(xi. 65), which furnished a young kid and mountain asparagus
for a homely dinner to which he invites a friend during the festival
of the Megalesia. From the satire in which this invitation is
contained we are able to form an idea of the style in which he
habitually lived, and to think of him as enjoying a hale and
vigorous age (203), and also as a kindly master of a household
(159 seq.). The negative evidence afforded in the account of his
establishment suggests the inference that, like Lucilius and
Horace, Juvenal had no personal experience of either the cares
or the softening influence of family life. A comparison of this
poem with the invitation of Horace to Torquatus (Ep. i. 5) brings
out strongly the differences not in urbanity only but in kindly
feeling between the two satirists. Gaston Boissier has drawn
from the indications afforded of the career and character of
the persons to whom the satires are addressed most unfavourable
conclusions as to the social circumstances and associations of
Juvenal. If we believe that these were all real people, with whom
Juvenal lived in intimacy, we should conclude that he was most
unfortunate in his associates, and that his own relations to them
were marked rather by outspoken frankness than civility. But
they seem to be more “nominis umbrae” than real men; they
serve the purpose of enabling the satirist to aim his blows at
one particular object instead of declaiming at large. They have
none of the individuality and traits of personal character discernible
in the persons addressed by Horace in his Satires and
Epistles. It is noticeable that, while Juvenal writes of the poets
and men of letters of a somewhat earlier time as if they were still
living, he makes no reference to his friend Martial or the younger
Pliny and Tacitus, who wrote their works during the years of his
own literary activity. It is equally noticeable that Juvenal’s
name does not appear in Pliny’s letters.
The times at which the satires were given to the world do not in all cases coincide with those at which they were written and to which they immediately refer. Thus the manners and personages of the age of Domitian often supply the material of satiric representation, and are spoken of as if they belonged to the actual life of the present,[1] while allusions even in the earliest show that, as a finished literary composition, it belongs to the age of Trajan. The most probable explanation of these discrepancies is that in their present form the satires are the work of the last thirty years of the poet’s life, while the first nine at least may have preserved with little change passages written during his earlier manhood. The combination of the impressions, and, perhaps of the actual compositions, of different periods also explains a certain want of unity and continuity found in some of them.
There is no reason to doubt that the sixteen satires which we possess were given to the world in the order in which we find them, and that they were divided, as they are referred to in the ancient grammarians, into five books. Book I., embracing the first five satires, was written in the freshest vigour of the author’s powers, and is animated with the strongest hatred of Domitian. The publication of this book belongs to the early years of Trajan. The mention of the exile of Marius (49) shows that it was not published before 100. In the second satire, the lines 29 seq.,
| “Qualis erat nuper tragico pollutus adulter |
show that the memory of one of the foulest scandals of the reign of Domitian was still fresh in the minds of men. The third satire, imitated by Samuel Johnson in his London, presents such a picture as Rome may have offered to the satirist at any time in the 1st century of our era; but it was under the worst emperors, Nero and Domitian, that the arts of flatterers and foreign adventurers were most successful, and that such scenes of violence as that described at 277 seq. were most likely to occur;[2] while the mention of Veiento (185) as still enjoying influence is a distinct reference to the court of Domitian. The fourth, which alone has any political significance, and reflects on the emperor as a frivolous trifler rather than as a monster of lust and cruelty, is the reproduction of a real or imaginary scene from the reign of Domitian, and is animated by the profoundest scorn and loathing both of the tyrant himself and of the worst instruments of his tyranny. The fifth is a social picture of the degradation to which poor guests were exposed at the banquets of the rich, but many of the epigrams of Martial and the more sober evidence of one of Pliny’s letters show that the picture painted by Juvenal, though perhaps exaggerated in colouring, was drawn from a state of society prevalent during and immediately subsequent to the times of Domitian.[3] Book II. consists of the most elaborate of the satires, by many critics regarded as the poet’s masterpiece, the famous sixth satire, directed against the whole female sex, which shares with Domitian and his creatures the most cherished place in the poet’s antipathies. It shows certainly no diminution of vigour either in its representation or its invective. The time at which this satire was composed cannot be fixed with certainty, but some allusions render it highly probable that it was given to the world in the later years of Trajan, and before the accession of Hadrian. The date of the publication of Book III., containing the seventh, eighth and ninth satires, seems to be fixed by its opening line to the first years after the accession of Hadrian. In the eighth satire another reference is made (120) to the misgovernment of Marius in Africa as a recent event, and at line 51 there may be an allusion to the Eastern wars that occupied the last years of Trajan’s reign. The ninth has no allusion to determine its date, but it is written with the same outspoken freedom as the second and the sixth, and belongs to the period when the poet’s power was most vigorous, and his exposure of vice most uncompromising. In Book IV., comprising the famous tenth, the eleventh and the twelfth satires, the author appears more as a moralist than as a pure satirist. In the tenth, the theme of the “vanity of human wishes” is illustrated by great historic instances, rather than by pictures of the men and manners of the age; and, though the declamatory vigour and power of expression in it are occasionally as great as in the earlier satires, and although touches of Juvenal’s saturnine humour, and especially of his misogyny, appear in all the satires of this book, yet their general tone shows that the white heat of his indignation is abated; and the lines of the eleventh, already referred to (201 seq.),
| “Spectent juvenes quos clamor et audax |
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
- ↑ This is especially noticeable in the seventh satire, but it applies also to the mention of Crispinus, Latinus, the class of delatores, &c., in the first, to the notice of Veiento in the third, of Rubellius Blandus in the eighth, of Gallicus in the thirteenth, &c.
- ↑ Cf. Tacitus, Annals, xiii. 25.
- ↑ Pliny’s remarks on the vulgarity as well as the ostentation of his host imply that he regarded such behaviour as exceptional, at least in the circle in which he himself lived (Ep. ii. 6).
- ↑ x. 56–107.
