Juvenal and Persius/The Satires of Persius/Satire 5

by Persius

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SUMMARY OF SATIRE V

This satire begins with an enthusiastic acknowledgment by the poet of all that he owes to his beloved guide, philosopher, and friend, L. Annaeus Cornutus, and then goes on to discuss the great Stoical thesis that all men (Stoics of course excepted) are slaves. The whole is modelled upon Horace, Sat. ii. vii.

O for a hundred tongues, as the poets of old used to say! (1–4). "Why such a prayer from you? You are not going to gather solemn vapourings on Mount Helicon, or inflict upon us the ghastly tales and grandiose mouthings of Greek Tragedy; yours is a more homely theme, to rebuke skilfully and pleasantly, in every-day language, the vices and the foibles of common life " (5–18).

No, no! my page is not to be swollen out with nothings. It is to you, dear friend, that I wish to open out my soui. that you may test it, and discern how sound it rings, and how deeply I have planted you in the recesses of my heart (19–29). From the day when I first put on the robe of manhood, when the two roads of life lay uncertainly before me, you took me under your guardian care; you folded me to your Soeratic bosom, and taught me, with cunning hand, to discern the crooked and the straight. It was you who fashioned my soul; you made our two lives into one, alike for work and play. Sure, sure am I that our two lives are derived from one common star, which links them both together (30–51).

No two men have the same desires. One is a busy merchant, another longs for ease; games, gambling, and love have each their votaries, but when their joints have been broken by old age and gout, all alike bemoan their days of grossness, and lament the life they have left behind them (52–61). Your delight is in study; you love to sow in the hearts of youth the good grain of Cleanthes. But men will not learn the one true lesson of life; "To-morrow," they say, "will be soon enough," and then again, "to-morrow": a morrow which is for ever pursued and never reached (62–72). What we want is freedom; but not the sort of freedom which is bestowed by the lictor's rod (73–82). "But is not the newly-made Davus free? has he not liberty to do what he likes? "Not so," says the Stoic; "no man is free who has not learnt the proper uses of life; no man is free to do what he will spoil in the doing of it. A doctor must understand medicine, a sailor navigation; how can a man live rightly if he does not understand the principle of right living, knowing what to aim at, what to avoid, how to behave in all the circumstances of life? Satisfy me on these points, and I will call you free, and a wise man to boot; but if your knowledge is but pretence, if you are but an ass in a lion's skin, reason will not listen to your claim; naught but folly can come out of a fool, not one step can he take without going wrong" (83–123). "For all that I am free," you say. "What? do you know of no master but one who uses the rod? Are you not a slave when your passions drive you this way or that way as they will? Avarice bids you rise and scour the seas for gain. Luxury warns you that you are mad in giving up, for filthy lucre's sake, all the ease and all the joys of life. Which master will you obey? And if you once break free, how long will you keep your freedom? (124–160). Or is it Love that enslaves you? Chaerestratus feels his chain, but cannot make up his mind to break it; the slightest word from his mistress brings him back to her. What kind of freedom was it that he got from the lictor's rod?" (161–175). And what of the candidate for public office who courts the mob by shows? What of the superstitions of the Jews, or the many magical follies to which men enslave themselves? (176–188).

At this philosophy the varicose Fulfennius laughs aloud, and bids a hundred pence for a pack of your Greeklings (189–191).

SATIRE V

It is the fashion of poets to call for a hundred voices, a hundred mouths and a hundred tongues for their lays,^[1] whether their theme be a play to be gaped out by a lugubrious tragedian, or a wounded Parthian plucking an arrow from his groin.^[2]

⁵"What are you driving at? What are these big lumps of solid poetry that you would cram down the throat so as to need a hundred throat-power to grapple with them?^[3] Let those who meditate lofty themes gather vapours on Mount Helicon,^[4] if there be any who propose to set a-boiling the pot of Procne or of Thyestes,^[5] whereby that dullard Glyco^[6] may be provided with his nightly supper. But you are not one that squeezes the wind like the bellows^[7] of a forge when ore is a-smelting, nor are you one who croaks to himself some solemn nonsense with hoarse mutterings like a crow; nor do you swell out your cheeks till they burst with an explosive Pop! No; your language is that of everyday life;^[8] skilled in clever phrasing, rounded but not full-mouthed, you know well how to chide vicious ways,^[9] how to hit off men's foibles with well mannered pleasantry. Let these be the sources from which you draw; leave to Mycenae her banquets, her heads and extremities, and make acquaintance with the dinners of common folk."

¹⁹Nay, indeed, it is no aim of mine that my page should swell with pretentious trifles, fit only to give solidity to smoke. To yourself alone, Cornutus, do I speak; I now shake out my heart to you at the bidding of the Muse; it is a joy to me to show you, beloved friend, how large a portion of my soul is yours. Strike it and note carefully what part of it rings true,^[10] what is but paint and plaster of the tongue. It is for this that I would ask for a hundred voices; that I may with clear voice proclaim how deeply I have planted you in the recesses of my heart, and that my words may render up all the love that lies deep and unutterable in my inmost soul.

³⁰When first as a timid youth I lost the guardianship of the purple, and hung up my bulla as an offering to the short-girt household gods; in the days when comradeship was sweet, and my gown, now white,^[11] permitted me freely to cast my eyes over the whole Subura— at the age when the path of life is doubtful, and wanderings, ignorant of life, parted my trembling soul into the branching cross-ways^[12]—I placed myself in your hands, Cornutus; you took up my tender years in your Socratic bosom. Your rule, applied with unseen skill, straightened out the crooked ways;^[13] my soul, struggling to be mastered, was moulded by your reason, and took on its features under your plastic thumb. With you, I remember, did I pass long days, with you pluck for feasting the early hours of night. We two were one in our work; we were one in our hours of rest, and unbent together over the modest board. Of this I would not have you doubt, that there is some firm bond of concord between our lives, and that both are drawn from a single star.^[14] Either a truth-abiding Fate hangs our destinies on the even-balanced Scales, or if the hour which dawned upon the faithful paii distributes between the Twins the accordant destinies of us twain,^[15] and a kindly Jupiter has vanquished for us the malignancy of Saturn,^[16] some star assuredly there is which links your lot with mine.

⁵²Men are of a thousand kinds,^[17] and diverse are the colours of their lives. Each has his own desires; no two men offer the same prayers. One under an Eastern sun barters Italian wares for shrivelled pepper, or for the blanching cumin-seed; another grows fat with good cheer and balmy slumbers. A third is all for field games; a fourth loses his all over the dice box; a fifth ruins himself by love; but when once the knotty gout has broken up their joints till they are like the boughs of an old beech tree, they lament that their days have been passed in grossness, that their light has been that of a mist, and bemoan too late the life which they have left behind them.^[18]

⁶²But your delight has been to grow pale over nightly study, to till the minds of the young, and to sow the seed of Cleanthes^[19] in their well-cleansed ears. Seek thence all of you, young men and old alike, a sure aim for your desires, and provisions for the sorrows of old age! "So I will, to-morrow," you say; but to-morrow you will say the same as to-day.^[20] "What?" you ask, "do you think it a great thing to present me with a single day?"—No, but when to-morrow comes, yesterday's morrow will have been already spent; and lo! a fresh morrow will be for ever making away with our years, each just beyond our grasp. For though the tire is close to you, and revolves under the self-same pole, you will in vain pursue it, seeing that your wheel is the hind wheel, and that your axle is the second, not the first.

⁷³What we want is true liberty;^[21] not by that kind is it that any Publius enrolled in the Veline tribe becomes the possessor of a ticket for a ration of mangy corn. O souls barren of truth, you who think that one twirl of the thumb can make a Roman citizen! Look at Dama here; an under-strapper not worth three groats; blear-eyed from drink; a man who would tell a lie about a half-feed of corn; his master gives him one spin, when lo and behold! in the turning of a top, he comes forth as Marcus Dama!^[22]—"What? Do you hesitate to lend money when Marcus is the surety?—Are you uneasy with Marcus for a judge?"—"Marcus has said it, it must be so!"—"Pray, Marcus, put your signature to these deeds."—This, indeed, is liberty undefiled! This is the kind we get from our caps of liberty!

⁸³"And pray how otherwise would you describe a free man than as one who is free to live as he chooses? I am free to live as I choose; am I not more free than Brutus?"—"Your logic is at fault," says my Stoical friend, whose ears have been well washed with pungent vinegar; "I accept the rest; but you must strike out the words 'you are free' and 'as you choose."'

⁸⁸"What? When on leaving the Praetor's presence I had been made my own master by his rod, why am I not free to do everything that I want to do, excepting only what the red-titled Law of Masurius^[23] forbids? "

⁹¹Just listen then, and drop that wrath and those curling sneers from off your nose, while I pluck your old wife's notions out of your head. It was no part of the Praetor's business to impart to fools a delicate sense of duty, or empower them to make a right use of our fleeting life; it would be more easy to fit a hulking clodhopper with a harp. Reason forbids, and whispers privately into the ear that no man be allowed to do what he will spoil in the doing of it. The public law of man and Nature^[24] herself lay down this rule, that ignorance and imbecility should hold action to be forbidden them.^[25] If you would compound hellebore when you do not know at what point to steady the tongue of the steel-yard, the principles of the healing art forbid; if a hobnailed countryman, who knows nothing of the morning star, were to ask for the command of a ship, Melicerta^[26] would declare that modesty had perished from off the earth.

¹⁰⁴Has Philosophy taught you how to live rightly?^[27] Are you skilled in discerning the appearance of truth, that there be no false ring of copper underneath the gold? Have you marked off the things to be aimed at, and those again to be avoided—the former with a white stone, the latter with a black? Are you moderate in your desires, modest in your establishment, and kindly to your friends? Can you now close your granaries, and now again throw them open? Can you pass by a coin sticking in the mud, without gulping down your saliva in your greed for treasure?^[28] When you can truly say, "Yes, all these things are mine," I will call you a free and a wise man, under the favour of praetors and of Jove; but if, after having been but a little ago of the same stuff as ourselves, you hold to your old skin, and though your brow be smooth, still keep a crafty fox^[29] in that vapid heart of yours, I take back what I have just granted you and pull in my rope. Not one point has reason granted you; put out your finger (and what can be a slighter thing than that?) and you go wrong; not all the incense in the world will win leave from the Gods that one short half-ounce of wisdom may find lodgment in the head of a fool! To mingle^[30] the two things is sacrilege; if you are a clown in all else, you cannot dance as much as three steps of the Satyr of Bathyllus.^[31]

¹²⁴"Yet for all that I am free," you say. And what is your ground of confidence, you that are a slave to so many masters? Do you know of no master but the one from whom the praetor's rod sets you free? If somebody sharply bids you take Crispinus' scrapers to the bath, and then abuses you as a lazy scoundrel, no strict bond of slavery, certainly, bids you stir, no force from without comes in to move your muscles; but if masters grow up within, in that sickly bosom of yours, how do you get oft scot-free any more than the man who was sent off to fetch the scrapers by the terror of his master's whip?

¹³²You are snoring lazily in the morning; "Up you get," says Avarice; "come, up with you!"—You do not budge; "Up, up with you!" she cries again.—"O, I can't!" you say.—"Rise, rise, I tell you!"—"O dear, what for?"—"What for? Why, to fetch salt fish from Pontus, beaver oil, tow, ebony, frankincense and glossy Coan fabrics; be the first to take the fresh pepper off the camel's back before he has had his drink; do some bartering,^[32] and then forswear yourself."—"O, but Jupiter will hear!"—"Whew! if you mean to live on terms with Jupiter, you must just go on as you are, content to be a simpleton scraping and scraping away with your thumb at the salt-cellar which you have so often tasted."^[33]

¹⁴⁰And now you are all ready, piling packing-cases and wine-jars on to your slaves. "Quick aboard!" you cry; there's nothing now to stop you from scudding over the Aegean in a big ship, were it not that crafty Luxury takes you aside for a word of remonstrance; "Where are you off to now, you madman? What do you want? What masterful humour is that swelling in your fevered heart so that a whole gallon of hemlock cannot assuage it? What? You to go skipping over the sea? You to take your dinner on a bench, with a coiled cable for a cushion, while a dumpy pot exhales for you the fumes of some reddish Veientine wine that has been spoilt because of the pitch going bad? What would you be at? Is it that the money which you have been nursing at a modest five per cent.^[34] I shall go on until it sweats out an exorbitant eleven? No, no; give your Genius a chance! Let us gather our sweets! Our life is our own to-day, to-morrow you will be dust, a shade, and a tale that is told. Live mindful of death; the hour flies; the word that I speak is so much taken from it."

¹⁵⁴What are you to do? Two hooks are pulling you in different ways; are you to follow this one or that? With wavering allegiance you must needs submit to each master by turns, and by turns break away from him. Nor if you have once made a stand, and refused the imperious command, can you say, "Now I have broken my chain"; for though even a dog may struggle against his chain and break it, yet as he runs away a good length of it will be trailing from his neck.

¹⁶¹"Here, Davus, quick! I am in real earnest; I mean^[35] to bring my past follies to an end." So says Chaerestratus, biting his nails to the quick. "What? Am I to be a stumbling block and a scandal to my excellent relations? Am I to lose alike my patrimony and my character by singing drunken songs, with my torch put out, before my mistress's dripping door?" "Bravo! my young sir. Show your good sense, and slay a lamb to the Protecting Deities!" "But do you think, Davus, that she will cry if I leave her?" "You're just playing the fool! And won't you be catching it, my boy, with her red slipper, just to teach you not to jib or to gnaw at the tight-drawn meshes! At one moment you're all bluster and indignation; next moment, if she call you back, you'll be saying, 'What am I to do? Am I not to go to her even now, when she sends for me, and actually implores me to return?' No, no, say I, not even now, if once you have got away from her entire and heart-whole." Here, here is the freedom we are looking for, not in the stick^[36] brandished by that nincompoop of a lictor.

¹⁷⁶And that white-robed^[37] wheedler there, dragged open-mouthed by his thirst for office—is he his own master? Up with you before dawn, and deal out showers of vetches for the people to scramble for, that old men sunning themselves in their old age may tell of the splendour of our Floralia!^[38] How grand! But when Herod's birthday^[39] comes round, when the lamps wreathed with violets and ranged round the greasy window-sills have spat forth their thick clouds of smoke, when the floppy tunnies' tails are curled round the dishes of red ware, and the white jars are swollen out with wine, you silently twitch your lips, turning pale at the sabbath of the circumcised. Then, again, there are the black spectres and the perils of the broken egg; there are the huge priests of Ceres, and the one-eyed^[40] priestess with her rattle, who drive demons into you^[41] that make your bodies swell if you do not swallow the prescribed morning dose of three heads of garlic.^[42]

¹⁸⁹If you talk in this fashion among your varicose Centurions, the hulking Pulfennius straightway bursts into a huge guffaw, and bids a clipped hundred-penny piece for a lot of a hundred Greeks.^[43]

Footnotes

1. The reference is to Iliad ii. 489, where Homer says that ten tongues and ten voices would be all too few to recount the leaders of the Achaean host; also to Virgil, who declares that a hundred tongues and a hundred voices would not be enough to tell all the forms of punishment in the lower world (Aen. vi. 625 foil.). See, too, Geor. ii. 43-4.
2. This line is closely imitated from Hor. Sat. II. i. 15.
3. A grotesque expression, after the manner of Persius. For whereas the demand made was for a hundred mouths for utterance, the speaker perverts the sense, and assumes that the hundred mouths are wanted for swallowing; as though the poet were a glutton stuffing himself with Thyestean meals.
4. Helicon, near Delphi, was the mountain of the Muses.
5. Referring to the grim tragic story of the supper off his own children that was served up to Tereus by his wife Procne.
6. An actor of the time, who seems to have played the part of Tereus.
7. The metaphor of the bellows is closely imitated from Hor. Sat. i. iv. 19 foll.
8. The toga was worn in comedy, as representing the dress of ordinary life, while the praetexta was worn in tragedy. This line, and especially the use of the word iunctura, is imitated from Hor. A. P. 47–8 and 242.
9. The pallor, as elsewhere, is the pallor of debauchery.
10. The metaphor from unbaked pottery is repeated from iii. 21. 22. The phrase pictae tectoria linguae is strained, combining as it does two different ideas;—lit. "the plaster of a painted tongue."
11. Not "my yet unsullied gown" (Conington), but "my gown now white," as distinguished from the toga praetexta of boyhood.
12. These lines repeat, in a more complicated form, the idea of the branching ways given in iii. 56-57; and just as in the former passage the reading diduxit, though not that of the best MSS., is to be preferred to deduxit, so here diducit, though hard to translate, may perhaps be preferred to deducit. Cum iter ambiguum est denotes the point at which the choice has to be made, when vitae nescius error, "the ignorant wanderings of childhood," diducit trepidas mentes, i.e. "parts, or draws asunder," the youthful mind into the two branching ways. The phrase illustrates the tendency of Persius to jumble two separate ideas into one, a new idea being introduced before he has finished off the old. The less natural, the more tortuous, the expression, the more is it after the manner of Persius. Deducit would have the simpler meaning "leads down the mind to the point where the roads begin to diverge" (Conington).
13. We have here repeated from iv. 11–12, in a more grotesque form, the idea of a moral foot-rule. In the former passage the truly moral man can distinguish the crooked from the straight even when his foot-rule has a crooked leg (i.e. is off the square); in the present passage the moral foot-rule of Cornutus is so perfect that it cunningly and insensibly straightens out the most twisted ways; his teaching is so skilfully applied that the pupil is led on to virtue without effort, scarcely knowing it himself.
14. The passage which follows (45–51) is closely imitated from Hor. Od. n. xvii. 15–24. I have followed the translation and interpretation given by Professor Housman (l.c. pp. 16–18). The horoscope is the sign of the zodiac which rises at the moment of birth; Persius chooses the signs of the Balance and the Twins, as both are suggestive of close friendship.
15. The translation given above for lines 48 and 49 (seu nata . . . duorum) is that given by Professor Housman. He takes seu in line 48 as equivalent to vel si (l.c. p. 20).
16. The influence of Saturn was always malignant, that of Jupiter favourable (Hor. Od. II. xvii. 23-25). Compare the use of our words "saturnine" and "jovial."
17. See Hor. Sat. II. i. 17: Quot capitum vivunt totidem studiorum Millia.
18. i.e. the life of virtue which they have abandoned. Professor Housman takes this somewhat differently: "they mourn that life is a thing which they have left untouched (l.c. p. 21). For the general meaning, cf. m. 38: virtutem videaut intabe scant que relicta.
19. Cleanthes (born at Assos about B.C. 300) was a pupil of Zeno, the founder of the Stoical school, and had Chrysippus for his pupil.
20. i.e. "it will be the same story again to-morrow"; "you will then again say 'to-morrow.'" Professor Housman reads fiat, following AB, and explains; "The new life shall begin to-morrow," says the sluggard. "No, no, let the old life continue to-morrow," answers Persius; "the day after to-morrow will be soon enough to begin the new."
21. This passage has caused much trouble to commentators, but can be simply explained. "We have need of liberty (i.e. the true liberty)—a kind of liberty not possessed by any Publius (any Tom, Dick, or Harry) who by getting enrolled in the Veline tribe becomes the owner of a ticket entitling him to a mouldy ration of corn." Hac stands for the true kind of liberty: "it is not by that sort of liberty that Publius becomes possessed of a corn-ticket." (See Professor Housman, l.c. p. 23.) The Veline tribe was the latest addition to the local tribes instituted by Servius Tullius, making up the total to thirty-five, a number which was never exceeded. The allusion in tesserula is to the free distribution of corn made to all citizens enrolled in the tribes.
22. The process of manumission here ridiculed was that by the rod (vindicta). The master took the slave before the Praetor or other magistrate, a third person touched the slave with the rod (virga or festuca or vindicta), saying "Hunc hominem liberum esse aio." The master then acknowledged the claim by turning the man round, with the words "Hunc hominem liberum esse aio." The ceremony was then complete. See below, 88. The newly-enfranchised citizen at once rejoices in a praenomtn; so Hor. Sat. II. v. 32. "Quinte" puia, aut "Publi" (gaudent praenomine molles Auricidae).
23. Masurius Sabinus was a distinguished jurist in the reign of Tiberius. The titles of laws were written in red ink.
24. These words come naturally from a Stoic. The Stoical doctrine of Nature had much to do with the adoption by Roman jurists of the theory of a "Law of Nature," the principles of which were applied to those who, not being Roman citizens, could not claim the benefit of pure Roman Law (ius civile). Maine shows in his Ancient Law how this fiction of a "Law of Nature lay at the root of what we call "Equity" in English law. The instrument by which the idea of a "Law of Nature" was grafted on to Roman law was the Praetor's Edict, each Praetor adopting and carrying on the Edict of his predecessor.
25. This may either mean "may deem them to be forbidden to them" (which is precisely what incompetence never does), or else "holds back or checks action as though it were forbidden."
26. Melicertes, otherwise Palaemon, was a sea deity.
27. The catechism which follows seems modelled upon Hor. Epp. II. ii. 205-211.
28. Mercury being the god of gain.
29. Here Persius, in his effort to combine two passages from Horace into a single phrase, perpetrates a gross confusion of metaphors. In the one passage (Sat. I. vi. 22) Horace alludes to the ass in the lion's skin, in the other (Sat. II. iii. 186) to that of the fox dressed up as a lion. The words farinae nostrae (" of the same flour as ourselves") introduce a new metaphor; and when he says pelliculam veterem, "the old skin," what he means is that the real nature of the fox remains unchanged beneath the skin.
30. Miscere is exactly the right word here, being used of mingling things which have no proportion or affinity to each other, as distinguished from temperare, "to mix in due proportion."
31. A comic dancer of the time.
32. The word verte is usually explained as = the phrase versuram facere, "to borrow "; properly to borrow from one man in order to pay another. But the word may denote mere bargaining or exchange: "exchange something," i.e. " enter into trade and then help yourself by perjury."
33. The phrase ἁλίαν τρυπᾶν is said of those who have come to the end of their resources through poverty.
34. A quincunx was five ounces, of which there were twelve to the as, or pound. In calculating interest, five-twelfths of an as on 100 asses paid monthly was equivalent to five per cent, per annum; similarly eleven ounces a month would be equivalent to eleven per cent.
35. The passage which follows is taken from the Eunuchus of Menander, translated by Terence; Persius gives the names Chaerestratus and Davus as in the Greek play, instead of Phaedria and Parmenio as in Terence.
36. Another word for the vindicta, the rod by which the elave was claimed for freedom.
37. i.e. the man ambitious of public office. All candidates for public offices had their toga artificially whitened, and hence were called candidati.
38. Candidates sought to gain popularity by exhibiting public games. At these games, especially at the Floralia, celebrated from April 28 to May 3, peas and other vegetables were often scrambled for by means of tickets (tesserae). Horace thus addresses a candidate for office; In cicere atque faba bona tu perdasque lupinis (Sat. II. iii. 182). These games were attended by great license, especially among women (Ov. Fast. v. 183–378; Juv. vi. 249–250). Hence the mention of them here leads naturally on to the consideration of the superstitious observances mentioned in the next section (179–188).
39. Apparently the birthday of Herod the Great. The Romans regarded the Jews as practising the basest of all superstitions. See notes on Juv. xiv. 96-106 and vi. 542–547.
40. Isis was supposed to punish offenders with blindness (Juv. xiii. 93).
41. The idea seems to be that of causing bodies to be possessed by evil spirits as were the Gadarene swine.
42. Persius piles up a list of the best known superstitions. Line 186 refers especially to the rites of Cybele, with her eunuch priests (Galli), and of Isis. See Juv. ii. 111; vi 512–13, and Hor. Epp. II. ii. 208–9.
43. Persius once more has his fling at the muscular soldier clans.