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
The 203d line of the eleventh Satire fixes its date to the later
years of Juvenal's life. It breathes, besides, throughout the spirit
of a calm and philosophic enjoyment of the blessings of life, that
tells of declining age; cheered by a chastened appreciation of the
comforts by which it is surrounded, but far removed from all extraneous
or meretricious excitement, and utterly abhorrent of all noisy or
exuberant hilarity. An additional argument is mentioned in the
Chronology for referring it to the date A.D. 124.
The twelfth Satire contains nothing by which we can fix its date with
any certainty. If, however, as the commentators suppose, the wife of
Fuscus, in the 45th line, be Saufeia, it will be connected with the
sixth, ninth, and eleventh Satires, and may probably be considered the
work of his advanced age.
The thirteenth Satire is fixed by line 17 to the year A.D. 118, the
60th after the consulship of L. Fonteius Capito. This is the only
Satire to which Mr. Clinton has assigned a date.
The argument applied to the tenth Satire will apply with nearly equal
force to the fourteenth. We are therefore prepared to admit the
plausibility of the conjecture, that l. 196 refers to the progress of
Hadrian through Britain, which would fix the date to A.D. 120; a very
short time previous to the composition of the following Satire.
The event recorded in the fifteenth Satire occurred shortly after the
consulship of Junius, l. 27, "nuper consule Junio gesta." This was, in
all probability, Junius Rusticus, who was consul with Hadrian A.D. 119.
The 110th line also probably refers to the influx of Greeks and other
foreigners into Rome, in the train of Hadrian (to which we have alluded
in discussing the date of the third Satire), which took place in the
preceding year.
The sixteenth Satire may have either been the draft of a longer poem,
commenced in early life (as l. 3 _may_ imply), which the poet never
cared to finish; or an outline for a more perfect composition, which he
never lived to elaborate. The mention of Fucus may connect it with the
twelfth Satire. But though there is quite enough remaining to warrant
us in unhesitatingly ascribing the authorship to Juvenal, there is too
little left to enable us to form even a probable conjecture as to the
date of its composition.
It is hardly necessary to add, that, after a careful examination
of the foregoing Chronology, it must be evident to every novice in
scholarship, that the whole life of Juvenal, as usually given, is
a mere myth, to which one can not even apply, as in many legendary
biographies, the epithet of poetical.
L. E.
ARGUMENTS OF THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL.
SATIRE I.
This Satire seems, from several incidental circumstances to have been
produced subsequently to most of them; and was probably drawn up after
the author had determined to collect and publish his works, as a kind
of Introduction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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