews for the upkeep of the temple – after AD 70 this tax was made compulsory and diverted to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol.The early-modern view of the avaricious Shylock did not exist in ancient Rome: Martin Goodman points out to me (per e-litteras) that this ‘is a product of the specific economic conditions of Jews in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages’. avarice: auaritia (Greek φιλαργυρία) denotes the hoarding of money with no intention of spending it and is a stock theme of Roman satire: see e.g. Horace Satires 1.1.28–107, 2.3.85–157, Persius 5.132–41, 6.75–

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80 and the figure of the bloated nouveau-riche Trimalchio in Petronius Satyricon. For discussion of the comparable vice of meanness see Aristotle EN 1107b8–14, 1119b22–1122a17, where ‘wastefulness’ (ἀσωτία) and ‘meanness’ (ἀνελευθερία) are the two vices whose virtuous mean is ‘generosity’ (ἐλευθεριότης): the wasteful man gives out more than he can afford, while the mean man gives out much less than he can afford. For Roman attitudes towards wealth cf. (e.g.) Horace Odes 2.2. The figure of the auarus (miser) occurs also at 7.30 (where he offers praise but no money to young poets) and is developed at 9.40 in the comic image of the perverted miser who computat et ceuet (‘reckons up his accounts while he twerks his bottom’). J. warns the new provincial governor to set limits to his auaritia (8.89) and laments (1.88) the ‘gaping pockets of greed’ prevalent in contemporary Rome, a greed which is to blame for other crimes such as sexual immorality (1.37–41, 1.55–7, 1.77), marital coldness (6.141), disregard for the laws (14.178, cf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 382) and of course bad parenting. The saying that ‘love of money is the root of all evil’ goes back at least to Diogenes the Cynic (Diogenes Laertius 6.50): the insatiability of the greedy man is proverbial (see Otto (1890) s.v. ‘auarus’, Horace Epistles 1.2.56 (semper auarus eget (‘the miser is always poor’)), Odes 2.2, 3.16.28) and cf. the depiction of the mental disorder of ἀπληστία (‘insatiability’) at e.g. Lucretius 3.1003–10: Horace (Satires 2.2.146–54) sees it in medical terms. 107–8  other … only: the juxtaposition of cetera solam stresses the contrast and the enjambement enhances the magnitude of avarice as being unique (solam) in being coerced. The words which open the two lines are also placed in strong contrast between the willing (sponte) and the unwilling (inuiti): and the element of ‘force’ is brought out by the terms inuiti … iubentur framing line 108. The two verbs are also contrasted: the spontaneous imitantur and the coerced iubentur. quoque goes with inuiti – ‘even against their will’; J. argues that young men are free to choose which character traits to imitate, but that avarice is positively forced upon them. Line 108 is metrically awkward, having no caesura in the 3rd or the 4th foot. 109  it’s a con: auaritia is a uitium but it can bear the appearance (specie) of a good quality such as prudence or being thrifty (parcus). The superficial similarity of a vice and a virtue is made all the more effective by the juxtaposition of uitium specie uirtutis and by the additional gloss umbra which here means ‘semblance’ (OLD s.v. ‘umbra’ 10) but whose meanings also include ‘ghost’ and ‘shade’ – meanness is thus the ‘dark side’ of thrift.

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The ease with which vices may be dressed as virtues (and vice versa) is something of a common idea in the ancient world (see e.g. Seneca Ep. 45.7, de clementia 1.3.1, Ovid Remedia Amoris 323, Sallust Cat. 11.1) and Cicero (de partitione oratoria 23.81.1) gives a good list of examples such as cunning masked as prudence, pleasure-hating austerity passing itself off as temperance, timidity as modestness. The most sinister exploration of this idea of the ‘revaluing of values’ is probably Thucydides’ account (3.82) of the civil war in Corcyra where ‘thoughtless aggression was now regarded as comradely courage…thinking of the future was the mark of a coward, moderation was an attempt to hide an unmanly character (τὸ δὲ σῶφρον τοῦ ἀνάνδρου πρόσχημα)…plotting against an enemy was legitimate selfdefence’. Horace (Satires 1.3.43–62) advises us to be generous with our friends and to see what may appear vicious in them as a form of virtue, even using (49) avarice as an example (parcius hic uiuit: frugi dicatur: ‘this man lives a rather stingy life: let him be called thrifty’), although this indulgent use of euphemisms was itself satirised as folly in the case of lovers (Plato Republic 474d–e, Lucretius 4.1153–70). See also Aristotle Rhetoric 1367a– b for the ways in which vices can be seen as virtues. J. of course loves to unmask vice masquerading as virtue, as in 2.8–15: an unmasking which Lucilius also performed, according to Horace (Satires 2.1.62–5). 110  miserable in outfit…: J. presents a thumbnail sketch of the miser, with vivid details of his appearance. habitus means ‘facial expression’ at 9.20 but elsewhere (2.72, 2.124, 3.177–80, 6.267, 8.202, 11.149) refers to clothing, leaving this line with a balanced A-B-A form of clothing-faceclothing. seuerum is the mark of the censors of old: cf. 11.91. For the shabby dress of the stingy man cf. Theophrastus Characters 22.8, 22.11, 22.13 (with Diggle (2004) ad loc.), Aristophanes Clouds 53–5. 111–3  as if … thrift: frugi (formed as the predicative dative from frux) functions as an indeclinable adjective meaning ‘sensible, honest’ and is a euphemistic way to describe a mean man. Here again the comparison and contrast of frugi and auarus is enhanced by the word-order and the word laudetur also raises the stakes even higher as he is not merely tolerated but positively praised. The positive terms accumulate, with effective anaphora of tamquam leading to the climactic magis quam as the miser is elevated to the status of a mythical beast. 112  keeps guard: tutela derives from tueor (‘to watch over’) and the personal use of the term is reminiscent of Horace Epistles 1.1.103, where Mayer comments ((1994) ad loc.) that ‘the use of the abstract tutela for the

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concrete tutor, as at Odes 4.14.43, is chiefly poetic diction (OLD 2)’. This poetic diction well suits the poetic simile which follows here. One problem for the miser is how to store the hoard safely: burying it in the ground seems to have been one option (Plautus Aulularia, Horace Epodes 1.33, Satires 1.1.41–2, 2.3.109, Seneca Epistles 90.40, Plato Laws 913ab, Aristophanes Plutus 237–41), while others like to gloat over their cash in the money-chest (arca) (3.143, 10.25, 13.74, Horace Satires 1.1.67). 113–4  J. draws on two famous mythical examples of guards. The Hesperides (‘daughters of Evening’) were said to live in the far west, near to the Atlas mountains (see 11.24–5), and they nurtured a tree which grew golden apples and which had been a wedding present from the goddess Earth to Juno when she married Jupiter. The dragon which guarded the spot was called Ladon and one of the labours of Hercules was to steal these golden apples (an achievement debunked by Lucretius at DRN 5.32–35). The Hesperides’ garden and its apples are mentioned by Hesiod (Theogony 215, 333–5) and Euripides (Hippolytus 742–3) and later by many Roman writers, mostly in connection with Hercules (e.g. Propertius 3.22.10, Varro Menippeans 299.1, Virgil Eclogues 6.61, Aeneid 4.484–5, Hyginus Astronomica 2.6.1.5, Manilius 5.16, Ovid Met.11.114, Martial 9.101.4). These apples have earlier (5.152) been used by J. as hyperbolic examples of fruit for the wealthy Virro to eat and Martial (4.64.2) compares his acres of land favourably with the gardens of the Hesperides. Pontus: Phrixus and Helle were the children of Athamas of Thebes: to escape their hostile stepmother Ino they were carried over the sea on a winged ram with a golden fleece. Helle fell into the sea (thereafter called the Hellespont) while Phrixus made it to Colchis (in what is now Western Georgia on the shores of the Black Sea) and was received by their king Aeetes. The ram was sacrificed to Zeus and its golden fleece hung up and guarded by a dragon. The quest of this golden fleece was the object of the voyage of the Argo under its captain Jason, who duly acquired this fleece with the magical assistance of the witch Medea. Ponticus means ‘of the Black Sea’ and this adjective alone is sufficient to identify the dragon guarding the golden fleece: J. assumes a level of mythological knowledge in his readership born (no doubt) of the same recycling of mythical tales which he bemoans at 1.1–13. The legend may have arisen from the phenomenon of sheep fleeces turning golden in certain geographical areas: see 12.40–42 with my note ad loc. The point of comparison in both cases here is the gold which both the dragons and the miser are guarding.

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114–6  Furthermore…: after the lofty epic comparison the poet lowers his poetic register with a highly prosaic sentence. 114 has a marked bucolic diaeresis followed by a string of short words (and final monosyllable), leading in enjambement to another line with bucolic diairesis and a heavy fifth foot spondee (ādquīr/ēndī) which leads in turn to the emphatic enjambed word artificem. For the didactic phrase adde quod see 15.47n. The effect is one of studied inelegance, belied by the plosive alliteration of populus putat, the key word egregium (derived from grex (a herd or flock) and so nicely apt after the golden fleece) and above all the final description of adquirendi/artificem which is a wonderful paradox of the prosaic and the aesthetic, as the word artifex commonly denotes artistic and technical creativity: the pretentiously artistic emperor Nero is said (Suetonius Nero 49.1) to have said before his death qualis artifex pereo (‘O what an artist dies with me!’). For the meaning of artifex here cf. OLD s.v. ‘artifex1’ 6 and cf. 4.18 (cleverness), 10.238 (crafty sexual skills), 11.102 (artistic genius) and 13.154 (the skilled creator of poisons). 116–8  estates grow: J. pursues the term artificem with the caricature of the miser as one who can somehow create the precious metals he craves by the unstinting use of the anvil (incude) and the forge (camino). He moves from the singular miser (hunc 114) to a plural (his fabris). his fabris is either ablative absolute (‘with these man acting as blacksmiths’) or else dative of advantage (the fortunes grow ‘for these blacksmiths’). 117  This line was excluded by some editors (Jahn, Braund, Willis, Clausen) but kept by Housman, Duff and Ferguson. It may be an interpolation, but it adds to the force of 118 if one understands it as meaning ‘[fortunes] grow and become greater by any means possible, provided that they use the anvil constantly and keep the forge always blazing’. The repetition of crescunt is also a pleasing touch suggestive of the obsessive quest for financial growth, for which Duff compares Horace Epistles 1.1.65–6 (rem facias, rem/ si possis recte, si non, quocumque modo rem (‘make wealth, wealth, morally if you can but if not then make wealth by whatever means’)). 118  anvil … forge: the line is neatly framed with the key metallurgical terms incude and camino. The juxtaposition of the two words denoting ‘unceasing’ (adsidua semperque) is also powerful, as is the ‘d’ and ‘c’ alliteration in the line expressive of the hammering. For the imagery of the forge cf. 3.309, 10.61–2, 10.130–132, 15.165–8. 119  This line was suspected as spurious by Housman (and excluded by Braund and Willis) and as it stands it is awkwardly phrased, although the punctuation after putat in 121 helps to prevent the piling up of clauses. The

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previous sentence had described the opinion of the populus: now J. brings in also (et) the figure of the father. The problem with excising this line is that we then have to understand pater simply from a sudden qui in 120 and also supply the sense of ‘sons’ to iuuenes in 121. felix has the meaning of ‘happy’ unlike beatus which has strong overtones of ‘fortunate’ in material circumstances (see next line). animi is here locative: ‘happy in mind’ as in Virgil Aeneid 4. 203, 529, (AG § 358, K-S II.1.§85 pp. 446–47). 120–121  who … who…: notice the anaphora of qui … qui introducing two parallel relative clauses which show the fetishising of wealth from two different points of view: the positive (wealth is admirable) and the negative (the poor cannot be happy). The rich man’s inability to understand the mentality of the poor is reminiscent of Petronius’ Trimalchio who feigns not to understand the word ‘poor’ (Satyricon 48.5). The ancient theme of the contented poor man who has the ‘little which is enough’ (as found in e.g. Aristophanes Plutus 551–4) and who is not therefore troubled by the dangers of wealth is a constant one in Roman thought and was emphasised by the Epicureans: see (e.g.) 10. 22–7, Horace Satires 1.1, Virgil Georgics 2.458–74, Claudian Shorter Poems XX. beati pauperis is (for this man) an oxymoron as beatus (for him) means ‘wealthy’. 122  J. powerfully combines two images here of wealth-seeking: that of a path to be followed and that of a code of behaviour, with the two images joined with the parallel demonstratives illa and eidem. secta derives from sequor (‘I follow’): for its meaning here see OLD s.v. ‘secta’ 2c: the primary meaning of ‘a course along which one travels’ is also present and makes for a neat way to frame the line with words denoting travel. incumbo (literally to ‘lean on’ as (metaphorically) at 8.76 and (literally) at 15.128) here has the sense of ‘to devote one’s energies to’ (OLD s.v. ‘incumbo’ 6). 123  basic elements: the word elementa denotes both the rudiments to be taught to children (as in Cicero de Oratore 1.163.5, Lucretius 1.81, Horace Satires 1.1.26, Epistles 1.20.17) and also the letters of the alphabet which make up words (cf. Suetonius Julius Caesar 56, Lucretius 1. 907–914). The word also functions as a term for the ‘building blocks’ of things such as atoms (Lucretius 3.374, 4.941) and so neatly introduces the list of behaviours which make up the miserly lifestyle. For money as ‘teaching’ others to do evil cf. Sophocles Antigone 298, Theognis 697–728, Solon 13.7–16. 123–4  The parent wastes no time. elementa suggests young childhood (see previous note), protinus states that this starts at once and imbuit is a strong verb of induction, gaining in power by being coupled with cogit.

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baptises: inbuo (also spelled imbuo) is literally to ‘soak’ or ‘drench’ but often has the sense of ‘initiate’ (OLD s.v. ‘imbuo’ 4). shabbiness: sordes is left to the end of the line for maximum effect and is a strongly pejorative term: meaning essentially physical ‘dirt’ it was soon used to describe folk who were dirty and so came to mean ‘squalid’: this then brought out the sense of ‘mean’ or ‘avaricious’ as such people would prefer to be squalid than to spend money, as here (and 1.139–40, Horace Satires 1.6.68: see OLD s.v. ‘sordes’ 4) and the word finally denotes moral baseness of unspecified form. sordes as a subject on the child’s curriculum (for him to ‘master’ (ediscere)) is a provocative image and the qualifying term minimas has the effect of producing the ‘child’s portion’ amount of sordes appropriate to a child. 124–5  Starting from small measures (minimas) of shabbiness, the child next (mox) graduates to limitless greed, and the interchange of learning (ediscere) and teaching (docet) is constant. longing: uotum properly denotes a prayerful wish (often accompanied by a promise to the deity addressed, recorded on ‘votive tablets’ as at 12.27), although it comes to mean little more than ‘heart’s desire’ as at 6.60, 10.6, 14.250, 14.298: J. has earlier used the word (10.23–5) of the earnest prayer to surpass others in wealth. 126  rations: a modius was a container used to measure out corn (containing about 8.5 litres): Petronius (Sat. 37) tells us that Trimalchio’s wife uses one to measure out her cash, and the phrasing becomes a byword for extreme opulence (see Otto (1890) s.v. ‘modius’), which fits well with its use here as an image of meanness as brought out in the final word iniquo which is the opposite of aequus and so here means ‘delivering short-measure’ (see Persius 1.130, OLD s.v. ‘iniquus’ 4b). For the image of the mean master delivering short rations to his slaves see Theophrastus Characters 30.11: more sensible voices in the ancient world realised that working slaves need decent food (Columella 1.8.17–18, Cato Res Rustica 5.2, 142). The hungry slaves are depicted with sluggish spondees (sēruōrūm uēntrēs) suggestive of their famished feebleness. castigat normally denotes the correction of moral infractions (as at 2.9, 2.35, 6.455, 14.54, Horace Ars Poetica 294) but here the slaves’ only offence is to need feeding. 127  The comment that the master also goes hungry marks this scene out as different from other scenes where the rich eat lavishly while the slaves or clients suffer, as for instance in Satire 5 (where Virro eats mullet or lamprey while his guests eat ‘grey fish bloated with sewage’ (5.104–5)) or as described by Seneca (Ep. 47.3). The point here is that what could be

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classed as a virtue (thrift, parsimonia) becomes a vice when taken to excess and when indulged in from selfish motives: see 109n. above. 127–33  mouldy lumps … chopped leek: Gowers ((1993)196) describes this passage as the ‘miser’s larder’ and suggests plausibly that: ‘this collection of rotten (hesternum, putri) and broken (frusta, minutal, parte, dimidio, sectiui) left-overs is a string of variations on the theme of inedibility.’ The theme here is the familiar point that the rich ought to use their wealth for good rather than hoarding it for nothing: see e.g. Horace Satires 1.1. 127–8  He may be hungry (esuriens) but he still cannot bear to eat up all (omnia) the crusts – the description of the food makes the reader assume that the man cannot eat the crusts as they are inedible, but J. springs the surprise that in fact he saves some up for later when they will be even more mouldy. The juxtaposition of mucida caerulei keeps the focus on the disgusting: mucidus has the primary sense of ‘snotty’ (cf. mucus) but has the sense here of ‘mouldy’ (as at 5.68: Martial (8.6.4) uses it for rancid wine). caeruleus is the colour blue (used of the eyes of the Germans at 13.164) used here of the distinctive blue-white penicillium mould which covers old bread. 129  yesterday’s mince: the line is framed by hesternum…minutal. minutal (a dish of minced food) receives ten recipes in Apicius’ Roman Cookbook but is rare in other classical Latin (only occurring here and at Martial 11.31.11 which is also a satirical sketch of a miserly host who will only serve pumpkins): the word is derived from minutus and so means a dish ‘consisting of fine pieces’ to suggest that even small scraps are being treated in this way (cf. minimas at 124), let alone larger chunks of meat. Here the miser makes a habit (solitus) of ‘keeping safe’ (seruare) old food in the middle of September. For rehashing of yesterday’s food cf. Suetonius’ account (Tiberius 34) of the emperor Tiberius serving up half-eaten dishes from the previous day, ‘to encourage public thrift by setting a personal example’. 130  September: autumn, and in particular the season after the rising of the ‘dog-star’ Sirius, was notorious for fevers and ill-health: see 4.56–7, 6.517–18, 10.221, 11.76, Homer Iliad 22.26–31, Hesiod Works and Days 417–9, Horace Satires 2.6.18–19, Odes 1.17.17–18, 2.14.15–16, 3.13.9–10, Hippocrates Aphorisms 3.9 (‘diseases are at their most deadly and acute in autumn’), Anth. Pal. 10.12.7 (‘having escaped the midday breath of the autumn dog-star’), Manilius 5.207–10. Celsus (2.1.1–2) argued that the changing of the season was the cause of this, while some modern scholars blame malaria for the ill-health. Keeping food long after its best-before

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date out of sheer meanness is a squalid practice (‘the act of a sordidus’ as Courtney says, citing Martial 1.103.7, 3.58.42), but J. expresses it in elegant epic language. and what’s more: nec non (OLD s.v. ‘neque’ 10b) began as a colloquialism (as it remained in e.g. Petronius Sat. 72.7.4) but became an elevated way of saying ‘and’ in the hands of Virgil (see Austin (1971) on Aeneid 1.707) and his successors (e.g. Ovid Met. 2.615, Lucan 3.516, Manilius 1.779, Statius Thebaid 5.190, Silius 1.411, Valerius Flaccus 2.664) and even elegists when in epic mode (Propertius 3.1.33). J. uses it seven times, sometimes for mock-epic grandeur (3.204, 9.88) and sometimes simply in the colloquial sense (e.g. 6.282). 130–131  next dinner: the enjambement of cenae/ alterius is effective as it enacts the waiting time between the two dinners. alterius here means ‘another’ or ‘a second ’ as at 141 below, 6.427 (OLD s.v. ‘alter1’ 1). conchem refers to a type of bean (cf. Martial 5.39.10, 7.78.2) and is the poor man’s food (see 3.293, 11.58, Horace Satires 2.6.63, Garnsey (1999) 121, Balsdon (1969) 53, Gowers (1993) 251–52). For the use of the adjective aestivam meaning simply ‘in summer’ cf. 1.28, 14.295, Lucretius 5.615, Propertius 3.20.11, Virgil Georgics 3.472: Duff compares the use of matutino at 4.108 (where the word simply means ‘in the morning’). 131–2  chunk … half: parte and dimidio indicate that he is saving up what has not been eaten in the first dinner. lacerti (from lacerta/lacertus) is the Scomber colias (OLD s.v. ‘lacerta’ 2) or Atlantic Chub Mackerel and was a common fish: cf. Persius 1.43, Catullus 95.8 (=Martial 4.86.8), Plautus Captiui 851, Martial 3.50.9. It was not the cheapest fish (see Martial 13.103) which may help to explain why leftovers are precious: for the combination with beans cf. Martial 7.78. signatam here means ‘locked up’ (OLD s.v. ‘signo’ 8c): the term derives from the seal (signum) which was used to protect a letter from being read by others, but the seal is here applied to protect the leftovers from the hungry (126) slaves: cf. Theophrastus Characters 30.16 (where ἀπογράφεσθαι has much the same meaning as signatam), Aristophanes Frogs 984–8, Thesmophoriazusae 418–28, Cicero de Oratore 2.248, Martial 9.88.7. silurus refers to the European catfish or sheatfish but was also the name of a fish found in the Nile in Egypt (see Braund on 4.33, Pliny NH 9.44, Lucilius 53 (iura siluri ‘sauces of the Nile-perch’) and said to be pickled in Alexandria (Athenaeus 3.118f–119a). 133  locking them away: includere continues the idea of locking up from signatam, while numerata adds an extra touch of suspicion in that this

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master will ‘count’ them in case somebody gains access to the safe place where they are locked up. The key defining term porri is left to the end of the line and the sentence for bathetic effect – all this effort for a humble singular leek. porrum came in two forms: porrum capitatum was allowed to grow to a head before being cut, while porrum sectiuum was cut as soon as it appeared from the soil (see 15.9, Martial 3.47.8, 10.48.9). Leeks are also part of the typical poor man’s lunch at Horace Satires 1.6.115: for the anaphrodisiac qualities of this vegetable on the lover’s breath see Martial 13.18, Gowers (1993) 297. 134  The point of this line is contained in the final phrase de ponte negabit which has concessive force: even a beggar from the bridge will refuse an invitation from this man. Beggars would routinely sit by bridges where traffic would be forced to slow down and linger: see 5.8, Martial 12.32.25, Ovid Ibis 416, Seneca Dial. 7.25.1, OLD s.v. ‘pons’ 1b. The sentence ends with the forceful future indicative making the strong assertion that even the beggar will refuse. 135  What is the point?: for the sentiment cf. Horace Satires 2.3.107–110 (‘what difference is there between and the man who hoards cash and gold but does not know how to use his deposits and is afraid to touch them as if they are sacred?’). quo commonly means ‘whither?’ but here has the sense of ‘to what purpose?’ as at 15.61, 8.9, 8.142, Horace Satires 1.6.24, Epistles 1.5.12, OLD s.v. ‘quo’ 2. Here one has to understand something like quo diuitias… gathered … torments: the phrase tormenta coactas is a stark juxtaposition reinforcing the idea that wealth is only obtained through suffering: tormenta are properly ‘tortures’ (OLD s.v. ‘tormentum’ 3) such as were used to extract the truth from slaves, and the semi-starvation described in lines 126–34 would count as such: but more commonly the word is metaphorical in force and simply means ‘torment’ as at 2.137, 6.209, 9.18 (OLD s.v. ‘tormentum’ 4). 136  Is it not … insanity: an elegant line, with two different words for ‘madness’ at either end and two forms of ‘obvious’ inbetween, the two phrases both introduced with cum. furor and phrenesis both mean ‘madness’ but the terms are very different in character and language. furor commonly attaches to a feeling which is irrational and/or passionate and is the opposite of (e.g.) ratio: for its common meaning of ‘folly’ (as here) cf. 1.92, 8.97 – it also means abnormal behaviour at 2.18, full-blown madness at 14.284, furious rage at 15.36, and furious hunger at 15.100. phrenesis derives from Greek φρενιτικός and

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means properly ‘inflammation of the brain’ (see Celsus 2.1.15.3, 3.18.3.1 (‘phrenesis is when the madness begins to be constant, when the sick man, although in his right mind up to now, nonetheless receives certain delusions… some such are cheerful, others depressed’), Pliny NH 24.63.7, Martial 4.80.1). The adjectival form phreneticus seems to have slipped into common usage for ‘insane’ or ‘delirious’ as at Petronius 63.10, 115.5.1, Seneca Dial. 2.13.1, Seneca Contr. 10.5.27.2, Martial 11.28.1, Celsus 2.4.9.1: and it is noteworthy that the Greek term for this condition was generally used in Rome, presumably because the leading exponents of medicine were Greeks. 137  to live … rich: the key words are again well balanced in the two halves of the line: rich (locuples) is opposed to poor (egentis), and death (moriaris) opposed to life (uiuere). For the levelling power of death, such that even the greatest are reduced to a small plot of earth, see 10.171–3 (‘only death admits the tiny size of human bodies’). fato (literally ‘fate’ or ‘death’) nicely balances moriaris (and the juxtaposition uiuere fato is close to saying that the austere life is a living death) and here has to be understood in the sense of ‘the lifestyle which fortune gives you’ (OLD s.v. ‘fatum’ 3b) as in 7.190, 14.158, Livy 9.18.19. J.’s point is that the rich usually have a choice in how they live, but this rich man is choosing to live as if he were a poor man who had no choice. 138–40  In the meantime…: J. suggests that there is an exponential growth in greed: the more money is made, the greater the desire for it, while (if line 140 is genuine) the reverse is also true in that those who lack money stop seeking it. 138 The sacculus is the purse which would be carried out of the house, as distinct from the ferrata arca (‘iron-clad safe’) which kept the family savings in the atrium (see 11.26–7 with my note ad loc.). The diminutive ending -ulus (cf. Catullus 13.8) shows that filling the sacculus is only the first stage of wealth-creation and it is tempting to imagine that its owner is still only a youth. The juxtaposition of words indicating ‘full’ (pleno … turget) is effective, as is the metaphorical use of ore (literally ‘mouth’) suggesting that the greed is an urge to devour money into its gaping maw (cf. 1.88 (‘when did the pocket of greed open wider?’)). 139  The love of cash…: the aphorism is neatly phrased, and the framing of the line with crescit…creuit creates a chiasmus of crescit amor…pecunia creuit. For the truism that increased wealth also increases the appetite for wealth cf. Persius 6.78–80, Horace Odes 2.2.13, 3.16.17–18 (‘anxiety follows money as it grows – and hunger for more of it’), Epistles 1.2.56

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(semper auarus eget (‘the avaricious man is always poor’)), Otto (1890) s.v. ‘avarus, avaritia’: the thinking is familiar in Epicurean rejection of unnatural luxury in favour of the paruum quod satis est (e.g. Epicurus Vatican Sayings 25, Κ.Δ.7, 15, Diogenes Laertius 10.130, Lucretius 5.1118–9) but is also found in Stoicism (e.g. Seneca Ep. 119.9 (‘money never made a man rich: it just infects all who touch it with a lust for more … the more you have,the more you are able to have.’). 140  the man … less: the thinking – that if indulgence increases desire, then austerity will reduce it – is perhaps wishful and is the inverse of the principle outlined in line 139. Poor people may still wish for wealth but be resigned to never having any and so appear to lack desire for it. hanc must refer to pecunia from 139. 140–4  That is how…: the avaricious man buys properties one after another: J. adopts a suitably paratactic style and a sequence of present indicative verbs (paratur … sufficit … libet…uidetur … mercaris) to indicate the succession of instant ongoing purchases, and the whole long sentence is addressed to the reader/Fuscinus in the second person (tibi). 140–1  is acquired: paratur/ altera makes good use of enjambement to enhance the effect of adding property to property, and the increase in word length is also expressive as rus unum needs altera uilla to be added to it. Line 141 is neatly framed with the stressed words altera … unum. paratur here has the sense ‘is bought’ (OLD s.v. ‘paro’ 4) as at 3.224, 14.273, Cicero ad Att. 12.19.1, Petronius Sat. 75.4. For the acquisition of luxurious villas such as that described by Pliny (Letters 2.17) see 10.225, Balsdon (1969) 209, Dewar (2014). For the singular word rus meaning ‘country estate’ cf. 6.55, 14.155, 16.36, OLD s.v. ‘rus’ 2. 142–3  it is nice…: the two vices examined by J. here are greed and envy and the emphasis is on the whims rather than the genuine needs of the landowner: he ‘wants’ (libet) to increase his ‘territory’ and he ‘thinks’ (uidetur) his neighbour has more and better land. Wealthy Romans from the 2nd century BC onwards sought to increase their wealth by the acquisition of latifundia or ‘large estates’ manned by slaves and producing cash crops such as livestock, vines and olives for financial gain: this practice chimed with the prejudice that senators were not allowed to engage directly in trade and the importing of slaves supplied a labour-force which made it all possible (see Appian 1.7–8). Tiberius Gracchus famously observed the Italian countryside manned by slave-labour (Plutarch Tiberius Gracchus 8)

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and Pliny (N.H. 18.35) later described this buying up of land by the rich as being the ‘ruin of Italy’ (latifundia perdidere Italiam), although both these quotations deserve to be taken critically: for more information see Hopkins (1978) 2–15. to extend: for proferre in this sense of ‘advance one’s borders’ see OLD s.v. ‘profero’ 8c, Cicero pro Tullio 14.4, de republica 3.24.6, Livy 1.44.4.1, 42.1.7.1. The phrasing makes it clear that the landowner envies the quality of the neighbouring land as its produce (seges) looks bigger and better: for the envious ‘grass is always greener’ sentiment cf. Horace Satires 1.1.110, Epistles 1.2.57, Ovid Ars Amatoria 1.349–50, Seneca de ira 3.13.1, Otto (1890) s.v. ‘alienus’ 1. cornfield: seges properly means ‘crops’ or ‘arable land’ but J. uses it metaphorically at 7.103 to ask indignantly of historians ‘what is the profit from that activity?’ (quae tamen inde seges?) and the landowner here is clearly looking for financial gain. 143–4  this one too: the ending of 143 with its string of three monosyllables is suggestive of the breathless haste with which the purchases are made (cf. 114, 5.86). The lavish description on line 144 almost sounds like the purchaser justifying his purchase with sales-patter: not just arbusta (a vineyard formed from growing vines up trees (arbores) as in Virgil Georgics 2.416) but also a whole mountain (montem) which is coloured grey-green (canet) with the thick (densa) olives growing on it. The purchaser is investing in cashcrops (vines and olives) which would give him a good return (see CAH xi. 697). Courtney points out that J. might equally well have written arbusta et montem densa: perhaps J. wished to have densa looking back to arbusta as well as forward to oliua (with which it agrees): the postponement of montem to its place after the caesura also throws emphasis onto it. 145–149  If the owner cannot be won over, then the greedy landowner vandalises the field to harass him into selling: this sort of bullying seems to have been more common than we might expect (see 150–151) and was certainly declared a crime in the early Roman legal code known as the ‘Twelve Tables’ (8, 9): see also 16.36–40, Martial 2.32.3, Seneca Ep. 90.39. For the importance of having (and being) good neighbours in the pre-industrial age, cf. Hesiod Works and Days 342–351, Pindar Nemean 7.86–9, Demosthenes 55.1 (‘there is nothing worse than to get a neighbour who is wicked and avaricious’), Horace Satires 1.1.85, Otto (1890) s.v. ‘uicinus’. Here the sequence of events is enhanced by the variation of tenses: uincitur is a vivid present tense and precedes the sending of the cattle which therefore goes into a threatening future

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indicative (mittentur). Courtney (on 3.239) sees this use of the future tense as ‘gnomic’ (comparing 7.187, 16.18–19) but there is a strong sense here that the intention or threat to vandalise the land should be (but is not) enough to sway the reluctant seller (see K-S 1.146). 145  owner: the so-called ‘master’ (dominus) is not won over by ‘any’ (ullo) amount of money, and the power-struggle between the two men is brought out by the juxtaposition of dominus non uincitur. 146–7 The cattle form a stampede of starving beasts, brought out by the listing of them as both individual boues and then whole herds (armenta): their common characteristic is hunger, stressed both implicitly (macri – they are ‘thin’ for a reason) and then explicitly (famelica – a word found only here in J.). Their hunger is born of hard work, as lasso…collo makes clear (for this topos in relation to cattle cf. 8.66, Catullus 64.38). The animals will be sent to wreck the corn while it is green – that is, before it has had any time to make its owner any money (see OLD s.v. ‘uiridis’ 3, Persius 3.22). 148–9  will not come home…: the threat is carried out to devastating effect, with the totality of the operation stressed. They do not go home until the job is done (nec prius … domum) reinforced by tota (‘all of it’) and also saeuos (‘raging’) applied to uentres (‘bellies’). We have to supply a verb such as abibunt with domum: the ellipsis here amounts to a syllepsis as abeant does double duty – the cattle do not ‘depart’ until the corn has ‘departed’ (into their stomachs). savage: for saeuus applied to hunger cf. Lucan 4.94: the word is more commonly used of lions (as in Lucretius 5. 862) or the Minotaur (Catullus 64.110) and hunger here has the power to turn what are usually tame beasts into wild ones, with the epithet saeuos transferred from the ruthless neighbours to the stomachs of their animals. noualia (only here in J.) is the plural of nouale and here means ‘fields’ (see OLD s.v. ‘nouale’ 3 and cf. Virgil Eclogues 1.70, Statius Thebaid 3.645). Pliny (N.H. 18.176) tells us that term properly denotes a field which is only sown in alternate years (as at Virgil Georgics 1.71). For the second-person verb credas addressed to the reader cf. 3.7, 5.156, 6.504, 10.246, 14.203, 15.118 and see possis in the next line. actum has to be understood as ‘job done’ leaving the emphasis to be on falcibus. 150  You would not easily…: for a more florid description of the difficulty of listing all examples of a given phenomenon cf. 10 220–226 (with my note ad loc.). complaint: the most powerful part of this line is the final word plorent (cf. 1.50, 5.158, 13.134, 15.134). 151  Now that the crop has been ruined the landowner has to sell his lands

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or starve. iniuria here amounts to ἀδικία (cf. 5.9, 8.121, 16.22) and denotes wrongdoing in general. 152  the gossip: J. protests that such behaviour will incur public opprobrium. bucina is an epic term for the trumpet or horn (cf. 7.71, Virgil Aeneid 7.519, Lucan 2.689, Silius 15.48), here used as a metaphor for the ‘blare’ of gossip as at Cicero ad Fam. 16.21.2 (where Cicero tells Tiro that he will be the ‘trumpeter of my reputation (buccinatorem … existimationis meae)’. The instrument – despite its tempting etymology from ‘bull’s-horn’ – was probably straight rather than curved as stated in OLD (see Seidel (1975) 154). The blaring tone is enacted in this line with its lack of any verb, with the loose syntax and harsh ‘f’ alliteration of foede … famae and the emphatic repetition of qui…quam across the caesura. sermones essentially means simply ‘words spoken’ (as at 3.73, 6.193, Catullus 64.144) but also indicates ‘conversation’ (as at 8.39, OLD s.v. ‘sermo’ 3) and then ‘common gossip’ (OLD s.v. ‘sermo’ 4: cf. 2.14, 10.88, Petronius 129.2, Tacitus Annals 3.6). The word also means ‘discourse’ (OLD s.v. ‘sermo’ 3b) and it is pertinent to note that Horace’s satirical poems are entitled sermones (on which see Coffey (1976) 68–69, Gowers (2012) 12–15) which raises the possibility that the word here is ironic as it could even describe the poem we are now reading. 153–155  The interlocutor retorts (inquit as at (e.g.) 1.102, 10.155, 13.84) that he cares nothing for his reputation, recalling the image of the unsociable miser (possibly Timon of Athens) in Horace Satires 1.1.65–7 (‘the dirty rich man accustomed to despising the utterances of the people, saying “the people hiss at me but I applaud myself at home when I gaze on the cash in my money-box”’). The wise man could (and did) disregard public opinion where public opinion was boorish and uninformed (e.g. Plato Republic 6.493a–c (where the people is likened to a beast), Horace Satires 1.10.76–7) but this sort of independence takes courage and often left the individual vulnerable and friendless (as itemised at 156–160 below). The Latin here amounts to saying ‘I would not give a fig for the praise of others if it meant living a poor life’. 153 The lupin was proverbially worthless and was even used on the stage as fake money (see Otto (1890) s.v. ‘lupinus’ and cf. Horace Epistles 1.7.23, Plautus Poenulus 597). tunica (literally ‘tunic’) has (like its Greek counterpart χιτών: see LSJ s.v. IV) a common metaphorical application as ‘a covering membrane’ or ‘part of a plant’ (OLD s.v. ‘tunica’ 3) as of the skin of an onion (Persius 4.30) or the surface of the eye (Celsus 7.7.13.A) and here means the pod of the lupin containing the seeds which were (and are) edible.

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For the short final syllable of malŏ cf. 6.223, 10.72, 10.250: the impression here is of colloquial speech. 154  The choice of words is interesting. uicinia picks up uicina from 143 and is the personified neighbourhood, the phrase laudet uicinia denoting the collective voice of local opinion as at Horace Satires 2.5.106, Epistles 1.16.44, Persius 4.46, Martial 12.59.4. village: uicinia is neatly juxtaposed with pago which reminds us that the scene is set in the countryside: cf. Horace Odes 3.18.12 (Nisbet and Rudd (2004) ad loc. comment that the pagus was ‘a scattered rural community that had some religious and administrative responsibilities’). 155  pathetic … tiny: the paean of praise in 154 is now cut down to size with the meagre reality, with emphasis on the smallness (exigui… paucissima) and the poor quality (farra) of the yield. grain: far was often used for archetypically plain food: cf. 5.11 (farris canini ‘dog’s bread’), Persius 3.25, Horace Satires 1.5.68–9, 1.6.112. The tedium of the plain fare is brought out by the repetitious assonance of ‘i’ and later ‘a’ in this line. Moralists had long praised the virtues of few/small possessions (see 139n. and see below on 161–6) but this avaricious man does not share their ideals. 156–60  You will….: the poet’s tone is one of scathing sarcasm as he points out that all the wealth in the world will not secure health and happiness. The sentence is framed in a strong future conditional clause with future indicatives (carebis etc) in the apodosis and the future perfect (possederis) in the protasis. 156–7  of course: the scorn is at once apparent in the ironic scilicet and the jingle of morbis…carebis . For the sarcastic use of scilicet see OLD s.v. ‘scilicet’ 4 and cf. 5.76, 6.239. The poet’s tone is hectoring as he piles up four forms of pain in two pairs, denoting bodily suffering (morbis et debilitate) and then mental anguish (luctum et curam), with each pair having its own assertive future tense verb (carebis…effugies). The list is reminiscent of the discussion of old age in 10.188–288 and the poet is probably envisaging the diseases and pain which await even the rich man in old age: see especially 10.218–32 for the bodily ills and 10.240–55 for the unremitting grief. 157–8  long life: the third element of the man’s future is that of longevity, with the notion of extended time enacted in the enjambement of tempora uitae/ longa. J. has already told us (10.358) that spatium uitae is among the least of life’s gifts (but see discussion of this in my note ad loc.), and so mere time is worthless unless it is accompanied by fato meliore as here: and the

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sarcasm of posthac (‘after this’ meaning ‘once you have acquired this land’ as explained in 159–60) is raised by the juxtaposition with fato (which is unchanging and not available to be bought). 159  gain possession: possideo is the mot juste for ‘owning land’ (cf. 1.108, 3.141, 10.225, 12.129) and solus is pointed (‘in sole ownership’) – in contrast to the ownership of the whole populus Romanus in 160 – and perhaps sardonic as it also reminds us of the social isolation which this avarice is causing. tantum is part of the correlative with quantum in 160 and culti … agri is a partitive genitive going with tantum. 160 Titus Tatius was king of the Sabines when his people joined together with the Romans under Romulus. He led an attack on the Romans after the abduction of the Sabine women, and managed to capture the Capitol – but the women themselves reconciled the warring tribes and he ruled jointly with Romulus until his (suspicious) death: see Ogilvie (1965) on Livy 1.10.1, OCD s.v. ‘Tatius, Titus’. Here, as Courtney points out, the use of his name obviates the need for the unmetrical Rōmŭlō. 161–166  In later times: mox denotes the period after Titus Tatius. The lengthy sentence makes the point that a mere couple of acres was not insufficient to reward men who had suffered a great deal for the state. 161  broken by age: fractis aetate stresses the length of active service before they are allowed to retire: cf. Tacitus Annals 1.34 where soldiers force Germanicus to feel their toothless gums and others ‘showed bodies bent with old age’ in a bid to be granted veteran status. The use of fractis here recalls Horace Satires 1.1.5 (‘the soldier, heavy with years, his body now broken (fractus) with much toil’): for further examples see OLD s.v. ‘frango’ 7. 161–2  The plosive ‘p’ alliteration and the enjambement make this an expressive phrase. The three Punic wars were fought between Rome and Carthage between 264–241 BC, 218–201 BC and finally 149–6 BC. Pyrrhus (319–272 BC), king of Epirus fought against Rome from 280–275 BC and here is elevated with the focalised term immanem (here as at 15.104 ‘brutal’ but elsewhere ‘massive’ and ‘monstrous’), while the threatening violence of the Molossians is indicated in synecdoche by drawing attention to their swords (gladios). The Molossians were one of the peoples indigenous to Epirus, and lived on the plain near to the oracle at Dodona: they unified Epirus under their rule until 232 BC when their sovereignty over the whole area ended and the Molossians were absorbed into the Epirote Confederacy, but they were the one part of Epirus to declare for Macedon in the wars

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between Rome and Macedon and the place was sacked by the Romans in 167 BC, with 150,000 captives being taken. Pyrrhus was the most famous of the Molossian kings who commanded the army of the whole country, and as such he defeated the Roman forces at Heraclea in 280 BC and Ausculum in 279 BC: both these victories involved major loss of forces and Pyrrhus returned to Epirus with less than a third of his original army. For his use of elephants in battle see 12.108 (with my note ad loc.): the Molossians were also famed for breeding especially courageous dogs (see Lucretius 5.1063, Horace Epode 6.5, Virgil Georgics 3.405). 163  finally: tandem suggests that these men have endured the whole succession of conflicts (outlined in 161–2) and their reward is therefore long awaited: and the point of contrast is between the many injuries sustained and the few acres given as their reward. half a hectar: the Roman iugerum measured 240 x 120 Roman feet and amounted to about ⅔ of an acre (0.27 hectares); two of these therefore amounted to a plot measuring 1⅓ acres and was an amount of land given to veteran soldiers, according to Livy (4.47.7.1, 6.16.6.4) and Varro (R.R. 1.10.2), but this seems considerably less than the 10 iugera given to peasant farmers and ex-soldiers (CAH xi p. 700) and Hopkins ((1978) 21) asserts that even seven iugera ‘would barely provide half the minimum subsistence for an average family’. J. makes the poverty even worse by adding the word uix (barely) suggesting that some might not even get two iugera. Pliny (N.H. 18.7) makes a similar censorious point to J. here: ‘In those early days, two iugera of land were considered enough for a citizen of Rome, and nobody was granted a larger portion than this – and yet nowadays men who just recently were the slaves of the Emperor Nero have been hardly content with pleasure-gardens that occupied the same space as this’. Once again, the poet’s desire to praise the past and contrast this with the corrupt present is evident. 164  injuries: uulneribus is emphasised in enjambement to highlight the physical cost of such military service – a point reinforced with mention of blood and toil (sanguinis atque laboris). merces properly denotes ‘payment’ (7.149, 8.246) but can also (as here and at 1.42 where it is also used of sanguinis albeit in a very different context) mean ‘reward’ or ‘recompense’. meritis minor go together (‘less than their deserts’). 165–6  never seemed: the generalisation is couched in universal terms: ‘nobody ever thought…’ ingratae/curta fides patriae is elegantly composed, with curta fides (literally ‘incomplete loyalty’) acting as a single idea (‘a

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lack of loyalty’) and framed by the pejorative term ingratae and then the climactically emotive word patriae. 166–71  A little clump of earth: this small plot of land fed a family whose size grows from line to line to an absurd extent, building up to the bathetic climax of line 172. 166  little … overface: the paradox is enhanced by the juxtaposition of the strong term saturabat and the diminutive glebula (from gleba: cf. 12.85) suggesting that this undersized plot is more than enough for them. The verb saturo denotes ‘to sate, fill to repletion’ and its cognate adjective satur is often used of the satisfied dinner-guest (e.g. Horace Satires 1.118, Lucretius 3.960) or contented goats (Virgil Eclogues 10.77); later on (15.3) it is used of the Ibis replete with snakes. 167  father…: the catalogue of family members begins with the paterfamilias and then sets up the theme of ‘crowded accommodation’ with the neat oxymoron turbamque casae – a turba ought not to be able to fit into a casa. Commentators point out that turba may mean simply ‘all the inhabitants’ with no indication of number (see OLD s.v. ‘turba’ 5c) but the following lines will make it clear that this particular turba is indeed large for the small house. 167–9  father … wife … children: lines 167–8 each begin with a key family member (patrem … uxor). The wife is one who continues to produce children (feta), and the tableau of her in her pregnant stillness alongside the four playing children is pleasing. The poet depicts the figures in some detail, with cardinal numbers in quick succession (quattuor unus … tres): three of the four children are legitimate offspring and so are masters (domini) while the fourth is a slave-child. uernula is the diminutive of uerna – the diminutive appropriate for the infant slave. A verna was any child born to a slave mother and was by definition a slave, no matter who the father was. The presence of a slave in this tiny poor cottage is something of a difficulty in that it raises questions about why such a small plot would want one: ‘poor peasants with only small plots of land could not benefit from another pair of hands’ (Hopkins (1978) 108). Their idyllic contentment with one slave contrasts with Naevolus (9. 66) who feels he needs to buy another slave ‘as one is not enough’. For the imagery of slaves as part of the idyllic family group cf. Horace Satires 2.6.65–7, Martial 3.58.22. 169–171  big brothers: just when the reader thinks that the casa (containing six people with another on the way) is already full, J. introduces older offspring to fill more space and eat yet more food. The agricultural work

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undertaken is well epitomised in the alliterative phrase uel scrobe uel sulco redeuntibus (‘as they come home from the ditch or the furrow’). A scrobis is a ‘hole dug in the ground’ (as in the hole dug by Midas’ servant to ‘bury’ the secret of his master’s ears at Ovid Metamorphoses 11.189) and probably indicates a ditch for the planting of trees and shrubs, whereas a sulcus is a furrow created by a plough for the sowing of crops (cf. 14.241, 7.48). The reference to their altera cena/ amplior asserts both their hard work (and consequent hunger) and also the success of their agricultural efforts which can produce not just one but also a second (altera) and larger meal daily. 171 The second meal has this whole line devoted to it and the emphasis is on quantity: amplior … grandes as well as the use of the plural pultibus. OLD defines puls as a dish ‘made by boiling crushed spelt or other grain in water, a kind of porridge’ and J. uses it at 11.58 as the byword for humble food (cf. Columella 2.9.19, Pliny NH 18.83.84): indeed ‘porridge-eater’ (pultiphagus) was used in comedy to indicate an early Roman (Plautus Mostellaria 828). This foodstuff was ‘part of the mythology of Roman beginnings, offered in rituals celebrating the origins of Rome and the birthdays of its citizens’ (Gowers (1993) 56, citing Pliny NH 18.19.83–4). 172  These days…: as often, the poet rounds off this section of his poem with a gnomic generalisation contrasting the glorious past with the degenerate present. modus here means ‘a measured amount’ (OLD s.v. ‘modus’ 1a) and agri is partitive genitive going with it. The final word of the line is climactic: this amount of land which used to feed a family of at least eight is not now enough even for a recreational garden: there is a strong implied contrast between need and desire, utility and pleasure. For Roman pleasure-gardens as a symbol of luxury, crime and loose living see 1.75 (‘they owe their gardens to crime’), 6.488 (the adulterous wife ‘is awaited in the gardens’), 10.16 (‘wealthy Seneca’s vast gardens’), Tacitus Annals 16.27 and see further OCD s.v. ‘Gardens’, Dyck (2013) on Cicero pro Caelio 27, Balsdon (1969) 206–207. 173–4  That is often…: J. returns to his main theme. He begins with a broad generalisation that avarice often (fere) produces the causes of crime before giving two examples of violent crime involving poison (uenena) and a blade (ferro), which represent the two obvious ways of murdering someone (cf. Tacitus Annals 14.3, 15.60.2). on the streets: grassor commonly has the sense of ‘roam in search of victims’ (OLD s.v. ‘grassor’ 2) and the noun grassator has the meaning ‘mugger’ at 3.305. The verbs here are in different tenses, with miscuit in the

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(gnomic) perfect tense and grassatur in the present tense (cf. 6.361), and the subject of both verbs is the personified moral flaw (at work through human agents). J. adopts this style of personification in his gnomic statements elsewhere, such as probitas laudatur et alget (‘virtue is praised and freezes’ 1.74): cf. 2.34–5, 3.152–3. 175–6  brutal lust: cupido is saeua in that it involves violence against others: Statius (Silvae 2.1.214) has the same phrase as one of the causes of death, whereas J. sees it as a cause of murder. It is fully in J.’s style to ensure that the final word of the sentence is striking and concrete: so here census is the term for ‘personal wealth’ as opposed to patrimonium (which is inherited wealth or estate: see my note on 10.12–13). census is a favourite word of the poet (cf. 5.57, 7. 137, 10.13, 13.7, 14.227, 304, 317, 16.53) in place of any bland term for ‘money’ as it connotes status as well as simple cash: its primary meaning (OLD s.v. ‘census’ 1,2) is the classification of citizens according to their wealth and so it connotes the superiority as well as the money which makes this sort of financial social-climbing different from mere miserliness. For the dog-eat-dog world of Roman acquisitiveness which combines avarice and social climbing cf. Lucretius 3.59–64. limitless: immodici (‘having no modus’: only here in J.) picks up modus from 172 and is often used with excessive desire (Livy 6.35.6, 10.13.14, Martial 2.56.2), unrestrained behaviour (Tacitus Histories 3.53.3) and even bad weather (Seneca N.Q. 3.28.1). est modus in rebus (‘things have their proper measure’) was an ethical statement of Horace (Satires 1.1.106) and is endorsed by J., both applying the Greek maxim μηδὲν ἄγαν (‘nothing in excess’). 176–7  the man who…: J. couches his generalisation in neat chiastic form, with fieri uolt..uolt fieri and enjambed emphasis on et cito. ‘Take the waiting out of wanting’ seems to be the motto of J.’s avaricious man, adding impatience to his already impressive catalogue of character flaws. 177–8 what … what…: the indignation is couched in the anaphora of quae…quis introducing a pair of rising rhetorical questions. For reuerentia see 47n.: the genitive legum is joined to reuerentia (‘respect for the laws’) whereas properantis auari is a possessive genitive and means ‘in the case of a miser who is in a hurry’). decency: pudor occurs twelve times in J. and denotes both ‘shame’ and ‘decency’: it ties neatly with metus as two reasons for respecting the laws – fear of being punished and anticipation of the shame attendant on being found out. For the sequence of thought cf. Propertius 3.13.48–50.

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179–188  J. indulges in dramatic personification of traditional attitudes, choosing as his mouthpiece some anonymous members of the Marsi, Hernici and Vestini – all ancient Italian tribes chosen to represent the hardy ways of old. A similar device is used by Horace who has a token tough-talking peasant (Ofellus) as his mouthpiece in Satires 2.2. The superannuated nature of the advice is emphasised by olim (suggesting that even the quotation is from the past) and senex (showing that the man in question is himself old). 179–80  ‘Live contented…’: the speech opens without introduction with a strong imperative addressed to young men: for this didactic tone cf. Horace Satires 2.2.127–136 (o pueri … uiuite fortes) and the stance of addressing the young of both sexes at Horace Odes 3.1.4. The line is remarkable for ‘c’ alliteration and the joining together of the diminutive casulis (from casa – small cottages, as if a casa were not already small enough: cf. 9.60, 11.153) and the collibus which are the home of the country-dweller in Horace Odes 4.5.29. At 12.83 pueri means ‘slaves’ but it is clear from what follows that the anonymous old man is addressing the younger generation in general. 180 The Marsi had been praised by Virgil as a genus acre uirum (‘a fierce race of men’) at Georgics 2.167 and Appian claimed (Civ. 1.46.203) they were the ‘most warlike tribe’, while Horace three times uses them in his Odes (1.2.39–40, 2.20.17–18, 3.5.9) as types of ‘stalwart rustics’ (Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) on Odes 1.2.39). Marsians were also known as sorcerers whose spells could and did cure the sick: see Virgil Aeneid 7.758 and Watson (2003) on Horace Epodes 5.76 for further exx.. They were amongst the most ardent fighters against Rome in the Social War of 91–87 BC and were only won over by being granted citizenship. The Hernici are also mentioned in Virgil (Aeneid 7.684) as forming part of the agrestis legio of Italians facing Aeneas: they were one of the tribes who fought against Rome in 306BC and who received citizenship eventually, becoming so Latinised that their native language disappeared (see Livy 9.42–3, OCD s.v. ‘Hernici’). The Vestini had long been allied with the Marsi (cf. Ennius Annales 7.229) and also joined in the struggle against Rome in 91–87 BC. Having all three tribes named makes for an accumulated unanimous authority for the sentiments uttered – combining frugality, religious observance and morality with a rugged physical toughness which disdains and disapproves of luxury as decadence. 181–2  Let’s: the verb moves from 2nd person imperative to 1st person jussive subjunctive which includes the speaker in his own admonition. The emphases here are on hard work – the bread is to be obtained by the plough and not by purchase – and on frugality – what is ‘enough’ and no more. Both

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sentiments are traditional: Epicurus was famously content with ‘plain bread and water’ (Diogenes Laertius X.11) and the Stoic Seneca also stated (Ep. 25.4) with approval the Epicurean thesis that ‘nature wants bread and water, and nobody is poor then; in fact anyone who restricts his desires to them would rival Jupiter in good fortune’. 182–4  For the meaning of numen see 13.36–7n. The term gods of the countryside here refers to the rural divinities who control fertility and harvest, such as the gods of wine (Liber) and corn (Ceres) as in Lucretius 5.14–5. J. may well have in mind here Virgil Georgics 1.7–8 which addresses Liber and Ceres ‘by whose gift the earth exchanged the acorn of Chaonia for the rich ear of corn’. Early man is often described as living on a diet of acorns: see note on 13.56–7, and also 6.10, Lucretius 5. 939, 5.1416, Virgil Georgics 1.148 and note how ueteris makes the points both that this had been their food from olden times and also that they stored them up with frugal thrift. In Homer (Odyssey 10.242–3) acorns are the food of ‘wallowing pigs’. The gods positively applaud the deployment of agriculture rather than the mere harvesting of acorns. 183  The language of ope et auxilio (aid and assistance) with its almost tautological repetition is to reflect the language of religious ritual: the same phrase is used of divine help by Cicero (pro Rabirio Post. 5.5) and is found in Lucilius 872W. welcome: gratae..munus is an expression of thanks to the gods for their gift – as well as a simple admission that corn tastes better than acorns and so the aristae is gratae to the diner as well as the deity. 184  picked up: contingo with the dative has the meaning ‘to be granted to one’ (OLD s.v. ‘contingo’ 8a: cf. 6.49, 6.217, Ovid Ars Am. 1.156). Elsewhere (e.g. 10.341) J. uses the verb with the accusative in its primary sense of ‘touch’ and this may well have caused some manuscripts to read homines instead of homini. The intransitive use has some sense of the serendipitous, which is appropriate as J. ascribes human ability to scorn acorns as entirely down to the decision of the gods rather than to any human progress. distaste: fastidia is a good word to denote the feeling of repugnance and disdain: cf. 10.202, 10.270, 11.80, 14.201. quercus literally means ‘oak’ but here (as at at Valerius Flaccus 1.70) denotes by synecdoche the acorns which the tree produced: cf. Lucretius 5.939 (‘[early man] looked after their bodies amidst the acorn-bearing oaks’). 185–188  That man…: J.’s point is that men who are content with little, and who are not embarrassed (pudet) by their rough clothes, have no need to commit crimes and so will not want (uolet) to do so. The passage elevates

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the moral value of poverty but also paints a picture of the rustic as being stronger than his effete urban peers – he can rebuff strong winds simply by his clothing (see 187n.). The transition from pellis to purpura had been charted by Lucretius in his anthropological account of early man (5.1416– 29) but Lucretius does not share J.’s illusions about the moral superiority of the hide-wearer and even suggests that the first man to wear such a skin was probably killed for the pelt. Virgil’s happy farmer, like Juvenal’s speaker here, has no need of purple (Georgics 2.465) and the Golden Age he envisages (Eclogues 4.42) will no longer dye cloth. 185  have no urge: Courtney points out that uolo with a perfect infinitive is ‘common in legal contexts’ but cf. Persius 1.91 where the words uolet incuruasse simply mean ‘the one who wants to bend my feelings’. 186  boots: the pēro was a rough thick boot, termed crudus by Virgil (Aeneid 7.690) and turned into an adjective by Persius in his description of the peronatus arator (‘thick-booted ploughman’ 5.102): see Paoli (1990) 105. Wearing high boots was the mark also of the hunter: Venus (disguised as a hunting girl) says as much as Virgil Aeneid 1.337, although the footwear in that case is the ‘purple buskin’ which would (presumably) be anathema to J.’s hardy farmer. The juxtaposition of glaciem perone makes the case stronger as footwear which is elegant would be no good in icy conditions. 187  skins turned inside-out: pellibus inuersis means simply that the animal skins have been reversed so that the furry side is worn close to the body. The sturdy farmer has the power to deflect (summouet) the east winds by this simple act of using skins: the verb often connotes active and successful aggression against enemies (see OLD s.v. ‘submoueo’). 187–8  purple cloth…: J. delays naming the subject of this phrase until the last possible moment for maximum effect. He frames the crimes (scelus atque nefas) with their cause, with the adjectives (peregrina ignotaque) separated in hyperbaton from the climactic subject (purpura). quaecumque est is a dismissive qualification (whatever it is) which continues the theme of ‘foreign and unknown to us’ (peregrina ignotaque nobis) by suggesting that the speaker has not seen it, while scelus atque nefas denote the breaking of human and divine law respectively and together encompass every form of wrongdoing. For the meretricious power of purple cf. 1.27, 7. 134–7 (flashy lawyers advertising their success with purple clothes) and for more on this exotic cloth see my note on 12.38–39. 189  men of old: we need to supply a verb such as dabant to this line. ueteres does double duty, signifying both ‘old (men)’ in contrast to the

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minoribus (the speaker has already been described as a senex in 181), and also ‘men of past times’ as contrasted with people now (nunc): for the former meaning see 6.308, 6.335, 13.61, OLD s.v. ‘uetus’ 1, for the latter see 4.52, 6.O30, 10.299, OLD s.v. 5. young: minor (the comparative of paruus) means ‘smaller’ but here is used to mean ‘younger people’ or more specifically ‘their descendants’ (see OLD s.v. ‘minor2’ 3 and cf. 1.148, 2.146, 8.234, 14.1A). 189–207  J. maintains the theme of the education of the young with a vignette of the father awaking his son from sleep to nag him into seeking success in material terms. For the range of careers offered cf. Livy 39.40.5 (‘knowledge of the law has brought some men to the top ranks, eloquence has done so for others, and military renown has advanced others’). 190 After autumn ends the nights become longer and so the working hours have to be extended into the hours of darkness, as the Stakhanovite elder Pliny is said to have done (Pliny Epistles 3.5.8): de media nocte may be a neat focalisation as what is (in winter) early morning will seem to the comatose youth to be the middle of the night. (For the phrase media de nocte cf. Horace Epistles 1.7.88, Caesar B.G. 2.7.1, Suetonius Caligula 26.4.2, OLD s.v. ‘de’ 4). supinum is often used in the sense of ‘lying languid’ (OLD s.v. ‘supinus’ 1,5) as at 1.66, 3.280, Catullus 32.10, Horace Satires 1.5.19, 1.5.85. This whole scene is reminiscent of Persius 5.132–139. 191  when the son…: the word order is expressive – after the darkness and the slumber of the previous line, the clamosus…pater verbally envelops the iuuenem with the awakening (excitat) placed last in the phrase as the shouting takes effect. barking: clamosus is used elsewhere of the theatrical ghost in a mime (8.186) or the noisy racetrack (9.144 cf. Martial 10.43.1): it is used of noisy types such as the orator (Quintilian 6.4.15) and the schoolmaster (Martial 5.84.2). The suffix -osus is often added to nouns (in this case clamor) to denote ‘rich in’ or ‘full of’: cf. seditiosus, religiosus. 191–3  get … write…: the father shouts six imperatives in less than three lines in a barrage of orders: the sequence of verbs is not entirely chronological but imagines the youth taking up his notebooks, writing on them, keeping awake, preparing the cases and consulting the lawbooks. 191  ceras (literally ‘wax’) indicates wooden tablets with a surface layer of wax on one side which could be erased and re-used ad infinitum (see OLD s.v. ‘cera’ 4, 29n., Fordyce (1961) on Catullus 42.5, Paoli (1990) 182): such tablets (often termed pugillaria, tabellae or codicilli) were used for letters (Propertius 3.23, Pliny Ep. 6.16.8) or drafts of poems (Catullus 50.2) or

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short notes as of a student such as this young man or the Elder Pliny (Pliny Ep.3.5.15.2). 192  The sequence is interesting: write (scribe) and do not go back to sleep (uigila), remembering that it is still very much night-time and the addressee is a teenager (puer). causas agere is a standard phrase for ‘to plead a case in court’ (OLD s.v. ‘causa’ 3a) but here obviously refers to the preparation of cases rather than their actual delivery. 192–3  Roman law had a long history (see OCD s.v. ‘law and procedure, Roman’) going back to the ‘Twelve Tables’ of 450BC and being added to constantly by political and legal authorities. These ancestral laws were rubras (red-lettered) because the chapter-headings were routinely written in red (cf. Persius 5.90, Petronius 46: see 5.27 for the simple meaning ‘red’). 193  Military service is held out as an alternative to the legal career, the post requiring that the youth should apply for it in writing (libello). For the meaning of libellus (the diminutive form of liber (‘book’) and denoting here a letter of petition) see OLD s.v. ‘libellus’ 3b: the secretary who dealt with such correspondence was referred to as a libellis (e.g. Tacitus Annals 15.35). The vine staff (uitem) was the symbol of a centurion’s authority but was obviously more than symbolic in its use as an instrument of corporal punishment (see 8.247: Tacitus (Annals 1.23) tells of the centurion Lucilius who was nicknamed cedo alteram (‘give me another [vine-staff]’) as he regularly broke his staff on the bodies of his soldiers). Young Romans from the senatorial and equestrian classes would expect to do some military service before entering civil careers, but the youth here is seen as one who will stay in the army until his 60th year, which suggests that he was from a lower class and that his ultimate aim was to become a senior centurion (primipilaris): for the role of this officer see Dobson (1974). At 8.46–52 J. contrasts the dull scion of a distinguished family with a man from the plebs who can plead cases in court for the uneducated nobleman, who will ‘untie legal knots’ and who can go to the East as an ‘enthusiastic soldier’, and it is likely that the father here is hoping that his son is a similarly able and ambitious young man with no ‘background’ but plenty of ability and energy. 194–5  Laelius must be the commanding officer who will (father hopes) admire his son’s rough physique. The key features here are the lack of concern over personal appearance, maturity, and obvious strength. untouched by the comb: combing one’s hair might not seem to indicate dandyish foppery, but having untidy hair and allowing nostril hair to grow unchecked both

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suggest that the young man is hardy (like the dinner-servant at 11.150) and unsullied by urban sophistication – and so better able to withstand the rigours of camp life with what Persius (3.77) calls the ‘smelly tribe of centurions’ than his soft urban contemporaries. Elsewhere we hear of combing the hair for a special occasion (11.150, 6.26–7, Persius 1.15, Horace Odes 1.15.14). Excessive concern with one’s appearance is often criticised: see e.g. 2.99 where the emperor Otho is abused for carrying a mirror in his kit and see also Ovid Ars Am. 507–8, Cicero in Cat. 2.22, Williams (1999) 31–2, 130– 131. The comb is made of box-wood as at Ovid Fasti 6.229, Martial 14.25.2 (see OLD s.v. ‘buxus’ 3a). broad shoulders: for grandes as applied to musculature cf. 16.14 (where it is calves which are big): alas is well chosen: the word commonly has a military meaning (as the ‘wing of an army’ (OLD s.v. ‘ala’ 5) or ‘unit of troops’ (OLD s.v. 6)) as well as its primary anatomical sense here (‘upper arm’ or ‘shoulder’) and the general will see the lad in military as well as physiological terms. 196  Mauri are the Moors of Mauretania in North Africa, while the Brigantes are a tribe in Northern England (Tacitus Agricola 17), and the choice of these named peoples is presumably to indicate that the youth is to traverse the whole Roman empire. Both of these places were troublesome to Hadrian in the early years of his reign. In 117/8 there was trouble among the Mauri after Hadrian had had the Moorish chieftain (and former governor of Judaea) Lusius Quietus executed, and Hadrian was granted a minor triumph for suppressing the disturbance (although the campaign was conducted by Q. Marcius Turbo): for details see OCD s.v. ‘Lusius Quietus’, CAH 11.522. The Historia Augusta (Hadrian 11.2) and also coins struck in 119 record Hadrian as having won a victory in Britain and he toured the province in 122 (see Salway (1981) 173) before arranging for his wall to be built there: the Brigantes were regarded as the largest and the most infamous of the British tribes (see Tacitus Agricola 31.4). The references here suggest that this poem was composed with a dramatic date earlier than the date which 15.27 gives us for the book as a whole (for the dating of Satires V see 13.16–18n.), but the father here may well be out of date and plucking putative military targets out of his memory rather than seriously proposing that his son enlist in an active campaign. The line is neatly phrased with the strong imperative verb at the start (dirue) followed by the chiastic and asyndetic phrasing of Maurorum attegias castella Brigantum. The word attegia is only found here (and in one inscription (CIL 13.6054)) and the effect is to suggest that the

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father is up to speed with the jargon of the campaign: cf. Virgil’s use of the Punic term magalia at Aeneid 1.421, 4.259. 197 The eagle was the legionary standard, which was held by the senior centurion (primipilus): this office was usually held for a year and the holder was then given equestrian rank thereafter (OCD s.v. ‘primipilus’) and a generous gratuity which helps to explain the transferred epithet locupletem (‘rich’) here applied to the eagle itself. sixtieth year: for the age of sixty as that of retirement cf. 13.17n.: military men were not automatically retired after twenty years’ service, as Tacitus Annals 1.34 shows. For the terms of military service see Balsdon (1969) 190–92. 198–200  Otherwise…: the father allows that military service is not for everyone by suggesting that the youth may find the work unappealing (piget) or even that the dangers are more than he can endure. 198–9  lengthy toil: the laborious work of the camp is well brought out by the sequence of long syllables and the assonance of ‘o’ in lōngōs cāstrōrum. The impersonal verb piget is well-chosen: related to the adjective piger (‘sluggish, lazy’) it indicates being weary of something (cf. Virgil Aeneid 4.335, Ennius Annales 16.401). 199–200  The mere sound of the horns and trumpets is enough to trigger the loosening of the bowels in the nervous soldier. For the combination of cornua and litui cf. Lucan 1.237–8, 7.476, Seneca Oedipus 732–3, Horace Odes 2.1.17–18: Harrison (2017, ad loc.) defines the cornu as ‘a G-shaped trumpet, a kind of large French horn’ and the lituus as ‘a curved widemouthed trumpet, a kind of slender Alpenhorn’. The Pavlovian response of the bowels is well brought out by the epithet trepidum applied to the uentrem and the vivid term soluunt, used with uenter of ‘purging’ the stomach by vomiting and diarrhoea (see OLD s.v. ‘soluo’ 10: cf. Martial’s advice on the effects of old plums at 13.29.2 and the dying Claudius at Tacitus Annals 12.67). The embarrassing effects of fear on the bowels is a staple feature of Greek comedy: cf. Aristophanes Frogs 479–85, Wasps 626, Clouds 293–5, Henderson (1975) 189. 200–201  get hold of: pares is 2nd person singular present subjunctive of paro (‘you should get’) and the subjunctive possis has final quality (‘something for you to be able to sell’). pluris is a genitive of price and is qualified by dimidio (‘by a half’: ablative of measure of difference) so that the phrase comes to mean ‘to sell with a 50% profit’. 201–2  turn your nose up: some trades (such as tanning: see corium at 204) were forced to operate across the Tiber towards the Janiculum (and

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so away from the city itself), as the processes involved pollution and foul smells: see e.g. Martial 6.93.4. The bumpy rhythm of line 202 is striking for the clash of ictus and accent until the final word: ūllī/ūs sŭbĕ/ānt āb/lēgān/dāe Tĭbĕr[im]/ ūltrā fastidium indicates ‘distaste’ as at 10.202, 326, 14.184 and there was a general feeling in Rome that trade was not appropriate for an aristocrat, although the same senators both made use of the goods manufactured (e.g. the leather skin at 13.155) and certainly engaged in trade through intermediaries (e.g. Plutarch Cato Maior 21): see OCD s.v. ‘trade, Roman’, D’Arms (1980). 203–5  distinction: discriminis is a partitive genitive with aliquid: the sentence is paced to throw the emphasis on the enjambed and contrasted terms unguenta et corium. corium is the term for a hide and so indicates the product being tanned: for the foul smell of the tannery cf. Aristophanes’s jibe at Cleon for his tanning business (Wasps 38). The point being made – that profit smells good from whatever its source – is an old one: the emperor Vespasian taxed the urine which was used by fullers and later asked his squeamish son Titus (who disapproved of this) whether the cash this raised smelt of the urine which produced it (Suetonius Vespasian 23, Dio Cassius 66.14.5). The enjambement of qualibet throws emphasis on the word and heightens the sense of ‘any at all’. 205–6  This is the mantra…: the father makes us wait for his gnomic utterance with a lengthy introduction. semper is hyperbolic, and the suggestion that Jupiter would say this if he were a poet is a humorous aside. For the phrasing dis atque ipso Ioue cf. Cicero Cat. 1.11, Virgil Aeneid 1.30: the effect here is to turn a broad comment (‘worthy of gods’) into a tiny caricature of the greatest of the gods scribbling (cf. 13.40–46) with the added insult that such a great god would be capable of no better than the trite line which follows. 207  get it: for the use of habere as meaning ‘owning property’ cf. Horace Satires 1.1.62. The sentiment is ascribed by Seneca (Ep. 115.14) to an unknown Greek tragedian (‘they ask not why or whence you are rich, they just ask how rich you are’). For the link between wealth and social standing cf. 3.143–4, Petronius Sat. 77.6, Pindar Isthmian 2.11. The prosody nēmō is the usual scansion of the word (see OLD s.v. ‘nemo’ and cf. Horace Sat. 1.1.1, 1.3.68, Persius 1.3) but elsewhere (e.g. 2.83, 3.46, 3.172, 6.17, 7.45, 13.131) J. scans it nēmŏ, suggesting that this line is a quotation from another source.

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208–9  These lines were excised by Jahn: Courtney suggests that they are ‘the sequel of 207 in its original context, whatever that may be’ and the lines are difficult to put into the mouth either of the father or the poet. The speech of the father reads better with the second-hand quotation as its climax rather than this inept gloss on the quote: but then J. is not out to make the father into a classy orator. The lines are similar to many other such sentiments in J. of the corruption of the young (cf. 1.78) and putting the cynicism into the mouths of nurses is a nice touch of scathing humour. There is also a nice balance between the boys (pueris) being ‘shown’ this while the ‘girls’ (puellae) ‘learn’ it before anything else. 208  assae were dry-nurses (‘one who does not provide milk to the infants’ is the scholiast’s explanation): the word derives from areo (‘to be parched’) and goes with uetulae. The word is only found here in extant Latin and one can surmise that it was ‘corrected’ by a scribe to the common word assem (‘penny’) which is read in five manuscripts: this then led to the ‘correction’ of repentibus (‘crawling’) to something which would fit a ‘penny’ and so Φ reads poscentibus (‘asking for’), while other scribes read petentibus. The manuscripts also divide over the word order of uetulae pueris (P) as against pueris uetulae (Φ): both are metrically possible and modern editors prefer the chiastic arrangement which has the crawling boys enclosed by the dry-nurses. Nurses are credited with didactic authority in many areas of ancient literature such as Euripides Hippolytus 490–92: Plutarch (On the Education of Children 3F) tells us that nurses are to be selected with care as they will tell stories to the children which will influence their minds (cf. Plato Laws 887d, Cicero de legibus 1.47.6, Tusc. 3.2.12, Tacitus Dialogus 29, Horace Epistles 1.4.8) and were often highly attached to their charges and vice versa (cf. Eurycleia at Homer Odyssey 1.434–5, the nurse in Aeschylus Choephoroi 730–82, the emotional farewell to Aeneas’ nurse Caieta in Virgil Aeneid 7.1–4 and Dido’s nurse at Aeneid 4.632–4). The term nutricula is used metaphorically in 7.148 of Africa as the ‘nursemaid of lawyers’ for its rhetorical schools. 209  ABC: alpha and beta are the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, here standing for the most rudimentary education in literacy (cf. Callimachus Iambi 5.3). Roman education and culture was mostly bilingual in Latin and Greek (see 15.110, Swain (2004)) and it is worth noting that girls were also taught to be literate: see Späth (2010) 150–51 and cf. especially Cicero ad Atticum 10.2.2. Elsewhere we hear of boys learning their elementa prima (‘first letters’) as at Horace Satires 1.1.26, Epistles 1.20.17–8: for J.’s views on the poor conditions of the teacher’s life see 7.215–43.

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210  pushing: for instantem in the threatening sense of ‘insisting’ see 63n. and cf. 6.407, 520, Lucretius 1.65. Here there is a neat juxtaposition of instantem monitis as the advice is couched in words of some insistence (see OLD s.v. ‘monita’ and cf. Propertius 1.1.37). Persius (1.79) has a similar picture of ‘bleary-eyed fathers pouring this sort of advice (monitus) at their sons’. quemcumque amounts to ‘whoever he is’, suggesting that the poet would be fearless in rebuking anyone who did this. 211  I could: possem is imperfect subjunctive in an implied conditional: ‘I could say ’, rather like 5.107. fatuous: uanus denotes ‘void’ or ‘pointless’ (as at 7.203, 13.137) but here means ‘foolish, silly’ as at 3.159, 8.15, (see OLD s.v. ‘uanus’ 6). The line is striking for the preponderance of monosyllabic words (sic … dic … quis te) suggestive of the finger-jabbing tone. 212  to hurry: festinare is surprising, although J. earlier (176–7) asserted that people who want to be rich want to get rich quickly, and repeated the idea with properantis in 178: the point here is that the son will grow up in his own good time and does not require pressure to advance in avarice ahead of his years. iubet is similarly tart: the father is being influenced by others into behaving as he does. 212–213  Take it from me: the short syllable on the end of praestŏ is not uncommon in J. especially in the fifth foot of the line: cf. (e.g.) 3.2, 3.59, 10.81, 10.156, 10.250, 11.198, 12.121, 13.64, 13.66, 13.94. The four-word statement across the line-end has much force: praesto has the sense ‘I guarantee, vouch for’ (OLD s.v. ‘praesto’ 14) and (with securus in 213) suggests ‘you need have no fears on that account’, while magistro is well juxtaposed in enjambement with discipulum to enact the truth that the pupil may come after the master but wil be his superior (meliorem). abi can be taken literally (go away !) but also has the colloquial sense ‘away with you!’, ‘enough’ as in Horace Epistles 2.2.205. 213–214  you will be outclassed: the son’s superior avarice to that of his father is compared to the superiority of warrior sons to their fathers in the age of the Trojan War in what is a ludicrous comparison: cf. Ovid Met. 15.855–6 for this sort of comparison. Ajax was the son of Telamon, ruler of Salamis, while Achilles was the child of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis. In the latter case it had actually been prophesied that the son of Thetis would be greater than his father (Pindar Isthmian 8.35, Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 768, Ovid Met. 11.221–265), while in the former case things are less simple: Ajax declares in Sophocles (Ajax 434–6:) ‘my father came home

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from this land of Ida bearing every kind of fame (εὔκλειαν), after winning the finest prize for courage in the army’ (on which see Finglass (2011) ad loc. and cf. also Ajax 465) while Ajax himself takes his own life unable to look his father in the eye (Soph. Ajax 462–5) and feeling that he has not lived up to his father’s example. Undoubtedly in Homer’s Iliad Ajax cuts a heroic figure and is several times (2.768, 7.289, 13.321, 17.279) named as the greatest fighter among the Greeks after Achilles, while J. mentions Ajax as ‘defeated’ in 10.84. The names are listed in chiastic order here, with the sons framing the fathers, and there is neat variatio in praeteriit and uicit (for the metaphorical use of praeteriit as meaning ‘surpassed’ see OLD s.v. ‘praetereo’ 3). 215–6  Go easy on the young: parcendum est teneris harks back to Virgil’s advice to farmers (Georgics 2.363) on how to tend young plants. The phrasing here is highly moralistic and rhetorical: for the metaphor of ‘filling the bone-marrow’ cf. OLD s.v. ‘medulla’ 2b and contrast a more literal use at 8.90: for the uses and meaning of medulla see further Watson (2003) on Horace Epode 5.37. Here the marrow is not yet filled with the evils of adult criminality where the two words denoting evil (mala nequitiae) are juxtaposed for effect. 216–17  beard cut: the youth’s young adulthood is marked by his clipping his beard: the first beard was cut and kept as a memento when the youth assumed the toga uirilis (see e.g. 3.186, Petronius Satyricon 29, Suetonius Caligula 10, Nero 12.4 for the depositio barbae). Young men are said to have kept trimmed beards until the white hairs of middle age (at about 40) and thereafter gone clean-shaven (see the barbatuli iuuenes of Cicero ad Att. 1.14.5.3–4) and this suits the language of the present passage, where cultri suggests shears for trimming rather than a razor for close shaving (see OLD s.v. ‘culter’ 1d). The verb ponere is Markland’s emendation of the manuscript reading pectere (‘to comb’) and is well attested with the meaning of ‘to have cut’: see OLD s.v. ‘pono’ 6b and cf. Horace Ars Poetica 297–8, Suetonius Caligula 5. pectere would mean that the lad’s beard has grown to a great length and so invited combing before shearing to protect the face beneath it: this is perhaps unlikely in the relatively brief period between puberty and the depositio barbae. For more on the Roman attitude towards shaving see 14.12n., Paoli (1990) 108–10: for the change in facial fashion of the bearded emperor Hadrian (not reflected in J.) see Anderson (1955). Elsewhere (8.165–6) J. regards the first beard as the time to cease from youthful folly, while here it is seen as the entry to adult misbehaviour:

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allowing the beard to grow was one sign of the philosopher (e.g. Horace Satires 2.3.35) although facial growth also was a mark of ‘primitive rusticity’ (Courtney on 4.103). 217  to let: admittere has the meaning here ‘to allow the access of’ (cf. 4.64, OLD s.v. ‘admitto’ 6a). longae is the reading of P and (if correct) would have to be taken as dative understanding barbae from barbam in 216: ‘to allow the blade of the knife to it long’. It cannot be genitive as culter is masculine in gender, and Φ’s reading longi (genitive agreeing with cultri) is preferable. 218–9  lying witness: the future misbehaviour cited here is that of lying on oath as a witness (testis) and doing so even though the rewards are small (summa/ exigua) and the oath is sworn by a major deity. The points are enhanced by the enjambement of exigua (his price is small) and by the et suggesting that he would perjure himself ‘even’ before Ceres. Ceres was the Roman goddess of agriculture, parallel to the Greek deity Demeter (see Beard, North and Price (1998) vol. 1 p.70, OCD s.v.’Ceres’) and an oath by her was especially binding as she presided over mysteries (see Braund (1996) on 3.144). 219  touching the altar of the god while swearing an oath made the oath even more binding: see 13.89n., 3.144–5, Plautus Rudens 1333–4, Horace Epistles 2.1.16, Herodotus 8.123, Demosthenes On the Crown 134. Here the oath is strengthened further by the touching of the foot of the statue of the goddess as well as her altar. The symbolic significance of this may be that of voluntarily submitting to the power of the god (see OLD s.v. ‘pes’ 7c): alternatively there may be a hint at the erotic significance of touching the foot (OLD s.v. ‘pes’ 3c, Ovid Amores 1.4.16) which adds a further touch of shamelessness to this perjurer’s behaviour. 220–224  daughter-in-law … dowry: a shocking statement: J. alleges that a husband will murder a wealthy wife for her dowry. If a wife died then the dos profecticia (that is, the dowry which the paterfamilias gave to his daughter) returned to the paterfamilias (after deductions for children – one-fifth per child). dos adventicia (which was a dowry given to her by other people such as kinsmen: see Treggiari (1991) 343) was kept by the widower, unless the donor had stipulated for its return – which then made it dos recepticia (Treggiari (1991) 351). Of course the short life-expectancy of men in Roman times would make it likely that there would be fewer surviving patresfamilias when a woman died and in these cases (when the wife’s father had already died) then the dowry would be kept by the

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widower (see Treggiari (1991) 350–51, Crook (1967) 105). In cases of divorce, by contrast, a wife would need to recover her dowry both to give to her next husband and to support herself in the meantime – considerations which would not apply in the case of death, which helps to support J.’s assumption that the wife would be murdered. The vignette is ideal material for the satirist to exploit and is paralleled in the courts – see for example the rich, old and ugly wife of Aris in Cicero (Pro Scauro 7), who met a very convenient death by hanging – a death which looked like suicide but might well have been murder. Aris, says Cicero, ‘did not wish to stay married as she (his wife) was hideous but he also did not want to divorce her because of her dowry’ (see on this Treggiari (1991) 330–31). Many authors commented that men married a wealthy woman for her money and these uxores dotatae then exercised control over their gold-digging husbands as the dowry would have to be returned if the marriage ended (see e.g. 6.136–41, Horace Odes 3.24.19–20, Plautus Asinaria 87, Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1161a1–2 (‘sometimes women with an inheritance rule over men’), Martial 8.6.1–3). The scathing image of the hen-pecked husband is here replaced by one who marries to get his hands on the dowry and kills the wife to secure it: cf. Persius 2.14. 220–1  dead: elatam (from effero) simply means ‘carried out’ but here has the sense of ‘carried out for her funeral’ (see OLD s.v. ‘effero1’ 3 and cf. 1.72, 6.175, 6.567, Martial 8.43.1, Horace Satires 2.5.85 and cf. the same meaning of Greek ἐκφέρω). uestra suggests that the son is still living his father and so the new bride will be sharing the home of her father-in-law. The force of the sentence is increased with the words iam … si … subit – she is ‘already’ dead if she (so much as) enters the threshold accompanied by (cum) the fatal dowry. Crossing the threshold was the mark of a new marriage and the doorposts were decorated lavishly (see Watson and Watson (2014) on 6.51–2) before the bride was carried over the threshold by her attendants (Treggiari (1991) 168). subeo can simply mean ‘go underneath’ and so ‘go through the doorway’ (as at 6.419) but elsewhere (2.88) J. uses the simple verb intrant for this action of entering a house and subit may bear a more sinister sense of ‘undergo’ (OLD s.v. ‘subeo’ 4) as in 6.592, 6.652 as well as sexual submission (2.50). This joins well with the compound adjective mortifera (literally ‘death-bringing’ from mors + fero) to suggest the innocent sacrificial victim being murdered. For the compound adjective cf. 4.113, 9.95, 10.10, Lucretius 6.1138: J. elsewhere has similar forms such as letifero (4.56) and umbrifero (10.194). The lethal force of the dowry is

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well conveyed by the joining of this ponderous adjective to the dissyllabic dote – so much harm from so small a word. 221–2  fingers … strangle: the husband is imagined strangling his bride, with the girl verbally enveloped by the murderous fingers (quibus … digitis) which frame the sentence. The daughter-in-law (nurus) of 220 is now simply ‘her’ (illa). For premo in the specific sense of ‘throttle, strangle’ see 6.621, OLD s.v. ‘premo’ 26: the detail per somnum (cf. Lucretius 4.1018, Virgil Aeneid 3.633, 5.636 Martial 11.46.1) adds vivid colour to the narrative by depicting the murder as taking place while the victim is asleep. 222–4  Whatever you think…: J. postulates a contrast between the addressee (the father) who thinks wealth should be acquired by effort and the son (abruptly referred to as illi) who has a faster route (breuior uia) to riches. The difficulty of obtaining wealth by seeking it abroad is well conveyed by the heavy syllables of the gerundive adquirenda (cf. 114–6n., 125, 238) and by the polysyndetic epic phrase terraque marique (often used of accumulated dangers or triumphs: cf. Lucretius 3.837, 5.219, 6.678, Virgil Aeneid 10.162, Livy 33.39.6, Lucan 1.201, Augustus Res Gestae 13). Here the epic journey and risk is contrasted with a ‘shorter route’ depicted briefly in five (mostly light) syllabes (brĕuĭor uĭă). 224  there is no … crime: another of J.’s sweeping generalisations (sententiae) as at: 1.74, 2.8, 2.47, 3.152–3, 10.22, 11.208, 13.191–2, 14.176– 7. The sentiment contrasts the honest toil of the father with the quick fix of the criminal son and assumes that theft is easy, using juxtaposition to contrast nullus and magni. The genitive case of sceleris is possessive: crime has many attributes perhaps but hard work is not one of them. 224–5  ‘I never told him…’: J. puts words into the mouth of his interlocutor as at (e.g) 153–5, with his denial emphasised by the pair of strong verbs (mandaui…suasi) framing line 225, as well as the four heavy spondees of māndāuī dīcēs ōlīm nēc. olim means here ‘one day’ in the future as at Horace Epodes 3.1, Satires 1.4.137, Ars Poetica 387–8, Virgil Aeneid 1. 20, 289–90 (see OLD s.v. ‘olim’ 3): elsewhere in J. it refers to the past (e.g. 3.163, 4.96, 5.110, 6.42, 6.157, 8.98, 9.17, 10.142, 11.77, 14.180: see OLD s.v. ‘olim’ 1,2). 226  the cause … you: a strikingly inelegant line metrically, with final monosyllable and clash of ictus and accent in the last two words, suggestive perhaps of the finger-wagging indignation of the speaker. For the censorious phrasing cf. Livy 28.27.11, Tacitus Annals 4.1.5 and for the thought that children’s behaviour all down to the parents cf. Seneca Ep. 115.11. Here the son’s condition is classed as insanity (‘a bad mind’ (mentis … malae))

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as at Terence Andria 164, Catullus 15.14, 40.1, Seneca Medea 46–7, de Ben. 3.27.2, Tibullus 2.5.104: the opposite term bona mens indicates ‘sanity’ at Seneca de Beneficiis 2.14.3, Ovid Fasti 4.366. For the collocation of causa and origo as parallel terms cf. Cicero Orator 174.6, 177, Ovid Metamorphoses 15.68–9, Apuleius Apologia 10.3.18, Tacitus Germania 9.2.2: the effect here is to heighten the emphasis and extend the weight of the accusation being levelled throughout this line at the monosyllabic culprit te (you). source: origo always occurs at the end of the line in Lucretius, Ovid and Virgil, unlike here: penes means ‘in the hands of’ (OLD s.v. ‘penes’ 3). 227–232  Whoever…: another sententia (see 224n.) generalising about anyone who seeks wealth before rounding once again on the addressee with second-person verb and pronoun (reuoces … te). The imagery of the son in his runaway chariot hints possibly at the myth of Phaethon who took the chariot of his father the sun-god. For the thought cf. Seneca Epistles 115.11 (‘our parents made us impressed by gold and silver, and avarice instilled in the young has settled more deeply and grown with us’). 227  The sentiment is given added weight by the heavily spondaic rhythm. For census as ‘property’ or wealth see 175–6n., 10.13. praecipio here means ‘instruct’ (OLD s.v. ‘praecipio’ 5b, cf. praecepta at 14.189, 15.107) or even ‘recommend’ (cf. 14.15–6, OLD s.v. ‘praecipio’ 6) – the word monitu in 228 picks up both senses. 228  brings up: there is a sharp change of tense from the perfect praecepit to the present tenses producit … dat … effundit suggesting that the previous instruction leads to the present (unintended and unwelcome) state of affairs, as at 12.62–7. laeuo (literally ‘left-side’) here means ‘harmful, pernicious’ (OLD s.v. ‘laeuus’ 5: cf. 6.495). 229  This line is not found in Φ and is bracketed as suspect by Mayor (who calls it ‘doubtless spurious’), Clausen, Willis and Braund, but accepted as sound by many other editors. It is, after all, possible for the omission to be the result of homoeoarchon, as line 228 and 229 both begin with the same word and a scribe could easily have confused them: and the line is apt in the context as this avaricious father has sons who aim to double their patrimonia. The argument of the context also requires the sons’ career to be one of crime as well as simply avarice (spoliare 237). Duff prints the lines as they stand, seeing the whole as two balanced clauses of relative clause (quisquis … amorem ~ et qui … conduplicari) followed by principal clause (et … auaros ~ dat … curriculo), reading the sentence as simply ‘whoever

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has instilled the love of great wealth, also (et) brings up avaricious boys, and who (has instructed, understanding praecepit from 237) them to have their estates doubled by fraud, he gives them free rein…’. This is awkward: the passive infinitive conduplicari is found nowhere else in Latin (although the verb is found with diuitias in Lucretius 3.70 and cf. Persius 6.78 rem duplica) and the need to use praecepit to govern it is also hard to accept: Housman notes that understanding praecepit makes per fraudes difficult – it would mean that the father deliberately makes his sons criminals, while the sense of the lines is that the father produces sons who imitate his avarice and turn to crime to fund this, an unintended consequence of his fatherly example and one which is adduced to deter the reader from avarice in the first place. Housman suggests that a line has dropped out after 229 and writes: et qui, per fraudes patrimonia conduplicari

(‘and who, when they see their inheritance doubled by fraud, long for their own to be doubled in this way also.’) which spells out the meaning of the passage in rhetorical style: and the omission can be explained by homoeoteleuton. The meaning envisaged is however difficult as the whole clause has to be taken as parallel to auaros – not just miserly but also ready to imitate crime – leaving the father as the singular subject of dat in 230. I follow Green and Ferguson in reading: quippe et per fraudes patrimonia conduplicare suggested by Amyx (1941). This would make dat libertatem the main verb governing the infinitive, and this has many precedents (Amyx cites Propertius 3.15.4, Virgil Aen. 3.670 and 8.591, Statius Thebaid 3.311 and 10.792; and compares the use of copiam dare at Catullus 65.366 and Virgil Aeneid 9.482). 230–231  Most editors take curriculo as meaning chariot (OLD s.v. ‘curriculum’ 5): the word is in the dative case with effundit habenas as at Virgil Aeneid 6.1, Ovid Metamorphoses 1.280. Editors notice that the masculine relative quem must refer to the son rather than to the chariot as curriculum is neuter – although a masculine form curriculus is also found in the grammarians (see OLD s.v.’curriculum’). This seems an unnecessary distinction as it is clearly a person who will respond to being ‘called back’

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rather than a thing (as Virgil notes in Georgics 1.514) and the chariot is only serving as a metaphor for the son. 231–2  If you call him back: the metaphor of the chariot-race continues, with the appropriate terms revoces (to recall the riders after a false start (OLD s.v. ‘reuoco’ 2, as at Ovid Amores 3.2.73)), subsistere (to stop running: see OLD s.v. ‘subsisto’ 3b), rapitur (‘is swept along’ or better races on as at Silius 1.134, 2.172, with a faint echo of the more literal sense of rapio (‘I seize, steal’) which fits the context) and metis (the turning-posts around which chariots had to pass to return up the track: see OLD s.v. ‘meta’ 2, Paoli (1990) 251, OCD s.v. ‘horse- and chariot-races’). 232  ignoring you … behind: the line is elegantly constructed around the central strong present indicative verb rapitur, with both ‘you’ and the ‘turning-posts’ abandoned – albeit in different ways. The turning-posts were the crucial and critical elements in the race: if the chariot went too close to one it might well crash and wreck all chances of victory, whereas if the chariot passed too widely then it would give another driver the chance to undertake and seize the lead. relictis here focalises the exultant speed of the driver who has successfully negotiated the turn and left the posts (safely) behind. ignoring: contempto marks a sour point – the son who perhaps owes everything to his father is now full of contempt for him and has left him in disgust. 233–4  Nobody…more latitude: a nice example of a sententia couched in both negative and then positive terms. No criminal will be satisfied if he only sins as much as you let him (and no more) – in fact everyone makes greater allowances for himself [than he makes for others]. The idea that we are more indulgent with our own faults than we are with those of others is found also in Horace Satires 1.3.20–37 – although Horace recommends that friends, just as parents and lovers do, should treat others with more indulgence, which uses this point of self-knowledge for different ends (see Gowers (2012) 119–120). J. is here remarking on the way in which children will push boundaries and so seek to break whatever limits parents set them: delinquere is found at Horace Satires 1.3.84 in the general sense of ‘doing wrong’. tantum … quantum is a neat correlative: ‘so much’ crime ‘as much’ as you (the addressee/reader) may allow, with the verb permittas emphasised in enjambement. When we read the plural verb indulgent we have to understand ‘people’ or ‘all of us’ from the negative nemo in 233. 234  give … latitude: for sibi indulgere used of giving oneself license to

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misbehave cf. 6.283, OLD s.v. ‘indulgeo’ 3b, Cicero de legibus 1.39, Horace Odes 2.2.13. latius (the comparative adverb from latus) usually has a spatial sense (as at e.g. Horace Odes 2.2.9, 3.1.9) but here more plausibly has the metaphorical sense of ‘latitude’ involving ‘grossness’ of behaviour (cf. OLD s.v. ‘latus’1 5c). 235–238  When you tell…: telling your son that generosity is stupid is tantamount to teaching him to rob and cheat, a message reinforced by the similarity of language (dicis … doces) but not one which is in itself cogent as it conflates the tight-fisted with the criminal. The argument’s force relies on the assumption of 233–4 that the young will always go beyond the limits we set them. 235  tell a young man: the scene, as Duff points out, is familiar from Roman comedy where the father advises his son against being generous to spendthrift friends (e.g. Plautus Trinummus 2.2). friend: amico is in emphatic position at the end of the line: giving money to strangers might be rash, but most people would assume that giving to one’s friends, either in a spirit of mutual support (see e.g. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 8.1155) or as an expression of the love which underpins true friendship (see e.g. Seneca Ep. 9.8) is all part of the meaning of friendship. The word amicus of course has a social and political sense in Latin which includes ‘partisan’ and ‘supporter’ (OLD s.v. ‘amicus’ 3) and in this ethically diluted sense J.’s words have more of a ring of truth, especially as the next line reduces the amicus to a propinquus. The Latin is slightly elliptic: we have to understand cum dicis iuueni stultum qui…. 236  relative: propinquus means originally ‘neighbouring’ but came also to mean ‘closely related’ as at 8.219, 13.207, 14.6, OLD s.v. ‘propinquus’ 4. The line is elegantly and expressively phrased, with the heavy syllables of paupertatem at once lifted by the two short syllables of leuet and with the neat doublet variation of leuet attollatque – for this combination cf. Virgil Aeneid 4.690, Livy 21.58.9.3, Seneca Ep. 65.16.3, 117.19. For the idea of poverty as a heavy condition needing to be ‘lifted’ cf. Ovid Met. 8.633–4, Seneca Dialogi 12.12.1, Tacitus Annals 2.48.11. 237–8  to rob, to defraud and to use: there is a pleasing tricolon crescendo here of infinitive phrases beginning with et and dependent on doces: (1) et spoliare… (2) et circumscribere (3) et omni/ crimine diuitias adquirere. circumscribo commonly has the meaning defraud as here: see 10. 222, 15.136, Seneca Ep. 97.11, OLD s.v. ‘circumscribo’ 6, ‘circumscriptor’, ‘circumscriptio’ 4. crimine here must mean crime (as 8.166, 13.24, OLD

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s.v. ‘crimen’ 4) rather than ‘charge’ (OLD s.v. ‘crimen’ 1): the whole phrase is close in meaning to 13.24–5. 238–9  the Decii: Publius Decius Mus and his son (with the same name) both died willingly to save the Roman army: the father in 340BC fighting the Latins (Livy 8.9.8) and the son in 295 fighting the Samnites (Livy 10.28.15). Both of them offered their lives in a ceremony called deuotio in which a man offered his life to the gods of the underworld in exchange for the safety of the state: this patriotic self-immolation of the Decii became the stuff of legend – see 8.254, Cicero Rab. Post.2, de natura deorum 3.15, Sest. 48, Virgil Aeneid 6.824. For more on deuotio see OCD s.v. ‘deuotio’, Beard, North and Price (1998) vol. 1, 35–36, 111, vol. ii, 157–58, Versnel (1976), Janssen (1981). There is proud alliteration of patriae … pectore. quarum picks up diuitias and we have to understand quantus as correlative to an implied tantus, thus: quarum amor in te quantus erat…. 240–243  These lines refer to legends of the Greek city of Thebes. Cadmus the Phoenician killed a dragon which was guarding a spring sacred to the god Ares near Thebes, whereupon Athene told him to sow the teeth of this dead dragon (anguis); he did so, and men sprang up fully armed out of the furrows. These men were the ‘Sparti’ (‘sown men’) and Cadmus then had to defeat them in battle. He did so by tricking them and all but five were killed: these five became (with Cadmus) the founders of the city. Menoeceus was a descendant of these Sparti and when the prophet Tiresias told the city that the plague which was killing them required the sacrifice of one descended from the Sparti, he threw himself over the city-walls. His grandson (also called Menoeceus) stabbed himself when Tiresias made the same demand to rid the city of the invading army from Argos (see Apollodorus 3.6.7.7, Euripides Phoenissae 905–1018, 1090–2, Statius Thebaid 10.628–782, Cicero Tusculan Disputations 1.116.14). 240  if Greece is not lying: si Graecia uera reminds us that in J.’s eyes Greeks are habitual liars: see 10.174 (Graecia mendax), 3.86–108 and cf. Pliny N.H. 5.4.2. The distancing of the author from his story allows him to embellish the following lines with expressive language without appearing to be gullible in believing them. Lines 241–3 were regarded as spurious by Knoche and Markland and are marked as suspect by Willis and Braund but are plausible when seen as the poet both maintaining his scepticism and also producing parody of the sort of mythological epic which he attacked in the opening of Satire 1 (1.1–13). For an earlier epic handling of this tale see Ovid Metamorphoses 3.104–110.

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241  furrows … teeth: there is a pleasing immediacy about the sudden appearance from out of the combination of furrows (sulcis) and teeth (dentibus) of legiones: not just people, but men formed into armed ranks. dentibus is an ablative of source (AG §403a, KS II.1.375–6) common with verbs such as nascor: cf. 4.140, 6.12, 8.259, 13.142, Horace Odes 1.1.1, Virgil Aeneid 2.74. quorum is masculine and so cannot be picking up Thebas (which is feminine): it has to be read as understanding Thebanorum. 242–3  with their shields: the surprise of 241 is repeated here with the men being ‘born with shields’, recalling the birth of Athene fully armed from the head of Zeus in Greek mythology. The warfare is conveyed in epic language: for bella capessunt cf. Statius Achilleid 1.467, Silius Punica 1.313, 7.325, 9.611, 10.58, Livy 26.25.5, 45.22.11, Virgil Aeneid 3.234 (arma capessant)), and the adverb continuo (at once) is emphasised in enjambement in the next line (cf. Lucretius 4.284, 345, Virgil Aeneid 9.118, 11.810, Lucan 1.315 for this effect). The epic language of the sentence is then deflated with the bathetic image of the trumpeter. The tubicen was the trumpeter who signalled the start of the battle (see 1.169, 15. 52, 15.157, Virgil Aeneid 11.424, Ovid Met. 3.705, Donaldson (1988)) and the quasi-plausible comment is clearly satirising the whole incident with a caricature of the trumpeter arising from the furrow. 244–5  For the metaphor of sparks (scintillas) producing the fire (ignem) cf. Virgil Aeneid 12.102 (with Tarrant (2012) ad loc.). It is more effective here as scintilla is also used by itself of incipient character traits (e.g. Cicero de Finibus 5.43.12, de republica 2.37.11: the image is used and explained by Seneca Ep. 94.29.3). The two lines operate as a form of tricolon crescendo: the fire is introduced (ergo ignem), then explained (cuius…dedisti) and then given a whole line to rampage over everything (flagrantem….uidebis). The expansive phrasing of flagrantem late mirrored in rapientem cuncta enacts the fire spreading over the line, and the two lines both end with a personal secondperson verb making it clear that the addressee will suffer what he has caused. 246  leniency be shown: parcetur is an impersonal passive – parco is an intransitive verb and so cannot be used in the personal passive (AG §208d) – and misero is to be understood with tibi. 246–7  lion-cub: the metaphor changes to that of a lion cub which grows up to destroy its own master. The image is an old one, found memorably in Aeschylus Agamemnon 717–36 and used of the young general Alcibiades by Aristophanes (Frogs 1431–2): cf. also Theocritus 5.38 (see Gow (1950) ad loc.), Palatine Anthology 9.47, Lucan 4. 237–42, Martial Spectacles 10.1.

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Callicles in Plato (Gorgias 483e5–6) alludes to this fable and his whole speech is a celebration of the powerful beast throwing off the shackles of education and law. For the rearing of lion-cubs see 7.75, Herodotus 3.32.1. Here the language is well chosen to elicit the reader’s response: the person who is nominally the master (magistrum) is afraid (trepidum) and the juxtaposition of the words enhances the irony – and in cauea is nicely ironic also, in that the master is himself imprisoned by his own prisoner. The status of the lion as his pet (alumnus) is left to the end of the line and the sentence for maximum effect, and magno fremitu suggests the fearful qualities which made this lion both a wonderful beast to show off to his guests and also a terrifying animal to be eaten by. The ease with which this magister is dispatched is shown in the short two-syllable verb which kills him: tollet means here ‘murder, despatch’ (see OLD s.v. ‘tollo’ 13) but the word also connotes ‘picking up’ and so we have this sketch of the massive beast simply hoisting the master aloft to his death. cauea can mean either ‘cage’ (OLD s.v. ‘cauea’ 1) or ‘arena’ (OLD s.v. 4): the latter meaning would only make sense if this master had reared an animal for himself to fight in public and many translators opt for ‘den’. Interestingly the Φ manuscript reads in caueam which gives a graphic sense of the lion taking the master ‘into the den’ but raises the obvious question of how the lion can both drag and roar (magno fremitu) simultaneously. 248  mathematicis can mean ‘mathematician’ (OLD s.v. ‘mathematicus’ 1) but its common secondary meaning is astrologer as at 6.562, Seneca Apocolocyntosis 3.2, Petronius 76.10, Suetonius Nero 40.2: the two meanings conflate presumably because of the calculation involved in producing a horoscope, as in the case of Thales who allegedly predicted an eclipse by calculation (Herodotus 1.74). If the astrologers know the date of birth (genesis, γένεσις), they can work out the position of the seven known planets at the time and thus construct a horoscope. Interest in astrology was huge in the ancient world, as is seen in works such as Manilius’ Astronomica, and it was taken as serious science by many rather than superstition (see Watson and Watson (2014) on 6.553–6). Petronius’ Trimalchio has a ‘zodiac dish’ as part of his banquet and pronounces on astrological matters with pseudo-authority (Satyricon 35, 39) and astrology was seen as dangerous enough to have astrologers expelled from Rome periodically (see 6.562–4) especially if they predicted the death or downfall of the emperor (see Tacitus Annals 3.22): Tacitus describes (Histories 1.22) astrologers as ‘a race of men treacherous to the powerful, quick to deceive the hopeful, a race which in

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our society will always be banned and will always also be retained’ and such men were indeed banished in 33 BC, AD 17 (Tacitus Annals 2.32.3), AD 52 (Tacitus Annals 12.52.3) and again thereafter (see Cramer (1951). Predicting the date of death (such as J. mentions here) was banned by Augustus in AD 11 (Dio 56.25.5), although Augustus himself was impressed by the astrologer Theogenes who fell at his feet in homage of his future (Suetonius Augustus 94.12). Tiberius was famous for his reliance on astrologers (see 10.94 and my note ad loc.): see further OCD s.v. ‘astrology’. In this case the son has consulted the astrologer to find out how long his father will live (cf. 3.42–4, 6.565–8, Ovid Met. 1.148) and decides to circumvent fate with a dose of poison to be rid of him sooner. Logically, this is (of course) nonsense. If fate decides what will happen then the time and manner of death cannot be brought forward by any means, but Virgil can still describe Dido’s suicide as not one caused by fate but ‘before her day’ (ante diem (Aeneid 4.696–7)). J. here juxtaposes the Greek terms mathematicis genesis to give both the flavour of expertise and some hint of his distaste for all things Greek, as at 13.121 (where see note). 248–9 colus denotes the spindle or distaff of the Fates ‘from which the thread of each man’s life is spun’ (OLD s.v. ‘colus’ 3) and so by extension the fate itself. The word here agrees with tardas: the distaff is slow as it predicts a long time before the father’s fated death: the stamen is the thread of life spun by the Fates (OLD s.v. ‘stamen’ 2b) which is ‘broken off’ to indicate the length a a man’s thread/life. For the imagery of Fate as weaving cf. 10.252, 12.64–6, Homer Iliad 20. 127–8, 24. 209–10 Odyssey 7.196–8, Catullus 64. 306–22, [Tibullus] 3.3.35–6, Horace Odes 2.3.15–16, Lucan 3.19, and note that one of the Fates is called Clotho (‘spinner’). The suggestion here is that the thread is only cut off at death: elsewhere (e.g. Horace Epodes 13.15–16) we find the idea that man’s fate is determined at birth. graue goes with the infinitive expectare – waiting for the death is ‘tedious’ or ‘oppressive’ (OLD s.v. ‘grauis’ 10). 249  the slow … thread is: this is an elegant balanced five-word line of A-B-C-B-A structure whereby words referring to future come first and last, technical nouns of the spinning are second and fourth and the central word is the strong future indicative verb morieris (you will die). The participle abrupto is held over to the next line in a splendidly effective enjambement whereby the reader – like the son – has to wait for the death. 250  delaying: moraris (from moror) hints at morieris (from morior) in a

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pointed jingle: you moraris when you should morieris. The heavy syllables and sequence of monosyllables also help to convey the lack of movement in the old man’s refusal to die, and the repeated iam in this and the next line also emphasise the tedium. uota are petitionary prayers accompanied by promises to the gods (see 124–5n.). 251  stag-like: the stag – like the crow (10.247 where see my note) – was said to have an unusually long life-span, although this idea was denied by Aristotle (Hist. An. 6.29.578b23) and Pliny (N.H.7.153.1), while Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 3.69) quotes Theophrastus as lamenting that crows and stags have more life than we are given. The idea was first voiced by Hesiod (fr. 304 M-W) who states that ‘the chattering crow lives out nine generations of healthy men, but the stag lives four times the life of a crow’. Here there is a nice contrast between the youth of the son (iuuenem) and the longa … senectus of the father and the pain of waiting is raised to the level of mental torture (OLD s.v. ‘torqueo’ 5). 252  Go and find: the message here to the father is that he needs to stock up on medical help and antidotes to poisons if he is to survive his son’s impatience: the two imperatives (quaere atque eme) are juxtaposed centrally in the line to suggest the urgency of this need. Archigenes is the famous Syrian doctor mentioned at 13.98 (where see note), while Mithridates’ name was attached to a range of antidotes which were popular: Mithridates VI Eupator Dionysus (120–63 BC) was king of Pontus and Rome’s most feared enemy in the 1st century BC (see 10.273n.) who protected himself against poison by taking regular small amounts of them to build up his tolerance (Pliny N.H. 25.6, Martial 5.76.1–2). These potions are mentioned in the medical literature (Celsus Med. 5.23.3, Galen 14.154–5) and casually alluded to by J. at 6.660–1 (where see Watson and Watson (2014) ad loc.). 253  concocted: the mot juste for putting together such potions was componere (see OLD s.v. ‘compono’ 7c) and this verb was used by Pliny (N.H. 29.24) for the concoction of exactly this substance. 253–4  If you want to…: instead of simply saying ‘if you wish to live’ J. uses two poetic paraphrases for ‘living to next year’ in the form of plucking another fig and handling new roses. Figs fruit in autumn while roses appear in spring and so the hysteron proteron sequence suggests ‘if you wish to live till autumn – or even just until the spring…’. The mention of figs is possibly ironic, as it was said that Livia had poisoned the figs which her husband the emperor Augustus was in the habit of picking, and this was allegedly the cause of his death (Dio 56.30.2) and Horace mentions the first figs along

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with the risk of sudden death in the late summer heat (Epistles 1.7.5). The imagery is very tactile: tractare and decerpere both denote physical handling of the plants. Roses are a symbol of luxury and pleasure (e.g. Horace Odes 1.5.1, 3.19.22, Cicero Tusc. 5.73, Seneca Ep. 36.9, Martial 3.68.5) which gives a clue to the father’s wealth which the son wishes to have (see OLD s.v. ‘rosa’ 1b) and which looks forward to the aesthetic pleasure which the next paragraph unfolds (uoluptatem 256). 255  J.’s addressee is a father who needs to fear his son, while Mithridates was both a father and also a king, fearful of being poisoned off his throne, and so he has twice as much reason as the next man to be fearful: for the conflict between parental and political obligations cf. Ovid’s tart judgement on King Agamemnon killing his child Iphigenia as rexque patrem uicit (‘the king overcame the father’ Met. 12.30). Mithridates’ son Pharnaces mounted an attack upon his father (Livy Periochae 102, Dio 37.13) and the king ended up asking a Gaul to kill him with a sword as poison would not work. Φ’s reading aut…aut (‘either (as) a father or (as) a king’) makes perfect sense but offers the roles as alternative, whereas the reading preferred here shows that they are simultaneous. 256–302  The dangers incurred in the pursuit of wealth and the folly attached to it. J. introduces this familiar satirical trope with theatrical imagery (256– 8, 262–4), and examples from Greek tragedy (284–7), viewing the spectacle of human folly in the manner of a member of an audience viewing drama or farce: rather like the way he contrasted the falsity of contemporary epic with the monstrous realities of everyday life in the opening lines of Satire 1. The poet moves away from the topic of parental guidance but the sequence of thought is not awkward: if (after all) the adults are going to educate their children they need to see things as they are, and J. is the man to show them. 256  I am showing: the short final syllable of monstrŏ is common in J.: see 153n. and 10.363 for the same word in the same position in the line. 256–7  you could not match it: the anaphora of nulla…nulla creates a pair of parellel theatrical venues. First the theatra (plural of theatrum (a transliteration of the Greek θέατρον and usually denoting a space such as the Theatre of Pompey): cf. 6.68, 10.128, 213) and then the pulpita (plural of pulpitum – a wooden stage for public performances and recitations). The two terms are combined in the same way at 3.173–4 (cf. Propertius 4.1a.15–16, Horace Epistles 1.19.40–1, Ovid Ars Am. 1.103–4). The praetor was one of the senior officials in Rome: only the two consuls had more power than them in republican Rome (see OCD s.v. ‘praetor’ and cf. 11.194–5 with my

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note ad loc.) and even under the empire the office was a significant political achievement which enjoyed administrative authority in the lawcourts, the city and the provinces. The urban praetor had the responsibility for organising and paying for the games – which makes lauti (posh or ‘wealthy’: see 13–14n.) pointed and apt. The style of line 257 is itself bombastic and rhetorical in imitation of the theatrical experience alluded to: note the jingle of aequare queas and the alliteration in praetoris pulpita. 258  watch: spectes is chosen rather than (say) uideas to keep the imagery of the theatrical spectator going. risk their lives: capitis (literally ‘head’) denotes life itself, as in phrases such as capitis damnare (‘to sentence to death’ e.g. Caesar B.C. 3.83.3, Nepos Pausanias 3.5.1 OLD s.v. ‘damno’ 1c). discrimen (from discerno and meaning literally ‘distinguishing’ or ‘difference’ as at 5.123, 6.301, 10.196, 13.118, 14.203) here means ‘crisis’ or ‘mortal danger’ (OLD s.v. ‘discrimen’ 5: cf. 10.311, 12.24, 12.55, 14.290). For the phrase capitis discrimen cf. Tacitus Germania 12.1, OLD s.v. ‘discrimen’ 3b). constent here has the meaning ‘cost’ with the ablative of price discrimine (cf. 6.365, 6.626, 7.45, OLD s.v. ‘consto’ 11): its subjects are incrementa in 259 and also fiscus and nummi in 260. 259  estate: domus (literally ‘house’) here represents the sum-total of the family wealth, the res domestica, rather than the building. The treasure chest (arca) is often mentioned where lavish wealth is under discussion: see 1.90, 3.143, 10.25,11.26, 13.74, Horace Sat. 1.1.67. This one is bronze-lined (aerata) but there may be also a suggestion of the money (aes) it contains. The word multus (agreeing with fiscus) is neatly placed aerata…in arca just as the cash is placed there in real life. 260  fat bag of cash: fiscus properly means the imperial treasury (4.55). Here it denotes the receptacle in which money was kept (OLD s.v. ‘fiscus’ 2: cf. Seneca Ep. 119.5) but there is also the suggestion of a grandiose fortune being stored. Money was regularly stored in temples and the epithet uigilem (transferred onto the god himself) here suggests that the temple of Castor had guards: this temple was on the south-west side of the Forum in Rome and was often referred to for brevity’s sake as ‘Castor’ even though it was dedicated to both Castor and Pollux, the sons of Zeus and brothers of Helen of Troy. The line is neatly framed by two words for money: fiscus … nummi. 261–2  Avenging Mars: there had been a robbery at the temple of Mars (in the Forum Augusti) in which thieves got away with not only the cash deposits but also (quoque) the helmet from the god’s statue which (ironically) represented the god’s protection in battle – a crime alluded to at 13.151–2,

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where see note. The irony here is that Mars the Avenger (Ultor) could not prevent, let alone avenge, this slight to his godhead and so human guards had to be set in place, an irony brought out by suas – he could not protect his own goods, let alone those of others. Men of wealth had been storing their money with Castor rather than Mars since then. 262–3  you may leave aside: no need for religious festivals if you want drama – look around you. The three festivals mentioned here are: the Floralia (April 28th–May 3rd), the Cerealia (April 12th–19th) and the Ludi Megalenses of Cybele (April 4th–10th): ‘with the winter over and the crops sown, April was a good month for festivity’ (Balsdon (1969) 246). The Floralia (dedicated to the goddess Flora who was responsible for all things which flower) were (according to the scholiast) famous for using prostitutes to perform naked in something like gladiatorial combat (6.246–67: cf. Ovid Fasti 5.348–55, Valerius Maximus 2.10.8, Seneca Ep. 97.8). The Ludi Cereales (in praise of Ceres the goddess of agriculture, equivalent of the Greek Demeter) held chariot-racing events in the Circus Maximus and also performed dramas by Juvenal’s day: Ovid (Fasti 4.681–2) also tells us that on the final day ‘foxes were set on fire and released onto the track as an offering to Ceres’ (Ash (2007) 226). Cybele was a Phrygian goddess whose worship came to Rome during the Punic Wars in 205–4 BC and who as the Magna Mater (Great Mother) exercised a profound impact on the religious life of the city (see OCD s.v. ‘Cybele’). Plays were performed outside her temple on the Palatine, on wooden stages erected for the occasion. It is notable that J. here refers to the festivals by the names of their patron gods and that he refers to the dramas by simply mentioning the stage-curtains (aulaea): this is a neat way of moving from the helmet of Mars in 261 to the curtains of the gods in 263. aulaea were theatre curtains, lowered to reveal the scene and then raised at the end of the performance (see OCD s.v. ‘theatre staging, Roman’) and cf. the metaphorical use of the term at 10.39. The construction licet + subjunctive to mean ‘you may’ (OLD s.v. ‘licet’ 1c) occurs many times in J. (e.g.1.162, 11.205): usually the construction has a concessive sense (‘although’ OLD s.v. ‘licet’ 4) as at 14.12. 264  human … entertainment: a neat, one-line, verbless chiastic summary to remind the reader of the point being made: understand sunt with the line. There is a neat contrast between work and play here in the juxtaposition of negotia ludi. For the thought cf. Cicero de senectute II.5 (with Powell (1988) ad loc.), Tacitus Annals 3.18, Horace Epistles 2.1.197–8.

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265–271  J. develops this theme with a detailed contrast of the circus entertainer and the merchant sailor. The circus entertainers are dismissed in two lines of reductive language, while the addressee’s situation is spelled out over five lines covering both his personal plight and his mental state. The distinction is harsh and harshly drawn: circus performers were lowclass persons, while many rich men had money invested in trade, for all the disapproval this might elicit (see 142–3n.). For disapproval of the greed and folly of risking one’s life in the pursuit of money see 288–91, 12.57–61, Persius 6.75–80, Horace Satires 1.1.29–32, Odes 1.1.11–14, Epode 2.6, Cato de agr. praef. 3, Hesiod Works and Days 236–7: J.’s whole description of the storm at sea (12.17–82) is imbued with the same feeling. 265–6 The petaurum was a springboard which was used by acrobats to demonstrate their skills either at dinner-parties (cf. Petronius 53.11–12) or (as here) in public performances. J. reduces the value and the skill of the act by describing it as simply bodies thrown up and his questioning use of a phrase expressing strong delight (oblectant animum: cf. Lucretius 2.363, Cicero Tusc. 3.60, Seneca Ep. 117.31) is ironic. Manilius (5.439–443) gives a lively account of the way such acts possibly played out, with a pair of acrobats using the petaurum to launch themselves into the air, alternately rising and falling in a see-saw movement which saw one rise as the other one landed back on the petaurum. Manilius tells us that they varied the excitement by leaping from the petaurum through flaming hoops. It is likely that this sort of flying performer was the famous Icarus who ‘at his first attempt fell down close to the imperial couch and spattered the emperor with his blood’ (Suetonius Nero 12). 266  Rope was also a common feature of acrobatic performance: and here and at 272 we get a glimpse of the acts concerned. rectum descendere funem suggests walking down a rope which has been pulled tight (rectum: see OLD s.v. ‘rectus’ 1a) from a point high up and stretching down to the ground: see Otto (1890) s.v. ‘funis’ and Horace Epistles 2.1.210 for the idiomatic phrase per extentum funem ire meaning ‘to do a difficult task’. Line 272 makes it clear that this was a balancing act. The performer was known as a funambulus – J. uses the exotic Greek term schoenobates (Greek σχοινοβάτης) at 3.77. Here again J. reduces the act to a routine (solet) job of simply descending a rope. 267  rather than you: the poet rounds on the addressee with jabbing monosyllables (quam tu) and the personal pronoun. Corycus was a port in Cilicia (Southern Turkey) which produced fine saffron (Pliny N.H. 21.31),

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the contents of the sacci olentis in 269. The trader’s incessant trading is well brought out by the two verbs (with enjambement) moraris/atque habitas which neatly magnifies the point (you stay longer … in fact you live there) and also by its length enacts the lingering described. puppe is strictly the ‘poop deck’ of a ship but is commonly used in synecdoche for the whole vessel (cf. 6.102, 12.31, OLD s.v. ‘puppis’ 2). 268  winds: the Corus (or Caurus) was the wintry north-west wind (10.180, Lucretius 6.135, Virgil Georgics 3.356 (semper hiems, semper spirantes frigora Cauri: ‘always winter, always breathing the cold of the Caurus’)), while the Auster was the south wind (4.59, 5.100, 6.517, 12.69, Lucretius 5.689). The south wind (also known as Notus) was feared as stormy (Horace Odes 1.3.14 (‘the raging of the south wind’ rabiem Noti), a feature of winter (Tacitus Annals 6.33) and of ‘death-dealing autumn’ (6.517–8, Horace Satires 2.6.18-–19, Odes 2.14.15–16, Ovid Met. 7.532): nobody but a fool would go looking for these winds. liable to be chucked: tollendus is clever, meaning ‘to be picked up’ and so ‘transported’ (OLD s.v. ‘tollo’ 6) but also connoting ‘raised aloft’ (like the acrobat, with the suggestion here of high seas and tossing of the vessel: OLD s.v. ‘tollo’ 8b, Virgil Aeneid 1.166, Horace Odes 1.3.16): it also means ‘to be removed/killed’ as at 247 (OLD s.v.’tollo’ 13, 14). 269  desperate and abject: the attack becomes personal. perditus (from perdo, to ‘ruin’ or ‘lose’) is never a good thing to be: meanings include ‘bankrupt’, ‘desperate’, ‘depraved’, ‘broken’. The sense also includes ‘reckless’ ‘crazy’ as at 3.73, 5.130, 8.212. The mss reading ac uilis has been seen as a problem for those who do not think it goes well with perditus and Nisbet ingeniously suggests articulis (‘wrecked in his joints’: ‘he is arthritic from living in a damp ancient ship’ Nisbet (1995) 286)). Hermann deleted the line, Housman read ac similis (‘and similar’ – as the sailor is as yellow as his cargo of saffron). In fact, uilis means abject when used of the professional buffoon Gabba at 5.4 and is also used of people as ‘cheap chickens’ at 13.142 or of ‘contemptible associates’ at 5.146 (cf. Horace Odes 3.27.57, Epistles 2.1.38). The stinking sack presumably contains scented saffron such as was used to perfume the stage during festival performances (see Lucretius 2.416, Propertius 4.1a.16, Sallust Hist. 2.70.8). Once again J. is devaluing the trader and the product by his choice of language. 270–1  Crete was the home of the god Jupiter as a child (see 13.41n.) and so the Cretan winejars can be comically described as his municipes. It was

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also the source of passum – a raisin wine produced when the grapes were spread out to dry (Pliny N.H. 14.81, 20.208): Martial (13.106) describes it as ‘the poor man’s mead’ and see Leary (1999) 35. For Crete’s importance in the Roman wine-trade see CAH2 XI. 719–20, Chaniotis (1988). The hyperbolic and ironic effects here are calculated: the wine being imported is not the finest vintage and so there is a certain bathos in the enjambement which emphasises the noun passum, as well as wry humour that this man is overjoyed (gaudes) to have imported the stuff from the (exotically phrased) shores of ancient Crete. Line 271 is framed by the key terms passum and lagonas, the latter a Greek term for flask (λάγυνος) domesticated into Latin and used of kitchenware from Spain (5.29) and found on board Catullus’ ill-fated ship at 12.61: the humble artifacts are now ennobled ironically as compatriots of Jupiter. The wine itself is pingue – rich and having the consistency of honey (as stated by Scribonius Largus Compositiones 63.5) as well as its sweetness (Apicius de re coquinaria 3.2.1). 272–5  livelihood: the merchant has been described as a dramatic figure of comparable entertainment value to the tightrope walker. J. now returns to the circus artiste to make a further comparison between them – the merchant is risking his life for money which he does not need, while the acrobat has to do the job to feed himself. The contrast is pointed by the description of the mercator as reckless (temerarius) while the acrobat is simply earning a living (uictum parat) ensuring against cold and hunger with that rope. The acrobat’s work is the merchant’s hobby. 272  He places his foot: the careful but risky placing of feet is well evoked here with the mixture of sureness (figens uestigia) and unsureness (ancipiti…planta) in chiasmus. ancipiti is a well-chosen term: meaning ‘facing both ways’ (OLD s.v. ‘anceps’ 1, from ambi-ceps) it suggests the balancing act, while other meanings of the word include ‘uncertain, lifeand-death, perilous’ (OLD s.v. ‘anceps’ 7,8) which also suits the hazards faced. places his foot: figens uestigia is a poetic phrase found in epic (e.g. Virgil Aeneid 6.159, Statius Thebaid 10.862, Valerius Flaccus 4.394–5) and the pleonastic combination of uestigia and planta is another device found in didactic (cf. e.g. Claudius Caesar Aratea 461–2, Grattius Cynegetica 276, Manilius 1.657, 4.631, Ovid Fasti 4.463) and epic (Silius Punica 7.463, 9.390, 15.505, 16.491). The effect here is to present the acrobat in heroic terms in contrast to the perditus ac uilis merchant. 273–4  The heroic account continues. 273 is a neatly balanced line framed by words denoting food (uictum) or the lack of food (famem), while both

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lines have a strong present indicative verb (parat…cauet) as the struggle for survival is denoted in parallel phrases both of which have the same pattern (accusative – ablative of instrument – verb); the reste (rope) is his mercede (trade), and his need for shelter is rendered a heroic struggle by being denoted with the poetic word brumam (‘wintry weather’: see reff. in OLD s.v. ‘bruma’ 2). For the combination of cold and hunger cf. 6.360. 274–5  The addressee is sharply called by the monosyllablic pronoun tu in contrast to hic in 272. If the acrobat has to take risks to stay alive, the merchant is rashly (temerarius) – and so unnecessarily – risking his life for superfluous goods. The wealth is described with balanced phrases of 1000 talents and 100 country-houses. One talent was equivalent to 6000 denarii or 24000 sestertii: given that a Roman unskilled labourer would earn something like 1000 sestertii a year and a Roman eques would have a minimum of 400,000 sestertii, the sum mentioned here is massive – the equivalent of the capital of 60 Roman equites or the annual salary of 24000 labourers. The Roman villa was a dwelling found either in the city (uilla urbana) or in the countryside (uilla rustica) and was a mark of the wealthy in either case (see 86–95n., OCD s.v. ‘villa’, Dewar (2014)). 275–7  J. indulges in hyperbole again, with the ports and the sea now filled with (plenum) ships – and not just small vessels but giant vessels (magnis trabibus) – and he then caps this with the absurdity that there are more people on the sea than on the land. Notice the didactic imperative (aspice), and the strikingly bumpy rhythm of the end of 276 (plūs hŏmĭn(um)/ ēst iam) with the final monosyllables reinforcing the point. There is variation of vocabulary (mare ~ pelago) and good use of metonymy as trabes (literally a wooden beam) stands for the whole vessel (OLD s.v. ‘trabs’ 4) but makes visual sense as from a distance it is the mast-beams of the many ships which would be visible. 277–8  hope of gain: the agent of the journey (left in enjambement until 278 for emphasis) is the simple spes lucri, here personified and endowed with a voice (uocarit). J. employs spes in this emphatic position six times: for lucrum cf. 6.571, 13.24, 14.204. For the phrase spes lucri cf. Seneca de Beneficiis 4.20.3, Persius Prol.12 (spes …nummi). 278–80  The risks undertaken by the mariner are evoked in a series of geographical names: first of all the entire Mediterranean from East to West is leapt over (transiliet) in two words (Carpathium Gaetulaque: cf. Horace Odes 1.3.24) only to be trumped by this mariner’s venturing right into the Atlantic.

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The Carpathian Sea (named after the island Carpathus, legendary home of the slippery old man Proteus (Ovid Met. 11.249)) was between Crete and Rhodes and was often dangerously stormy (Propertius 2.5.11, 3.7.12, Horace Odes 1.35.8: the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (43) calls the island ‘windy’ (Κάρπαθος ἠνεμόεσσα)). Gaetulia in Northern Africa (situated in roughly the area which is now Algeria) was famous for being the source of exotic wild beasts (elephants at 10.158, antelope at 11.140, lions at Virgil Aeneid 5.351, Horace Odes 3.20.2), exotic slaves (5.53, 5.59) and fierce fighters (Virgil Aeneid 4.40). The merchant here is presumably interested in profiting from the Roman imports of corn, slaves and wild animals from Africa (see OCD s.v. ‘Africa, Roman’, CAH xi.534–6). Calpe is what is now known as the rock of Gibraltar and (like Cadiz at 10.1) represents the furthest western point of the Mediterranean. Hercules is said to have travelled throughout Europe and reached the furthest part of Spain where the Mediterranean goes into the Atlantic via the straits of Gibraltar, setting up as a memorial the ‘Pillars of Hercules’, one being the rock of Gibraltar and the other in Africa at Abila (Pomponius Mela de Chorographia 1.27.2). Hercules was travelling in his quest for the cattle of Geryon and the golden apples of the Garden of the Hesperides (see above 113–4n.) and J. inflates the heroic dangers of this merchant by elevating his journey to this level: J.’s merchant, like that of Horace (in Odes 1.31) was presumably ‘heading for the Roman province of Baetica in southern Spain, and its ports Gades (mod. Cadiz) or Hispalis (mod. Seville), where he can trade his exotic wares for grain, wine, honey, fish sauce (garum) and olive oil…or perhaps for metals too’ (Mayer (2012) 196). 280  hear … flood: the language is highly poetic in tone. The reference to the tale of Hercules is contained in the epithet Herculeo (agreeing with gurgite) which appears to be naming a stretch of water after the hero: and the term gurges denotes a swirling rough water (see OLD s.v. ‘gurges’ and cf. 13.70, 2.150). sun hissing: the legend has it that the sun sinks into the Atlantic Ocean and so its fire can be heard hissing (stridentem: see OLD s.v. ‘strido’ 1d and cf. 10.61, Ovid Met.12.279, Lucan 9.866) as it hits the water: cf. Statius Siluae 2.7.27, Silius Italicus Punica 1.209–10. Epicurus seems to have endorsed this theory (Diogenes Laertius 10.92 uses the term ‘quenching’ (σβέσιν) and cf. fr. 346b Usener) while Lucretius 5.650–655 also follows the theory of the sun burning out and needing to be rekindled but adds the alternative idea that the sun travels beneath the earth to emerge on the other

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side at daybreak. Here the juxtaposition of gurgite solem enacts the meeting of sun and sea. 281–3  ample reward: having elevated the merchant’s voyage to one of heroic and epic proportions, J. now uses bathos to pull the venture down to size: the opening phrase (grande…pretium est) is sarcastic (exactly as it was at 12.127), and the following lines show that the ‘rewards’ amount to just cash and travellers’ tales. Markland argued that a line of verse had been missed between 282–3 conveying the sense ‘to let you be able to boast to your astonished friends that you…’. swollen sack … tumescent: there is also almost certainly a double meaning at work in the Latin. follis (literally ‘bag’) means ‘purse’ but also ‘scrotum’ at 6.373b (OLD s.v. ‘follis’ 1c, Adams (1982) 75) while aluta (a leather strap) is also used of a flaccid penis at Martial 11.60.3 (not listed in OLD: see Adams (1982) 40). The surrounding words are also sexual in connotation: tensus has a strong sexual sense of ‘erect’ (OLD s.v. ‘tensus’ 1b: cf. tentigo (sexual tumescence as at 6.129)) and is used with alutam in Martial 11.60.3 (ulcus habet Priami quod tendere posset alutam (‘she has a randy urge which could stretch the flaccid tool of Priam’). tumida (tumescent) fits the context perfectly and we have the image of the sailor returning home after weeks at sea with his sexual desires desperate to be met and also with a money-bag full of cash. superbus can fit both senses: he is ‘proud’ of his financial success and his travellers’ tales, but he is also ready to act like Tarquinius Superbus who raped Lucretia: superbus is also used of those who refuse sex (e.g. Ovid Met.3.354 (Narcissus) Amores 3.13.26 (the girl’s modest palla)). 283  the wonders: sailors from the furthest seas would regale their countrymen with tales of wonders seen at sea: ‘violent whirlwinds, unheardof birds, sea-monsters, creatures half-man, half-beast, seen or thought to have been seen in terror’ (Tacitus Annals 2.24). Odysseus’ narrative in Homer’s Odyssey contains marine wonders such as Scylla and Charybdis (12.426–446) and the Sirens (12.165–200), while J. alludes to awesome beasts of the sea such as the British whale (10.14: cf. Horace Odes 4.14.47– 9) and Pliny (N.H. 9.4.4–7) gives a catalogue of wonders reported from the Indian Ocean such as the whale nearly 3 acres in length with bones almost 20 metres long. Pliny (N.H. 9.9–10) describes Tritons and Nereids being seen and heard in the reign of Tiberius, while Catullus (64.16–18) describes how the Argonauts saw naked Nereids emerging from the waters. Here there is a

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salacious touch to the phrase ‘young men of the sea’ for the Tritons, who are not usually regarded as attractive beings but who might attract this especially sex-starved sailor (see 281–3n.). The line is framed by the two words denoting the sea, which thus contain verbally as in life the wonders described (monstra et iuuenes): there is also effective use of sibilance in the depiction of the waters. 284  madness: talk of seeing monstra leads nicely onto more general discussion of the merchant’s madness, with two famous cases from tragedy to contrast with the (even greater) madness of the real man. furor has a range of meanings but essentially connotes delirium and hallucination: the merchant, like the mythological examples which follow (285–7), believes that he is perfectly sane and seeing the truth, but everyone around can see how insane his choices are. Tragic examples like these suit the poet’s purpose as the simple allusion can bring up the well-known sorry tale whose unhappy ending is guaranteed. For non unus as ‘not just one’ cf. 6.218. Note also the juxtaposition of agitat furor to emphasise the mental disturbance. 284–5 The sister referred to is Electra, whose brother Orestes had killed their mother Clytemnestra in revenge for her murdering of their father Agamemnon. Orestes was tormented by the grim Furies, as dramatised most memorably in Aeschylus’ Oresteia: our passage is close to Euripides Orestes 260–4, but the story continued to be dramatised by Roman authors from the republican era (Ennius (Eumenides), Accius (Atreus)) and from the imperial age (Aemilius Scaurus (Atreus), Pomponius Secundus (Atreus), Seneca (Agamemnon)). Furies: the Eumenides (‘kindly ones’: also called Erinyes) are the avenging spirits which persecute murderers, especially those who have murdered their own kin, and who carry out curses (see OCD s.v. ‘Erinyes’). Their formidable appearance is enhanced by flaming torches (Cicero de legibus 1.40) – such as were seen in a terrifying vision by the matricidal Nero (Suetonius Nero 34.4) – or even flaming hair (Seneca Hercules Furens 87). 286–7  this one: the mad man here is Ajax, a formidable Greek warrior (cf. 15.65n.) in the Trojan War who had been slighted when he was not given the armour of the dead Achilles and who left his tent to go and murder his fellow generals Agamemnon and Odysseus (called Ulysses in Latin and here referred to as simply Ithacum (‘the man from Ithaca’)). The goddess Athena, protectress of the Greeks, drove him mad and he abused and killed cattle, thinking that they were the Greek generals. The tale was dramatised by Sophocles (Ajax) but was obviously well-known to Roman audiences from Latin tragedies on the same story such as Ennius’ Ajax, Pacuvius’ Armorum

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Iudicium (‘Contest of Arms’) and Teucer, Accius’ Armorum Iudicium and Livius Andronicus’ Ajax the whip-bearer. Greek tragic stories remained popular with Roman audiences and the dead Ajax even acquired resonance after the murder of Caesar in 44BC (Erasmo (2004) 99). Dio Cassius (58.24.4) quotes the emperor Tiberius threatening that he would ‘make an Ajax’ of the tragic poet Aemilius Scaurus – i.e. force him to commit suicide – on the grounds that he had used the legend of Agamemnon to slander the emperor. Ajax’s name became a byword for a losing case in a debate: see 213, 7.115–6, 10.84 (with my note ad loc.). battered … lowing: J.’s delineation of Ajax’s madness is effective: the striking of the cattle is mentioned first (boue percusso) and then the appropriate sound emerges in the onomatopeic verb (mugire) credited to Agamemnon. Adding on aut Ithacum in enjambement is an inspired stroke, as Ajax has no idea which of the two men is making the noise – for the simple reason that neither man is. 287  tunics and cloaks: tearing at one’s clothes (and/or hair) is a sign of mental distraction, whether rage, grief or madness: cf. 2.71, [Seneca] Octavia 327–8, Statius Siluae 5.1.20, Apuleius Metamorphoses 8.8.5, Cicero Tusc. 3.62.5–6. The tunica was worn close to the body, while the lacerna was an over-garment like a cloak (cf. 1.27, 3.148, 9.28, 16.45) ‘worn by soldiers (Propertius 3.12.7) and muleteers (Petronius 69.5)’ (Braund (1996) 90) but also posh musicians (10.212) and lawyers (16.45). licet here has the concessive sense ‘even though’ (see 262–3n.). The word order in line 287 is calculated to put parcat immediately after Ithacum: ‘sparing’ is not part of the treatment of Ulysses but is granted to the clothing the merchant wears. 288 A curator was a guardian ‘appointed to administer the property of minors, women and insane persons’ (OLD s.v. ‘curator’ 3): to ‘be in need of a curator’ was a phrase found elsewhere with the meaning of ‘to be mad’ (cf. Horace Epistles 1.1.102). Crook ((1967) 118) points out that the role of curator extended to ‘lunatics and … spendthrifts’ and the purpose was ‘the protection of family property’ and ‘the only situation in which a man’s relatives could get a complete right to take over his property against his will’ and so protect the family estate from the insane ventures of the individual. This makes eminent sense in this context of a man about to load wealth onto a flimsy vessel at sea. 288–9  fills .… plank: the folly of the venture is brought out in the language used: the mercator stuffs the ship with mercibus ‘right up to the top of the side’ (ad summum latus), leaving his life and his property in the keeping of a

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little three-syllabled word tabula (plank) which is the only thing separating them from the unda. For this manner of expressing the risks of sailing cf. 12.58–9 (with my notes ad loc.): the word tabula is often used of the planking which is torn off in shipwrecks – see OLD s.v. ‘tabula’ 1b and cf. Virgil Aeneid 1.119, Ovid Met. 11.428, Tristia 1.6.8, Petronius Satyricon 115.14. 290–1  silver cut up: with acute bathos J. reduces the financial rewards to broken metal. Line 290 builds up the suffering and the crisis with emotive words such as mali tanti and discriminis, and the wording reason for so much trouble recalls epic phrases such as ἀρχὴ κακῶν (see Homer Iliad 5.63, 11.604, Thucydides 2.12.3, Herodotus 5.97) and Virgil Aeneid 6.93, 11.480, Lucan 7.407–8; for the meaning of discriminis see 258n. Line 291 then gives a reductive answer to the question posed in 290, with a line framed by words denoting ‘small’ (concisum … minutis) and the central phrase titulos faciesque emphasised in juxtaposition. concīdo means to ‘chop up’ and so reduces the money to what it is – cut up metal. Coins displayed wording (see OLD s.v. ‘titulus’ 2) and also an image (see OLD s.v. ‘facies’ 9), but (given the size of a coin) such titles and images are but tiny (minutas). 292  The merchant ignores adverse weather signs in his relentless quest for profit. Untie the mooring rope means ‘set sail’ (as at Virgil Aeneid 5.773) and is an order addressed to his crew by the merchant. The speed of the storm’s arrival is well conveyed in the vivid present tense of occurrunt (from curro – ‘I run’) and the sequence of clouds followed by thunderbolts is enacted in the word order of the Latin. For fulgura as inspiring terror in many people see 13.223 (see note on 13.223–228), 6.587. The funis was the rope which moored the ship to the quayside (OLD s.v. ‘funis’ 1b). 293  master … bought: the merchant is described in ironic terms, a man supposedly in control (dominus) but having to shout (clamat) against the noise of the weather; risking his life for his cargo which he needs to bring back to sell. Corn (frumenti) was an essential import to a city whose population (of about one million) was far too large for the agriculture of its hinterland to feed: see OCD s.v. ‘food supply: Roman’, Rickman (1980), CAH xi.716– 717. Corn was brought to Rome from Egypt, North Africa (Josephus B.J. II. 383–5), as well as Spain and Sicily. Pepper was so popular that in 92 AD the emperor Domitian built ‘pepper warehouses’ (horrea piperataria) in the city (see Schmitthemmer (1969) 95 + n.49). The pepper was imported from India (see Persius 5.55 with Miller (1969) 80) to Alexandria and thence

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to Rome, where it was ubiquitous in Roman cuisine (mentioned over four hundred times in Apicius) and even became a byword for a hot-head (piper, non homo (‘[he’s] pepper, not a person’) Petronius Satyricon 44). 294  nothing … nothing: the merchant downplays the threat from the weather by his choice and use of words: his assertion is made more powerful by the anaphora of nil, the alliteration of ‘c’ and assonance of ‘i’. The approaching storm is reduced to ‘the colour of the sky’ and the dark cloud to ‘the black strip’. The sky always has a colour of course – the colour is worth pointing out here as it is unwelcome. strip: the usual meaning of fascia is ‘ribbon, band’ (as worn around the body or the head: cf. 6.263, 9.14, Martial 11.104.7, OLD s.v. ‘fascia’ 1,2) and by extension any ‘long and narrow surface’ (OLD s.v. ‘fascia’ 3). It is an unusual word to use of a cloud formation but cf. Manilius 1.682 for its use of the band of the zodiac in the skies. 295  Summer thunder: for interesting background on the ancient thinking surrounding seasonal thunder and lightning see McCartney (1932). The phenomenon of thunder and lightning was invested with considerable superstitious and scientific interest: see e.g. KRS 138, 158, Aristophanes Clouds 374–380 (with Dover (1968) ad loc.), Lucretius 6.96–422, Horace Odes 1.34 (where the poet claims that lightning from a clear sky makes him recant his former Epicureanism). The merchant here presumably scoffs at the risk posed by suggesting that thunderstorms in summer could not be long or serious – a calculation which the following lines will refute vividly. The neuter singular of the adjective aestiuus is used as an adverb (AG§214d: cf. altum at 1.16, multum at 1.164, horrendum at 6.485, laeuum at Virgil Aeneid 2.693). For this use of the word cf. 14.130–1n.. 295–7  This very night…: the merchant is at once cast as infelix: the poet covers himself with the adverb forsitan but the ominous time phrase hac … ipsa/nocte adds a note of superstitious urgency to his plight, with the enjambement throwing emphasis onto nocte and so adding darkness to the meteorological predicament. His suffering is conveyed in the verbs cadet … premetur/obrutus as he will fall from his ship – now broken into its component trabibus (cf. 14.276) – into the water and there be swallowed up by the waves, with the strong future indicative verbs ending consecutive lines and the end-result (engulfed: obrutus) emphasised with enjambement. 297  A final image to add mockery to the pathos as he clings on to his money-belt with both left hand and his teeth while his right hand presumably tries to keep him afloat. For the rich person’s capacity to grab money with the teeth cf. Petronius Satyricon 43.1 (the recently deceased

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Chrysanthus would ‘pick up a penny from a dung-heap with his teeth’): here the merchant is taking no chances and using all available extremities to hang on to his money. 298  Not so long ago: modo has the sense ‘just recently’ (OLD s.v. ‘modo’ 5: cf. 2.73, 2.160, Petronius Satyricon 37.3), comparing recent past with the present: here the contrast is between his excessive demands in the past and his current need simply to survive. For uotis see 124–5n. 299  The poet refers to two famous gold-bearing rivers: the Tagus in Spain and the Pactolus in modern Turkey (ancient Lydia). Both rivers are mentioned in this capacity by Pliny (N.H. 33.56): for the gold of the Tagus cf. Catullus 29.19, Lucan 7.755, Ovid Met. 2.251, Martial 7.88.7. The river Pactolus had alluvial deposits of gold in its bed and carried this gold dust (here termed rutila … harena) down from the heights of Mt Tmolus (Herodotus 1.93.1, 5.101, Euripides Bacchae 154: see Shear (1924)) and this was said to be the source of the wealth of King Midas in legend and of Sardis in history (cf. Horace Epodes 15.20 with Watson (2003) ad loc.). The two rivers suggest the wealth of both the west and the east of the Roman empire – all of which is still insufficient for this man. 300  he will be happy: sufficient picks up suffecerat from 298, just as assem in 301 contrasts with (similarly placed) aurum in 298. rags: pannus indicates a scrap of cloth, here used for scanty and/or scruffy clothing (OLD s.v. ‘pannus’ 2a: cf. 7.145, 8.95, 10.102). The merchant here is struggling to have the bare minimum of clothing, just enough to cover his ice-cold crotch, and the rags and the groin are juxtaposed in verse as in life. 301–2  The almost naked man only gets a minute amount of food and this is secured by begging. We hear elsewhere (Persius 1.88–90, 6.32–3, Phaedrus 4.21–25) of shipwrecked men having a picture painted of their ship being destroyed in a storm – preferably on a broken piece of the actual ship – and using this as a prop to elicit donations from strangers. The merchant, who was seeking pictures scratched onto coins (291) is using a picture of the storm (tempestate) to sustain himself (OLD s.v. ‘tueor’ 5a). 303–331  J. ends the poem with the point that wealth brings anxiety and never brings satisfaction. He has already mentioned (135–7) that the quest for wealth is painful madness – now he turns to the unfortunate effects of owning it. 303–4  Things … anxiety: wealth is acquired with suffering (malis) and, once obtained, it only demands more mental distress (cura maiore metuque). The language is negative: cura denotes ‘concern’ and suggests the need to pay

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attention to the wealth, while metu denotes outright anxiety that it may be lost. 304  Keeping guard … process: as often, J. reduces his thought to a pithy summary where misera is promoted to the start of the phrase for emphasis, while custodia means both the keeping guard over one’s money but also the metaphorical prison which wealth imposes on the wealthy (OLD s.v. ‘custodia’ 6b). parta literally means ‘begotten’ (from pario (‘I give birth’)) and is used metaphorically here as at 16.52 and 13.25 (where see n.). For a more developed examination of the thesis that wealth is a source of misery and danger see 10.12–22 and cf. Seneca Ep.115.16. 305–6  Licinus was a slave of Julius Caesar who was freed by Augustus and rose to great wealth as governor of Gaul in 16–15 BC according to Dio (54.21). His name became a byword for great wealth: see 1.109, Persius 2.36, Seneca Ep.119.9, 120.19, Apocolocyntosis 6.1.8, Martial 8.3.6, Otto (1890) s.v. ‘Licinus’. plutocrat: this man is not just diues but praediues (for the prefix indicating ‘pre-eminence in the quality concerned’ (OLD s.v. ‘prae’) cf. 10.16 with my note ad loc.) and so has a whole cohortem seruorum to act as firefighters. fire-buckets: the term ama (often aspirated as hama, derived from Greek ἅμη) was a water-bucket (Cato de agr. 135.2, Pliny Ep. 10.33.2.4). The choice of the words uigilare cohortem suggests the imperial firefighters known as the uigilum cohortes (see OLD s.c. ‘cohors’ 4b, Tacitus Histories 3.64.4), a force set up by Augustus in AD 6 (Suetonius Augustus 30.1: see further Daugherty (1992) 229–31). The point of the wakefulness of the watchmen is (presumably) to allow Licinus himself to sleep in peace, but this one is hardly going to find rest: attonitus (literally ‘thunderstruck’) here has the sense of ‘stupefied, paralysed (with fear)’ (see OLD s.v. ‘attonitus’ 2a: cf. 4.146, 7.67, 8.239, 13.194). The effect of sudden stupefaction is enhanced by the final monosyllable ending of the line causing a syncopated and bumpy rhythm. Fire was (of course) a huge hazard in ancient Rome, as J. has already made clear (3.197–222) 307–8  Licinus’ inventory of goods, spreading over two lines, is impressive: amber (electro), statues (signis), Phrygian columns, ivory and tortoiseshell. amber: electrum has two meanings in Latin, as does the Greek word ἤλεκτρον: ‘amber’ and ‘an alloy of gold and silver’. In Virgil it means ‘amber’ at Eclogues 8.54, but the alloy at Aeneid 8. 402 and 624, and it might mean either at Georgics 3.522. Both meanings would fit the context here, but ‘amber’ seems the more likely meaning: in a comparable context, Virro the wealthy banqueter has ‘large cups embellished with amber and

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rough with beryl’ (5.37–8, where the reference to the Heliades makes the meaning ‘amber’ unambiguous: see Braund (1996) ad loc.). Amber certainly enjoyed status as a wonder of the ancient world ever since Thales noted its magnetic power (Diogenes Laertius 1.24, KRS 95). At 9.50 we hear of balls of amber (sucina…grandia) being given as presents, and women enjoy their scent at 6.573 (cf. Martial 5.37.11, 11.8.6). For a good overview of the use and provenance of amber in the ancient world see OCD s.v. ‘amber’: for the Roman use of amber in luxury items see Darab (2012), Paoli (1990) 155. signa here means statues (OLD s.v. ‘signum’ 12) as at 3.216, 8.102, 8.110. columns were the mark of a wealthy house: cf. the palace of the Sun god at Ovid Met. 2.1, Tibullus 3.3.13, and Pliny’s account (N.H. 36.59) of the ‘more than thirty’ columns of onyx in the dining room of Claudius’ wealthy freedman Callistus. Phrygian recalls the fabulous wealth of the orient (cf. Horace Odes 2.12.22) and in particular the Phrygius lapis (marble) mentioned at Horace Odes 3.1.41 (see Nisbet and Rudd (2004) ad loc.). Marble (see OCD s.v. ‘marble’) was quarried in Italy and imported from Greece and Africa by Augustus, who famously claimed to ‘have found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble’ (Suetonius Augustus 28.3.3). The singular columna is an example of the ‘collective singular’ cf. 1.120–1, 3.142, Ovid Ars Am.1.50, Horace Odes 1.19.12 (with Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) ad loc.). 308 For ivory used in luxury furniture cf. 11.123, Plautus Stich. 377, Horace Odes 1.31.6, 2.18.1, Ovid Met 8. 701–2, Seneca Ep.16.8, Catullus 64.44–9, Martial 2.43.9–10, OCD s.v. ‘furniture’, Bacchylides fr. 20B.13, Musonius fr. 21 p.110 Hense (‘couches of ivory and silver’). testudo literally means the tortoise or turtle but the word was used for tortoise-shell used as material or overlay (OLD s.v. ‘testudo’ 2c) as at 6.80, 11.94 (where see my note ad loc.), Virgil Georgics 2.463. Wooden couches or beds overlaid with a tortoiseshell veneer were seen as luxurious items (6.80, Martial 9.59.9–10, 12.66.5). 308–310  pots … do not burn: J. contrasts the wealthy man’s anxiety over losing his property with the carefree attitude of the Cynic who has no wealth and so no fears: for the poor man’s freedom from fear cf. 10.22 (and contrast 3.278–304 where the poor man is all the more anxious as he cannot afford guards). The romantic idealisation of poverty as a blessed and a virtuous state is a theme in Roman literature (cf. 6. 294–5, Horace Odes 3.2.1–3, Seneca Ep.87.41, Lucan 1.165–6, Valerius Maximus 4.4.11) but J. is usually more hard-headed (cf. 7.53–62, 14.120–121). In this passage J. moves from

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extreme wealth to extreme poverty to heighten the contrast and the simple point that wealth causes worry (as stated at 304). 308–9 The Cynic school of philosophy is a form of austere primitivism which regarded the happy life as one lived as close as possible to nature, eschewing all unnecessary possessions and imitating the life-style of animals (hence the name ‘Cynics’ from the Greek term κυνικός (‘dog-like’): see OCD s.v. ‘Cynics’) in their clothing, eating and sexual habits. The founder of the school is usually regarded as Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412–324 BC: see OCD s.v. ‘Diogenes’ (2)) who is said to have lived in an earthenware jar or pot (πίθος in Diogenes Laertius 6.23, dolio here and at Seneca Ep. 90.14, testa at 311). J. has earlier (13.122: see notes to 13.121–2) alluded to the Cynic refusal to indulge in clothing (on which cf. Seneca de Beneficiis 5.4.3) and Diogenes’ encounter with Alexander the Great referred to here was a tale often told (e.g. Cicero Tusc. 5.92, Diogenes Laertius 6.38). J. does not name his Cynic here – and equally outrageous tales were told of Diogenes’ follower Crates (e.g. Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.153, 3.200, Diogenes Laertius 6.85–93). For the Cynics as a philosophical school see Dudley (1937), Brunschwig and Lloyd (2000) 321–35: for Cynicism in Rome see Griffin (2018) 475–95. The phrasing of 308–10 is strong and economical as is the subject described. dolia nudi conveys the ‘tub’ and the ‘nakedness’ in effective juxtaposition followed by the blunt do not burn (non ardent – in contrast to the highly flammable villa of a Licinus). pot: a dolium was a large earthenware vessel for storing foodstuffs and liquid and the ‘tub’ of Diogenes did indeed break at least once (Diogenes Laertius 6.43). The emergence of a new ‘house’ (domus) tomorrow (cras) is a brilliant stroke by the satirist as the word domus appears as quickly as the house/tub itself would appear. 310  sealed: the broken tub can be repaired with a lead rivet: for this sense of commissa see OLD s.v. ‘committo’ 2b. manebit here means ‘will last’ (cf. 13.177 and see OLD s.v. ‘maneo’ 7a): ‘make do and mend’ seems to have been a Cynic priority. 311–14  The meeting of the Cynic philosopher and Alexander the Great has various versions: in one (Diogenes Laertius 6.38, Plutarch Alexander 14, Valerius Maximus 4.3.4) the king asked the philosopher if he could grant him a favour, at which Diogenes asked him to move out of his sunlight. In another version Alexander stood opposite him and said ‘I am Alexander the great king’ – to which Diogenes replied ‘and I am Diogenes the dog’ (Diogenes Laertius 6.60). Juvenal deftly applies the epithet magnum to the Cynic in the tub rather than to the king.

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312–3  how much happier: happiness can be maximised only by reducing desires and not by indulging them, so that the one who desires nothing must be happier than one who has to struggle to satisfy his appetites. For this thinking – common to Cynicism and to Epicureanism – see 14.139n. and cf. (e.g.) Horace Satires 1.1.41–79, Lucretius 2.14–36. Alexander was a source of great interest for the Stoic Seneca for his ‘pride and lust for conquest’ (Graver and Long (2015) 354: see Seneca Ep. 53.10, 91.17, 94.62–3, 119.7) and J. elsewhere (10.168 where see my notes on 10.168–9) comments that ‘one world is not enough’ for him. The contrast is neatly set up in line 313 between the nil at the start of the line and the orbem at its end. Diogenes was also a great dweller (i.e. large inhabitant) as he presumably filled up his tub: the subjunctives (cuperet and posceret) in 313 are indicators that the verbs are part of what Alexander ‘realised’ and so the clause from quanto is an indirect question: in Diogenes Laertius (6.32) Alexander claimed that if he were not Alexander then he would like to be Diogenes. 314  who would suffer: Alexander will pay for his res gestae with proportionate pericula, raising the question of whether such deeds are worth it – a question posed first by Achilles in Homer Iliad 9.307–429. aequanda has the sense of ‘to match’ (OLD s.v. ‘aequo’ 11 and cf. 3.88, 4.16, 12.130) as if the amount of fame were directly proportional to the amount of danger, a weighing up assisted by the juxtaposition of pericula rebus. 315–6  you have no…: these lines appear also at 10.365–6 (where see my note ad loc.). Duff and Green think they are irrelevant here, Courtney thinks they are put here to remind us of the earlier passage, while Ferguson argues for them being evidence of a gap in the text. J. does repeat himself at times (1.25 ~ 10.226, 13.137 ~ 16.41) as do other poets (e.g. Lucretius 1.926–950 ~ 4.1–25) and the lines can be justified in both places. numen (from nuo (to nod the head)) is a sign of divine power and balances the final word deam: ‘you have no (real) divine power as it is only we who make you a divinity’. The passage in 10 argued that the way to happiness is through acceptance of what will come with a brave heart: there is a slight disjunction here as Alexander has just been described as undergoing unnecessary dangers in pursuit of fame and fortune, only for the poet to dethrone Fortune as a deity, and one can only assume that mention of the pericula facing the great man led the poet to add this consideration. 316–7  I will tell them…: J. adopts a highly didactic style in these lines, setting out his subject matter in an indirect question before the main verb edam: cf. 1.19–21, Virgil Georgics 1.1–5, Lucretius 2.62–6 (with Fowler

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(2002) 147). This pose is undercut by the phrase si quis me consulat, implying that nobody may be listening to him, but this does not stop the poet launching (318–329) into a series of alternative and mutually exclusive assessments of what is enough wealth. mensura here (as at 1.41, 9.34, 10.98, 14.93) means ‘extent’ or ‘amount’ (OLD s.v. ‘mensura’ 2b) and is to be taken with census, which means ‘wealth’ as at 3.140, 5.57, 10.13, 13.7, 14.176, 14.227, 14.304 (OLD s.v. ‘census’ 3, see note on 14. 175–6). 318–321  The poet begins with the Greek philosophers’ views, alluding to the austerity of Epicurus and Socrates, with three consecutive lines beginning with (in) quantum, named philosophers in the same position in successive lines and a neat contrast between the garden (hortis) of the former and the house (penates) of the latter to end lines 319–20. He later (322–6) brings in Roman values of quantity. 318  thirst, hunger and cold: The bodily needs are listed in order of urgency: lack of water will kill more quickly than hunger or cold, the three privations being personified as ‘demanding’ (poscunt) satisfaction – a vocal metaphor common in philosophy (cf. Lucretius 2.369 (reposcit) 2.17 (latrare) 6.9 (flagitat), Manilius 4.8 (natura reposcat) Cicero de Finibus 1.71 (uoce naturae)). Epicurus regarded kinetic pleasure as the removal of pain, and he classed pleasures into three groups: (a) natural and necessary (such as the food and drink and shelter listed here), (b) natural and unnecessary (e.g. sex) and (c) unnatural and unnecessary (luxuries): and he specifically listed the three essential demands of nature as J. does here: ‘the cry of the flesh is not to be hungry or thirsty or cold: have and expect to keep this state and one could rival Zeus in happiness’ (Vatican Sayings 33=LS 21G). in quantum here means simply quantum, a usage more common in prose (OLD s.v. quantum’1 1b: cf. Seneca Ep. 95.5, de beneficiis 3.33.4, Pliny N.H. 17.92.4). 319  gardens: whereas Plato taught in the Academy and Aristotle in the Lyceum, Epicurus lived with his followers in the ‘Garden’ (as mentioned at 13.122–3, where see n.: cf. Diogenes Laertius 10.10, Cicero de Finibus 5.3, de Natura Deorum 1.93.6, Propertius 3.21.26). The plural word hortis might to a Roman suggest a large country estate (as at 7.79–80, 10.334: see Balsdon (1969) 195–96), and so J. here (as at 13.123 (exigui)) stresses its small scale (paruis) as providing the minimum required of the bare essentials. 320  Socrates (469–399 BCE) was famed for his plain living (Xenophon Memorabilia 2.1, Seneca Ep. 104.27, Diogenes Laertius (2.27: ‘he was proud of his plain living and never asked fees from anyone: he said that he most enjoyed food which least needed condiments’) and he thought that the

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true philosopher would not be enthusiastic for the pleasures of food, drink and sex (Plato Phaedo 64d2–6). Horace implies (Odes 3.21.9) that a love of Socratic philosophy and a love of drinking are mutually exclusive, and J. at 2.10 clearly intends Socraticos … cinaedos to be a contradiction in terms. Socrates seems to have been untouched by cold, walking barefoot even in the snow and ice of a harsh winter when on active military service in Thrace (Plato Symposium 220b5–7), and in Plato (Apology 36e103) Socrates declares that he is poor and so in need of public maintenance and certainly has no money to pay a fine (Apology 37e2–6). To ‘do a Socrates’ (σωκρατεῖν) in Aristophanes Birds 1282 is equated with favouring Sparta, going hungry, long-haired and filthy (see Dunbar (1995) 636), while students of ‘Socrates’ in Aristophanes Clouds (440–2) expected to be hungry, thirsty and cold. home: the penates were the gods of the household larder (penus means ‘food, provisions’: the etymology is exploited at Virgil Aeneid 1.704) and so is understood as standing in synecdoche for the home itself (OLD s.v. ‘Penates’ 3: cf. Catullus 9.3, 64.404) especially in terms of its material circumstances (as at Virgil Georgics 2.505, Aeneid 8.543, Tacitus Annals 2.84.2, 3.34.2, Valerius Maximus 4.4.9, Lucan 5.537). capio here has the sense ‘contain, hold’ (OLD s.v. ‘capio’ 25) as at 10.148, 11.171, 13.74. 321  The thought that Nature and philosophy say the same thing – in other words that wisdom is to live in perfect accordance with the demands of nature – is common, especially in Epicureanism (Horace Satires 1.1.73– 5, 1.2.111–13, Lucretius 2.14–61) but also a claim made by other schools (Cicero de Finibus 2.34, Marcus Aurelius 5.9). For the equivalence of natura and sapientia cf. Cicero Tusculan Disputations 4.79. aliud … aliud means ‘now one thing … and then something else’ (OLD s.v. ‘alius’ 8b: cf. Lucretius 1.469, 6.991–5). 322  Do you think?: for the use of a rhetorical question to the addressee cf. 1.1, 8.1–18, 14. 15–24, 177–8. The emphasis here is thrown onto the first word acribus – here in its meaning (OLD s.v. ‘acer’ 8) ‘harsh, strict, severe’ as at 2.77. cludo is a form of the verb claudo and here has the sense of ‘limiting’ an activity or instinct (OLD s.v. ‘claudo’ 8d), while uideor (literally ‘do I seem’) here has the sense ‘do you think that I…’ model: an exemplum was a model or pattern of behaviour (OLD s.v. ‘exemplum’ 6) used to illuminate an argument in rhetoric: J. uses concrete exempla of human behaviour (e.g. 10.12–18 where the general point about the danger of wealth is illuminated by the examples of Longinus and Seneca) to render his arguments both realistic and also vivid. For the use of the term

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in a rhetorical question cf. 8.183–4 and for the term exemplum in general see 13.1n. 322–3  add in … create: the use of two singular imperatives (misce … effice) and the use of nostris (‘ours’ – i.e. modern Roman as opposed to old Greek) is effective in challenging the addressee with the demand that the question can be settled in his own terms. moribus means ‘characteristic behaviour’ (OLD s.v. ‘mos’ 5 and cf. 1.147, 3.140, 11.57, 14.74) and here simply refers to the accepted norms of Roman society. 323–4  In 67 BC the tribune Lucius Roscius Otho passed a lex Roscia theatralis which reserved the front fourteen rows of the theatre for the exclusive use of men of equestrian rank – a law which the emperor Domitian reaffirmed (Suetonius Domitian 8.3, Martial 5.8.3: see also CAH xi.389). The seats were known as equestria (see OLD s.v. ‘equester’ 3b) or quattuordecim (ordines) (OLD s.v. ‘quattuordecim’, Seneca Ep. 44.2): for the indignity of poorer men being thrown out of them see 3.154, Horace Epodes 4.15– 16 (with Watson (2003) 165–67). ordo here means a row of seats (OLD s.v. ‘ordo’ 1b). summam denotes the ‘sum’ of money which constituted the minimum wealth required to register as a member of the Equites: the level was fixed at 400,000 sesterces (cf. Pliny Ep. 1.19), a significant sum (affording an income twenty times that of a legionary soldier: see 14.274– 5n.) but one dwarfed by the fortune of 20 million sesterces owned by Pliny which was itself only modest in comparison with the wealthiest men in Rome (see CAH xi. 823). It is interesting that J. avoids simply saying ‘equestrian’ and forces the reader to work out what he is discussing by his allusion to the law of Otho. quattuordecim would not have been metrically possible in hexameters, and so J. uses the compound form ‘twice seven’ (bis septem) as did (e.g.) Virgil (Aeneid 1.71, 9.161) and Ovid (Metamorphoses 11.302): see 14.28n. for this form of numbering. 325  wrinkles … lip: note the chiastic ordering of noun-verb-verb-noun in rugam trahit extenditque labellum. For the phrasing rugam trahere to denote the frown causing a furrow on the brow cf. 9.8–9, 13.215–6, Varro res rusticae 1.2.27, Ovid Amores 2.2.33, Seneca de Ben. 6.7.1. Pushes out your lip suggests a pouting expression. 326  take … make that: two more (see 322–3n.) singular imperatives (sume … fac) – one at the start of the line and the other after the caesura – raise the stakes. J. varies the terminology pleasingly: ‘Two Equites’ is shorthand for ‘the wealth required for two Equites’ (i.e. 800,000 sesterces), while fac tertia quadringenta means ‘bring it up to a third 400,000’ – i.e.

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add a third 400,000 to make the sum as much as a triple eques. For tertius in this sense cf. Hor Ep.1.6.35, Lucretius 1.445 OLD s.v. ‘tertius’ 4: I can find no parallel for the translation of tertia as ‘thrice’ in a multiplicative sense, although this is the sense suggested by several translators. For the sense of fac as ‘make up a total’ cf. OLD s.v. ‘facio’ 9, Catullus 5.10 (with Fordyce (1961) ad loc.). The heavy spondaic rhythm of the final word quādrīngēnta is effective in suggesting the mass of wealth. The word is neuter in form as it understands the words milia sestertium (‘thousands of sesterces’). 327–31  If … if: the poet constructs an impressive final sentence, with a double conditional (si…si) followed by a triple negative (nec … nec … nec) which culminates in the name Narcissi – which is then glossed in a two-line sketch which itself uses rhetorical anaphora of the relative pronoun (cui … cuius). The insatiable greed for money is a theme addressed often by J. (cf. 139n.) and he manages to end his poem with moral as well as financial exempla, moving bathetically from the great kings of the past to the ironically entitled uxorious Caesar of Roman times, just as in lines 319–323 the poet passed from two Greek philosophers to Roman equites. 327  still not: nondum suggests that the increasing allowances of lines 323–6 denotes a temporal sequence. gremium means the ‘lap or bosom as a place in which objects are carried or put for safe keeping’ (OLD s.v. ‘gremium’ 2a) as at 7.215, as well as its common meaning of a lap as a part of the body (e.g. 2.120, 3.176, 5.142). To ‘fill the lap’ here thus means to satisfy the desire for full pockets, although Cicero’s famous description (Philippics 2.63) of Antony filling his lap (gremium suum … impleuit) with vomited bits of food may be echoed also. pandere often has the sense of ‘opening the folds of one’s garments in welcome’ (cf. 1.88, Seneca Ep. 74.6, OLD s.v. ‘pando’ 2a) and the subject of panditur is gremium. 328  Croesus was king of Lydia and a byword (see Otto (1890) s.v. ‘Croesus’) for excessive wealth (cf. 10.274, OCD s.v. ‘Croesus’): the use of his name is another exemplum (see 322n.) with a moral edge as Croesus famously died unhappy after his throne had been overthrown by the growing might of Persia under Cyrus (Herodotus 1.26–92 and cf. 299n. for the goldbearing river Tmolus in Lydia which was the source of much Lydian wealth). The Persians were renowned for their wealth and luxurious ways: see 11.57 (with my note ad loc.), Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) 423–24. 329  Narcissus was a freedman and secretary of the emperor Claudius whose wealth (of 400 million sesterces) was prodigious (see OCD s.v. ‘Narcissus (2)’, Suetonius Claudius 28, Dio Cassius 60.34.4). It may be

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significant that the name also refers to the self-loving youth of Greek mythology. The syncopated spondaic rhythm of dīuĭtĭ/ae Nār/cīssī is striking, throwing weight onto the name with which the line ends (cf. 326). 330  Claudius (10 BC–AD 54) was emperor from AD 41 (when Caligula was assassinated) until his own death. The title Caesar – which was the cognomen of C. Julius Caesar (102–44 BC) who became dictator and was assassinated shortly after – was adopted by the first emperor (Augustus) and thereafter by his successors, so that the word could simply mean ‘the emperor’ whoever he was (OLD s.v. ‘Caesar’ 3, cf. 10.86 (Tiberius) 10.330 (Claudius) 12.106 (Hadrian)). indulsit (from indulgeo) is here used with accusative and dative, meaning ‘to whom (cui) he granted everything (omnia): for this meaning of indulgeo cf. 2.164–5, 6.384, OLD s.v. ‘indulgeo’ 5. Note the heavy ‘c’ alliteration here. 331  wife: the uxorem in question was Valeria Messalina, great-granddaughter of Augustus’ sister Octavia and third wife of the emperor Claudius, who was her second cousin and her senior by about thirty years. She bore him two children (Octavia and Britannicus) and then married C. Silius in AD 48 – an act which sealed her doom as it was construed as treason against the emperor her husband (see 10. 329–345 for J.’s eloquent use of the story). Tacitus tells us (Annals 11.37–38) that the order to execute her was given by the freedman Narcissus and only communicated to Claudius after it had been carried out, a sequence of events which J. well evokes by the ironic description of the emperor as one who paruit imperiis…iussus – the real imperator was the servant and the apparent servant was the master, the line being framed by words indicating subservience (cf. Tacitus’ phrasing (Annals 11.35) omnia liberto oboediebant… [Narcissus] deduci imperatorem iubet (‘all things passed to the will of the freedman, and he ordered the emperor to be taken…’) and cf. J.’s remark on the ignorance of Claudius at 10.342). It is worth pointing out that Narcissus was forced to commit suicide on the death of Claudius six years later, when the emperor’s fourth wife had Claudius poisoned. The final two lines of this poem are perhaps inessential to the overall message of the poem: the text could well have stopped at 329 without any loss of sense in the thesis that no amount of wealth is ever enough. It could even be said that the link of Narcissus’ massive wealth (the last in an ascending list of affluence which has overtaken even Croesus) with his unbridled power (to order even emperors to kill their wives) might be seen as undercutting the poet’s point that wealth is not going to afford anything

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desirable as this sort of power appealed to many. The conclusion only makes moral sense if we read it as linking the wealth with the tendency to commit evil acts (cf. 227–232) – and even here the morality is ambiguous in the light of Messalina’s scandalous behavour which J. has already described in highly pejorative terms at 6.114–32 and 10.329–345 and which made her a villainous figure in other sources: Dio Cassius for instance describes her (60.14.3) as ‘the most whorish (πορνικωτάτη) of women’. The poem ends on a bleak note of political and moral chaos.

SATIRE XV This is a remarkable study in anger and superstition: ‘a novel condemnation of anger, anger which manifests itself in the graphic form of religious intolerance, murder and cannibalism’ (Braund (2004) 487). It has had its share of detractors – Duff ((1975) xli) describes it as ‘the weakest of the Satires’, while Ferguson ((1979) 323) considers it ‘an ugly, humourless satire, totally unredeemed by laughter’. It stands out as unusual in the collection for being wholly focused on somewhere other than Rome: and it also stands out in the Satires for the attention given to the value of humanitas and the uplifting promotion of human kindness above the destructive forces which drive us apart. The target of the satire is (as elsewhere) the folly and vice which cause havoc in society: the folly of worshipping false gods and the vice which allows us to see each other as a meal. This is far from the only place in J. where harsh criticism is meted out to people of the east (e.g. 3.61–5) and the poet no doubt knew that he could count on his readers feeling sympathy for his revulsion at what is (by any standards) appalling behaviour: his criticism of the Egyptians begins with (essentially harmless) religious bigotry, but the bulk of the poem is a treatment of murderous rage. One difficulty with the poem is precisely the scandalous nature of the crime being censured – as Jenkyns ((1982) 188 n.25) puts it: ‘cannibalism in Egypt is no doubt deplorable, but Juvenal has chosen a theme that seems at once too easy and too far-fetched. We feel that he has bought his moral superiority at a cheap rate’. This all-too obvious moralism may tend to push us towards the theory that in this poem J.’s speaker is a construct of the ‘bigoted and irrational racist Roman’ (as Anderson ((1987) 204) puts it), regaling his listeners with prurient details of what he claims to despise. It is

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worth remembering at this stage that what matters to J. is the poetry which he is writing: and whatever degree of ‘sincerity’ which lies behind it matters less than the sheer brilliance of the execution. The structure may be summarised thus: 1–13 13–26 27–32 33–92

The Egyptians and their gods which are too strange even for a Ulysses to recount plausibly. J. introduces his tale – a story from recent history. The feud and its murderous consequences including cannibalism 93–131 the cannibalism of the Vascones – very different from the Egyptians 131–58 humans need to have compassion 159–174 or they behave worse than wild animals For more on Egyptian cannibalism cf. Dio 74.4.1, Fredericks (1976), Baldwin (1977) 408, Power (2013). Tacitus (Histories 1.11) called Egypt ‘a province made warring and unstable by superstition and indiscipline, with no knowledge of laws or experience of government’. On Roman attitudes towards Egypt see Balsdon (1979) 68–69, Dalby (2000) 172–77: see esp. notes on lines 126–8 and cf. Propertius 3.11.33, Martial 4.42, Cicero pro Rabirio Postumo 34. Some Greeks had formed the opinion that Egyptians were devious and immoral: the Greek verb αἰγυπτιάζειν meant ‘to play dirty tricks’ (cf. Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 922, Cratinus fr. 378, Theocritus 15.47–50 with Gow (1950) ad loc., Hall (1989) 123). For analysis of this poem see: Anderson (1987), Geue (2017b) 206–10, McKim (1986), Powell (1979), Singleton (1983), Tennant (1995). 1–13  Who does not know?: This opening salvo against Egyptian religious customs recalls Cicero Tusculan Disputations 5.78 (‘who does not know the Egyptians’ way of life? Their minds imbued with pernicious errors, they would rather submit to execution than to hurt an ibis, an asp, a cat, a dog or a crocodile’. cf. Cicero de natura deorum 1.82.4) and post-Actium mockery of Egyptians and their gods (e.g. Virgil Aeneid 8.698–700, Propertius 3.11.39–46). Cicero ignores the fact that such animal-worship varied from region to region – a fact which J. acknowledges. J. uses a great number of Greek words and endings (Aegyptos, crocodilon, ibin, cercopitheci, chordae, aeluros) to add some anti-Hellenic contempt to the mix: for his despisal of all things Greek see 3.58–125. J. achieves uariatio of vocabulary in his many words denoting veneration in terms both positive (adorat … pauet …

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nitet … uenerantur) and negative (the anaphora of nefas … nefas) building up to the bathetic line 13 (‘cannibalism – that’s OK’). 1  Volusius of Bithynia is otherwise unknown. Martial addresses a certain Bithynicus in several poems (2.26, 6.50, 9.8, 12.78) and one of Cicero’s correspondents in 44 BC was a Bithynicus who was the son of Q. Pompeius A.f. Bithynicus ‘who had acquired the cognomen from his part in organising the new province of Bithynia’ (Shackleton-Bailey (1977) 462, on ad Fam 6.16). A Volusius was mocked as a poet in Catullus 36 and 95, and another named as a haruspex in Cicero (Verrines 2.3.28): more promisingly, Valerius Maximus (7.3.8) has a tale about a Plebeian Aedile of this name disguising himself as a priest of Isis to escape the triumviral proscriptions which at least offers a link between the name and the Egyptian worship which this poem will explore. For this type of geographical cognomen cf. Creticus (2.67), Ponticus (8.1), Allobrogicus (8.13), Gaetulicus (8.26), Asturicus (3.212), Persicus (3.221). The effect of the name here is perhaps to suggest wide-ranging cosmopolitanism assumed to have knowledge of remote areas such as Egypt. 1–2  Who…?: the poem, like poems 1, 8 and 16, opens with a question. The indignant quis nescit? asserts what is generally known as at 6.247, 12.28, Ovid Amores 1.5.25, Martial 5.18.7, Seneca Epistles 117.27.1. crazy: madness is a common target of satire: for demens cf. 6.222, 10.166, 11.2 and of course 10.233 where it means senile dementia. The positioning of demens adds emphasis to the absurdity of the customs: and for the wording cf. Cicero de natura deorum 1.43 ‘With the errors of the poets may be classed the monstrous doctrines of the magi (portenta magorum) and the insanity of the Egyptians (Aegyptiorum … dementiam)’. monsters: portentum is a strong term, always used of the abnormal and unnatural and often prefiguring the divine: applied to people it may mean a monster of depravity (OLD s.v. ‘portentum’ 2b, Cicero pro Milone 63), while elsewhere (as here) it simply indicates what is monstrous or unnatural (OLD s.v. ‘portentum’ 2a: Claudius’ mother (Suetonius Claudius 3.2) called her disabled son a human portentum and Horace (Epistles 2.2.208–9) lumps together ‘dreams, magic terrors, marvels, witches, ghosts of the night and Thessalian portenta’ as objects of a wise man’s ridicule. For colo in the sense of ‘worship’ see OLD s.v. ‘colo’ 6 and cf. 1.115, 10.116, 14.103, 15.38. 2  J. begins his catalogue of bizarre gods with the crocodile: the reptile of the Nile (found elsewhere in Africa of course, but associated with Egypt (cf. Arrian Anabasis 6.1.2, where Alexander concludes that he is in Egypt

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when he sees crocodiles in the Indus). The crocodīlus (κροκόδειλος) was an object of some fascination to Greeks and Romans (see e.g Pliny N.H. 8.96) and its dung was regarded as having medicinal and cosmetic uses (see Watson (2003) 404–405). Its habits had been described by Herodotus (2.68) and Aristotle (Hist. Animalium book 2). Herodotus correctly tells us (2.69) that crocodiles ‘are treated as holy by some Egyptians and as enemies by others: they are sacred to people living in and around Thebes and the lake of Moeris’ whereas the people living near Elephantis ‘even eat crocodiles, not regarding them as sacred’. The crocodile-god was Sebek in Egypt (Souchos to the Greeks (see LSJ s.v. σοῦχος). 3 The ibis (associated with the Egyptian god Thoth) was regarded as sacred, according to Herodotus (2.75) and Cicero (de natura deorum 1.101), because it killed the winged snakes which were trying to fly into Egypt from Arabia: Herodotus describes one species as (2.76) ‘black all over with a crane’s legs and a crooked beak, about the size of a corn-crake’ while a different species is ‘without any feathers on its head and neck, with plumage which is white except for its head, neck and the tips of its wings and tail, which are black’. stuffed full of snakes: it is the black ibis which kills the snakes and so deserves its desciption here as saturam serpentibus, where the sibilance adds to the effect of the mass of snakes inside the bird. 4–6  Egypt is filled with wonders both (apparently) supernatural (the singing stones of Memnon), historical (Thebes with its 100 gates) and (in a sort of reverse bathos), the theological wonder of men worshipping a monkey, something which J. implies was common in Thebes: the addition of the term aurea fits well with the ancient impression (Homer Iliad 381–4 Pliny NH 18.170) that Thebes was a prosperous place, famous for its Colossi of Memnon and for its 100 ceremonial gates. 4  The last two feet of the line are filled with the grandiose (if ungainly) fivesyllable noun cercopitheci to refer to the long-tailed ape (κερκοπίθηκος: cf. Pliny NH 8.72). This animal was known in Rome (cf. Martial 14.202) and the term was also used to describe ugly simian features in men (Suetonius Nero 30.2, Martial 7.87.4). golden … gleams: there is effective juxtaposition here of nitet aurea to emphasise the gleaming of the statue, and great contempt in the final word being thus elevated. In fact the ape worshipped in Egypt was the ‘dog-headed’ ape (Simia hamadryas, κυνοκέφαλος) identified (like the ibis) with the god Thoth: for the enduring fascination of the ape for the Romans and the link with Egypt see McDermott (1936). 5  Memnon, as told in the lost Aethiopis of Arctinus, was the dark-skinned son

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of Dawn (Eos) and Tithonus. He was the handsome (Homer Odyssey 11.522) ruler of Ethiopia (Hesiod Theogony 984–5) who took a force to help the Trojans in the Trojan war. There he killed Greeks such as Antilochus (as recalled by Juvenal at 10.253) who died saving the life of his father Nestor (Pindar Pythian 6.28–42). He was himself killed by Achilles and was honoured after his death: the statues referred to here are the ‘Colossi of Memnon’ which were said to make musical sounds when the rising sun’s rays hit them – as though Memnon were greeting his mother Dawn (see Pausanias 1.42.2, Pliny NH 36.58, Tacitus Annals 2.61). The statue was chopped in half by an earthquake (Strabo 17.1.46) and the most likely explanation of the sounds is that ‘after the cold of night the rapid expansion of the loosened stones in the sudden change of temperature caused vibration of the material and air-currents through the cracks’ (Courtney). The statue bears the name of the emperor Hadrian who visited the site in AD 130: when the statue was restored in AD 202 by Septimius Severus the musical sounds ceased to happen. See OCD s.v. ‘Memnon’, Balsdon (1969) 230, Danziger and Purcell (2005) 137. dimidio … Memnone is most plausibly an ablative absolute but may also convey the sense of ablative of source (‘from the split Memnon’: see AG § 403). chordae (another Greek word) are the strings of a musical instrument (as at 3.63, 6.382) which here sound (resonant) spontaneously as they are endowed with supernatural power (see OLD s.v. ‘magicus’ b) – like the spells of the gaslighting wife at 6.610 or Circe’s wand in Valerius Flaccus (7.212). 6  Thebes in Greece famously had seven gates (see 13.27): its namesake in Egypt (called Waset in ancient times: modern Luxor) had one hundred gates and was famed from Homeric times (see Iliad 9.383 where it is termed ἑκατόμπυλοι) to the other end of the classical period (Ammianus 17.4.2, 22.16.2) with a stream of visitors such as Herodotus (2.143). Roman tourists flocked there: Germanicus in AD 19 (Tacitus Annals 2.60) went to see Thebes and Memnon, and the emperor Hadrian visited the place in November 130 (CAH xi.144). The Thebans even reckoned themselves to be the most ancient of all humans (Diodorus Siculus 1.50.1): for evaluation of the facts about Egyptian Thebes see S.West (1988) 201–202 on Homer Odyssey 4.125–7. The city was sacked more than once: by the Assyrian ruler Assurbanipal in 663BC and then by C. Cornelius Gallus in 30/29 BC. razed: obruo often has the sense of ‘destroy’ or ‘bring down’ (cf. 10.142) or ‘drowned’ (14.297): see OLD s.v. ‘obruo’ 4. The ablative portis is acceptable as ablative of description (‘hundred-gated Thebes’): the case throws emphasis onto Thebe itself as being totally destroyed, gates and all.

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7–8  cats … fish … dog: the poet gives us a neat tricolon of animals (aeluros … piscem … canem) to build up to the blunt nemo Dianam. As commonly in tricola, the items are listed with anaphora (illic … hic … illic) and increase in length: in this case the dog is delayed until later in the colon for suspense. Cicero (de legibus 1.32.5) mocks those ‘who worship a dog or a cat as gods’. 7  aelurus is a Greek word (αἴλουρος) for cat, found only here in extant Latin verse and giving the line a more exotic tone than (say) feles would have done. Herodotus (2.67) tells us that cats were mummified and buried in sacred chambers in Bubastis – a place which shared its name with the local cat-goddess (see OCD s.v. ‘Bubastis’). The river referred to (fluminis) is presumably the Nile: Herodotus tells us (2.72) that the Egyptians regard the Nile fish known as lepidotos ( ‘with thick scales’ (cf. Aristotle HA 505a24), identified by LSJ with the carp) as sacred – as also the eel. Strabo assures us (17.1.40) – in contradiction to J. – that all Egyptians shared this worship. Herodotus tells us (2.37) that priests were not allowed to eat any fish (cf. Plutarch Moralia 353d). 8  whole towns … Diana: the line operates two strong contrasts to highlight the differences: oppida tota versus nemo, and canem versus Dianam. The worship of a divinity in the form of a dog is referred to by Virgil (Aeneid 8. 698: the ‘barking Anubis’: cf. Propertius 3.11.41, Ovid Met. 9.690, Apuleius Met. 11.11.4 for similar phrasing): see OCD s.v. ‘Anubis’. Diana was the Roman goddess of hunting who therefore was mistress of dogs, whereas Egyptians spurned the goddess in favour of the animal. 9  leek … onion: onions and leeks were in fact eaten in Egypt as is clear from papyrological evidence (see Goelet (2003) 26, Mikhail (2000) 110) and biblical sources (Numbers 11.5): in fact Egyptian priests abstained from onions for practical reasons (Plutarch Moralia 353) as they induce both thirst and weeping. Egypt grew the best leeks according to Pliny (NH 19.110), who also tells us (19.101) that Egyptians treated onions and leeks as divine when swearing oaths, perhaps in the sense that they were offered as sacrifice. J.’s phrase here clearly recalls Horace Epistles 1.12.21 (‘but whether you butcher fish or leek and onion’) where the poet is giving good Epicurean advice to the discontented Iccius: his point there is probably (as Mayer (1994) 200 puts it) ‘fish was a delicacy and onions cheap, so H. may only be saying ‘however you choose to treat yourself’’. J. is here making the foods into Egyptian divinities as lines 10–11 (numina) make clear, with strong words for the religious prohibition (nefas) and two phrases to spell out

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the general act of sacrilege (uiolare: see OLD s.v. ‘uiolo’ 2 and cf. 11.116, Cicero Tusc. 5.78) and the brutal munching of the crunchy vegetables (frangere morsu – a phrase found also in silver epic such as Lucan 6.114, Valerius Flaccus 2.459, Statius Thebaid 10.417). 10–11  oh what pious folk: J. uses heavy sarcasm here to express mock admiration for the piety of this nation: a piety which will be shattered when he describes their cannibalism later on. Duff suggests that J. is here alluding to the idea that gods revealed themselves to innocent men in innocent times (as in Catullus 64.384–6) but this seems unnecessary as the snarling irony of sanctas is linked with the absurd idea of gods growing in the garden, an absurdity highlighted by the enjambed emphasis of numina and its juxtaposition over the line-break with hortis. 11–12  woolly beasts: Herodotus tells us (2.42) that sheep were sacrificed in the Mendes province but not goats, while in Thebes sheep were sacred and goats were sacrificed, which contradicts J.’s blanket generalisations (abstinet omnis mensa … nefas illic). The god Mendes was often shown as a ram and the deity was identified by Herodotus with the Greek god Pan (see OCD s.v. ‘Mendes’). woolly: for lanatus as a term cf. 8.155: it is comnonly used in agricultural writers (Columella 6.2.4, 7.3.2, 11.2.33) and was the cognomen of the (presumably) downy-haired Menenius Agrippa (Livy 4.13.6). Pliny – like J. here – uses it as a covering term for all woolly animals and describes them as ‘the stupidest animals’ (NH 8.199). The poet varies and intensifies his language in this couplet, moving from the gentle abstinet … mensa to the focalised brutality of fetum iugulare. For iugulare used in this sense (‘to kill by cutting the throat’ OLD s.v. ‘iugulo’ 1) cf. 12.127, Virgil Aeneid 12.214. kid: for fetus used of the young of an animal cf. 14.78, Lucretius 2.358. Tender young animals were often (but not always) chosen as sacrificial victims (see Virgil Aeneid 12.170 (fetum), Horace Odes 3.13, Ogilvie (1981) 42–43) and J.’s tone here suggests kindly feelings on the part of the Egyptians towards small animals, their smallness brought out in the diminutive capellae – feelings which (he will assert in the blunt and shocking phrase which follows) they do not extend to people. 13  eat … flesh: uesci (+ ablative) here has the sense of ‘devour’ (OLD s.v. ‘uescor’ 2a) as in other celebrated cannibal feasts (15.106, Virgil Aeneid 3.622, Livy 23.5, Pliny NH 6.53.5). licet is placed last for emphasis – this abomination is actually permitted. Courtney wisely points out that J.’s inference of the legitimacy of cannibalism from the fact that it had happened was unfair – there are many examples of humans eating human flesh in

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order to survive – but then satire does not usually aim to be fair and J. will consider the less reprehensible cases later (93–116). Diodorus Siculus 1.84.1 tells us of cannibalism in Egypt owing to a famine, where it is clearly justified: more commonly cannibalism was threatened (Homer Iliad 22.346– 7, 24.212–213) or practised against one’s enemies – Jews in Cyrene who revolted against Roman rule in 115–117 AD are said by Dio (68.32) to have practised cannibalism on their victims, while the legendary Tydeus slays and eats the head of his enemy Melanippus in Statius (Thebaid 8.718–66). J. will furnish more examples of legendary cannibalism in line 18. 13–15  Ulysses was washed ashore at the island of Scheria (Homer Odyssey books 6–8) and entertained there by their king Alcinous: over dinner (super cenam) the hero recounted his movements since leaving Troy, a first-person narrative which occupies books 9–12 of the Odyssey. dumbstruck: Homer tells us at the end of his story (Odyssey 13.1–2) that his audience were ‘silent and spell-bound’ which J. reinterprets as incredulous astonishment (attonito, placed first in the sentence, at the end of the line for emphasis and heightened by the syncopated rhythm of the final monosyllable cum), although he covers himself with the disclaimer perhaps (fortasse) juxtaposed with the qualifying term quibusdam (i.e. some of them, but not all). 15–16  wrath or mirth: bilem aut risum neatly sums up the conflicting emotions: anger at being taken for fools and laughter at the absurdity of his tale. bilis (our word ‘bile’) is secreted by the liver which was seen as the source of emotions (see Watson (2003) on Horace Epodes 5.37) and is a more prosaic word not found in Virgil, Ovid and the major epic poets. For bile as indicating anger verging on nausea cf. 5.159, 6.433, 11.187, 13.143, Horace Odes 1.13.4, Satires 1.9.66, Epistles 1.19.20, Epodes 11.16, Martial 5.26.3, OLD s.v. ‘bilis’ 2. There is a nice irony here (as at 11.187) in the word being used in the context of a dinner-party where digestive juices are something to be regulated. 16  lying: mendax is in fact a perfectly justified term to use of Ulysses the accomplished liar who created his ‘Lying Tales’ mainly to protect his identity from the murderous suitors (Homer Odyssey 13.253–295, 14.199–359, 17. 419–44, 19.172–202) and who admits to deceiving the Cyclops about his identity (Odyssey 9. 364–7) – but who also invented a false identity to tease his aged father (24.304–14: on the whole topic see Aristotle Poetics 1460a, Walcot (1977), Richardson (2006)). big-mouth: aretalogus (transliterated from Greek ἀρεταλόγος) is only found three times in Latin and equally rarely in Greek. It is usually defined as a ‘professional

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expounder of ἀρεταί’ (i.e. encomia of divine powers) or simply ‘narrator of virtues’ (see Gowers (2012) 84–85, OCD s.v. ‘miracles’). The form found expression in poetic texts such as Callimachus Hymn 6, Propertius 3.17. The word acquired the sense of ‘long-winded sententious teller of tall tales’ as at Suetonius Augustus 74 and this suits J.’s context here well, but there is also lurking the possible sense of Ulysses as ‘virtue-signalling’ in his tendentious account of his own travels. Ulysses is far from modest in naming himself as one ‘whose fame reaches the heavens’ (Homer Odyssey 9.19–20) and the pompous term aretalogos is both a good description of the man and also the sort of pretentious term he may well have used of himself as he sang his own praises. (It might also be tempting to speculate that J. is playing on the name of the queen of Phaeacia (Arētē) and describing the guest as sweet-talker of his hostess, but the quantity of the vowels (ărĕtālogus) argues against this). 16–23  The angry Phaeacians wish to see Ulysses hoist with his own petard, exposed to real versions of the sort of monsters which he has invented. J.’s readers will have been familiar with these well-known episodes from the Odyssey, some of which have already been alluded to in Satire 14 (see 14.19–20n.): Scylla (Odyssey 12.80–100, 234–259) was a sea-monster who devoured sailors. while Charybdis (Odyssey 12.234–59) was a whirlpool which devoured ships and crew. The Laestrygonians were cannibals who speared Ulysses’ men ‘like fishes’ and carried them off to eat them (Odyssey 10.80–132), while the one-eyed Cyclops Polyphemus was another maneating monster (Odyssey 9.176–555). Circe was a threat of a different kind: she was a witch who turned Ulysses’ men into pigs (Odyssey 10.133–574): Elpenor was one of Ulysses’ men who is not described in Homer as being turned into a pig but who in fact died a very naturalistic and believable death when he fell off a roof when drunk (Odyssey 10.551–560) and whose ghost pleads with Ulysses in the underworld (Odyssey 11.51–80). The clashing Cyanean rocks presumably refers to the rocks narrated at Odyssey 12.59– 72, although the term usually refers to the Symplegades which were faced by Jason and the Argonauts (see 19–20n., OCD s.v. ‘Symplegades’). The bag of storm-winds was a gift from the god of winds Aeolus to enable Ulysses to sail safely home to Ithaca: the gift misfired when his men opened the bag (thinking it contained treasure) and the winds blew them back to Aeolus’ island (Odyssey 10. 1–75). J.’s ordering of these tales is clever: he has the cannibals together on one line (18) framed by the matching pair of sea-monsters Scylla and Charybdis (17 and 19) and the clashing rocks: divine beings then appear in the pairing of Aeolus and Circe, ending with the

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vignette of the hapless Elpenor. The thrust of the argument is that monstrous rocks, witches, and bags full of winds are more credible than cannibalism. 16–18 ‘Is nobody…’: the audience burst into an angry rhetorical question which has the force of a command: ‘will nobody throw…?’ This colloquial usage of nemo + present indicative is apt to be addressed to slaves by a master (as at Terence Phormio 152, Horace Satires 2.7.34). ecquis is used in a similar way (e.g. at Virgil Aeneid 9.51, Horace Satires 2.7.34–5). throwing: abicit is the 3rd person present tense of abicio which is a compound (abiacio) and so one might expect the first syllable to be lengthened as it represents ab-iacit with consonantal ‘i’ as it is in Virgil (Aeneid 10.182), Horace (Epistles 1.13.7, Odes 4.7.17), Propertius (4.11.77) Statius Thebaid 2.479, Achilleis 1.172: other poets however shorten the syllable as J. does here (Manilius 1.666, 4.44, ps-Virgilian Moretum 94). The present tense has future sense but also suggests impatience (‘is nobody throwing him? why is he still here?’) 17  real-life: uera is pointed: the Charybdis in his tale is seen as a fiction (cf. fingentem in 18) and he deserves (dignum) a real one (cf. 8.188). savage one: saeua may seem otiose as there was no Charybdis which was not savage, but (again) the adjective shows the anger of the speaker. 18  inventing: fingentem is emphasised at the start of the line and has explanatory force (AG § 496, K-S ii.1.775 §139.2). The heavy fifth-foot spondee and clumsy rhythm of the end of the line is apt for the lumbering Cyclopes: and the Greek accusative endings in -as mimic Ulysses’ language. giant: immanis was applied to the monstrous Pyrrhus at 14.162 is is used three times in this poem (cf. 104, 125). 19–21  sooner believe: citius is to be taken with crediderim. For citius (literally ‘more quickly’ and so meaning ‘sooner’ in the sense of ‘more readily’) cf.16.32, Publ. Syrus 168, OLD s.v. ‘cito1’ 3. The perfect subjunctive crediderim has potential force (AG§447, cf. 2.24, 6.651, 8.75, Horace Satires 1.5.44). 19–20  Cyanean: the word Cyaneis is the dative of Cyaneae (Κυάνεαι) which is the name of the ‘Symplegades’ or ‘clashing rocks’ most familiar from the legends of Jason and the Argonauts (e.g. Valerius Flaccus Argonautica 2.382, 4.638, Lucan 2.716, Pliny NH 4.92.3, Hyginus 21.1.1, Euripides Medea 2), but here assimilated by the Phaeacians to Ulysses’ ‘wandering rocks’ (πλαγκταὶ πέτραι, Homer Odyssey 12.61). This is clever characterisation on J.’s part: the Phaeacians are accusing Ulysses of being a con-artist (mendax) and it is clearly their suspicion that he has lifted this exploit from the tale of Jason – and so

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their use of the Argonautical term hints at this. clashing: to spell the point out he translates the Greek term συμπληγάδες (from συμ-πλήσσω) into the nearequivalent Latin form concurrentia (from con-curro) a trope found also in Ovid Amores 2.11.3, Statius Thebaid 11.438, Valerius Flaccus 1.60, 1.630 (see OLD s.v. ‘concurro’ 4). The dative case of Cyaneis may be seen as possessive dative (‘the rocks belonging to the Cyaneae’). et is transposed and is to be taken before plenos as if it were -que: a usage found in epic (Virgil Aeneid 2.383) and a ‘neoteric mannerism’ (Austin (1964) ad loc.: see Fordyce (1961) on Catullus 23.7, Norden (1957) 402–404). Elsewhere J. postpones nec in the same way (6.440, 11.158, 12.66,13.43). The effect here is to throw greater stress onto tempestatibus with the hint that et conveys ‘even’ as well as ‘and’: bags full of ‘actual storm-winds’. bags: uter is J.’s equivalent to Homer’s ἀσκὸς βοός (Odyssey 10.19): the same word is used by Ovid (Amores 3.12.29) of the bag of winds referred to here. 21  Circe in Homer (Odyssey 10.238) strikes the men with a stick (ῥάβδος) and confines them in pig-sties: it is unclear whether the blow from the stick is part of the enchantment or simply the herding instrument, as she had already given them the drugs. J. here has a nice oxymoron whereby Elpenor is struck with a flimsy blow (tenui percussum uerbere): uerber is commonly used of flogging (as at 6.481, 8.267, 10.317, 13.194: see OLD s.v. ‘uerber’ 3,4), as is percussus (e.g. 14.286): but Circe only needs a gentle touch to secure the effect, showing both her femininity and her power. 22–3  Courtney states that J.’s ‘memory slips’ in naming Elpenor as one turned into a pig but this is perhaps incorrect: for one thing, the angry Phaeacians are speaking and their refusal to believe the tales is well reinforced by their contemptuous error: for another, Elpenor was young and foolish (Odyssey 10.553 descibes him as ‘unsound in his wits’) and so his name leads neatly onto line 23 (tam uacui capitis: ‘does he think we are as stupid [as Elpenor]?’) 22  grunting: grunnisse is the perfect infinitive of grunnio or grundio, a wonderfully onomatopeic word for grunting (see e.g. Cicero Tusc. 5.116, Laberius Mimi 103): the collocation of remigibus … porcis is ‘a fine oxymoron’ (Courtney), and the word order is itself significant as the men enter the line as oarsmen and end the line as pigs. 23  For the phrase empty-headed cf. 14.57–8, OLD s.v. ‘uacuus’ 1c, Horace Odes 1.18.15. The Phaeacians’ indignant speech ends with strong ‘p’ alliteration and equally strong patriotism as they self-define with their nationality. Phaeacian: the noun Phaeax properly denotes an ‘inhabitant

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of Phaeacia’ (see OLD s.v. ‘Phaeax’) but here has the adjectival sense of Phaeac(i)us as it is applied to the whole populum: cf. 4.100 (Numidas). 23–25  Phaecia has since ancient times been identified with Corcyra (modern Kerkyra/Corfu: see Thucydides 1.25, 3.70, Hornblower (1991) 70) and J. reminds us of this with Corcyraea. 24–25  J. covers himself with the qualifying pronoun aliquis (somebody, but not necessarily everybody) but justifies his sentiments with rightly so (merito). His point in the rest of the couplet is that sober listeners would be more critical of the tales. booze: tēmētum is a rare and archaic (Pliny NH 14.90, Gellius 10.23.1) word for ‘intoxicating liquor’ found in comedy, farce, mime and occasionally in more elevated genres (Livy 10.42.7, Horace Epistles 2.2.163): the adjective temulentus (‘drunk’) is derived from it and is more common in Latin (11 times in Tacitus, for instance). flagon: an urna was able to hold three gallons (almost 14 litres: see 6.426, 7.236, 12.44) and so might be unwieldy as the vessel from which to drink directly: duxerat means here, however, ‘had drunk’ as at 6.428, Horace Odes 1.17.22, 4.12.14, Propertius 2.9.21 OLD s.v. ‘duco’ 25b) rather than ‘decant’ (Ferguson): the Phaeacians are lavish hosts (Homer Odyssey 8.248) who supply drink in their own (Corcyraea) flagon (urna) but this wise guest has only taken a tiny amount (minimum, emphasised by its placing early in the phrase). 26  all by himself: Ulysses was alone (solus) with no witnesses to support his tall tales as his companions had by now all died. the Ithacan: Ulysses here is simply called Ithacus – his homeland was the island of Ithaca. recited: the last word of the line is well-chosen: canere (‘to sing’) is used especially of poetic composition (e.g. Virgil Aeneid 1.1) and so reminds us that Ulysses’ tales were part of the epic narrative which is the Odyssey, but it is also used especially of singing the praises of men or gods (Horace Odes 1.10.5, 1.32.10, Epodes 9.18, Virgil Aeneid 7.698), and here the subject and the object of the verb is the boastful aretalogus (16) himself, Ulysses. More sinister still, the verb often denotes ‘boastful … language’ (OLD s.v. ‘cano’ 4a: cf. 2.64, Virgil Aeneid 9.621, Statius Thebaid 11.299) which is very much Ulysses’ manner, even when it causes him trouble (e.g. Homer Odyssey 9.474–505). Virgil (Aeneid 4.14) has Dido recall Aeneas’ narrative in similar terms (quae bella exhausta canebat! (‘what a draining of war’s cup he told’ (Austin (1955) ad loc.)) and it is possible that J. uses the word in this passage as an ironic reference to that famous intertext. sub here means ‘under the authority or guarantee of’ (OLD s.v. ‘sub’ 16, Livy 2.37.8, Petronius 118.6, Statius Siluae 2.3.76, 5.3.227).

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27–29  J. now moves from the distant past to recent (nuper) events, from tall tales told with no corroboration to events which took place in a specific known place and which were committed by a whole people. The irony here is also plain: J.’s tale is going to prove that cannibalism does happen, and so the imagined incredulity of the Phaeacians will prove to have been premature and wrong. 27  I will: nos is not needed as it is in the verb referemus but is put here in emphatic position to mark the difference between Ulysses and the poet himself, whose tale is miranda quidem but very much true – a contrast which is stressed further with the repeated nos as 29. L. Aemilius Iuncus was consul in 127 AD and this is one of the few passages which date J.’s poetry (cf. 13.16–18n.), although nuper is not specific and ‘recently [in comparison to the Trojan War]’ allows a lot of latitude. 28  Coptus is in Upper Egypt on the river Nile, now the village of Qift 27 miles from Luxor, and was famous for being built up by the emperor Augustus (see OCD s.v. ‘Coptus’: super in this sort of context means ‘beyond’ or ‘further inland’ (OLD s.v. ‘super’ 5). J. brings the reader back from Phaeacia to the Egyptians here: he names the area, specifies that it had city-walls and adds that it was boiling hot (cf. Catullus 7.5). The term calidae is elsewhere applied to Egypt (Lucan 2.586) and saying that Egypt is hot may seem a cliché, but calidus also means ‘passionate, angry’ (OLD s.v. ‘calidus’ 9) which will be seen to the full in what follows. The prosaic term referemus (OLD s.v. ‘refero’ 5) is in sharp contrast to the ‘singing’ (canebat 26) of Ulysses. 29  tragedy: a coturnus (transliterated from Greek κόθορνος) was a loose boot worn by tragic actors in the theatre: it had the convenience of being wearable on either foot and was built up to add height to the actor (see Watson and Watson (2014) on 6.506). For its metonymic use to mean ‘tragedy’ cf. 6.634, 7.72, Ovid Amores 1.15.15, Tristia 2.1.393, Horace Odes 2.1.12, Satires 1.5.64. The phrase cunctis … coturnis has obvious alliterative and assonant force. mob: uolgus often has pejorative force (see 2.74, 3.36–7, 10.51, 11.3, 15.126, Horace Odes 3.1.1, OLD s.v. ‘uulgus’ 2) and this will be important as the mob-violence becomes lynch-justice and finally cannibalism (see 15.36, 15.126). 30–31  no whole people: tragedies generally focus on the actions of an individual rather than a group, but both Aeschylus Persians and Euripides’ Bacchae could be seen as exceptions to this. J.’s assumption in the line is that tragedy always involves criminality: this is questionable in cases such as

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Euripides’ Alcestis, and plays such as Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus the King pitch their characters into situations where it is not obvious what is the ‘right’ thing to do. Presumably J. is thinking of the ghastly violence which is depicted in tragedy and comparing it favourably with the even ghastlier case he is about to narrate. Pyrrha and her husband Deucalion were the only people allowed to survive the great flood sent by the gods and their task was then to form a new human race by throwing stones which turned into people (see Ovid Met. 1.253–416), and so a Pyrrha stands for ‘from the start of the human race’. At 1.81–6 J. used the same legend with the same meaning. 30  trailing robes: a syrma (σύρμα, literally ‘a trailing thing’) was a long robe worn by tragic actors, used in its literal sense at 8.229, Martial 4.49.8 but here used (like coturnis in 29) metonymically for ‘tragic role’. unfurled: the verb uoluas primarily means ‘roll’ but here has the metaphorical sense of ‘read’ from the action of unrolling a written scroll (6.452, 10.126, OLD s.v. ‘uoluo’ 9a). The resulting phrase is a mixed metaphor (‘you scroll through the trailing robes’) complete with mythological exemplum which neatly suggests the style as well as the content of tragedy. 31–2  Listen while I tell you: accipe is a neat didactic imperative (see 13.120n.), while exemplum indicates a paradigm or significant case (see 13.1n.) produced by the dira feritas of the Egyptians: savagery: feritas denotes extreme brutality of people (e.g. Tacitus Histories 1.41, Livy 38.37.3) and animals (Ovid Tristia 4.6.6): J. will later (15.159–64) assert (incorrectly) that animals do not practise cannibalism. in our own times: nostro aeuo is stipulated in contrast to the aeons of time past since Pyrrha. For produco in the sense of ‘bring forth, produce’ see OLD s.v. ‘produco’ 5, Lucretius 4.1223. 33–35  Ombi and Tentyra are termed finitimos and (if our identification of them is correct) they are about ten miles apart: Tentyra is modern Denderah, north of Coptus, while Ombi is (probably) modern Negadeh. This sentence is remarkable for its sequence of parallel phrases, in which the rising list of simultas, odium and uulnus are all subjects of the singular verb ardet, and in which finitimos agrees with the place-names Ombos et Tentyra. 33  old … long-standing: uetus and antiqua reinforce each other (cf. 6.21) but are not synonymous: uetus suggests that the quarrel has lasted a long time, whereas antiqua tells us that it began a long time ago. 34  enduring … never be healed: immortale and numquam sanabile are saying similar things in different terms: the hatred is ‘undying’ while the

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‘wound’ can ‘never be healed’. The terms are sardonic here as the ensuing fight will cause people – if not their hatred – to die and will inflict real ‘wounds’ on each other. For the metaphorical sense of uulnus as ‘mental or emotional hurt’ see OLD s.v. ‘uulnus’ 3, Virgil Aeneid 4.2, Ovid Met. 5.426. 35  burns: ardet as a metaphor for the blazing of passion is common in Latin – cf. 1.45, 9.96, 15.52 – but also extends the metaphor of uulnus as the ‘wound’ is now feverish and inflamed (OLD s.v. ‘ardeo’ 4, Horace Epodes 17.30). 35–7  on both sides … each of the two: the sparring of the two places is stressed in utrimque … uicinorum … uterque and the strength of feeling is evoked in the words furor … odit. rage … mob: for the image of mob madness evoked in the juxtaposition furor uolgo cf. Lucretius 2.621–2, Virgil Aeneid 1.149–150, Ovid Met. 3.530–1, Horace Satires 1.6.97–8. inde has a causal sense (as at 1.168, 3.236, 6.139, 10.140 (OLD s.v. ‘inde’ 9a)) picked up by quod after the caesura. uīcīnōrum takes up the final two feet of line 36 with a solemn fifth-foot spondee (cf. 14.115, 15.18). The collective nature of the madness is stressed with the use of the place-names (Ombos et Tentura), the pejorative noun uolgo and then the agency ascribed to the area (locus) which is said to hate, to believe and to worship (odit … credat … colit) as a person in itself (ipse). 36–38  The argument was apparently over crocodiles, although J. does not tell us so. The Ombi worshipped crocodiles as part of the cult of the god Set (on whom see OCD s.v. ‘Set’), while the Tentyrites hated and hunted crocodiles and worshipped the cow-headed goddess Hathor. Aelian (On the Nature of Animals 10.21–24) adds that the Ombi even rejoice if a child is taken by a crocodile ‘as they have produced a meal for a god’ while the Tentyrites catch crocodiles in nets, hang them from trees, flog them and then cut them up and eat them (cf. Pliny NH 28.30, Strabo 17.1.44: see also 15.2n.). 37–38  the only gods: Romans generally had an inclusive attitude towards foreign deities – so long as this involved neither disrespect towards Roman gods nor a cover for political agitation – and theological chauvinism such as J. describes would seem strange, especially as the Romans were accommodating towards the cults practised by Egyptians (see CAH xi.992–7). habere here has the sense of ‘regard’ (OLD s.v. ‘habeo’ 24a): it is appropriate that the trouble started during a religious festival (tempore festo). sed has a conversational tone in starting the story after the general remarks (‘but anyway…’: see OLD s.v. ‘sed’ 2b).

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39–40  one tribe … enemies: Which side started it? J. studiously avoids attributing blame at this point, simply describing the two sides as alterius and inimicorum: lines 73–6 suggest that it was the Tenturites who first attacked the Ombites (and so alterius here means Ombites while inimicorum refers to the Tenturites), but it was clearly important for the poet not to apportion blame in this tale of mutual hatred and reciprocal brutality. The sentence is construed thus: the occasio seemed (uisa (est)) worth taking (rapienda) by all (cunctis): for this use of uisa see OLD s.v. ‘uideo’ 20a. Snatch an opportunity is natural language in English and in Latin (Horace Epodes 13.3–4 (rapiamus occasionem), Livy 27.17.11, Quintilian I.O. 8.3.47) but here the verb rapere has more of its natural violent force – it was not just the opportunity being seized here – and the word has a sense of urgency (see Watson (2003) 425). chiefs and leaders: J. is dignifying the warring tribes here with his use of terms: populi…primoribus ac ducibus is formal language for what will become a riot (see OLD s.v. ‘primoris’ 4b) and the effect is to force the reader to see that this was as much a state-action, whose blame lay with the leaders, as a riot of a disorderly mob. The syncopated rhythm (ac duci/bus ne) with its clash of ictus and accent is effective in marking the strife. 41–44  happy and cheerful day…: a vignette of Egyptians having fun, the target of the attack as shown in the repeated ne and the ominous language chosen. 41  happy … joys…: the line splits at the caesura into the two parallel phrases denoting the festivity in general (laetum … diem) and the culinary delights in particular (magnae … cenae). The emphasis is obviously on pleasure (laetum … gaudia) and cheerfulness (hilarem: cf. 11.178, 12.65, 13.52) and the final word cenae neatly looks forward to the details of the dinner in the following line – and also to the cannibal ‘feast’ which is to come. 42  aware of: sentirent is translated ‘enjoy’ by many but it is more sinister than that: the Ombites will not even ‘be aware of’ their lavish party once the enemy strike. 42–4  The Egyptians feasted out of doors – as discussed by Abdelrahiem (2010) and Iskander (2011) – and the feast could go on for a whole week (Pliny NH 8.186, Ammianus 22.15.17) as in Christianity’s observance of the ‘octave’ of Christmas and Easter. 42  The set-up here sounds Roman, with portable tables (mensis) loaded with food and diners reclining on a couch (toro), but the outdoor location

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is specified as being at temples and crossroads as detailed in Herodotus (2.35.4). Temples are of obvious significance in the political and religious life of the people, but crossroads (compita) are also vital places to meet and gossip in ancient times (see 9.112, Horace Satires 2.3.26, 2.6.50, Livy 34.2.12, Propertius 2.20.22) and even have their own cult (of the Lares Compitales: see OCD s.v. ‘Lares’) which reflects the notion that ghosts haunted crossroads (cf. also Oedipus’ catastrophic crossroads at Sophocles Oedipus the King 716 and Seneca Oedipus 278: and see LSJ s.v. ‘τρίοδος’ 2). 43  does not sleep: peruigil is a strengthened form of uigil, meaning ‘awake all night long’, a sense strengthened by the addition of nocte ac luce. peruigili agrees with toro and is a transferred epithet (it is the diner rather than the couch who stays awake) as at 8.158, Lucretius 6.754, just as iacentem suggests both the reclining person and the couch which is its grammatical referent. night and day: nocte ac luce is a pleasing phrase (cf. Virgil Aeneid 4. 184–6, Manilius 1.94) with nocte looking back towards peruigili and luce looking forward to the sun which shines in 44. 44  sometimes found: the slow pace of time is evoked in the spondaic rhythm of the second and third foot, while the sudden discovery is enhanced by the dactylic present tense inuĕnĭt. For the pathetic fallacy whereby the sun ‘sees’ what goes on see 13.78n. 44–46  as I have noticed: J. adds a personal observation about the Egyptians and their extravagant and disorderly behaviour. quantum ipse notaui has excited much discussion: from the ancient world onwards some have seen it as providing evidence that J. visited Egypt but (while there is no reason why he should not have been there) the words cannot be forced to prove that and may simply refer to Egyptians who live in Rome: see Uden (2015) 206n.7, Geue (2017) 261. quantum has the sense of ‘to the extent that’ (as 4.109, OLD s.v. ‘quantum’2 2) and is a simple phrase to cover the generalisation (‘so far as I have observed [but I may have not seen enough to judge]’), just as famoso (disreputable) suggests that he relies on the word of others for his judgement. rough … over-indulgence: the poet’s language is doubly critical with each key term first in its clause: Egyptians are horrida, but they are also people of great luxuria, and neither is a laudable characteristic. The assumption behind this sentence is that the uncouth person is not likely to be a bon viveur: for horrida as suggesting aversion to personal luxury and grooming cf. 3.212 (the mourning mother), 6.10 (primitive women more unkempt (horridior) than their ‘acorn-belching husbands’), 8.116 (‘hairy Spain’: cf. 9.12), 10.298.

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certainly: sane concedes that Egyptians are rustic in this way (see OLD s.v. ‘sane’ 8a). The roughness is quickly dealt with and the rest of the parenthesis is devoted to the luxuria, with line 46 packing quite a punch in the promotion of barbara, the effective final juxtaposition of turba Canopo and the understated is a match for, where non cedit literally means ‘is not inferior to’: see OLD s.v. ‘cedo1’ 8d and cf. 7.38). foreign mob … Canopus: J. sets up a contrast here between the native Egyptians (the barbara turba) and the Greek inhabitants of Canopus, a place which was a disreputable (famoso) resort twelve miles from Alexandria, famous for the its ‘fortunate’ lifestyle which its abundant harvest assured (Virgil Georgics 4.287) as well as for its debauched ways (1.26, 6.84, Propertius 3.11.39, Seneca Ep. 51.3, Lucan 8.543, 10.64. Strabo (17.1.16) tells us that Greek even has a word κανωβισμός to mean ‘luxurious living’: cf. Statius Siluae 3.2.111. J. is of course no fan of Greeks (3.58–125) or of conspicuous consumption (cf. e.g. 1.135–146, 6.292–3, 11.77 (with my note ad loc.)). 47–48  Consider this too: the prosaic imperative phrase adde quod (cf. 14.114, Lucretius 1.847, 3.829, 4.1121–2, Manilius 3.238, Horace Satires 1.2.83, 2.7.78) introduces another factor in the undisciplined situation: lines 40–42 explained the motive, lines 47–48 explain the timing with the focalised term facilis reporting their view of the situation. drunk … slurring … staggering: the drunkenness of the Ombites is brought out in the tricolon crescendo of (a) madidis (b) blaesis (c) mero titubantibus. madidus (literally ‘soaked’) is common in the sense ‘drunk’ as at 6.297, Plautus Amphitruo 1001 (OLD s.v. ‘madidus’ 6): blaesus properly denotes ‘mispronouncing one’s words’ for any reason (as at Martial 10.65.10), but the speech defect is commonly ascribed to the word-slurring of a drunk (e.g. Martial 9.87.1–2). J. may be recalling Ovid’s lines (Ars Am. 1.598) ebrietas ut uera nocet, sic ficta iuuabit:/ fac titubet blaeso subdola lingua sono (‘real drunkenness damages your prospects [with the girls], but fake drunkenness will help you: make your cunning tongue stammer with slurring sound’). titubo (literally ‘to totter, stagger’) is another obvious symptom of drunkenness – cf. Columella de re rustica 10.1.1.309, Ovid Met. 3.608, 4.26, 15.331, Fasti 6.677, Seneca Ep. 114.22 – and to be expected if they are drinking unmixed wine (mero). The phrasing uictoria de + ablative is not uncommon in prose: cf. Livy 21.46.8. Notice how the awkward rhythm of the ending of 47 mirrors the unsteadiness of the drunken people. 48–51  On one side … on the other: J. contrasts the moods of the two

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sides, with inde … hinc … introducing a lavish description of merriment on the one hand and blunt ‘ravenous hatred’ on the other. 48–9  a men’s dance: dancing of this effeminate kind was not something which decent Roman men went in for – see the use of saltator (‘dancer’) as a term of abuse by Cicero Pro Murena 13 and cf. my note on 11.162–82, OCD s.v. ‘dancing’ – but the point is not laboured as J. has already damned the Egyptian character. 49–50  black piper … perfumes … heads: the dancing is well described with imagery which is visual (nigro tibicine … flores … coronae) auditory (tibicine) and olfactory (unguenta … flores). black: this might seem a redundant epithet as all Egyptians were termed black (Herodotus 2.57.2, 2.104, Martial 4.42.5–6, 10.12.12) but commentators from the ancient scholia onwards have suggested that J. is implying that the piper is of inferior African quality rather than a Greek Alexandrian: Egyptian fluteplayers were in demand in Rome (Tacitus Annals 14.60). qualiacumque (OLD s.v. ‘qualiscumque’ 2a) is depreciatory in tone as at Catullus 1.9, Horace Satires 1.10.88 and here suggests that the Egyptians were not fussy about the quality of the perfumes. For the importance of fragrances in the ancient party setting see 6.303, 11.122 (with my note ad loc.), Catullus 13, Horace Odes 4.12: they are often (as here) linked with garlands (e.g. Lucretius 4.1132, Horace Odes 2.3.13–14, 3.14.17). garlands: multae in fronte coronae, if taken literally, adds a touch of absurdity with its image of plural garlands on one brow, although the point of multae is presumably to stress that this party was a lavish affair, in slight contrast to the unflattering nature of the fragrances (qualiacumque). The occasion here is not specified: tempore festo (38) suggests a religious festival and J. seems to be envisaging something like the Bacchanalia which was notorious in Roman history for its alleged licentiousness and was banned by the senate in 186 BC: see 2.3, Tacitus Histories 2.68.7 (peruigiliis ac Bacchanalibus, translated as ‘all-night orgies’ by Ash (2007) 264), OCD s.v. ‘Bacchanalia’. 51  ravenous hatred: after the joyous pleasure comes the painful hatred. ieiunus literally means ‘hungry’ (as at 5.10, 10.232), and the literal sense is to the fore here both because the Tentyrites are not sharing the feast and also ironically as their enemies the Ombites will eat their flesh. The metaphorical sense of ‘desperately craving’ is found at Lucretius 4.876, Propertius 4.5.4, Virgil Georgics 3.493. 51–2  The battle starts with taunts, as battles often do in epic (e.g. Homer

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Iliad 22.248–272, Virgil Aeneid 10.873–882, 12.887–895 (cf. 65 below)) and in history (Tacitus Histories 1.64.2, Annals 14.17): the start of the battle is marked both with prima and also with the enjambed incipiunt. Ancient battles often began with the trumpet-call (see 1.169, 14.243 and cf. e.g. Caesar B.G. 2.20, 7.81.3, Sallust Catiline 60.1, B.J. 99.1, Livy 29.27, Virgil Aeneid 11.424, OLD s.v. ‘tuba’ 1a) and so the taunts are the equivalent of the ‘trumpet’ sound here. on fire: ardentibus (cf. 35n.) picks up and varies ieiunum from the previous line, while the specific odium is now widened to more general animis which has the sense of ‘anger’ and ‘passion’ (cf. 1.152, 6.285, OLD s.v. ‘animus’ 11) as well as simply ‘heart’ or ‘mind’. spat: rixa (found also at 61 below) is more commonly found in contexts of private quarrels (especially involving drink) rather than in military action (see e.g. 3.289, Catullus 40.4, Horace Odes 1.18.8) and reminds us that this is something of an impromptu brawl. 53  run … roar: the word-order mirrors the action as the shouting (clamore) spreads to the other side (pari) and then leads to action (concurritur). For the impersonal passive concurritur cf. Horace Satires 1.1.7, Caesar B.G. 7.4.2, Cicero Phil. 10.21.1, Sallust B.J. 53.2, Virgil Georgics 4.78, OLD s.v. ‘concurro’ 3b, AG §208d). 53–4  instead of: uice + genitive means ‘as a substitute for’ (OLD s.v. ‘uicis’ 8b) and looks forward to nuda in 54 which here has the sense of ‘unarmed’ (OLD s.v. ‘nudus’ 12) as at Tacitus Annals 16.9, Seneca Ep. 95.33. 54–6  rages … intact: the narrative passes immediately from the attack to the outcome. J. shows the almost total casualty rate in two ways: paucae sine uolnere and uix cuiquam aut nulli … integer, focussing on the jaws and the noses independently of their owners. 55–6  hardly anyone: uix cuiquam aut nulli is similar to Persius 1.3 uel duo uel nemo: both recall the Greek phrase ἤ τις ἢ οὐδείς (e.g. Herodotus 3.140, Xenophon Cyropaedia 7.5.45). The poet neatly juxtaposes nulli toto for effect and leaves the nose dangling at the end of the line before completing the phrase with the enjambed integer: for a split-second it seems that the fighters have lost the nose altogether. The same effect is repeated in uoltus/dimidios in 56–7. 56–58  faces … jaws … eyes: facial disfigurement is further described to the reader, addressed with the indefinite second-person subjunctive aspiceres – the imperfect subjunctive making the verb present in sense and so more vivid (‘[if you were here] you would be seeing…’). The phrase cuncta per agmina picks up and varies toto certamine by adding that the injuries

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were sustained by all ranks (and not simply one group). The injuries are horrific: faces torn in two (dimidios: cf. 8.4, 13.95n., 15.5, Martial 10.2.10), unrecognisable features (alias facies), bones showing through broken cheeks. alias (literally ‘changed’: see OLD s.v. ‘alius1’ 7a) is something of an understatement before the grisly detail to follow: genis could mean either ‘cheeks’ (OLD s.v. ‘gena’ 1) or ‘eyes’ (OLD s.v. 2), but the detail of ‘gaping bones’ supports the former more than the latter, although the hint of ‘eyes’ is picked up in oculorum. J. juxtaposes ossa genis for vividness: ruptis … genis is an ablative absolute (‘once the cheeks had been smashed the bones showed through’). The final image of this sentence is one of fists full of blood from eye-sockets, thus saving the worst until last. hiantia and plena also suggests eating – hio is used of gaping mouths desperate for food (10.231) and plenus is often used of the satisfied diner (14.138, Horace Epistles 1.7.31) – which looks forward to the feast to come. 59–60  game: the fighters are inflicting grotesque injuries, and yet (tamen) the matter is not yet serious enough as nobody has yet died: ludere … puerilis frames lines 59 to sum up ironically the gruesome contents of lines 51–58: for the use of ludere as mere pretence cf. 6.324–5, while puerilis/… acies would suggest boys playing soldiers (‘a children’s mock-battle’ as Green translates). ipsi is important, showing that the sentence is focalised through the eyes of the combatants themselves – which also explains the subjunctive calcent. The combatants have damaged faces but nobody has yet died, a notion conveyed with the brutal alliterative phrase cadauera calcent. This verb (derived from calx (‘heel’) and common in agricultural contexts) appears often in the context of trampling (bodies etc) in battle, denoting both superiority and contempt (OLD s.v. ‘calco’ 6a) as at: 3.248, Ovid Met. 5.88, Virgil Aeneid 12.340, Lucan 7.293, 529, Statius Thebaid 11.679, Livy 34.2.2 (metaphorical). 61–2 They are right: J. spells out and also mocks the sentiment of 59–60. sane is ironic: it has concessive force (as at 44) but here appears to make the outrageous statement reasonable (seen also in the quasi-philosophical ergo in 62), with obvious oxymoron of the meaning ‘sensibly’ (OLD s.v. ‘sane’ 2) up against rixantis … turbae. what is the point?: quo here means ‘for what purpose?’ (see 14.135n. and cf. 8.8–12, 142–5 OLD s.v. ‘quo1’ 2). scrapping: rixantis picks up rixae (52) while turbae picks up turba (45): tot milia is hyperbolic but it forms one singular baying mob, united in bloodshed. The short enjambed phrase si uiuunt omnes is devastatingly simple and the passage recalls Seneca’s

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scathing account of the mob watching executions (Epistles 7.1–5) with its ironic questions such as ‘why is the criminal not more willing to die?’. 62  So … harsher: the thirst for death makes the fighting fiercer. ergo – which makes the decision sound a reasonable inference – is sardonic, while the final monosyllables (et iam) show the narrative picking up speed. 63  stones on the ground: as in 52–4, the poet makes it clear here and in 64–5 (domestica … tela) that this battle is not planned but impromptu as the fighters have to search for the rocks from those on the ground. inclinatis … lacertis is a vivid touch – the arms are bent back to give greater force to the throw – and the hyperbaton lengthens the phrase as the thrower stretched his arms. 63–4  fling: J. is possibly thinking of Homer Iliad 7.269 (‘whirling’ ἐπιδινήσας) and Virgil Aeneid 12.901 (ille manu raptum trepida torquebat in hostem (‘he snatched up [the rock] in his shaking hand and flung it at his enemy’)) here. torqueo is often used of throwing spears (which are spun by the thrower: 5.155, OLD s.v. ‘torqueo’ 9, Watson and Watson (2014) on 6.449–50) but the verb is also used by J. of throwing cups (5.26) and words (6.450). Another sense of torqueo is to ‘torture’ (OLD s.v. ‘torqueo’ 3,4,5: cf. 1.9) which gives more force to the word here. 64–5  riot: line 64 has no strong caesura (there is a weak caesura in the 3rd foot but none in the 4th) and the final five-syllable word is ungainly (cf. 6.71, 373, 15.4). domestica seditio means ‘civil strife’ (as opposed to external warfare) at e.g. Cicero de Lege Agraria 2.90, Livy 2.42.3, Tacitus Agricola 24.3.2, Histories 4.12, Seneca Dial. 12.7.4: here the adjective domestica is going with tela and has the sense of ‘usual, familiar’ (9.17, OLD s.v. ‘domesticus’ 5) as well as ‘locally sourced’ (cf. 14.32). 65–7  stone: J. downgrades the rocks (saxa 63) to a single stone (lapidem) as Virgil did (Aeneid 12. 897~906). Rock-throwing was a standard part of epic combat (see 13.230–2n.), often coming between spear-throwing and close combat, and the greater the warrior the bigger the stone: Turnus tries (unsuccessfully) to hurt Aeneas with a rock at Virgil Aeneid 12. 896–914: Homer tells us that Hector flung a rock at Ajax, only for Ajax to fling a ‘much bigger stone … like a mill-stone’ (Iliad 7.263–70) which makes Hector fall to his knees, and later on Ajax took a ‘huge jagged rock’ and ‘smashed together all the bones in the head of Epicles’ (Homer Iliad 12.378–86). The son of Tydeus (Diomedes) inflicts serious damage on Aeneas as Homer tells us (Iliad 5.302–310): ‘the son of Tydeus grasped in his hand a stone – a big piece of work which two men could not carry as men are these days, but

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he wielded it alone with ease. With this he hit Aeneas on the hip, where the thigh turns in the joint … and crushed the bone, and broke the two sinews too, and the rough stone tore the skin away.’ J. here evokes the size and weight of the rock with the heavy preponderance of spondees in 66, and the moment of impact is conveyed in the alliterative and assonant percussit pondere coxam. The word coxam (hip) is not a poetic term and ends line 66 with jarring bathos. 65–8  not the sort…: epic commonly depicts heroes of the past as greatly superior to modern humans: cf. Homer Iliad 5.303–4 (quoted above), 12.381–3 (‘not even with both hands could a man as men are now hold it, no matter how young and strong he was, but Ajax lifted it…’), 12.445–9, 20.285–7, Virgil Aeneid 12.899–901 (‘not even twelve select men could lift it on their necks, men with bodies such as the earth brings forth now’) and this notion of degeneration in human quality is well attested in ancient thought (see e.g Hesiod Works and Days 106–201 (with West (1978) 172– 77), Pliny NH 7.73–4, and see also 6.9, 13.28.30n.) and is both supported and demythologised in Lucretius’ account of the superior toughness of early man (5.925–30, with Gale (2009) 177). The satirist makes good use of the trope here, mocking the puny moderns in contrast to their epic forebears, using epic terms to describe what heroes did and more modest language (sed quem ualeant emittere) of the Egyptians. Line 68 spells out the degeneration and ends with a wonderful touch of satire in the final word natae: this word agrees with dextrae which is feminine in gender but there is a clear implication that these moderns are women rather than (real) men, a taunt found also in Homer Iliad 2.235, 7.96. 69  even when…: J. now undercuts his recent promotion of ‘ancient (good) vs contemporary (bad)’, by telling us that things were already (iam) going downhill even when Homer was alive, thus mocking the very trope he has been using. 70  the earth … now: the poet goes back to the ‘degeneration’ theme in language reminiscent of the ‘golden age’ theory of degeneration which J. explores (and sends up) here and at 6.1–24, along with Epicurean ideas of anthropology (see 65–8n.): the contrast of illis (68) … nunc (70) … recalls Lucretius’ pessimism at 5.1009–1010, just as the imagery of mother earth bringing forth humans echoes earlier philosophers (e.g. Anaximander (KRS 136), Empedocles (KRS 382), Lucretius 2.589–660, 991–1022, 5.795–815). The idealised view of past ages is as old as Homer: see for instance Nestor’s nostalgic reminiscences at Homer Iliad 1.260–73 and for more pointed moral

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Kulturpessimismus see Horace Odes 3.6.45–8, Homer Odyssey 2.276–7, Aratus Phaenomena 123–6. J. assumes elsewhere that physical toughness is accompanied by moral strength (cf. the servant described at 11.142–61 (‘son of a hardy shepherd … a boy of honest expression’)) and that luxuria softens muscles as much as morals (11.90–116). Rather like Lucretius (5.1009– 1010: see Costa (1984) 117), J. suggests that developments in technology and comfort have done nothing to improve men’s moral character – a theme which is also found in Seneca Epistle 90 – and that our greater comfort produces only greater wickedness. weedy: pusillus is a striking term: it is probably (OLD s.v. ‘pusillus’) the diminutive of pullus which is itself a word for what is small (such as a foal or chick) or else a euphemistic term for a small person (See Gowers (2012) on Horace Satires 1.3.45). Taking this word with homines produces something of a satiric oxymoron, but it also bears out the view that early man was bigger and stronger (cf. 6.9 where early man produced ‘large babies’). 71  any god: the response of the gods is targeted at both forms of human weakness: they laugh at them for being puny and hate them for being wicked, in chiastic order (malos … pusillos … ridet … odit) and with chuckling assonance of -et et. The singular deus – qualified by quicumque aspexit – suggests that divine attention to us is not going to be great. This differs totally from the providential view of gods which we find in 10.346–50, and also neatly sums up the attitude of the satirist himself who (like a divine viewer) regards folly and vice with laughter and loathing and who also finds pygmies amusing (13.170–173). The poet used the word aspicio of the reader looking at the battle-scene in 56 and it is the word which Catullus also uses (76.19) for divine attention to his suffering. 72  let my tale resume: J. picks up his narrative from line 65 with a deft apology for the interruption: the ironic conversational trope suggests that the narrator is speaking extempore (cf. Horace Satires 1.1.108, 1.6.45). deuerticulum is a metaphor for a digression in writing (OLD s.v. ‘deuerticulum’ 3) or a diversion from work (Quintilian 12.3.11): both senses are in play here. fabula is used often of a tale with a point to it – as in Horace Satires 1.1.70, 1.1.95, Epistles 1.2.6 (OLD s.v. ‘fabula’ 4). 73–74  steel … arrows: after the impromptu rock-throwing, the fighting now uses ‘proper’ weapons (ferrum … sagittis) to repel the attack, and the first and last words of both lines emphasise the ‘fighting’ aspect. subsidiis aucti is vivid detail and also explains the sudden increase in courage shown in audet, while promere ferrum is a military phrase (cf. Livy 40.4.13, 42.52.11,

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Horace Odes 3.20.10, Ovid Met. 1.468, OLD s.v. ‘promo’ 1b) for what is becoming less of a scuffle and more of a proper battle. one side: pars altera is non-specific (see 39–40n.) but line 75 makes it clear that it refers to the Ombites. infestis may seem redundant – arrows are usually ‘hostile’ – but here the word reinforces both audet and pugnam which frame it, showing that it took courage (audet) to face the enemy (infestis) and fight (pugnam). renew: instaurare is a good word to use: properly it means ‘to resume’ or ‘repeat’ (OLD s.v. ‘instauro’ 1) and here it shows that the arrival of the reinforcements (subsidiis aucti) is making them ‘renew’ their efforts (cf. Virgil Aeneid 2.451 with Austin (1964) ad loc., OLD s.v. 3) and perhaps repeat the assault with greater vigour. 75 The Ombites are referred to by the name of their town rather than as its people: J. has earlier done the same at 35 and also with Egypt itself (45). chase them down: instantibus is good military vocabulary (OLD s.v. ‘insto’ 5), as is terga fugae … praestant which is close to Propertius 4.2.54 (hostes turpi terga dedisse fugae (‘the enemy surrendered their backs to shameful flight’)): cf. also Virgil Georgics 4.85, Aeneid 5.586, 12.463, Lucan 4.714. praestant (OLD s.v. ‘praesto2’ 6) is more elevated vocabulary than simply dant, and the only parallel for the phrase is Tacitus Agricola 37.3 (but cf. terga praebere at Ovid Met. 10.706, Lucan 4.603). The effect throughout this passage is of a pompous narrator overdoing his efforts, with cumbersome assonance such as praestant instantibus. The text of this line is a good example of the range of readings in the different manuscripts (see apparatus criticus). I have printed what is the consensus of modern editors, but there is something to be said for the putative reading of P (supported by Hardy (1963) ad loc.) which has praestantibus omnibus instans, with instans agreeing with pars altera (73) as the subject of the whole sentence (‘pressing hard on all those who live … and who turned their backs’). 76  Tentyra: the poet takes a whole line to name the Tenturites and remind us (cf. 33) that they were neighbours (uicina). Tentyra is described in faintly idyllic terms, with the shady palms as protection against the baking heat (calidae 28n.: cf. Virgil Georgics 4.20). There may also be a sly dig at the expense of the Tenturites as palma is also (6.323, 7.118, 8.58, 11.181 (with my note ad loc.), OLD s.v. ‘palma’ 4b) the sign of victory and here they are facing defeat. umbrosae … palmae must surely be a genitive of quality (‘Tentura of the shady palm’) rather than dative with uicina (‘close to the shady palm’) as read by Hardy: for this use of the genitive cf. 3.4–5, 10.125, AG §345.

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77–78  slips…: the narrative is forceful with strong present tense verb-forms at the start of the lines and effective enjambement of cursum/ praecipitans. The hapless victim is anonymous (quidam) and his mishap is blamed on his excess of fear – a point which both focalises the tale and also raises our empathy. For the transitive use of praecipito see OLD s.v. ‘praecipito’ 6c. is captured: capiturque at the end of the phrase neatly shows the endresult of the rest of the sequence from labitur. Falling in running-races is not uncommon – cf. Nisus at Virgil Aeneid 5.329, Ajax at Homer Iliad 23.774 – but this fall is fatal and the framing of the sentence with the parallel verbs (labitur … capiturque) marks the sealing of his doom. hinc is the reading of P, where Φ reads hic (‘here’): hinc quidam means ‘one of the men from here (i.e. the Tenturites)’ which is similar to inde aliquid at 7.220 (and note how often J. uses hinc to mean ‘from that source’ (e.g. 1.119, 1.144, 11.127–8, 14.82, 15.51)). hinc may also have a temporal sense in the narrative (OLD s.v. ‘hinc’ 4: cf. Horace Satires 1.5.50, Virgil Aeneid 3.551). 78–81  chopped … eat him all up: the cannibal feast is described in grisly detail. First the hacking of the man from being a singular illum into a plural frusta et particulas – where frusta denotes large chunks and the diminutive particulas shows these in turn subdivided into bite-sized morsels, with the word order mirroring the action. The narrator then speculates on the reason for this, with the same contrast of singular and plural in multis … unus. The quick eating of the man is conveyed in a single dissyllabic word edit but the poet also gives the detail of the bones being gnawed (with the rare word corrosis used to create the assonant corrosis ossibus with its onomatopoeic sibilance as they chew) as they eat him all up (totum), bones and all. The subject of this long sentence is the singular turba, acting with one will and in victory (uictrix). For the phrase cf. 4.62, 5.21. J. has already denoted the Egyptians as a turba cf. 46, 61 above. 81–3  did not boil…: J. adds that this cannibalism was worse than it might have been as the man was not even cooked before being eaten, owing to their impatient refusal to wait for the cooking process. The two ways of cooking meat are listed in mock-serious discussion: boiling (decoxit: see OLD s.v. ‘decoquo’ 2) or roasting (the verb has to be assumed from the culinary term ueribus (‘roasting spits’, from ueru)). The poet then stretches out the phrase longum usque adeo tardumque…/ expectare to enact the lengthy wait envisaged: longum simply means ‘lasting a long time’ (as in 6.221, 6.292, 10.190, 10.204, 10.255, 10.265) while tardum is the mark of focalised impatience, suggesting ‘slow’ (4.107, 6.477, 10.186, 14.248): for the two

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words juxtaposed cf. 4.44. The final phrase (contenta cadauere crudo) has wonderful crunching onomatopoeia and ends the sentence with mounting horror: they are (a) contented (b) with a corpse: and (c) it is not even cooked. For crudus see 1.143 with Braund (1996) ad loc. The dismembering and eating raw may recall the sparagmos and omophagia such as was practised by Maenads in Dionysiac ritual (see OCD s.v. ‘Dionysus’, Dodds (1951) 276–78), but the Egyptian feast here has no religious tones. 84  we can be happy here: the tone becomes sarcastic (they treat people badly but at least they respected fire). J. may be thinking of Virgil Aeneid 2.154–5 (uos aeterni ignes et non uiolabile uestrum/ testor numen: ‘you everlasting fires and your inviolable godhead I call to witness’: cf. also Ovid Heroides 14.9 for the phrasing). The Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia saw fire as the god Atar (see Herodotus 1.131–2, Strabo 15.3.14 Pausanias 5.27.5 Phoenix fr. 1 Powell). Zoroastrians did not bury or burn their dead as they regarded both earth and fire as divinities: their method of disposal of the dead involved allowing bodies to be exposed in the open air – using the ‘tower of silence’ (dakhma) which removed the rotting corpse from the city. In classical thought fire has its divine representative in the figure of Vulcan (Hephaestus in Greek: see OCD s.v. ‘fire’). uiolo is a religious term (cf. 6.O4, 6.537, 11.106, 13.219, Seneca Ep. 97.2, OLD s.v. ‘uiolo’ 1). 85–6  In Greek mythology Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind: for this he was chained to a pillar, his liver was eaten daily by an eagle and regenerated every night (Hesiod Theogony 506–616). For more on Prometheus see 14.34–5n.: here it is important that his theft was prompted by his famous love of mankind (he was known as φιλάνθρωπος in [Aeschylus] Prometheus Bound 11 and cf. Aristophanes Birds 1545). J. adds detail here which may be significant: instead of simply stealing fire from heaven he stole it summa caeli de parte and some have taken this to refer to the fiery outer air or ‘aether’ of the Stoics (Cicero de natura deorum 1.37, 1.39) and Epicureans (e.g. Lucretius 1.231, 1.1034, 5.585). J. is more likely emphasising the effort which Prometheus put into the theft and so adding to the sense of gratitude owed to him by mankind in general and owed to the Egyptians by him for not polluting this sacred fire, as explained in 86–7. J. neatly places the balancing pair caeli and terris at the same metrical position in the two lines, immediately before the caesura in the third foot. 85–6  The Φ manuscripts of this line read Prometheus (and donauit): Griffith ((1969) 387) proposed plausibly that the text should become second-person (Prometheu, … donasti) to make sense of te in 86: if we stick with the manuscript

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reading then te has to refer to Volusius Bithynicus who has not been addressed or mentioned since line 1, which is less likely than the poetic use of apostrophe here as at 10.166–7, 12.83–5, 13.81 (where see note). 86–7  substance: elementum (στοιχεῖον in Greek) refers to one of the four elements (earth, air, water and fire) which made up all matter: see 11.14 with my note ad loc. There is something comic about using the interpersonal term gratulor (OLD s.v. ‘gratulor’ 2) for a physical element: and the use of the first person verbs is also an ironic touch of mock-emotion, complete with the ludicrous image of Prometheus the ‘lover of mankind’ rejoicing that the cannibalism involved no fire. 87–8  chew on a corpse: mordere cadauer is a variation on contenta cadauere crudo in 83 with the added detail of ‘biting’ (as well as consuming) the body: and the overcoming of natural distaste is conveyed in sustinuit (OLD s.v. ‘sustineo’ 6) which is emphasised in enjambement. Line 88 is framed by two strong verbs and the line is expressing the surprising statement that in fact these people who could do this loved doing so, with the corpse (cadauer) now turned into meat (carne). 89–92  The final vignette of this section develops the thought of line 88: far from being a minority taste, these men were even queuing up to taste the drops of blood which were all that remained. 89  criminal case: the deed was described as a scelus twice in 29–30. For the phrase quaeras et dubites cf. Lucretius 1.332: the second person subject here is no longer Prometheus but the reader as at 14.38, 14.48, 14.148–9 (where see note for more exx.). 90 The pleasure (uoluptatem) is contained inside the prima … gula in verse as in life, and the spondaic rhythm suggests the savouring of the meal. For the choice of gula here as the organ of greedy eating cf. 14.10. 90–1  The manuscripts read autem which adds little to the line: most modern editors adopt the reading ante to point to the temporal sequence whereby the man who was standing at the back of the queue ‘just before’ finds the body ‘by now’ (iam) all eaten up and only gets a taste (gustat) at the very end of this long sentence and this long wait. 91–2  body … blood: the dead body is now termed corpore in opposition to the sanguine (placed in identical position on the next line) which is all that is now left. ductis is glossed by OLD (s.v. ‘duco’ 11) as ‘to cause to move in a controlled direction’ but the word can also indicate drawing a line in the earth (OLD s.v. ‘duco’ 12) which may be closer to what J. is depicting here. The choice and use of words is effective as the disappointed cannibal,

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expecting flesh, only had blood: and only ‘some’ (aliquid) blood: and only a taste of it (gustat) rather than a drink, after putting his fingers through the earth (with terram digitis juxtaposed to enact the movement). 93–131  a different case: J. now meets the counter-argument head on – other peoples have eaten human flesh and so the Egyptians are not the unique monsters which they might appear from lines 27–92. His answer is that all other cases of cannibalism have been matters of necessity, whereas the Egyptians ate human flesh out of perverted choice. 93 The Vascones were a pre-Roman tribe who lived in what is now Navarre, Aragon and La Rioja in Spain: they are possibly the ancestors of the Basques who derive their name from them. The main town was Calagurris, and the rebellious Roman general Q. Sertorius held out here until his death in 73 BC: in the following year this town was the last to surrender after a siege led by Afranius which reduced the townfolk to eating human flesh to survive (Valerius Maximus 7.6, Orosius 5.23.14). The name is scanned Vascŏnĕs here. as the story has it: ut fama est distances the author from his story (cf. e.g. Lucretius 3.981, 5.17, 5.395, Propertius 2.6.15, Virgil Aeneid 6.14, Livy 25.25.13, Ovid Heroides 13.57 and see Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) on Horace Odes 1.7.23). 94  extended their lives: the phrase animam producere (‘to prolong life’) is uncommon and the nearest parallel is Lucan 4.796: but producere often means ‘extend’ (OLD s.v. ‘produco’ 10) and uitam ducere is not uncommon with similar meaning (see OLD s.v. ‘duco’ 24, Lucretius 3.1087, Horace Epodes 17.63): the effect here is that of a rhetorical flourish to express a simple idea, the lengthening of the phrase pointing to the lengthening of the lives. 94–96  There it was … siege: the poet’s refutation is couched in a series of asyndetic phrases, with anaphora of sed and a string of nominal phrases in apposition (res … inuidia … casus … egestas) as the excuses are fired out thick and fast. There is some well-chosen word-order: line 95 is framed by words for (mis)fortune (fortunae … casus), and the spondaic rhythm of 96 and the long word obsidionis convey the long siege, leading up to the climactic word egestas. 94 Understand est with res diuersa and cf. rem dissimilem at 8.215–6. 95–6  fortune is personified and credited with inuidia: cf. 13.86–7n. extremities: ultima (the neuter plural of the adjective ultimus) is used as a noun: cf. 12.55 (with my note ad loc.), Virgil Aeneid 2.446, OLD s.v. ‘ultimus’ 6d. The punctuation before casus and the enjambement of extremi (which agrees

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with it) adds great force, suggesting breathless impatience with the interlocutor and throwing emphasis onto both words by the pauses before them: casus is by definition something which happens by chance and is not chosen, while extremus denotes something which is the worst imaginable. 96  ultimate … dreadful … long: the three adjectives are juxtaposed at the start of the line to reinforce each other. The egestas is going to be analysed in lines 99–100 and J. neatly places the word here at the end of the sentence. 97–8  The incident … mentioned: these lines are suspect and may be an interpolation. If genuine, they add little to the tale beyond pointing out that the Vascones were to be pitied rather than condemned: and the passage runs better without them, as egestas at the end of 96 leads neatly onto the discussion of foods in 99. Furthermore the phrasing is weak and is only defensible as J. characterising an increasingly inarticulate speaker. The use of exemplum as ‘example’ with a genitive is paralleled at 2.113–4, 7.189–90, 10.49–50, 10.247, 14.32. The majority of manuscripts read cibi but some modern editors read G’s tibi which would be addressed to Volusius and would balance mihi. 99–100  After eating…: the Vascones ate everything else before (and therefore in preference to) human flesh, moving from vegetation (herbas) to meat (animalia) before eating humans. Note the variation of omnis … cuncta, the anaphora of post … post and the effective catch-all word quidquid leading in enjambement to the fine phrase cogebat uacui uentris furor with its alliteration of quidquid/ cogebat and uacui uentris and its personification of hunger as furor. For the madness of hunger cf. 14.136n., Virgil Aeneid 2.355–7, 9.340 (uesana fames): here cogebat adds to the argument that Vascones acted out of necessity rather than choice, as does fame in 102. 100–101  even the enemies were pitying: a clever touch couched in an ablative absolute phrase, with miserantibus picking up miserabile in 97. The poet creates a vignette of the enemy themselves (ipsis) pitying the Vascones when they ought to want them dead. 101 is powerful, creating a sketch of the paleness and emaciation in general before zooming in on the tenuis … artus in particular, with miserantibus framed by the skinny limbs which provoke it. 102–3  hunger: fame is another reminder that this act was done out of necessity (cf. cogebat 100) and also goes well with lacerabant – tablemanners are not expected when one is this hungry. The wit of the sentence is (as often) at the end: these men were eating other people’s limbs (membra aliena) but were also ready to eat even their own, with et sua placed for

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maximum effect in enjambement and followed by a stop. Self-cannibalism brings to mind the myth of Erysichthon (see Ehrhardt (2014) 491–93) who was cursed with insatiable hunger and ended up (in some accounts) eating himself: see Ovid Met. 8.738–878 esp. 877–8 (‘he began to tear at his own limbs with his teeth and the wretch fed his body by reducing it’). esse is the infinitive from edo (I eat). fame is ablative of cause (AG §404b): for the quantity famē cf. 6.424, 14.84n.. 103–6  Who…?: a strong rhetorical question, with anaphora of quisnam hominum … quisue deorum, personification of the bellies themselves (uentribus) as deserving forgiveness and a reminder of the sufferings they have endured (dira atque immania passis), culminating in a rhetorical a fortiori flourish: if even the souls of the men eaten would forgive them, then all the more should we. 103  who: for quisnam see 10.68, 13.243–4n and see OLD s.v. ‘nam’ 7b: for the pairing of men and gods (common in epic (e.g. Homer Iliad 4.235, 21.508, Virgil Aeneid 1.229, 10.175, Statius Thebaid 3.641) and didactic (Lucretius 1.1)) cf. 13.31n. 104  dread horrors: dira atque immania is a strong combination (cf. Cicero In Vatinium 9.4, Seneca Hercules Oetaeus 261) conveying terrifying (dira: cf. 4.14, 4.80, 7.161, 10.15, 13.106: the word was used only at 96 of the Vascones’ egestas) and monstrously overwhelming (immania), used elsewhere of the fall of a house (10.107), Pyrrhus (14.162), the Laestrygonians (15.18) and the Agathyrsi (15.125). Once again the exculpation is pronounced: the forces against them are described in monstrously fearful terms (whereas the Egyptians were just enjoying the fun (59)) and the eloquent participle passis shows that the situation was forced upon them. 105–6  manes are the spirits of the dead men, thought to be ‘dangerous revenants … especially if they were the spirits of the prematurely dead’ (Watson (2003) on Horace Epodes 5.94, citing Livy 3.58.11) and so the thought is a fortiori as these subterranean avenging spirits (see 2.149) are more forgiving than we are: there is also a jingle of immania … manes. Line 106 is metrically awkward as uescebantur produces a fifth-foot caesura and the line ends with the syncopated meli/us nos. uescor was the word used at line 13 to describe the cannibalism (see note). quibus is relative, referring to the Vascones, and dative as the indirect object of ignoscere. 107–109  The teachings…: the exculpation goes on: we know better thanks to philosophy, but these unenlightened Spaniards did not have this privilege and so should be forgiven. The poet brings the reader into the

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experience with nos (cf. 13.31, 13.142, 14.31, 14.323 (nostris)) assuming that ‘we’ share his opinions. 107  Zeno of Citium (335–263 BC) was the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy: see 13.121n.. Stoics in fact may not have opposed cannibalism per se: this school seems to have been close to Cynicism and early Stoics seem to have seen nothing wrong with such taboos as incest and cannibalism (see Diogenes Laertius 7.188, Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Scepticism 3.207, 3.246, Sellars (2007) 9). J. is perhaps thinking of the Stoic advocation of accepting death rather than succumb to evil, seen for instance in the suicide of Cato Uticensis (see 14.41–3n., Diogenes Laertius 7.130, LS i.428–9, Sandbach (1975) 48–52): in this case starving to death was an option. 107–8  (for some … life): the bracketed phrase seeks to explain why Zeno is relevant to the case and is probably spurious. If genuine we would have to punctuate before nec and allow the subject of putant to be quidam (‘some folk’). 108–9  Cantabrian: Cantaber is factually incorrect as the Vascones were not Cantabrians (see OCD s.v. ‘Cantabri’) but the distinction is less important than the point being made with unde/ Stoicus. Cantaber for the Romans aroused images of insubordinate Spaniards only conquered with difficulty: see Horace Odes 2.6.2, 2.11.1 (bellicosus Cantaber), 3.8.22, 4.14.41, Epistles 1.12.26. Strabo (3.3.8) even described the native Spaniards as ‘tough and excessively feral’ (χαλεπώτεροι και θηριωδέστεροι: cf. Dio 54.11.3). especially … of old: antiqui praesertim is a pointed juxtaposition: Spaniards, J. argues, are savage even in our own day, and so this must have been even more true in the old days; they could plead primitive ignorance, but we cannot. Metellus (see OCD s.v. ‘Caecilius Metellus Pius, Quintus’) was Sulla’s consular colleague in 80 BC and was sent to Spain to fight the rebel Roman general Sertorius. He enjoyed some success (the town of Medellin is named after him, for example) but only conquered his enemy when he was joined by Pompey. Commentators criticise J. for linking Metellus with the cannibalism as this only occurred after Metellus had left (see 93n.) but (again) his name is more effective as his family were indeed ancient (antiqui) – the first Caecilius Metellus was consul in 251 BC. antiqui here takes the view from J.’s own day (nos (106)) to the incidents about two hundred years earlier in 72 BC. For the elliptical use of interrogative unde cf. 1.150, 2.127, 9.8–9, 14.56n. 110–112  Nowadays … these days: a parenthesis to elaborate on line 109 with an acerbic remark about ‘modern times’: nowadays there are no

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uncivilised places (such as Spain was in former days). The tone is, however, not one of approval. 110  Athenas literally refers to the Greek city Athens but ‘Greek Athens’ would have little point and ‘our Athens’ even less unless the word is here understood metonymically as ‘culture’ as at Valerius Maximus 2.1.10 (cf. Cicero de Oratore 1.13.1): for Athens as a byword for learning cf. Propertius 1.6.13, 3.21.1, Horace Epistles 2.2.43–5, Manilius 4.687, Ovid Heroides 2.83. The statement that the whole world has the culture of Greece (Graias) and Rome (nostras) is itself an elegant line with effective juxtaposition of Graias nostrasque and the metonymy left to the end of the line as a witty surprise (‘our “Athens”’). Romans of learning were effectively bilingual in Greek and Latin (see 14.209n., Swain (2004)). 111  articulate … job: another balanced line (noun A – adjective B – verb – adjective A – noun B) mirroring the rhetorical ability which the line describes and enacting the process whereby the end-result is expressed at the end of the line in the juxtaposition of facunda Britannos. A causidicus was a ‘case-pleader’ or barrister – a group of men who make little money for their efforts (7.105–49) and who the poet tells us elsewhere (7.147–9) would be better off going to Gaul or Africa. For Gaul as a centre of such training cf. Tacitus Dialogus 10.2, Agricola 4: Caligula held oratorical contests at Lyons (1.44, Suetonius Caligula 20). Britons with ambition or pretensions under Roman rule had to use Latin well (Salway (1981) 506): cf. Tacitus Agricola 21.2, Martial 11.3.5. 112  Thyle (θούλη, called ultima Thyle (‘furthest Thyle’) by Virgil (Georgics 1.30) and Seneca (Medea 379)) was a byword for the extreme North, glimpsed by Agricola as he circumnavigated Britain (Tacitus Agricola 10 where see Ogilvie and Richmond ad loc.)) and usually identified as Shetland (see OCD s.v. ‘Thule’). The rhetor taught the secondary stage of education after the grammaticus stage (3.76): for a scathing account of the work of the rhetor see 7.150–214: it was clearly a lowly occupation (7.197–8) but one which was needed now that oratory was in public use, even in Thyle. hiring: for the verb conducere applied to hiring a teacher see 2.114, OLD s.v. ‘conduco’ 3a. There is a neat irony in the statement that Thyle is talking about hiring a teacher of – speaking. 113  That people: ille populus refers to the Vascones. noble: nobilis often has a political sense in Latin, connoting one who has a consul in the family (8.199, OLD s.v. ‘nobilis’ 5), but here it must be taken in its more general sense of ‘noble in character’ (OLD s.v. 6) and so seems to be making a point:

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for all their uneducated and uncivilised ways (108–9) these people were still nobilis. 113–4  Zacynthos refers not to the Greek island (modern Zante) but rather to the Spanish city of Saguntum which the Greek island allegedly founded (Silius 1.290, 2.603). This city was besieged and captured by Hannibal in 219–8 BC (Livy 21.14–15) and became known for the extreme suffering of the siege (maior clade), in the course of which men killed their parents to protect them from falling into slavery (Cicero Paradoxa Stoicorum 3.24) and burned down their own houses with themselves and their families inside to avoid being captured (Livy 21.14). Livy does not however allege cannibalism amongst them, and Silius Italicus (2.521–5), while mentioning this possibility, denies that it happened. Petronius (Satyricon 141) has a character tell his would-be legatees that they must eat his corpse, citing Saguntum as a case where people ate human flesh – J. perhaps intends his satire (like that of Petronius) to show up the ignorance of his speaker at this point. For the phrasing par uirtute atque fide sed maior clade with its balance of great virtue and greater ill-fortune cf. the words of Aeneas to his son: ‘learn, boy, your manliness and your hard work from me, but your fortune from others’ (Virgil Aeneid 12.435–6, itself recalling Sophocles Ajax 550–551). uirtus and fides are readily linked (cf. 1.115, Sallust Catiline 20.2, Horace Carmen Saec. 57–8, Livy 8.31.9) as two sides of the coin: the courage to act and the loyalty to act rightly. 115–6 Lake Maeotis is the Sea of Azov north of the Crimea and J. uses this geographical allusion to refer to the Taurians who worshipped the goddess Opis (associated with the Roman goddess Diana (Artemis in Greek)), whose rites famously involved the human sacrifice of strangers, as detailed in Herodotus 4.103, Euripides Iphigenia in Tauris 35–40, 384 (see Parker (2016) xxiii), Ovid Tristia 4.4.63–4, Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Scepticism 1.149, 3.208. J. postpones the name Aegyptos with enjambement to its emphatic position at the end of the sentence and the start of the line. 116–119  The Taurians only kill their victims: they do not eat them, which makes the Egyptians worse. Lucian (Dial. Deorum 16.1) does allege cannibalism on the part of the Taurians. J. creates a picture of the wicked Taurians (nefandi) only to draw back with tantum immolat: ulterius nil which raises Egyptian wickedness higher than the relatively modest wickedness of Tauris. 116–7  woman of Tauris who invented: the Taurica inuentrix has to be female in gender and plausibly refers to Opis/Artemis as the goddess credited

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with demanding this worship – although Iphigenia denies this (Euripides IT 380–91, on which see Parker (2016) 140–41) and blames the Taurians’ own taste for bloodshed. unspeakable: nefandus is a strong term of disapproval: cf. 13.174, 15.165, Catullus 64.397, Virgil Georgics 1.278, Aeneid 3.653 Ovid Met. 3.731, 10.228, Seneca Oedipus 635. It is used of the Taurian sacrifices by Ovid (Tristia 4.4.65) and of the cannibal Tydeus by Statius (Thebaid 9.18). It has a jangling oxymoronic effect here when coupled with sacri. 117–8  assuming that you…: J. distances himself from his material by reminding us that this is poetic material – an ironic touch as this text is also a poem and the phrase carmina tradunt has a musical assonance which is itself poetic: cf. 93n., 13.2302n., 6.643–4, 10.246, Lucretius 2.600, Euripides Heracles 1346. ut iam often has the concessive sense ‘even though’ as at Priapea 68.29, Ovid Ars Am. 1.346, 3.89, Ex Ponto 4.8.5, OLD s.v. ‘ut’ 35b: but here it means more plausibly ‘seeing that you…’ as at Cicero de Finibus 4.66. dignă fidē means ‘deserving of trust’ (for dignus + ablative cf. e.g. 1.51, 4.136, 5.62, 6.61, 13.33, 13.62, 14.1, 15.17). 118–9  only: tantum here has the adverbial sense ‘no more than’ (cf. 1.1, OLD s.v. ‘tantum’ 8) and the sentence is neatly framed with the sacrificial terms immolat and hostia. ulterius (cf. 1.147, 9.38, Virgil Aeneid 12. 938) denotes ‘further’ while grauius (cf. 6.134, 6.279, 10.201, OLD s.v. ‘grauis’ 11) has the sense of ‘more oppressive’ (from the root meaning ‘heavy’). 119–123  A sequence of three indignant rhetorical questions. 119–20  crisis: casus would be an exculpatory factor (cf. 95–6) but is rudely dismissed in the case of the Egyptians (here referred to simply as hos), whose recent (modo) atrocity contrasts with the ancient poetic saga of Tauris. drove: impulit (OLD s.v. ‘impello’ 7) also adds to the sense of compulsion which excused the Vascones (cf. 100 (cogebat) who were victims (passis 104) rather than perpetrators. 120–1  hunger … defences: the Egyptians were neither starving to death (fames) like the Vascones (cf. 100–102) nor being besieged (infesta … arma) like the Saguntines (113–4n.). infestaque uallo arma means literally ‘weapons threatening their palisade’ (see OLD s.v. ‘infestus’ 3a) and cf. 16.16 for the uallum as a defensive stockade. 121–2  abominable an atrocity: the language is highly expressive – detestabilis derives from detestor which is ‘to call down a curse’ and so means ‘execrable’ or ‘loathsome’, while monstrum denotes an ominously dreadful sight (see OLD s.v. ‘monstrum’ 5): for J.’s use of this sort of

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language cf. 2.48, 6.286, 9.38, 13.65, 13.126, 15.172, Plaza (2006) 305–336. audere is emphasised in enjambement and ends the sentence with another point – they would not even dare to do this. 122–3  dry … shaming: commentators suggest that J. here raises the idea that the atrocity was in order to shame the river Nile into rising for them during a drought: the river was regarded as a god (see OCD s.v. ‘river-gods’, cf. Aeschylus Suppliants 1024–5, Cribiore (1995)) and such an action would show their anger at the god, like the Arcadian custom of flogging the statue of the god Pan when there is a shortage of food (Theocritus 7.105–8) or Augustus withdrawing the statue of Neptune from a procession after losing ships in a storm (Suetonius Augustus 16: cf. Caligula 5). shaming: invidiam facere denotes raising inuidia (ill-will) ‘against an opponent as a way of contributing to his defeat’ (OLD s.v. ‘inuidia’ 3a: cf. Livy 38.43.2, Ovid Met. 4.548, Petronius Satyricon 107.10) and in this context suggests that the natives were acting in such as way as to embarrass the god of the river Nile into irrigating their crops. Herodotus (2.13) discusses how the Egyptians rely on the river for irrigation as Greeks rely on rainfall, and how Egypt would not survive if the Nile ceased to flow: the pollution caused by cannibalism is thus a reaction to the scarcity but also a way of befouling the god himself. Memphis was a city in Lower Egypt, used here metonymically for the whole land: for this usage and the adjectival form cf. Ovid Ars Am. 3.393, Martial 14.150.1, Lucan 4.136. 123  The stubborn refusal of the god and the retaliatory cannibalism are neatly conveyed in the juxtaposition facerent nolenti. 124–128  J. develops a strong contrast between some terrifyingly aggressive tribes and the effete Egyptians, pointing to the inverse proportion of their strength and their abominable behaviour: for the rhetorical trope whereby the deed is condemned all the more for being foreign even to beasts and to savages see Cicero de inuentione 1.103. The four races whom he mentions in 124–5 are all bywords for savagery: three of these races are described with varied adjectives to express their repellent character, with the name Brittones perhaps needing no such qualifier. 124 The Cimbri were a German tribe from north Jutland who, together with the Teutones, had defeated Roman armies in 113 BC, 109 BC, and 105 BC: it took C. Marius (cf. 8.249–50, 10.276–82) to defeat them finally in 101 BC. For their savagery cf. Seneca de beneficiis 5.16.2, Horace Epodes 16.7 (with Watson (2003) ad loc.). Britons: Brittones (a variant spelling (cf.

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Martial 11.21.9) of Britanni) refers to the inhabitants of Britain who were also famed for savagery and uncivilised behaviour (Horace Odes 3.4.33, Ovid Amores 2.16.39–40, Caesar B.G. 5.14, Tacitus Annals 14.30). 125  A chiastic line with the names of the tribes framing their descriptive adjectives. The Sauromatae lived near the Sea of Azov, at the northern edge of the known world (cf. 2.1, 3.79, Ovid Tristia 3.10.5) and were known as savage (Statius Thebaid 3.352): Herodotus (4.110–117) describes how they overcame the Amazons. J. here calls them truces, a term often used to describe people’s savage countenance (e.g. Virgil Aeneid 10.446–7, Horace Epodes 5.4). The Agathyrsi lived in what is now Romania and wore warpaint (cf. Virgil Aeneid 4.146, Pomponius Mela 2.10.1, Pliny NH 4.88.4): their promiscuous sexual habits are described by Herodotus (4.104). The adjective used to describe them (immanes) is the same as was used of Pyrrhus at 14.162 and is used three times in this poem (see 104n.). 126  raged with the madness: if the text is correct there has to be a hiatus at the caesura (for other cases of hiatus after the caesura cf. 3.70, 6.274, 6.468, 10.281, 12.110, 13.65, 14.49). The effect here is to force a pause after rabie which then throws stress onto inbelle which is the point of the contrast: the warlike tribes contrasted with this feeble crowd. rabie is the perfect word here, connoting both savagery (15.163, OLD s.v. ‘rabies’ 1) and also madness (6.448 (of insane hunger), 6.648, OLD s.v. ‘rabies’ 2): the juxtaposition with saeuit – also used of savage cruelty (e.g. 13.170, 13.196, 15.54) and brute desire (14.175) – adds to the force of both words. unwarlike useless: the two adjectives inbelle and inutile similarly reinforce each other with the repeated in- prefix. inbellis is also used in J. of eunuchs (6.366) and cowardly perfumed Greeks (8.113). inutilis is more commonly applicable to things rather than people but here (as at Virgil Aeneid 10.794) has the sense of the Greek ἀχρεῖος (‘unfit for fighting’ LSJ s.v. I.2) and was a word which old Anchises used of himself at Virgil Aeneid 2.647. mob: for the pejorative sense of uolgus cf. 29n, 35–7n, 13.35n. In Virgil’s description of the battle of Actium (on the shield of Aeneas in Aeneid 8.675– 713) the Egyptians are not regarded as an easy enemy to defeat (see Aeneid 8.687), although Propertius describes (3.11.51) Cleopatra as fleeing to the ‘timorous Nile’. J. has earlier outlined his view of Egyptian lack of martial prowess: they await the best time to attack (39) and choose a moment when the enemy is weakened by intoxication (38–50): and they are a race much given to luxuria (41–6). 127–8  tiny … little: the satirist shrinks these Egyptians to miniature

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people with tiny boats, in contrast to the massive savages of lines 124–5. The emphasis on smallness is conveyed in paruula …breuibus and in the ironic use of epic phrases such as dare uela and remis incumbere of these pathetic vessels. 127  boats: The phaselus (φάσηλος) was originally a word for a type of bean (LSJ glosses it as vigna sinensis: cf. Virgil Georgics 1.227 with Mynors (1990) ad loc.) but soon came to be used for a bean-shaped boat (cf. Catullus 4, Virgil Georgics 4.289). Horace implies (fragilem…phaselon (Odes 3.2.28–9: cf. Ovid Amores 2.10.9)) that such boats were flimsy, but Sallust (Histories iii.8M) says that a whole cohort of soldiers was conveyed on one grandi phaselo. The boats are described by J. here as fictilibus which recalls Strabo’s description (17.1.4) of them as ‘ferry-boats made of pottery’ (ὀστράκινα πορθμεῖα: see next n.). hoist sails: uela dare is an epic phrase (cf. e.g. Virgil Aeneid 1.35, 2.136, 8.708, 12.264, Lucan 8.185, 9.1001, Ovid Met.1.132, Valerius Flaccus Argonautica 6.597, Silius Italicus Punica 3.7) and the pretensions of the sailors are mocked with the descriptive adjective paruula. The phrasing here is reminiscent of Horace Odes 4.15.3–4 where the poet seeking to write epic is knocked back by Apollo’s lyre to stop him launching his small sails (parua … uela darem). 128  painted: Virgil (Georgics 4.289) and Martial (10.30.13) describe the phaselus as picta: and testae here shows that J. is still referring to the earthenware vessels of 127. Once again the mockery is couched in parody of epic pretensions: the phrase remis incumbere is found in serious poetry such as Virgil (Aeneid 5.15, 8.108, 10.294) and here the epic phrase is (as in 127) undercut with the adjective breuibus, leaving us with a caricature of little sails and tiny oars. The effect is only increased with the juxtaposition of words: breuibus pictae has the size and the colour side by side, while remis incumbere testae has the ludicrous image of leaning over the oars – of a pot. testa is also used of Diogenes’ tub dwelling at 14.311, a roof-tile at 3.270, a fish-platter at 4.131, a jar at 5.35, and a potsherd used for self-castration at 6.514. Courtney plausibly suggests that the reference is to ‘raft-like ferryboats made of pots tied together with planks laid on top’. 129–31  You will not … look the same: a prolix sentence with which to end this section of the poem. Notice the use of enjambement, the balanced parallel clauses of crime and perpetrator (poenam sceleri … supplicia populis), the strong pair of future indicative verbs (inuenies … parabis), the doublet of pares … similes, all leading to the pair of nouns ira atque fames.

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129  punishment: poena usually takes a genitive of the crime being punished (see OLD s.v. ‘poena’ 1) and so we have here to assume either dignam (from digna later in the line: difficult as dignus almost always takes an ablative as at 15.140 below: see OLD s.v. ‘dignus’) or a word such as debitam (cf. Cicero in Catilinam 2.11.2). 130  these peoples: the plural form suggests that J. is not picking on the Egyptians as such but on any peoples who behave like this. 130–1  equal … the same: for the pairing pares…/et similes cf. Cicero pro Roscio Amerino 118.10, Lucretius 2.341, Sallust Cat. 14.5, Manilius 1.213, but cf. Livy 45.43.2 and Quintilian 10.1.102 for the words used in contrast. pares here means ‘equal in degree’ (OLD s.v. ‘par’ 7b) – such that the anger is as powerful as the hunger – while similes shows that the two urges both act in the same way (OLD s.v. ‘similis’ 7). ira sums up the behaviour of the Egyptians (as shown in 27–92) while fames refers also to the enforced cannibalism of the Vascones and others (93–114). 131–58  Nature…: humans need compassion: this picks up the need to show compassion for cannibals where their cannibalism is enforced (cf. 103–106) but takes it much further into realms of wider sympathy, in a passage which gives the lie to the notion that J. is always a bitterly negative and misanthropic writer. 131–2  Nature…gave: the language is teleological, ascribing our capacity for soft-heartedness to the expressed agency of nature herself. mollis elsewhere in J. denotes pathic homosexuality in men (e.g. 2.47, 9.38) or effeminacy (6.63, 6.366–7) but here has a far less pejorative sense as at Horace Odes 3.10.17, 3.11.43, Ovid Amores 2.5.26 (OLD s.v. ‘mollis’ 11). For its application to hearts cf. [Tibullus] 3.6.16 and for the meaning ‘prone to tears’ cf. Ovid Fasti 4.523. claims: fatetur (literally ‘declares’) is used at 10.172 of personified Death (as here of personified Nature) and means something like ‘shows’ (as at 2.17, OLD s.v. ‘fateor’ 4) or ‘makes clear’. The present infinitive dare (with the present indicative fatetur) has to mean ‘Nature shows that she gives’ referring to every separate act of creating a new human being in a process which is ongoing – although the proof (133) is in the past (in that she has given us tears). For humano generi cf. 13.159. 133  tears: sunt lacrimae rerum, as Aeneas says cryptically (‘the world is a place of tears’, Virgil Aeneid 1.462: cf. Palladas in Anth. Pal. 10.84) and Pliny (N.H. 7.2–4) observed that tears separate us from the animal kingdom (cf. 146–7). Tears often go with anger – cf. 1.168 (inde ira et lacrimae),

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5.159, Braund (1997) 68–69 – and the argument of Satire 13 is that Calvinus is both furious (13.14–15) and also grief-stricken (13.134) at his loss. J. mocked the lacrimose disposition of Heraclitus (10.30–32: see my note on 10.38–53n.) as excessive, but here shows an empathy with human suffering which is far from the scathing mockery of some of the earlier satires. The ancients did not always see weeping as a sign of weakness – Homer’s Achilles weeps copiously for instance (Iliad 1.349 etc.) – but against this was the thought that giving in to tears was weak and pointless (see e.g. Ajax in Sophocles Ajax 319–20, 852–3 (with Finglass (2011) ad loc.), Heracles in Sophocles Trachiniae 1071–5, 1199–1201 and Euripides Heracles 1354– 6, Orestes in Euripides Orestes 1031–2: cf. Dover (1974) 101). It is also worth noting that the same Achilles who himself wept easily also rebuked Patroclus (Homer Iliad 16.7–8) for weeping ‘like a girl’. In Roman times grief was also regarded as something to be resisted and overcome if it interfered with action: see e.g. Cicero ad Atticum 12.15, Seneca Ep. 63.1 (‘you should not be dry-eyed, but should not wallow in weeping either’) and widows (though not widowers) were required to remarry a year after bereavement (Dio 56.43). This is the best … sensibility: Courtney objects to sensus as genitive singular and reads it as nominative singular (‘this is the best part of us, feeling’), while Housman prints haec nostri pars optima. sensus/ plorare ergo (see his long note on 133–4). The problem for Courtney is the ‘lack of a good parallel’ for sensus as ‘our emotional make-up’, and while OLD (s.v. ‘sensus’ 6c, with reff.) has the word meaning ‘the faculty of feeling emotions, heart’ which suits our passage, the genitive singular is awkward (‘[the capacity to weep] is the best part of our emotional heart’). At 8.73 the phrase communis sensus denotes ‘fellow-feeling’ while at 15.146 it means ‘a capacity for feeling’. Housman reads sensus (accusative plural) as being the ‘feelings’ of the hapless friend which nature tells us to weep for: starting a new sentence in the final foot of the line is not unparalleled (cf. in this book 13.34, 13.103, 13.115, 14.315, 322, 15.159) and throws extra weight onto sensus and also plorare in enjambement. 134–5  she tells us: the subject of iubet is natura from 132: for nature ordering see below on 138. squaloremque rei refers presumably to the exaggerated scruffiness which defendants would put on to try to elicit sympathy from the judges: captatio beneuolentiae took physical as well as verbal form in ancient forensic oratory. See for instance Aristophanes Wasps 564–5, Quintilian 6.1.30, Cicero pro Murena 86, Gellius 3.4.1.

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The textual problems continue. As the text stands it has to be understood thus: ‘[nature] orders us to weep for the raggedness of a friend (amici) who as a defendant (rei) is pleading his case (causam dicentis)’. The word order is odd but not impossible, but the -que after squalorem has to be read as joining not causam (which is part of the participial phrase) with squalorem but amici with rei which is very awkward. Suggestions include Wakefield’s casum lugentis amici (‘the plight of a grieving friend’) and Knoche’s excision of the entire phrase from causam to rei. The most elegant suggestion is Courtney’s amictus for amici: this makes a neat pairing of the garment (amictus) and its shoddy state (squalorem) and leaves rei to be taken with causam dicentis. 135–6  ward … guardian: the scene envisaged is one where a ward (pūpillus: a minor under the care of a guardian) has been defrauded and is taking the guardian to court. The ward was usually a boy whose father has died before the child has reached the age of puberty (fourteen): if the father’s will had not specified a guardian (tutor) then the nearest male relative on the father’s side became guardian and potentially heir to the ward’s inheritance (for details see Crook (1967) 113–16, OCD s.v. ‘Guardianship’). The scope for fraud was massive – a situation alluded to in 1.46–7, 6.629, 10.222, Horace Epistles 2.1.122–3, Persius 2.12–14 – and enough to prompt some legal measures (e.g. Suetonius Claudius 23.2) and drastic action in severe cases (e.g. Suetonius Galba 9.1): being found guilty of this sort of fraud rendered the culprit infamis (see Crook (1967) 84–85). For the term circumscriptorem see OLD s.v. ‘circumscribo’ 6a, ‘circumscriptor’. The legal procedure was carried out not by the ward (Crook (1967) 277) but by one representing him/her or possibly by the magistrate acting ‘inquisitorially’ (OCD s.v. ‘law and procedure, Roman’ 10), but the description in 137 suggests that the ward was at least visible. Line 136 is sonorously spondaic, as Ferguson notes, perhaps evoking the heavy tones of the indignant orator, with the epic phrase manantia fletu (cf. Catullus 101.9, Lucan 6.776) more rhetorical than mere ‘weeping’ would be: cuius must refer back to the pupillum (rather than the circumscriptorem), although the momentary confusion is apt in this context of gender-confusion. 137  girlish hair: long hair, once common (along with beards) for men even of consular rank (4.103, 5.30) was later on a marker for juvenile status (e.g. Petronius Sat. 29.3, 57.9, Martial 10.62.2) and was expected in girls and women. For long hair in adult men as a sign of degeneracy cf. Catullus 37.17, Martial 3.58.31–2. In the transgressive world of Trimalchio’s feast the

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evening begins with attractive long-haired boys (Petronius Satyricon 27.2), and Lucretius (4.1053) mentions ‘boys with girlish looks’ as objects of desire, while the androgynous youth here recalls Bacchus in disguise in Ovid (Met. 3.607) and Horace Odes 2.5. 21–4, which itself recalls the ‘famous episode of the young Achilles in female disguise on Scyros’ (Harrison (2017) ad loc.) as well as the puer delicatus figure in (e.g.) Horace Odes 3.20.13–16. Here it is simply the girlish hair which is mentioned, although presumably the beardless cheeks would also be relevant. The weeping is not necessarily a mark of femininity (see 133n.) but is useful in winning over the sympathy of the judges (cf. Cicero pro Cluentio 197, in Catilinam 4.3.11, pro Sestio 146 and see 134–5n.) and is a mark of the child’s vulnerability. For this sense of incertus see OLD s.v. ‘incertus’ 8f, Lucan 2.571. 138  nature’s orders: naturae is emphasised by position and picks up natura from 132. For the idea of personified nature giving out orders and instructions cf. 134, 14.31, Lucretius 3. 931–963, Horace Satires 1.6.93, Seneca Dialogi 7.24.3, Epistles 119.3. Here the verb gemimus is placed after the caesura and leads on to the two examples of tragic deaths which prompt it. 138–140  girl … child: for the pathos of this sort of untimely death cf. Virgil Aeneid 6.306–8: mention of the untimely death of an unmarried grown woman recalls Sophocles’ Antigone, Catullus’ Polyxena (64. 363–4) and Lucretius’ Iphigenia (1.84–101). Young children died in great numbers in ancient times (28% of live births did not see their first birthday (Hopkins (1983) 225)) but grief at their death could be massive (Horace Epistles 1.7.7, Tacitus Annals 15.23, Hopkins (1983) 221), for all that Seneca (Epistles 99) argued that the younger the deceased, the less justification for grief. J. makes the scene here vivid by having the funeral bump into us (occurrit : cf. 1.18) thus hinting that the unnamed girl is a stranger. We then witness the burial of the baby with the specific details of despatch (buried in earth: terra clauditur) explained by the added poignancy that the baby was not old enough for cremation – a feature of Roman life also mentioned by Pliny NH 7.72 – which also allows the poet to enclose the child’s demise with the two key ways of disposal (terra … rogi) and the two elements of earth and fire, as well as reinforcing the young age of the deceased by adding minor to infans. 140–1  torch … Ceres: it is perhaps surprising that J. brings the Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece into what is a simple moral point that good people have sympathy with others. The Mysteries of the Greek goddess Demeter (whose Roman equivalent was Ceres) were performed at Eleusis near Athens: the

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priest (or ‘hierophant’) would utter a blanket order (πρόρρησις) excluding all those not initiated or not deemed holy enough to enter the rites (cf. Virgil Aeneid 6.258, Callimachus Hymn 2.2). The word mysterium (μυστήριον) is derived from mystes (μύστης) which means ‘an initiate’ but the rites were kept secret (arcana) and so became ‘mysteries’, although here by transferred epithet it is the torch (face) which is ‘secret’. The worship began with a torchlight procession of initiates (cf. Ovid Fasti 4.494, Aristophanes Frogs 340–52 (with Dover (1993) 61)) which makes more sense if the ritual was performed in darkness. Roman worship of Ceres was itself of great antiquity (see OCD s.v. ‘Ceres’), but many Romans were initiated at Eleusis – Sulla, Augustus, and Hadrian for instance. Suetonius tells us (Nero 34.4) that Nero, for all his love of Greek culture, did not dare to become involved in Eleusinian rites ‘from whose initiation the impious and the criminal are removed by the voice of the herald’. ‘The civic nature of this cult, its antiquity and its myths – long familiar at Rome – guaranteed its prestigious position’ (Beard, North and Price (1998) vol. i p.223). For Hadrian’s initiation into the cult in 124 AD see CAH xi.622: his obvious enthusiasm for the cult would make J.’s remarks here topical and apt. 142 other people’s misfortunes do not concern him: ‘No man is an island, entire of itself’ as John Donne put it: the truism that mutual sympathy is an essential part of human nature was expressed many times in Latin in language which J. imitates here (homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto (‘I am human: I regard nothing human as not belonging to me’ Terence Heautontimoroumenos 77, cf. Seneca Epistles 88.30, OLD s.v. ‘alienus’ 10) and the concept of humanitas incorporates kindness and human feeling (OLD s.v. ‘humanitas’ 3): for the thought cf. Sophocles Ajax 121–6 (with Finglass (2011) ad loc.), Oedipus Coloneus 560–568. For the Epicurean idea that human society grew out of mutual sympathy and social contract cf. Lucretius 5. 1011–27 and see 150–158n. 142–3  that is why: Nisbet ((1995) 27) is scathing about ideo and suggests adeo (‘what is more it is from heaven…’ OLD s.v. ‘adeo’ 6), a reading which has been adopted by Willis, Courtney and Ferguson. ideo can however stand as picking up from hoc in a rhetorical amplification (‘this is what separates us … for this reason we have acquired…’: see OLD s.v. ‘ideo’ 3 and cf. 3.47, 7.143–4, 13.89). The interesting argument in 142–7 is that our human skills and insights are a direct by-product of the humanitas which makes us feel sympathy for the sufferings of others: intelligence (ingenium) is both a cause and an effect of our humanitas, a means and an end in itself.

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This … us: the two final monosyllables of 142 are neat in expressing the subdivision of humans from animals, here simply called ‘dumb things’ (mutorum) as at Seneca Dialogi 6.12, Epistles 95.32, Quintilian 7.3.16. Animals are often described thus (OLD s.v. ‘mutus’ 1: cf. 8.56) and the term designates inability to use language rather than inability to make sound at all, ‘internal’ speech ‘by which man differs from non-rational animals: for crows and parrots … utter inarticulate sounds’ (Sextus Empiricus Against the Professors 8.275–6 (LS vol. 1 p. 317)). The collective noun grex is used elsewhere pejoratively of a gaggle of people (1.46, 6.161, 6.175, 6.533, 9.143, 10.94, 12.116) and here the juxtaposition of grege mutorum is expressive of the lumpen mass of muteness. 143–6  divine: the divine teleology is stressed here in J.’s language (uenerabile … diuinorum …caelesti). Elsewhere (10. 346–50) J. has argued that the gods give us what is good for us as we are dearer to them than we are to ourselves (carior est illis homo quam sibi), a view of divine control which found its place in Stoicism (Diogenes Laertius 7. 147, Cicero de natura deorum 2.75–6, Gellius 7.1.1–13, Seneca de Beneficiis 2.29): needless to say, the Epicureans argued vehemently against all such forms of teleology (e.g. Lucretius 2.167–181 with Fowler (2002) 234–39). 143–4  mind … respect: it is tempting, in the light of the gloss diuinorumque capaces, to read uenerabile … ingenium as a mind which is (actively) capable of worshipping the gods (OLD s.v. ‘uenerabilis’ 2) rather than its more common meaning of ‘deserving respect’ as at 13.58. Courtney points out however that J. elsewhere does not use -bilis adjectives actively (see further Postgate (1913)), and the other reading ‘a brain that’s worthy of homage’ (Green) also makes sense. allotted: sortiti (from sortior) is linked to sortition and has the sense of undeserved fortune rather than fortune as a reward for our merits (cf. 6.505, 13.49. 14.96). capax here has the sense ‘capable of understanding’ (OLD s.v. ‘capax’ 4), picking up the idea of intellect from ingenium and looking forward to the arts and skills of the following line. The thinking here is Stoic: see especially Manilius 2.105– 116, 4.901–910 (with Volk (2009) 222–25) as well as the human knowedge of, and contact with, the gods alluded to in e.g. Cicero de Diuinatione 1.110, Seneca Epistles 74.29, 110.8 – a contact which is (of course) unavailable to the Epicurean whose best option is to aspire ‘to live a life worthy of the gods’ (dignam dis degere uitam Lucretius 3.322). 145  practising and … creation: note the apparently hysteron proteron inversion of exercendis pariendisque (cf. 14.253–4n.): the point here is

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rhetorical – being able to perform skills which someone else has invented is good, but inventing the skills in the first place is even better. The sequence of lengthy words in this line well evokes the quasi-scientific techniques at work. Wonder at human artistic and technological progress is a common theme in ancient literature: cf. e.g. Sophocles Antigone 332– 375, [Aeschylus] Prometheus Bound 442–68, 478–506, Euripides Supplices 201–13, Diodorus 1.8.1–7, Lucretius 5.925–1457, Guthrie (1971) 60–68: some ancient thinkers (e.g. Critias fr. 25 DK) included religion itself among the clever inventions of humanity. 146  heart: a wonderfully expressive line. sensum means more than simply ‘sensation’ as this is not something which animals lack, but rather ‘capacity for fellow feeling’ as at 133 (cf. OLD s.v. ‘sensus’ 6c): the spatial metaphor of human beings ‘dragging’ this down from the ‘heavenly citadel’ is powerful and visual, almost suggesting that this humanitas is plunder which we have stolen (OLD s.v. ‘traho’ 5) from the divine arsenal, somewhat in the manner of Prometheus stealing fire for us (see 15.85–6n.). demissum enhances the visual image of the sensum being ‘let down’ as if by a rope from heaven (cf. OLD s.v. ‘demitto’ 5, Propertius 4.7.17: Lucretius (2.1153–4) uses similar language to debunk this very theory). 147  herd of dumb animals: animals were called simply mutorum in 143: now they are referred to as prona et terram spectantia. The phrasing is similar to Ovid Met. 1.84–6 and alludes to human erect posture as opposed to animals’ four-footed gait (OLD s.v. ‘pronus’ 3b) and the submissiveness of animals as opposed to human confidence in looking at the heavens (cf. Manilius 4.897–910, Xenophon Memorabilia 1.4.11, Cicero De Legibus 1.26, De Natura Deorum 2.140). Raising one’s eyes can be an act of defiance and independence (cf. Lucretius 1.66–7) while lowering the gaze is an act of humility and weakness (e.g.Ovid Amores 2.5.43): the students in Socrates’ Phrontisterion interestingly do both at once in Aristophanes (Clouds 187–194). Persius (2.61) uses the same language to denote brutish and unphilosophical humans, as does Plato (Republic 586a–b). 147–8  At the beginning of the world: mundi/ principio is a temporal phrase: principium has the meaning ‘the point of time at which a thing begins’ (OLD s.v. ‘principium’ 2), while mundus is the Latin term for the known universe (κόσμος in Greek). communis conditor refers to the creator of both humans and animals: for the word conditor of the ‘creator of the world’ (something akin to the δημιουργός of Plato Timaeus (28a4–5, 28c2– 3)) cf. Manilius 2.701, Seneca Dial.1.5.8.

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gifted them: indulsit is a good word to use, indicating a gift which is in our favour (OLD s.v. ‘indulgeo’ 5 and cf. 14.234). 148–9  souls: anima denotes the faculty which makes a thing a living thing (ψυχή cf. 1.83, 6.501, 10.163, 12.57, Lucretius 3.117–129) often simply ‘breath’ (OLD s.v. ‘anima’ 1,2). heart: animus often represents the mental faculties or rational part of the soul (νοῦς or mens cf. Lucretius 3.94) but the term can also connote the ‘heart’ in the appetitive sense (θυμός) and in particular the seat of feelings towards others (OLD s.v. ‘animus’ 9c, 1.89, 6.285, 10.357, 13.190, Catullus 45.20) which will lead neatly onto mutuus adfectus. illis / tantum animas, nobis animum quoque is a neatly balanced contrast (cf. 14.15–16), with illis ~ nobis, tantum ~ quoque and animas ~ animum. 149–151  affection: adfectus here means something like our word ‘affection’: cf. 12.10, OLD s.v. ‘affectus1’ 7. Line 150 is neatly framed by adfectus and iuberet – the feeling is strong enough to compel our behaviour and this was the intention of the god who gave it to us – and contains the complementary infinitives petere … praestare which themselves embody the idea of reciprocal (mutuus) affection. J.’s more mechanistic (iuberet … trahere) view of human development differs from that of Epicurus who focuses on the evolutionary process whereby options chosen (and found good) persuaded men to adopt more social modes of behaviour: Lucretius concedes that not everybody observed the rules (5.1024–7) but that most must have done so in order for the race to survive. Juvenal’s account is close in spirit to Aristotle’s judgement (Nicomachean Ethics 1097b11) that human beings are ‘by nature political’: see also 3.312–314 where Umbricius idealises the condition of a Rome which was ‘content with one prison’. 151–158  A lengthy unit with eleven infinitive phrases, denoting the stages and elements of the emergence of a social contract (for which cf. 142n., Cicero de Officiis 1.16.50–51). The language and the thinking here mark a strong contrast to the ‘golden age’ theory of human degeneration found in (e.g.) Hesiod Works and Days 106–201 in which primeval paradise deteriorated to the present-day hardships we endure. The passage has similarities with the Epicurean account in Lucretius 5.1011–1027, although Lucretius’ view of social history (5.1108–9) is one of Realpolitik whereby unnamed ‘kings’ built the cities for their own protection rather than as an expression of altruistic co-operation: perhaps more relevant is the comparison with Horace’s scathing view of social development at Satires 1.3. 99–124, whereby ‘rules were invented from fear of the unjust man’. See also Aristotle Politics 1.2.7.

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The stages described here are: the search for safety by bringing scattered people together into fewer places, building houses close to each other, offering help to the weak, and creating armies for defence and walled towns for protection. 151–2  bring scattered…: the point is made twice: first in general terms and then in specific detail, first with a short phrase to indicate drawing folk nearer to each other and secondly with a longer phrase to convey the long and painful migration involved. The development of a society is enacted in the word order whereby the nameless dispersos become a populum, and the sense of necessity is helped by the strong verb trahere – usually used of forcing the unwilling (e.g. 10.88, 13.108, Seneca Epistles 107.11 (‘ducunt uolentem fata, nolentem trahunt’: 'the fates lead the willing but drag the unwilling along’)). The second phrase adds to this sense of wistful regret: the former dwellings were pastoral (nemore … siluas framing the line) going back generations (uetusto … proauis habitatas). The enjambed de nemore is to emphasise the old rural dwelling-place. The phrasing here is strongly reminiscent of Cicero de inuentione 1.2: ‘[a great and wise man realised what human beings could achieve] and he forced men who were scattered in fields and in woodland dwellings into one place ‘(dispersos homines in agros et in tectis siluestribus abditos … compulit unum in locum). Lucretius (5.955) shares the common view that early man dwelt in ‘groves (nemora), mountain caves and woods (siluas)’ (cf. Ovid Metamorphoses 1.103–6), a view which J. expands on at 6.2–10. ancestors: proauis means literally ‘great-grandfather’ but here is loosely meaning ‘a remote ancestor’ (cf. 3.212 where J. has proauorum atauos (literally ‘great-great-great grandfathers of great-grandfathers’) OLD s.v. ‘proauus’ 2, Horace Ars Poetica 270). 153  home: the houses were more than mere dwellings and had sacred significance as shown in the juxtaposition domos laribus, where the household gods are used both metonymically (standing for ‘houses’ as at 14.20) and also literally as the spirits which protected the home. For household gods (Lares) see OCD s.v. ‘Lares’. nostris picks up nos from 149 and reminds us that this is our own people under discussion and that these considerations still apply in the present. 154  safe … neighbour’s: the word order assists the meaning: the houses are safe because of their proximity to each other, as shown in the verbal proximity of tutos uicino. There is a neat surprise ending to the line as we expect another word for ‘house’ but J. offers us a more vivid somnos (‘sleep’). Lucretius had stated that early man had no fear of the sun’s disappearance

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as such (5.970–981) but conceded that sleeping out in the open laid humans open to attack from wild beasts (5.982–7). The reading limine (‘threshold’) has been accepted by most editors but Nisbet ((1995) 257) suggests that uicino ab limite in Virgil Eclogue 1.53 supports the variant reading limite (‘boundary’). The ablative is explanatory – the sleep is safe because of the neighbouring doorway. 155–6  collective self-confidence: J.’s choice of words stresses that untroubled sleep requires a lack of anxiety and the confidence is born of the safety afforded by numbers, with conlata fiducia standing here for conlatorum fiducia (as Duff notes), and ciuem (156) stressing that the individual is now part of a political community, as further developed in communi (157). to protect: the care of the weak is a vital part of the mutuus adfectus (149–50) and the language here suggests that the sufferer has been injured in battle, both justifying the care and also prompting the idea of military security in 157–8. The language is again epic: for protegere armis cf. Ilias Latina 821, Ovid Met. 8.394, Silius Italicus 12.263, while ingenti uolnere recalls Virgil Aeneid 10.842, 12.640, Homerus Latinus Ilias Latina 748, Ovid Met. 13.537, Statius Thebaid 9.270. nutantem has the sense of tottering as if about to fall (OLD s.v. ‘nuto’ 4b) and matches lapsum: people defended a man who had fallen down (lapsum) and one who looked likely to do so (nutantem). The protection of the ‘fallen’ (and possibly dead) recalls the struggle over the corpse of Patroclus in Homer (Iliad 17.1–761), while the protecting of the wounded recalls Menelaus and Ajax escorting the wounded Odysseus from the battlefield (Iliad 11.462–488). 157–8  For the use of the trumpet to mark the start of the battle cf. 15.52 (and 15.51–2n.): the emphasis here is on communi … isdem … una suggesting that groups of potential rivals now merged into a single force, with added details of the building of fortifications and the use of locks. Towers (turribus) are part of the final stage of human development in Lucretius (5.1440) to find defence: defendier is the archaic form of the passive present infinitive defendi, a form used regularly by Lucretius and six times by Virgil: in both authors the form is used mostly (as here) in the fifth foot and the usage dates back to the Laws of the Twelve Tables as well as to early Roman comedy (see Austin (1955) on Virgil Aeneid 4.493). J. presumably uses this form to evoke the ancient early legal settlements. The point of the ‘one key’ is to emphasise that defence was a matter for all in common rather than for individuals to live protected against each other. For the use of teneo as ‘to keep enclosed’ see OLD s.v. ‘teneo’ 18.

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159–174  Beasts: earlier on (124–5) J. argued that even savage tribes draw the line at cannibalism: from here he develops a similar line of argument by suggesting that savage animals are in fact morally superior to anthropophagic humans. Earlier philosophers (such as Cynics and Sophists) had (sometimes falsely) used the behaviour of animals as a benchmark for what is ‘natural’ – see e.g. Herodotus 2.64, Plato Gorgias 483c–d, Laws 836c (homosexuality is unnatural because animals do not practise it, says the speaker), Symposium 207a5–208b6 – and this idea was sufficiently well-known to be parodied by Aristophanes (Clouds 1427–9, Birds 753–768). The phenomenon of kingship, for instance, was justified by analogy with the world of bees (cf. Plato Politicus 301d–e, Republic 520b, Virgil Georgics 4.210–218, Seneca de Clementia 1.19) right up to J.’s own day (Dio Chrysostom Or.4.62–3 Plutarch Moralia 813c). More relevantly to this passage, Horace Epodes 7.11–12 argues that animals do not kill their own kind as Romans do (see Watson (2003) 278): J. echoes this but adds the important intensifier that humans not only kill each other but that they also eat their own species. For more realistic depictions of animal internecine behaviour see Hesiod Works and Days 276–280. 159  snakes: J. begins with a generalisation here. Snakes are chosen perhaps as they are venomous and highly dangerous creatures (cf. 5.91, Lucan 9.614, Horace Odes 1.37.27, Virgil Georgics 1.129) as well as being beasts of illomen (Horace Odes 3.27.5 with Nisbet and Rudd (2004) ad loc.) and a common symbol of viciousness (e.g. Cicero in Vatinium 4.7) whose total eradication is foreseen in the coming golden age of Virgil Eclogue 4.24. agreement: concordia is used of animals at Virgil Aeneid 3.542 and frequently of people (e.g. 2.47, Cicero Catiline 2.19, de Oratore 1.56, Livy 3.69.4). iam sets up an implicit contrast with the distant past of mundi principio (147–8): for this sort of ‘then vs. now’ moral contrast cf. Catullus 64.397–408. 159–60  Beasts … like their own: the phrase has a gnomic ring and can be construed either thus: ‘the similar wild animal spares the kindred markings’ or else ‘the beast which is similar in its markings spares its relatives’. Of these the latter is more idiomatic and elegant, as the synecdoche (the ‘markings’ for the animals – it was not only the skin which was saved) also highlights the decisive feature which secured the animal’s safety (for this sort of synecdoche cf. 10.345, 13.59, 14.162). Note the word order: the beast first recognises the markings (cognatis maculis) and sees that it is similar (similis) to itself: the word fera at the end of the sentence is thus lightly ironic as this beast is not in fact savage – at least to its own kind.

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160–163  lion … boar … tigress: J. makes abundant use of vivid epic language here. Note the polyptoton to enact the meetings of similar animals (leoni … leo: aper … apri: tigris … tigride), along with variation of vocabulary in the two parallel pairs of statements: killing is denoted by ‘took the life’ (eripuit uitam) and then ‘died at the teeth of’ (expirauit … dentibus), while peace is both active (agit … pacem) and established (inter se conuenit). The superior lion is ‘stronger’ (fortior) while the superior boar is ‘bigger’ (maioris). The lion and the boar are simply named, while the peaceful tiger and bear are qualified with adjectives (Indica, saeuis). The poet uses rhetorical questions for the first two beasts to ask indignantly when (quando) and where (quo nemore) this has happened, with umquam (ever) adding to the effect. The language is oratorical and epic, giving an ironic feel to this description of animal behaviour: for uitam eripio cf. Cato Orationes 59.4, Cicero pro Milone 26, Livy 8.32, Seneca Phoenissae 142: for expirauit (literally ‘breathed his last’) cf. OLD s.v. ‘exspiro’ 3, Virgil Aeneid 11.865, Horace Epode 5.91, Ovid Met. 5.106. For the ferocity of lions cf. 14.246–7n.: for tigers cf. 6.270 (with Watson and Watson (2014) ad loc.). Boars and bears both enjoyed some status as food in Roman times (for boar cf. 1.141, Horace Satires 2.2.89–92, for bearmeat cf. Petronius Satyricon 66): they were also hunted in the arena (boars 1.23: bears 4.99). The teeth are the salient feature of the boar: cf. Homer Iliad 9.539 (ἀργιόδοντα (‘white-tusked’)), Tibullus 3.9.2–3, Manilius 5.229, Ovid Heroides 4.104 (obliquo dente timendus aper: ‘the boar is terrifying with its sidelong teeth’), Met. 10.715, Apuleius Met. 8.5. For the grouping of lion, bear, boar and tiger cf. Virgil Georgics 3.245–9. 163–4  tigress: the Indian or Bengal tiger (panthera tigris tigris). Literature often indicates the country of origin (e.g. Armenian tigers at Propertius 1.9.19, Tibullus 3.6.15, Virgil Eclogues 5.29, Ovid Amores 2.14.35, Met. 8.121: Hyrcan tigers at Virgil Aeneid 4.367). ‘Tigers were sent from India to Augustus, and the first tiger, tamed and caged, was exhibited in Rome in 11 BC at the dedication of the Theatre of Marcellus: Claudius later exhibited four.’ (Balsdon (1969) 303, citing Pliny NH 8.65, Dio 54.9.8, Suetonius Divus Augustus 43.4). This line is notable for the assonance of ‘i’, and for the effective enjambement of perpetuam over the next line. The animals are described with concessive adjectives – rabida … saeuis – and the verb conuenit here is used in its impersonal sense (taking the dative ursis and also inter + accusative: see OLD s.v. ‘conuenio’ 7b) as at 6.281, Catullus 57.1, Martial 8.35.3, Seneca Apocolocyntosis 2.2.

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furious: rabidus is commonly used of raging hunger (cf. 6.248, Virgil Aeneid 6.421) and is applied to tigers by Virgil (Georgics 2.151) and Martial (Spect. 18.2). 165  But: ast marks a strong contrast with what has gone before (3.69, 6.67, 8.46, 15.78, 16.48), here showing the difference in savagery between the wildest of beasts and the human being (homini). The anvil is often specified as the tool for creating weapons (see OLD s.v. ‘incus’ and 10.131– 2, Virgil Georgics 2.540, Horace Odes 1.35.38–40): here the epithet nefanda is transferred from the persons making the weapons to the anvil itself. 166  produced … anvil: incude … produxisse is (as Duff points out) similar to procudisse as used in a similar context by Lucretius (5.1265). The term also (like extendere in 168) suggests the lengthening of the metal into a long blade (see 2.94, OLD s.v. ‘produco’ 9). The ‘p’ alliteration adds to the effect of the metal being hammered, while parum is a neat understatement (it was ‘not enough’ to make deadly (letale) weapons, as they have also to eat their victims). 166–7  forge … rakes…: a familiar trope is to link metallurgy for agriculture with the same technology used for murder and warfare, and the bronze is often blamed for the violence: see e.g. Hesiod Works and Days 145–155, 189, Lucretius 5.1289–96, Tibullus 1.10.1–10, Ovid Met. 125– 143: for J.’s take on the idea cf. 3.309–11. Other writers contrast the peaceful life of the farmer with the bellicose stress of the warrior (e.g. Aristophanes Acharnians 1096–1142, Peace 551–5, Tibullus 1.1.3–7, Horace Epode 2.1–5 (with Watson (2003) ad loc.): something of a false dichotomy as Cato makes clear (‘farmers make the strongest men and the most energetic soldiers’ Agr. praef. 4). J. here borrows the traditional chronological sequence whereby smiths in earlier times did not yet know how to make weapons: cf. Virgil Georgics 2.539–40, Seneca de Ben. 7.10.2, Pliny NH 34.138. rakes … hoes … mattocks … ploughshare: The implements here are itemised with variation of case: two accusatives (rastra et sarcula) and two ablatives (marris ac uomere, the latter being a generalised singular for plural as often in Latin poetry). The rastrum is a drag-hoe (cf. Persius 2.11) used for clearing vines at Catullus 64.39 or breaking up clods of earth in Virgil Georgics 1.95, while the sarculum (from sario (‘to hoe, weed’)) is a simple hoe ‘with a blade set at an angle to a pole …used as a substitute for the plough on rocky soil’ (Nisbet and Hubbard (1970) on Horace Odes 1.1.11). 167  forge: for this use of coquere cf. Persius 5.10, Lucan 6.405, OLD s.v. ‘coquo’ 2b – Ferguson suggests a pun on the word suggesting ‘cookery’ which could have beeen apt in this poem about cannibalism, if the poet had

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not explicitly told us that Egyptians did not in fact wait to cook their victims (81–3). J. has a similar list of implements (uomer, marra, sarcula) at 3.311: the marra was a kind of pick-axe or mattock (cf. Pliny NH 17.159, Columella de re rustica 10.72). The ablatives marris ac uomere have to be taken with lassi (‘weary with the [effort of making] mattocks and ploughshare’) as at 8.246: the line is thus framed by the two words which govern the metallurgy (adsueti … lassi), the one denoting their frequent practice, the other the endresult of their efforts. Nisbet ((1995) 28) thought this was ‘a poor line’ and so an interpolation: but we have need of a verb to govern rastra et sarcula from 166 and Nisbet accepts that J. can be ‘garrulous and diffuse’. 168  not knowing: the lack of weapons in early society is put down to ignorance (nescierint) rather than to any superior virtue, and the past is contrasted with the present which is conveyed in the first-person verb aspicimus in 169. to knock out: gladios extendere is a pregnant phrase, suggesting the straightening and lengthening process whereby implements were stretched into swords. For the phrase cf. OLD s.v. ‘extendo’ 4a, Persius 5.38, Lucan 4.417. 169  We are looking … now: J. begins to close his poem. He brings the past up to date with an inclusive present-tense verb aspicimus and the word nunc (172: cf. Catullus 64. 406 and note also uideret in 172). The choice of a verb of seeing reminds us that J. is claiming first-hand knowledge of Egyptian cannibalism (see 45 quantum ipse notaui), while populos recalls 39 and 130 and irae recalls 131. 170  somebody: the killing is of a singular somebody (aliquem), but the eating of their body turns them into a smorgasbord of different cuts of meat. The list is in ascending order of horror: pectora might pass for animal meat, but bracchia are going to be recognisably human and the uoltum will identify the actual individual being eaten. For Tydeus’ eating of the head of his enemy see 15.13n.. 171  think: the subjunctive crediderint is inferential from what we see to what they must have believed from the evidence of their behaviour. 171–3  The subject of the verbs diceret and fugeret, each part of a rhetorical questions (quid … quo…) is concealed until the opening of 173 where Pythagoras is finally named, in emphatic enjambement. 172  The question is indignant: where would he not rather flee? suggesting that he would flee anywhere on earth to get away from such things. For monstra cf. 121–2n. We see (aspicimus 169) these abominations and stay put: if Pythagoras were to see them (uideret) he would not.

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173  Pythagoras of Samos was an influential mathematician and thinker who travelled widely and settled in Croton in South Italy in 530 BC. He developed theories such as the transmigration of souls and seems to have founded a group which practised strict rules concerning diet and burial of the dead. Legends of his divine status, his ability to bilocate and his recalling of previous incarnations, made him famous throughout the ancient world and his influence can be detected in Plato and later thinkers (see OCD s.v. ‘Pythagoras’). For the satirical jibe at his belief that beans were not to be eaten see 3.229, Horace Satires 2.6.63, Cicero de Divinatione 1.62. 173  abstained: the vegetarianism of Pythagoras is couched in terms which remind us of the central point being made: he refused to eat animals as if they were human – whereas the Egyptians eat humans as if they were animals (for the contrast cf. 14.98). Seneca (Ep.108.17–19) gives good reasons for Pythagoras’ vegetarianism as arising from his belief in the transmigration of souls into animals (a belief which ironically Herodotus (2.123) ascribes first to the Egyptians): for vegetarianism in the ancient world see OCD s.v. ‘animals, attitudes to’. On Pythagoreanism in the early empire see e.g. CAH xi. 925–6: the emperor Hadrian was given a text of the mystical teachings of Pythagoras (Danziger and Purcell (2006) 256) 174  Pythagoras ate some vegetables but not every bean (a restriction which is discussed by Barnes (1987) 205–207) and the point is made satirical with the oxymoronic juxtaposition indulsit uentri (give his belly a treat) – most Romans would not regard beans as haute cuisine – which in turn recalls the words of Epicurus (Diogenes Laertius 10.11) who, content with bread and water, asked to be sent a pot of cheese when he wished to have a ‘feast’. For the dietary rules of the Pythagoreans see KRS 230–1, Barnes (1982) 104. J. works up to a fine satirical climax with the word legumen to end the poem and yet the a fortiori point is still well made to establish the moral gulf between the Egyptian cannibals and others, with a sliding scale ranging from extreme brutality (Egyptians, who treat humans as meat), through normal folk (who eat meat but not humans) to extreme fastidiousness (Pythagoras, who will not touch meat at all and refrains even from some vegetables). The poet is not endorsing Pythagoreanism as a counsel of perfection but is using the example of the sage to make the moral condemnation of the cannibals all the stronger.

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SATIRE XVI The final poem in the collection is incomplete, breaking off (mid-sentence) after a mere 60 lines. The implicit promise in line 7 to deal with other topics later is not fulfilled, thus adding good evidence for its incompleteness. Scholars have produced several explanations for this: 1. J. may have died and left it unfinished (as did Virgil with the Aeneid). 2. The archetype manuscript may have lost its final pages: but the length of Book V as a whole argues against this and this theory could only be sustained if the poet intended 16 to be the first in a new book of poems. Book V has 814 lines already and adding more to this poem would have taken the length well beyond the line-length of other books (although Lucretius does exceed 1000 lines in every book of the de rerum natura). Furthermore, no ancient commentator or author cites any lines from the putative ending to this poem, whereas major sources such as Servius and Priscian quote from the fragment we have, thus providing evidence that this poem is both genuine and also incomplete. 3. The poem may have been censored by Hadrian – this is unlikely as there would in that case be nothing left, and the fragment we have would not have survived. The poem as we have it discusses military life: 1–6 7–34 35–50 51–60

Being in the military can bring advantages – if you are lucky Advantages enjoyed by all soldiers – safety from assault by civilians Soldiers enjoy the advantage in lawcourts Financial advantages of being a soldier.

J.’s attack is on the urban cohorts of the Praetorian Guard. This was the body of troops with whom Romans were most familiar as they were stationed close to the city: they had shown the power to remove citizens under the leadership of Sejanus (see 10.58–107) – a man who could have become emperor himself (10.74–7). They had made the reluctant Claudius emperor after the assassination of his nephew Caligula, and later on they had succeeded in putting Trajan on the imperial throne. These men were essentially bodyguards of the emperor and enjoyed greatly superior pay and conditions (and ran far fewer risks) compared to those troops out in the

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provinces (see 1n., 20n. and OCD s.v. ‘Praetorians’, Watson (1969) 16– 18, 97–99, 108–14). Their visible proximity, their superior pay and their privileges all made them excellent satirical material. For discussion of this poem see: Clark (1988), Highet (1954) 154–60, Stramaglia (2008) 291–95, Geue (2017b) 211–15, Schmitz (2019) 159–61. 1–6  Being in the military can bring advantages – if you are lucky The emphasis is on good fortune (felicis … prospera … secundo … fati benigni) as being the deciding factor in the desirability of military service: if you have the goddess Fortuna with you, then you have no need of other divinities. Fortune has had a chequered history in J. – see 10.366 (=14.315– 6), where it is debunked and degraded to the status of not being a real divinity at all. Here J. pays at least lip-service to the importance of good luck in military assignments. 1.  Who could count?: J. opens this satire with a rhetorical question as he did in Satires 1, 8, and 15. The hyperbole whereby a large number is deemed beyond counting recalls Lucretius 2.1054, [Tibullus] 3.10.12, Statius Thebaid 1.231–2, Siluae 3.1.102. praemia suggests in the first place the financial rewards (3.56, 8.92, Augustus Res Gestae 17, Suetonius Augustus 49, OLD s.v. ‘praemium’ 1), which were two denarii a day for praetorian soldiers (Tacitus Annals 1.17.6, Watson (1969) 97–98) and generous bonus payments at the accession of a new emperor (Watson (1969) 108–14) and a severance bonus of 5000 denarii payable on discharge (Dio 55.23, Watson (1969) 147). praemia can also denote rewards in a more general sense (as at 10.142, OLD s.v. ‘praemium’ 2) which J. will go on to describe at line 35 onwards. Nothing is known of Gallius although the name appears in republican times (Cicero ad Atticum 11.20.2, Philippics 13.26) and under the empire (Suetonius Augustus 27.4, Tiberius 6.3). 2  military service: militiae is emphasised by enjambement, as is sidere in line 4. castra is the subject of the passive verb subeuntur (see OLD s.v. ‘subeo’ 10b, 6.419, 14.220–1, Propertius 1.6.30), comparable to militia iniretur at Tacitus Annals 1.17.5. Scholars from Jahn onwards noticed that lines 2–3 are odd as they stand: ‘‘If recruits are lucky, may I be a lucky recruit’ is grotesque’ (Courtney). Housman wrote the line which is printed as 2a to fill this gap. 3  nervous recruit: The poet has described himself as elderly (11.203, 1.25) which may explain why even the prospera castra still leaves him frightened

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(pauidum) as he is a raw recruit (tironem) with no military experience – although the offer to join up is probably ironic and part of the satire. The porta must here refer to the gate of the camp (cf. Caesar B.G. 5.53.1 Livy 27.18) and excipiat is a jussive subjunctive expressing a wish. secundo sidere is an important caveat added at the end of the sentence: the poet only wishes to enlist if he can do so with a lucky star and enjoy the signs of success listed in line 60. For excipere as a term used in astrology cf. 7.194–6. 4  stars … benevolent: the line is framed by the significant words sidere and benigni. fati hora benigni refers primarily to the time of one’s birth, seen as indicative and predictive of good or bad fortune in later life and used by astrologers in their calculations of life-span. See 7.194–8, 14.248n., 6. 569–81 with Watson and Watson (2014) 253–55. The literature on ancient astrology is vast: see e.g. OCD s.v. ‘astrology’, Beard, North, and Price (1998) vol.1, 231–32, Ogilvie (1981) 54–55. For the phrasing here cf. Persius 5.48 and cf. the word horoscopus (e.g. Persius 6.18) derived from Greek ὡροσκόπος and giving us the word ‘horoscope’. Stramaglia ((2008) 299) suggests that the hora here may also refer to the time when the recruit enters the camp for the first time (‘a sort of new horoscope’): cf. 6.580–1. 5–6  Letters of recommendation (litterae commendaticiae, ἡ συστατικὴ ἐπιστολή) were written on behalf of military and political officials to promote the man’s chances of securing a favourable posting (see Cotton (1985) Rees (2007), Watson (1969) 37–38): book 13 of Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares consists entirely of such letters, and tablet 250 of the Vindolanda tablets found on Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England is a good example (‘I ask that you think fit to commend him to Annius Equester, centurion in charge of the legion…’): the format is found also in Pliny (e.g. Letters 2.13, 3.2, 3.8, 4.4) and even in verse (Horace Epistles 1.9). Here the situation is made comic and ironic by the burlesque of divine beings involved: the god of war Mars is appropriately the addressee of the letters, written by his mistress (Venus) and his mother (Juno). For this sort of burlesque on divine figures cf. 13.38–41. The singular verb commendet has two separate subjects (epistula and genetrix), suggesting that line 6 is to be read as if an afterthought. 5  Venus was married to the blacksmith god Vulcan but conducted an adulterous affair with Mars as stated explicitly by Homer (Odyssey 8.266– 369), Lucretius (1. 31–40), Aeschylus (Suppliants 665) and Pindar (Pythian 4.87). Hesiod (Theogony 933–7) even gives the pair three children together. For the adulterous relationship cf. 2.31, 10.314, Ovid Tristia 2.295–6, Amores 2.5.28, Heroides 15.91–2, Metamorphoses 4.171, Propertius 2.32.33.

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6  mother: Juno’s affection for Samos, where she had a cult centre, is well documented in the ancient world: see e.g. Virgil Aeneid 1.16, Ovid Met. 8.220–1. Herodotus tells us (3.60) that her temple in Samos was ‘the largest of all the temples I have seen’, on a par with that of Artemis at Ephesus (2.148). The word harena is left until the end of the sentence and the line for emphasis: Juno loves Samos – even the very sand there delights her. 7–34  Advantages enjoyed by all soldiers – safety from assault by civilians 7  Let’s deal: the poet begins his disquisition in didactic style with a firstperson plural verb (in the jussive subjunctive) drawing the reader into the collective discussion, as later on notemus (35). The use of first-person plural verbs to assume shared experience is found also in Lucretius (especially uidemus as at (e.g.) 2.20) and is common in J. (e.g. 10.4–5, 10.366). The jussive form is common in the philosophers (e.g. Lucretius 1.954–6, Seneca Ep. 117.25, de Beneficiis 2.32.4, Cicero Tusc. 4.24.1) and is natural in literature which is in the form of a dialogue, such as this passage. For the use of commoda (a word which Catullus (84.1) depicts Arrius as unable to pronounce correctly) cf. 9.89, 13.21, Lucretius 3.2, 4.1074, Horace Satires 2.8.76, Epistles 1.14.37: the term is used specifically of soldiers’ rewards by Cicero (Agr. 2.54, Phil. 5.53) Ovid (Ars Am. 1.131–2) and Suetonius (Augustus 24.2, Galba 12.2): see OLD s.v. ‘commodum’1 4. communia shows that these commoda are not confined to any one group or rank of soldiers: no doubt there were however some ranks which enjoyed especial advantages. primum communia here suggests that the poet intends to treat of less universal benefits later – a promise which the poem does not fulfil. 8  not … least: the litotes haut minimum (cf. Cicero pro Fonteio 21.11, Ovid ex Ponto 2.3.46) is comparable to the common Greek equivalent οὐκ ἐλάχιστον (e.g. Homeric Hymn to Hermes 573, Herodotus 7.168): for litotes in J. cf. 13.7, 14.93. The construction illud erit ne … audeat is unusual and striking. Commentators state that it is technically a consecutive subjunctive (and so ought to be ut non rather than ne) and means ‘not least is the perk which grants that no citizen dare…’. The use of ne gives the line the feel of a legal prohibition (ne is the standard term to introduce prohibitions (e.g. 1.110, 2.42, 15.89 and cf. 16.16 below) in laws from the Twelve Tables onwards (see OLD s.v. ‘ne’ 1,2) which is highly apt in this context as the citizen is legally impotent in this sort of ‘case’ involving military force and privilege. toga-clad: togatus indicates a civilian (OLD s.v. ‘togatus’ 2: for the contrast

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of toga and militia cf. 10.8–9, Cicero pro Murena 84, pro Marcello 24, Livy 22.38.9). The term also indicates Roman citizen status (OLD s.v. ‘togatus’ 3: cf. Cicero Verrines 2.1.74 (where togatus is contrasted with being Greek), Virgil Aeneid 1.282) and the clothing of a cliens (3.127, Martial 2.57.5). te refers presumably to an imaginary soldier rather than to Gallius. 9  dare: audeat is emphasised in enjambement and the statement is immediately corrected and made even more striking with immo and what follows. The accused soldier would face a trial conducted by his fellowsoldiers, and so it would take courage to risk the repercussions in so uneven a contest. Thump … thumped: the repetition of pulsare … pulsetur is effective at bringing out the switch from active to passive whereby the citizen is more likely to be beaten than to beat: for this sardonic view of justice cf. 3.299– 301 (‘this is “liberty” for a poor man – to be allowed home with a few teeth still left him’). The rhythm of dissimulet nec with its clash of ictus and accent and final monosyllable is apt in this context of a beating. 10  dare: audeat is repeated in the same position from line 9: a good example of rhetorical and ironic anaphora as the ‘daring’ involved is very different: both Markland and Nisbet suspect the manuscript reading and opt for words denoting enthusiasm, but this would remove the anaphora and is not necessary. The office of praetor was one of the senior positions in the Roman cursus honorum and the urban praetor was responsible for the conduct of the lawcourts (Livy 6.42.11, OLD s.v. ‘praetor’ 2a, Crook (1967) 73–77). He would examine the parties to the case in camera to establish whether the case was worth bringing to court – in this case by the physical showing of injuries inflicted on the claimant. The line has a pleasing assonance of ostendere dentes. 11  swelling … lumps: the grotesque injuries are well evoked in the language chosen. offa is a lump of food such as a cake (e.g. Virgil Aeneid 6.420) but the word is used metaphorically in J. for an aborted foetus (2.33), a face-plaster of cosmetics (6.472) and here a black swollen bruise. The line is rich in words denoting colour (black (nigram) and blue (liuoribus)) and swelling (tumidis … offam). 12  relictum is translated as left him (i.e. remaining) which is at first surprising: the citizen would show the eye he has lost to the praetor and not the one he still has: J., however, makes the point cleverly by (a) implying that the other eye has been knocked out totally and (b) adding the detail that even this ‘remaining’ eye is subject to medical attention and little hope of

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recovery (for this sense of relictus cf. 6.373B). For injury to eyes in fighting cf. 15.58. Doctors receive a generally negative press in J. (see 13.124–5n.): they are impostor Greeks (3.77) who laugh at piles (2.13), are called on to castrate men for women’s pleasure (6.370) and kill their patients in autumn (10.221, where see my note ad loc.). For the image here of doctors unable to promise recovery cf. 6.289. 13–14  A skilful sentence. Bardaicus (from the Illyrian tribe Vardaei/ Bardaei (see OLD s.v. ‘Vardaicus’)) iudex leads us to expect that a human judge will be assigned, only for the expectation to be dashed with the enjambed calceus in lin 14 showing that the ‘judge’ is the summary justice of the military boot (synecdochic for the soldiers who make up the jury but threatening also summary violence: for the boot cf. Martial 4.4.5 and see 3.247–8, 16.24–5). 14  massive … huge: the line focusses on the soldier’s physical size and threatening stance, with the hapless citizen ‘not daring to look the judges in the face: his line of vision is fixed on the benches and below’ (Jenkyns (1982) 201). The boot (calceus) and the calf-muscles (surae) frame the line, and grandes magni are juxtaposed to emphasise the size of the men and consequently the benches (subsellia) needed to seat them. For subsellia as the judicial benches see 16.44 and (e.g.) Cicero pro Roscio Amerino 12.9, Philippics 2.19.4. Persius pokes fun at soldiers for their philistinism (3.77– 85 where they are called ‘the smelly race of centurions’) and for general boorishness (5.189–91): Tacitus also points out their forensic lack of finesse (Agricola 9.2). 15–17  laws: J. states that it was a rule that serving soldiers were subject to martial rather than civil law and so were tried in the camp. Marcus Furius Camillus was created dictator five times between 396 and 367 BC (see OCD s.v. ‘Furius Camillus, Marcus’, Ogilvie (1965) 631) and was credited with the creation of a standing army which was not released at the end of campaigning but lived in winter quarters (Livy 5.2). The edict forbidding soldiers to leave camp to give evidence was given by Hadrian (Justinian Digest 22.5.3.6). 15  The line is wholly taken up with legal authority going back centuries – the laws are ancient (antiquis) and preserve the mos maiorum attributed to the man who saved Rome from the Gauls over four centuries earlier. The legal terms frame the central key word castrorum (literally ‘army camp’ but used in a general sense here (see OLD s.v. ‘castra’ 3 and cf. 14.198)). 16  extra has to be taken with uallum – the hyperbaton suggesting the

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(forbidden) displacement of the soldier. litigo is the standard term for going to court (cf. 6.35, 7.141). 17  As often, J. repeats the point in different words, so that outside the camp is now glossed as far from the standards. The wording is not however otiose repetition: signa were the military ensigns (OLD s.v. ‘signum’ 10: cf. 8.12, 16.55 for the combination of signa and castra to indicate the miltary) which had great symbolic and religious meaning (Watson (1969) 129–31): the loss of the signa in the Roman defeat at the hands of Parthia was a national disgrace and their recovery was celebrated in the coinage of Augustus with the inscription SIG(NIS) REC(EPTIS). The word also denotes ‘evidence’ in a legal sense (OLD s.v. ‘signum’ 4c and cf. the same ambiguity in the Greek term σημεῖον) and so here has the sense that the soldier is staying comfortably away from the evidence presented in court. 17–19  the verdict … complaint: a pathetic claim put into the mouth of the injured citizen and quoted as evidence that the soldiery can harm the minds as well as the bodies of the citizens. The style of the sentence is desperately rhetorical, with the final two feet of line 17 contained in one long word and the legalese language of cognitio de milite … defertur causa querelae. For the legal usage of these words see OLD s.v. ‘cognitio’ 3, ‘defero’ 9e, ‘causa’ 1, ‘querela’ 1b. The result being sought is ultio, which stands out in emphatic enjambement as the key emotive term amid the dry legal language (see 13.189–91n.). 18  dērit is the syncopated form of deerit (from desum). The conflict of the two men is well adduced in the placing of milite … mihi. Nisbet deleted this line and the sense can manage without it, but the meaningless mss. reading igitur has been sensibly emended by Housman and the word inquis makes it clear that this is not J. speaking. 20–28  The forces against the plaintiff are comprehensive: the line is framed by the key terms tota cohors and omnesque manipli where tota matches omnes and cohors matches manipli. The Praetorian Guard was made up (in Juvenal’s time) of ten cohortes, three of which were stationed in the city (see OCD s.v. ‘praetorians’, OLD s.v. ‘cohors’ 4a), and was the permanent imperial military force in the city: the cohort was subdivided into three manip(u)li (see OLD s.v. ‘manipulus’ 3). The threat of physical violence creates fear in the plaintiff and also in any ‘friends’ who might otherwise support him. 21–2  redress: The language is highly sardonic: your (so-called) redress (uindicta) ends up leaving you worse off than the original iniuria did.

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curabilis has been seen as a problem. The word only occurs here in Latin (OLD s.v. ‘curabilis’) and this context suggests that it has to mean ‘requiring medical attention’ rather than the more obvious sense ‘capable of being healed’. If it were to mean ‘curable’ then the sense would be that the uindicta itself were a (mental?) affliction which the soldier’s boot would ‘heal’: but curare almost always means ‘to treat medically’ (OLD s.v. ‘curo’ 3) and (given that J. also tells us that the vengeance is ‘more serious’; than the original injury) the sense must surely therefore be ‘needing treatment’. See Postgate (1913) 417–22, OLD s.v. ‘-bilis’ and cf. Virgil Aeneid 7.764 where placabilis means placanda. For the medical sense of grauis see OLD s.v. ‘grauis’ 14b and for the topos of ‘cure as worse than the disease’ see 8.209– 210, Seneca Contr. 6.7, Woodman and Martin (1996) 255–56 on Tacitus Annals 3.28.1. The impact of the forces against him are also brought out by the phrasing consensu magno (often used of senatorial judgements: see e.g. Livy 37.58.3) which gives a feeling of legitimacy to the intimidation. 22–25  One would be mad to incur the wrath of soldiers and risk injury: the point is made obliquely and depends on the interpretation of declamatoris to denote the futility of forensic oratory in such a case. The striking off-beat rhythm of dignum erit ergo suggests the ranting about to be mentioned in 23. 23  Vagellius (who appears in 13: see 13.118–9n.) is here described as a declamator or ‘rhetorician’ who produced epideictic speeches as exercises in oratorical skill rather than with any real forensic purpose (cf. 7.150, 10.167, Petronius Satyricon 1.1, Quintilian 3.8.51, Cicero pro Planco 83). The word (deriving from clamare (‘to shout’)) has a pejorative flavour in satire and the mockery here is metrical (the heavy preponderance of spondees), stylistic (the four-word line aping the expansive rhetoric) and simply abusive (mulino corde). donkey-brained: for mulinus used as a term of abuse for the stupid see Catullus 83.3 (with Fordyce (1961) ad loc.), Plautus Most. 878 and cf. the similar use of asinus (OLD s.v. ‘asinus’ 2). The animal was mostly seen as a paragon of stubbornness and clumsiness (see e.g. Homer Iliad 11. 558–62 with Hainsworth (1993) ad loc.) as well as the beast which produced an annoying braying call (the term rudere is properly the word for ‘braying’ (e.g. Apuleius Met. 7.13) but is also used of loud orators by Lucilius 273– 4W. 24–5  you have two good legs is well chosen. It denotes ‘being healthy and able to walk’ with an ominous implication that this will change: legs were also typically the target of attack (see OLD s.v. ‘crus’ 1b, Plautus

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Rudens 816, Horace Odes 3.2.16) and the focus of this plaintiff’s line of sight (14n.): but there is also a contrast of only two legs versus so many thousands of hobnails. The onslaught of attack is well conveyed with the anaphora of tot … tot, the hyperbole of milia, the clash of ictus and accent in the phrase tót călĭg/ás tot with its final monosyllable coming like a blow, the alliteration of caligas … clauorum. offendo denotes the striking against someone or something, especially of the foot (OLD s.v. ‘offendo’ 1, ‘offensio’ 1), while the caliga was specifically the soldier’s boot (and the source of the nickname Caligula for the emperor Gaius (Suetonius Caligula 9.1)) unlike the more general word for footwear calceus (14). For this kind of ‘focalised metonymy’ (Stramaglia) cf. 13–4, 3.247–8 (feet and hobnails), 8.115 (hairless legs). 25  hobnails: the clauus is the ‘hobnail’ found in the boot (OLD s.v. ‘clauus’ 1a) exactly as at 3.248 and standing by synecdoche here for the boots themselves – with the added point that there were of course far more hobnails than boots and so milia is slightly less hyperbolic. The final short syllable of miliă remains short before the two initial consonants as they are a mute and a liquid combination: this is a matter of choice for the poet and practice varies even with the same word (cf. e.g. pātris at 3.43 but pătrum at 14.36). 25–7  so far from: tam procul … ab urbe is comic: the praetorian camp was only a short distance (about one quarter of a mile) from the city-wall. Pylades was the ultra-loyal friend to Orestes in tragedies such as Aeschylus Choephoroi, Euripides Electra and Sophocles Electra. In Latin he became a byword for self-sacrificing friendship, prepared even to die for his friend – a fate which (J. suggests) might befall anyone befriending this plaintiff: see e.g. Cicero de finibus 2.79, de Amicitia 24.11, Manilius 2.583, Ovid Rem. Amoris 589 ex Ponto 79–86, Martial 6.11, Williams (2012) 148–49. The irony here is that, in the three plays named above on the theme of the trial of Orestes, Pylades is a mute character (κωφὸν πρόσωπον) except for his brief but devastating three lines at Aeschylus Choephoroi 900–902 (see Parker (2016) 68–69): and so a ‘Pylades’ might not be the witness one would want in this case. For the use of a mythological character to represent a type of person cf. 1.61 (Automedon), 4.65 (Agamemnon) 5.59 (Ganymede), 6.655–6 (murderous women), 7.115, 10.84 (Ajax), 8.269 (Thersites), 12.119 (Iphigenia), 13.249 (Tiresias). 26  Embankment: molem aggeris suggests military language (see OLD s.v. ‘moles’ 3b, ‘agger’ 2a, Caesar BG 3.12.3, BC 1.25) which again

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heightens the incongruity of these rampart-builders unwilling to walk a few yards. The agger (5.153–5, 6.588, 8.43, OLD s.v. ‘agger’ 2c) was the rampart surrounding the city of Rome, built by Servius Tullius (Livy 1.44.3) or Tarquinius Superbus (Pliny N.H. 3.67), used as a favourite place to walk (Horace Satires 1.8.15). The praetorian camp was placed beyond the agger between the Colline and Viminal Gates. 27–28  let … let’s: the verbs are both jussive subjunctives: and the final word amicos is sardonic in the situation where such ‘friends’ will not help. Line 28 has a slow and heavy spondaic rhythm typical of the friends who are thinking up excuses for their absence. For non here (in place of the expected ne in prohibitions of this kind) see OLD s.v. ‘non’ 3, and cf. 3.54, 11.185–6. 29–34  J. points to the reason for silence as nobody is willing to incur the wrath of the soldier by bearing witness against him. Such a witness would be akin to the heroes of old: cf. 3.137–9, 8.80–84, 11.90–1 (with my note ad loc.). 29–31  when … dared: the sentence is a remote conditional, with understood with audeat. For the phrasing testem dare cf. Plautus Pseudolus 514, Cicero Verrines 2.5.165, OLD s.v. ‘do’ 14. In Roman civil cases the iudex was a citizen appointed by the magistrate and empowered to give judgement which was binding (see OCD s.v. ‘law and procedure, Roman’ 2, Crook (1967) 78–83). 29–30  fists flying: ille/ nescio quis has the effect of suggesting that if ‘any single one – whoever he is – ’. For the phrase cf. Cicero pro Fonteio 25.11, Lucullus 81.1, ad Brutum 13.2.7. pugnos literally means ‘fists’ (see 15.58, Propertius 3.14.18, Virgil Aeneid 4.673, OLD s.v. ‘pugnus’ (a)) but here must mean ‘fighting’ by synecdoche. The word order is deliberate: it ought to be self-evident that one who had seen fighting would say ‘I saw’ (uidit dicere ‘uidi’) and the juxtaposition of the words brings out the deliberate denial, as at 7.13–14. 31–2  up to … beard and long hair: traditional and long-established wisdom is well suggested in the ponderous anaphora of dignum … dignumque, in the reference to the beard and long hair and in the enjambed word maiorum. For fashions in facial hair see 13.55–6n. and for beards as worn by Greek tutors see 14.12n. Here the combination of beard and long hair conveys the impression of Romans of old as at 4.103, 5.30, OLD s.v. ‘barbatus’ (c), Cicero de Finibus 4.62, pro Caelio 33: the first barbers only entered Italy (from Sicily) in about 300 BC according to Varro (res rusticae 2.11.10). maiorum means ‘ancestors’ (OLD s.v. ‘maior’ 3b) and the term

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recalls the familiar term mos maiorum (OLD s.v. ‘mos’ 2b, Cicero Verrines 2.1.40, in Catilinam 1.27) for the ‘inherited traditions’. 32–4  lie … truth: a neat contrast – it is easier to find a false witness against a citizen than a true witness against a soldier – with balanced contrasts of falsum ~ uera loquentem and paganum ~ armati. The difference between the citizen and the soldier is eloquently told in the style of these lines: the citizen is simply referred to with one word (paganum) showing how little he counts for anything, while the soldier is endowed with property and shame and is given a whole line to describe him. The effective threefold anaphoric repetition of contra as first word in two successive lines and then once again in 34 builds up the rhetorical force of the threat to the soldier in a manner redolent of the barrister conducting the case. For this sense of fortunam see 14.328, 11.176n., OLD s.v. ‘fortuna’ 11b. There is sardonic irony in the final word pudorem as it is the opposite to the sort of behaviour which J. has ascribed to soldiers in the poem so far (cf. 8.83, 11.154, 14.178). paganus (originally meaning ‘villager’ from pagus) here means ‘civilian’ (as Greek παγανός: see OLD s.v. ‘paganus’ 2, Tacitus Histories 1.53, LSJ s.v. ‘παγανός’: Tacitus calls citizen non-soldiers oppidani in Annals 3.46.1 and Pliny Epistles 10.86.2 distinguishes milites from pagani) but the word also has a derogatory sense of ‘buffoon’ at Tacitus Histories 3.53 deriving perhaps from its meaning of ‘country-dweller’ (see Lane Fox (1986) 30–31). citius literally means ‘more quickly’ (see OLD s.v. ‘cito1’ 1 and cf. 1.125, 4.134, 10.225, 14.31) but the meaning elides easily into ‘more easily’ as at 15.19, Horace Satires 2.5.35. 35–50  Soldiers enjoy the advantage in lawcourts 35  At line 7 J. announced that he was firstly dealing with commoda and described the soldier’s negative advantage of being effectively immune from prosecution: he now turns to more lucrative rewards, with the expansive and chiastic phrase praemia alia … alia emolumenta, the style enacting the extent of the rewards as alia atque alia and the dactylic rhythm of the line suggest an ever-flowing flood of benefits. mark up: notemus here picks up and varies tractemus in 7, while praemia picks up from the same word in line 1. praemium can mean simply ‘reward’ or ‘prize’ (as at 6.321, 8.92, 8.119, 10.142, OLD s.v. ‘praemium’ 2) and more specifically military ‘plunder, booty’ (OLD s.v. 3, Caesar B.C. 3.82.1, Livy 2.60.3) or even ‘bribes’ (3.56, OLD s.v. 1). emolumentum has a similar ring of ‘advantage, reward’ (cf. 3.22, Lucretius 5.166, Seneca de Beneficiis 2.31.3) and often denotes material gain (cf. Cicero pro Milone 32.6).

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36  oaths: sacramentorum is emphasised both by its enjambement and by its heavy spondaic sound. The sacramentum was the military oath of allegiance to the commander (OLD s.v. ‘sacramentum’ 2a) and also here the specific oath of loyalty to the emperor (see Hermann (1968) 122–23). sacramentorum is genitive of source (K-S II.1. 414) as is felicis … militiae in 16.1–2. 36–9  neighbour … cake: J.’s first example of a civil case is that of neighbours appropriating land from each other, a scenario which recalls 14.145–9, and which was dealt with by Hadrian as cited in Justinian Digest 47.21. Boundaries were marked with a massive stone (saxum) and there was a god of boundaries (Terminus) who was honoured with a festival (the Terminalia) on February 23rd every year (see Ovid Fasti 2.638–84, OCD s.v. ‘Terminus’). For the boundary stone cf. Homer Iliad 21.403–5, Virgil Georgics 1.126–7, Aeneid 12.897–8, Livy 41.13: such things were not needed in the idyllic golden age (Tibullus 1.3.43–4). The outrage is enhanced by the adjectives (the land formed part of his ruris auiti, taken by an improbus neighbour who dug up the sacrum stone which had been the object of annua religious cult) and the two verbs ademit and effodit – the first (taken) being a simple statement while the second (dug up) better shows the effort undertaken. The hyperbaton of postponed si in 37 towards the end of its clause throws the emphasis on the property under dispute, as Stramaglia ((2008) 310) points out. 36  glen … field: conuallis is a ‘deep, narrow, or enclosed valley’ as in Livy 1.12.10, OLD s.v. ‘conuallis’: for the conjunction of conuallis and campus cf. Lucretius 5.1375, Virgil Georgics 2.185–6. family: auitus derives from auus (grandfather, ancestor) and the term states that the land has sentimental as well as financial value. 37  wicked: improbus is a strong word, strengthened by the enjambement: the term is used of Eppia (6.86) who eloped to Egypt with a gladiator, abandoning her family (cf. also 9.63, 10.305, 13.3). The term goes with uicinus which is separated from it in hyperbaton, thus enacting the displacement of the property in verbal form. 38  stone … boundary: the juxtaposition of limite saxum neatly shows the boundary-stone verbally on the boundary itself. limes here means the ‘strip of uncultivated ground used to mark the division of land’ (OLD s.v. ‘limes’ 1a, Virgil Georgics 2.278). 39  polenta … cake: puls refers to a sort of porridge or polenta: see 14.171n. for its status as quintessentially Roman staple food. libum was a ‘kind of cake, usually employed in sacrifical offerings’ (OLD s.v. ‘libum’)

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whose antiquity was beyond doubt: see Ennius Annales 121, Cato Agr. 75: Varro (LL 7.44) links the name with the word ‘libation’ as sacrificial fare: see further 3.187, 6.540, Horace Epistles 1.10.10. For patulus in the sense of ‘flat’ cf. OLD s.v. ‘patulus’ 2e and 3.277 (‘shallow’ basins) and 13.74 (‘expansive’ moneybox). annua makes the reference to the yearly Terminalia clear. 40–41  J.’s second example of civil lawsuit is a debtor refusing to repay, with the key words (debitor … nummos) framing the line and the situation made more vivid with the ellipse of si. pergit with the infinitive means here ‘to persist in’ as at 14.122, Cicero de Oratore 3.95. Line 41 is an elegant ‘golden line’ almost identical with 13.137 which has cast doubt on its authenticity: but the lines cannot be deleted here without leaving a gap in the sense and it is perfectly possible that the poet intended it to stand in both places, as he did with 1.24=10.226, 10.365–6=14.315–6 and as other poets did (see e.g. Lucretius 1.926–50=4.1–25). Alternatively, the repetition of the line within the same book could be seen as evidence that J. did not give this book its ‘final polish’ (as Courtney comments). For the details of the line see 13.137n.. 42–4  time of year: annus here has divided commentators. Some (e.g. Duff) read it simply as ‘a year’ (i.e. twelve months), while others (beginning with Servius on Virgil Aeneid 2.102) understand the sense of ‘time of year’ (and so the phrase means not that one has to ‘wait twelve months’ but rather that the case cannot begin until the judicial year starts on January 1st when the praetor allocates times for the cases outstanding). Roman courts sat from January to October (Balsdon (1969) 212–23). expecto can mean to ‘wait in expectation’ with an accusative of the time-period (OLD s.v. ‘exspecto’ 4b) as in Cicero pro Cluentio 90 and Cicero has a phrase close to this one at de Prov. Cons. 17.1 (annus est integer uobis exspectandus (‘you have to wait a whole year’)), which makes Duff’s interpretation possible: but the qualifying phrase qui lites incohet/ totius populi (where qui is not the relative pronoun but the adverbial form meaning ‘in order that thus’ (OLD s.v. ‘qui2’ 4a) and where the litigant is the subject of incohet, meaning ‘so he can start the litigation’) supports Servius. totius populus implies that a whole city’s worth of cases is stacked up waiting for judgement, supporting the idea that there has been a backlog owing to the holiday: J. adds this phrase to contrast with the military cases which were certainly fewer in number but faster in delivery. One problem is that annus does not mean ‘New Year’; but the word can mean ‘calendar year’ in the sense of a datable period (OLD s.v.

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‘annus’ 3) which is close, and the qualifying phrase makes the meaning clear. Some mss. read the indicative form inchoat but the reading incohet of Φ is a pleasing subjunctive adding to the sense of impatience. all and sundry: the contrast here is between civilians queuing up with the whole population while soldiers get a date (tempus agendi (49)) to suit them in a single verb (praestatur). 43–4  The plaintiff has waited months but even then (tum quoque) his waiting is far from over: the sense of waiting is enhanced by the anaphora of mille … mille followed by totiens, the balanced nouns taedia and morae evoking the impatience (taedia) and the simple delays (morae). tantum here has the adverbial meaning that the benches are ‘only’ prepared and not actually occupied: benches in court were covered with cushions before the case started (see OLD s.v. ‘sterno’ 2 and cf. 9.52). 45–7  The rhythm of 45 is heavily spondaic suggestive of the slow waiting. The disappointed expectation is well conveyed in the language used: a strong enjambed verb sternuntur opens 45 (the benches are being covered with cushions, so things are happening) but an even stronger enjambed verb opens 47 (digredimur as the nameless ‘we’ all go away again disappointed). For this sort of sudden adjournment see Pliny Epistles 5.9.2. Between these two verbs the barristers are described with ongoing present participles. Caedicius was described as a harsh iudex at 13.197 (see note ad loc.) while Fuscus is only mentioned at 12.45 as the husband of a dipsomaniac, although Martial (7.28.5–6) addresses a poem to an orator of that name. It is possible that both names are significant: Caedicius the judge is a ‘slasher’ (as argued at 13.197n.) while Fuscus is ‘hoarse’ (OLD s.v. ‘fuscus’ 3) or ‘drab’ (OLD s.v. 4): neither man is going to deliver a reasoned verdict. Caedicius is removing his cloak: the lacerna was an overgarment which protected the toga (9.28–9: see 14.287n.) and its removal showed that the case could begin as it was established practice from Augustus onwards that speakers wore togas but not cloaks (Suetonius Augustus 40.5 positis lacernis togatum). lacernas is plural for singular as at 1.27 (cf. cucullos at 6.118). piss: micturio is the desiderative form of mingo (to urinate) as at 6.309 and so suggests that his urination is an act of volition rather than necessity: a precaution taken before starting a long speech. The detail of Fuscus relieving himself thus is both a naturalistic and a satirical touch: while the man will wish to empty his bladder before beginning the case, urinating is elsewhere seen as contemptuous (see 6.309–10 with Watson and Watson (2014) ad loc.) and mentioning it here is adding a touch of contempt for

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the proceedings: cf. Trimalchio using a chamber-pot during his banquet at Petronius 27. The false dawn of parati is at once shattered with digredimur and the poet ends the sentence with a generalised description, in which the same ‘we’ who digredimur are the ones who pugnamus. sticky sand: lenta..pugnamus harena is a metaphor from gladiatorfighting which was conducted on real sand – which would become damp and sticky (OLD s.v. ‘lentus’ 3) from the blood spilt onto it. Here the meaning of lenta is naturally understood to be ‘slow’ (after all the lengthy delays: see OLD s.v. ‘lentus’ 4,5,7 and one assumes a hypallage for lenti fori) and its secondary meaning only becomes apparent with harena. For the gladiatorial metaphor applied to forensic conflict cf. Pliny Ep.6.12.2 48  The soldiers are distinguished by their weapons and uniforms, with the symmetrical dress conveyed in the balanced phrasing of: noun – verb et noun – verb in arma tegunt et balteus ambit and an elevated turn of phrase (cf. Sallust Catiline 58.10.1, Livy 3.60.8, Statius Thebaid 8.690–1. Valerius Flaccus 3.189–90 and cf. Juvenal 5.184). The balteus was a sword-belt (cf. 6.256, OLD s.v. ‘balteus’ 1a) which went round the body. 49  to please them: the power of soldiers is shown clearly. quod placitum est is a formal phrase which recalls the language of state-decisions (OLD s.v. ‘placeo’ 5b, cf. 16.53, Tacitus Annals 3.33 etc.) and also the decrees of gods (Plautus Amph. 635, Virgil Aeneid 1.283, 2.659, 12.503, Horace Odes 2.17.16, Satires 2.6.22, Lucan 10.417, Valerius Flaccus 3.297), while ipsis here suggests ‘the masters’ (OLD s.v. ‘ipse’ 12). praesto here has the obvious primary sense of ‘to provide’ (OLD s.v. ‘praesto2’ 10) but it also bears the meaning ‘to be superior to others’ (OLD s.v. 1) or to ‘take precedence’ (OLD s.v. 3) which adds to the flavour of superiority enjoyed by the military. 50  they … case: a resounding line to conclude the paragraph and the topic of litigation, with vocabulary expressive of wasted time (atteritur) and pointless hold-ups (sufflamine). sufflamen denotes a ‘brake’ or ‘drag’ to stop a moving vehicle (as at 8.148). res means ‘property’ and so the metaphorical atteritur suggests that the lengthy (longo) legal process erodes the estate of the litigant – unless he is a soldier. 51–60  Financial advantages of being a soldier Roman fathers ruled their families and owned their property, such that sons could not be said to own their own money if their fathers were alive – unless the sons were soldiers. This leads to the situation where fathers seek to be legatees of their own sons – a good example of the Juvenalian topsy-turvy world.

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51  only: solis is emphatically placed at the start of the line and the sentence to emphasise the rarity of this exemption. The phrase testandi militibus ius with its syncopated final monosyllable (cf. 13.95 and especially 14.101 where the same word ius ends the line), the heavy syllables of the gerund testandi and the ‘i’ assonance all make for a strikingly ugly phrase. Leaving property in one’s will is only permitted to those who are legally allowed to own property in the first place (who are not under patria potestas) and money held by dependants (peculium) was deemed the property of the paterfamilias. The soldier’s pay (peculium castrense) was exempt from this (OLD s.v. ‘peculium’ 1c: see Gaius Inst. 2.106, Justinian Digest 49.17 and Arjava (1998) 149) with the effect that sons in the army were effectively sui iuris rather than under the control of their father. 52  father … alive: once the father died then the male heir(s) would inherit and become legally entitled to own property. parta labore is a phrase also found in Lucretius (5.869) and Martial (10.47.3): for labor used of military service cf. labori (57), 14.198, Cicero de Officiis 2.45.15, Horace Odes 3.4.37–9. 53  part of … estate: corpore here means ‘the gross amount, aggregate’ (a legal term: see OLD s.v. ‘corpus’ 16b). estate: for the meaning of census see 10.13, 13.7n., 14.175–6n. 54  control: regimen (from rego) denotes legal and financial control (OLD s.v. ‘regimen’ 3) but combined with the verb tenet suggests also that there is a metaphor here of ‘holding the rudder’ of ship (OLD s.v. ‘regimen’ 1b, Ovid Met. 3.593, Tacitus Annals 13.49.13). Coranus is a name which is linked with legacy-hunting at Horace Satires 2.5.55–69, where he is an older man married to a young wife whose father wishes to inherit from him, only to be disappointed. The name here may be significant as the Greek word κόρος can mean either ‘lad’ or ‘surfeit, satiety’ both of which could apply here to this ‘overfed lad’. 55–6  following … salary: a whole line (55) is devoted to describing the son’s glittering military career (continued in lines 56–7: cf. pulchro 57), with a sequence of impressive long words denoting his massive rank and authority: for signa see 17n. The term signorum comes (literally ‘one who accompanies the standards’) is a grandiloquent term for ‘soldier’ (OLD s.v. ‘comes’ 3a), while castrorum aera (‘money of the army camp’ cf. Ovid Amores 1.9.44) is a poetic term for peculium castrense (see 51n.). This is in sharp contrast to the insignificant father who is described as simply tremulus pater in the following line – another good example of the topsy-turvy world in which patria potestas is inverted.

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56  doddering: tremulus is often used as a sign of old age: see 10.198, 10.267 with notes ad loc. and cf. Ennius Annales 1.34, Plautus Curc. 160, Catullus 64.307, Calpurnius Siculus Eclogae 7.43, Virgil Aeneid 2.509–10, Ovid Heroides 19.26, Met. 10.414 (‘trembling with years and with fear’), 14.143, Martial 6.71.3. courted: captat refers to legacy-hunting (captatio) – a theme much explored in J. (see 1.39, 5.92–8, 6.40 and especially 12.93–130 with my notes ad loc.). The practice was exploited by men seeking to enrich themselves by being made heirs to the estate of a childless old rich man: here the position is reversed as it is the older who is courting the younger man, the father courting his own son – presumably in the expectation that the soldier will die in battle and so have money to leave. This abhorrent thought is in contrast to 10.241 where J. lists the death of sons as one of the great miseries of old age. Herodotus (1.87) quotes Cyrus as telling us that in peacetime sons bury their fathers, while in wartime fathers bury their sons. This father is more of a monster than his son. 56–7  fair favour: the tone is surely sardonic: fauor aequus advances the soldier and rewards him with gifts for his ‘fine work’ (pulchro labori). This slight oxymoron (how can overt preference be fair?) focalises the matter through the eyes of the soldier, for whom the reward is no more than he deserves (aequus) and whose efforts qualify for the term pulchro. For soldiers as glamorous men see Plautus Miles Gloriosus 998–9, Livy 4.19.1, and for the glamour of honour cf. Seneca de Beneficiis 2.9, Valerius Flaccus 1.40. fauor is an emendation of the manuscript reading labor and has been accepted generally: labor presumably crept in as the scribe’s eye saw labori in 57 and fauor makes a great deal more sense. 58–60  emperor: ducis may mean ‘the emperor’ (as at 2.104, 4.145, 7.21) and it is possible that J. is here alluding to Hadrian who was excessively generous towards his troops (S.H.A. Hadrian 10.2) – which may have given rise to the theory that the rest of the poem was censored. Line 58 is heavily spondaic and ipsius once again (see 49n.) suggests ‘the master’. For referre see OLD s.v. ‘refert’ 1c and cf. 1.154, 4.5, 5.123, 6.657, 8.193, 10.213, 11.21, 11.182. 59  brave … blessed: the phrase means that the general wishes to reward with good fortune those who are valiant in battle: the future tense of erit shows that the rewards are to encourage heroism rather than to reward past acts of bravery. felicissimus recalls felicis in line 1 and would be ring-composition if this were the ending of the poem: for the sense here see OLD s.v. ‘felix’

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6 and cf. 3.152 (infelix paupertas). Elsewhere J. uses felix of those blessed by good fortune in respect of their talents or health (see fortunam in line 34 and cf. 7.190–202, 10.248, 13.142): here the sense of supreme blessedness is well conveyed in the superlative felicissimus followed by laeti in 60. 60  medals … decorations: picking up the visual signs of success implied in pulchro (57), J. singles out the emblems of glory. phalerae were worn as a decoration by horses (see 11.103n.) or (as here) by soldiers (e.g. Sallust Jugurtha 85.29, Livy 9.46.12, Tacitus Histories 1.57, Virgil Aeneid 9.359), in the manner of modern medals (Silius 15.255): see Maxfield (1981) 91– 95. A torques (from torqueo) was a ‘collar of twisted metal, especially worn as a military ornament or decoration’ (OLD) and such objects were taken as plunder from foreign enemies (e.g. Livy 24.42.8, 33.36.13). Nisbet and Rudd (2004) comment on Horace Odes 3.6.12 that the Romans ‘associated torques with Eastern or Gallic peoples’ and they point out that Persian kings ‘honoured friends with necklaces (Herodotus 3.20.1, Xenophon Cyropaedia 8.2.8, Anabasis 1.2.27)’. For more on torques see Maxfield (1981) 86–89 and cf. Tacitus Annals 3.21.9: for the combination of phalerae and torques see Cicero Verrines 3.185, Suetonius Augustus 25.3, Tacitus Germania 15.3.3, Histories 2.89, Annals 12.36.11: here the combination of items is sealed with the anaphora of omnes.

INDEXES Select Index of Names Achilles 269, 347 Aeneas 327–8, 339, 344 Aeolus 314 Agathyrsi 342 Ajax 269–70, 292–3, 327 Alban wine 189 Alcibiades 279 Alcinous 313 Alexander the Great 299–300 Anticyra 149 Antiphates 213 Apicius 246 Apollo 186, 196 Archelaus 118 Archigenes 149, 282 Archilochus 121 Arginusae 174 Aris 272 Aristophanes 148, 150, 266 Aristotle 116, 180–1, 231, 241, 351 Athene 279 Athens 338 Atlas 132 Augustus 166, 227–8, 281, 298, 341, 365 Bion of Borysthenes 3 Brigantes 265 Britons 341–2 Brutus 220 Cadmus 278 Caedicius 183 Caetronius 232–4 Caieta 232–3 Caligula 205, 338 Calvinus 114–5, 119

Camillus 364 Canopus 323 Carpathian Sea 290 Castor and Pollux 166, 284 Catiline 219 Cato 220, 337 Catullus 153 Centaurs 133 Cerberus 133 Ceres 271, 285, 347–8 Charybdis 314–5 Chrysippus 177 Cicero 160, 163, 219 Cimbri 341 Circe 314, 316 Cirrha 143 Claudius 5, 19, 205, 207, 266, 305, 308 Cleopatra 10 Coptus 318 Coranus 374 Corycus 286 Crete 287–8 Croesus 19, 304 Cybele 285 Decii 278 Democritus 5 Diana 143, 311 Dio Cassius 19, 127 Diogenes 11, 157, 197, 299, 343 Diomedes 327 Domitian 7, 10, 20, 147, 303 Electra 292 Elpenor 314–6 Ennius 2, 131

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Indexes

Epicurus 118, 130, 145, 155, 157–8, 193–4, 212, 250, 261, 290, 301 Erysichthon 336 Etruscans 138 Faesidius 127 Falernian wine 189–90 Fides 119 Flora 285 Fonteius 122 Furies 133, 183, 292 Fuscinus 203 Gaetulia 290 Gallicus 168 Gallius 360 Ganymede 131 Gibraltar 290 Glaucus 184–5, 187 Goethe 10 Hadrian 10, 135–6, 265, 310, 348, 370, 375 Hannibal 339 Hebe 131 Hector 223, 230, 327 Hercules 131, 143, 234, 242, 290 Hernici 260 Herodotus 116, 184, 358 Hesiod 126 Hesperides 242, 290 Homer 153–4, 190, 197, 213 Horace 2–4, 117, 139, 194, 198, 202, 232, 241, 253, 259, 276, 282–3, 295, 302, 308, 351 Hymettus 178 Isis 147 Iuncus 318 Ixion 133 Jason 242, 314–6 Juno 131, 362 Jupiter 166, 267, 287–8 Lades 149 Laelius 264

Laestrygonians 314 Larga 214 Leotychidas 184–5 Licinus 297 Livy 139, 339 Lucilius 3,12,195 Lucretius 127, 133–4, 136, 145, 155, 193, 232, 262, 329, 347, 351–3, Maecenas 234 Maeotis 339 Manilius 286 Mars 153–4, 284–5, 361 Marsi 260 Martial 9 Medea 223, 242 Memnon 309–310 Memphis 341 Menippus of Gadara 3 Menoeceus 278 Meroe 169 Messalina 180–1, 305 Metellus 337 Minerva 143–4 Mithridates 282–3 Molossians 255–6 Moors 265 Moses 238 Narcissus 19, 304–5 Neptune 143, 154, 341 Nero 4–5, 165, 167, 191, 195, 232, 243, 256, 348 Nile 126, 311, 341 Octavian 4 Odysseus 222, 291 Ombi 319, 321, 324, 330 Orestes 292, 367 Otho 265 Ovid 10 Pactolus 296 Parthia 365 Persius 4, 155

Indexes

Petronius 3,4,5, 295–6, 339 Phaeacia 317 Pharos 144 Philippus 159 Plato 116–7, 178, 186, 202–4 Plutarch 203 Pluto 132 Polyphemus 213, 314 Pompey 174, 213, 337 Pontus 242 Posides 234 Praeneste 232–3 Prometheus 134, 217–8, 332–3 Propertius 147 Proserpina 132, 134 Pylades 367 Pyrrha 319 Pyrrhus 255–6 Pythagoras 357–8 Rhadamanthus 183 Rutilus 212 Sallust 205, 332 Saturn 130–1 Sauromatae 342 Scylla 314 Sejanus 173 Seneca 3–5,117, 169, 234, 261, 267, 352 Setian wine 189 Sibyl 221 Sirens 213, 291 Sisyphus 133–4 Socrates 118, 178, 301–2 Sparti 278–9 Stentor 153 Tacitus 145, 165, 168, 188, 192, 236, 255, 291

379

Tages 138 Tagus 296 Tarpeian Rock 142 Taurians 339–40 Telemachus 202, 222 Tentyra 319, 321, 324, 330 Terence 348 Terminus 370 Thales 177, 280 Thebes 126, 278, 310 Thucydides 198, 241 Thyle 338 Tiberius 125 Tibur 232–3 Timon of Athens 253 Tiresias 147, 200–201, 278 Titus 267 Titus Tatius 255 Tityus 134 Trimalchio 227, 244, 280, 346–7, 373 Turnus 327 Ulysses 313–4, 317 Umbricius 7 Vagellius 156, 366 Varro 3 Vascones 334–38 Venus 128, 361 Verres 165–6, 199 Vespasian 267 Vestini 260 Virgil 14, 262, 270, 317, 332 Volusius 308 Vulcan 131–2 Zacynthus 339 Zeno 151, 337 Zeus 127 Zoroastrians 332

380

Indexes

Index of Literary Terms alliteration 119, 149–50, 222, 229, 243, 253, 255 anaphora 16–17, 241, 259, 283, 311, 367, 372, 376 antithesis 16 apostrophe 14, 143 assonance 190, 226, 229, 340, 355, 363 asyndeton 265 bathos 119, 156, 160, 172, 239, 294 bucolic diairesis 153, 172, 243 catasterism 132 chiasmus 228, 265, 285, 303, 369 cognomen 308, 312 consolatio 13, 115, 161, 164 correlatives 276 diatribe 3 diminutives 16, 121, 331 elision 228 ellipsis 146, 252 enjambement 147, 149, 155, 209, 243, 254, 281, 325, 334–5, 343, 372 epanalepsis 228 epic language 17–18, 160, 355 epic periphrasis 196 epideictic oratory 23 exemplum 117, 302–3 focalisation 263, 331, 367 gnomic statements 15, 187, 217, 222, 259 golden line 16 grand style 14–18 hendiadys 171 hymn-formula 154 hyperbole 17, 118, 121, 289, 360

hysteron proteron 282, 349 implicit myth 274, 222, 336 irony 10, 12–13, 156, 172 juxtaposition 128, 130, 226, 240, 273, 296, 343 legal language 365 litotes 235, 362 metaphor 220–221, 253, 297, 320 metonymy 289 monosyllables 119, 155 onomatopoeia 206, 332 oxymoron 217, 326 parataxis 194, 238, 250 parody 13–14, 160 persona 13, 21–24 pleonasm 288 polyptoton 355 polysyndeton 273 rhetorical exclamation 18, 163 rhetorical question 14–15, 149, 163, 259, 302, 336, 340, 360 rhythym 297 sarcasm 312 sibilance 190 significant names 203 spondaic rhythm 213, 222, 234, 239, 273, 315, 320, 346, 368 syllepsis 164–5 syncopated rhythm 128, 153, 169, 172, 194, 217, 219 synecdoche 221, 364, 367 synizesis 194 theoxeny 126 transferred epithet 149, 252 tricolon crescendo 176, 223, 279

Indexes

General Index acorns 136, 261 acrobats 286, 288 adikos eudaimon 118, 151 adultery 214–6 amicitia 277 anger 115–116, 122, 159, 161, 176, 180–1 animals 354–5 apes 309 arson 165 astrologers 280–281, 361 avarice 239–40 Bacchanalia 324 barrister 338 battles, epic 196, 324–5, 327–30 beards 135–6, 208, 270–1, 368 bees 140 beggars 248, 296 bile 313 blushing 198–9 boots 262 builders 231–2 bulla 128, 205–6 cannibalism 307, 312–3, 318, 331–6 censor 223 census 119, 259 chariots 275–6 circumcision 237, 239 circus performers 286 comedy 277 cooking 144, 207, 331 crocodiles 308–9, 320 crossroads 322 crucifixion 229–230 (see also: death penalty) Cynics 157, 298–300, 354 dancing 324 dating of Juvenal’s Satires 7–8, 10, 122, 265, 318

381

death, untimely 347 death-penalty 135, 151, 163–4, 167, 173, 199–200 degeneration 126–7, 328–9, 351 deuotio 278 disease in autumn 246, 283, 287 divination 138, 155 doctors 158, 364 dogs 226 dowries 271–2 drunkenness 323 eagles 230–1 eclipses 192 education 208, 224, 244, 268, Satire 14 Egypt 6,8,10–11, 20, 126, 306–313, 321–3, Satire 15 passim Epicureanism 300–302, 328, 351 (see also index of names s.v. ‘Epicurus’) equites 303 erotodidaxis 214 eunuchs 234 exile 200 Fates 218, 281, 352 festivals 285, 320, 324 food 155, 206–7, 246–8, 254, 258, 294–5, 370–1 fortune 124, 145, 233 Forum 161 gambling 204–5 Germans 169–70 ghosts 191–2 golden age 129–130 golden fleece 242 gout 148–9 grief 121 guardians 293, 346 hemlock 179 hens 163 household gods 196, 213, 352

382

Indexes

hypochondria 194–5 ibis 257, 309 incense 155 ivory 298 Jews 11, 235–9 land allocation 256 law, Roman 264 lawcourts 161, 168, 371–2 leeks 248, 311–2 legacies 372 legacy-hunting 375 letters of recommendation 361 lex Roscia 11, 303 lupins 253 mackerel 247 madness 224–5, 248–9, 273–4, 292–3 marble 233, 235, 298 medicine 282 metre 24–27, 148 military service 264 mime 153 misers 242, 245 misogyny 22–23, 121, 159, 167, 180– 181, 197 mob 128, 253, 318, 320, 342 money 137, 140–1, 160 murder 125 Nature 344, 347 nature, human 198 nurses 268 oaths 141, 146 old age 123 Olympic Games 149 parasites 221–2 parricide 167 patronage 9 perjury 129 pimps 221 pipers 324 pleasure-gardens 258 poison 166–7 pork 236–7

praetor 283–4 Praetorian Cohorts 359–360, 365, 367 praetors 119, 363 prisons 200 prodigies 138–40 Punic Wars 255 purple cloth 262 pygmies 170–2 rattle (sistrum) 147 roses 283 Sabbath 236, 239 sacrifice 138, 196–7 saffron 287 salutatio 160 satire 1–5, 329 scurra 153 slavery 210–11 soldiers 364 Sophists 211, 354 sorites 120–121 sportula 127–8 Stoicism 4, 150, 157–8, 212, 337, 349 stork 228–9 sun 142 superstition 192–3 tablets, writing 162, 216, 263–4 textual transmission 27–29 theatre 283, 285, 318–9, 367 thunderbolts 142, 182, 192–4, 295 torture 182, 213 trade 267 trumpets 253, 266, 279, 325, 353 tuberculosis 148 uigiles 297 vengeance 175–6, 180–1 villas 250, 289 vulture 229 wealth 284, 289 weeping 344–5, 347 winds 287 wine 189–90, 287–8 xerostomia 188