Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/840

 806 JUVENAL mediate references to Rome, and is written in a less angry inood than the earlier ones, may be the work of this retire ment, and that it niay have been during that time that he filled this office. On the other hand, it was by Domitian that the worship of Vespasian was established with especial sanctity, and it may be doubted whether a priesthood instituted in his honour would be recorded as a title of dignity late on in the reign of Hadrian. The lines already quoted from satire iii. imply that during his early career as a satirist Juvenal maintained his connexion with Aquinum, and that he had some special interest in the worship of the &quot; Helvinian Ceres.&quot; Nor is the tribute to the national religion implied by the dedication of the altar to Ceres inconsistent with the beliefs and feelings expressed in the satires. While the fables of mythology are often treated contemptuously or humorously by him, other passages in the satires clearly imply a conformity to and even a respect for the observances of the national religion. 1 The. spirit of Juvenal, which sought for a standard of right action rather in the old Roman and Italian traditions than in the tenets of philosophy, would incline him to sympathize with the revival of religious observance and also of a kind of belief in divine agency on human affairs, which accompanied the establishment of the empire. The evidence as to the military post filled by him is curious, when taken in connexion with the confused tradition of his exile in a position of military importance ; and there appears to be some further evidence that the cohort of which he was tribune was quartered in Britain. But it cannot be said that the satires bear traces of military experience. The life described in them is such as would present itself to the eyes of a civilian, and would be talked about and commented on at the dinner tables and in the clubs, baths, theatres, and places of public resort in the great metropolis. 2 The only other contemporary evidence which affords a glimpse of his actual life is contained in three epigrams of Martial. Two of these (vii. 24 and 91) were written in the time of Domitian, the other (xii. 18) early in the reign of Trajan, after Martial had retired to his native Bilbilis. The first of these epigrams, addressed to some backbiter who had endeavoured to embroil the two friends with one another, attests the strong regard which Martial felt for him ; but the subject of the epigram seems to hint that there may have been something suspicious or uneasy in the temper of the satirist, which made the maintenance of a steady friendship with him difficult. In the second of these epigrams, addressed to Juvenal himself, the epithet &quot;facundus&quot; is applied to him, one which might equally l&amp;gt;e employed whether he was best known at the time as a writer of poetic satires or as an eloquent rhetorician. In the last Martial imagines his friend wandering about dis contentedly (inquietus) through the crowded streets of Rome, and undergoing all the discomforts incident to attendance on the levees of the great : &quot; Dum per limina te potcntiorum Sudatrix toga ventilat.&quot; Two lines in _the poem (22-3) suggest that the satirist, who has inveighed with just severity against the worst corruptions of Roman morals, was not too rigid a censor of the morals of his friend. Indeed, his intimacy with Martial is a ground for not attributing to him exceptional strictness of life. The additional information as to the poet s life and cir cumstances derivable from the satires themselves is not 1 See especially xiii. 3-16. 2 Comp. i. 145, &quot;It nova uec tristis per cunctas fabula cenas&quot;; xi. 3 sq. Omuls convictus, thermae, stationes. omne theatrum De Rutilo.&quot; important. He tells us what might easily be inferred from the number of allusions to the Greek and Latin poets con tained in his satires, that he had enjoyed the training which all educated men received in his day (i. 15) ; he indicates, as was mentioned above, his connexion with the old Volscian town Aquinum ; he speaks of his farm in the territory of Tibur (xi. 64), which furnished a young kid and moun tain asparagus for a homely dinner to which he invites a friend during the festival of the Megalesiaca. In the satire in which this invitation is contained, and in one or two more of the later ones, he seems partially to remove the mask which he wears in the earlier and more directly aggressive satires. From it we are able to form an idea of the style in which he habitually lived, and to think of him as enjoy ing a hale and vigorous age (line 203), and also as a kindly master of a household (159 sq.). The negative evidence, afforded in the account of his establishment, and the bitter tone in which his friend is reminded of his domestic un- happiness (186-9), suggest the inference that, like Lucilius and Horace, Juvenal had no personal experience of either the. cares or the softening influence of family life. A comparison of this poem with the invitation of Horace to Torquatus (-Ep., i. 5) brings out strongly the .differences not in urbanity only but in kindly feeling between the two satirists. It reminds us also of how much less we know of the one poet than of the other, and of how shadowy a personage the Persius of the one is as contrasted with the Torquatus of the other. An excellent critic of Latin literature, M. Gaston Boissier, has drawn from the indications afforded of the career and character of the persons to whom the satires are addressed most unfavour able conclusions as to the social circumstances and associations of Juvenal. If we believe that the Trebius, Posturnus, Ponticus, Nsevolus, Fersicus, of the satires were real people, with, whom Juvenal lived in intimacy, we should conclude that he was most unfortunate in his associates, and that his own relations to them were marked rather by outspoken frankness than civility. But these personages seem to be more &quot;nominis umbrae&quot; than real men ; they serve the purpose of enabling the satirist to aim his blows at one particular object instead of declaiming at. large. They have none of the individuality and traits of personal character discernible in the Damasippus or Trebatius of Horace s satires, or the Julius Florus, the Torquatus, the Celsus, the Fuscus, the Bullatius, &c., of the epistles. It is noticeable that, while Juvenal writes of the poets and men of letters, Statins, Saleius Bassus, Quintilian, &c., of a somewhat earlier time, as if they were still living, he has no reference to the career or reputation of his friend Martial, and that he is equally silent about the two illustrious writers who wrote their works during the years of his own literary activity,- the younger Pliny and Tacitus. It is equally noticeable that among the many cultivated and estimable men and women who are brought before us in the correspondence of the former of these writers the name of Juvenal does not appear. We feel on more certain ground in endeavouring to de termine the times at which the satires were given to the world. But these do not in all cases coincide with those at which they were written and to which they immediately refer. Thus the manners and personages of the age of Domitiau often supply the material of satiric representa tion, and are spoken of as if they belonged to the actual life of the present, 3 while allusions even in the earliest show that, as a finished literary composition, it belongs to the age of Trajan. The most probable explanation of these discrepancies is that already hinted at, viz., that in their present form the satires are the work of the last thirty years of the poet s life, while the first nine at least, the most powerful and most characteristic among them, not only reproduce the im pressions of his earlier manhood, but may have preserved with little change passages written and perhaps familiarly known in his own literary circles during this earlier time. 3 This is especially noticeable in the seventh satire, but it applies also to the mention of Crispinus, Latinus, the class of delatores, &c., in the first, to the notice of Yeiento iu the third, of Rubellius Blan- dus in the eighth, of Gallicus in the thirteenth, &c.