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
Rubrius, though not, like these, of noble race,
Followed with equal terror in his face;
* * * * *
Montanus' belly next, and next appeared
The legs on which that monstrous pile was reared.
Crispinus followed, daubed with more perfume,
Thus early! than two funerals consume.
Then bloodier Pompey, practised to betray,
And hesitate the noblest lives away.
Then Fuscus, who in studious pomp at home,
Planned future triumphs for the arms of Rome.
Blind to the event! those arms a different fate,
Inglorious wounds and Dacian vultures wait.
Last, sly Veiento with Catullus came,
Deadly Catullus, who at beauty's name
Took fire, although unseen: a wretch, whose crimes
Struck with amaze even those prodigious times.
A base, blind parasite, a murderous lord,
From the bridge-end raised to the council-board,
Yet fitter still to dog the traveller's heels,
And whine for alms to the descending wheels.
GIFFORD.
Figure after figure they live before us, till the procession culminates
with the crowning horror of the blind delator, L. Valerius Catullus
Messalinus. Equally vivid is Juvenal's description of places. There is
the rude theatre of the country town with its white-robed audience _en
négligé_:--
ipsa dierum
festorum herboso colitur si quando theatro
maiestas tandemque redit ad pulpita notum
exodium, cum personae pallentis hiatum
in gremio matris formidat rusticus infans,
aequales habitus illic similesque videbis
orchestram et populum, clari velamen honoris
sufficiunt tunicae summis aedilibus albae (iii. 172).
Some distant parts of Italy are known,
Where none but only dead men wear a gown,
On theatres of turf, in homely state,
Old plays they act, old feasts they celebrate;
* * * * *
The mimic yearly gives the same delights;
And in the mother's arms the clownish infant frights.
Their habits (undistinguished by degrees)
Are plain alike; the same simplicity
Both on the stage and in the pit you see.
In his white cloak the magistrate appears;
The country bumpkin the same livery wears.
DRYDEN.
There is the poor gentleman's garret high on the topmost story of some
tottering _insula_, close beneath the tiles, where the doves nest:
lectus erat Codro Procula minor, urceoli sex
ornamentum abaci nec non et parvulus infra
cantharus, et recubans sub eodem marmore Chiro
iamque vetus graecos servabat cista libellos,
et divina opici rodebant carmina mures (iii. 203).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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