O grovelling souls, and void of things divine!
Why bring our passions to the Immortals' shrine,
And judge, from what this carnal sense delights,
Of what is pleasing in their purer sights?
This the Calabrian fleece with purple soils,
And mingles cassia with our native oils;
Tears from the rocky conch its pearly store,
And strains the metal from the glowing ore.
This, this, indeed, is vicious; yet it tends
To gladden life, perhaps, and boasts its ends;
But you, ye priests (for sure ye can), unfold—
In heavenly things, what boots this pomp of gold?
No more, in truth, than dolls to Venus paid,
The toys of childhood, by the riper maid!
No! let me bring the Immortals what the race
Of great Messala, now depraved and base,
On their huge charger, cannot;—bring a mind
Where legal and where moral sense are joined
With the pure essence; holy thoughts that dwell
In the soul's most retired and sacred cell;
A bosom dyed in honor's noblest grain,
Deep-dyed;—with these let me approach the fane,
And heaven will hear the humble prayer I make,
Though all my offering be a barley cake.
Gifford.
4. DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS
When one has read his Horace, one feels personally acquainted with the poet, so frankly biographical is he. This is true, though to a much less extent, of Persius. But Juvenal is almost sphinxlike in regard to himself. What little we know is gained from a few indirect references in his writings themselves, and from the numerous and contradictory ancient lives which have come down to us prefaced to the different manuscripts of Juvenal's satires. From these we gather that he was born sometime between 48 and 55 A. D., at the town of Aquinum in Latium, and was the son of a well-to-do freedman who left him a patrimony sufficient for his modest maintenance through life. He had a good education in grammar and rhetoric, and devoted himself through a large part of his earlier life to rhetorical declamation; though he seems not to have made any professional or profitable use of the talent which he undoubtedly possessed for the vocation of the advocate. He enjoyed some unimportant though honorable civil employment under Titus and Domitian, and served for one period of his life in the army, probably in Britain, with the rank of military tribune.
In Juvenal's later life he seems to have given offense either to Domitian by some lines which he wrote upon a favorite pantomime dancer of the emperor, or to Hadrian for a similar cause. By one or the other of these emperors, according to tradition, he was practically exiled by an appointment to a command of a legion in Africa. The date of his death is as uncertain as that of his birth, but it seems to lie between 128 and 138 A. D.
It will be seen, therefore, that our poet was contemporaneous with ten Roman emperors, his life covering the period from Nero to Hadrian, inclusive. It was during the reign of Domitian, however, that Juvenal, now already well advanced to middle life, took up his residence in Rome and began that work which was to be his material contribution to life and letters.
Life in Rome under Domitian!—what a challenge to the satirist! what a field for the preacher! These were the crowning years of well-nigh a century of ever-increasing horror. With the downfall of liberty and the republic, both of which had perished in fact long before their name and semblance vanished, wealth and luxury had poured into Rome from the conquered provinces, and with these that moral laxity against which Horace had aimed his satire, then in four successive reigns Rome had cringed and groaned under the absolute sway of cynic, madman, fool, and flippant murderer, each more recklessly disregardful than the last of civic virtue and the lives and common rights of man. Then three puppets within a year involving the world in civil strife were themselves swept off the stage by Vespasian and Titus, who did indeed give passing respite to the state. And then for fifteen years—Domitian! Of these fifteen years Tacitus, just emerging into the grateful light of Nerva's and of Trajan's reigns, indignantly exclaims:
They had besides expelled all the professors of philosophy, and driven every laudable science into exile, that naught which was worthy and honest might anywhere be seen. Mighty, surely, was the testimony which we gave of our patience; and as our forefathers had beheld the ultimate consummation of liberty, so did we of bondage, since through dread of informers and inquisitions of state, we were bereft of the common intercourse of speech and attention. Nay, with our utterance we had likewise lost our memory, had it been equally in our power to forget as to be silent.... Few we are who have escaped; and, if I may so speak, we have survived not only others, but even ourselves, when from the middle of our lives so many years were rent; whence from being young we are arrived at old age, from being old we are nigh come to the utmost verge of mortality, all in a long course of awful silence.—Galton.
Somewhat earlier than this, though within the same generation, Paul the apostle to the Gentiles, the preacher of that dark age, had written a letter to the infant Christian church at Rome in which he had drawn a terrible picture of what human society can become when it has thrown off all checks and abandoned itself to profligacy. His picture, we may be sure, was drawn from the life.
And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they which practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practice them.