Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

Name: Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal
Author: Butler, Harold Edgeworth

Butler, Harold Edgeworth

Latin poetry -- History and criticism; Rome -- In literature

The eighth satire may be regarded as the presage of a distinct change of
type. Instead of the vivid pictures of Roman life and the almost
dramatic representation of vice personified, Juvenal seems to turn for
inspiration to the scholastic declamation which had fascinated his
youth. Moral problems are treated in a more abstract way, and the old
fierce onset of indignation, though it has by no means disappeared,
seems to have lost something of its former violence. There are also
traces of declining powers, a greater tendency to digression, a lack of
concentration and vigour, and even of dexterity of language. But the
change is due in all probability not merely to advance in years nor to
the calming and mellowing influence of old age, but also to a change
that was gradually passing over the Roman world. The material for savage
satire was appreciably less. Evil in its worst forms had triumphed under
Domitian. With Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian virtue began slowly and
uncertainly to reclaim part of her lost dominions.

The fourth book opens with the famous tenth satire on the vanity of
human wishes. What should man pray for? The theme is hackneyed and the
treatment shows no special originality. But the thought is elevated, the
rhetoric superb, and the verse has a resounding tread such as is only
found in Persius and Juvenal among the later poets of Rome. 'What shall
man pray for?' Power? Think of Sejanus, Pompey, Demosthenes, Cicero! To
each one greatness brought his doom. Think of Hannibal and Alexander,
how they, and with them all their high schemings, came to die; Long
life? What? Should we pray to outlive our bodily powers, to bewail the
death of our nearest and dearest, to fall from the high place where once
we stood? Beauty? Beauty is beset by a thousand perils in these vile
days, and rarely do beauty and chastity go hand in hand. Rather than
pray for boons like these, 'entrust thy fortune to the gods above,' or,
if pray thou must,

                            stand confined
    To health of body and content of mind;
    A soul that can securely death defy,
    And count it nature's privilege to die;
    Serene and manly, hardened to sustain
    The load of life and exercised in pain:
    Guiltless of hate and proof against desire,
    That all things weighs and nothing can admire;
    That dares prefer the toils of Hercules,
    To dalliance, banquet, and ignoble ease.
    The path to peace is virtue; what I show,
    Thyself may freely on thyself bestow;
    Fortune was never worshipped by the wise,
    But, set aloft by fools, usurps the skies.[719]

In the eleventh satire we drop from these splendid heights of rhetoric;
to a declamatory invitation to dinner, which affords occasion for a
denunciation of the extravagant indulgence in the pleasures of the table
and for the praise of the good old days when Romans clave to the simple
life. The dinner to which Juvenal invites his friend will be of simple
fare simply served--

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to JuvenalButler, Harold Edgeworth

History

Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

Butler, Harold Edgeworth

Latin poetry -- History and criticism; Rome -- In literature

The eighth satire may be regarded as the presage of a distinct change of
type. Instead of the vivid pictures of Roman life and the almost
dramatic representation of vice personified, Juvenal seems to turn for
inspiration to the scholastic declamation which had fascinated his
youth. Moral problems are treated in a more abstract way, and the old
fierce onset of indignation, though it has by no means disappeared,
seems to have lost something of its former violence. There are also
traces of declining powers, a greater tendency to digression, a lack of
concentration and vigour, and even of dexterity of language. But the
change is due in all probability not merely to advance in years nor to
the calming and mellowing influence of old age, but also to a change
that was gradually passing over the Roman world. The material for savage
satire was appreciably less. Evil in its worst forms had triumphed under
Domitian. With Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian virtue began slowly and
uncertainly to reclaim part of her lost dominions.

The fourth book opens with the famous tenth satire on the vanity of
human wishes. What should man pray for? The theme is hackneyed and the
treatment shows no special originality. But the thought is elevated, the
rhetoric superb, and the verse has a resounding tread such as is only
found in Persius and Juvenal among the later poets of Rome. 'What shall
man pray for?' Power? Think of Sejanus, Pompey, Demosthenes, Cicero! To
each one greatness brought his doom. Think of Hannibal and Alexander,
how they, and with them all their high schemings, came to die; Long
life? What? Should we pray to outlive our bodily powers, to bewail the
death of our nearest and dearest, to fall from the high place where once
we stood? Beauty? Beauty is beset by a thousand perils in these vile
days, and rarely do beauty and chastity go hand in hand. Rather than
pray for boons like these, 'entrust thy fortune to the gods above,' or,
if pray thou must,

                            stand confined
    To health of body and content of mind;
    A soul that can securely death defy,
    And count it nature's privilege to die;
    Serene and manly, hardened to sustain
    The load of life and exercised in pain:
    Guiltless of hate and proof against desire,
    That all things weighs and nothing can admire;
    That dares prefer the toils of Hercules,
    To dalliance, banquet, and ignoble ease.
    The path to peace is virtue; what I show,
    Thyself may freely on thyself bestow;
    Fortune was never worshipped by the wise,
    But, set aloft by fools, usurps the skies.[719]

In the eleventh satire we drop from these splendid heights of rhetoric;
to a declamatory invitation to dinner, which affords occasion for a
denunciation of the extravagant indulgence in the pleasures of the table
and for the praise of the good old days when Romans clave to the simple
life. The dinner to which Juvenal invites his friend will be of simple
fare simply served--

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

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