The morals of the female sex were as depraved as those of men: ladies of noble and royal blood would have lovers in their pay, and when they had lost the attraction of personal charms, would supply their place by the temptation of gold. One empress publicly celebrated her nuptials with an adulterer in the absence of her lord; another gratified her wantonness by prostitution. Even those who were not so profligate aped the manners and habits of men, and would even meet in mock combat; and there was no public amusement so immoral or so cruel as not to be disgraced by the presence of the female sex. Licentiousness led to murder; and poisoning by women was as common as it was in France and Italy in the sixteenth century.[[1090]]
Times like these would even have shocked the urbane and gentle Horace. Had he then lived, he would probably have thought such vice beyond ridicule, and his tone might have approached more nearly to the thundering indignation of Juvenal. “Society in the age of Horace was becoming corrupt; in that of Juvenal it was in a state of putrefaction.”[[1091]]
In this period of moral dearth the fountains of genius and literature were dried up. The orator dared not impeach the corrupt politician, or defend the victim of tyranny, when every one thought the best way to secure his own safety was by trampling on the fallen favourite, now Cæsar’s enemy.[[1092]] The historian dared not utter his real sentiments. Poetry grew cold without the genial, fostering encouragement of noble and affectionate hearts. There was criticism, grammar, declamation, panegyric and verse-writing, but not oratory, history, or poetry. Juvenal, though himself not free from the declamatory affectation of the day, attacked the false literary taste of his contemporaries as unsparingly as he did their depraved morality. From Sejanus to Cluvienus he allowed no one to escape.
But noble as Juvenal’s hatred of vice must be allowed to be, and fearless as are his denunciations, we look in vain throughout his poetry for indications of an amiable and kind-hearted disposition. He was not one to recall the lost and erring to a love of virtue, or to inspire a pure and enthusiastic taste for literature. His prejudices were violent; he could see nothing good in a Greek or a freedman: he hated the new aristocracy with as bitter a hatred as Sallust. As a critic he is ill-natured; as a moralist he is stern and misanthrophic. Mark, for example, the gloomy bitterness with which he speaks of old age,[[1093]] and contrast it with the bright side of the picture, as drawn by the gentle Cicero in his incomparable treatise.
Deficient, however, as he was in the softer affections, his sixteen Satires exhibit an enlightened, truthful, and comprehensive view of Roman manners, and of the inevitable result of such corruption. Those whose moral taste was utterly destroyed would read and listen without profit, but they could not but tremble: his words are truth. The conclusion of the thirteenth Satire is almost Christian. It is unnecessary to quote from an author who is in every scholar’s memory: it would even occupy too much space to make a fair selection from so many fine passages. The eleventh Satire is the most pleasing, and most partaking of the playfulness of Horace. The seventh displays the greatest versatility and the richest fund of anecdote. The twelfth is the most amiable. The description of the origin of civil society in the conclusion of the fifteenth is full of sound sense and just sentiments; whilst the way in which he speaks of the insane bigotry of the Egyptians, exhibits his power of combining pleasantry with dignity. But the two finest Satires are those[[1094]] which our own Johnson has thought worthy of imitation: one of which (the tenth) Bishop Burnet, in his Pastoral Charge, recommended to his clergy; and the noblest passage in them is that which describes the fall of the infamous Sejanus.[[1095]] Few men could be so well adapted to transfer the spirit of Juvenal into English as Dr. Johnson. He had the same rude, plain-spoken, uncompromising hatred of vice; and, though not unamiable, did his best to conceal what amiability he possessed under a forbidding exterior. He was not without gayety and sprightliness; but he concealed it under that stateliness and declamatory grandeur which he attributes to Juvenal.
The historical value of Juvenal’s Satires must not be forgotten. Tacitus lived in the same perilous times as he did; and when they had come to an end, and it was not unsafe to speak, he wrote their public history. Juvenal illustrates that history by displaying the social inner life of the Romans.[[1096]] Their works are parallel, and each forms a commentary upon the other. When such were the lives of individuals, one cannot wonder at the fate of the nation.
The style of Juvenal is, generally speaking, the reflex of his mind: his views were strong and clear: his style is vigorous and lucid also. His morals were pure in the midst of a debased age: his language shines forth in classic elegance in the midst of specimens of declining and degenerate taste. His style is declamatory, but it is not artificially rhetorical. He could not restrain himself from following the example of Lucilius: he could not dam up the torrent of his vehement and natural eloquence. Whether his subject is noble or disgusting, his word-painting is perfect: we feel his sublimity—we shudder at his fidelity. The nature of the subject causes his language to be frequently gross and offensive; but his object always is to lay bare the deformity of vice, and to render it loathsome. He never indulges in indecency, in order to pander to a corrupt taste or to gratify a prurient imagination. For this reason his pages are less dangerous than those of more elegant and less indecent writers, who throw a veil over indelicacy, whilst they leave those qualities which blind the moral vision and inflame the passions. It must be remembered, also, that neither the dress, manners, nor conversation of ancient Rome were so decent and modest as those of modern times; and, therefore, Roman taste would not be so shocked by plain speaking as would be the case in an age of greater social refinement. Juvenal closes the list of Roman satirists, properly speaking: the satirical spirit animates the piquant epigrams of his friend Martial; but their purpose is not moral or didactic: they sting the individual, and render him an object of scorn and disgust, but they do not hold up vice itself to ridicule and detestation.
CHAPTER IV.
BIOGRAPHY OF LUCAN—INSCRIPTION TO HIS MEMORY—SENTIMENTS EXPRESSED IN THE PHARSALIA—LUCAN AN UNEQUAL POET—FAULTS AND MERITS OF THE PHARSALIA—CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS AGE—DIFFICULTIES OF HISTORICAL POETRY—LUCAN A DESCRIPTIVE POET—SPECIMENS OF HIS POETRY—BIOGRAPHY OF SILIUS ITALICUS—HIS CHARACTER BY PLINY—HIS POEM DULL AND TEDIOUS—HIS DESCRIPTION OF THE ALPS.
M. Annæus Lucanus (BORN A. D. 39.)
At the head of the epic poets who flourished during the silver age stands Lucan. He was a member of the same family as the Senecas, for the same rhetorician of that name was his grandfather, and the Stoic philosopher his uncle. Another of his uncles, also, L. Junius Gallio, is mentioned in the Eusebian Chronicle as a celebrated rhetorician. This Gallio derived his surname from being the adopted son of Jun. Gallio, who, by some, is supposed to have been the proconsul of Achaia, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles.[[1097]]