in scaena numquam cantavit Orestes, Troica non scripsit. quid enim Verginius armis debuit ulcisci magis aut cum Vindice Galba, quod Nero tam saeva crudaque tyrannide fecit? (viii. 220).
Besides, Orestes in his wildest mood
Sung on no public stage, no Troics wrote.—
This topped his frantic crimes! This roused mankind!
For what could Galba, what Virginius find,
In the dire annals of that bloody reign,
Which called for vengeance in a louder strain?
GIFFORD.
It is almost a crime to be a foreigner. The Greek is a liar, a base flatterer, a monster of lust, a traitor, a murderer.[723] The Jew is the sordid victim of a narrow and degrading superstition.[724] The Oriental is the defilement of Rome; worst of all are the Egyptians;[725] they even eat each other. The freedman, the nouveau riche, the parvenu[726] are hated with all a Roman's hatred. The old patriotism of the city state is not yet merged in the wider imperialism. It is bitter to hear one of alien blood say 'Civis Romanus sum'.
This strange violence and lack of proportion are due in part to the poet's rhetorical training, which had warped still further a naturally biased temperament. He had been taught and loved to use the language of hyperbole. And he had lived through the principate of Domitian; it was that above all else which made him cry difficile est saturam non scribere. To this same tendency to exaggeration may be in part attributed the extreme grossness of so much of his work. It is true that vices flaunted themselves before his eyes that it would be hard to satirize without indecency. There is excuse to some extent for the second, sixth, and ninth satires. But even there Juvenal oversteps the mark and is often guilty of coarseness for coarseness' sake. It is easy to plead the custom of the age,[727] but it is doubtful whether such pleading affords any real palliation for a writer who sets out to be a moralist. It is easy in an access of admiration to say that Juvenal is never prurient: but it is hard to be genuinely convinced that such a statement is true, or that Juvenal's coarseness is never more than mere plain speaking.[728]
For not a few readers, this tenseness of language, this violence of judgement, and this occasional unclean handling of the unclean, make Juvenal an exhausting and a depressing poet to read in any large quantity at a time. Worse still, they lead the reader at times to harbour doubts as to the genuineness of Juvenal's indignation. Such doubts are not in reality justifiable. Juvenal sometimes goads himself into inappropriate frenzies and sometimes betrays a suspiciously close acquaintance with the most disgusting details of the worst vices of the age. But though he had something of the unreality of the rhetorician, and though his character may, perhaps, not have been free from serious blemish, he is never a hypocrite; nor, though he paints exclusively the darkest side of society, is there the least reason to accuse him of culpable misrepresentation of actual facts. He has selected the material most suited to his peculiar genius: we may complain of his principle of selection, and of his tendency to generalize. There our criticism must end.
These defects are largely the defects of his qualities and may be readily forgiven. We have Pliny the younger and the inscriptions to modify his sombre picture. When all is said, Juvenal had a matchless field for satire and matchless gifts, against which his defects will not weigh in the balance for a moment. His unrivalled capacity for declamation, for mordant epigram and scathing wit, more than compensate for his often ill-balanced ferocity; the extraordinary vividness of his pictures of the life of Rome makes up for lack of perspective and proportion, the richness and variety of his imagination for its too frequent superficiality, the vigour and trenchancy of his blows for the absence of the rapier thrust, the fervour of his teaching for its lack of breadth and depth. These qualities make him the greatest of the satirists of Rome, if not of the world.
It is, perhaps, his vividness that makes the most immediate impression. It would be hard to find in any literature a writer with such a power to make the scenes described live before his readers. The salient features of a scene or character are seized at once.[729] There is no irrelevant detail; the picture may be crowded, but it is never obscure; if there is a fault it is that the colouring is sometimes too crude and glaring to please. But before such word-painting as the description of Domitian's privy council criticism is dumb:
nec melior vultu quamvis ignobilis ibat Rubrius, offensae veteris reus atque tacendae. * * * * * Montani quoque venter adest abdomine tardus, et matutino sudans Crispinua amomo quantum vix redolent duo funera, saevior illo Pompeius tenui iugulos aperire susurro, et qui vulturibus servabat viscera Dacis Fuscus marmorea meditatus proelia villa, et cum mortifero prudens Veiento Catullo, qui numquam visae flagrabat amore puellae, grande et conspicuum nostro quoque tempore monstrum, caecus adulator, dirusque a ponte satelles dignus Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes blandaque devexae iactaret basia raedae (iv. 104).
Rubrius, though not, like these, of noble race,
Followed with equal terror in his face;
* * * * *
Montanus' belly next, and next appeared
The legs on which that monstrous pile was reared.
Crispinus followed, daubed with more perfume,
Thus early! than two funerals consume.
Then bloodier Pompey, practised to betray,
And hesitate the noblest lives away.
Then Fuscus, who in studious pomp at home,
Planned future triumphs for the arms of Rome.
Blind to the event! those arms a different fate,
Inglorious wounds and Dacian vultures wait.
Last, sly Veiento with Catullus came,
Deadly Catullus, who at beauty's name
Took fire, although unseen: a wretch, whose crimes
Struck with amaze even those prodigious times.
A base, blind parasite, a murderous lord,
From the bridge-end raised to the council-board,
Yet fitter still to dog the traveller's heels,
And whine for alms to the descending wheels.
GIFFORD.
Figure after figure they live before us, till the procession culminates with the crowning horror of the blind delator, L. Valerius Catullus Messalinus. Equally vivid is Juvenal's description of places. There is the rude theatre of the country town with its white-robed audience en négligé:—