tota licet veteres exornent undique cerae atria, nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus. Paulus vel Cossus vel Drusus moribus esto, hos ante effigies maiorum pone tuorum, praecedant ipsas illi te consule virgas. prima mihi debes anima bona. sanctus haberi iustitiaeque tenax factis dictisque mereris? adgnosco procerem; salve Gaetulice, seu tu Silanus, quocumque alio de sanguine, rarus civis et egregius patriae contingis ovanti (viii. 19).
Fond man, though all the heroes of your line
Bedeck your halls, and round your galleries shine
In proud display: yet take this truth from me,
'Virtue alone is true nobility.'
Set Cossus, Drusus, Paulus, then, in view,
The bright example of their lives pursue;
Let these precede the statues of your race,
And these, when consul, of your rods take place,
O give me inborn worth! Dare to be just,
Firm to your word and faithful to your trust.
Then praises hear, at least deserve to hear,
I grant your claim and recognize the peer.
Hail from whatever stock you draw your birth,
The son of Cossus or the son of Earth,
All hail! in you exulting Rome espies
Her guardian power, her great Palladium rise.
GIFFORD.
This is rhetoric, but rhetoric of the noblest kind. Of pure poetry there is naturally but little in Juvenal. Neither his temperament nor his subject would admit it. He had too keen an eye for the hideous and the grotesque, too strong a passion for the declamatory style. Hence it is rather his brilliant sketches of a vicious society, his fiery outbursts of rhetoric, his striking sententiae that primarily impress the reader:
expende Hannibalem: quot libras in duce summo invenies? (x. 147).
Great Hannibal within the balance lay,
And count how many pounds his ashes weigh.
DRYDEN.
finem animae quae res humanas miscuit olim, non gladii, non saxa dabunt nec tela, sed ille Cannarum vindex et tanti sanguinis ultor anulus. i demens et saevas curre per Alpes, ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias (x. 163).
What wondrous sort of death has heaven designed
For so untamed, so turbulent a mind?
Nor swords at hand, nor hissing darts afar,
Are doomed to avenge the tedious bloody war;
But poison drawn through a ring's hollow plate,
Must finish him—a sucking infant's fate.
Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool,
To please the boys, and be a theme at school.
DRYDEN.
nemo repente fuit turpissimus (ii. 83).
For none become at once completely vile.
GIFFORD.
summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori
et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas (viii. 83).
si natura negat, facit indignatio versum (i. 79).