Satire IV Argument
Had Persius lived after instead of before Juvenal we might have imagined that he had taken for the theme the noble lines in his eighth Satire,
“Omne animi vitium tanto conspectius in se
Crimen habet quanto Major qui peccat habetur.” viii., 140.
“For still more public scandal Vice extends,
As he is great and noble who offends.”
—Dryden.
Or had he drawn from the fountains of inspired wisdom, that he had had in his eye a passage of still more solemn import: “A sharp judgment shall be to them that be in high places. For mercy will soon pardon the meanest; but mighty men shall be mightily tormented.” Wisdom, vi., 5. Either of these passages might fairly serve as the argument of this Satire. What, however, Persius really took as his model is the First Alcibiades of Plato, and the imitation of it is nearly as close as is that of the Second Alcibiades in the Second Satire. And the subject of his criticism is no less a personage than Nero himself. The close analogy between Nero and Alcibiades will be further alluded to in the notes. We must remember that Nero was but seventeen years old when he was called to take the reins of government, and was but three years younger than Persius himself. The Satire was probably written before Nero had entirely thrown off the mask; at all events, before he had given the full evidence which he afterward did of the savage ferocity and gross licentiousness of his true nature. There was enough indeed for the stern Satirist to censure; but still a spark of something noble remaining, to kindle the hope that the reproof might work improvement. In his First Satire he had ridiculed his pretensions to the name of Poet; in this he exposes his inability as a Politician. The Satire naturally and readily divides itself into three parts. In the first he ridicules the misplaced ambition of those who covet exalted station, and aspire to take the lead in state affairs, without possessing those qualifications of talent, education, and experience, which alone could fit them to take the helm of government; and who hold that the adventitious privileges of high birth and ancient lineage can countervail the enervating effects of luxurious indolence and vicious self-indulgence. The second division of the subject turns on the much-neglected duty of self-examination; and enforces the duty of uprightness and purity of conduct from the consideration, that while it is hopeless in all to escape the keen scrutiny that all men exercise in their neighbor’s failings, while they are at the same time utterly blind to their own defects, yet that men of high rank and station must necessarily provoke the more searching criticism, in exact proportion to the elevation of their position. He points out also the policy of checking all tendency to satirize the weakness of others, to which Nero was greatly prone, and in fact had already aspired to the dignity of a writer of Satire; as such sarcasm only draws down severer recrimination on ourselves. In the third part he reverts to the original subject; and urges upon the profligate nobles of the day the duty of rigid self-scrutiny, by reminding them of the true character of that worthless rabble, on whose sordid judgment and mercenary applause they ground their claims to approbation. This love of the “aura popularis” was Nero’s besetting vice; and none could doubt for whom the advice was meant. Yet the allusions to Nero throughout the Satire, transparent as they must have been to his contemporaries, are so dexterously covered that Persius might easily have secured himself from all charge of personally attacking the emperor under the plea that his sole object was a declamatory exercise in imitation of the Dialogue cf Plato.
“Dost thou wield the affairs of the state?”1386—(Imagine the bearded1387 master, whom the fell draught of hemlock1388 took off, to be saying this:)—Relying on what? Speak, thou ward1389 of great Pericles. Has talent, forsooth, and precocious knowledge of the world, come before thy beard? Knowest thou what must be spoken, and what kept back? And, therefore, when the populace is boiling with excited passion, does your spirit move you to impose silence on the crowd by the majesty of your hand?1390 and what will you say then? “I think, Quirites, this is not just! That is bad! This is the properer course?” For you know how to weigh the justice of the case in the double scale of the doubtful balance. You can discern the straight line when it lies between curves,1391 or when the rule misleads by its distorted foot; and you are competent to affix the Theta1392 of condemnation to a defect.
Why do you not then (adorned in vain with outer skin1393) cease to display your tail1394 before the day to the fawning rabble, more fit to swallow down undiluted Anticyras?1395
What is your chief good? to have lived always on rich dishes; and a skin made delicate by constant basking in the sun?1396 Stay: this old woman would scarce give a different answer—“Go now! I am son of Dinomache!”1397 Puff yourself up!—“I am beautiful.” Granted! Still Baucis, though in tatters, has no worse philosophy, when she has cried her herbs1398 to good purpose to some slovenly slave.
How is it that not a man tries to descend into himself? Not a man! But our gaze is fixed on the wallet1399 on the back in front of us! You may ask, “Do you know Vectidius’ farms!” Whose? The rich fellow that cultivates more land at Cures than a kite1400 can fly over! Him do you mean? Him, born under the wrath of Heaven, and an inauspicious Genius, who whenever he fixes his yoke at the beaten cross ways,1401 fearing to scrape off the clay incrusted on the diminutive vessel, groans out, “May this be well!” and munching an onion in its hull, with some salt, and a dish of frumety (his slaves applauding the while), sups up the mothery dregs of vapid vinegar.
But if, well essenced, you lounge away your time and bask in the sun, there stands by you one, unkenned, to touch you with his elbow, and spit out his bitter detestation on your morals—on you, who by vile arts make your body delicate! While you comb the perfumed hair1402 on your cheeks, why are you closely shorn elsewhere? when, though five wrestlers pluck out the weeds, the rank fern will yield to no amount of toil.
“We strike;1403 and in our turn expose our limbs to the arrows. It is thus we live. Thus we know it to be. You have a secret wound, though the baldric hides it with its broad gold. As you please! Impose upon your own powers; deceive them if you can!”
“While the whole neighborhood pronounces me to be super-excellent, shall I not credit1404 them?”
If you grow pale, vile wretch, at the sight of money; if you execute all that suggests itself to your lust; if you cautiously lash the forum with many a stroke,1405 in vain you present to the rabble your thirsty1406 ears. Cast off from you that which you are not. Let the cobbler1407 bear off his presents. Dwell with yourself,1408 and you will know how short your household stuff is.
Footnotes
1386 Rem populi tractas? from the Greek περὶ τῶν τοῦ δήμου πραγμάτων βουλεύεσθαι. The imitations of the First Alcibiades are very close throughout the Satire. Even in our own day, in looking back upon ancient history, it would be difficult to find two persons so nearly counterparts of each other as Nero and Alcibiades; not only in their personal character but in the adventitious circumstances of their life. Both came into public life at a very early age. Nero was emperor before he was seventeen years old, and Alcibiades was barely twenty at the siege of Potidæa. Seneca was to Nero what Socrates was to Alcibiades. Both derived their claims to pre-eminence from the mother’s side: Nero through Agrippina, from the Julian gens; Alcibiades through Dinomache, from the Alemæonidæ. The public influence of both extended through nearly the same period, thirteen years. Both were notorious for the same vices: love of self-indulgence, ambition of pre-eminence, personal vanity, lawless insolence toward others, lavish expenditure, and utter disregard of all principle. It would be very easy to carry out the parallel into greater detail. Comp. Suet., Nero, c. 26, with Grote’s Greece, vol. vii., ch. 55.
1387 Barbatum. Cf. Juv., xiv., 12, “Barbatos licet admoveas mille inde magistros.” Cic., Fin., iv., “Barba sylvosa et pulcrè alita inter hominis eruditi insignia recensetur.” Hor., ii., Sat. iii., 34, “Tempore quo me solatus jussit sapientem pascere barbam.”
1388 Cicutæ. Cf. ad Juv., vii, 206.
1389 Pupille. Alcibiades was left an orphan at the age of five years, his father, Clinias, having been killed at the battle of Coronea; when he was placed with his younger brother Clinias, under the guardianship of Pericles and his brother Ariphron, to whom his ungovernable passions, even in his boyhood, were a source of great grief. Of this connection Alcibiades was very proud. Cf. Plat., Alc., c. 1. Nero lost his father when scarcely three years old; and at the age of eleven, he was adopted by Claudius and placed under the care of Annæus Seneca. It is curious that the first public act of both was an act of liberality to the people. Compare the account of Nero’s proposing the Congiarium (Suet., Nero, c. 7), with the anecdote of the quail of Alcibiades told by Plutarch (in Vit., c. 10). There is probably also a bitter sarcasm in the word “pupille,” as it was the term of contempt applied to Nero by Poppæa, who was impatient to be married to him, which the control of his mother Agrippina, and the influence of Seneca and Burrhus, delayed. Cf. Tac., Ann., xiv., I, “Quæ (Poppæa) aliquando per facetias incusaret Principem et pupillum vocaret qui jussis alienis obnoxius non modo imperii sed libertatis etiam indigeret.” Some imagine pericli to be intended as a pun, “One that would prove dangerous hereafter;” as Alcibiades was compared to a lion’s whelp, Arist., Ran., 1431, οὐ χρὴ λέοντος σκύμνον ἐν πόλει τρέφειν ἤν δ’ ἐκτρέφῃ τις, τοῖς τρόποις ὑπηρετεῖν.
1390 Majestate manûs. Ov., Met., i., 205, “Quam fuit illa Jovi: qui postquam voce, manuque Murmura compressit, tenuere silentia cuncti.” So Lucan says of Cæsar, “Utque satis trepidum turbâ coeunte tumultum Composuit vultu, dextrâque silentia jussit.” Cf. Acts, xiii. 16.
1391 Curva. The Stoic notion that virtue is a straight line; vices, curved: the virtues occasionally approaching nearer to one curve than the other. Cf. Arist., Eth., II., vii. and viii.; and Sat., iii., 52, “Haud tibi inexpertum curvos deprendere mores, Quæque docet sapiens braccatis illita Medis Porticus.”
1392 Nigrum Theta. The Θ, the first letter of θάνατος, was set by the Judices against the names of those whom they adjuged worthy of death, and was hence used by critics to obelize passages they condemned or disapproved of; the contrary being marked with Χ, for χρηστόν. Cf. Mart., vii., Ep. xxxvii., 1, “Nosti mortiferum quæstoris, Castrice, signum, Est operæ pretium discere theta novum.” Auson., Ep. 128, “Tuumque nomen theta sectilis signet.” Sidon., Carm., ix., 335, “Isti qui valet exarationi Districtum bonus applicare theta.” (It was also used on tomb-stones, and as a mark to tick off the dead on the muster-roll of soldiers.)
1393 Summâ pella decorus. The personal beauty of Alcibiades is proverbial. Suetonius does not give a very unfavorable account of Nero’s exterior, “Staturâ fuit prope justâ, sufflavo capillo, vultu pulchro magis quam venusto, oculis cæsiis.” The rest of the picture is not quite so flattering. It should be observed, by the way, that Suetonius speaks in terms by no means disparaging of Nero’s verses, which, he says, flowed easily and naturally: he discards the insinuation that they were mere translations, or plagiarisms, as he says he had ocular proof to the contrary. Suet., Vit., c. 51, 2.
1394 Caudam jactare, a metaphor either from “a dog fawning,” or “a peacock displaying its tail.” Hor., ii., Sat. ii., 26, “Rara avis et pictâ pandat spectacula caudâ.”
1395 Anticyras. Cf. ad Juv., xiii., 97. Hor., ii., Ep. ii., 137, “Expulit helleboro morbum bilemque meraco.” Lucian, ἐν Πλοίῳ, 45, καὶ ὁ ἑλλέβορος ἱκανὸς ποιῆσαι ζωρότερος ποθείς. Meracus is properly applied to unmixed wine; merus, to any other liquid.
1396 Curata cuticula sole. Cf. ad Juv., xi., 203, “Nostra bibat vernum contracta cuticula solem.” Alluding to the apricatio, or “sunning themselves,” of which old men are so fond. Line 33. Sat. v., 179. Cic., de Senect., xvi. Mart., x., Ep. xii., 7, “I precor et totos avida cute combibe soles, Quam formosus eris, dum peregrinus eris.” Plin., Ep. iii., 1. “Ubi hora balinei nuntiata est, in sole, si caret vento, ambulat nudus.” iv., Ep. 5, “Post cibum sæpe æstate si quod otii, jacebat in sole.” Cic., Att., vii., 11. Mart., i., Ep. lxxviii., 4. Juv., ii., 105, “Et curare cutem summi constantia civis.” Hor., i., Ep. iv., 29, “In cute curandâ plus æquo operata juventus.” iv., 15, “Me pinguem et nitidum bene curatâ cute vises.” Cf. Sat. ii., 37, “Pelliculam curare jube.”
1397 Dinomaches. Vid. line 1. Plut., Alc., 1. It appears from Plat., Alc., cxviii., that it was a name Alcibiades delighted in.
1398 Ocima. Properly the herb “Basil,” ocimum Basilicum, either from ὠκὺς, from its “rapid growth,” or from ὄζειν, from its “fragrance.”
1399 Mantica. From Phædrus, lib. iv., Fab. x., “Peras imposuit Jupiter nobis duas: propriis repletam vitiis post tergum dedit: Alienis ante pectus suspendit gravem. Hâc re videre nostra mala non possumus: alii simul delinquunt, censores sumus.” So Petr., Frag. Traj., 57, “In alio peduclum vides: in te ricinum non vides.” Cat., xxii., 20, “Suus quoique attributus est error: Sed non videmus manticæ quod in tergo est.”
1400 Quantum non milvus. Cf. Juv., ix., 55, “Tot milvos intra tua pascua lassos.”
1401 Pertusa ad compita. “Compita” are places where three or more roads meet, from the old verb bito or beto. At these places altars, or little chapels, were erected with as many sides as there were ways meeting. (Jani bifrontes.) Cf. v., 35, “Ramosa in compita.” Hence they are called “pertusa,” i. e., pervia, “open in all directions.” At these chapels it was the custom for the rustics to suspend the worn-out implements of husbandry. Though some think this was more especially done at the Compitalia. This festival was one of those which the Romans called Feriæ Conceptivæ, being fixed annually by the Prætor. They generally followed close upon the Saturnalia, and were held sometimes three days before the kalends of January, sometimes on the kalends themselves. Vid. Cic., Pis., iv. Auson., Ecl. de Fev., “Et nunquam certis redeuntia festa diebus, Compita per vicos quum sua quisque colit.” According to Servius, they are described, though not by name, by Virgil, Æn., viii., 717. Like the Quinquatrus, they lasted only one day, and on that occasion additional wooden chapels were erected, the sacrificial cakes were provided by different houses, and slaves, not freedmen, presided at the sacrifices. Vid. Plin., XXXVI., xxvii., 70. The gods whom they worshiped are said to have been the Lares Compitales, of whom various legends are current. But this is doubtful. Augustus appointed certain rites in their honor, twice in the year. Suet., Vit., c. xxxi., “Compitales Lares ornari bis anno instituit vernis floribus et æstivis.” It seems to have been a season of rustic revelry and feasting, and of license for slaves, like the Saturnalia. The avarice of the miser, therefore, on such an occasion, is the more conspicuous. His vessel is but a small one (seriola), and its contents woolly (pannosam) with age (veterem); yet he grudges scraping off the clay (limum) with which they used to stop their vessels, in order to pour a libation of his sour wine.
1402 Balanatum gausape. The Balanus, or “Arabian Balsam,” was considered one of the most expensive perfumes. πρὸς τὰ πολυτελῆ μύρα ἀντ’ ἐλαίου ἔχρωντο. Dioscor., iv., 160. Cf. Hor., iii., Od. xxix., 4, “Pressa tuis balanus capillis Jamdudum apud me est.” The gausape is properly a thick shaggy kind of stuff. Hence Sen., Ep. 53, “Frigidæ cultor mitto me in mare quomodo psychrolutam decet, gausapatus.” Lucil., xx., Fr. 9, “Purpureo tersit tunc latas gausape mensas.” From whom Horace copies, ii., Sat. viii., 10, “Puer alte cinctus acernam gausape purpureo mensam pertersit.” It is here used for “a very thick, bushy beard.”
1403 Cædimus. A metaphor from gladiators, which is continued through the next three lines. “While we are intent on wounding our adversaries, we leave our own weak points unguarded;” i. e., while satirizing others, we are quite forgetful of and blind to our own defects. There is here also a covert allusion to Nero, who, though so open to sarcasm, yet took upon him to satirize others. Cf. ad Juv., iv., 106, “Et tamen improbior satiram scribente cinædo.”
1404 Non credam. Sen., Ep. lix., 11, “Cito nobis placemus: si invenimus qui nos bonos viros dicat, qui prudentes, qui sanctos, agnoscimus. Nec sumus modicâ laudatione contenti: quidquid in nos adulatio sine pudore congessit, tanquam debitum prendimus: optimos nos esse sapientissimos affirmantibus assentimur.”
1405 Puteal flagellas. “This line,” Casaubon says, “was purposely intended to be obscure; that while all would apply it in one sense to Nero, Persius, if accused, might maintain that he intended only the other sense, which the words at first sight bear.” Puteal is put for the forum itself by synecdoche. It is properly the “puteal Libonis,” a place which L. Scribonius Libo caused to be inclosed (perhaps cir. A.U.C. 604). It had been perhaps a bidental (cf. ad Sat. ii., 27), or, as others say, the place where the razor of the augur Nævius was deposited. Near it was the prætor’s chair, and the benches frequented by persons who had private suits, among whom the class of usurers would be most conspicuous. (Hence Hor., i., Epist. xix., 8, “Forum putealque Libonis Mandabo siccis.” ii., Sat. vi., 35.) Puteal flagellare, therefore, is taken in its primitive sense to mean, “to frequent the forum for the purpose of enforcing rigorous payment from those to whom you have lent money; or the benches of the usurers, in quest of persons to whom you may lend it on exorbitant interest.” Cf. Ov., Remed., Am., 561, “Qui puteal Janumque timet, celeresque Kalendas.” Cic., Sext., 8. In its secondary sense, it may apply to the nightly atrocities of Nero, who used to frequent the forum, violently assaulting those he met, and outrageously insulting females, not unfrequently committing robberies and even murder; but having been soundly beaten one night by a nobleman whose wife he had outraged, he went ever after attended by gladiators, as a security for his personal safety; who kept aloof until their services were required. Nero might well, therefore, be called the “scourge of the Forum,” and be said to leave scars and wales behind him in the scenes of his enormities. Juvenal (Sat. iii., 278, seq.) alludes to the same practices. A description of them at full length may be found in Tacitus (Ann., xiii., 26) and Suetonius (Vit. Neron., c. 26).
1406 Bibulas. “Those ears which are as prone to drink in the flattery of the mob as a sponge to imbibe water.”
1407 Cerdo, Put here for the lower orders generally, whose applause Nero always especially courted. So Juv., iv., 153, “Sed periit postquam cerdonibus esse timendus cœperat.” viii., 182, “Et quæ turpia cerdoni volesos Brutosque decebunt.” “Give back the rabble their tribute of applause. Let them bear their vile presents elsewhere!”
1408 Tecum habita. “Retire into yourself; examine yourself thoroughly; your abilities and powers of governing: and you will find how little fitted you are for the arduous task you have undertaken.” Compare the end of the Alcibiades. Juv., xi., 33, “Te consule, die tibi qui sis.” Hor., i., Sat. iii., 34, “Te ipsum concute.” Sen., Ep. 80, fin., “Si perpendere te voles, sepone pecuniam, domum, dignitatem: intus te ipse considera. Nunc qualis sis, aliis credis.”