leave no doubt that he was well advanced in years when they were written.
Two important dates are found in Book V., comprising satires xiii.-xvi. At xiii. 16 Juvenal speaks of his friend Calvinus as now past sixty years of age, having been born in the consulship of Fonteius. Now L. Fonteius Capito was consul in 67. Again at xv. 27 an event is said to have happened in Egypt “nuper consule Iunco.” There was a L. Aemilius Iuncus consul suffectus in 127. The fifth book must therefore have been published some time after this date. More than the fourth, this book bears the marks of age, both in the milder tone of the sentiments expressed, and in the feebler power of composition exhibited. The last satire is now imperfect, and the authenticity both of this and of the fifteenth has been questioned, though on insufficient grounds.
Thus the satires were published at different intervals, and for the most part composed between 100 and 130, but the most powerful in feeling and vivid in conception among them deal with the experience and impressions of the reign of Domitian, occasionally recall the memories or traditions of the times of Nero and Claudius, and reproduce at least one startling page from the annals of Tiberius.[4] The same overmastering feeling which constrained Tacitus (Agric. 2, 3), when the time of long endurance and silence was over, to recall the “memory of the former oppression,” acted upon Juvenal. There is no evidence that these two great writers, who lived and wrote at the same time, who were animated by the same hatred of the tyrant under whom the best years of their manhood were spent, and who both felt most deeply the degradation of their times, were even known to one another. Tacitus belonged to the highest official and senatorial class, Juvenal apparently to the middle class and to that of the struggling men of letters; and this difference in position had much influence in determining the different bent of their genius, and in forming one to be a great national historian, the other to be a great social satirist. If the view of the satirist is owing to this circumstance more limited in some directions, and his taste and temper less conformable to the best ancient standards of propriety, he is also saved by it from prejudices to which the traditions of his class exposed the historian. But both writers are thoroughly national in sentiment, thoroughly masculine in tone. No ancient authors express so strong a hatred of evil. The peculiar greatness and value of both Juvenal and Tacitus is that they did not shut their eyes to the evil through which they had lived, but deeply resented it—the one with a vehement and burning passion, like the “saeva indignatio” of Swift, the other with perhaps even deeper but more restrained emotions of mingled scorn and sorrow, like the scorn and sorrow of Milton when “fallen on evil days and evil tongues.” In one respect there is a difference. For Tacitus the prospect is not wholly cheerless, the detested tyranny was at an end, and its effects might disappear with a more beneficent rule. But the gloom of Juvenal’s pessimism is unlighted by hope.
A. C. Swinburne has suggested that the secret of Juvenal’s concentrated power consisted in this, that he knew what he hated, and that what he did hate was despotism and democracy. But it would be hardly true to say that the animating motive of his satire was political. It is true that he finds the most typical examples of lust, cruelty, levity and weakness in the emperors and their wives—in Domitian, Otho, Nero, Claudius and Messalina. It is true also that he shares in the traditional idolatry of Brutus, that he strikes at Augustus in his mention of the “three disciples of Sulla,” and that he has no word of recognition for what even Tacitus acknowledges as the beneficent rule of Trajan. So too his scorn for the Roman populace of his time, who cared only for their dole of bread and the public games, is unqualified. But it is only in connexion with its indirect effects that he seems to think of despotism; and he has no thought of democracy at all. It is not for the loss of liberty and of the senatorian rule that he chafes, but for the loss of the old national manliness and self-respect. This feeling explains his detestation of foreign manners and superstitions, his loathing not only of inhuman crimes and cruelties but even of the lesser derelictions from self-respect, his scorn of luxury and of art as ministering to luxury, his mockery of the poetry and of the stale and dilettante culture of his time, and perhaps, too, his indifference to the schools of philosophy and his readiness to identify all the professors of stoicism with the reserved and close-cropped puritans, who concealed the worst vices under an outward appearance of austerity. The great fault of his character, as it appears in his writings, is that he too exclusively indulged this mood. It is much more difficult to find what he loved and admired than what he hated. But it is characteristic of his strong nature that, where he does betray any sign of human sympathy or tenderness, it is for those who by their weakness and position are dependent on others for their protection—as for “the peasant boy with the little dog, his playfellow,”[5] or for “the home-sick lad from the Sabine highlands, who sighs for his mother whom he has not seen for a long time, and for the little hut and the familiar kids.”[6]
If Juvenal is to be ranked as a great moralist, it is not for his greatness and consistency as a thinker on moral questions. In the rhetorical exaggeration of the famous tenth satire, for instance, the highest energies of patriotism—the gallant and desperate defence of great causes, by sword or speech—are quoted as mere examples of disappointed ambition; and, in the indiscriminate condemnation of the arts by which men sought to gain a livelihood, he leaves no room for the legitimate pursuits of industry. His services to morals do not consist in any positive contributions to the notions of active duty, but in the strength with which he has realized and expressed the restraining influence of the old Roman and Italian ideal of character, and also of that religious conscience which was becoming a new power in the world. Though he disclaims any debt to philosophy (xiii. 121), yet he really owes more to the “Stoica dogmata,” then prevalent, than he is aware of. But his highest and rarest literary quality is his power of painting characters, scenes, incidents and actions, whether from past history or from contemporary life. In this power, which is also the great power of Tacitus, he has few equals and perhaps no superior among ancient writers. The difference between Tacitus and Juvenal in power of representation is that the prose historian is more of an imaginative poet, the satirist more of a realist and a grotesque humorist. Juvenal can paint great historical pictures in all their detail—as in the famous representation of the fall of Sejanus; he can describe a character elaborately or hit it off with a single stroke. The picture drawn may be a caricature, or a misrepresentation of the fact—as that of the father of Demosthenes, “blear-eyed with the soot of the glowing mass,” &c.—but it is, with rare exceptions, realistically conceived, and it is brought before us with the vivid touches of a Defoe or a Swift, or of the great pictorial satirist of the 18th century, Hogarth. Yet even in this, his most characteristic talent, his proneness to exaggeration, the attraction which coarse and repulsive images have for his mind, and the tendency to sacrifice general effect to minuteness of detail not infrequently mar his best effects.
The difficulty is often felt of distinguishing between a powerful rhetorician and a genuine poet, and it is felt particularly in the case of Juvenal. He himself knew and has well described (vii. 53 seq.) the conditions under which a great poet could flourish; and he felt that his own age was incapable of producing one. He has little sense of beauty either in human life or nature. Whenever such sense is evoked it is only as a momentary relief to his prevailing sense of the hideousness of contemporary life, or in protest against what he regarded as the enervating influences of art. Even his references to the great poets of the past indicate rather a blasé sense of indifference and weariness than a fresh enjoyment of them. Yet his power of touching the springs of tragic awe and horror is a genuine poetical gift, of the same kind as that which is displayed by some of the early English dramatists. But he is, on the whole, more essentially a great rhetorician than a great poet. His training, the practical bent of his understanding, his strong but morose character, the circumstances of his time, and the materials available for his art, all fitted him to rebuke his own age and all after-times in the tones of a powerful preacher, rather than charm them with the art of an accomplished poet. The composition of his various satires shows no negligence, but rather excess of elaboration; but it produces the impression of mechanical contrivance rather than of organic growth. His movement is sustained and powerful, but there is no rise and fall in it. The verse is most carefully constructed, and is also most effective, but it is so with the rhetorical effectiveness of Lucan, not with the musical charm of Virgil. The diction is full, even to excess, of meaning, point and emphasis. Few writers have added so much to the currency of quotation. But his style altogether wants the charm of ease and simplicity. It wearies by the constant strain after effect, its mock-heroics and allusive periphrasis, and excites distrust by its want of moderation.
On the whole no one of the ten or twelve really great writers of ancient Rome leaves on the mind so mixed an impression, both as a writer and as a man, as Juvenal. He has little, if anything at all, of the high imaginative mood—the mood of reverence and noble admiration—which made Ennius, Lucretius and Virgil the truest poetical representatives of the genius of Rome. He has nothing of the wide humanity of Cicero, of the urbanity of Horace, of the ease and grace of Catullus. Yet he represents another mood of ancient Rome, the mood natural to her before she was humanized by the lessons of Greek art and thought. If we could imagine the elder Cato living under Domitian, cut off from all share in public life, and finding no outlet for his combative energy except in literature, we should perhaps understand the motives of Juvenal’s satire and the place which is his due as a representative of the genius of his country. As a man he shows many of the strong qualities of the old Roman plebeian—the aggressive boldness, the intolerance of superiority and privilege, which animated the tribunes in their opposition to the senatorian rule. Even where we least like him we find nothing small or mean to alienate our respect from him. Though he loses no opportunity of being coarse, he is not licentious; though he is often truculent, he cannot be called malignant. It is, indeed, impossible to say what motives of personal chagrin, of love of detraction, of the mere literary passion for effective writing, may have contributed to the indignation which inspired his verse. But the prevailing impression we carry away after reading him is that in all his early satires he was animated by a sincere and manly detestation of the tyranny and cruelty, the debauchery and luxury, the levity and effeminacy, the crimes and frauds, which we know from other sources were then rife in Rome, and that a more serene wisdom and a happier frame of mind were attained by him when old age had somewhat allayed the fierce rage which vexed his manhood.
Authorities.—The remarkable statements in a “life” found in a late Italian MS. (Barberini, viii. 18), “Iunius Iuvenalis Aquinas Iunio Iuvenale patre matre vero Septumuleia ex Aquinati municipio Claudio Nerone et L. Antistio consulibus (55) natus est, sororem habuit Septumuleiam quae Fuscino (Sat. xiv. 1) nupsit,” though not necessarily false, cannot be accepted without confirmation.
The earliest evidence for the banishment of Juvenal is that of Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 480), Carm. ix. 269, “Non qui tempore Caesaris secundi | Aeterno coluit Tomos reatu | Nec qui consimili deinde casu | Ad vulgi tenuem strepentis auram | Irati fuit histrionis exul,” lines which by the exact parallel drawn between Ovid’s fate and Juvenal’s imply the belief that Juvenal died in exile. The banishment is also mentioned by J. Malalas, a Greek historian subsequent to Justinian, who gives the place as Pentapolis in Africa, Chron. x. 262, Dindorf. The inscription (on a stone now lost) is as follows, the words and letters in brackets being the conjectural restorations of scholars:—“[Cere] ri sacrum | [D. Iu] nius Iuvenalis | trib. coh. [I] Delmatarum | II vir quinq. flamen | divi Vespasiani | vovit dedicav[it] que | sua pec.,” Corp. inscr. lat. X. 5382, xiii. 201 sqq. The best of the known manuscripts of Juvenal (P) is at Montpellier (125); but there are several others which cannot be neglected. Amongst these may be specially mentioned the Bodleian MS. (Canon. Lat. 41), which contains a portion of Satire vi., the existence of which was unknown until E. O. Winstedt published it in the Classical Review (1899), pp. 201 seq. Another fragment in the Bibliothèque Nationale was described by C. E. Stuart in the Classical Quarterly (Jan. 1909). Numerous scholia and glossaries attest the interest taken in Juvenal in post-classical times and the middle ages. There are two classes of scholia—the older or “Pithoeana,” first published by P. Pithoeus, and the “Cornutus scholia” of less value, specimens of which have been published by various scholars. The earliest edition which need now be mentioned is that of P. Pithoeus, 1585, in which P was first used for the text. Amongst later ones we may mention the commentaries of Ruperti (1819) and C. F. Heinrich (1839, with the old scholia), O. Jahn (1851, critical with the old scholia), A. Weidner (1889), L. Friedländer (1895, with a full verbal index). The most useful English commentaries are those of J. E. B. Mayor (a voluminous and learned commentary on thirteen of the Satires, ii., vi. and ix. being omitted), J. D. Lewis (1882, with a prose translation) and J. D. Duff (1898, expurgated, and ii. and ix. being omitted). There are recent critical texts: conservative and chiefly based on P, by F. Buecheler (1893, with selections from the scholia) and S. G. Owen (in the Oxford Series of Texts); on the other side, by A. E. Housman (1905) and by the same, but with fewer innovations, in the new Corpus poetarum latinorum, fasc. v. The two last-named editors alone give the newly discovered lines of Satire vi. There are no recent translations of Juvenal into English verse. Dryden translated i., iii., vi., x. and xvi., the others being committed to inferior hands. Other versions are Gifford’s (1802), of some merit, and C. Badham’s (1814). Johnson’s imitations of Satires iii. and x. are well known. For the numerous articles and contributions to the criticism and elucidation of the Satires, reference should be made to Teuffel’s Geschichte der römischen Litteratur (Eng. trans. by Warre), § 331, and Schanz, ditto (1901, ii. § 2, § 420a).
(W. Y. S.; J. P. P.)