Wisdom, I know, contains a sovereign charm,
To vanquish fortune or at least disarm:
Blest they who walk in her unerring rule!
Nor those unblest who, tutored in life's school,
Have learned of old experience to submit,
And lightly bear the yoke they cannot quit.
GIFFORD.
He agrees with the Stoics just because their practical teaching harmonizes so entirely with the old virtus Romana, that is his ideal.
No more profound are his religious views: he hates the alien cults that work as insidious poison in the life of Rome; he rejects the picturesque legends of the afterworld, bred of the fertile imagination of the Greeks. But he is no unbeliever:
separat hoc nos a grege mutorum, atque ideo venerabile soli sortiti ingenium divinorumque capaces atque exercendis pariendisque artibus apti 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 (xv. 142).
This marks our birth
The great distinction from the beasts of earth!
And therefore—gifted with superior powers
And capable of things divine—'tis ours
To learn and practise every useful art;
And from high heaven deduce that better part,
That moral sense, denied to creatures prone
And downward bent, and found with man alone!—
For He, who gave this vast machine to roll,
Breathed life in them, in us a reasoning soul:
That kindred feelings might our state improve,
And mutual wants conduct to mutual love.
GIFFORD.
God is over all and guides and guards the world, and has ordained torment of conscience and slow retribution for sin.[735] Yet Juvenal does not definitely reject the gods of his native land; nor do these exalted beliefs cause him to refuse sacrifice to Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and his household gods.[736] It is the creed, not of a theologian, but of a man with high ideals, a staunch patriotism, and a deep reverence for the past.
But this lack of profundity and philosophical training does not, as may be inferred from passages already quoted, prevent him from being intensely effective as a moral teacher. His platitudes are none the worse for not having a Stoic label and all the better for their simplicity and directness of expression. They do not reveal the hunger and thirst after righteousness that breathe from the lines of Persius, but they have at least an equal appeal to the plain man, and they are matchlessly expressed. His pleading against revenging the wrong done, if not on the very highest moral plane, possesses a grave dignity and beauty that brings it straight home to the heart:
at vindicta bonum vita iucundius ipsa. nempe hoc indocti, quorum praecordia nullis interdum aut levibus videas flagrantia causis. * * * * * Chrysippus non dicet idem nec mite Thaletis ingenium dulcique senex vicinus Hymetto, qui partem acceptae saeva inter vincla cicutae accusatori nollet dare. plurima felix paulatim vitia atque errores exuit omnes, prima docet rectum sapientia. quippe minuti semper et infirmi est animi exiguique voluptas ultio. continuo sic collige, quod vindicta nemo magis gaudet quam femina. cur tamen hos tu evasisse putes, quos diri conscia facti mens habet attonitos et surdo verbere caedit occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum? poena autem vehemens ac multo saevior illis quas et Caedicius gravis invenit et Rhadamanthus, nocte dieque suum gestare in pectore testem (xiii. 180).
'Revenge,' they say, and I believe their words,
'A pleasure sweeter far than life affords.'
Who say? The fools, whose passions prone to ire
At slightest causes or at none take fire.
… … … Chrysippus said not so;
Nor Thales, to our frailties clement still;
Nor that old man, by sweet Hymettus' hill,
Who drank the poison with unruffled soul,
And, dying, from his foes withheld the bowl.
Divine philosophy! by whose pure light
We first distinguish, then pursue the right,
Thy power the breast from every error frees
And weeds out every error by degrees:—
Illumined by thy beam, revenge we find
The abject pleasure of an abject mind,
And hence so dear to poor, weak womankind.
But why are those, Calvinus, thought to 'scape
Unpunished, whom in every fearful shape
Guilt still alarms, and conscience ne'er asleep
Wounds with incessant strokes 'not loud but deep',
While the vexed mind, her own tormentor, plies
A scorpion scourge, unmarked by human eyes?
Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign,
Can match the fierce, the unutterable pain
He feels, who night and day, devoid of rest,
Carries his own accuser in his breast.
GIFFORD.
The same characteristics mark his praise of nobility of character as opposed to nobility of birth: