juvenel satire 3 greek struck exerpt

8/3/2019 JUVENEL Satire 3 Greek Struck Exerpt

1/4

From Juvenel, Satire 3: A Greek Struck Rome.

21 Here spoke Umbricius:- "Since there is no room," quoth he, "for honest callings

in this city, no reward for labour; since my means are less to-day than they were

yesterday, and to-morrow will rub off something from the little that is left, I

purpose to go to the place where Daedalus put off his weary wings while my whitehairs are recent, while my old age is erect and fresh, while Lachesis has something

left to spin, and I can support myself on my own feet without slipping a staff

beneath my hand. Farewell my country!. . . . let those remain who turn black into

white, to whom it comes easy to take contracts for temples, rivers or harbours, for

draining floods, or carrying corpses to the pyre, or to put up slaves for sale under

the authority of the spear.[4] . . . seeing that they are of the kind that Fortune raises

from the gutter to the mighty places of earth whenever she wishes to enjoy a

laugh?

41 "What can I do at Rome? I cannot lie; if a book is bad, I cannot praise it, andbeg for a copy;. . . .

58. "And now let me speak at once of the race which is most dear to our rich men,

and which I avoid above all others; no shyness shall stand in my way. I cannot

abide, Quirites, a Rome of Greeks; and yet what fraction of our dregs comes from

Greece? The Syrian Orontes has long since poured into the Tiber, bringing with it

its lingo and its manners, its flutes and its slanting harp-strings[6]; bringing too the

timbrels of the breed, and the trulls who are bidden ply their trade at the Circus.

Out upon you, all ye that delight in foreign strumpets with painted headdresses!Your country clown, Quirinus, now trips to dinner in Greek-fangled slippers,[7]

and wears niceterian[7] ornaments upon a ceromatic[7] neck! One comes from

lofty Sicyon, another from Amydon or Andros, others from Samos, Tralles or

Alabanda; all making for the Esquiline, or for the hill that takes its name from

osier-beds[8]; all ready to worm their way into the houses of the great and become

their masters. Quick of wit and of unbounded impudence, they are as ready of

speech as Isaeus,[9] and more torrential. Say, what do you think that fellow there

to be? He has brought with him any character you please; grammarian, orator,

geometrician; painter, trainer, or rope-dancer; augur, doctor or astrologer:-

'All sciences a fasting monsieur knows,

And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes! ' [10]

In fine, the man who took to himself wings[11] was not a Moor, nor a Sarmatian,

nor a Thracian, but one born in the very heart of Athens!

81 "Must I not make my escape from purple-clad gentry like these? Is a man to


2/4

sign his name before me, and recline upon a couch better than mine, who has been

wafted to Rome by the wind which brings us our damsons and our figs? Is it to go

so utterly for nothing that as a babe I drank in the air of the Aventine, and was

nurtured on the Sabine berry?

86 "What of this again, that these people are experts in flattery, and will commendthe talk of an illiterate, or the beauty of a deformed, friend, and compare the

scraggy neck of some weakling to the brawny throat of Hercules when holding up

Antaeus[12] high above the earth; or go into ecstasies over a squeaky voice not

more melodious than that of a cock when he pecks his spouse the hen? We, no

doubt, can praise the same things that they do; but what they say is believed. Could

any actor do better when he plays the part of Thais, or of a matron, or of a Greek

slave-girl without her pallium? You would never think that it was a masked actor

that was speaking, but a very woman, complete in all her parts. Yet, in their own

country, neither Antiochus[13] nor Stratocles,[13] neither Demetrius [13] nor the

delicate Haemus,[13] will be applauded: they are a nation of play-actors. If you

smile, your Greek will split his sides with laughter; if he sees his friend drop a tear,

he weeps, though without grieving; if you call for a bit of fire in winter-time, he

puts on his cloak; if you say 'I am hot,' he breaks into a sweat. Thus we are not

upon a level, he and I; he has always the best of it, being ready at any moment, by

night or by day, to take his expression from another man's face, to throw up his

hands and applaud if his friend gives a good belch or piddles straight, or if his

golden basin make a gurgle when turned upside down.

109 "Besides all this, there is nothing sacred to his lusts: not the matron of the

family, nor the maiden daughter, not the as yet unbearded son-in-law to be, noteven the as yet unpolluted son; if none of these be there, he will debauch his

friend's grandmother. These men want to discover the secrets of the family, and so

make themselves feared. And now that I am speaking of the Greeks, pass over the

schools, and hear of a crime of a larger philosophical cloak; the old Stoic[14] who

informed against and slew his own friend and disciple[15] Barea was born on that

river bank[16] where the Gorgon's winged steed fell to earth. No: there is no room

for any Roman here, where some Protogenes, or Diphilus, or Hermarchus rules the

roast--one who by a defect of his race never shares a friend, but keeps him all to

himself. For when once he has dropped into a facile ear one particle of his own andhis country's poison, I am thrust from the door, and all my long years of servitude

go for nothing. Nowhere is it so easy as at Rome to throw an old client overboard.

. . . . . .

145 'And what of this, that the poor man gives food and occasion for jest if his

cloak be torn and dirty; if his toga be a little soiled; if one of his shoes gapes where

the leather is split, or if some fresh stitches of coarse thread reveal where not one,


3/4

but many a rent has been patched? Of all the woes of luckless poverty none is

harder to endure than this, that it exposes men to ridicule. 'Out you go! for very

shame,' says the marshal; 'out of the Knights' stalls, all of you whose means do not

satisfy the law.' Here let the sons of panders, born in any brothel, take their seats;

here let the spruce son of an auctioneer clap his hands, with the smart sons of a

gladiator on one side of him and the young gentlemen of a trainer on the other:

such was the will of the numskull Otho who assigned to each of us his place.[20]

Who ever was approved as a son-in-law if he was short of cash, and no match for

the money-bags of the young lady? What poor man ever gets a legacy, or is

appointed assessor to an aedile? Romans without money should have marched out

in a body long ago!

----

NOTES

[4] A spear was set up at auctions as the sign of ownership.

...

[6] Referring to thesambuca, a kind of harp, of triangular shape, producing a shrill

sound.

[7] Trechedipna, "a run-to-dinner coat"; ceromaticus, from ceroma, oil used by

wrestlers; and niceterium, "a prize of victory"-all used to ridicule the use of theGreek forms.

[8] i.e. the Mona Viminalis, from vimen, "an osier."

[9] An Assyrian rhetorician: not the Greek orator Isaeus.

[10] From Johnson'sLondon.

[11] Daedalus.

[12] Hercules slew Antaeus by raising him from the ground, till when he was

invincible.

[13] Names of Greek actors.

[14] Publius Egnatius Celer. See Tac.Ann. xvi. 30-32 andHist. iv. 10 and 40.

[15] For the accusation and death of Barea Soranus, see Tac.Ann. xvi. 23 and 33.

[16] i.e. at Tarsus on the river Cydnus...

[20] The law of Otho (B.C. 67) reserved for knights the first fourteen rows in the

theatre behind the orchestra where senators sat. The knights (equites) were the

wealthy middle class, each having to possess a census of 400,000 sesterces.

[21] The rendering is uncertain. Duff translates, "Take your money and keep your


4/4

cake."

[22] At this feast cakes (liba) are provided; but the guests are expected to give a tip

to the slaves. According to Duff, the client pays the slave, but is too indignant to

take the cake.

[23] Lit. "a slender flute-player"; props were so called either from theirresemblance to a flute, or to the position in which the flute was held in playing.

[24] Borrowed from Virgil,Aen. ii. 311, of the firing of Troy, iam proximus ardetVcalegon. Juvenal's friend inhabits the third floor, and the fire has broken out on

the ground floor.

[25] Celebrated Greek sculptors.

[26] i.e. vegetarians.

[27] Probably the somnolent Emperor Claudius is meant.

[28] The hundred guests are clients; each is followed by a slave carrying akitchener to keep the dole hot when received.

[29] The great Roman general under Claudius and Nero, famed for his physical

strength.

[30] Compare xiv. 133.

[31]Proseucha, a Jewish synagogue or praying-house.

[32] Aquinum

juvenel satire 3 greek struck exerpt

Documents