Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

by Harold Edgeworth Butler

secuit Lucilius urbem, te Lupe, te Muci, et genuinum fregit in illis; omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico tangit et admissus circum praecordia ludit, callidus excusso populum suspendere naso (i. 114).

Lucilius bit deep into the town of his day, its Lupuses and Muciuses, and broke his jaw-tooth on them. Horace, the rogue, manages to probe every fault while making his friend laugh; he gains his entrance and plays about the heartstrings with a sly talent for tossing up his nose and catching the public on it. CONINGTON.

But the first satire stands alone qua satire. It is not, perhaps, the most interesting to the modern reader. It mocks at empty literary fashions, which have comparatively small human interest. But it is in this satire that Persius comes nearest the true satirist. The obscurity and affectation of its language is its one serious fault; otherwise it shows sound literary ideals, close observation, and a pretty vein of humour. Elsewhere there is small trace of keen observation[240] of actual life; he calls up before his reader no vision of the varied life of Rome, whether in the streets or in the houses of the rich. Instead, he laboriously tricks out some vice in human garb, converses with it in language such as none save Persius ever dreamed of using, or scourges it with all the heavy weapons of the Stoic armoury. There is at times a certain violence and even coarseness[241] of description which does duty for realism, but the words ring hollow and false. The picture described or suggested is got at second-hand. He lacks the vivacity, realism, and common sense of Horace, the cultured man of the world, the biting wit, the astonishing descriptive power, and the masterly rhetoric of Juvenal. We care little for the greater part of Persius' disquisition[242] on the trite theme of the schools, 'what should be the object of man's prayers to heaven?' when we have read the tenth satire of Juvenal. There is the same commonplace theme in both, and there is perhaps less originality to be found in the general treatment applied to it by Juvenal. But Juvenal makes us forget the triteness of the theme by his extraordinary gift of style. Like Victor Hugo, he has the gift of imparting richness and splendour to the obvious by the sheer force and glory of his declamatory power. Similarly the fifth satire, where Persius descants on the theme that only the good man is free, while all the rest are slaves, compares ill as a whole with the dialogue between Horace and Davus on the same subject (Sat. ii. 7). There is such a harshness, an angularity and bitterness about it, that he wholly fails of the effect produced by the easy dignity of the earlier poet. It is abrupt, violent, and obscure; and for this reason the austere Stoic makes less impression than his more engaging and easy-going predecessor. Horace knew how to press home his points, even while he played about the hearts of men. Persius has neither the persuasiveness of Horace nor the force of Juvenal.

But Persius, if he falls below his great rivals in point of art, is in one respect immeasurably their superior. He is a better and a nobler man. In his denunciations of vice his eyes are set on a more exalted ideal, an ideal from which he never wanders. There is a world of difference between the 'golden mean' of Horace, and the worship of virtue that redeems the obscurities of Persius. There is a still greater gulf between the high scorn manifested by Persius for all that is base and ignoble, and the fierce, almost petulant, indignation of Juvenal, that often seems to rend for the mere delight of rending, and is at times disfigured by such grossness of language that many an unsympathetic reader has wondered whether the indignation was genuine. Neither Horace nor Juvenal ever rose to the moral heights of the conclusion of the second satire (61):

O curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanes, quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros immittere mores et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere pulpa? haec sibi corrupto casiam dissolvit olivo et Calabrum coxit vitiato murice vellus, haec bacam conchae rasisse et stringere venas ferventis massae crudo de pulvere iussit. peccat et haec, peccat, vitio tamen utitur. at vos dicite, pontifices, in sancto quid facit aurum? nempe hoc quod Veneri donatae a virgine pupae. quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance non possit magni Messalae lippa propago? compositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto: haec cedo ut admoveam templis et farre litabo.

O ye souls that cleave to earth and have nothing heavenly in you! How can it answer to introduce the spirit of the age into the temple-service and infer what the gods like from this sinful pampered flesh of ours? The flesh it is that has got to spoil wholesome oil by mixing casia with it—to steep Calabrian wool in purple that was made for no such use; that has made us tear the pearl from the oyster, and separate the veins of the glowing ore from the primitive slag. It sins—yes, it sins; but it takes something by its sinning; but you, reverend pontiffs, tell us what good gold can do in a holy place. Just as much or as little as the dolls which a young girl offers to Venus. Give we rather to the gods such an offering as great Messala's blear-eyed representative has no means of giving, even out of his great dish—duty to God and man well blended in the mind—purity in the shrine of the heart, and a manly flavour of nobleness pervading the bosom. Let me have these to carry to the temple, and a handful of meal shall win me acceptance. CONINGTON.

This is real enthusiasm, though the theme be trite, and it is noteworthy that the enthusiasm has clarified the language, which goes straight to the point without obscurity or circumlocution. Here alone does the second satire of Persius surpass the more famous tenth satire of Juvenal. Yet even this fine outburst is surpassed by the deservedly well-known passage of the third satire, in which Persius appeals to a young man 'who has great possessions' to live earnestly and strenuously (23):

udum et molle lutum es, nunc nunc properandus et acri fingendus sine fine rota. sed rure paterno est tibi far modicum, purum et sine labe salinum (quid metuas?) cultrixque foci secura patella est. hoc satis? an deceat pulmonem rumpere ventis, stemmate quod Tusco ramum millesime ducis, censoremve tuum vel quod trabeate salutas? ad populum phaleras, ego te intus et in cute novi. non pudet ad morem discincti vivere Nattae. sed stupet hic vitio et fibris increvit opimum pingue, caret culpa, nescit quid perdat, et alto demersus summa rursus non bullit in unda. magne pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos haut alia ratione velis, cum dira libido moverit ingenium ferventi tincta veneno: virtutem videant intabescantque relicta. anne magis Siculi gemuerunt aera iuvenci, et magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis purpureas subter cervices terruit, 'imus, imus praecipites' quam si sibi dicat et intus palleat infelix quod proxima nesciat uxor?

You are moist soft earth, you ought to be taken instantly,
instantly, and fashioned without end by the rapid wheel. But you
have a paternal estate with a fair crop of corn, a salt-cellar
of unsullied brightness (no fear of ruin surely!), and a snug
dish for fireside service. Are you to be satisfied with this? or
would it be decent to puff yourself and vapour because your branch
is connected with a Tuscan stem, and you are thousandth in the line,
or because you wear purple on review days and salute your censor?
Off with your trappings to the mob! I can look under them and see
your skin. Are you not ashamed to live the loose life of Natta? But he
is paralysed by vice; his heart is overgrown by thick collops of fat;
he feels no reproach; he knows nothing of his loss; he is sunk in the
depth and makes no more bubbles on the surface. Great Father of the
Gods, be it thy pleasure to inflict no other punishment on the monsters
of tyranny, after their nature has been stirred by fierce passion, that
has the taint of fiery poison—let them look upon virtue and pine that
they have lost her for ever! Were the groans from the brazen bull of
Sicily more terrible, or did the sword that hung from the gilded cornice
strike more dread into the princely neck beneath it, than the voice
which whispers to the heart, 'We are going, going down a precipice,' and
the ghastly inward paleness, which is a mystery, even to the wife of our
heart? CONINGTON.

The man who wrote this has 'loved righteousness and hated iniquity'. In the work of Persius' rivals it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it is the hatred of iniquity that is most prominent; the love of righteousness holds but a secondary place.