The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius: Literally translated into English prose, with notes, chronological tables, arguments, &c.Persius
General
The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius: Literally translated into English prose, with notes, chronological tables, arguments, &c.
Persius
Juvenal -- Translations into English; Verse satire, Latin -- Translations into English
There is little doubt that considerable portions of the sixth Satire
were written in the reign of Trajan. 1. The lines 407-411 describe
exactly the events which took place at Antioch, in A.D. 115, when
Trajan was entering on his Armenian and Parthian campaigns. 2. The
coins of Trajan of the year A.D. 110, have the legend Dacicus and
Germanicus, cf. l. 205; and although Domitian triumphed over the
Dacians and Germans, none of his extant coins bear that inscription;
the general title being Augustus Germanicus simply. 3. Again, l.
502 describes a kind of headdress, very common on the coins of the
reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, representing Plotina the wife of Trajan,
Marciana his sister, and Sabina the wife of Hadrian, and others: and
this fashion was a very short-lived one. Beginning with the court, it
probably soon descended to the ladies of inferior rank; but like its
unnatural antitype, the towering, powdered, and plastered rolls of our
own countrywomen, in the degraded days of the two first Georges, it was
too unnatural and disfiguring to remain long in vogue with that sex,
to whom "tanta est quærendi cura decoris tanquam famæ discrimen agatur
aut animæ." 4. The subject itself also affords an additional reason
for supposing that the Satire was composed when the poet was advanced
in life. The vices of women are hardly a topic for a young writer to
select; but the vigorous manner in which he handles the lash, rather
marks the state of mind of the man who has outgrown the passions of
early manhood, and from "the high heaven of his philosophy" looks down
with cold austerity on the desires, and with bitter indignation at the
vices, of those whose feelings he has long since ceased to share.
Juvenal was, as Hodgson says, "an impenetrable bachelor," and if, as
he conjectures, he was jilted in his early youth, this fact would give
additional bitterness to the rancor which in old age he would feel
toward the sex by whom his personal happiness had been embittered, as
well as the ruin of his native country precipitated. 5. If we are right
in supposing that by Heliodorus, Juvenal meant Artemidorus Capito (and
the change in the name is both simple and readily suggested), this
would also bring down the date of this Satire to Juvenal's later years,
as about A.D. 122 was the time when this court-physician of Hadrian had
attained his greatest reputation. 6. In line 320, Saufeia is spoken of
in similar terms to those employed in the eleventh Satire, which was
confessedly the work of his later years. 7. Compare also the mention
of Archigenes (l. 236) with the 98th line of the thirteenth Satire,
written A.D. 118. 8. The allusions to the importation of foreigners,
with their exotic vices, would also refer to the same date. See Chron.,
A.D. 118.
The date of the seventh Satire will depend mainly on the question, Whom
does Juvenal intend to panegyrize in his 1st line?
"Et spes et ratio studiorum in Cæsare tantum."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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