Watching the World Unravel:
Juvenal’s Satirical Mechanics
By
Timothy Michael Haase
B.A., Fordham University, 2005
Dissertation
Submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Classics at Brown University
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND
MAY 2013
© Copyright 2013 by Timothy M. Haase
This dissertation by Timothy Haase is accepted in its present form by the Department of
Classics as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Date
John Bodel, Advisor
Recommended to the Graduate Council
Date
Joseph Reed, Reader
Date
Kirk Freudenburg, Reader
Approved by the Graduate Council
Date
Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School
iii
CURRICULUM VITAE
Timothy M. Haase was born on June 3, 1983 in Metairie, Louisiana, USA. He first began
Latin at the age of 13 in his first year at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, LA, starting
Greek a year later. He continued his studies of Latin and Greek at Fordham University in
Bronx, NY; he excelled there, a member of the highly select Honors Program and elected
to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year (2003-4). He graduated from Fordham in 2005
summa cum laude, in cursu honorum, with a major in Classical Languages and a minor in
Classical Civilization, having completed an honors thesis (advised by Harry B. Evans)
entitled “Amor and Rape: Sexual Violence in Ovid’s Fasti.” He immediately began his
graduate career as a Ph.D. student at Brown University in the fall of 2005, having been
awarded a Jukowsky Fellowship upon his admission. During his graduate career, he held
several positions of service to his department and the graduate school; in particular, he
served, with Lauren Donovan (Ph.D., Brown ’11), as Co-Coordinator of Professional
Development for Graduate Students in the Classics Department. He has presented several
papers at graduate student and professional conferences, mostly related to the interplay
between content and mechanics in Greek and Latin texts. In addition, since 2011 he has
been a Visiting Instructor of Classics at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work would simply not exist without the presence of friends, colleagues, and
loved ones who have supported me throughout its long gestation period. First and
foremost is John Bodel, whose tireless support and encouragement has given me a
following wind ever since my arrival in Providence. My work has also become much
more rigorous and incisive as a result of the insightful comments of my readers, Jay Reed
and Kirk Freudenburg. A final thanks is owed to the entire faculty and staff of the Brown
Classics Department, especially those who have helped improve my writing and thought
over the years via thoughtful commentary on other projects.
A second debt of gratitude is due to all my graduate student colleagues whom it
has been my pleasure to befriend and engage with since 2005. I have been blessed to
enter as encouraging and fruitful an intellectual atmosphere as the Brown Classics
Department. Though it would be impossible to list all those from Classics and affiliated
programs who have somehow helped bring this project to fruition through intellectual or
emotional support, a few figures deserve to singled out for especial recognition: Lauren
Donovan (one could not ask for a better cohort), Leo Landrey, Cynthia Swanson,
Mitchell Parks and Scott DiGiulio. One last figure who deserves to be singled out for her
assistance in helping me formulate, refine, and express my thought about Juvenal as this
project coalesced is Robin McGill; answering her probing questions on our commute
together to Wheaton College was a necessary step in defining the boundaries and goals of
this dissertation.
Gratitude is likewise due to the unstinting support and respect of my parents and
the surrogate families that have adopted me since my move to the Northeast 12 years ago
(especially the Ciarcias, the Griffins, the Brunos, and the Giulianis).
Finally, endless love and thanks are due to my wonderful and caring wife and
“executive producer,” Delphina Ciarcia-Haase, without whose patience, selflessness, and
devotion this project could never have been realized.
.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
pg.
Introduction and Orientations: From “Voice” to “Vision”………..............…....1
A. Will the “real” Juvenal please stand up? .................................................6
B. Orientations: Vision in Ancient Rome………………..........……........... 14
C. Visualized Meaning in Juvenal………………………………….............22
D. What are we looking at? Meaning and Representation
in Juvenal’s World………………………………………....................... 30
Chapter 1. A Panopticon of Vice: The Rhetoric of Exposure in Juvenal 2….... 45
A. The Hair Down There………………………………………...................49
B. The Translucent Show: Laronia and Creticus…………………….......... 55
C. Behind Closed Doors………………………………............................... 63
D. Monsters and their Mates: Gracchus on Parade…………………........... 67
E. Bottom Floor: Ancestors and Perverts…………………………..............75
Chapter 2. The Mirage of “Nobility”: Reference and Negotiation in Juvenal 8...78
A. Home is Where the Hatred is…………………………………................82
B. What’s in a Name(d)? ………………………………………..................88
C. Let’s Talk It Out: Rubellius and Ponticus………………………............92
D. Liminality and the Immoral Show of Rome………………………........ 103
E. The History Lesson………………………………………….................. 119
Chapter 3. Laughter and Myopia: the Worldview of Juvenal 10….................... 126
A. Who’s Laughing Now? ……………………………………....................133
B. Have You Heard the News About Sejanus? ……………………............142
C. All the King’s Horses and All the King’ Speeches………………..........151
D. …Long After the Thrill of Living is Gone………………………...........168
E. Eye of the Beholder…………………………………………..................187
F. The Answer Behind the Curtain………………………………...............197
Chapter 4. The Devils Inside: Female “Threats” to Roman Satire in Juvenal 6...203
A. She Takes Just Like a Woman… …………………………….................210
B. Ugly on the Inside: Women, Cosmetics, and Deception…………..........223
C. The Bleeding Heart Show……………………………………................ 231
D. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet………………………………….................247
Conclusion.................................................................................................................255
Appendix: Juvenal and Modern “Self-Consuming” Literature...........................262
Bibliography…………………………………………………..................................271
vi
Introduction and Orientations: From “Voice” to “Vision”
You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light upon a
thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print
in the sand indicates the tiger’s passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus
flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are
only what they are.
Finally the journey leads to the city of Tamara. You penetrate it along streets thick
with signboards jutting from walls. The eye does not see things but images of things that
mean other things: pincers point out the tooth-drawer’s house; a tankard, the tavern;
halberds, the barracks; scales, the grocer’s. Statues and shields depict lions, dolphins,
towers, stars: a sign that something—who knows what?—has as its sign a lion or a
dolphin or a tower or a star. Other signals warn of what is forbidden in a given place (to
enter the alley with wagons, to urinate behind the kiosk, to fish with your pole from the
bridge) and what is allowed (watering zebras, playing bowls, burning relatives’ corpses).
From the doors of the temples the gods’ statues are seen, each portrayed with his
attributes—the cornucopia, the hour-glass, the medusa—so that the worshiper can
recognize them and address his prayers correctly. If a building has no signboard or figure,
its very form and the position it occupies in the city’s order suffice to indicate its
function: the palace, the prison, the mint, the Pythagorean school, the brothel. The wares,
too, which the vendors display on their stalls are valuable not in themselves but as signs
of other things: the embroidered headband stands for elegance; the gilded palanquin,
power; the volumes of Averroes, learning; the ankle bracelet, voluptuousness. Your gaze
scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think,
makes you repeat her discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are
only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts.
However the city may really be, beneath this thick coating of signs, whatever it may
contain or coneal, you leave Tamara without having discovered it. Outside, the land
stretches, empty, to the horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds. In the shape that
chance and wind give the clouds, you are already intent on recognizing figures: a sailing
ship, a hand, an elephant. . . .
(“Cities and signs. 1.” from Invisible Cities [Calvino 1974: 13-14])
Juvenal was supposed to be the easy Roman satirist. The reader does not have to
attempt to stitch together tatters from what was clearly a variegated satiric quilt, as he
does for Lucilius. Juvenal likewise seems to lack the self-consciously multi-dimensional
irony that defines the work of Horace (hexameter, iambic, and lyric alike) nor is he
clouded by the obscuritas and motley imagery that pervade Persius. In the scholarship of
1
the last several decades, Horace remains the detached, ironical teacher; yet, perhaps
because of the obvious multivalence, the “meaning” of Horace’s task seems somewhat
easier to pin down, in that it is supposed to be hard to pin down. His text is rich in its
interaction with its generic models (which include New Comedy and Hellenistic diatribe
along with Horace’s stated predecessor Lucilius) and contemporary politics; but, because
Horace makes himself a moving target, his readers’ attention has been all the more
focused.1 Similarly, Persius’ difficulties in language and imagery have similarly made
sympathetic readers that much more attuned and ingenious; his intertextual relationship
with Horace and the complex bond he creates between his private devotion to Stoicism
and the public orientation of satire create an intimidating surface, but, upon penetrating,
he appears somewhat straightforward. 2
Juvenal was originally so much the easier to categorize, but the categorizations
kept contradicting each other: Is he the poet of saeva indignatio3 or is the coolly
“rhetorical” satirist?4 Is Juvenal’s language an amalgam of grand style and sermo
1
Recent full length studies include Schlegel 2006, Freudenburg 1993, and Oliensis 1991 along with
informative chapters/sections in the major monographs on satire that emerged at the outset of the 21 st
century: Freudenburg 2001, Plaza 2006, and individual sections of each of the generic explorations of
Keane 2006.
2
Cucchiarelli 2005 gives an excellent succinct summary of the intertextual and Stoic aspects of Persius’
satiric approach. Bramble 1974 remains the departure point for contemporary studies of Persius; for a more
recent full length study, see Hooley 1997.
3
The collocation is first made in the epitaph of that most Juvenalian of modern authors, Jonathan Swift,
who lies interred in Dublin under the inscripition, “Ubi sæva Indignatio/ Ulterius/Cor lacerare nequit.” (ll.
5-7). See Weber 1981 for more on the reception of verse satire in the English Augustan era and how this
has affected the constructions of our satirical categories (namely, “Horation” and “Juvenalian” as general
critical terms).
4
The classic catalogue on the source of Juvenal’s thought in his rhetorical milieu is de Decker 1913. For a
more recent discussion of the impact of rhetoric on the style and content of Persius and Juvenal, which
identifies a more dynamic interaction between the satirists and the “authority” of imperial rhetoric, see van
den Berg 2012.
2
pedestris or are the heights towards which he stretches one big joke?5 He appears the
most politically engaged of the Roman satirists (naming half a dozen previous emperors,
and none kindly).6 But his victims, emperors included, are all dead—as he himself tells
us (1.170-71).7 Is he then using the dead as timeless models for contemporary social ills?
Or is he the “real” ill?8 Further, Juvenal appears to draw on many of the genres he
lambasts in his opening lines:
Semper ego auditor tantum? numquamne reponam
vexatus totiens rauci Theseide Cordi?
inpune ergo mihi recitaverit ille togatas,
hic elegos? inpune diem consumpserit ingens
Telephus aut summi plena iam margine libri
5
scriptus et in tergo necdum finitus Orestes?
(1.1-5)
Will I always be just an audience? Will I never get to take my revenge, when I’ve
been exasperated so many times by the Theseid of Cordus, going hoarse? So they’ll get
away with all these declamations at me? That one, plays with togas, this one, elegies?
They’ll get away with their huge Telephus gobbling up my. Entire. Day. or that Orestes,
scribbled up to the very edges of the paper and on the back to boot, still not finished?9
Recent scholars have tracked within his work the footprints of elegy (particularly
in Satire 6),10 Horace’s lyric,11 philosophical texts,12 epigram,13 history,14 the theater (see
5
Scott 1927, though dated, remains the most detailed exposition of Juvenal’s relationship with the so-called
“Grand Style.” See Powell 1999 for objections to the communis opinio on the grand style of Juvenal,
particularly as seen in the famous passage 6.634-638, the most frequent citation of Juvenal’s “tragic”
satirical program.
6
See Ramage 1989 for an extended catalogue and discussion of Juvenal’s reference to imperial
predecessors.
7
The bibiliography on these two lines is immense. Important contributions include Anderson 1982: 207-9.
(orig. 1957), Kenney 1962, Martyn 1970, Griffith 1970, Fredericksmayer 1990, Freudenburg 2001: 234-42,
and Plaza 2006: 46-50.
8
See, in particular, Winkler 1983, discussed below (in section A) and Anderson 1982: 297-314 (orig. 1964).
9
All quotations of Juvenal, unless otherwise noted, are drawn from Clausen’s OCT; all translations are my
own.
10
Nardo 1973 and, more recently, Watson 2007a and Watson 2007b. Farrell 2003, in his discussion of the
development of Roman elegy, tantalizingly hints at some of shared traits of Roman elegy and satire, but
leaves them unexplored (406 n. 44).
3
section C below), and, most of all, epic.15 Does Juvenal subordinate these genres to satire
or, perhaps more problematically, does he place these literary endeavors alongside his
own, hinting that it will suffer from the same vulnerabilities as they do?
Recent scholarship has fully embraced this ambivalence. What this study will add
to contemporary trends is a detailed consideration of Juvenal’s satire as a self-conscious
construction of a “visual text” of Rome. Juvenal’s “mechanics,” i.e. the way that his
words construct that text (whether by dramatizing his victims in tableaux throughout
Rome or metonymically reducing their rotten character to concrete external details or
“renaming” them as figures from Rome’s past), rely on a straightforward semiotic
formula: scene A or physical feature A or name A points unambiguously to moral flaw or
folly B. I will argue below that this formula is tied to visual models of depiction and
interpretation in Juvenal.
Yet what comes to define the Rome of Juvenal is exactly the breakdown of these
easy associations and metonymies; the semiotic logic underlying Juvenal’s methods can
thus be shown to be self-defeating in light of his satiric object. This “failure,” the shortcircuiting of straightforward correspondence between sign and meaning, is precisely what
11
Littlewood 2008, which traces overlaps of the idyllic scenes of sacrifice in Sat. 12 with scenes from
Horatian lyric.
12
Even as Juvenal claims to have ignored it: accipe quae contra valeat solacia ferre/ et qui nec Cynicos
nec Stoica dogmata legit/ a Cynicis tunica distantia, non Epicurum/ suspicit exigui laetum plantaribus horti
(13.121-24). Keane 2007 gives a recent account of the interaction, identifying models for each of the satires
in Bk. 5 in different philosophical texts, such as Satire 15’s debt to Cicero’s Tusculan Disputationes.
13
On the relationship, see especially Mason 1963, Anderson 1982: 362-95, and Colton 1991, who gives an
exhaustive survey, satire by satire, of Juvenal’s intertextual debt to Martial.
14
Keane 2012 has argued for a much more dynamic, almost competitive, edge to Juvenal’s allusions to
Tacitus.
15
Henderson 1999: 249-73, Connors 2005 (on all the satirists), Freudenburg 2005a; Jones 2007: 95-116
considers epic to be the primary genre against which satire defines itself.
4
will define the representative process of the text. For the compromised way in which
Juvenal’s satires will come to represent Rome embodies the unruly atmosphere better
than mere specular reflection would have. Juvenal’s image of the disruption of traditional
value and meaning in Rome will operate not only at the level of content (e.g. his
depiction of the elevation of the vulgar freedman over decent, hard-working Roman in
Umbricius’ monologue in Satire 3) but also at the level of mechanics, problematizing his
means of depicting the turbulence of Rome.
What will invoke these complex ideas of representation is the way that Juvenal
draws on the visual practices, both social and aesthetic, of contemporary Rome. Recent
studies of Roman visual practice have elucidated the importance of vision in, e.g., epic,16
but less focus has been paid to satire, particularly its most vivid practitioner, Juvenal. In
the following pages, this study will propose a scheme of understanding Juvenal that
moves away from overriding considerations of the satirist’s “voice” and towards an
understanding of his visual practices. I will argue that the prominence of visualization
itself as moral comment in Juvenal will evoke literary problems of representation, namely
the question of the correspondence between a depicted object and the text which contains
that depiction. I will begin with some remarks on the troubling aspects of the still
dominant theory of Juvenal’s “voice,” especially as it appears in discussions of the
persona theory. As background to a new, more visually-oriented critical approach to
Juvenal, I will then briefly sketch the cultural background of visual practices and how
notions of vision were brought to bear morally, socially, and aesthetically in the Rome of
Juvenal’s era. I will continue by giving a few examples of how Juvenal constructs
satirical meaning in a fundamentally visual way and will then demonstrate how this
16
See, e.g., Leigh 1997; Lovatt 2006.
5
visualizing and externalizing mode runs counter to its content, arguing that this clash is a
basic part of Juvenal’s poetic program of depicting Rome. This study will examine
Satires from the first four books of Juvenal’s Satires to show that, though there are
diachronic developments in Juvenal, his concerns with meaning and representation can be
identified throughout his corpus.17
A. Will the “real” Juvenal please speak up?
Juvenal remains one of the most mysterious and least attested figures in the Latin
classical canon. There exist few certain references to him besides three epigrams of
Martial (7.24, 7.91, 12.18).18 Nor does he talk much of himself in his satire.19 It should be
said at the outset of this review that all we have of Juvenal the author is his text, and any
judgments about his sincerity, moral purpose, or identity must stem entirely from it.
Though challenges to the “sincerity” of the poet’s voice began to find an outlet
near the turn of the 20th century, 20 it was William S. Anderson who single-handedly
advanced formal criticism of Roman verse satire. In response to the biographical
17
Cf. Knoche 1970: 499, who posits a Geist common to all of Juvenal’s satires; this study will be more
precise in assigning this shared “attitude” a much more specific reference, namely, the examination of
issues of meaning and its self-consuming discursive practices.
18
Syme 1979b examines particularly the value of the inscription at Arpinum recording the name sometimes
used of him, Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, eventually dismissing its value in identifying the poet. Instead, he
suggests a provincial origin—North Africa perhaps? Syme 1979a more fully considers possible interactions
with two major contemporaries (Tacitus and Pliny) and gives a dating scheme based on the publication
histories of the Annales and Juvenal’s presumed interaction with them. He concludes: “To posterity the
satirist Juvenal remains an isolated and enigmatic figure (he willed it thus). No friend is verifiable and
tangible, except for Martial.” (15)
19
1.15-17, 11.203-8, and 15.45 are among the few references Juvenal seems to make to his youth or
adulthood.. See Keane 2002 and Plaza 2006: 235-43 on some of the interpretive possibilities of these
limited references.
20
Inaugurated by the groundbreaking study of rhetorical commonplaces in Juvenal by Josué de Decker,
Iuvenalis Declamans (1913). Wiesen 1963 and Kenney 1963 give a good summary of the two positions,
then alive in the contemporary debate, and thus offer a valuable snapshot of the landscape of Juvenalian
scholarship before Anderson’s innovations became absorbed into the critical mainstream.
6
approach of scholars such as Gilbert Highet,21 Anderson adapted the approach used by
Alvin Kernan toward English satire in his Cankered Muse: Satire of the English
Renaissance (1959). In a series of articles published in the 1960s,22Anderson separated
“author” and “satirist” and identified a set of contradictions that constitute of the figure of
the “satirist,” a mask (persona) thought to be consciously constructed by the author.
Satire becomes a kind of “self-consistent drama,” acted by satirist figures whose bluster,
self-contradictions, and hyperboles become part of the drama.
In addition, Anderson specifically situated this play of satirist and author in a
Roman context: “Juvenal devised angry satire in order to exploit the long moralistic
tradition of Roman culture and to utilize the possibilities for ambivalence in the role of
the indignant moralist.”23 He further argued that the Roman audience would not have
sided with the speaker, as he displayed a level of anger that would have been
philosophically unacceptable, and readers may even have refigured their own moral
attitudes in response to his example.24 This is further confirmed, according to Anderson,
by Juvenal’s deliberate abandonment of the “angry” satirist from Satires 1 through 6 and
his construction of new personae, becoming the “Democritean” satirist in Bk. 4 and even
more detached and cynical in Bk. 5.25 In Anderson’s conception, Juvenal’s satire
21
Embodied in Highet 1954, which, as the only English full-length overview of Juvenal’s career, retains
some value, especially in his discussion of Juvenal’s medieval and renaissance reception (180-232), despite
its defunct chapters of biographical reconstruction (1-41).
22
23
All reprinted in Anderson 1982: 197-486.
Anderson 1982: 390 (orig. 1970)
24
The main point of Anderson 1982: 293-361 (orig. 1964). Anderson 1985 offers a similar use of this
approach as applied to a later satire, Satire 15.
25
Anderson 1982: 277-292 (orig. 1962); cf. Braund 1988: 184-98. Anderson argues against prevailing
views that the obvious change in mood is rather prompted by a decline in satirical powers (Highet 1954) or
7
becomes on this reading considerably more opaque vis-à-vis its supposed topics, as the
audience’s gaze shifts from the satirists’ objects to the satirist himself.
Despite a cogent response by Highet,26 Anderson’s approach was fully integrated
into scholarship within a decade: it became regular, for example, to include a disclaimer
separating the “satirist” from the author Juvenal (even if this distinction was not
necessarily pertinent).27 Susanna Braund, the most prominent Juvenalian scholar of the
last few decades indebted to Anderson’s approach, has consistently heralded its value and
expanded its boundaries.28 Martin Winkler, focusing on the three most sexually charged
satires (2, 6, and 9) took the approach perhaps to its logical extreme: to Winkler, the
biased satirist himself (i.e. “Juvenal”) is the “true” social ill that the author Juvenal
describes.29
Yet more recent challenges have emerged to the persona theory, attacking both its
premises and its basis in supposedly ancient conceptualizations of the distance between
author and internal speaker. Of considerable weight is Roland Mayer’s recent summary
of the ancient evidence for the approach: “The modern concept of the use of the authorial
persona was demonstrably unavailable to the ancient reader or writer-as-reader, who had
in light of the development of his biography (Lindo 1974, who uses Horace’s biography and poetic career
as analogous).
26
Highet 1974, perhaps dated in its formal criteria (the separation of narrative/dramatic poetry from lyric-I
poetry, and the further subdivision of the I-poetry), anticipates the moral recent work of Mayer
investigating the ancient concept of the authorial voice and ancient reading practices more carefully.
27
A small sample: Sweet 1979: 283-4; Romano 1979: 19 (and 220 n. 86); Hudson 1989: 71 and 136 n. 6;
Keane 2006: 9.
28
See Braund 1988 (which, though focusing on the transitional ‘ironic’ persona of Bk. 3, offers a general
account of the development of Juvenal’s persona over the his entire oeuvre, esp. 1-23 on the indignant
satirist), Braund 1992, Braund 1996a, and Braund 1996b. The title of the last, an overview of Roman satire,
confirms the primacy of the persona in her approach: Roman Satirists and Their Masks.
29
Winkler 1983, esp. 207-229.
8
his own very different notion about the use made by the personal poet of masks.”30 He
argues that Roman authors read their predecessors’ works biographically, including the
satirists themselves (cf. Horace’s picture of a Lucilius who entrusted his life to his books
as if to a friend, Serm. 2.1.30-34).31 Though Mayer seems to ignore some important
evidence (the milieu of declamatio in which Juvenal emerges plays a large role in
Anderson’s original argument, but is not mentioned by Mayer), the objections he raises
on the ancient primary evidence are pertinent.
Maria Plaza, in a section of her recent monograph on humor in Roman verse
satire (“The Question of Trust in Juvenal’s Speaker”, a subsection of her more general
overview of Juvenal’s subject-oriented humor, “Juvenal: To Laugh with Him or at
Him?”), specifically takes on the question of persona as it involves Juvenal and “whether
the blatantly prejudiced and extremist persona of many of his satires…should be read as
undermined or endorsed by the author.”32 After an account of Juvenal’s ambivalent
portrayal of Umbricius, she then moves on to the modern arguments concerning
“Juvenal” (as satirical construct of Juvenal), cataloguing several serious methodological
problems. For example, such arguments often work by implication and generalization;
comparisons with other genres can be deceptive, as these comparisons often ignore
30
Mayer 2003: 57.
31
Mayer further argues that the poems usually summoned as ancient evidence of the separation of subject
and author (such as Cat. 16) are inconclusive, because they are read out of the specific context in which that
separation is generated. Nor would a persona offer the kind of protection from prosecution or infamy often
imagined; LaFleur 1988 takes seriously Horace’s warning about excessive criticism and points to the
possible legal consequences of insulting the wrong people. As Mayer flatly states, “the persona really
offered no protection.” (Mayer 2003: 77)
32
Plaza 2006: 243.
9
inherent generic differences in approach and goal.33 Often, as Plaza shows, the more
detached, ironic attitude of the later poems in Juvenal’s corpus is used as a benchmark to
judge the earlier poems without acknowledging the inherently destabilizing effects of
irony or justifying why the later poems should be a yardstick for the earlier. More
importantly, she argues that commentators’ attempts to instate the persona of “Juvenal”
as the “real” object of the satire, in order to save the apparent objects of his satiric attack,
probably derives from modern sensibilities and an impulse to exonerate Juvenal from the
views that the modern progressive reader does not find appropriate.34 Nor does the
persona answer the questions which the construction seeks to address: as Ralph Rosen
has argued, couched in a larger discussion about Juvenal’s place in the larger ancient
tradition of aischrôlogia and ponêria, the persona-approach does not really resolve the
content of satire, that is, its “fundamental didactic and moral claims.”35
As Plaza rightly points out, another consequence of too enthusiastically
embracing the orthodox view of Juvenalian persona is that it downplays the remarkable
insights made in recent years as regards Juvenal’s depiction of Rome as an example of
Roman ideology. Indeed, the personal and cultural objects of Juvenal’s satire, rather than
its subject (“Juvenal”), have received the most sophisticated and nuanced examinations in
recent years.
33
In particular, Anderson’s argument concerning a Roman audience’s reception is founded on a
comparison of Juvenal with Senecan philosophy (Anderson 1982: 293-361, orig.1964)
34
She compares Juvenal’s reception to that of Archie Bunker, a character who was warmly received even
by those who found his views distasteful; she contines, “liberal readers, liking the impression of the satire
but disliking its prejudiced hero, are trying to save at least the poet through the gap that humour creates
between the author and his bigoted character.” (Plaza 2006: 256 n. 174)
35
Rosen 2008: 219-222, quote from 222.
10
Recent readings have argued that Juvenal does reveal a kind of “reality,” but an
ideological rather than physical one. The ideological reality of satire has been examined
particularly richly through the prism of feminist approaches, particularly in Satires 2, 6,
and 9. Amy Richlin’s Garden of Priapus, on sexual aggression in Roman humor, which
devotes an entire chapter to Juvenal, remains a groundbreaking example of this
approach.36 Her study is founded on the psychological theory of “outsider” mockery,
which often acts to reaffirm social norms by mockery of their opposite. For Richlin, the
ithyphallic, aggressive guardian god Priapus acts as an symbol for the attack of Roman
sexual poetry, in which obscenity works to stain its object as Priapus threatens to
penetrate those who enter his garden. When Juvenal “makes the mask of Priapus his own
persona,” he does not then remove it to wink at a tolerant and knowing audience.37
John Henderson has given a more intricate and complex view of the intertwining
of ideology and Roman satire, underlining how problematic the satiric project is, in that it
tends to attack its own authority in a frenzied act of (self-)cannibalism.38 Kirk
Freudenburg, in a recent monograph, also imagines the social project of satire and its
politics in an attempt to move away from overly formalist critiques.39 He focuses on how
36
Richlin 1983.
37
Richlin 1983: 195. Much feminist scholarship on Juvenal, unsurprisingly focusing on Sat. 6, has
followed in this mold, including Johnson 1996, Gold 1994, and Gold 1998. Similarly ideological in vein,
though expanding beyond a strictly “feminist” approach, is Shumate 2006: 19-54, which demonstrates the
way that Juvenal, as a part of project to define Roman, masculine identity, often conflates three separate
groups of Others (women, homosexuals, and foreigners) so that they have matching characteristics; she
then gives a modern analogue in the depiction of various groups of “Others” in the propaganda of Nazi
Germany.
38
Henderson 1999: 173-201.
39
Cf. his introduction to his edited companion to Roman Satire: “But this kind of study, by now, has
perhaps gone on too long. Or, to put this more positively, the time is now ripe for it to be pushed farther
and made to pay bigger dividends. For such studies in the field of classics especially, useful as they are,
have tended to blunt satire’s political edge by focusing on how certain effects are mechanically produced
11
the development of a narrative of a genre, “Roman Satire,” is a construction best
examined in light of another construction, “Rome,” particularly in the way that Lucilius’
successors in Roman satire chose to deal with the “loss” of the libertas which was
thought to characterize his verses. In the chapter devoted to Juvenal, Freudenburg focuses
on Juvenal’s explicit belatedness and how it participates in the Trajanic-era practice of
retrospective demonizing of Domitian (showing contemporary parallels in Pliny and
Tacitus), each man scrambling to prove how anti-tyrannical he was—but only after the
fact, and while remaining reticent on more strictly contemporary affairs. Juvenal both
performs this task and, in passages of ambiguous interpretation, questions it—challenging
his audience’s ability to claim the libertas they think they are entitled to.
Though the concerns of this study will prove to be more poetological, it is
indebted to this renewed focus on the “objects” of Juvenal’s satire and the destabilizing
implications of his attack. In light of the some of the limitations and blind spots of
persona theory raised by Mayer, Plaza, Rosen, et al., this study will move away from the
idea of “voice” as the primary critical concept in reading Juvenal. In its place, it will
focus on Juvenal’s “vision,” that is, the visual logic of the construction of Rome in his
text. I will argue that the satiric value of Juvenal’s text lies in the way he envisions the
Roman social and moral landscape and the way he simultaneously he challenges the
operations of that visionary project.40 This challenge will emerge most obviously in those
rather than on how they have played in the highly tendentious political worlds wherein they were produced.
This is the downside of analysis fixated on form.” (2005b 28-29)
40
My use of “landscape” here is decidedly metaphorical. Though I will take some account of Roman
topography and its metonymic significance as it appears in Juvenal, for the most part, I am less concerned
with how Juvenal maps Rome than with how he “maps” satire. Gold 1999 and Larmour 2007 both offer
reviews of the major defined topographical features in Juvenal (the Subura, the Porta Capena, sites of
spectacle, etc.), but the movement, which Larmour (174) traces in Satire 6, into the undefined space of
12
satires in which he tries vigorously to control the slippage of meaning and value in Rome
(namely, Satires 2, 8, and 10)
Indeed, scholars have often praised Juvenal for his visual imagination and vigor.
As Victoria Rimmel notes, scholars often employ metaphors from cinematography and
the visual arts to describe Juvenal, giving an example: “[The] hyperbolic is lined up with
the microscopic,…painting in epigrammatic flashes or zooming in for a close-up before
panning out for the skyline shot.”41 The reader comes face to face with this visualizing
impulse in Juvenal almost immediately: after Juvenal takes a deep breath (1.1-21),42 he
presents a scene of unbearable vice:
cum tener uxorem ducat spado, Mevia Tuscum
figat aprum et nuda teneat venabula mamma,
patricios omnis opibus cum provocet unus
quo tondente gravis iuveni mihi barba sonabat,
cum pars Niliacae plebis, cum verna Canopi
Crispinus Tyrias umero revocante lacernas
ventilet aestivum digitis sudantibus aurum
nec sufferre queat maioris pondera gemmae,
difficile est saturam non scribere.
25
30 (1.22-30)
When the “tender” eunuch takes a wife, and Mevia snags a Tuscan boar and holds the
nets with her tit showing, when one man challenges all the patricians with his wealth—a
guy who used to make my beard resound with his snipping!—when some piece of the
Egyptian mob, some house-slave of Canopus, Crispinus, while his shoulder hitches up
Roman streets and “neighborhoods” (e.g., Clytemnestram nullus non vicus habebit, 6.656) figures, to an
extent, the importance of specific topographical reference in the whole of the corpus.
41
Rimmel 2005: 86. Braund and Raschke 2002: 80, similarly use camera imagery when discussing how
Juvenal describes a parade of evildoers through one or two features. Rosen 2008, commenting on 9.145-46
(sit mihi praeterea curvus caelator, et alter/ qui multas facies pingit cito), when Naevolus (acting as
Juvenal’s stand-in for the moment, as Rosen argues) adds an engraver to the list of the entourage to which
he feels entitled: “Does not the satirist “engrave” vivid images of his characters, or paint the portraits of
multas facies?” Cf. Kenney 1963: 719; Jenkyns 1982: 173-81; Witke 1970: 117 etc. Though Juvenal is not,
strictly speaking, a narrative, we can still profitably consider the schema of narratological perspectives
available to the narrator, located along two axes, a) from panorama to scenic to close-up and b) focalized
within a character’s perception or not, as discussed by De Jong and Nünlist 2004.
42
The best exposition of Juvenal’s opening section is Henderson 1999 249-73, where he discusses the
identification of writer and reader which this mimetic opening enacts (which he terms antimetathesis) as
well as the play of allusion, particularly with Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, that the dense epic imagery of
lines 7-13 activates.
13
some scarlet cloak, he flutters the steamy gold on his sweaty fingers, and he can’t even
endure to hold up the weight of the bigger gem, it is difficult not to write satire.
Before considering in greater detail the visual orientation of Juvenal’s satirical
techniques, it is necessary to review the relationship between Juvenal’s visual
imagination and Roman social, moral, and artistic practices of visuality, that is, the
obsessively visual nature of Roman cognition, judgment, and expression.
B. Orientations: Vision in Ancient Rome
“Being, for a Roman, was being seen…[The] spectator was, for the Romans, an
inspector, judge, and connoisseur.”43 In the “specular world of Roman politics,”44 the
realm of the visible encompassed the social, political, and moral milieu, and to be an elite
Roman meant subjecting oneself to the judgmental gaze of fellow Romans. Shadi Bartsch
has recently given the most extensive review of what she terms the “skopic paradigms” of
ancient Rome.45 As she shows, in the arena of elite self-display, there was a selfconscious focus on following and providing exemplary models, coupled with a profound
sense of being watched. To be an elite Roman, an orator or politician or general, meant
constantly subjecting oneself to appraisal, which, in turn, meant becoming vulnerable to
the penetrating power of the gaze.46
43
Barton 2002: 221; she specifically discusses the relationship between verecundia/pudor and seeing in
Rome and the need to display oneself for purposes of honor while simultaneously keeping oneself
inviolable. Bartsch 2006: 132-36 is hesitant to adopt the older version of the binary of shame/guilt (where
the former is external and the latter is purely internal) in Roman culture, but she sees the usefulness of the
schema in bringing the external obsessions of Roman society to the foreground.
44
Bartsch 2006: 130. Cf. Elsner 2007, who mentions the “remarkably ocular culture” at Rome in his
discussion of the literary gaze in ekphrasis (68).
45
Bartstch 2006: 115-82.
46
Bartsch 2006: 117-38 for elite self-display; she later (138-52) discusses “dangerous” aspects of the gaze
in ancient Rome (such as the “evil eye”), connecting it to a discussion of ancient optical theories which
posit sight as a tactile experience, involving contact between seer and seen (58-67). Frederick 2002a gives
14
For an ancient Roman, the awareness of an audience was thought to be a spur to
virtue.47 Nor need the audience be animate, for the most effective audience in the Roman
aristocratic household was thought to be the wax-masks (imagines) of one’s ancestors,
stored in special cupboards (armaria) in the Roman noble’s atrium and produced, inter
alia, for aristocratic funerals.48 As Harriet Flower has argued, imagines were constructed
as an audience in one’s own home: “through his life, a Roman was expected to act as if
constantly in their presence and to consider himself answerable to them.”49
The politics of Roman space, from private house to public square, emphasized the
“accessibility” of the elite and reminded Romans of the constant presence of vision and
judgment. The Roman house, whose axis was “social,” rather than gendered (as in the
division between men’s and women’s living quarters in Athens) or aged (as we might
now think of the children’s part of a house), was designed with few truly private spaces;
most rooms in it fall somewhere on a spectrum between totally private and totally
a useful review of the challenges in applying notions of the “gaze” to ancient Rome, which has often been
erased or elided into Greek practices and evidence in discussions of ancient sexuality, as well as the history
of the “gaze” as a critical concept and how it might be thought to apply to Roman culture (13-24). Mulvey
1975, still provocative, is one of the basic texts in formulating the idea of the “gaze,” oriented towards film
studies along the lines of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It discusses how films unconsciously demonstrate the
socially established codes of looking and their role in establishing gendered identity through difference.
Elsner 2007: xi similarly points out the usefulness of the gaze in our cultural studies of Rome because it
refracts the act of looking into a combination of an object (situated in a specific context) and the
“psychological investments” of a subject (either individual or collective and culturally charged).
47
Bartsch 2006: 18-28 explores how the mirror in the ancient world similarly acted as a check on behavior,
as it transformed the self into a “judging other” by imagining oneself being looked at. The goal in this
moral theory was to live up to (if handsome) or transcend (if less so) one’s outward appearance:
“handsomeness must be confirmed by good deeds, rather than conferred by it” (21).
48
Flower 1996 is the definitive treatment of imagines in Rome; for their presence at funerals (the
procession and the accompanying ritual of the laudatio, the eulogy), see Flower 1996: 91-158.
49
Flower 1996: 14, 185-222 on the significance of imagines in the Roman atrium (quote: 221). For more on
imagines as audience in Juvenal, see Ch. 2. A. What makes the imagines an example of the “gaze” is their
physical presence; whereas the abstract memory of one’s deeds could function as a model for virtue (cf.
especially Tac. Agr. 46.3, which prioritizes forma mentis aeterna over imaginibus quae marmore aut aere
finguntur in encouraging virtue), the imagines represent those deeds physically instantiated in such a way
so to actually look at present-day Romans (because they are shaped like faces).
15
public.50 The very design of the house emphasizes, in its performance of social
boundaries, the importance of observation in the maintenance of social roles: the servile
section was effectively invisible while the section for elites, where public business took
place (such as the receiving of clients for the morning salutatio), was designed to
promote “visual transparency” through unbroken sight-lines from atrium into deeper
portions of the house.51
Similarly, public space, especially the theater, was a sphere where one might
especially be expected to be judged. Holt Parker has reviewed the theater as a locus for
elite self-fashioning in Rome (as well as fissures and failures in those attempts at selfpromotion).52 As he argues, the social structure was reflected in the structure of the
theater: the lex Roscia (67 B.C.E.) created an elaborate hierarchy of tiers in the seating of
the theater, where the Roman noble was flanked by views from both the front and back
(i.e. the performers and the lower classes). This prominence at the theater is an example
of the importance of visibility for elite social identity but also shows that visibility
entailed vulnerability: as one could be acclaimed by applause, so too could one be
crippled by rejection. The importance of controlling one’s image while even entering the
theater was paramount.53
Indeed, even more than the social vulnerabilities were the moral ones. By their
visibility elites became structurally similar, “though at different ends of the spectrum of
50
For the axes of the Roman house, see Wallace-Hadrill 1994: 10-14.
51
Wallace-Hadrill 1994: 44-47; see esp. the Casa del Menandro, pll. 2-3 for the unobstructed sightlines of
the elite Roman house.
52
Parker 1999. He compares this visibility to the public spectacle of the census, where hierarchy is literally
paraded (173-75); for more on the census procession, see Wiseman 1969.
53
Parker 1999: 166-75.
16
class, vulnerability, and virtus,”54 to the class of Roman who regularly submitted
themselves to the spectacular gaze (namely, actors and gladiators), whose position
entailed a severe restriction of legal rights. As with prostitutes, actors and gladiators
suffered legal infamia , which meant they could not hold magistracies or make
accusations, nor were they protected against corporal punishment, “one of the hallmarks
of Roman citizenship.”55 Holt Parker connects this condemnation with the susceptibility
of their bodies to the “penetrating” gaze.56 Though this danger of “being assimilated to
those who appeared on stage or in the arena”57 does not seem to have troubled the
Romans as much as some have argued,58 it does remind us of the pervasiveness of the
gaze at Rome and its critical possibilities. As shown in recent analyses of physiognomic
texts and ancient references to the process of “reading” bodily signs, the gaze was the
means to interpret a complicated externalized sign system, where gender, identity, and
deviance were mapped onto physique, clothing, gesture, and gait.59 As Seneca tells his
pupil, external features are to be read as manifestations of internal character:
Omnia rerum omnium, si observentur, indicia sunt, et argumentum morum ex minimis
quoque licet capere: impudicum et incessus ostendit et manus mota et unum interdum
responsum et relatus ad caput digitus et flexus oculorum; improbum risus, insanum vultus
habitusque demonstrat. Illa enim in apertum per notas exeunt: qualis quisque sit scies, si
54
Bartsch 2006 152.
55
Edwards 1993: 124. For the low status of performers, see esp. Edwards 1993: 121-26 and Edwards 1997.
56
Parker 1999: 164-65, followed by Bartsch 2006: 152-57. For a rejoinder to overly expanding the
semantic field of “penetration” as Parker (and Frederick 2002b) argue for, see Williams 2010: 260-62.
57
Parker 1999: 167.
58
Bartsch 2006: 157-64 offers some suggestions as to why these structural similarities were not more
troubling to ancient Romans; for example, the social distinctions were clearly marked by external signs like
dress, i.e. the toga.
59
See Gunderson 2000 on physiognomy and rhetoric in Rome and Gleason 1995 on Imperial Greece, esp.
29-37 on the 2nd century C.E. physiogonomic text of Polemo.
17
quemadmodum laudet, quemadmodum laudetur aspexeris.
(Seneca Ep.52.12)
All things are indicators of everything, if they should be inspected carefully, and it is
permitted to take evidence of someone’s character from even the littlest details: the walk
and the movement of the hand and the halting response and the finger brought to the head
and the deflection of the eyes reveal the impure man, laughter points out impure man, the
face and clothing the insane one. For those things lay out in the open through marks: you
will know what kind of man anyone is, if you look at how he praises and is praised in
return.60
The importance of vision in Rome found expression in literary modes as well,
which were not, strictly speaking, “visual.” Rome’s visual culture, and the way that
culture engaged with the past, was mapped out in the extensive use of exempla in Roman
literature.61 The preface to Livy’s history presents us with the most important explicit
example of the interplay between visuality and exempla, where he imagines his work as a
visual artifact:
Hoc illud est praecipue in cognitione rerum salubre ac frugiferum, omnis te exempli
documenta in inlustri posita monumento intueri; inde tibi tuaeque rei publicae quod
imitere capias, inde foedum inceptu foedum exitu quod vites. (Livy, Praef. 10)
In the understanding of events, this is chiefly what is healthful and profitable, that you
gaze upon specimens (documenta) of every example positioned on a conspicuous
monument (inlustri monumento); from there you can understand for yourself and for your
republic what to imitate and, from there, what to avoid, foul from conception to
expiration.
Recent studies have shown how Livy engages actively with the exempla he employs
within his texts by analyzing how Livy’s historical actors themselves utilize models from
the past within the historical narrative and enact his program of following and avoiding
60
Cf. Cic. De Orat. 3.221: imago animi vultus, indices oculi.
61
For a convenient summary of the rhetorical operations of exempla, see Demoen 1997, based on Greek
rhetorical texts starting with Aristotle. Of particular note to readers of Juvenal are his discussion of
“inductive” exempla, when a particular instance is used an illustration of a general principle (134-35) and
refutation either by counterexample or an attack on the validity of the application to a particular case (137).
18
past examples.62 Jane Chaplin notes that exempla are thought to be effective because they
fit into a larger literary and historical cognition of “vividness”: in the “deeply visual
nature of Roman memory, exempla advance an argument because they put the past in
front of the audience’s eyes.”63 As Andrew Feldherr has shown in his analysis of Livy’s
creation of highly visual and spectacular situations, where the internal audience gives the
Augustan reader an index for how to interpret history, exempla are part of a larger
program of vivid depiction in Livy’s history.64
Indeed, the “vividness” (enargeia) that is one of Juvenal’s most time-honored
qualities is specifically tied to turning “hearers” into “viewers” in ancient poetic
practice.65 “Vividness” appears in both Greek and Roman rhetorical texts, originating as a
technical term (enargeia) by at least the 2nd cent. B.C.E., and is variously cast into Latin
as demonstratio, evidentia, illustratio, repraesentatio, and, most tellingly, sub oculos
subiectio. Quintillian, discussing the difference between simple clarity (perspicuitas) and
“vividness” (here, evidentia/repraesentatio) says that the latter “shows itself in a certain
way” (hoc se quodam modo ostendit), and, rather than being limited to the hearing (usque
ad aures valet) and simply “narrated” (narrari), vividness is “shown to the imagination”
(oculis mentis ostendi, Quint. 8.3.61-62). Quintillian argues later that one way to achieve
62
See especially Chaplin 2000; Chaplin 2000: 6-31 reviews the role of exempla in previous historiography,
Greek and Roman, and in Roman education, emphasizing how exempla makes history useful (cf. salubre
and frugiferum above).
63
Chaplin 2000 14. She points out that the imagines, as vivid reminders of the historical achievements of
one’s ancestors, could be thought as a material instantiation of an exemplum in its protreptic function.
64
Feldherr 1998. For Livy as a particular “vivid” author, see the metaphors of light in Quintillian’s
appraisal: cum in narrando mirae iucunditatis clarissimique candoris (Quint. 10.100.1).
65
Scott 1927: 20-31 gives a good account of Juvenal’s use of enargeia, though couched in a now dubious
discussion of how enargeia was meant to evoke the high style and sublimity. For a history of the term, see
Zanker 1981. Scholz 1999 is also useful, focusing on Quintillian and describing enargeia specifically in
relation to ekphrasis.
19
this feeling of vividness, particularly relevant to an analysis of Juvenal’s poetic
techniques, was through the use of vivid details, rather than broad strokes; one creates the
effect of subiectio sub oculos by an effusion of particulars (nec universa, sed per partes,
Quint. 9.2.40).
For the purposes of this discussion, one of the most important associations of
enargeia in ancient rhetorical criticism was its association with the mode of ekphrasis.66
Though usually deployed in scholarship as a generic term, i.e. the literary description of
an art object either on its own (such as Philostratus’ Imagines) or positioned in a longer
narrative work (Achilles’ shield in Iliad 18, the temple walls at Carthage in Aeneid 1), in
ancient rhetorical treatises its primary significance was as a descriptive mode: as with
enargeia, it is meant to evoke sight on the part of a listener. The analogy of text with
visual art opens up several meaningful interpretative questions, especially concerning
mimesis and representation: what are the consequences of a text trying to map itself onto
an external object? How will they correspond, and how might a text thematize places
where they cannot?
It is useful at this juncture to think briefly about the nature of representation or
mimesis before considering what Juvenal’s text might be thought to represent. Stephen
Halliwell has recently demonstrated that ancient discourses of mimesis, which came to be
flattened in Romantic attacks on notions of classical “naturalism,” were in fact a complex
spectrum residing between two competing notions of representation and aesthetics (i.e.
how to judge the success of those representations).67 In brief, we might think of the two
66
See Webb 1999 for an account of the origins of the term in the 20 th century as a generic term (i.e. the
literary description of an art object).
67
Halliwell 2002.
20
poles of mimesis (roughly defined by Halliwell as “the use of an artistic medium to
signify and communicate certain hypothesized realities”) as “world-replicating” and
“world-creating,” representation of the world or representation of a world:
First, the idea of mimesis as committed to depicting and illuminating a world that is
(partly) accessible and knowable outside art, and by whose norms art can therefore,
within limits, be tested and judged; second, the idea of mimesis as the creator of an
independent artistic heterocosm, a world of its own, though one that, as in Goethe’s case,
may still purport to contain kind of “truth,” about, or grasp of, reality as a whole.68
These two conceptions of representation thus generate two contrasting aesthetics: one
which focuses on “realism” or “naturalism” and which places emphasis on “outwardlooking” correspondence between performance and reality, and another focusing on
formal coherence/congruity, where formal satisfaction creates success.69 Representation,
by its very nature, opens up a gap between itself and its object; in fact, mimesis depends
on the viewer recognizing this gap for its aesthetic effect.70 We must know that Zeuxis’
grapes are painted, and thus not real, to be impressed that the birds mistook them for
reality.71
Visuality at Rome, that is, the conceptualization of “meaning” as something
which can be expressed visually,72 thus operated on numerous levels simultaneously
(bodily, social, moral, physical, rhetorical, cognitive), and Juvenal’s text will be no
68
Halliwell 2002: 16.
69
Halliwell 2002: 23.
70
Cf. Freedberg 1989: 343-44 (quoted at Elsner 2007: 114), on Ovid’s Pygmalion narrative: “The great
paradox and the great tragedy that lies in making the protagonist an artist is that the object he made was
only beautiful because of his skills, because it was art; but as soon as it came alive, it was no longer a piece
of art at all. It was indeed, and no less, than the body itself.”
71
In a famous story recounted by Pliny the Elder (NH 35.65), Zeuxis’ paintings of grapes were so
convincing that birds flew to the painting and tried to eat them.
72
Cf. the figuration of Elsner 2007 of “visuality” as a “screen”: “My focus then is on the pattern of cultural
constructs and social discourses that stand between the retina and the world, a screen though which the
subjects of this inquiry (that is, Greek and Roman people) had no choice but to look and through which
they acquired (at least in part) their sense of subjectivity” (xvii).
21
exception. Yet Juvenal will not simply be an example of these visual practices in social
and moral arenas; he will also engage with the aesthetic issues that visualized meaning in
literary text raises. This engagement with visualizing practices will become central to
Juvenal’s representational content in his “compromised” picture of Rome. It will be
helpful to first review the particularly “visual” mode of satirical content in Juvenal, using
examples drawn from throughout the corpus.
C. Visualized Meaning in Juvenal
A few examples of Juvenal’s visual mechanics, focusing on how his visualizing
processes construct a meaning through image (or analogy to image) alone, will establish
the satirical logic of Juvenal’s visuality (which I will argue is eventually problematized
by what they portray).73 Indeed, to examine the scene quoted above (1.22-30), Juvenal
elaborates his satirical picture for nine lines before any explicit condemnation. The
externalizing weight of the lines functions as condemnation before we even reach the
exasperated exclamation at line 30: “[when all this is happening,] it’s difficult not to
write satire.”74 Juvenal will engage with Rome’s visualizing conceptual modes to craft
what I will refer to frequently throughout this study as “externalizing” satire.
Though there is no shortage of verbal commentary in Juvenal, often his outbursts
only restate the satiric content which his images have already transmitted. Older
73
This is not to say that Juvenal does not often work discursively. In fact, the “rogues’ gallery” of Satire 1
(1.22-80), as Braund 1996a 112-14 shows, is focused around an interplay between exhibition and
exposition, “showing” and comment.
74
Freudenburg 2001: 213-15 gives a particularly interesting reading of these lines in light of the distance
between the Domitianic milieu of Bks. 1 and 2 (made explicit in 2.29-33 and 4.37ff.) and their date of
publication several decades after the “dramatic” date; after all, that’s what Juvenal has been doing, not
writing satire. Syme 1979a asserts, using the publication scheme of Tacitus’ Annales and its links with
moments in Juvenal’s text, publication dates from 117-132 C.E.
22
commentators, such as Joachim Classen, have often recognized this conception:
“[Juvenal] describes reality in the hope that reality as such, unmasked and exposed in its
brutal nakedness—often of course exaggerated like a cartoon—will make an impression
on his readers and will make them react—just as an artist, e.g. a painter, hopes to achieve
the same simply by presenting reality, or even like a historian who gives facts without
comment.”75 Despite failing to see that this picture is Juvenal’s comment, Claasen gives
an accurate description of his mechanics.
In this opening passage, we can see several of what I will argue are Juvenal’s
characteristic externalizing techniques. At lines 22-23, he portrays a female gladiator
participating in a venatio, with just enough detail to make the scene come alive in its
outrageous glory: she is named (Mevia), as is the boar (Tuscum), and she exposes her
breasts in the manner of one imitating an Amazon in the arena.76 Crispinus, who appears
twice more in Sat. 4 (4.1ff., 107-8), is satirized through close-ups of particular parts of his
body and objects whose moral significance is indicated by their charged or degrading
description; for his shoulders are syntactically “wrapped” with a Tyrian cloak (Tyrias
umero revocante lucernas, 27) and his “sweaty” fingers (sudantibus, 28) are weighed
down by gold and gems so heavy he can barely hold them.77 Each is a concrete
manifestation of wealth, but the particular description gives the possession of that wealth
a moral charge whose significance is matched by the earlier, more discursive introduction
75
Classen 1998: 101 [emphasis mine]. Similarly, the comment of Witke 1970 on the interjection by the
Egyptian freedman (1.102-109) in the extended sportula scene later in the same satire: “The scene needs no
comment, for Juvenal lets the Asiatic nouveau-riche provide his own interpretation” (120).
76
Cf. Mart. Lib.Spect. 6b. for a female in a venatio (there chasing a “Nemean” lion in imitation of
Hercules).
77
For the moral significance of Tyrias, compare Lucian’s description of the rich at Rome as “showing forth
scarlet cloaks and holding out their fingers.” (Nigrinus 21) and see Ch. 4. A, on the female gladiator and
her endromidas Tyrias (6.246).
23
of the nouveau riche (24-25). Crispinus’ origin (verna Canopi, 26) is significant too;
unlike the proper name of Crispinus himself (whose referent is an actually existing
person) or Mevia at line 22 (used to evoke a generalized aristocrat),78 Crispinus is called
a “house slave of Canopus” for the moral associations that the city evokes, even though
the historical Crispinus was probably from Memphis.79 In each of these techniques, there
is a kind of “moral correspondence” or “satiric iconography,” where the image or word is
meant to evoke an unmediated moral association. What will become paramount to the
significance of this “iconography” is how these techniques are linked to ancient
discourses of literary vision and thus will be subject to the same interpretative
difficulties.80
I categorize these “externalizing” or “visualizing” techniques in three ways, each
of which is represented in the passage above: “concretizing,” “dramatizing,” and
“nominalizing.” “Concretizing” involves objectifying moral traits into external features,
such as clothing, food, or facial features, for the purposes of mockery. One could point to
the evocation of Greek booties (rusticus ille tuus sumit trechedipna, 3.67—worn by a
rustic!) or the crack of castanets (testarum crepitus, 11.172)81 or the literal rottenness of
the clients’ stingy meal in Satire 5 (e.g. soldiae iam mucida frusta farina, 5.68; tu scabie
78
Cf. Ferguson 1987: 154.
79
On Canopus, see 15. 45-6 (luxuria, quantum ipse notavi,/ Barbara famoso non cedit turba Canopo); on
Crispinus’ likely origins from Memphis, see Mart 7.99.1-2: Sic placidum uideas semper, Crispine,
Tonantem/nec te Roma minus quam tua Memphis amet.
80
Others have shown Juvenal’s dependence on this kind of moral shorthand when discussing food (Hudson
1989) and the city/country dichotomy (Braund 1989b), but I wish to assert that this process is particularly
at play in Juvenal’s visual constructions.
81
The context of this phrase in Satire 11 is significant, for the castanets are evoked as representative of
salacious Spanish dancers that Juvenal won’t have at his “modest” dinner, but that he will include in his
satiric cena-poem.
24
frueris mali, 5.153)82 or the denigration of poetic works by being included in an auction
catalog alongside “wine-jugs,” “cupboards,” and the like (oenophorum, tripedes, armaria,
cistas,/ Alcithoen Pacci, Thebas et Terea Fasti, 7.11-2). There is an element of “exposure”
in the satirical gaze that Juvenal casts on these objects, as if he is salvaging moral cargo
sunk deep in his objects’ character and fishing it out for us to see.83
This notion of “exposure” is even more prominent in Juvenal’s “dramatizing”
patterns, where Juvenal stages a scene for his satiric audience, giving at least a vaguely
concrete mise-en-scène and props.84 These scenes can be long (the sportula scene at 1.95126, the concilium principis at 4.73-136; the entirety of Satire 9) and can include
passages of direct speech or dialogue; but the idea of dramatization can also encompass
microscenes compressed into a single line or less. We should conceptualize not just fully
“dramatic” scenes but also tableaux vivants or, coming back to the realm of visual arts,
“sequential art,” where Juvenal jumps from panel to panel in an effort to create a fully
textured satiric scene.85 Under this concept, one could fit the snapshots of jobs which
Umbricius cannot stoop to in degraded Rome ([vivant] quis facile est aedem conducere,
flumina, portus,/ siccandam eluviem, portandum ad busta cadaver,/ et praebere caput
domina venale sub hasta, 3.31-33) or the perjurer counter-suing his accuser (tunc te sacra
82
For more on food’s programmatic place in satire, see Gowers 1993: 211-19 on Sat. 5 in particular.
83
Cf. Witke 1970: Juvenal “conceives of the inner state as static. With him, outward description of activity
is the primary access to inner motivation” (151). Jenkyns 1982: 205-219 has perhaps given the best
exposition of how Juvenal uses objects in his satire, describing both his “literalism” (his denigration
through description of objects “as they are”) and his “fancy” (his animation of objects to give lively
comment).
84
Keane 2006: 30 discusses how Juvenal can be thought to unite 2 previous satiric modes, the rhetoric of
“exposure” that Horace conceives for Lucilius of “unmasking” hidden faults (cf. detrahere et pellem,
nitidus qua quisque per ora/ cederet, introrsum turpis, H.S.2.1.64-65) and “Horace’s own method of
putting targets on a metaphorical stage—namely, the fictional vignettes of his satire.”
85
The term “sequential art” was coined by Michael Eisner in his groundbreaking work on the “poetics” of
20th century comics, Comics and Sequential Art (Eisner 1985).
25
ad delubra vocantem/ praecedit, trahere immo ultro ac vexare paratus, 13.107-8).
Although the cultural significance of the stage is an important undercurrent in deploying
this technique, as Catherine Keane has thoroughly shown,86 for our purposes, the
significance of the method is its structural shape, where action (determined by writerdirector Juvenal) is depicted externally, to be interpreted by the viewer-reader.87
Finally, Juvenal can use significant names as metonymizing substitutes, either
from mythology or from literature (especially Martial) or from history, sometimes with
ironic force.88 The logic of the deployment of names is the same as in the more obviously
visual modes of concretization and dramatization; the name is to be recognized as having
a specific reference which does not need explanation. At the outset of Satire 5, Juvenal
compares Trebius, his addressee, to two famous scurrae associated with Maecenas and
Augustus, Sarmentus and Gabba, (si potes illa pati quae nec Sarmentus iniquas/ Caesaris
ad mensas nec vilis Gabba tulisset, 5.3-4),89 thus setting up the devastating climax: the
stingy patron Virro turns Trebius into a fine show indeed (quae comoedia, mimus/ quis
86
Keane 2003: 258-63 gives a review of Roman attitudes towards the theater and spectacle in Juvenal.
Keane 2006: 28-41 more fully considers the ideological role of “theater” in Roman society (both as
institution and as metaphor) and how Juvenal self-consciously implicates himself into those structures; cf.
Knoche’s description of a Juvenalian world where everything has been turned into Bühnenspiel (519). For
all the sophistication of her location of Juvenal in the nexus of the paradoxical attitudes towards the theater,
she does not fully consider the structural possibilities of theatrical depiction in Juvenal. Imagining Juvenal
as theater opens up possibilities for metatheatrical gestures concerning the elision between satirist-subject
and satiric-object, which I will explore more fully below.
87
Schmitz 2000: 20-34 is an excellent account of Juvenal’s visualizing processes, which she terms his
“Staging of Reality” (Inszenierung der Wirklichkeit), which transforms the satiric audience into a
“spectating reader” (zuschauend Leser, 21).
88
Jones 2007: 48-75 (56-60 on Juvenal) gives the best account of names as used in the satirical poets
(among whom he classes Martial and Catullus). He argues that Juvenal’s mixture of sources for his
exempla is a programmatic gesture, signifying the mixed nature of Juvenal’s satire as much as his play with
linguistic registers.
89
Sarmentus, in fact, appears in the flesh Horace in a degraded Battle of the Bards: nunc mihi paucis
Sarmenti scurrae pugnam Messique Cicirri,/ Musa, velim memores… (H.S.1.5.51-53); For Gabba, see
Martial 10.101.
26
melior plorante gula, 5.157-58).90 However when one views the thorny problem of
Juvenal’s use of names in light of the closing lines of Satire 1, where he all but
invalidates any notion of true onomasti komoedein for his satire, the issue of the
references of names become unusually complex.91
As one can see from the passage from Satire 1, these techniques are usually
intertwined within a single passage in Juvenal. Two further examples, drawn them from
later books of Juvenal, will test the truism that Juvenal’s visual presentation grows
dimmer later in his corpus.92 The first, taken from Satire 7, on the wretched place of
intellectuals in Rome, is a snapshot of a hapless causidicus pleading his case in Juvenal’s
mythological burlesque and earning a pitiful reward for his efforts:
consedere duces, surgis tu pallidulus Aiax
dicturus dubia pro libertate bubulco
iudice. rumpe miser tensum iecur, ut tibi lasso
figantur virides, scalarum gloria, palmae.
quod vocis pretium? siccus petasunculus et vas
pelamydum aut veteres, Maurorum epimenia, bulbi
aut vinum Tiberi devectum, quinque lagonae.
115
120
(7.115-121)
The “generals” sit down, and you rise, a translucent Ajax, in order to address some
oxherd judge on behalf of dubious liberty. Burst your strained liver, so that green palms
of victory can be rigged up for you in your exhaustion, the glory of the walk-up! And
your reward for your advocacy? A dry little ham-bone and a jar of tuna-fish or old onions,
90
Baumert 1989: 738 similarly argues that these procedures can be combined: “Leading-before-the-eyes
(Vor-Augen-Führen) can go from a judgmental naming and an amusing display to a depiction in which the
contradiction in the nature of things is revealed.”
91
“I will undertake what is allowed against those whose ashes are covered by the Via Flaminia and Via
Latina” (experiar quid concedatur in illos/ quorum Flaminia tegitur cinis atque Latina). The question of
what the names of the dead represent, especially when called upon as if they were contemporaries, remains
vexed: are they allegorical attacks on the present, where the named figures represent particular
contemporary figures? Are they stand-ins or paradigms, ad vitium replacing ad hominem attacks (e.g.
Fredericksmayer 1991: 797)? The indeterminancy of the reference may be the entire point, but my concern
is about the structure of the reference: it talks as if it is naming something and, in naming, confers meaning
(in the form of judgment or mockery), so the original referent itself is somewhat immaterial.
92
Cf. Baumert 1989: 741n.35 and 743; Henderson 1997: 139 n.38. I maintain that Juvenal’s “vision” and
its concomitant concerns with representation is used throughout the corpus, as even the more purely
discursive satires (Satire 13 being the most) can still reflect some of the mimetic concerns in the subtle
psychological turns which the speaker makes.
27
rations for the Maurians, or some wine sent downstream from the Tiber (send it back!)—
five jars to have (when you’re having more than one).
Juvenal first gives us a brief scenic glimpse of this “rather pallid” Ajax (pallidulus Ajax
115) re-enacting a perverted version of the Iudicium Armorum from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses93 and “glorying” in his scanty prize, fastening branches to the stairs to
his garret (117-18). There is a double layer to the drama of the first tableau (in court):
Juvenal’s use of the mythological name (as well as the allusion to Ovid’s epic) to recast
the trial as re-enactment of a noble scene from Greek mythology smashes headlong into
the real nature of the court, syntactically delayed until we meet the “oxherd judge”
(bubulco/ iudice, 116-17). Further he breaks down the lawyer’s fee into a series of food
items, which he then degrades, to show the true “value” of the lawyer’s efforts: not just a
ham, but a “dry hamlette” (siccus petasunculus, 119) or cheap jug-wine instead of
imported fineries—but at least he gets a lot of it! (quinque lagonae, 121). This series of
images and metonymies effectively function as comment, with its full significance
coalescing in the “viewer’s” mind with little comment from Juvenal needed.
In the middle of Satire 14, concerning the transmission of greed along
genealogical lines, Juvenal contrasts his portrayal of the simplicity of ancient Rome with
a vivid picture of a contemporary father’s aspirations for his son:
haec illi veteres praecepta minoribus; at nunc
post finem autumni media de nocte supinum
clamosus iuvenem pater excitat: 'accipe ceras,
scribe, puer, vigila, causas age, perlege rubras
maiorum leges; aut vitem posce libello,
sed caput intactum buxo narisque pilosas
adnotet et grandes miretur Laelius alas;
dirue Maurorum attegias, castella Brigantum,
ut locupletem aquilam tibi sexagesimus annus
93
190
195
Cf. Ovid Met.13.1-2. Consedere duces et vulgi stante corona/ surgit ad hos clipei dominus septemplicis
Aiax...
28
adferat; aut, longos castrorum ferre labores
si piget et trepidum soluunt tibi cornua ventrem
cum lituis audita…
200 (14.189-200)
These were the precepts those outdated men used to hand down to children; but
nowadays at the end of autumn in the middle of the night a bellowing father shakes
awake the son, lying on his back: “Here, take these wax tablets! Write, boy, stay up all
night! Plead cases, read the red-letter laws of our ancestors; or demand a centurion’s staff
with a letter of recommendation, but make sure Laelius takes note of your head,
unblemished by comb, and your hairy nostrils and is impressed by your huge armpits;
destroy the Moors’ tents, the strongholds of the Britains, so your sixtieth year provides
you with a rich senior position, the standard! No? If you loathe the thought of tolerating
the long labors of the camp and the clarions and claxons let slip of the “dogs” of your
nervous belly when you hear them…
Here, the dramatic introduction of the father’s speech is even more pronounced: we are
given a dramatic occasion and see him vigorously shake his son awake and pelt him with
a long harangue about ambition. Each of the occupations listed in the speech (causidicus,
soldier, and, not quoted from later in his speech, merchant) is given some visualizing
touch, though the most elaborate concerns soldiery. Besides using geographical names
which stretch across the Empire (from North Africa to Northern Britain) to generate an
image of his future career careening across Europe, he evokes the name of a putative
superior (Laelius) to promote his petition, whose name might be thought to evoke old
Romanitas.94 Even more vivid are the father’s objectifications of military life into, at the
bodily level, unkempt appearance and “huge armpits” (caput intactum buxo narisque
pilosas…grandes…alas, 194-5) and, at the material level, blaring horns (cornua…cum
lituis, 199-200). Finally, one must note how the messiness which the father projects onto
his son is meaningful only if it is seen by Laelius (adnotet…miretur Laelius, 195).
94
Ferguson 1987: 131 identifies the name with C. Laelius, son of C. Laelius, a friend of Scipio Aemelianus
with some military and political success, though he states flatly, “He is here simply the type of the man
who will foster his subordinate’s future.”
29
We can never fully disentangle language and image in Juvenal,95 but this
exposition shows how much Juvenal turns his audience/readership into viewers96 and
how he deploys and engages with cultural practices of envisioning in a specifically
satirical context. Though turning his readership into viewers has been explored from
psychoanalytic perspectives (where “viewer” becomes “voyeur”),97 this study is more
concerned with the following question: what are we “looking” at when we read Juvenal?
As I will argue, the answer is far from straightforward.
D.
What Are We Looking At? Meaning and Representation in Juvenal’s
World
How then might we describe Juvenal’s world? To call it “chaotic,” while certainly
true, does not quite precisely delineate the problem. In Juvenal’s world, the systems of
meaning have gone haywire: women are becoming men (esp. Satire 6: see Chapter 4),
men are becoming women (esp. Satire 2: see Chapter 1), Greeks are becoming Romans
and Romans Greeks (Sat. 3: non possum ferre, Quirites,/ Graecam Urbem, 3.60-1). The
vulgar are becoming wealthy, the wealthy are becoming vulgar (Sat 8: see Chapter 2),
while the talented and deserving stay poor (see above on Crispinus; Sat. 7 and, ironically,
95
For the most part throughout this study, I will not be discussing the rhetoric of Juvenal’s techniques
except in the ways that his verbal texture can self-consciously play with his world construction (cf. Ch 4,
section B on 6.479-85).
96
Since the visual operation comes to fruition in the imagination of his reader, the point remains whether
Juvenal imagines his addressee as an audience (at a recitatio) or as a readership. Each situation would come
with its own advantages: an audience would allow for more dramatic play by the speaker in any given
performance, while reading creates a more complete analogy between visual world and visual text.
97
Gunderson 2005 and Miller 2007 are the fullest explorations of these impulses; Braund and Rachske
2002 similarly argue that Juvenal’s spectacle turns his audience into voyeurs (69); Cf. Elsner 2007: 178179 who argues for the structural similarities created by Seneca’s text between the reader and the onanistic
voyeurism of Hostrius Quadra from Seneca’s Natural Quaestiones (1.16), who positioned distorted mirrors
so that he could watch himself penetrate and be penetrated. See Ch. 2, n. 72.
30
Sat. 9). Even as Juvenal’s later satires are less closely tied to the social milieu of Rome
and his issues are abstracted into a more universal moral discussions, the problem
remains: men have turned ambition into pure greed and frugality into miserliness (Sat.
14), they misunderstand the correct sources and directions for anger (Sat. 13),98 the
meaning of friendship (Sat. 12), in fact, the meaning of everything (Sat. 10: see Chapter
3).
A few close readings will demonstrate how Juvenal discusses this change of value
and the slipperiness of meaning in various ways in his text. One particularly rich locus for
these notions is in the decaying relationships between patrons and clients that Juvenal
portrays, particularly in his first and third books of Satires. It has been argued, in fact,
that the idea of the broken system of amicitia provides an over-arching structure to the
entirety of book 1.99 Indeed, it appears as the final word of the book:
ille sapit, qui te sic utitur. omnia ferre
si potes, et debes. pulsandum vertice raso
praebebis quandoque caput nec dura timebis
flagra pati, his epulis et tali dignus amico.
170
(5.170-73)
He’s the smart one, the one who takes advantage of you this way. If you can endure
anything, you deserve to. And so you will provide your head—shaved on top—to be
struck whenever and you won’t shrink back from suffering hard thwacks. You deserve
these banquets and this sort of “friend.”
The lines function to complete the conversion, enacted over the satire, of Juvenal’s
attitude towards his addressee Trebius, for whom he had originally concocted the
98
See especially Braund 1997 and Fredericks 1971b for the subtle psychological “narrative” of anger in the
Satire.
99
Cloud and Braund 1982; LaFleur 1979.
31
imaginary cena of Satire 5 as an exemplum for Trebius to avoid in its foulness.100 Here,
though, he unveils his contempt for Virrones and Trebii alike in the final five words. The
irony is thick, for Juvenal uses amicus to demonstrate simultaneously what “friendship”
has become in the world of Juvenal and how one would correctly denote that relationship.
As Richard LaFleur has shown, the notion of perverted amicitia runs throughout the
world of Book 1, from the abject flattery of Domitian’s courtiers, “whom he actually
hated,” and whose “friendship” was actually fear, barely disguised (ergo in consilium
proceres, quos oderat ille,/ in quorum facie miserae magnaeque sedebat/ pallor amicitiae,
4.73-75), to the greedy miser, whose gruesome death is welcomed by “friends” with open
arms (ducitur iratis plaudendum funus amicis, 1.146). Instances of amicus and its
cognates point both to the perversion of the patron-client relationship and how this
perversion has transformed the meaning of the word itself.101
This social relationship of stingy patron-marginalized client is portrayed again, in
even more ironic terms, in Satire 9.102 The infamous Naevolus, explaining to Juvenal the
reason for his unkempt appearance (vultus gravis, horrida siccae, silva comae,/ nullus
tota nitor in cute…sed fruticante pilo neglecta et squalida crura, 9.12-3, 15), discusses
that his patron Virro, to whom Naevolus prostitutes himself as stud for patron and his
wife, has stiffed him. Reflecting the irony of the grotesque patron-client relationship of
100
There is a particularly rich banquet of readings of Sat. 5, to which I am certainly indebted but which I
here intend to put to more abstract purposes: Morford 1977; Freudenburg 2001: 264-77; Keane 2006: 30-1;
Gowers 1993: 211-19; and Braund 1996a’s commentary (275-308).
101
Anderson 1982: 201 looks at a similar string of “positive” terms of moral valuation used ironically in
Sat. 1, e.g. qui testamenta merentur/ noctibus, in caelum quos evehit optima summi/ nunc via processus
(1.36-8)
102
For more on Satire 9, see especially Braund 1988: 130-77, Plaza 2006: 159-66, Henderson 1999: 199200 (on Naevolus), Tennant 2003, and the recent metapoetic discussion of Naevolus as stand-in for Juvenal
at Rosen 2008: 223-35.
32
Bk. 1 taken to a more absurd level, Naevolus’ description of himself as “dedicated and
devoted client” comes in the context of his mercenary “duty” of breeding with his
patron’s wife: “Fine, so you can pretend and ignore my other services, but how much is it
worth to you that, were I not a dedicated and devoted client to you, your wife would still
be a virgin?” (verum, ut dissimules, ut mittas cetera, quanto/ metiris pretio quod,/ ni tibi
deditus essem/ devotusque cliens, uxor tua virgo maneret?, 9.70-2). When Naevolus
earlier describes Virro as a mollis avarus, the patron himself represents a kind of
syntactical monstrum (quod tamen ulterius monstrum quam mollis avarus, 9.38), for it is
impossible by text alone to distinguish modifier and modified, essential trait and
accidental qualifier. Is he a greedy patron who also happens to be a pathic, or a pathic
who, in addition to being penetrable, is miserly? This is brought out a few lines later by a
grotesque hendiadys, computat et cevet (9.40), where the full force of juxtaposition
comes in envisioning the acts as simultaneous. Even as he showers disdain on Virro for
his “stinginess” and his “disease” (iam nec morbo donare paratis?, 9.49), Naevolus
represents the corrupt system in two ways, both describing it and acting as a corrupt
participant inside of it.
Nor is this problem of meaning restricted merely to social constructions. In Satire
15, the Egyptians mistake animals for humans in two diametrically opposite ways, overly
abstemious vegetarianism and savage cannibalism:
porrum et caepe nefas violare et frangere morsu
(o sanctas gentes, quibus haec nascuntur in hortis
numina!), lanatis animalibus abstinet omnis
mensa, nefas illic fetum iugulare capellae:
carnibus humanis vesci licet.
10
(15.9-13)
It is a crime to ravage and crack with your bite leeks and onions (O sacred races, for
whom these divinities are brought to life in their gardens!), every table abstains from
33
wooly creatures, and it is an unspeakable crime there to sacrifice a kid’s offspring: it is
permitted, however, to dine on human flesh!
Such a perverted people these are that they cannot tell the difference between what to eat
and what not to! Nor are they consistent with their very natures, for despite their dinky
clay Nile-boats, this “useless mob” displays the ferocity not even demonstrated by the
Britons or Germans (qua nec terribiles Cimbri nec Brittones umquam/ Sauromataeque
truces aut inmanes Agathyrsi,/ hac saeuit rabie inbelle et inutile uolgus/ paruula
fictilibus solitum dare uela phaselis/ et breuibus pictae remis incumbere testae, 15.12428).103
Yet Juvenal can be shown, like his satirical objects, to be participating selfconsciously in the same malfunction of discourse. As with Naevolus above, Juvenal’s
deployment of verbal irony “represents” destabilization in two ways. The ironic
deployment of words like amicitia and amicus or morbus (9.49) not only portrays the
destabilization of traditional meaning, it participates in it, for Juvenal uses the old term in
its new warped connotation. He uses a corrupt sign-system against itself. Similarly, when
he follows the declaration above (15.9-13) with a long excursus on its credibility (15.1331), as opposed to the mythical travelers’ tales of Odysseus related to the court of the
Phaeacians without a witness,104 it actually performs the opposite, raising concerns about
the veracity of his fabula.
Note that this destabilization does not come at the level of mere content, though
that will have its place in our analysis. It’s not simply that Juvenal “contradicts” himself
103
See Schmitz 2000: 43.
104
Juvenal is playing on a discourse between truth and fiction already inaugurated in Homer himself, when
he says that his characters tells “many lies which sound like the truth,” (ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων
ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα, Hom. Od. 19.203) and thematized by Hesiod in the Initiation by the Muses at the opening
to the Theogony (ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα,/ ἴδμεν δ᾽, εὖτ᾽ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα
γηρύσασθαι, Theo. 27-8).
34
(cf. the mockery of vegetarianism above is at odds with the use of Pythagorean
vegetarianism as a representative of humanitas at 15.169-74).105 Instead, what is so
striking about Juvenal’s undermining of value and meaning is that it operates at the level
of mechanics, that is, how Juvenal’s satire constructs meaning. As this study will
examine in more detail in Chapters 1-3, if words and images in his world no longer have
their traditional valence, what effect does that have on this construction of that world?
What exactly is Juvenal portraying?
When Juvenal mechanically designs his text like a visual object, Juvenal
necessarily evokes the same problems of interpretation that visuality and its textual
representations have evoked in other Roman literary productions. The examples above
are all explicitly analogized to visual performance: the lines on amicitia in Sat. 5 are
situated inside a comparison which frames Trebius’ “performance” at the dinner as the
fulfilling the role of the stupidus character in a mime, marked by his shaved head.106
Similarly, Sat. 9 is Juvenal’s only truly dramatic satire, with nothing falling outside of the
mouths of the dramatic actors.107 Finally, the story of cannibalism in Satire 15 is
explicitly compared to a tragedy (15.29-31), unlocking the dramatic possibilities of the
extended narration of the scene.108 Juvenal’s text might be analogized to an enormous
ekphrasis of Rome, for his text purports to a literary representation of “real” visual
105
See Anderson 1985 and Singleton 1983 and the reply of Tennant 1995 for how to interpret this clash.
This kind of inconsistency is not peculiar to Juvenal: Roller 1996 gives an outstanding reading of how
competing ethical discourses operate in Lucan, including in the mouth of the poet; O’Hara 2007 gives a
synoptic account of inconsistent voices in Roman epic from Lucretius to Lucan.
106
Vertice raso; see RE s.v. Mimos 1748.22.
107
For the relationship of Satire 9 to dramatic forms like mime and Atellan farce and its performability, see
Braund 1988: 170-77.
108
Pace Schmitz 2000: 42-44, who argues that the reference to tragedy, cunctis graviora coturnis (15.29),
refers strictly to the outsized content of the satire.
35
phenomena which exist outside of the confines of that description.109 Thus, as with more
“traditional” ekphrases, the evocation of vision becomes “itself a potential literary
metaphor for reading.”110 As Jaś‎Elsner has described, literary ekphrases are necessarily
paradoxical in their representational strategies, for they both enable our view (“in helping
the viewers it is training to see”) and obstruct it (“in the veil of words with which it
screens and obscures the purported visual object”).111 Certainly what Elsner says of the
reader confronted with the tapestry of Ariadne’s lament in Catullus 64 can be mapped
onto Juvenal’s audience as well: the reader is figured as an extratextual viewer, “whose
access to this picture is always vicariously through its description, and whose response to
the subject of the description is continuously focalized through [Ariadne’s] lament.”112
Similarly, the famous ekphrasis of the events of Troy at Juno’s temple in Carthage, where
Vergil seamlessly intertwines Aeneas’ responses to the painting with the description of
the painting, stresses that there is more than one way to read symbols, even within a
historicist framework.113
109
The “reality” of the object is certainly at play in epic narrative, for neither the Shield of Achilles/Aeneas
nor the tapestry at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis “really” exist, though they of course exist for the actors
within the narrative (i.e. in the fictional world of epic). See below for more on how this idea of fictional
world might be thought to apply to Juvenal. Fowler 2000 offers an excellent summary of some of the issues
of ekphrasis, as well as accompanying bibliography; see also, more recently, the volume of Classical
Philology co-edited by Jaś Elsner and Shadi Bartsch with articles on the theoretical and practical issues of
ekphrasis (Bartsch and Elsner 2007).
110
Elsner 2007: 68; at 67-109, he examines more fully the mechanics of the gaze in ekphrases of Catullus
and Vergil and how they ignite interpretive subjectivities, comparing them to visual representations of the
gaze in wall painting at Pompeii.
111
Elsner 2007: 68.
112
Elsner 2007: 70.
113
Fowler, 2000: 81; see Fowler 2000: 77 n. 40 for further bibliography of the scene.
36
Scholars have long acknowledged Juvenal’s “selectivity” and “exaggeration”114
and one of the most positive developments of the persona approach is that it no longer
made Juvenal a transparent source for social history. 115 Indeed, if one imagines the drama
of Juvenal’s text as mechanical, rather than metaphorical, we might even have moments
of metatheatricality in Juvenal, moments where Juvenal lets the scripted nature of his
performance show out.116 In the famous sportula scene in Satire 1, Juvenal reveals the
strings of his marionettes when he has a rich freedman vent his frustration while waiting
for his dole:
sed libertinus prior est. 'prior' inquit 'ego adsum.
cur timeam dubitemve locum defendere, quamvis
natus ad Euphraten, molles quod in aure fenestrae
arguerint, licet ipse negem? sed quinque tabernae
quadringenta parant. quid confert purpura maior
optandum, si Laurenti custodit in agro
conductas Corvinus ovis, ego possideo plus
Pallante et Licinis?' expectent ergo tribuni,
vincant divitiae,…
105
110 (1.102-110)
But the freedman is first. “I am first,” he says, “Why should I be afraid or hestitate to
defend my spot, even if I was born at the Euphrates—which these soft windows in my ear
attest to, though I myself deny it? But five inns provide 400,000. What desirable thing
does the higher-tiered purple provide, if Corvinus guards hired sheep in a Laurentine field,
while I have more than Pallas and Liciniuses?’ So let the tributes keep waiting, let wealth
win out…
114
E.g. my emphasis in the quote of Joachim Classen above or the description in Braund 1989 of Juvenal’s
construction of Rome through a technique of “distortion by suppression and omission of ordinary, everyday,
and uninteresting aspects of life in the city and by exaggeration of the extraordinary, colorful, and
fascinating aspects of life in the city” (25).
115
He is still, however, often read as an example of “ideologies,” particularly regarding his views on gender
and class (see above), though this approach requires the same rhetoric of “reality” as looking for “social”
truths, for it attempts to “see through” the text to find some kind of encoded “reality,” the rhetorical clause
where “something stands only for itself, seemingly circumscribed…and we say that something is
something, the ‘be-all and end-all.’” (Kennedy 1993, 9). Kennedy 1993: 1-23, reviewing the conflict
between postmodern textuality and historicism in the context of reading Roman elegy, is a good reminder
of the impossibility of closure in our texts and our readings as critics, though he models an alternative
reading, focusing on Roman elegy, of how to read texts as performing their own contexts.
116
See Postlewait and Davis 2003, focusing on properly dramatic texts, for the full range of the meanings
of “theatricality,” which can roughly refer to the ways real life might impinge on the theater or vice versa.
37
In a feature which Christine Schmitz has termed “speech inconsistent with character”
(charakterinkonsistentes Sprechen), she argues that Juvenal’s text sacrifices its mimetic
authenticity to make satirical point, because the freedman never would have called
himself mollis (104).117 Nor would the freedman likely referred to his ear-piercing as a
“window” (fenestrae, 104), though Juvenal might. This kind of moment, much more so
than previous discussions about Juvenal’s “voice,” calls into question the nature of
Juvenal’s satirical objects and their correspondence with “reality.” One perhaps thinks of
the reflections on the role of artistic creator in the apologia of sultry Jessica Rabbit from
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988): “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.”118
Nor is this not an idle reference, as that film is expressly set in a world whose
actors must often confront the logical consequences of a fantastical proposition: what
would happen if the world of cartoons were to intersect with the world of “reality”? 119
Despite recognizing the construction of Juvenal’s text, too seldom do we grapple with the
issues at play in Juvenal’s representative discourse. We can assert that satire must have
some kind of correspondence with reality to have been meaningful to its readers,120 but
how do we establish what his representative value might be?
We should think of Juvenal’s text as self-consciously locating itself somewhere
between these two kinds of mimetic aesthetics established above. It is clear that Juvenal’s
117
Schmitz 2000: 31-34.
118
Cf. Freudenburg 2005a: 82, on the how the myth of epic, monstrous vice in Juvenal’s satire creates the
necessity of his characters, who are, to use dramatic metaphors, “players acting out pre-assigned roles in a
highly orchestrated discourse that requires them to be silly and nefarious and greedy, and so on, so that the
satirist might arrive on the scene.”
119
Eco 1990: 69, in his survey of possible-world modality and fiction, briefly considers how this film plays
with the possibilities of fictional worlds overlapping.
120
Most powerfully stated by Kroll 1988: 92 (quoted by Williams 2010: 425 n.2): Immerhin hätten ihre
unzählingen Anspielungen kein Verständnis gefunden, wenn die Sache nicht allgemein verbreitet gewesen
ware.
38
text is not “naturalistic” in its focus on the grotesque, the out-sized, the ludicrous. But to
declare Juvenal’s universe a mere fictional one, whose correspondence to the real world
is tenuous,121 debases not only the charge of its ideological content in 2nd century Rome
and 21st century America but the value of reading it at all. Yes, Juvenal is good show, but
surely there is something more to it? What I will argue in the following chapters is that
Juvenal constructs his text as a “debased” form of representation, whose internal
mechanisms for depicting the world of “Rome” are compromised by the influence of
Rome on itself. Juvenal is, indeed, a “mirror of degradation,” but Juvenal’s text is not a
“direct transcription of scene[s] from everyday life.”122 Rather, to extend the metaphor of
the mirror in a different way, Juvenal’s text is indeed an accurate “reflection” of its time,
for it enacts the problems of meaning and value which Juvenal identifies in Rome. I will
argue that the implication and problematization which John Henderson identifies as
naturally occuring in comic and satiric texts in Rome applies not only to its ambivalent
ideological stance but to its poetological one.123
121
Doležel 1988: 475-480 reviews the development of mimetic orientations towards the correspondence
between narrative fiction and “reality,” dismissing 3 different conceptions in turn. Do particulars in a
fictional work correspond to really existing people? Do they correspond to a more universal conception,
instantiated in a text by particular characters (Trimalchio and Fortunata in the Satyricon representing some
kind of “truth” about contemporary freedman; cf. Auerbach 1953: 24-49)? If we posit the existence of a
fictional world, are we required to consider it to have prior existence? (For a crisp statement of this problem
of fictional worlds, see Leithauser 2012: is a text a “box” which contains characters’ lives in their entirety
or a “keyhole” through which the reader catches a passing glance into another world?). Doležel eventually
discusses (481-493) how the use of “possible-world modalities” (a logical mode of thought where our
actual existence is posited as only one occurrence from an infinity of possible occurences) might be
developed to answer some of these questions such that a fictional world can take account of the real world
but retains its fictional particularity (more fully fleshed out in Doležel 1998). This theory, though expressly
oriented towards “constructional” fictional narratives (of which Juvenal is not at all a narrative and a
complicated version of “fiction”) rather than “descriptive texts,” can still be useful in creating a model for
interpreting Juvenal because it allows for a correspondence while not requiring it. See Eco 1990: 64-82 for
more on the usefulness of “possible-worlds” semantics in reading fictional narratives.
122
Witke 1970: 120; 115.
123
Cf. Henderson 1999: “In every case, I shall claim, the Latin texts smudge substantial lines of cultural
power. And they all find a branch to sit on while they gleefully saw it through” (ix).
39
Thus, the textual landscape (“Rome”) that Juvenal will recreate in verse for the
reader will be shown to correspond to the spectacle which Juvenal shows himself
confronted with (Rome). As Juvenal looks at Rome, so we will look at “Rome” (i.e.
Juvenal’s text). His method will not be exclusively visual, but it will depend on the logic
of the visual, of correspondence between satiric sign A and “Roman” phenomenon B. If
Rome to Juvenal has become a spectacle where nothing is as it seems, the most piquant
way to represent that crisis is to attack the apparatuses of his own representative project.
Juvenal will re-enact his dilemma in his satire and, by projecting that problem onto the
reader, challenge the reader with an analogously complicated interpretive situation. The
mechanics of visuality in Juvenal do provide a model of interpretation; but, unlike visual
reading in, e.g., Livy,124 Juvenal’s argument is that this model will necessarily be debased
by its environment.125 Though it is difficult not to write satire in Rome (1.30), this does
not mean it is not difficult to write satire in Rome.
In Chapters 1-3, I will survey three moments in Juvenal’s corpus where the
metapoetic difficulties of Juvenal’s enterprise of representing Rome intertwine explicitly
with the satirical topics at hand. At the outset of Satires 2, 8, and 10, he expressly
confronts some issue of meaning or definition, which in turn becomes the point of
departure for the rest of the satire. In each of these three satires, there is similar structural
procedure: Juvenal will set a watchword for Roman vice or degeneration or folly early in
124
Chaplin 2000, esp. 73-106; Feldherr 1998: 11.
125
Cf. Henderson 1989: 195n.4 on the relationship between language as depicted in the principate and used
in Tacitus’ Annales: “Already in their 1st chapter, Annals indissolubly associate the fraud and deception
suavely tooled into the control of society through violence done to language with the falsification and
disfigurement of historiography. ‘Tacitus’ is not silent on the doublebind knotted in his writing, though, as
with the declamatory writers, most obviously Juvenal, readers are ill-advised to search his work for the
editorial comment, the emotional outburst, the forced interpretation which betrays the historian’s truesincere-inner-underlying deep ‘view,’ so do not expect to catch him with his rhetorical trousers down, his
work is ironized beyond anything so crude.”
40
the satire (2.8, 8.20, 10.2-4) which will prove to open up meaningful avenues of reading
for the rest of the poem when redirected back onto the logic of Juvenal’s text. For each of
these satires, I will give a close, consecutive reading of the whole satire, in order to plot
the emergence of the paradox whereby the satirical means which he uses to discuss the
main topic of the satire begins to be woven self-destructively into that satire’s content.
The “form” will thus come to represent the content, in all its contradictions and
complications. I have chosen both early and later satires (though I have not accounted for
Book 5 in depth) to demonstrate an underlying concern with processes of meaning
throughout Juvenal’s oeuvre, despite great changes in tone and rhetoric.
The world of gender transgression in Satire 2 could be politely described as “a
wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Juvenal initially takes aim at the most notorious
offenders, those who exhibit virtue in their deportment while secretly reveling in sexual
deviance. In my first chapter, “A Panopticon of Vice: The Rhetoric of Exposure in
Juvenal 2,” I will argue that Juvenal’s initial advice to be suspicious of external
appearance (frontis nulla fides, 2.8) has destabilizing consequences when juxtaposed with
the strongly visualized mechanics of his satire. I will argue that Satire 2 displays in each
of its objects of attack some kind of contradiction between internal and external,
emblematic of a larger chaos of sexual reference; yet, as I will also show, the satire itself
depends on a logic of coherent correspondence in order for that satirical attack to be
meaningful.
In Satire 8, as Juvenal moves away from the intensely visualized mode of Satire 2,
his final object of discussion becomes similarly discursive. Satire 8 interrogates the true
meaning of “nobility” in light of the decadence of modern nobles, arriving early at the
41
maxim that “virtue is the one and only nobility” (nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus,
8.20). Yet, as I will argue in my second chapter, “The Mirage of “Nobility”: Reference
and Negotiation in Juvenal 8,” Juvenal’s mocking discourse will rely on the essential
connection between birth and status even as it tries to disengage them and re-hinge status
to virtue. Juvenal will insinuate that birth should be dispensed with as a meaningful
criterion for judgment by showing various ways in which nobles from both recent and
distant past dissolved the essential connection between birth and virtue or muddied the
boundaries between high and low status. Yet his satirical techniques, particularly in their
reliance on exemplary names to stand for a particular brand of virtue or vice, must rely on
the fixity of reference. His intimations about the value of birth thus threaten to turn his
satire into a self-negating discourse.
Satire 10 begins by invoking a world where men have difficulty distinguishing
(dinoscere, 10.2) true goods from false through the fog of misconception (erroris nebula,
10.4). This misunderstanding leads men to mistakenly desire apparent goods which lead
only to their own destruction. Juvenal sets out to correct those impressions. I will argue in
my third chapter, “Laughter and Myopia: The Worldview of Juvenal 10,” that this initial
evocation of “mistaken” objects of desire, in turn, sparks a subtle critique of the satirical
perspectivizing which Juvenal embarks upon by insinuating himself into the world of the
satire through the stand-in satirist Democritus. The centrifugal irony of the situations that
Juvenal will describe often turns out to run counter to the finality of the meaning he tries
to impose on those situations. Notions of “vision” in Satire 10 will be both mechanical
(the reliance on the logic of self-affirming appearance) and metaphorical (the selfconscious clash of cognitions of Rome). The weakness of the attempt to resolve the
42
satire’s difficulty in the final 20 lines will only serve to underscore the contingency of the
satirical view Juvenal has adopted.
Satires 2, 8, and 10 come together, then, to form a kind of “shadow” or “anti”program in Juvenal’s satires, the goal of which is to expose to the reader fissures and
contradictions in Juvenal’s discourse. Juvenal’s satires do indeed mean what they say, but
they can also show how “meaning” what you “say” is more slippery business than he
initially claims. The reader of Juvenal’s satire is saddled with the same interpretative
burden that Juvenal depicts himself lugging around Rome. In my final chapter, “The
Devils Inside: Female Threats to Roman Satire in Juvenal 6,” I wish to offer a case-study
demonstrating how this “anti-program” may reveal the same interpretative crisis in a
satire that does not explicitly activate issues of meaning in the same way as Satires 2, 8,
and 10. In the overwhelming blunderbuss of Satire 6, Juvenal charts the degeneration of
Roman women from chaste (though indelicate) prehistoric women (6.1-20) to the honest
Roman matron of yesteryear (6.286-291) and culminating in the tragic murderesses of
today (6.634-661). Many of the aspects he will deplore in Roman women (gender and
social transgression, deception, etc.) will be shown to have a metapoetic significance to
his own project, revealed through, and reflected in, the satirical means by which he
identifies those faults. I offer a new reading of the final section of the Satire 6 which
argues that the notoriously evasive programmatic discussion at 6.634-38 (fingimus haec
altum…) is an apocalyptic dovetailing of the social and poetological concerns of the
satire The end of poem thus reveals how his satirical perspective has been indelibly
“corrupted” by the panoply of vicious women it has just finished envisioning.
43
After a brief conclusion, I will examine some modern texts in order to chart how
Juvenal’s self-consuming discourse has unexpected analogues in recent metafictional
literature. This appendix will survey three 20th century novels (Don Delillo’s White Noise,
Paul Auster’s City of Glass, and Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch) to show how aspects of
contemporary literary technique can be thought analogous to Juvenal, not only in their
experimental mechanics, but also in their representational strategies.
44
Chapter 1: A Panopticon of Vice: The Rhetoric of “Exposure” in Juvenal 2
After a two line introduction about fleeing to the ends of the earth (Ultra
Sauromatas fugere hinc libet et glacialem/ Oceanum, quotiens aliquid de moribus
audent, 2.1-2), which gives the satire both apocalyptic and universalizing implications,
Juvenal launches into what appears to be his object of attack for the satire: qui Curios
simulant et Bacchanalia vivunt (2.3).1 Immediately at the outset, Juvenal’s use of proper
names concretizes an abstract notion of hypocrisy: he does not say that his targets preach
one thing and practice another, but, more precisely, that they wear the mask of Curii
while actually acting out Bacchic revels. This is not to say that the metonymy of Curii2
for proper Republican mores is a difficult transference; it will become important
however, in light of the explosive claim a few lines later, about the untrustworthiness of
external appearance.
Juvenal continues in this “externalizing” vein in the next few lines as he stages a
kind of distorted Roman atrium outfitted with the busts and books of philosophers:
Indocti primum, quamquam plena omnia gypso
Chrysippi invenias; nam perfectissimus horum,
Si quis Aristotelen similem vel Pittacon emit
Et iubet archetypos pluteum servare Cleanthas.
5
(2.4-7)
Firstly, the untutored, although you would find everything stuffed with the gypsum of
Chrysippus; for he is the most perfected of these men, if he has purchased an almostAristotle or Pittacus and bids his bookshelf keep safe originals of Cleanthes.
1
Cf. the similar opening to Sat. 10 (Omnibus in terris, quae sunt a Gadibus usque/ Auroram et Gangen,
10.1-2), which is often cited as corresponding to Juvenal’s move away from Roman topics and more
towards universal ethical issues in Bks. 4 and 5 of the Satires (Anderson 1982: 288; Reeksmans 1977: 117).
For the global scope of Juvenal’s satiric corpus, see Rimmel 2005: 83.
2
Though see Ferguson 1987: 75-76 for a detailed account of major members of the Curii, of whom some
were less upright and law-abiding than others.
45
These objects stand not only for moral tenets espoused by his satiric objects but
also, through their mere materiality, for their hollowness of those tenets in light of their
hypocrisy.3 In particular, we should note how similem Aristotelen (6) plays up the gap
between ostensible belief and practice: these busts are similar—but only similar—to
Aristotle, i.e. they share only his external appearance of philosophy without the
underlying significance.4 Similarly, the bust of Chrysippus is referred to by a periphrasis
of its material, gypsum (gypso/ Chrysippi, 4-5); the way the poet has emphasized the
materiality of the figure undercuts the impression that the hypocrites attempt to transmit
through displaying it. These props prepare the stage well for our actors to come.
And then the immediate Juvenalian right hook: frontis nulla fides (2.8): “Don’t
trust what’s in front of you!” Scholars are divided on the import of this line to the rest of
the poem’s theme. One school has seen the entire satire, in light of this line, as dealing
with moral hypocrites; the theme, as pithily summarized by Willibald Heilmann,
concerned the distinction between Sein und Schein, as symbolized by Rome’s selfdestructive sexual mores, particularly in the form of pathic homosexuality.5 Yet later
3
Cf. Weisen 1989: 715. As we shall see, the opening of Satire 8 uses a similar technique with the busts of
philosophers replaced with imagines and broken statues. Barchiesi and Cucharelli 2005 discuss how the
satirists “reduc[e] abstract concepts to their real or corporeal referents, thereby exacting from them a moral
significance,” in the context of how they apply this strategy to their own bodies and the gaps that are
thereby opened up (207). This strategy is made later explicit within the text, as Juvenal remarks on
Naevolus’ downcast appearance as marking his decline at the opening of Satire 9: deprendas animi
tormenta latentis in aegro/corpore, deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque/inde habitum facies. Igitur
flexisse videris/propositum et vitae contrarius ire priori. (9.18-21). Cf. also Lucil. Fr. 638: animo qui
aegrotat, videmus corpore hunc signum dare.
4
On the choice of statues: Chrysippus and Cleanthes, as early representatives of Stoicism make sense not
only in light of the emphasis on ethics in Stoicism but also for the enthusiastic adoption of Stoicism by
certain senators during the early Empire. Pittacus, as one of the Seven Sages, stands in for general wisdom;
Aristotle is convenient perhaps for his Nicomachean Ethics and also for his more material and empirical
approach to philosophy, over and against Plato’s idealism.
5
Heilmann 1967, followed by, e.g., Winkler 1983, Schmitz 2000: 60 (Satire 2 depicts “Widerspruch
zwischen Schein und Sein”; further, 128-137).
46
scholars pointed out the inadequacies in applying the theme of appearance versus reality
to the whole satire. For one, there is a clear shift from secrecy to ostentation in the
figures’ presence in the second half of the poem such as Creticus or Gracchus’ public
performance in the arena. Scholars have responded to this objection by showing how the
climaxing structure of the poem enacts the exposing rhetoric that Juvenal begins here, as
Juvenal displays ever more brazen forms of social inversion and perversion.6 All the
figures may not be hypocrites per se, but Juvenal uses the untrustworthy nature of
appearances to advance the logic of exposure of their hidden parts before a satiric
audience. This exposure originates in the first part of the poem in grotesque images of
the body7 and then moves into a less physically localized “putting on stage of deviants
performing reprehensible behavior.”8 Jonathan Walters has shown how the “theme of
secrecy and disclosure” is enacted in this poem in the recreation of private activity for the
public gaze.9
But the logic of this exposure depends, paradoxically, on the reliability of
appearances. Even if we distrust the visual stimuli we receive from the world (or, in this
6
E.g. Nappa 1998, who tracks the climaxing movement of the poem through increasing debasement and
how this mirrors, inversely, the loss of Roman vigor by the collapsing of social paradigms. Nappa, in
general, views Juvenal’s satiric technique as more dynamic than that allowed previously by, e.g. W.S.
Anderson, who argued that, unlike Horace, Juvenal’s satires consist of an elaboration and aggregation of
images and examples related to a given theme rather than a development of that theme (Anderson 1982:
253). Braund and Cloud 1981: 203-208 outline a neat diptych structure, with 2.81-83, on the spread of vice
analogized to a viral contagion, as a pivot point; each half of the diptych (climaxing respectively in
Creticus and Gracchus in the arena) portrays a movement from secrecy to openness (cf. Schmitz 2000:
132ff.).
7
Gunderson 2005 discusses the clash between “lying bodies” and the truth, where “vile bodies speak
against their owners” (227). Cf. Romano 1979: 81 on the “irony of self-betrayal” at play in the this
opening section.
8
Walters 1998: 355. Walters discusses the social implications of this staging and the way that, on the one
hand, it creates community norms by defining certain deviations while also allowing the viewer to take
pleasure in the portrayal of these deviances, even while keeping themselves firmly in the normal category.
9
Walters 1998: 361.
47
case, the actors populating this satirical world), we must have some baseline of reliability
to read the visual meaning that these satirical pictures create. At some point, we must be
able to believe what we see, depending on who is doing the showing; in a world overrun
with play-actors who display one behavior while secretly practicing another,10 we have to
trust in the meaningfulness of those “secret” behaviors—the behaviors that are exposed to
us by the satirist. That is, there must exist a coherent system of reading and decoding
images, whereby Juvenal’s gestures of showing the “real” world, stripped of its masks,
still has a coherent meaning.11
Yet, the second satire revolves around those instances where this consistency is
attacked. I wish to argue that the maxim frontis nulla fides is indeed the lynchpin of the
satire and that Satire 2 does revolve around a contradiction between Schein und Sein; we
must, however, include under the rubric of Schein the meaning-making act of satire itself.
Satire 2 is the most vivid example of the way Juvenal uses visuality to make satiric
meaning while implicitly calling meaning into question. Indeed, the poem is
exceptionally staged, such that one could think of it not merely as what Paul Allen Miller
calls “enchainment of images,”12 but a series of playlets, particularly those of Laronia
(34-65), Creticus in his see-through tunic (65-78), the travesty of the Bona Dea by a
group of effeminates (83-116), the marriage of Gracchus to the cornicen, presented in a
series of snapshots from engagement to wedding night (117-136), the appearance of
10
Keane 2006: 29 discusses this section as an example of the issues of performative identity and
theatricality as a social phenomenon depicted in Juvenal (and emblematized by Juvenal as satirist himself).
11
Cf. the formulation of Winkler 1983: 90-96, where reading Satire 2 is described as watching Juvenal
“tearing down the elaborate front” emblematized by the false philosophers.
12
An apt description of both Roman elegy and satire by Miller 2007: 142, who seeks to trace in Rome the
“movement of desire” (rather than a path logical or mimetic) between these enchained images in selections
from Horace, Ovid, and Juvenal.
48
Gracchus in the arena (143-148), and the confrontation between modern-day effeminates
and the grim Romans of yore in the underworld (149-158).
Obviously, one need only look at the gaps in the line numbers above to see that
this strategy of spectacle-making does not encompass the satire in its entirety. Still, what
I will show is how the obsessively “presented” nature of this satire (whether through a
reliance on concrete objectifications or satirical dramaturgy) interacts with the theme of
referential coherency. There has been a breakdown in Rome, so Juvenal says, in the
ability to construct a sound model of behavior and reality, yet this impression of a world
out-of-joint applies to Juvenal’s satirical world as well. I will focus my analysis then on
those visual images and the resulting satirical short-circuit that occurs when we as readers
take Juvenal’s claim of all-consuming inconsistency seriously.13
A. The Hair Down There
Indeed, the next sentence after the stunning frontis nulla fides confirms a kind of
universalizing impulse to Juvenal’s skepticism: “For what district isn’t swimming with
grim-faced perverts [or perverted grim-faces]?” (quis enim non vicus abundant/ tristibus
obscenis, 2.8-9).14 Though tristibus obscenis refers primarily to the hypocrites already
hinted at line 3 and further described in grotesque detail in the following lines (10-33), on
13
This line of thought is certainly indebted to Kirk Freudenberg’s (Freudenberg 2001: 234-242) exposition
of the cognitive dissonance that results for readers at the notorious end of Sat. 1.170-171, where Juvenal
claims to attack the dead. Freudenberg reminds us that satire creates a body of readers engaged in a process
of reading and deciphering, a process which is not always straightforward.
14
Weisen 1989: 715 highlights out the doubleness in Juvenal’s pairs of adjectives, such as tristibus
obscenis, where it becomes unclear which of the pair is meant to be substantive (cf. 9.38 mollis avarus of
Naevolus’ patron). One can see here an attempt to destabilize meaning at the level of the individual word
by vacillating between an attribute and what it is being attributed to (despite the efforts of commentators to
flatten this effect; cf. Courtney’s insistence in reference to 9.38 that avarus is a noun; cf. Courtney 1980:
643, Index III [Style, Grammar, Latinity, Metre], s.v. “Adjectives: as nouns”)
49
another level, it embraces the contradiction at the heart of the satire: how can a Roman be
tristis and obscenus at once? One answer: he can live two lives which should be mutually
exclusive (e.g. our hypocrites who “talk about virtue while wagging their asses,” de
virtute locuti/ clunem agitant, 2.20-21); but on another, more basic, level he can’t be
both, at least not at the same time. This is precisely the unhinged world in which this
satire portrays itself operating, with ramifications that collapse back onto it.
Juvenal next maps out this contradictory state of affairs onto the bodies of
individual offenders. With satirical precision, Juvenal identifies that part of the body most
emblematic of this contradiction—the anus—and exposes it (or, rather, depicts it being
exposed) first through coarse metaphor, then through a stand-in for the satirist:
castigas turpia, cum sis
inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos?
hispida membra quidem et durae per bracchia saetae
promittunt atrocem animum, sed podice levi
caeduntur tumidae medico ridente mariscae. (2.9-13)
You criticize foulness, even while you yourself are the most notorious trench among the
Socratic faggots? Yeah, your limbs are hairy and the hard bristles all over your arms
show a harsh heart, but I know. Your swollen piles are dissected from a smooth ass—
with the doctor laughing the whole time.
Juvenal is not the first to identify Stoic philosophizing, emblematized by hairiness,15
contradicted by sexual submissiveness of its proponents. Indeed, Shadi Bartsch has
tracked this phenomenon of supposed sexual debasement among Stoic philosophers
occurring in many sources in the 1st century C.E., particularly Martial.16
15
Cf. Gleason 1995: 67-70 on Stoic codes of hairiness.
16
Bartsch 2006: 164-82. Plotting this against Roman notions of the link between inpenetrability,
masculinity, and libertas (and their inverses), she argues that the Stoic transfer of inviolability from body to
mind, figured in the elevation of the importance of patientia, had the unexpected consequence of equating
Stoics with passi (patior), pathic homosexuals.
50
In order to see the contrast in mechanics, it is valuable to compare at a poem of
Martial’s that, while not about Stoics specifically, hews particularly closely to Juvenal’s
picture of the hirsute pervert:
Aspicis incomptis illum, Deciane, capillis,
cuius et ipse times triste supercilium,
qui loquitur Curios adsertoresque Camillos?
Nolito fronti credere: nupsit heri. (Mart. 1.24)
You see that one, with his hairs undid, Decianus, whose grim arched eyebrow even you
are afraid of, who is always talking about Curii and Camilli, restorers of liberty? Don’t
believe the hype: he was given away in marriage yesterday.
The joke is almost exactly the same, but the way that Juvenal and Martial tell it
are radically different. It isn’t just that Juvenal’s joke is situated in a different generic
mode, the expansiveness of satire rather than the compression of epigram.17 Martial
works verbally through the tension and release of the elegiac couplet, which unrolls
before the satisfying deployment of the punchline in the last line. But for Juvenal the
hypocrisy is not revealed not verbally but visually. The coarseness of the metaphor fossa
is suitably aggressive, but the next lines make clear the significance of “reading” the
body.18 As Maud Gleason has shown in her discussion of self-construction in Imperial
17
Colton 1991: 67-72 discusses Juvenal’s debt to Martial in these lines, though not with especial insight.
Mason 1963 and Anderson 1982: 362-96 both give interesting discussions of how Martial’s jokes
drastically change meaning when imported into satirical discourse, even if the content of the joke is exactly
the same.
18
It is worth reminding ourselves here how the metaphor works, in this case taking a part of the body and
transforming it into something else. It requires a kind of faith that the image will be comprehensible to the
reader, i.e. will be clearly enough connected to the original object being depicted to be recognizable, while
also creating a new set of meaningful associations through the transference (that is, using fossa for
something more literal, like podice in l. 12). The process of metaphor then, like the materialization of the
bust of Chrysippus discussed above, reminds us as readers that satirical language itself is an “external”,
something mapped over the satirical object depicted.
51
Rome, there was a bodily “language,” rooted in physiognomy, a semiotic system which
could be depended on to discern masculinity from its deviations.19
We see these bodily semiotics play out here. One aspect of the hypocrites’ bodies
declaim their old-fashioned virtue (hispida membra...durae per bracchia saetae, 10;
atrocem animum, 12), while another (tumidae...mariscae, 13) reveals their perverted
behavior, with the figure of the doctor standing in for the satirist, with his laughter
authorizing ours.20 Erik Gunderson describes well the satirical situation: “smutty volumes
are legible on the body’s surface and the narrator reads them to us.”21 Yet, at the moment
of exposure by doctor-cum-satirist, the levis podex (12) that betrays its owner (the “truthtelling private parts” in Gunderson’s words, the truths that are the poetry itself)22 is just as
much an external trait as the bristly limbs. Only the authority of the satirist makes the
podex a more veracious orifice than the mouth spouting virtues a little later.
But considerably more disconcerting is the effect that this revelation has on the
original set of signs, namely the hairy limbs. For, according to the logic that the poem has
presented so far, signs of manliness point to effeminacy. Juvenal, adding a few other
externalized signs such as a penchant for dour silence and extremely short hair (magna
libido tacendi/ atque supercilio brevior coma, 2.14-15), upsets the reliability of our
19
Gleason 1995: 55-81, esp. 58-70. See Gleason 1995: 29-37 for an account of the physiognomic texts
which survive from the imperial period. For the conscious construction of masculinity of Romans through
“performance,” either exemplary (like orators) or monstrous (like actors, orators’ perverted Doppelgänger),
see Gunderson 2000. Indeed, this code could be put to political use: Corbeill 2002 gives an interesting
account of ways of deportment and walking could be used rhetorically by Cicero to “identify” and censure
a popularis politician.
20
See Braund 1996 ad loc, Keane 2006: 64, Plaza 2006: 158.
21
Gunderson 2005: 227, who likewise describes how the reader of satire must “decipher the flesh” (228).
Freudenberg 2001: 249ff. similarly plays up the problematic “peep-show” aspects of Satire 2: “His counter
tirade, in turn, is itself explicit and titillating. Its ability to arouse is thus one of the problems it presents”
(250).
22
Gunderson 2005: 227.
52
physiognomic iconography by undercutting exactly those gestures which should
guarantee a properly Roman masculinity. Thus, as Gleason shows, one reason that
hypocrites were so vociferously denounced is because of the fundamental danger they
posed to interpretative codes of gender: “Those who tampered with the most visible
variables of masculinity in their self-presentation provoked vehement moral criticism
because they were rightly suspected of undermining the symbolic language in which male
privilege was written.” Gunderson likewise asserts that the satirist requires us to “accept
the rhetorical proposition that ‘bodily style is the man,’” yet Juvenal goes to great pains
to show us that bodily style is not the man here.23 As Barbara Gold has pointed out in her
discussion of the appearance of women’s bodies in Juvenal, his “implied ideal Roman
[who] displays no discrepancy between outer appearance and internal character” does not
properly exist in Juvenal: “the perfect, contained male body is conspicuous by its
absence.”24
Nor does Juvenal admit of the opposite possibility, whereby feminine traits might
somehow belie masculine character (at least not here: see Ch. 4, Section A). He continues
with an ironic approval of the confessed pathic Peribomius (“Peribomius acts more
truthfully and genuinely; I blame the fates for this one who confesses his disease in his
face and gait”, verius ergo/ et magis ingenue Peribomius; hunc ego fatis/ inputo, qui
vultu morbum incessuque fatetur, 2.15-17), making it clear how we are to read these
23
Gunderson 2005: 228, citing the classic formulation of the proposition that a man’s rhetorical character
reveals his inner one: talis hominibus fuit oratio quails vita (Sen.Ep.114.1). Gunderson recognizes the
instability of J’s bodily semiotics (cf. “how can one be confident in a building erected upon the quicksand
of flabby depravity?” [228]), but he redirects this challenge towards a psychoanalytic reading of the
narrator’s desire for a “lost whole,” which uses vile bodies as foil (229f.)
24
Gold 1998: 371. This notion of the closed, classical body is paramount to the limitations of applying
notions of the Bahktinian grotesque, which prioritizes an open, fluid body and ambivalence encompassing
both death and renewal, to Roman satire, as Bahktin himself recognized. See Miller 2001: 153-157.
53
signs. More ironically, he allows a pervert (infamis Varillus, 2.22)25 to similarly interject
on behalf of these openly effeminate men: “‘Am I supposed to be afraid of you as you
grind, Sextus? How am I worse than you?’” (‘ego te ceventem, Sexte, verebor?...quo
deterior te?’, 2.21-22)
The reader is here left adrift, with a dependable paradigm neither for manliness
nor, at a slightly further remove, for truth itself; the poem is dependent on visual signs to
make satirical meaning or, more precisely, on the reliable correspondence between those
signs and internal character.26 In a poem so intimately concerned with static categories of
status and gender, Juvenal has disrupted the evaluative measures by which we are to
judge those categories.27 Domitian stands as the embodiment of this disorder, who even
as he reinstitutes moral legislation condemning adultery, is an “adulterer polluted by a
tragic coupling” (tragico pollutus adulter/ concubitu, 2.29-30); in a perverse act of
exposure by Juvenal the aborted fetus which Julia expels is described as a “lump
resembling its uncle” (patruo similes…offas, 2.32).28 Here, we are presented with the
grim paradox that underlies the tensions of Satire 2: we must use one visual sign (the
graphically coarse description of the fetus) to disprove another (Domitian’s legislation).
As with the doctor above, the authority of the satirist’s language (particularly its increase
25
The anonymity of this “notorious” figure may be part of the joke; cf. Ferguson 1987 237 for the lack of
reference.
26
This satire in particular emblatizes Juvenal’s “satirical dismemberment,” by bringing visual attention to
selected body parts which are taken to stand for the whole; cf. Braund and Racschke 2002:74, 80, which
compares Juvenal’s satirical monstra to Dr. Frankenstein’s, particularly in the grotesque amalgamation of
parts, and Weisen 1989: 716.
27
Cf. Plaza 2006 311-312, who argues that line 23 (loripedem rectus derideat, Aethiopem albus) introduces
a notion of “relativity in the laughable.”
28
For Domitian’s moral legislation, see Braund ad loc and Stewart 1994: 310-315. Keane 2012: 415 also
suggests that Juvenal’s description of the aborted fetus metapoetically points to Domitian’s monstrous
depiction in literature of the next generation. Domitian’s true “legacy,” his simulacrous abortions, is his
presence in the literary record.
54
in graphic intensity) directs us to the correct prioritization of reading these signs, but it
does not remove the underlying problem of the unreliability of signs in general. Even as
the poem later shifts from the contradiction between two sets of visual signs (the
hairiness vs. the hemorrhoids) to the contradiction between status or gender and activity
(usually presented visually, whether quasi-dramatically or concretized into objects), this
uneasiness about straightforwardly reading Juvenal’s moral spectacle should remain.
B. The Translucent Show: Laronia and Creticus
The notion of hypocritical moralists continues after the horror of Domitian’s
“children”, but presented in a different way. With lines 34-65, Juvenal presents a tidily
framed dramatic scenelet, the extended interjection of one Laronia. Laronia, introduced
“as if she had been standing in the wings listening,”29 no longer able to bear the jeremiads
of the false moralists,30 bursts onto the scene and launches into an extended rant of her
own. Indeed, she enacts the situation of the lines just prior: “Wouldn’t the worst flaws
then rightly and deservedly censure these made up Scauri and bite back when criticized?”
(nonne igitur iure ac merito vitia ultima fictos/ contemnunt Scauros et castigata
remordent, 2.34-35).31
29
Braund 1995: 207.
30
Note especially the use of fero in her introduction: non tulit ex illis torvum Laronia quendam, 2.36. The
language of “bearing” and “enduring” is central to the tone of indignatio that Juvenal develops in his early
books of satires: cf. Anderson 1982: 278, 427, Braund 1988: 3, Schmitz 2000: 62.
31
Because of the neatness of the way this couplet introduces Laronia, I feel that there should be a slight
shift in standard paragraphing of Satire 2. Usually 34-35 are thought to be a kind of summation of the
previous 32 lines, with parallels with the opening lines pointing to ring composition (e.g. castigas, l. 9 ~
castigata l.35; cf. Braund 1996a ad loc). Yet these lines introduce a new notion that the Laronia scene
dramatizes: the criticized striking back, using the same standard of measurements by which they have been
attacked. I think we should imagine, then, the next section of the poem beginning at line 34, not 36.
55
In her extensive denunciation, she uses some of the same techniques as Juvenal
himself. For example, she points to contradictory external signs that undercut the
moralists’ claims (the clash between perfume and hairiness: sed tamen unde/ haec emis,
hirsute spirant opobalsama collo/ quae tibi?, 2.40-42); she draws our attention visually to
the object of attack (respice primum [i.e. before scrutizing women]/ et scrutare viros,
2.44-45). She introduces, on Juvenal’s behalf (see below), the theme that will come to
dominate much of the second half of the poem, the conflict between the men’s proper
social roles and their degrading activity (whether actually more “feminine,” such as
taking a “husband,” or simply a degrading analogy to actions commensurate with female
social roles, such as fighting in the arena). The most striking inversion in men’s practice,
according to Laronia, is weaving: “you draw out the wool and carry back the finished
pelts to the baskets, better than Penelope, more lightly than Arachne, you twist the
spindle, pregnant with thin thread,” (vos lanam trahitis calathisque peracta refertis/
vellera, vos tenui praegnantem stamine fusum/ Penelope melius, levius torquetis
Arachne, 2.54-56).32
Much of the controversy concerning Laronia’s place in Satire 2 has revolved
around whether or not we are to think of her as an independent female speaker, Juvenal’s
one concession to the female voice. It has now been demonstrated convincingly that
Laronia is simply a satirical ventriloquist’s dummy espousing Juvenal’s own views.33 We
32
Praegnantem (55) becomes especially relevant in light of Juvenal’s emphasis on the infertility of the
perverted Roman body; cf. Julia’s abortion at ll.32-33 and Juvenal’s one “comfort” in the light of
Gracchus’ marriage, that two men cannot get pregnant (sed melius, quod nil animis in corpora iuris/ natura
indulget: steriles moriuntur, 2.139-140). For the infertility of the bodily grotesque in Roman Satire, see
Miller 1998 and Miller 2001: 153-157. For the ideological import of weaving in Juvenal, cf. his picture of
the “good old days” at 6.289-290: vellere Tusco/ vexatae duraeque manus.
33
By, inter alias, Braund 1995, Schmitz 2000: 60, and Plaza 2006: 155-59. Braund 1995 summarizes the
point nicely: Laronia effectively “bolster[s] a masculine view of the world, a view which condemns the
56
cannot recuperate Laronia to make her voice more acceptable to our sensibilities. We can,
however, on the other hand, consider how she destabilizes Juvenal’s attack, if we think of
her as another weapon in Juvenal’s arsenal. She continues, in her own way, the problem
that arises in a world where nothing matches appearances (frontis nulla fides), by
transferring the problem from the conflict between two opposing signs (one internal and
one external, where only the authority of the speaker can direct us on how to choose
between the two) to the internal conflicts within the sign maker him- (or rarely, as here,
her-) self.
Laronia, though she may not be a prostitute as used to be claimed, is certainly
implied to be an adulteress.34 Her presence is decried by the hypocrites with the
exclamation “Where are you sleeping now, Julian Law?” (‘ubi nunc, lex Iulia, dormis?’,
2.37).35 Though Laronia can cite the lex Scantinia as a counterblow to the moralists
(quod si vexantur leges ac iura, citari/ante omnis debet Scantinia),36 she never answers
their original objection. Laronia subverts traditional standards of judgment by her
enthusiasm in handing down judgment from a problematic position.37 As Susanna Braund
assimilation of men to women” and collaborates in their alienation (214). Freudenberg 2001: 252-53
discusses Laronia as a kind of proto-Juvenal, but claims that she is not to be trusted because of the
categorical nature of her attack. As I argue below, if anything it is exactly the opposite: it is not that
Laronia is wrong, but rather that she is right, and so are her accusers.
34
See Braund 1995 and Braund 1996a ad 36-38 for arguments that she is an adulteress. See Williams 2010:
103-36 on adultery and the Roman concept of stuprum.
35
For a discussion of the adultery and Lex Julia de Adulteriis Coercendis, passed by Augustus in 17 B.C.E.
and later renewed by Domitian in his moral legislation (as evidenced by flattering poems of Martial [6.7]
and Statius [Silv.5.101-2]), see Treggiari 1991: 262-98 (277-98, on the lex Julia). Braund 1996 ad loc
evinces another wink, pointing out how the wording implies that the law itself may be adulterous: “with
whom are you sleeping, lex Iulia?”
36
For the controversy about the exact nature of this law, presumably forbidding intercourse between men,
see, inter alios, Richlin 1993, Williams 2010: 130-136, and Fantham 2011.
37
Stewart 1994 313-14; Nappa 1998: 99.
57
has shown, Laronia’s speech functions both as attack on hypocritical men and as a
“defense” of women.38 However successful she is thought to be in the former, in the
latter, Laronia’s moral authority is undermined from “outside,” by the one deploying her
as a satirical tool, Juvenal himself. Laronia, in her attack, argues that women do not usurp
men’s role:
non erit ullum
exemplum in nostro tam detestabile sexu.
Tedia non lambit Cluuiam nec Flora Catullam:
Hispo subit iuuenes et morbo pallet utroque.
numquid nos agimus causas, ciuilia iura
nouimus aut ullo strepitu fora uestra mouemus?
luctantur paucae, comedunt coloephia paucae.
50
(2.47-53)
There’s not example in our sex so despicable. Tedia doesn’t lick Cluvia, nor Flora
Catulla: Hispo plays the bottom for young men and goes pale with each disease. Do we
ever plead cases, learn tort law or disturb your fora with any clatter? Few women wrestle,
few women munch on the athlete’s Atkin’s.
Yet each of the examples she gives (rejection of lesbianism, 49; rejection of the
law courts and public life, 51-52; rejection of athletics, 53), can be “disproven” by these
very accusations appearing against women, both in Juvenal’s contemporary Martial39
and, more to the point, in Juvenal’s sixth satire.40 The reader may not know these specific
contradictions within Juvenal’s text but Laronia’s obvious adultery will cause us to
question her claims. Indeed, whether we consider lines 34-35 to introduce Laronia or
close out the first main section (see note 31), the sting of declaring Laronia the ultima
vitia (2.34) does not fade, even if she is granted the right to bite back. The metonymy
38
Braund 1995: 211, 213.
In particular the notorious tribad Philaenis at Martial 7.67, who is both athletic and a lesbian, even
actively penetrating men.
39
40
For female homosexuality, cf. 6.311, inque vices equitant ac Luna teste moventur; for women in public,
cf. 6.242-45; for female athletes, 6.246-268. I discuss each of these instances in Ch. 4.
58
transforms a person into an abstract (rather than vice versa, as usual in Juvenal) and is
extremely inauspicious way to introduce a figure who advocates your message.
The final message is murky. If Laronia’s objections against the hypocrites are
sound, despite her problematic position, how do we treat the moral injunctions of the
hypocrites? Surely what they espouse is not wrong, simply because they are the ones
espousing it? Juvenal’s rhetoric of exposure, that is, his denunciation by signs, depends
on some kind of reliable baseline of criticism, yet the poem makes it still unclear what
that baseline would be in a world of universal vice. Everyone—Juvenal, Laronia, even
the hypocritical philosophers—and, simultaneously, no one has the authority to issue
satirical criticism. The issues of who is allowed is make satirical meaning is underlined
by the way that the satirical mockery is shaped into a quasi-dramatic confrontation
between two actors. The voice of Juvenal fades into the background and the figures of his
satire—object, names, or actors—take center stage to speak for themselves. The structure
of the dramatic scene means its satirical authority lies entirely in recognizing and
accepting an underlying code of correspondence which the drama plays out, even if its
content involves a world where things do not correspond as they should.
Laronia’s tableau ends with a scripted exeunt of the despicable actors (fugerunt
trepidi vera ac manifesta canenetem/ Stoicidae; quid enim falsi Laronia? 2.64-65),
dramatizing the effectiveness of her criticism. Her job complete, she herself is shuffled
unceremoniously offstage, only to be replaced with a character who looks suspiciously
similar to her, the pleader Creticus. Juvenal introduces him with reference to his
distinguishing characteristic, his gauzy attire, before he is even named. He then
59
immediately draws attention to two other aspects of Creticus pertinent to his appearance
in the satire, his prosecution of adulterers and the spectacle he attracts:
sed quid
non facient alii, cum tu multicia sumas,
Cretice, et hanc vestem populo mirante perores
in Proculas et Pollittas? est moecha Fabulla;
damnetur, si vis, etiam Carfinia : talem
non sumet damnata togam.
65
70 (2.65-70)
But what else will others not do, when you put on that flimsy teddy, Creticus, and, even
as the people gawk at this garment, plead against Proculas and Pollittas? Fabulla is an
adulteress; if you want, let Carfinia be condemned: even condemned, she would not put
on this sort of toga.
Juvenal brings our gaze directly to bear on Creticus and the way his external display
creates a conflict of interest with his prosecutions.41 On the other hand, Juvenal does not
exclude the adulterous Romans from criticism; “condemn them!” he says (damnetur, 69).
Though Laronia claims that Roman moralists “forgive the crows and censure the doves”
(dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas, 2.63), Juvenal here shows his tendency to
imply that everyone is at fault. Creticus is not at fault in his prosecutions, only in his
attire (talem/...togam, 69-70).
Again, we have a character from a problematic position inveighing against the
moral faults of Rome, yet here that character has become the object of satire, rather than
its exponent. The parallels to Laronia’s situation are not accidental. Moreover, that
position is highlighted via an appeal a clear-cut external feature, namely the multicia
(66), even though Juvenal has previously muddied straightforward meaning. Creticus
name too could be considered another locus of disorder. “Creticus” certainly evokes a
noble line, and part of the incongruence that underlies Juvenal’s criticism (and which will
41
Cf. Gold 1998: 378: “[Creticus’] clothes show the slippage between pretended character and underlying
perversion.” and Cloud and Braund 1982: 205. Nappa 1998 argues that “his effeminacy has rendered his
authority invalid,” (101) but this ignores the lines following on the legitimacy of Creticus’ charges.
60
become more explicit in his discussion of Gracchus) is the conflict between Creticus’
noble birth/name (an essential trait) and his appearance and behavior (an external one). 42
Laronia’s name similarly evokes a noble heritage.43
The notion of correspondence underlying the logic of exposure, which Juvenal
initiated through the laughing doctor who merely had to “show” us the hemorrhoids (and
we all know what those mean) continues in this section, but with a slightly tweaked
mechanic. Rather than reveal the hidden private parts that clash with the openly displayed
traits (as at 2.11-15) or using a well-informed stand-in to condemn the hypocrites
dramatically (Laronia at 2.34-65), Juvenal simply stages the conflict openly for us to
watch.44
en habitum quo te leges ac iura ferentem
vulneribus crudis populus modo victor et illud
montanum positis audiret vulgus aratris.
(2.72-74)
Why, the sort of clothes in which the people should listen to you citing laws and statutes,
that people just now victorious with untended wounds and the mountain crowd with their
ploughshares put aside!
More precisely, he re-stages the spectacle that Creticus has already created
unintentionally and subsumes his external audience, we the readers, into its internal
42
Creticus is one name of the Caecilii Metelli, who would have been extinct by the time of Juvenal’s
writing, though Martial (7.90) mentions a Creticus; see Ferguson 1987: 71 and Tennant 2001: 188n49 for a
brief overview of the lineage. Whatever the exact reference, as with the Scaurii earlier, we are certainly
meant to imagine a nobleman. We must remember that, for an ancient, the status conferred by birth was
essential, not accidental, and was expected to be manifest in behavior. Henderson 1997: 13 reminds us that
“‘ birth’ concerns not just gentility, nor only family and inter-familial claims made for and against
recognition of the value of descendants, but rather all competing ‘axiological-deontological systems’ (the
nexus of thought and utterance regulated between considerations of worth and of duty) that dispute truth,
power, and authority, in whatever social arenas” [emphasis mine].
43
See Braund ad loc. For more on Juvenal’s play with noble names here, see Stewart 1994: 315.
44
Walters 1998 focuses on this sort of spectacle in the second satire, but is more concerned with the way
that it works socially, that is, the way that it puts on wrongdoers on stage to create community standards
(from which these wrongdoers diverge) and, paradoxically, the sadistically sublimated pleasure that this
staging arouses in satirist and audience.
61
audience. 45 We are the “dumbfaced people” (populo mirante, 67) and he projects a little
later an internal audience for his spectacle, with whom we are to identify
(montanum...audiret vulgus, 74).
However we read the credibility of this audience,46 it is clear that Juvenal’s flair
for spectacle has become ever more explicit here. And yet the conflict between status and
behavior that Juvenal seeks to expose through the staging and visual emblematization of
Creticus’ garment is the very rift that problematizes the convenience of that iconography.
Unlike the piles on display to the surgeon’s knife or the explicit perversions in the two
next tableaux, the Bona Dea re-enactment and Gracchus’ marriage, Creticus’ deviance is
localized entirely in his stage costume.47
In his final farewell to Creticus, Juvenal sardonically describes him as
“transparent”: “You zealous and indomitable master of liberty, Creticus—I can see right
through you” (acer et indomitus libertatisque magister,/ Cretice, perluces, 2.77-78).
Perluces is usually recognized as having the double meaning of “transparent”: not only is
Creticus’ cloak see-through, but so is Creticus! We can see his perversion reflected on the
outside, through his multicia. I wish to suggest a third metapoetic connotation, which
reflects on the “transparency” of Juvenal’s language. Juvenal, as should be clear by now,
has undermined (though, importantly, not totally destroyed) his claim that we are able to
get a glance at his actors’ internal natures through external manifestations like these. It is
45
See Ch 2, Section D on acting nobles in Satire 8 for a more detailed discussion of the implications of this
gesture.
46
Weisen 1989: 719, for example, sees the insubstantiality of Roman idealism exposed by the mythical
idealistic descriptions of Creticus’ onlookers.
47
Compare the figure of Rubellius Blandus in Sat. 8.39-70; as I show in Chapter 2, Section C, his only true
flaw, according to Juvenal, unlike the debased nobles that begin the satire, is overly enthusiastic pride in his
noble lineage.
62
this “transparency” that the second satire keeps calling into question by the very
contradictions it seeks to address. Visualizing satirical language is never “transparent”; it
is yet another “external”, a surface on which we are told we can spy the nature of the
things that language depicts.48 Laronia and Creticus are the lynchpins of the satire: one
offers a spot where satirical authority is problematically ceded to an actor within the
satire (Laronia), the other a scene in which satirical criticism is couched in visual,
morally charged “staging” (complete with audience).
C. Behind Closed Doors
The intersection of spectacle, exposure, and externalization of vice comes to the
fore in the next section, on the pathic travesty of the Bona Dea celebrations (84-116).
This scene is a highlight of Juvenal’s technique of scene-painting crammed with auditory
and visual shorthand, a clatter of blasphemy and a dramatic tableau of morally
meaningful objects. These lines operate as yet another variation of the exposure motif as
originally presented in the opening lines, projected beyond the locus of the individual
body to a group of those individual bodies interacting. There is a raucousness to the
scene—a sense that it is overcrowded with voices and characters—that enacts the
implication of the previous verses on the viral spread of vice at Rome (dedit hanc
contagio labem/ et dabit in plures, sicut grex totus in agris/ unius scabie cadit et
48
Cf. Introduction, note 72, for Jaś Elsner’s definition of visuality as a metaphorical “screen” which the
Romans necessarily looked through to perceive and create social, intellectual, moral, etc. meaning.
63
porrigine porci/ uvaque conspecta livorem ducit ab uva, 2.78-81).49 Here, rather than use
dramatic technique as an opportunity to let another character speak his sentiments
(Laronia’s interjection, problematic as it itself turns out to be) or to underscore, by restaging for the reader, the degrading spectacle that the object of satire already puts on for
Rome (Creticus), Juvenal here produces for his Roman reader a dramatic scene and lets
the scene speak almost entirely for itself, particularly the props and costumes of the
participants. The scene, though “staged” publicly for his readership, is a private one and
fits into the earlier satirical rubric of “exposing”—that is, projecting vices visually for our
inspection.50 Yet Juvenal does very little denouncing in the main body of the scene itself.
The large absence of critical comments is crucial: we must already accept Juvenal’s
premises about value of these objects for the scene to have satirical meaning. There is
little satirical authority to interpret these symbols for us, even as the satire wants us to
question the straightforward interchange between one kind of meaning (social and ritual
roles governed by gender) and another (the actual activity of men).
For the scene is wholly predicated on the erasure of dependable systems of ritual
meaning through travesty: the participation of effeminate men in a celebration of a
goddess exclusively for Roman women. Indeed, the irony of the reversal is pointed out
49
Freulend Jenson 1981: 160-161 sees this passage as emblematic of the attitude of the early satires
towards vice, namely, that vice victimizes and exploits others while remaining unharmed and unpunished
itself (cf. 1.3-4 inpune ergo mihi recitaverit ille togatas/ hic elegos?) For more on the association of
disease and cinaedi, see Williams 2010: 197-200.
50
Courtney ad 84 (domi): “They are a secret society.” Walters 1998 describes how the “vivid depiction for
the audience exactly what was going on indoors recreates it for the public gaze” (359) and compares
Juvenal’s procedure here to a kind of flagitatio. For more on the relationship between flagitatio and the
procedures of the Roman satirists, see Graf 2005. This undercuts those scholars who see the second half of
the satire (usually thought to begin with Creticus’ introduction) as focusing on those who are more flagrant
and public with their misdeeds, e.g. Winkler 1983: 101ff., 138 n.61. What is more relevant here is that, in
another way, there is no movement, since whether hidden/private or public, all the deeds are exposed to
public examination by the same visualizing mechanics. This is to say nothing of the related issue of the
reliability of Juvenal’s reports of private misdeeds, an issue taken up through the analogy of the ‘private
eye’ by Braund and Raschke 2002: 67ff.
64
immediately by the expulsion of women from the premises: “No woman enters—they’ve
already been driven far away: the altar of the goddess lies open to males alone. “Get out,
profane women!” goes the shout, “With no horn is a flute-girl going to groan here!”
(exagitata procul non intrat femina limen:/ solis ara deae maribus patet. ‘ite,
profanae,’/clamatur, ‘nullo gemit hic tibicina cornu.’ 2.88-90).51 On the social level, this
perversion of the Bona Dea ritual underlines the corrupting influence of vice in Rome.52
Yet, on a more fundamental level, trammeling over distinctions of gender in ritual is
merely another example of how definitional problems have run amok in Juvenal’s Rome.
This is not to say that the irony and confusion underlined at the outset makes the
scene completely uninterpretable; rather, as Juvenal himself has said, one cannot take for
granted the correspondence of image and meaning. These objects and gestures would
have had significance for the Roman audience Juvenal constructs, but there is an
undeniable paradox in using a fixed system of moral imagery to uncover cognitive
dissonance. Men’s appearance, status, sex—these can no longer be taken for granted as
pointing to inner, reliable meaning.
As in Satire 6, where women act like men, these men challenge the fundamental
semantic and social construct in the Roman mind: gender. Barbara Gold emphasizes how
cross-dressing turns these men into an “in-between” gender who are men by one criteria,
but women by another; “such men,” she continues, “are defined in visual, material, and
external ways by their bodily adornments, which locate them in an ambiguous place on
51
Romano 1979: 84 on the “total usurpation of sexual status expressed in solis maribus.”
52
Stewart 1994: 316-320.
65
the gender scale.”53 Indeed, the vividness of Juvenal’s externalizing imagery reaches its
peak here, in details such as the fluttering eyelashes during the application of mascara
(ille supercilium madida fuligine tinctum/ obliqua producit acui pingitque trementis/
attollens oculos, 2.93-5) and the splash of colors in their gawdy garments (reticilumque
comis auratum ingentibus implet/ caerulea indutus scutulata aut galbina rasa, 2. 96-7).
Juvenal also provides aural details, particularly in the “broken voice” of the participants
(hic turpis Cybeles et fracta voce loquendi/ libertas, 2.111-12).54 Similarly, Nancy
Shumate argues that the similarities between this scene and the orgy that takes places
when the women celebrate the Bona Dea in Satire 6 (6.314-51) “implicates this group in
female sexual excess ipso facto.”55
That the boundaries separating men and women are symbolically destroyed by
this ritual travesty is emphasized metapoetically through the insertion of the short
“digression” on Otho that the mention of one effeminate’s mirror brings to mind (ille
tenet speculum, pathici gestamen Othonis, 2.99).56 The logic of the satirical attack on
Otho is the same, focusing vividly on objects and the dissonances that their employment
53
Gold 1998: 377, 380. As Gold points out (378), this attitude reaches its climax in Juvenal’s final words to
the celebrants to bring to fruition their effeminate program and literally un-man themselves: quid tamen
expectant, Phrygio quos tempus erat iam/ more supervacuam cultris abrumpere carnem? (2.115-116:
“What are they waiting for then? They should have lopped off with blades that useless flesh, like good
Phrygians, a long time ago.”). Nappa 1998: 104 similarly discusses 2.137-142, on homosexual sterility, as
evidence for pathics as a kind of liminal third gender
54
The text here is problematic: one must either take turpis as substantival and the genitive Cybeles as
depending on it, or turpis can modify libertas (if nominative) or Cybeles (if genitive), which leaves Cybeles
to trail unpleasantly on libertas.
55
Shumate 2006 : 25.
56
Schmitz 2000: 132 has argued that this “digression” is actually central to the poem’s theme of the
spreading contagion in its juxtapositions of these private activities and their more public manifestations in a
single scene.
66
creates.57 One should note the loaded enjambment at the opposed binaries at lines104-7:
nimirum summi ducis est occidere Galbam/ et curare cutem,…solium adfectare Palati/ et
pressum in faciem digitis extendere panem (“Of course, only the greatest leader can kill
Galba and take care of his pores…or reach for the Palatine’s throne and to take the bread
with his fingers and mush it into his face”). Yet, though the interjection is thematically
coherent with the context, it strongly disturbs the momentum of the spectacle: Juvenal
freeze-frames mid-line on the mirror in the pathic’s hand at line 99 and breaks off to
discuss the global implications of the role reversal and ritual travesty, as emblematized by
Otho’s equipment. The disturbance of the satirical presentation itself mid-thought
similarly embodies the confusion of the world in which Juvenal is trying to create
meaning.
D. Monsters and Their Mates: Gracchus on Parade
This violation of “dramatic” boundaries and conventions is continued to an even
more striking extent in the depiction of the climactic “villain” of the satire, Gracchus.58
Gracchus, certainly a nobleman, though his identity cannot be pinned down precisely, is
the protagonist of two consecutive spectacles which, taken together, function as the
57
Cf. Wiesen 1989: 721. Freudenberg 2001: 256-7 argues slyly for another kind of dissonance in the
reference to Otho’s mirror as res memoranda novis annalibus atque recenti/historia (almost certainly a
reference to Tacitus’Histories concerning the civil war of 69 C.E).: if one went looking for this story in
Tacitus, one wouldn’t find it; this absence draws the clearer moral distinctions of the historian into the
satirist’s own “self-defeat.” Keane 2012: 413-15 also shows that Juvenal’s deployment of figures from
Tacitus in Satire 2 is representative of the way he inverts Tacitus’ historical analysis. Rather than
interrogating the heights of power and their corrupting influence on the body politic, he posits these
authoritative figures as mere examples of a larger social phenomenon: “Juvenal is able to convert historical
material on one theme (for example, civil war) into satiric material that emphasizes another (i.e.
effeminancy)…[he] find[s] new themes that enable a different perspective on the same events.”
58
Ferguson 1987: 105-106 argues that he is the grandson of Sempronius Gracchus who was an associate of
Lucius Caesar and follows J. Dürr in positing a Domitianic date for the character; whatever his precise
identity, Juvenal makes the fact of his noble lineage clear (ll. 124-26, 145-46; see below for more).
67
climax of the issues of incoherence, giving a final yank to the social and gendered threads
that have been unraveling throughout Satire 2. In the first (117-136), Gracchus is seen
marrying an unnamed cornicen. In the second scene, after a short intrusion about the
satirical “comfort” provided by the sterility of such unions (sed melius, quod animis in
corpora iuris/ natura indulget, 2.139-40), he describes a final degradation that is
explicitly marked as the climax of vice (vicit et hoc monstrum, 2. 143), Gracchus’
appearance in the arena as a retiarius.59
The designation of Gracchus’ marriage as a monstrum a little into the passage
(scilicet horreres maioraque monstra putares, 2.122), where Juvenal compares the
marriage of two men to prodigies such as a woman giving birth to a calf or a cow giving
birth to a sheep (si mulier vitulum vel si bos ederet agnum, 2.123), releases, in a single
word, the entire complex of issues which Juvenal has tensely coiled into his satire. The
Roman concept of a monstrum, which in its development is related to the Greek use of
τέρας,60 embodies a violation of the laws of nature which, simultaneously, must be
addressed and interpreted as a sign. As it often pointed out, monstrum is etymologically
related to both monere and monstrare. 61 Prodigies or monstra are not merely freaks or
grotesques or hybrids.62 Their appearance as violations of natural law represents a
59
The momentum and rhythm of this satire is particularly well-constructed for Juvenalian standards, as the
transitions between each section are well-marked and create a sense of increasing escalation and crescendo.
Besides the final lines on Gracchus, there is also the transition between the individual figure of Creticus
and the crowd of celebrants of the Bona Dea: foedius hoc aliquid quandoque audebis amictu;/nemo repente
fuit turpissimus. accipient te [sic Creticus]/paulatim qui… (“At some point you will do something fouler
and more bold than this garment; no one becomes grossest overnight. They will take you in, little by little,
those who…, 2.82-84).
60
61
See Moussy 1977 for a discussion tracing the development of monstrum measured against τέρας.
E.g. Plaza 2006: 308.
62
Nadeau 2011: 179-80, who follows the incidence of each occasion of monstrum in Juvenal’s corpus,
recognizes that it represents a “perversion of the laws of nature,” but entirely fails to recognize its
referential quality, as a sign of the gods pointing to vice.
68
warning from the gods, a symbol of the gods’ anger at the sinfulness of parents or
society, demanding purification.63
The monstrous has also been thought a metapoetic symbol for Juvenal’s satire as
well,64 and it occurs particularly appropriately here. These prodigies conjure a vision
which performs both horror and interpretation. Their nature as an index of man’s
perversions, a physical embodiment of larger societal transgression, points to the
complex hermeneutic circle of prodigia, whose appearance was thought to be directly
generated by, and read as a symbol of, a perverted world. Yet, as I have argued, one of
the themes of this satire hinges on the difficulty of interpreting visual signs. The
conjuring of a monstrum here in Satire 2 thus collapses notions of hybridity,
transgression, visuality, and interpretation into a single image. If we think of Juvenal’s
satire as a monstra, we must ask ourselves what exactly are we to read it as a sign of.
The first section on the marriage of Gracchus marks a continuation of some of the
staging techniques Juvenal employs with Creticus and the Bona Dea celebrants, but reenvisioned as a montage. Rather than an extended scene or tableau, Juvenal presents a
number of snapshots of the ceremony interspersed with comments in his own voice,
addresses to the Roman people (121-123) and to Mars, here stylized archaically as
Gradivus (126-132). This constant vacillation between seeing Gracchus married off like a
63
Garland 1995: 59-72. The appearance of the haruspex in line 121 (o procures, censore opus est an
haruspices nobis?) may point to an allusion of the role of haruspex, according to Livy (cf. 27.37.6), in
expiating 2nd century Rome from the threat of hermaphrodites, a physical embodiment of society’s gender
transgression; for more on hermaphrodites as monstra, see Garland 1995: 68-70.
64
Cf. Winkler 1991: 23, who points to Juvenal’s fondness for hybrid as an indication of the affinity of his
text with painting. Plaza 2006: 305-337, discusses the appearance of “monsters” in Juvenal’s text at some
length, though she rather stretches the semantic field of the word. Braund and Raschke 2002: 75-82 ponder
the moral question of producing a monstrous text: what responsibility does Juvenal have for unleashing this
spectacular monster upon the world? In the end they conclude that the staging of the monstrous is merely
emblematic of contemporary society’s decay. I, on the other hand, argue that, by occurring here, monstra
evokes the problems of reading signs as emblematic in the first place.
69
bride65 and Juvenal’s dramatization of his own fury creates a kind of jagged rhythm that
has the same effect on the reader of satire as the situation depicted in the satire itself,
namely, a sense of derailment and confusion,. A good encapsulation of this rhythm is
provided at the very opening, when Juvenal reports that Gracchus has given a large
dowry to a cornicen…”or is it a tubicen?,” he immediately interjects (quadraginta dedit
Gracchus sestertia dotem/ cornicini, sive hic recto cantaverat aere, 2.117-118).
True “marriage” between males is a difficult to substantiate in ancient Rome.66 It
defies the primary political and social purpose of a Roman marriage, namely the
procreation of legitimate children.67 What is most important for our purposes is how
homosexual marriage would have represented an irresolvable conceptual dissonance in
the Roman mind: “In this sense, ‘matrimony’ between two men was an anomaly in the
conceptual and linguistic terms of traditional Roman belief systems. It was impossible for
both men to keep their gendered identity as viri intact.”68 Indeed, all the more perverse is
that Gracchus is said to play the bride in this arrangement: he gives a dowry (dedit
Gracchus sesteria dotem, 2.117), wears a bridal veil (flammea sumit, 2.124), and is
65
In particular, note the force of ecce at 2.129 in the address to Mars (traditur ecce viro clarus genere
atque opibus vir…) to focus visual attention on our villain; cf. Schmitz 2000: 26-27 for this use of ecce as
parts of Juvenal’s program of Inszenierung.
66
Williams 2010: 279-86 gives an interesting discussion of the possibility of the marriage between males,
sorting between rhetoric (such as Cicero’s accusations about Antony at Phil.2.44) and well-attested
historical instances involving Nero, which according to our sources (Dio Cassius, Suentonius, and Tacitus)
were publicly celebrated.
67
Treggiari 1991 5-13, esp. “it was necessary for the state that citizens should marry and produces new
citizens,” (8-9). This volume remains the most extensive source for the basic workings of every aspect of
Roman marriage from engagement until death or divorce.
68
Williams 2010: 281.
70
referred to as “the newly wedded bride” (the almost tender image, gremio iacuit nova
nupta mariti, 2.120).69
Juvenal again uses clothing as a marker of dissonance, when Gracchus’s wedding
dress is contrasted with the accoutrements of his role as Salian priest in a procession:
Segmenta et longos habitus et flammea sumit
arcano qui sacra ferens nutantia loro
sudavit clipeis ancilibus.
(2.124-26)
He is putting on his flounces and trailing gown and veil, the same one who, while
carrying the swinging sacristies from the mystic thong, sweated because of the sacred
shields.
We have here two ritual-spectacles juxtaposed and emblematized through the external
marker of clothing, the perverted wedding ceremony and the traditional leaping
procession of the Salii through the streets of Rome in March and October. We return
again to the dilemma of the opening lines: how can one man participate in two acts with
mutually exclusive moral connotations? The juxtaposition brings together how Gracchus
travesties simultaneously his gender and his lineage.70 We see here, yet again, the
dependence on the visual and dramatic logic to create a world of categorical chaos at
Rome. Even further, the spectacles that Juvenal depicts and creates will soon take place
publically: “Let me live a little longer, and those things will happen, they will! and in the
open! They’ll even want them reported in the daily tribune!” (liceat modo vivere, fient,/
69
For these aspects as distinctively referring to the bride’s role in the wedding, see now Hersch 2010, 94106, 123. Williams 2010: 281-83 argues that it was precisely the male bride that was the locus of anxiety
for Romans, rather than the male “husband” in the pair. Yet, in this scene, I believe that he also ignores
how Juvenal thematizes Gracchus’ status a little later, compounding the various lines of identity which
Gracchus can be thought to pollute.
70
Nappa 1998: 103: “Gracchus therefore has inverted social relations in three ways: he has participated in a
marriage between men, he has taken the role of a woman, and he has violated the station to which he was
born.” This contradiction is similarly evinced at the level of language a little later in a moment of quasidialogue, when someone reports to Juvenal, in direct quotation, that they have “business” the next day:
‘nubit amicus/nec multos adhibet’ (2.134-35). Juvenal points out the incoherence very economically: since
nubere is a word technically used with the bride as the subject (cf. Mart. 1.24.4, quoted above), another gap
in meaning is opened up by the use of the masculine amicus.
71
fient ista palam, cupient et in acta referri, 2.135-6). The open performance of these
travesties in the future will render unnecessary Juvenal’s role as reporter and interpreter
and will leave the reading up to us. Even as these deeds will become manifest, they may
yet become paradoxically unclear because we will no longer be able to rely on the
satirist’s interpretation of the visual signposts and correspondences needed to read Rome.
This danger is reflected subtly in a detail concerning the appearance of Gracchus
in the arena (143-148), which acts not only as the climax of the satire but also the
encapsulation of some concerns which arise from satire’s reliance on externalization, here
through spectacle, as a way of creating meaning. This second section on Gracchus has
often been considered befuddling, if we claim that the poem concerns the sexual mores of
Rome.71 Scholars have now addressed this objection by noting that the poem, at its heart,
addresses sexual roles, rather than sexual behaviors, and the inversion of those roles in
contemporary Rome; scholars studying the interplay, in conceptions of masculinity,
between the low status of Roman spectacle and the display of the body have convincingly
shown how this section works relative to the entire satire.72 More pertinently for this
reading, these lines act as a final summation of the dissonant clashes along the axes of
71
E.g. Courtney’s desire to enclose the section in parentheses; for his explanation, see Courtney 1980: 122.
72
See esp. Walters 1998: 363. Konstan 1993 discusses the poem in the light of the poles of dominance and
masculinity arrayed against submissiveness and effeminacy. As he notes, “the polarities of gender and class
are homologous,” (13) so Gracchus’ appearance in the arena is an abomination because he is assuming a
role normally conferred upon a conquered foreigner (cf. Edwards 1997 for more on the low status of
gladiators and other performers). This “crossing of status categories” (Konstan 1993: 14) is equivalent to a
playing of the female role, in sexual activity or otherwise. Walters 1998, drawing on the analogy of the
grotesque display of Hostius Quadra at Sen.N.Q. 1.16, who placed an elaborate apparatus of mirrors so as
to watch himself be all-penetrated and penetrating, argues for a connection in the Roman mind between
unmanliness and the public display of the body. For more on Hostius, see Elsner 2007: 178-79 and esp.
Bartsch 2006: 103-14. Nappa 1998: 107-108 similarly points out that “passive submission concretely
realizes the elusive but overwhelmingly important moral category of effeminacy” and that it is this slide
into effeminacy that is so dangerous to the moral stability of Rome.
72
gender and class in the system of chaotic sexual vice which Juvenal has created in this
poem.
The passage features emphasis again on Gracchus’ clothing and equipment as a
way of identifying him (specifically as a retiarius) but also a remarkable excursus on
Gracchus’ “internal” nature, his lineage, which is unparalleled elsewhere in the satire:
Vicit et hoc monstrum tunicate fuscina Gracchi
lustravitque fuga mediam gladiator harenam
et Capitolinis generosior et Marcellis
145
et Catuli Paulique minoribus et Fabiis et
omnibus ad podium spectantibus, his licet ipsum
admoveas cuius tunc munere retia misit.
(2.143-48)
The fuscina of the tunic-wearing Gracchus surpasses even this horror and he as a
gladiator surveyed the middle of the arena in flight, more well-born than Capitolini and
Marcelli and the descendants of Catulus and Paulus and Fabii and all those gazing at the
box seats, though you add the very one for whose games he cast his nets.
For the first time in the satire, Juvenal explicitly discusses the noble lineage of his
satirical object, casting that lineage as an essential, internal characteristic which stands as
foil to Gracchus’ ostensible (and ostentatious) behavior. Though not as effective as some
of his more notorious oxymorons (such as meretrix Augusta, 6.118) because of the
separation between the two words, we should read the pair gladiator…generosior (14445) as presenting yet another problem of “reading” and interpreting. How is it possible
for Gracchus to be a nobleman and a gladiator?73 More compellingly, the reaction of the
crowd (which is also implicitly satirized) is to watch.74 When presented with the same
satirical information, the same conflict of various kind of signs—social, visual, etc.—
they do not erupt into a satirical rant, but rather simply absorb the spectacle.
73
Indeed, this would have been legally “impossible” at Rome because of certain strictures on the
participation of nobles in ludi; see Levick 1983 for a decree from Larinum on the punishments accorded to
nobles for appearing on stage.
74
Schmitz 2000: 136.
73
Evidently, Juvenal’s interpretation of the clash of definitions is not as self-evident
as he would have us believe. Though some scholars have argued that Juvenal uses his
satirical spectacle as a kind of sadistic stand-in, whereby his viewers can participate in
vice vicariously by watching,75 I would think it has the opposite effect: the image of
spectacle here unhinges Juvenal from his audience, showing the possibility of various
interpretations. Unlike the horrified onlookers to Creticus, Juvenal subtly creates another
response for those confronted with contemporary Rome. To show how unstraightforward reading the world has become, he gives us a second paradigm: mute
observation and, perhaps, even enjoyment.76
Nor should this be surprising, if we have been paying attention; in a satirical
world where external characteristics are constantly at variance with true meaning, the
notion of sifting through those appearances and arriving at a monolithic conclusion, the
one that Juvenal urges us to draw, seems overly restrictive. He has identified those gaps
in society where behavior somehow fails to match external characteristics or where
irreparable damage is being done to our social and sexual iconography; yet by exploring
these issues he shows how his own discourse is dependent on a similar logic of
correspondence in its “iconography” and is thus equally threatened by its disrepair.
75
Walters 1998: 365; Gunderson 2005: 234.
76
Contrast this attitude with his explicit condemnation of those who enjoy the spectacle of the nobles in
Satire 8 (nec tamen ipsi/ignoscas populo; populi frons durior huius,/qui sedet et spectat, 8.188-90). This
fragmentation of perspectives will be central to my reading of Satire 10 (Ch. 3).
74
E. Bottom Floor: Ancestors and Perverts
The thematic “descent” that has taken place in Satire 2, where each example is
worse than the one that proceeds and vice spreads like a contagion across Rome and the
text, is literalized in the poem’s coda:
esse aliquos manes et subterranea regna,
Cocytum et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras,
atque una transire vadum tot milia cumba
nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aere lavantur.
sed tu vera puta: Curius quid sentit et ambo
Scipiadae, quid Fabricius manesque Camilli,
quid Cremerae legio et Cannis consumpta iuventus, 155
tot bellorum animae, quotiens hinc talis ad illos
umbra venit? cuperent lustrari, si qua darentur
sulpura cum taedis et si foret umida laurus. (2.149-158)
150
That there are some manes and subterranean kingsdoms, Cocytus and black frogs in the
Stygian pool, and that so many thousands cross the stream on a single canoe—not even
little boys believe it, unless they are not old enough to be washed for a quadrans. But
pretend they’re real: what do Curius and both scions of Scipio feel, what do Fabricius and
the shades of Camillus feel, what do the legion of Cremera and the youth eaten up at
Cannae feel, so many ghosts of battles, whenever this sort of shade comes to them from
here? They would like to be purified, if they were given some sulphur along with torches
and if there was some wet laurel.
In Juvenal’s katabasis, the viewer does not need to leave his seat since Rome has already
become a kind of chaotic underworld. Juvenal stages a different kind of scene here than
the previous spectacles of Gracchus, Creticus, and the perverted Bona Dea festival.
Rather than put the objects on stage and let their props, costumes, and actions speak
(mostly) for themselves, he sets up this scene as a foil, depicting vicariously the proper
response of the audience of the satirical show of Satire 2. Juvenal uses Roman names
again as moral markers; here, though, rather than evoking the contradiction between that
name and its representative’s inappropriate behavior (Laronia, Creticus, Gracchus), they
have their expected significance: they indicate the souls of virtuous high-born Romans
75
and Roman soldiers.77 What should these good Romans—and by extension, we—feel
when they witness the progress of these kind of shades into the underworld? A desire for
immediate purification.
Yet, wedged between the scene-setting in lines 149-15178 and the confrontation
scene is another explosive tag (nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aere lavantur./ sed tu
vera puta, 152-53) rendering the entire passage absurd. The verb introducing indirect
discourse that begins at line 149 is delayed until the start of line 152 and it is a negative:
no one believes that these things exist, except for the youngest children. Still, Juvenal
urges us, let’s pretend that the following scene could happen, explicitly exposing the
rhetorical fiction of this section.79 We have here another clash between the Schein of
satire, the visualizing narrative of Rome that Juvenal constructs, and “true” Sein, since his
moral content is debunked as factually empty by Juvenal himself. It speaks
metapoetically of the techniques of satire as a whole which parades before us the shades
of evildoers (recall 1.180-181: experiar quid concedatur in illos/ quorum Flaminia
tegitur cinis atque Latina) at which we are supposed to look and retch. Are we as
insubstantial as the shades that populate these juvenile beliefs? The scene opens up those
same rifts that this satire has examined explicitly among the Romans, those moments of
77
Anderson 1982: 211-216 is the most thorough treatment of the military imagery in Satire 2, showing how
it is deployed with negative irony with reference to hypocrites (e.g. qui talis verbis/Herculis invadunt, 2.1920) or positively, as a foil to the military virtue which effeminate Rome now lacks. Connors 2005: 139
suggests a parallel with the parade of descendants in Aeneid 6.
78
One especially notes the almost certain allusion to Aristophanes’ Frogs in ranas in gurgite nigras (150);
this could simply bring to a mind a dramatic context and technique or, if we think more carefully of the plot
of the play, we might consider the overlap between the respective Underworld travelers: the sexually
ambiguous Dionysius in Aristophanes and the effeminate shade in Juvenal.
79
Anderson 1982: 305. Others have seen the consciously revealed fantasy as thematically expressive of
either the stagnation and emptiness of references to the past (Weisen 1989: 722; Smith 1989: 818) or used
as representative of the topsy-turvy world at Rome (Tennant 2001: 190).
76
semantic static where the clashing of several sets of signs has frustrated efforts to find
coherent meaning in Rome—or in satire about Rome.
The poem ends with a final ironic couplet, where the Armenian hostage, who has
become a “human” at Rome (venerat obses,/ hic fiunt homines, 2.166-67),80 takes back
perverted Roman “virtues” to his homeland:
mittentur bracae, cultelli, frena, flagellum:
sic praetextatos referunt Artaxata mores. (2.169-170)
There will be sent trousers, knives, bridles, and a whip: so they bring back to Artaxata
Roman “morals.”
Juvenal again uses objects as a moral iconography of manliness; but, in a reversal, this
equipment belongs to an Easterner. It portrays the inverse of the objects now used by
Romans, those accoutrements of the Bona Dea festival: the needle for applying mascara
(94), the glass phallus-shaped drinking vessel (95), and especially the mirror (99ff.). The
semantic confusion which the satire portrays and embodies might be thought to be
summarized in the cutting irony of the final word; the “morals” they will bring back81
will be of a debased and meaningless sense.
80
Scholars’ varying interpretations of the force of the word homines might be counted as a nice emblem of
the semantic confusion this satire represents: for example, Courtney 1980 ad loc sees is contrasted with viri
(i.e. they become men, but not “men”—or, perhaps, they become “men”, but not real men; again the
question of the essential definition is at stake), while Braund 1996 points out the possibility of a
paraprosdokian for pathici, with homines standing for an ironic euphemism.
81
Cf. Keane 2006: 131 for the way that this passage, as well as 2.82-84 earlier (see note 59) fits into the
patterns of “learning” vice in Juvenal.
77
Chapter 2: The Mirage of “Nobility”: Reference and
Negotiation in Juvenal 8
Though Satire 8 is more discursive and less intensely visualized than Satire 2, it
can be still shown to contain the same problems of definition and incoherence, with the
same accompanying problems for satire. Indeed, it will similarly rely on signposts both
visual and semiotic to explore a different crisis of categories in Juvenal’s Rome: the
definition of “nobility.” Although John Henderson’s explorations of Juvenal’s
provocative use of exempla in this Satire is fundamental to understanding its play with
the political mechanisms of nobilitas at Rome,1 I will argue that the questions which
Juvenal raises about the “meaning” of nobility in Satire 8 cannot help but apply to the
“meaning” of his own satire.
In the first very line, Juvenal lays out the problem of defining what nobility is or,
more precisely, defining what the point of nobility is, asking, “What do family-trees do?”
(Stemmata quid faciunt? 8.1).2 His nominal answer appears twenty lines later: “Virtue is
the one and only nobility” (nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus, 8.20). The sententious
nature of the answer, almost oracular in its sweeping simplicity, indicates to the reader
that Juvenal’s topic concerns more than how contemporary nobles (or those of two
generations past, or twenty) disgrace their noble lineage through their peccadilloes.
Indeed, its deceptively simple syntax represents how easily and instinctively categorical
definitions can be absorbed, both at Rome and in satire.
1
Henderson 1997. The other major studies are comparatively few: Braund 1988 69-129, and Fredericks
1971a.
2
For stemmata as painted family trees in the atrium, see Flower 1996: 40.
78
A closer look at line 20 reveals the underlying irresolution of Juvenal’s answer,
for the syntax of the line, whereby virtus is the subject and nobilitas sola…atque unica is
the predicate,3 is unsettled. Without the preceding lines, the sentence as it stands could
just as well read “nobility is the one and only virtue.” The context of this opening—
plotting an abstract definition of “virtuous nobility” over and against its degraded
particular representatives in contemporary culture—would, of course, support the first
reading.
Yet Juvenal also seems to argue that these Romans have forfeited their claims to
the cachet of nobility by their behavior; thus the “true” noble would necessarily be
virtuous by definition, thus making the sentiment tautologous. John Henderson describes
well how slippery and open-ended the line is: “The release of that last word, virtus, which
has been jacked up higher with every word that precedes, in the outcome carries only a
spurious, formal finality. So far, we’re scarcely the wiser for it.”4 The problems of
stability of the definition of Roman nobility will come to be condensed near the end of
the satire into an escalating depiction of the noble actors, who, on Juvenal’s estimation,
become a grotesque hybrid, a social adunaton corresponding to the sexual adunata of
Satire 2: how can someone be a noble and an actor? It is no coincidence that Juvenal
stages Gracchus’s momentous appearance in the arena at, or near, clearly marked
climactic moments in both satires.5
3
As e.g. Courtney 1980 would have it.
4
Henderson 1997: 62. Cf. Henderson’s statements elsewhere that Juvenal “tak[es] the greatest care to show
up in his syntax how utterly both these master-terms, nobilitas and virtus, depend on context for meaning”
(61)
5
Sat 2: vicit et hoc monstrum tunicati fuscina Gracchi (2.143); Sat 8: haec ultra quid erit nisi ludus?
(8.199). Only the princeps citharoedus Nero can be deployed to top Gracchus in Sat. 8 (211-230). See Ch.
79
Most scholars who have discussed the whole of Satire 8 have focused on it purely
as a denigration of the nobility and their arrogant, and unwarranted, pride in their
ancestry.6 John Henderson has most closely explored the semantic open-endedness of
Satire 8, particularly in the catalogue of famous Roman cognomina in the opening
nineteen lines and the discussion of euphemism following; in the end, though, he sees
Satire 8 as most concerned with the meaning of genealogies (including satirical
“genealogies”) and how investigating them is a politically destabilizing move: “What
questioning gentility (family distinction) does, on the other hand, is court destabilization
of the working of hereditary systems in the operation of civic institutions, by focusing on
the few who enjoy the privilege which these deliver.”7 Satire 8, to Henderson, is
concerned with the meaning-making institutions of Rome, the “prestige industry” as he
terms it, namely heredity, used to reinforce an unbalanced system of power that
perpetuates itself through the valuing of a characteristic unable to be achieved by an
individual’s effort.
The analysis of this chapter will focus insetad on how the deconstruction of the
process of Roman nobility is reflected in Juvenal’s own mechanics. In order to enact his
project of satiric denigration of the fallen Roman nobility, Juvenal must rely on the
implication that nobilitas does, in fact, have a fixed meaning, referring to the essential
value conferred by lineage alone. For something to be coherently mocked, there must be
1.D for more on the place of Gracchus at the climax of Sat. 2 and the critical problems that have arisen
stemming from it.
6
E.g. Fredericks 1971a: “It is correct to call the poem ‘cynically humorous’ or ‘humourously cynical,’ but
not morally hopeful, for its real subject matter is the absurdity of stemmata as a moral ideal…The whole
pursuit of family pedigrees is a foolhardy system of values” (124-125, 126) and later: ”What [Juvenal] says
in his own hyperbolical fashion is not that contemporary nobles are curable, but that they do indeed pursue
the wrong ideals.” (132)
7
Henderson 1997: 11.
80
a stable standard of judgment against which to mock it as deviant. Yet, since Juvenal
explores the incoherence of the definitions of nobility (is it virtus or gens?), his discourse
will destabilize the fragile categories it relies on to operate. 8
The basic satiric situation of Satire 8 is the social crisis emblematized by the
deviations of “modern” nobles from the path of the forebears who conferred value upon
their nomina. 9 There is, however, a more fundamental crisis of meaning, with even more
profound implications, of which the breakdown in the signification of nobilitas is a potent
symbol. Juvenal will expose thus two related paradoxes in his satirical discourse, such
that his own satire will become a representation, in two senses, of Rome-in-flux, both
depicting it and embodying its contradictions. For Juvenal will mock the transgressions
of Roman nobles by relying on a fixed system of relations (whereby nobility through
birth is supposed to correlate with virtue), even as his satire will call the fixity of this
system into question by positing an alternate definition of nobility conferred not by birth,
but in spite of it. Further, he will rely on a semiotic toolkit which will depend on an
analogous fixity in linguistic reference even as he represents a world in which
8
For a recent reappraisal of the idea of the gens in Roman culture and early Republican history, see Smith
2006; especially of interest are his account of the ancient evidence (12-64, esp. 15-20, for the inheritance of
membership in a gens through a common male ancestor and its relationship with nomina and cognomina,
32-44, for the legendary and mythological genealogy of some Roman clans, and, 55-63, for the role of the
gens, however contested, in elite self-definition and whether gens was a term denied to plebeians) and the
relationship between the patriciate, the familia, and the gens in the Early Republic (251-80), particularly in
maintaining patrician privileges and status (302-35).
9
Regardless of the historicity of a “social crisis” in early 2 nd century C.E. Rome, it is unquestionable that
the “Rome” of Juvenal’s Satires is marked by social porousness. Reekmans 1977 is still the most useful
systematic catalog of the change in social categories in Juvenal’s Rome (and how his depiction of them
reflects back on their creator, who is deemed an “authoritarian personality” [161]); see also Knoche 1970
510ff. Plaza 2006: 114-27 focuses on how Juvenal depicts money as creating a new set of meanings and
values related to that crumbling social order; see also Courtney 1980: 27. Shumate 2006: 19-54 examines
how Juvenal works to reaffirm those values by his delineation of Romans and The Other (in which is
contained notions of femininity, foreignness, and sexual deviance, often elided into each other). Malnati
1988 compares the views of social mobility presented in Martial and Juvenal, noting how, for Juvenal,
“social mobility is in itself a cause of indignation,” (134) while Martial is less concerned with aristocratic
rigidity and more with exposing pretense.
81
uncomplicated denotation is becoming unhinged. As in Satire 2, he will continue to use a
visual language of satiric iconography, as well as a more discursive symbolic system in
his employment of Roman names as both historical figures and, transhistorically, as
representations of virtue or, more frequently, vice.
A. Home is where the Hatred is
Discussing the entrenched crisis in Roman signs, Juvenal starts in the heart of an
imagined Roman house, the atrium. Indeed, the atrium is an appropriate place to begin, a
nexus of the display of a Roman family’s social value (to be deciphered by visitors). As
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has shown in his exposition on the design of the Roman house,
whose structure could be thought to “perform” social boundaries, the atrium was
designed primarily as a public place which was oriented around accessibility and
transparency.10 More importantly, it was also where the status objects of the imagines and
stemmata (painted family trees) were displayed, both as an exemplum for the occupants
to follow and a demonstration of elite standing.11
This notion of the atrium as an intersection of Roman social and familial identity
dovetails appropriately with the opening of Juvenal’s satire, as the first twenty lines have
long been recognized as a flashpoint for Juvenal’s techniques of externalization via
10
Wallace-Hadrill 1994, esp. 44-47. Likewise, Edwards 1993: 160-61 describes how the Roman house is
also a locus of moralistic attacks because it reflects the entrance of symbolic disruption by those attempting
to enter the elite through expansion of wealth. Henderson 1997: 10 also discusses the atrium as an
appropriate metapoetic symbol for satire’s exposure and conflation of private and public: “[The satirist’s]
reach claims this threshold conduit linking interior privacy and the public highway for the social realm of
civic intercourse.”
11
See Flower 1996: 16-31, for a brief summary of the value of the imagines and, 185-222, for their
presence in the Roman house, displayed in the atrium (211-220). Henderson 1997: 19 deconstructs the
significance of the ancestor masks, which are part of a larger scheme of the logic and significance of
Roman naming conventions, clustering around ancestry (19-21).
82
concrete objects as a means of social criticism. Two parallel patterns of meaning-making,
social and satirical, thus converge in the scene.
Satire 8 begins with the reader-viewer surveying the wreckage:
Stemmata quid faciunt? Quid prodest, Pontice, longo
sanguine censeri, pictos ostendere vultus
maiorum et stantis in curribus Aemilianos
et Curios iam dimidios umeroque minorem
Corvinum et Galbam auriculis nasoque carentem,
quid fructus generis tabula iactare capaci
?Fabricium?, post haec multa contingere virga
fumosos equitum cum dictatore magistros
si coram Lepidis male vivitur? Effigies quo
tot bellatorum, si luditur alea pernox
ante Numantinos, si dormire incipis ortu
luciferi, quo signa duce set castra movebant?
cur Allobrogicis et magna gaudeat ara
natus in Herculeo Fabius lare, si cupidus, si
vanus et Euganea quantum vis mollior agna,
si tenerum attritus Catiensi pumice lumbum
squalentis traducit avos emptorque veneni
frangenda miseram funestat imagine gentem?
tota licet veteres exornent undique cerae
atria, nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus.
5
10
15
20 (8.1-20)
5-6 om. G, del. Hermann 6-8 del. Guyet 7 habent PG, om corvinum P: corvini G censorem
Harrison fabriciumpontifices posse ac Housman
What do family trees do? What’s the benefit, Prodicus, of being approved by a blood
stretching back, of showing the painted faces of your ancestors and Aemeliani standing
on chariots and Curii, now missing his other half, and Corvinus short a shoulder, and
Galba in need of earries and a nose, what is the fruit of boasting of Fabricius with a huge
family chart, and, after these, to connect with many a branch smoke-stained masters of
horse and a dictator, if the Lepidi’s public life is ill? What’s the meaning of
representations of so many warriors, if you play an all-night dice game before the
Numantines, if you go to bed at the sun’s first rise, the very time when they used to
deploy standards and troops? Why does Fabius, born in a Herculean home, rejoice in the
Allobrogici and the great altar, if he is covetous, if he is empty and however softer than a
Venetian lamb, if he, rubbed smooth in his tender groin by Catinensian pumice-stone,
betrays his hairy grandfathers and, a buyer of poison, ruins his wretched line with a statue
worth shattering? Though the old wax-faces adorn the atrium on all sides, virtue is the
one and only nobility.12
12
The textual difficulties are thick here. I accept at line 4 here the texts of Clausen and Braund, which
follow the proposal of Prateus, where umero is an ablative of degree of difference (“less by a shoulder”),
rather the mss. Greek accustative umeros interpreted by Housman (though he finds the statement obscure)
83
There is a palpable air of disrepair hanging over the scene. As one reads, the
notions of decay seep in at line 4, when Curios is immediately qualified by dimidios
(Curios iam dimidios); in particular, the temporal texture of iam (the Curii are “now”
missing its other half) underscores the notion of decline and deterioration. The
degradations to the statues become increasingly abject, covered in smoke or with ears and
noses lopped off. Scholars have long recognized how the pile-up of visual details of
abuse and neglect of the ancestral images (whether wax imagines, busts, or statues) is
analogous to the breakdown in morals among the descendants, especially as the figures in
the opening lines becoming increasingly decrepit.13
Yet already there are hints of semantic imprecision in the Juvenal’s use of names,
a difficulty in both reference and resonance. John Henderson has closely studied this
section, ruthlessly unspooling the possible implications behind each one of the Roman
cognomina that Juvenal uses. It is not always precisely clear whom each cognomen refers
to14 or, more importantly, how straightforward these moral identifications are.15 Already,
as meaning habentem minores umeros, i.e. “armless” (followed by Courtney 1980). I also translate
Fabricium, a Renaissance conjecture, followed by Henderson 1997 (145 n. 68 for his answers to
Housman’s objection to Fabricium), for mss. repeated Corvinum. A proper name seems demanded by the
context of the tabula generis, rather than the more generalized censorem (Braund) or pontifices (Housman);
otherwise, what is the reference of the genus?
13
For example, Courtney ad l.4: “The physical decay of these portraits symbolizes the decline of the noble
republican ideals and traditions.” See also Jenkyns 1982: 212 and Winkler 1983: 33-34, who argues that the
statues mark not only present day decline but how that decline can negatively impact the reputations of the
dead.
14
In particular, he examines the shift between the singular, such as Corvinum and Galbam, and in l. 5, and
plurals, like Aemelianos and Curios ll. 3 and 4, and the play between the singularity of those figures and
their exemplary meaning in defining gentility (Henderson 1997: 29-33). Javier Uría, in discussing the use
of names in Ciceronian invective, gives a helpful paradigm of how to consider the way that names do work
beyond their linguistic intention of either reference (connecting A with the name B) or appellation (giving
A the name B), taking on, in Roman thought, extended meanings and connotations. This observation is
invaluable considering the frequent use Juvenal makes not only of extended depictions of past figures as
exemplars of vice or virtue but even of names themselves as stand-ins for qualities (cf. sed nunc ad quas
84
this ambiguity should clue the reader into the ambivalence of Juvenal’s use of names, for
as he uses names from the past as representative of certain vices of crimes (treason,
sexual improprieties, etc.), Juvenal will undo easy dichotomies between past virtue and
present-day corruption.
As in Satire 2, there arises a play between Sein und Schein, though oriented
slightly differently. In Satire 2, Juvenal concerned himself (at first) with the incoherence
between the visual signs of sexual continence and masculinity (hairiness) and actual
behavior (namely, signs hidden from view: piles and depilated genitals) and then exposed
various examples of semantic and ideological incoherence around the axis of sexual
propriety. Here, the outer signs are abundantly clear, as Juvenal depicts them. The
dilapidated state of the statues is a result and manifestation of “modern” nobles’ disregard
for the mores that are supposed to be linked to the meaning of maiores. Evoking the
incoherence of Roman masculinity in Satire 2, the contrasting juxtaposition of presentday depilation (tenerum attritus Catiensi pumice lumbum, 16) and past ruggedness
(squalentis avos, 17) provide a transparent text of Roman decline, easy to read for satirist
and, one degree removed, for satiric viewer. Similarly, the simultaneous staging of the
youthful disgracer as engaged in frivolous, all-night “warfare” and the military
accomplishments of his forebears (9-12) assumes an unproblematic rubric of
non Clodius aras?, 6.345 or my remarks in Chapter 1 about Curios in at 2.3). For more on Juvenal’s use
and abuse of Roman notions of names and exemplarity, see the introduction, section B, and Ch. 3. C.
15
In particular, he charts out the full Fabian line and its decline, identifying the “intolerable psychic
burdens” of being unable to ever top Fabius Cunctator. (Henderson 1997: 51-59). Indeed, it had died as a
noble line, with Paullus Fabius Persicus, co. AD 34, as the last consul among the patricians.
85
interpretation; there is posited a stable idea of what nobilitas is, in order to chart presentday deviations.16
The modern-day dice player empties his ancestor’s accomplishments of meaning
by perversely re-enacting them. Indeed, even more grotesque, he does it before their very
eyes and, in turn, ours. In this satire, Juvenal will again and again call forth a structure of
judgmental vision, whereby the reader is transported into the satire to assume the
standpoint of a viewer of Roman deviance. Yet this structure of satiric spectatorship will
only serve to underscore its current impotence and the breakdown in its effectiveness in
enforcing social codes of identity, for those figures in the satire who act as stand-ins for
the reader are one and all objects from the past. They are helpless to interact with an
increasingly perverse environment; not only is a triumphal statue inanimate, it is
emphatically by-gone, representing a lost age.17 In this scene the imaginary audience,
appropriately enough, is made up of the ancestors themselves, especially as manifest in
the form of the imagines.18 Yet the conduit between past and present which the imagines
represent has been severed, and the weight of their gaze thuds uselessly to the ground.
This stand-in audience for the satiric reader will serve as a potent symbol of the position
of Juvenal and the reader in Satire 8. Juvenal’s frustration at present-day nobility comes
precisely from the fact that these signs are either misread or ignored by his fellow
16
See Henderson’s remarks on our dice-player, similarly tracing the implication of this visualized
juxtaposition: “For this ‘Caesar,’ the die is cast every single night: mobile Rome, the army striking camp, is
for him just ‘shifting statues’ round the atrium HQ. In the poetics of satiric scorn, it is ‘shifting signs.’ A
tin-soldier play of metaphor (signa…movebant: the art in artillery?)” (Henderson 1997: 49).
17
In fact, this age is so lost that eventually it will be shown never to have existed at all (see section D
below). For the paradox of Roman statues as both “alive” and a byword for dead, dull, or unfeeling, see
Stewart 2003: 36-45.
18
Cf. Bartsch 2006: 124-27. Pliny HN 35.4-7 provides an interesting counterpoint to Juvenal, because in
his moral account of the development of art, the imagines were degraded by becoming more extravagant.
86
Romans, for this perversion of noble responsibility is not accompanied by any apparent
loss of power and influence.
Indeed, it is appropriate to consider briefly Juvenal’s place in the history of
Roman moralizing discussion about the overlap of mores and maiores. Susanna Braund
has carefully detailed the patterns and motifs of literature on “true nobility,” identifying
three main treatments: Romans who have maiores but not mores, Romans who are
endowed with mores but lack maiores, and Romans who have both. She then compares
Juvenal to previous handlings of the theme and eventually arrives at the conclusion that
Juvenal’s treatment is ultimately unoriginal.19 For Braund, however, this unoriginality is
meaningful in constructing the speaker of Satire 8 and coloring our reading of the satire’s
content thereby: “triteness serves the specific purpose of parody and caricature.” In her
analysis, Satire 8 stands as the reductio ad absurdum of the virtus/nobilitas theme.
Though Braund’s formulations about the satire are unfortunately marred by a
priori assumptions about satirical persona inherited from W.S. Anderson and Alvin
Kernan, the apparent ineffectuality of Juvenal’s treatment of the topic is a useful notion.
Rather than focusing on the speaker and whether he is a moralist or a pseudo-moralist,20
it is profitable to consider how the content of the satire and its obvious inheritance from
19
Braund 1988: 79-102. She lists an invaluable set of comparanda from the late Republic and early Empire
in both Greek and Latin at pp. 122-29.
20
Braund 1988: 111ff. gives a detailed reading of Satire 8 based on the idea of a vacillation between
“moralist” and “pseudo-moralist”, where the latter indicates moments where the speaker slips into material
or an irreverent tone not appropriate for a moralist or where hyperbole sends the speaker over the edge. Yet
this reading is based on presumptions about the boundaries of “moralism” created by Alvin Kernan (as
formulated for Roman poetry by Anderson 1982: 277-361), especially concerning the speaker undercutting
his moral authority by wallowing in vice. One need only consider the Seneca the Younger’s depiction of
Hostius Quadra (lovingly described at NQ 1.61.1; for more, see the sources in Ch. 1, n 72) or Cicero’s
indelible portrait of a drunk Antony vomiting at a state function at Phil.2.63.13 to wonder about the
legitimacy of such a critique. Few would accuse either of being self-destructively ironic. The one place
where this reading does activate meaning is at 8.103ff., Juvenal’s advice not to plunder subject states; see
section C below.
87
the previous tradition points up the ineffectuality of that tradition itself. The very
continuity of 150 years’ worth of moral exhortation highlights the necessity of that
discourse to instruct nobles to live up to their ancestry.21 Braund is correct to show that
Satire 8 cannot be thought to participate in that discourse in a traditional way, but, rather
than commenting on the nature of the speaker, this lack of participation reflects on the
nature of the discourse itself. The most explosive word in the condition (si coram Lepidis
male vivitur, 9), with which the characteristically long Juvenalian period at lines 2-9
climaxes, is not male but coram. Despite the long-standing tradition of moral bluster,
Juvenal shouts, these things are happening right in front of our faces! Indeed, Juvenal’s
gradual descent into unpleasant material from the past (first Neronian, then deep into the
Republican period) which closes the satire will serve to problematize any solid
conceptual notion of prisca virtus against which to compare present-day folly. The
inability for this discourse to posit fixed moral points of reference projects instability
onto Juvenal’s own satiric discourse, which Juvenal will directly address in the next
section of Satire 8.
B. What’s in a Name(d)?
Inversely, the recognition by scholars of the moral value of Juvenal’s broken
imagines takes for granted the process of satirical meaning taking place: so thoroughly
are we naturalized to Juvenal’s techniques that we fail to recognize that Juvenal’s
constructs the seen “reality” of the Rome in his satires to correspond to the reality of
21
Braund lists a series of parallels dating back to Sall. BJ. 85.
88
noble decline (as he sees it).22 Richard Jenkyns describes the two main motifs of Satire 8
as “names and how they fail to make a simple connection with reality” and “statues and
images,” whereby these motifs are “presented not just as ideas but as scenes or
pictures.”23 Yet these two motifs are, in a way, incoherent; if names cannot be thought to
correspond straightforwardly to reality, why should Juvenal’s images?
Indeed, after the traditional moral material immediately following upon line 20
(which advises Ponticus to be “noble” in his mores and his “true” nobility will be
recognized: agnosco procerem, 8.26),24 itself somewhat curious,25 the next paragraph
explicitly discusses the slippery correspondence between an object’s name and its
manifest traits:
quis enim generosum dixerit hunc qui
indignus genere et praeclaro nomine tantum
30
22
John Henderson alone, it seems to me, has briefly mentioned the implications of this sleight of hand:
“Again, Juvenal sees what he means to see: talking up a perfectly ordinary bust into a ‘symbol [of] the
decline of the noble republican ideals and traditions,’ indeed; or pecking his own heirloom to pieces; or
vandalizing the human icon to mock the vanity of its pretensions to incarnate the dead and gone; or making
fun of his own own efforts to write life into craven images.”(Henderson 1997: 40). Similarly: “Where the
face does duty for the person, is there anything else on view besides looks?” (Henderson 1997: 28) Jenkyns
1982: 212-19. recognizes the satirical technique at play, of allowing objects to say more than what is there,
but he does not explore it fully beyond describing its satirical effectiveness. The importance of the face
here reflects Roman conceptions of individualizing art, for, in Roman statuary, there was a much greater
variety of heads than body-types, which were often interchangeable (cf. Stewart 2003: 47-59).
23
Jenkyns 1982: 206.
24
Ferguson 1989: 188, explores the origins of the name, “not found among older aristocracy,” but which
implies an ancestor who had enjoyed military success, à la Africanus or Germanicus. Henderson’s
suggestions are even more aggressive, such as an indication of non-Roman eastern origin (see Henderson
1997: 25-26). An unpleasant Valerius Ponticus appears in Tacitus (Ann. 14.41) under Nero. In poetry, the
name appears in Martial (several times), Propertius (as the straw-men composer of a Thebaid at 1.7.9) and,
perhaps most significantly, as a adjective meaning “Pontic” in Horace’s Ship of State ode, 1.14. For more
on the possible allusion to Horace, see Braund 1988: 226 n.59.
25
There is certainly an ironic incoherence in the passage ll.26-30, where Juvenal cynically describes that
rara avis, the citizen of high birth outstanding in service (alto de sanguine rarus/ civis et egregius, 27-28),
so rare that they are received by an overjoyed fatherland (ovanti patriae, 28) with the same acclaim shown
by followers of Isis in the celebration of the ritual discovery of Osiris (29-30; for more on this feast, called
the Heuresis, after the cry heurêka by the devotees, see Courtney 1980 ad. 29). The comparison of a
Roman ovation to a ritual originating in Egypt is odd enough; but even further, Juvenal, in a way, performs
this ovation himself in the previous line: salve Gaetulice, seu tu/ Silanus (26-27).
89
insignis? nanum cuiusdam Atlanta vocamus,
Aethiopem Cycnum, pravam extortamque puellam
Europen ; canibus pigris scabieque vetusta
levibus et siccae lambentibus ora lucernae
35
nomen est pardus, tigris, leo, si quid adhuc est
quod fremat in terris violentius. ergo cavebis
et metues ne tu sic Creticus aut Camerinus.
(8.30-38)
For who would call that one “noble” who is unworthy of his family and is remarkable (?)
only because of an outstanding name. We call someone’s dwarf “Atlas,” an Ethiopian
“Swan,” the bent and deformed girl “Europa”; for dogs which are lazy and made smooth
by chronic mange and licking the edges of a lamp dry, their name is “panther,” “tiger,”
“lion,” or something else which roars more violently on the earth. Therefore, be you wary
and fear being called “Creticus” or “Camerinus” in this way.
Juvenal asks, who could apply the attribute generosus to someone whose actions
and character blatantly falls short of the prestige their name bestows? The following lines
provide a subtle, cynical answer to this query: anyone! For we are accustomed not simply
to call things by inappropriate names (vocamus, 32),26 but to call them by names which
are diametrically opposed to their clearly distinguishable traits. In lines 37-38,
superficially meant as advice to the addressee Ponticus, the off-handed sic (ergo cavebis/
et metues ne tu sis sic Creticus aut Camerinus) delivers the final blow. Juvenal outlines
the “new” logic of definition in the disordered world of Rome: to give someone a noble
name is actually an offence to their mores since, fitting into an established pattern of
contradiction between name and behavior, the designation would imply its opposite.27
More and more, not just the concretely described dregs of nobility but Juvenal’s own way
of framing the discussion makes a final definition of nobility anything but transparent.28
26
The first person plural vocamus rather than a third or second person is significant here: we Romans? we
humans? we readers of satire?
27
The phenomenon is termed by ancient rhetoricians antiphrasis (e.g. Quint. 9.2.47); comparable examples
in English are Robin Hood’s fellow “Little John” and the ironic description of especially large men as
“Tiny.”
28
Henderson 1997: 71 also observes here how euphemism becomes dysphemism, but he is, as in general,
more concerned with the implications social rather than poetological.
90
In Rome, a word can point to both its meaning and its opposite. This exposure of
incongruous naming conventions thus ironizes and debunks coherent patterns of
definitions. This debunking can also be thought to represent as transition in method in
Satire 8: it will move away from an attack on the discrepancy between the prestige
granted to his satiric objects by society and their “real” natures based only on piquant
visualized representations. Satire 8 will instead embrace a subtler, more discursive brand
of incoherence. Though Juvenal’s arsenal will continue to include dramatization and
objectification (especially concentrated in the section on stage-struck patricians), his
“moral metonymy” will become broader in Satire 8, though equally paradoxical.
Juvenal’s reliance on terms with fixed moral resonance, particularly his use of exemplary
names, will metapoetically play out the central issue of the satire (namely, if virtus is the
one and only nobilitas, what need is there for “nobility” in the first place?). For Juvenal
makes comments that, rather than simply trying to reconstitute the “true” definition of
nobilitas imply that the concept should be dispensed with altogether. Yet the
indeterminancy of “nobility” will run counter to Juvenal’s discursive practices, which
rely on the fixity of moral associations to land their satiric blows. Juvenal will show that
nobilitas has no essential connection to mores (and never has, 8.231-75), but Juvenal’s
mockery has have no resonance unless “nobility” continues to have meaning.
The conflict between what Juvenal says throughout Satire 8 and the suitability of
positing a “noble” class can sometimes arise from bouts of near-pleonasm or, conversely,
at those times when Juvenal explicitly or subconsciously dismisses “nobility” as a useful
term. An example of the first comes above, just after the opening lines set in the
nobleman’s atrium. Juvenal bids his pledge Ponticus to “be you a Paulus or Cossus or
91
Drusus in your behavior” (Paulus vel Cossus vel Drusus moribus esto, 8.21). Is moribus
necessary to say? The names Paulus, Cossus, and Drusus must already have moral
connotations for their use as a referent here to be meaningful.29 Yet the statement would
almost certainly lack clarity without moribus; indeed, it appears that it is the reference to
the noblemen which is pleonastic since it is exactly noble mores which are at issue. This
is not mere verbosity, for this combination of words, situated early in the satire, helps
unlock the issues of definition and reference that course through the rest of the poem.
C. Let’s Talk it Out: Addressing Rubellius and Ponticus
More globally, Juvenal can undercut the point of discussing “nobility” entirely
even as his stated project is meant to remove the impurities from the nobility by forging a
better definition of nobilitas. Several moments from the following scene with Rubellius
Blandus illustrate this. After the discussion of antiphrasis, Juvenal then turns his glance
towards one particularly egregious noble, Rubellius Blandus (8.39-70),30 and stages a
conversation with him (his ego quem monui? Tecum mihi sermo, Rubelli/ Blande., 8.3940)—though considering Blandus gets only three lines of dialogue, it might hardly be
termed sermo. Juvenal attacks Rubellius’ blusterous pride in his own heritage and allows
him to speak only in order to hang himself with his own noose:
his ego quem monui? tecum mihi sermo, Rubelli
Blande. tumes alto Drusorum stemmate, tamquam
40
29
Ferguson 1987 suggests that Paulus in 8.21 is L. Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, that Drusus is almost
certainly Nero Claudius Drusus, but that Cossus is likely more generalized, perhaps Sergius Cornelius
Cossus or Cornelius Lentulus Cossus. Henderson 1997: 71 argues for the ambiguity of the names
themselves, that are a “generous range of heroes, Paulus, Cossus, and Drusus, paradigmatically
ambivalent.”
30
Since he is depicted as Neronian (inflatum plenumque Nerone propinquo, 8.72), he is a member of the
Drusi and certainly related to, but not identical with, a) C. Rubellius Blandus suffect co. 18 C.E. who had a
son b) Rubellius Plautus, executed in 62 C.E. See Ferguson 1987: 199.
92
feceris ipse aliquid propter quod nobilis esses,
ut te conciperet quae sanguine fulget Iuli,
non quae uentoso conducta sub aggere texit.
'uos humiles' inquis 'uolgi pars ultima nostri,
quorum nemo queat patriam monstrare parentis,
ast ego Cecropides.'
45
(8.39-46)
And whom have I been advising with these words? I’ve got to have some words with
you, Rubellius Blandus. You swell because of the high family-tree of the Drusi, as if you
did something to earn your nobility, such that a matron whose blood beshone of the Julii
conceived you, and not someone who weaves for hire along the wind-swept outskirts.
‘You lowly creatures,’ you say, ‘the lowest part of our crowd, none of whom would be
able to point out his parent’s homeland—me though, I’m a pure-blooded Crecropian.’
Here, Juvenal depicts Rubellius committing a less debauched but still distasteful
offense: rather than reveling before the broken statues of his forebears, Rubellius is
simply overly and undeservedly proud of his lineage, though he himself has no
achievements to have warranted birth from someone noble (42) rather than a meager
weaver-woman (43). The underlying meaning is clear: birth is irrelevant unless one has
done “something for which you might be noble” (41). Rubellius’ snide derision of the
common people is completely undone by his designation of himself as not quite a Roman
noble after all, but instead a “pure-blooded Cecropian” (46).31
Juvenal introduces something dangerous to his discourse when he implies the the
primary reference of “nobility” should be transferred from birth to virtue because it
undermines the necessity of defining anything as “noble” at all, if it merely functions as a
byword for “virtuous.” Juvenal continues the discussion of the value (or lack thereof) of
bloodlines themselves by pointing out that it is in fact the skilled lower classes who plead
the cases of the lazy nobles, who “split the knot of the laws and unravel legal riddles”
(veniet de plebe togata/ qui iuris nodos et legume aenigmata solvat, 8.49-50), and who
31
Cecropides is a loaded term for a Roman to use to describe oneself; although it metonymically refers to
the Athenian notion of autochthony and, thus, here points to Rubellius’ pride in his Italic origins, it surely
contains a self-destructive nugget, which is what Juvenal lobs back at Rubellius.
93
make the most effective and hard-working soldiers (8.51-52). “But you” Juvenal intones,
“you’re nothing but a pure-blood Cecrops and, just like a Herm,…missing a bit” (at tu/
nil nisi Cecropides truncoque simillimus Hermae, 8.52-53). Juvenal takes Rubellius’ own
term of pride (“Cecropian”) 32 and unleashes its ironic implications, adding that, not only
is he an Athenian, but he is a Herm—and a “busted” one at that. The allusion to the
Mutilation of the Herms throughout Athens on the eve of the departure of the Athenian
expedition to Sicily in 415 B.C.E.33 not only suggests Rubellius’ similarity with the
disgruntled noble oligarchs who probably perpetrated it, but it renews the imagery of
broken statues with which the satire began.34 Here, Juvenal takes the imagery further:
whereas before the broken statuary was a physical reflection of the criminal activity
taking place at its feet, here human actually becomes statue: Rubellius is alive (nullo
quippe alio vincis discrimine quam quod/ illi marmoreum caput est, tua vivit imago, 8.5455). Yet even the tag on Rubellius’ “life” is double-sided, as it is his imago, i.e. his
ancestor mask, which “lives”: Rubellius is not exactly a living death, as some have
claimed, but a living instantiation of a dead ancestor.35 Rubellius is playing an endless
worldwide tour in an ancestor cover band, never stooping to write his own songs.36 Woe
betide the atrium that Rubellius’ imago will one day ornament. The message is clear:
32
Or, more precisely, the one that Juvenal has given to him.This is another example of Christine Schmitz’s
“Character-inconsistent Speech” (see Intro, section D) and a good way of drawing out the mimetic paradox
of satirical ventriloquism here.
33
Courtney ad loc. is hesitant, but next to Cecropides, trunco Hermae must conjure up the mutilated herms.
The story is related canonically at Thucydides 6.28-29, 53ff.
34
Fredericks 1971a: 120. Note too the metrical harshness of three monosyllables in a row, two ending the
hexameter, one beginning the next (at tu/ nil, 8.52-53)
35
Fredericks 1971a: 120; Courntey ad 8.55. As Flower 1996: 2 insists, an imago should not be construed as
a proper “death mask.”
36
As James Uden has recently pointed out (Uden 2013), the statement cuts both ways because, if Rubellius
were truly a living embodiment of his ancestry, Juvenal would be praising, not criticizing him.
94
Rubellius’ birth has no standing unless correlated with virtuous achievement—which is
another way of saying that it has no standing at all.
Juvenal slyly moves from comparisons with inanimate objects to the animal
kingdom and here the argument turns explicitly against the value of birth: dic mihi,
Teucrorum proles, animalia muta/ quis generosa putet nisi fortia? (“Tell me, those of
Trojan stock, who would think the dumb animals ‘noble’ unless they were strong?”, 8.5657).37 Juvenal then describes how the palm of victory is awarded on the basis of success
(i.e. speed: cuius/ clara fuga ante alios et primus in aequore pulvis, 8.60-61) and not
linked in any way to genealogy (sed venale pecus Coryphaei posteritas et/ Hirpini, si
rara iugo Victoria sedit, 8.62-63).38 Though an analogy of humans to animals would not
be read as controversial, Juvenal’s attack on heredity is sweeping for a Roman, in its
destruction of the importance of birth in establishing identity and value. As he continues,
Juvenal notes that among horses (ibi) there is “no respect for ancestors, no favor for the
shades” (nil ibi maiorum respectus, gratia nulla/ umbrarum, 8. 64-65).39 Indeed, when
Juvenal returns to the world of men, he wants to be impressed by achievement and
37
Though the argument from analogy with animals may seem unusual, it is a commonplace in rhetorical
texts, particularly of horses, such as Quintillian 5.11.4 and Dio Chry. 15.30.
38
Coryphaeus and Hirpinus being, of course, members of successful horse teams; Hirpinus also appears in
Martial (3.63.12).
39
Though Courtney argues that the ibi indicates that Juvenal is referring exclusively to the world of horses,
this argument ignores that the section as a whole concerns an analogy between animals and men. He does
not follow this statement by stating, “but among men, it is different,” but simply gives an account of the
punishment of the slow-footed horse (segnipedes, a play on the elevated compound sonipes, as at Verg.
Aen.11.600), namely, their cheap exchange between masters and labor at the mill (ll.65-67). It is no
coincidence that the mill is often the threatened punishment for human troublemakers in Plautus (e.g ut
ferratus in pistrino aetatem conteras, Bacch. 4.6.11), and, indeed, in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, our asinine
friend Lucius, condemned to the mill, gives a grim description of human slaves toiling in the mill with him
(9.13.1-2). See Bradley 2000 for more on the “animalizing” discourse of slavery which underscores the
fictional scene. Later in the satire, Juvenal asserts that if a servant acted the way the nobles do, Ponticus
would dispatch them to prison-farms (quid facias talem sortitus, Pontice, servum?/ nempe in Lucanos aut
Tusca ergastula mittas, 8.179-180).
95
dismisses the value of birth: “Thus, so we can admire you, not your relations, give us
something I could carve on a stone beyond those honors which we gave and give to those
to whom you owe everything” (ergo ut miremur te, non tua, privum aliquid da/ quod
possim titulis incidere praeter honores quos illis damus ac dedimus quibus omnia debes,
8.68-70). Here, ergo points back to the conclusion to draw from the analogy, the
importance of new individual achievement in maintaining one’s noble status.
It could be objected here that damus and dedimus in line 70 indicate that Juvenal
does in fact give respect to ancestry, through his acknowledgment of their
monumentalization on stone. Yet Juvenal gives those honors not to abstract ancestry, but
to concrete ancestors, whose deeds and successes contribute to, but are not dependent on,
the reputation of their own predecessors any more than the victories of a racehorse are
tied to its parents. Juvenal thus ends his imaginary address to Rubellius Blandus with this
explicit dismissal of the connection between birth and achievement and his assertion that
repute should be founded on the latter instead of the former. Juvenal adds a subtly ironic
tag that Rubellius actually reflects the trend of his family ties, rather than bucks it:
iuvenem quem nobis fama superbum/ tradit et inflatum plenumque Nerone propinquo
(“the youth who, so the story goes, was haughty and puffed and full of his nearness to
Nero,” 8.72). Though Juvenal states simply that Rubellius is haughty because of his
family connection to Nero, the mention of a genealogical relationship with Nero subtly
foreshadows the dissolution which is emblematic of nobility in general. As Juvenal
begins to stretch back in time, subtly here, more directly later, the implications of the
antiphrasis section loom larger. The assumptions at the outset concerning the connection
between nobility and virtue, which latter-day representatives were thought to pervert, are
96
becoming ever more tenuous. It is this hint which Juvenal expands in the following
section concerning the history of gubernatorial ransacking of the provinces.
But first, in a moment of transition, he turns back to Ponticus, giving a series of
seemingly moral exhortations to be a good and honest Roman, either as a soldier, teacher,
or lawyer (esto bonus miles, tutor bonus, arbiter idem/ integer, 8.79-80).40 Though these
terms are themselves uncomplicated in their moral associations, Juvenal’s reliance in
these lines on externalized or metonymic symbols of morality or immorality (particularly
the mention of the tyrant Phalaris, alluding to the torture device of the bronze bull, 8.8182) seems to run counter to a philosophy that urges its audience not to “lean on the
reputation of others” (miserum est aliorum incumbere famae, 8.76). In a satire where
Juvenal questions not only the current equation of nobility (i.e. birth) to “nobility” (i.e.
virtue) by using marked examples to the contrary but also considers whether “nobility” is
a useful term at all, his reliance on moral iconography may lead the reader to worry
whether his satiric scaffolding is similarly primed for collapse: ne conlapsa ruant
subductis tecta columnis (8.77).41 Another example of Juvenal’s resort to the obvious
(both in a sense of “visualized for the satiric audience” and “easily accessible, even
cliché”) is the snapshot of the perjurer-cum-gourmand, slurping down expensive oysters
and bathed in fine perfumes: dignus morte perit, cenet licet ostrea centum/ Gaurana et
Cosmi toto mergatur aeno, 8.85-86).
40
It may considered perhaps slightly ironic that Juvenal mentions “teacher” among the models of Roman
virtue, considering the poor treatment that teachers of grammar and rhetoric had just received in Sat. 7.150240 in the same book. See Weisen 1973 and Braund 1988 24-68 for a discussion of the treatments of
teachers in Sat. 7, including Juvenal’s own reinforcement of their degradation.
41
Compare the columns cracking at the opening of Satire 1, worn down by the prolific and blusterous
performance of poetic recitation: Frontonis platani convolsaque marmora clamant/ semper et adsiduo
ruptae lectore columnae (1.12-13)
97
Suddenly, Juvenal gives his discussion a much more specific frame: he depicts
himself giving instructions to Ponticus before he is dispatched to be governor of a
province (expectata diu tandem provincia cum te/ rectorem accipiet, 8. 87-88).42 In this
passage, he moves again towards the thematic irony underlying the notion that the most
profound thieves of provinces have always been corrupt Roman noblemen, for it is
precisely the social position granted by birth which enables their rapaciousness by
providing the opportunity to govern the provinces they defraud. The entire section is
filled with references to Roman plunderers, who drained provincials dry (ossa vides
regum vacuis exucta medullis, 8.90) and take more as governors than as conquerors
(plures de pace triumphos, 8. 108).
Thus, alongside the paradox of redefining nobility while jettisoning it entirely,
runs another contradiction illuminated by Juvenal’s move backwards into the past, for the
binary corrupt-cum-contemporary Rome and virtuous-cum-bygone Rome is countered by
Juvenal’s extended discussion of readily identifiable noble brigands from previous
generations. This further widens the gap between nobility and virtue which the satire has
initially set out to bridge. Of the prosecuted governors mentioned by Juvenal who can be
identified definitively, the most recent is Marius Priscus (cum tenuis nuper discinxerit
Afros, 8.120), whose trial and condemnation by Tacitus and Pliny the Younger in 100
C.E. was already two decades old. He draws from almost a century prior (Capito et
42
Henderson 1997 85 suggests that this move outward to the provinces suggests the universal implications
of the poem’s imagery, globally and temporally. Braund 1988: 95-102 embarks on an extended generic
analysis of the section, describing it as a propemtikon in the terms of the 4th c.e. century grammarian
Menander Rhetor, and argues for the points of contact between this seeming digression and the rest of the
poem. I agree with her that this sub-section operates like a case study of the whole, especially as it repeats,
contorts, and undercuts the moral content, but I will assert that this repetition has a different result,
resulting in the same poetological morass of the rest of the poem, rather than establishing further the
pseudo-moralistic persona of the speaker.
98
Tutor…piratae Cilicum, 8.93-4; Cossutianus Capito, prosecuted in 57 C.E.)43 or even two
centuries before (his mention of the notorious sacrilegus Verres, 106, immortalized by
Cicero’s condemnation in 70 B.C.E.). Juvenal relies on the immediate resonance of these
by-gone names to carry the weight of condemnation in the same way that current nobles
rely on the resonance of their cognomina to grant them their prestige and the license
(provincial or otherwise) that accompanies it. Indeed, Juvenal does not even mention the
crimes of two governors: inde Dolabella † atque hinc† Antonius. (8.105).44 Their names
alone are notorious enough for Juvenal’s purposes, particularly the additional resonance
that many of them escaped unscathed or relatively unscathed from the trials: quid
damnatio confert? (“What does it matter if you are condemned?”, 8.94).45 That Tutor
cannot be definitely identified (8.93)46 may only add to the picture of pervasive
corruption, for the text prods the reader into understanding the implication of a name that
may not actually refer to anyone.47
43
Cf. Tac. Ann.13.33 and 16.21 and Quint. 6.1.14.
44
Though the sense is clear enough, the exact reading of the unmetrical line has not been settled
satisfactorily. Common emendations involve keeping atque and inserting some kind of adjective or noun in
apposition in front of Antonius (Cf. Braund’s reading: Dolabella praedoque Antonius). See Courtney ad
loc. for more.
45
One points especially to his mention of Marius (cum tenuis nuper Marius discinxerit Afros?, 8.120; the
nuper is especially sardonic considering it forms Juvenal’s justification for avoiding being assigned to
Africa). Despite his successful conviction at the hands of Tacitus and Pliny the Younger (which Pliny had
rhapsodized at length, Epist. 2.11), Juvenal mentions him in Satire 1 in the “rogues’ gallery” as rather
flourishing even as an exile: exul ab octava Marius bibit et fruitur dis/ iratis, at tu victrix, provincia,
ploras, 1.49-50). In her chapter discussing the intersecting of law and satire, Keane examines this passage
as evidence that Juvenal’s satire depicts that justice is not served in the courts, but outside them (Keane
2006: 97-98).
46
Syme 1979a: 271-72, argues, though not forcefully, for accepting the alternate manuscript reading of
Numitor, which metonymically refers to Epirus Marcellus (co. 74 for the second time), linked with
Cossutianus Capito twice in Tacitus (Ann. 13.33; 16.28.1). Ferguson 1987, with no great confidence,
explains that it may refer to the son of C. Vellaeus (suffect consul in 28 C.E.).
47
Eco 1990: 79-82, describes the expectation of an author for “cooperative good will” from his Model
Reader, wherein the reader pretends he understands the references to the Realien in a fictional world,
especially geography. He gives an example from Victor Hugo’s Quatrevingttreize of an incredibly long and
99
At lines 100-104, he again uses his technique of letting a scene and its objects
explain moral decline on their own:
plena domus tunc omnis, et ingens stabat acervos
nummorum, Spartana chlamys, conchylia Coa,
et cum Parrhasii tabulis signisque Myronis
Phidiacum vivebat ebur, nec non Polycliti
multus ubique labor, rarae sine Mentore mensae.
100
(8.100-104)
At that time, their homes were full, and there stood a huge pile of money, and Spartan
cloaks, and Coan silks, and, alongside paintings of Parrhasius and statues of Myron, the
ivory of Phidias was alive, and there was not lacking many a labor of Polyclitus
everywhere, rare were the tables without a Mentor.
Here, Juvenal uses many of the nomimalizing techniques as before, but inverted. Instead
of a list of names of corrupt Roman nobles, he lists artists (Parrhasius, Myron, Phidias,
Polyclitus, and Mentor) each representative of the pinnacle of their field,48 whose names
convey the priceless nature of the artistic treasures once stockpiled in provincial homes.
The objects listed here, including a statue described as “alive” (Phidiacum vivebat ebur,
103; contrast this with the nobles as living imago above) are referentially ironic, for they
denote what isn’t there.49 These objects exists only in the provincials’ past (tunc, 100),
because they have been embezzled, one and all. Juvenal uses names (here, of artists
instead of governors) to similarly recall noble crimes, focusing on the plundered rather
than the plunderer and wistfully locating the objects in the past.
detailed catalogue of revolutionary outposts which, he argues, is not meant to send the reader to the
encyclopedia, but simply to reinforce the scope of the revolutionary network: “The Reader is supposed to
take all these names as mere rigid designators referring to imprecise baptismal ceremonies.” (81)
48
Those fields are painting, bronze sculpture, ivory sculpture, marble sculpture, and silverwork. Cicero
similarly uses a profusion of masterworks to characterizes the brazenness of a plunderer’s fraud : Huic
hereditas ad HS facile triciens venit testamento propinqui sui Heraclii, plena domus caelati argenti optimi
multaeque stragulae vestis pretiosorumque mancipiorum; quibus in rebus istius cupiditates et insanias quis
ignorat? Erat in sermone res, magnam Heraclio pecuniam relictam; non solum Heraclium divitem, sed
etiam ornatum supellectile, argento, veste, mancipiis futurum (Cic. Verr.2.35).
49
Juvenal uses the referential trick to even more ironic ends in Sat. 11, where he gives a salacious
description (cf. magis ille extenditur, et mox/ auribus atque oculis concepta urina movetur, 11. 169-70) of
the Spanish dancing girls who won’t be at his modest dinner party (11.161-70)
100
The irony of these noble misdeeds, conveyed through drawing on well-trodden
names and tangible objects, is matched by a similar irony in this section concerning the
choice of province. Juvenal advises Ponticus to choose a province precisely based on its
likelehood to resort to mutiny, implying that Ponticus will be no better than his forebears.
Previous commentators have well identified how Juvenal undercuts the moral point by
focusing on the expedient justifications for not defrauding his province: “The governor is
advised to look after his own skin and warned not to provoke insurrections by fierce
nations (lines 112-24).”50 Juvenal embarks on a long list of provinces to avoid (Spain,
Gaul, Africa, Illyria, etc.) because they are too drained to be worth robbing and because
provincials reduced to desperation pose a danger. A little before, Juvenal had portrayed
the ineffective pleading and attempts at prosecution of a typical provincial; Juvenal had
advised a provincial to give up rather than risk losing his fare home: praeconem,
Chaerippe, tuis circumspice pannis,/ cum Pansa eripiat quidquid tibi Natta reliquit,/
iamque tace; furor est post omnia perdere naulum, (8.95-97). Here the options available
to plundered peoples are more ominous:
tollas licet omne quod usquam est
auri atque argenti, scutum gladiumque relinques
[et iaculum et galeam; spoliatis arma supersunt].
quod modo proposui, non est sententia, verum est;
credite me vobis folium recitare Sibyllae,
125
(8.122-126).
Though you take away what gold and silver are anywhere, you will leave behind shield
and sword [and spear and helmet; arms are the only things left for the pillaged]. What I
have just now laid down is not some mere pointed phrase, but the truth! Imagine me as if
I were reciting it to you from the Sibylline books.51
50
Braund 1988: 101; similarly, Fredericks 1971a: 123 points to Juvenal’s “argu[ing] to Ponticus’ weaker
nature.”
51
Though l. 124 was originally deleted by Hermann, Courtney points out there is no good internal reason
to argue that the lines are not genuine. They are simply not preferred by most critics. Hendry 1998 tries to
salvage the lines by substituting aera for arma, which he finds reduces the tautology and provides a more
effective sententia.
101
Though Juvenal then goes on to give positive advice (don’t allow your entourage
free reign, don’t stand for bribery, make sure your wife is honest, 8.127-130; more
activities to avoid at 8.135-139), it is precisely these lines about the mutinous threat that
Juvenal marks as especially sententious (125-26). In a satire where the “reality” of
nobility and its ties to virtue are up for grabs, it is important that Juvenal’s most emphatic
assertion of the truth of his advice comes at one of its most cynical moments, even as it
appears to be couched in a section of positive moral exhortation. The inevitability to
noble corruption is implied here, even at the moment Juvenal stages himself molding a
prototypically good noble.52 He soon claims that faults, when committed by nobles, are
that much more prominent because of the stature of the offender (omne animi vitium
tanto conspectius in se/ crimen habet, quanto maior qui peccat habetur, 8.140-41), yet
this is only half-true. These men’s crimes are that more conspicuous in that they provide
material to stage and expose them in satire.53 It is also clear that they remain unpunished,
thus enabling the opportunity for Juvenal to arrange that material. More and more, as the
reader proceeds through the satire, the initial question of defining nobility with regards to
virtue becomes ever more self-defeating. As Juvenal depicts it, virtue in deeds and
nobility by birth—which Juvenal had initially merged into nobility by deeds (nobilitas
sola est atque unica virtus, 8.20)—are contradictory in terms, challenging the very notion
of defining “nobility” at all. How can Juvenal claim that the “nobility of your very
parents begin to stand against/in contrast to you,” (incipit ipsorum contra te stare
52
Cf. Keane 2006: 97 on the “real” lessons of 8.94: “A governor-to-be might be encouraged by the
satirist’s remark ‘what different does a conviction make?’ (94), even in the context of a sermon about the
numerous motivations for noble behavior.”
53
Notice the imagery of “nobility” casting light onto something hidden (incipit…nobilitas claramque facem
praeferre pudendis, 8.138-39), which is exactly what Juvenal’s satires can be thought to do.
102
parentum/ nobilitas, 8.138), when he shows that generation after generation of Roman
“nobles” are anything but?
D. Liminality and the Immoral Show of Rome
Indeed, delving deeper into the satire, Juvenal focuses exclusively on the moral
and social failings of the nobility, proceeding ever backward in time until arriving at the
first Roman, Romulus himself. It is significant that Juvenal returns to techniques of
staging and objectification in the next two main sections, one on the debauched consul
Lateranus (146-162) and his celebrated account on nobles on stage (183-230). At the very
point where the intersection of name (i.e. birth) and virtue is muddied, Juvenal marks a
return to an apparently straightforward visual program.
With this return to visualizing technique, the satire shifts from focusing on
immorality per se to an emphasis on social deviants who bestride an uncomfortable
crossroads. Beginning with Lateranus and culminating with Nero, the next two major
sections involve figures who challenge straightforward delineations between nobility and
non-nobility. Just as in Satire 2, Juvenal’s externalizing satirical technique, which relies
as much on readers’ correct interpretation of satirical signs as on direct condemnation, is
accompanied by the depiction of figures who reflect the porousness of boundaries and
definition.
Though social and moral strongly intersect in Roman thought, making social
transgression equivalent to moral deviance,54 it is relevant that the section of transition
54
Edwards 1993, whose chapter on Roman attitudes towards acting is particularly relevant here (“Playing
Romans: representations of actors and the theatre”, 98-136), has extensively studied this intersection. In the
particular case of Satire 8, I will show that these strains of sociopolitical morality are problematized by the
context of the discourse in which they appear.
103
from Juvenal’s moral exhortation to Rubellius Blandus and Ponticus (39-140) to the
staging of Lateranus (146-82) focuses on two undeniably “moral” crimes, perjury and
adultery:
Quo mihi te, solitum falsas signare tabellas,
in templis quae fecit avus statuamque parentis
ante triumphalem? Quo, si nocturnus adulter
tempora Santonico velas adoperta cucullo?
145
(8.141-145)
What does it matter to me that you are accustomed to put your seal on forged testaments,
in the very temples which your grandfather constructed and in front of the triumphal state
of your father? What does it matter, if you, a nighttime adulterer, veil and cover your
temples with a Gallic hood?
The return to Juvenal’s satirical iconography is clear: besides the cucullus, which usually
has the loaded connotation in Juvenal of being used to cover nefarious nighttime deeds,55
Juvenal’s morally loaded backdrop (in templis quae fecit avus, 143)56 emphasizes the
helpless spectatorship of the triumphal statue,57 just as coram had underscored his
condemnation of the nobles’ flagrant misdeeds at the beginning of the satire (si coram
Lepidis male vivitur?, 8.9).
Further, the referent of te is difficult to pin down: who exactly is Juvenal staging
as perjurer and adulterer? John Henderson takes it as referring to Ponticus himself,58 but
this interpretation is extremely difficult, even in light of the implications that Juvenal
makes about Ponticus’ impending propraetorship in 8.116-124. As the moral advice
55
See 6.330 and especially its use by the infamous nymphomaniac Messalina in Sat 6: dormire virum cum
senserat uxor,/ sumere nocturnos meretrix Augusta cucullos...(6.116, 118 as ordered in Clausen’s text),
where the word order textually enacts its function, “clothing” Messalina. Note too the use of an oxymoron
(meretrix Augusta) to mark a spot of mutually exclusive identities, a figure of thought which will appear
twice in the section from Lateranus to Nero.
56
Temples were not an unusual place of doing testimonial business (cf. Mart. 10.70.7) but their appearance
cannot help but emphasize the outrageousness of the perjury.
57
Keane 2006: 34-35.
58
Henderson 1997: 92.
104
which precedes these lines has become increasing generalized, the figure of Ponticus has
faded into the background. Nor could it be Lateranus, since this would undercut the
marked dramatic flourish with which he is introduced immediately afterward, especially
the delay of his name (see below). The only wrongdoer he has addressed with the second
person in the satire is Rubellius Blandus, long since gone from the audience’s sight. One
must conclude that, like Teucrorum proles (8.56) and Troiugenae (8.181), he is
addressing a generalized Roman audience itself; in those two places, Juvenal is chastising
Romans for different kinds of sins, their misconstrual and misconstruction of “nobility”
(8.56-57, introducing the section on the “nobility” of animals) and their willingness to
indulge the debauched patricians (see below). Juvenal will later indict his audience for
their willing spectatorship to Gracchus’ spectacle (populi frons durior huius, 8. 189); but
here at line 141, even worse, the average Roman (te) is an actual participant in Juvenal’s
vicious spectacle, not merely a jaded observer. These moments of address show how the
misreading of nobility and the willingness to permit gross transgressions of social station
is a widespread phenomenon and indicate the helplessness of Juvenal’s satiric project of
definition, which he apparently embarks on alone.
Whoever the second person refers to, these obvious misdeeds cannot help but
contrast with the lesser evil of Lateranus’ driving his own chariot, introduced in the very
next lines: “past the ashes and bones of his ancestors, on a swift cart flies fat Lateranus,
and he himself—on his own!—tightens the wheel with the brake—a consul driving a
mule!” (praeter maiorum cineres atque ossa volucri/ carpento rapitur pinguis Lateranus,
et ipse/ ipse rotam adstringit sufflamine mulio consul/, 8.146-148). Reference to
Lateranus’ ancestors (cineres atque ossa maiorum, 146), as with parentis and avus in line
105
142, reignites the motif of the immense gulf between present day nobles and their
ancestors as well as the helpless position of those ancestors, condemned to watch but not
intervene. In the previous propemptikon section, however, Juvenal had seriously undercut
the process of assigning value based on birth, nor does the topic of Lateranus’ birth per se
arrive again in the brilliant sketch of the tavern-visiting, cart-driving consul. Further,
Juvenal continues the projection of vice backwards in time, again short-circuiting easy
opposition between present and past.59
Instead, Juvenal focuses on depicting Lateranus’ marginal existence, fully
inhabiting neither the noble nor the vulgar class. This liminal identity continues the
internal challenges to the kind of categorical thinking required to decisively define
nobility with regards to virtue. His twofold existence is encapsulated in the oxymoron
mulio consul, a juxtaposition of two mutually exclusive social and political worlds.60 As
S.C. Fredericks astutely points out, the symbols of Lateranus’ office are transformed into
the instruments of the muleteer, further driving home the dissonance between Lateranus’
proper bearing and his actual behavior: “The virga of the consul’s office (mentioned as
such previously in lines 23 and 136) is for Lateranus the mule-driver’s rod (virga, 153).
The manipli (153) are not companies of Roman soldiers but the bundles of hay that
Lateranus feeds his horses.” Fredericks also points out the religious contradictions that
Lateranus embodies, swearing by Epona, the goddess of horses, in front of the very altars
59
Lateranus was consul designate in 65 C.E. before being executed as a member of the Pisonian
conspiracy. For more on this identification, see the arguments in Ch. 3, n. 6.
60
Of course, Lateranus is not the only man for whom mule-driving symbolized how high-flown identity
could clash with humble station. The humble origins of Ventidius Bassus (co. 43 B.C.E.) were
encapsulated in the sneer “mulio” cast by Cicero among others (so Pliny reports, HN 7.135); Suetonius
reports that Vespasian was similarly reminded of his lowly beginnings by catcalls of mulio (Vesp.4.3). Yet
Lateranus is the exact inverse of these, for he embraces the servile rank of which the character of his noble
birth defines him as essentially the opposite. For more on the economic and social realities of muleteers in
the Empire, see Bodel (forthcoming).
106
of Jupiter (Iovis ante altaria iurat/ solam Eponam et facies olida at praesepia pictas, 8.
156-157).61
Further, Juvenal immediately calls upon our viewership to underscore the
immensity of Lateranus’ behavior: “[he does this] at night at least, but Luna sees it, and
the stars bear down with witnessing eyes” (nocte quidem, sed Luna videt, sed sidera
testes/ intendunt oculos, 8.149-150). We are again projected into the position of an
ineffectual observer, simultaneously distanced and involved. Through the focalized lens
of the moon, Juvenal elides us into the properly appaled Roman perspective; yet this
identification only serves to heighten our frustration as the wrongdoers always separated
from our agency by the gulf of time and, in the case of the moon, space. Soon, Lateranus’
contemporaries will similarly be observers: Juvenal continues that this “restraint” is
caused only by his office and, at the end of his term, he intends to drive his chariot in the
light of day (clara Lateranus luce flagellum/ sumet, 8.151-152). Lateranus’ own liminal
identity is matched by the overlap between the borders of night and day.62
Juvenal continues his exploitation of sensory cues as he goes on to describe
Lateranus at the pub, using words and a style of depiction of immediate moral resonance.
We see Lateranus frequenting low taverns (popinas, 8.158)63 at all hours of the night
(pervigiles, 8.158), staffed by perfumed foreigners (obvius adsiduo Syrophoenix udus
61
Fredericks 1971a: 127.
62
Larmour 2007, comparing 6.309-313, where the hapless husband treads on the pool of urine,
representing the remnants of the his wife’s debauchery the previous night (in that passage note especially
Luna teste and luce reversa, ll. 311 and 312, respectively), remarks that the signs of nighttime corruption
are visible in the daytime, if one simply looks hard enough (202-4). Braund 1988: 106-7 also includes night
and day, and conspicuousness and obscurity, as two examples of the binary motifs that structure the
thought of the whole satire.
63
See Courtney ad loc. for references to the low status of these establishments.
107
amomo, 8.159),64 who effusively greet their beloved guest (hospitis adfectu, 8.161). Even
the placement of the bar at the Porta Capena (sardonically called the porta Idymaeae
because of the settlement of Jews nearby, 8.160)65 is meaningful, reinforcing the
transgression of Lateranus’ behavior by locating it at a border region of the city, where,
as David Larmour asserts, inside and outside, past and present, and natural and unnatural
commingle.66 Lateranus’ behavior subverts the determination (and determinism) of social
status based on birth and threatens Juvenal’s own project by further disconnecting and
isolating inherited station as a meaningful criterion for judgment. Juvenal shows
Lateranus not committing “crimes” but acting basely and, in so doing, transgressing the
proper boundaries of nobility, even as Juvenal tries to ordain a final meaning for
“nobility” by securing it to virtuous behavior.
Here arises a defender to excuse Lateranus’ behavior: “An advocate of his fault
will tell me, ‘We did the same things too when we were young.’ (defensor culpae dicet
mihi ‘fecimus et nos/ haec iuvenes,’ 8.163-64). Juvenal actually concedes this point (esto,
8.164),67 though he limits his pardon to the young (indulge veniam pueris, 8.167), rather
than for a man at the right age for leading soldiers into battle (maturus bello, 8. 169). The
reference to battle surely evokes the perverted all-night “battles” we witnessed at the
64
Compare the earlier depiction of the gourmand, “steeped in a whole container from Cosmus” (Cosmi toto
mergatur aeno, 8.86). Cosmus, famous for his cosmetics and perfumes, appears likewise in Martial
associated with luxury (1.87, 3.55, etc.). The obviously foreign name Syrophoenix is repeated
contemptuously in the next line for effect.
65
Courtney ad loc.
66
Larmour 2007: 202-7. He compares the appearance of the Porta Capena here with its loaded significance
at the Satire 3, whereby the once pristine natural spring has been “corrupted” by, e.g., fancified decorations
of marble (nec ingenuum violarent marmora tofum, 3.20).
67
In this respect, Juvenal’s depiction of Lateranus differs from the transgressors of Satire 2, as the only
proxy speaker there, Laronia, acted against the interests of the hypocritical perverts, rather than speaking at
all in their favor.
108
outset of the satire (cf. 8.9-12) and intimates that the only kind of “battle” that Lateranus
and his ilk will be prepared for is combat over the dice table.68 There is a hint here, then,
of the normality and ubiquity of what Juvenal portrays as the transgressive, undermining
the moralist’s attempts at defining social morality.
Juvenal’s depiction of Lateranus continues with a brilliantly grotesque scene (into
which we are again inserted as viewers, invenies, 173) of his coterie sprawled around
him:
mitte Ostia, Caesar,
mitte, sed in magna legatum quaere popina:
invenies aliquo cum percussore iacentem,
permixtum nautis et furibus ac fugitivis,
inter carnifices et fabros sandapilarum
et resupinati cessantia tympana galli.
aequa ibi libertas, communia pocula, lectus
non alius cuiquam, nec mensa remotior ulli.
175
(8.171-178)
Dispatch him, Caesar, dispatch your legate to Ostia, but first look for him in a huge bar:
you’ll find him there, lying about with some murderer, mixed in with sailors and thieves
and runaway slaves, among hangmen and coffin-makers and the clanging drums, at rest,
of a reclining eunuch-priest. There is liberty for all, shared cups, the couch has no
preferential spot, nor is anyone cut off from the table.
Here, again, Juvenal uses the setting and the dramatis personae to tell the story, with an
extravagant list of the gypsies, tramps, and thieves with whom Lateranus associates. A
walking contradiction, a man between worlds, Lateranus represents a transgressive
challenge to Roman nobility. Ironically, that these men share the loving cup (literally:
pocula communia, 177) is, in fact, a sign of their degeneracy, since the nobility, by
definition, are supposed to be removed from their company. 69 Juvenal imports a charge
68
Cf. the battle imagery at 1.88-92: alea quando/ hos animos? Neque enim loculis comitantibus itur/ ad
casum tabulae, posita sed luditur arca./ proelia quanta illic dispensatore videbis/ armigero!
69
One wonders if the scene is not meant to make the reader recall, as least in its general outline, the famed
Cena Trimalchionis from the Neronian era Satyricon, with its admixture of our learned and noble hero
Encolpius with the upwardly mobile freedman.
109
of hypocrisy against the nobles on this very point, for they are happy to excuse their own
behavior even while they condemn servants for similar activity (at vos, Troiugenae, vobis
ignoscitis et quae/ turpia cerdoni Volesos Brutumque decebunt, 8.181-182).70 These lines
further hone in on the confusing and contradictory nexus of virtue, birth, and “nobility”
with the contemptuous vocative “sons of Troy” (Troiugenae); the bombastic form of
address points precisely to where that arrogance on the part of the nobles originates, their
descent.
Even more transgressive of social boundaries than Lateranus are nobles who
make a spectacle of themselves, either as actors, or mimes, or even in the arena, reaching
its nadir with the supreme example of a noble actor, Nero.71 Before dropping the curtain
on the nobles on stage, Juvenal remarks that his satire’s exempla will here increase in
turpitude (Quid si numquam adeo foedis adeoque pudendis/ utimur exemplis, ut non
peiora supersint, 8.183-84). Some scholars have found his insistence on the heinousness
of these nobles on stage absurd, or even ironic or parodic.72 Yet Catherine Edwards has
shown how Romans viewed the theater as a dangerous import from Greece and the shame
involved in making oneself a public spectacle. Actors had the technical restriction of
70
Juvenal 11.1-55 is founded on a similar difficulty in establishing a shared set of moral codes for the
wealthy and poor concerning consumptions, also taking on an ironic perspective on trying to establish an
all-embracing social code. See Jones 1990 and Weisinger 1972 for more on Satire 11.
71
Of course, the issue of nobles on stage was not simply a Juvenalian metaphor. It is well attested in the
sources (e.g. Tac. Ann. 14.14: nobilium familiarum posteros egestate venales in scaenam duxit) and now in
the material record, as demonstrated by a senatus consultum recovered at Larinum concerning noblemen
appearing on stage and at gladiatorial games, first published in 1978 (Levick 1983). Indeed, the decree
shows that acting on stage carried real-world penalties, such as the interdiction of “due burial” (libitinam, l.
15) if one had acted “in contravention of their order” ([contra dignitatem ordinis], ll. 14-5, as restored by
Levick). In a review of imagery of the spectacular spaces in Rome, Gold 1999 argues that the theater
embodies a locus of “counter-behavior” where “actors…betray their appropriate class and status.” (64)
72
E.g. Braund 1988: 119: “[On Nero] How can anyone rate histrionics as more serious than matricide?”
For Braund in particular, this absurdity reflects the absurdity of the moralizing position of the speaker in
Satire 8.
110
infamia, nor were they protected from corporal punishment, and were associated with
license and sexual immorality.73 So, one must take seriously the moral connotations that
the incoherence of Roman nobles appearing on stage would raise. These nobles stand as
the most flagrant representative of discord in Juvenal’s Rome, since the very way that
they choose to trample on the borders between noble and lower class (namely, appearing
in spectacles) is exactly what makes this trampling more visible and more profound.
One might also note that Juvenal’s technique shifts; rather than simply depict the
nobles and let their illicit crossing of boundaries speak for themselves, here Juvenal
intersperses these grotesque performances with moral comment. These nobles basely
show themselves, appearing in mimes recognizable to the satiric audience (consumptis
opibus vocam, Damasippe, locasti/ sipario, clamosum ageres ut Phasma Catulli, 8.185186).74 But what is more, they show themselves willingly and at prominent festivals
where they could be easily recognized in the open: “they sell [their beatings] without a
Nero forcing them, and they do not hesitate to sell them at the games of the praetor sitting
on high” ([sc. verbera] vendunt nullo cogente Nerone/ nec dubitant celsi praetoris
vendere ludis, 8. 193-194).75 According to Juvenal, evening a looming death would be no
excuse for this lowly participation in the theater, for playing stock roles like the jealous
73
Edwards 1993: 98-123. For their sexual immorality in Juvenal, see, e.g. the memorably suggestive image
of Roman women itching for the accoutrements of Accius (tristes/ personam thyrsumque tenent et subligar
Acci, 6.69-70). See Edwards 1997 for more on their social position, which was analogous to prostitutes.
74
For Catullus the mimographer, see also Sat.13.111 and Mart.5.30.3. One supposes that Juvenal may be
indicting his own audiences implicit endorsement of these foul spectacles in that they can instantly
recognize and understand the moral connotations of the mention of Catullus here. Henderson 1999: 249-73
argues that Juvenal plays a similar game of reference in the opening lines of Satire 1 (1.1-21), where
recognition of his references becomes an act of self-indictment for participating in the vapid recitation
culture he attacks.
75
Taking Courtney’s suggestion of verbera for the very difficult in sense funera at l.192. Griffith 1962
retains the ms., arguing that funera refers to “stage-deaths,” citing the parallel of the Laureolus mime-cumexecution at Mart. Lib.Spect. 7 (see the next note for more on this poem)
111
husband of Thymele (8.195-197). The mixture of proper names, some noble (Lentulus,
8.187; Fabios, 8.191; Mamercorum, 8.192) and others related to the theater, either
writers, actors, or characters (Catulli, 8.186; Thymeles and Corinthi, 8.197), shows how
these performances muddy the boundary between noble and lowborn.
One could, however, also view this shift from mere showing to a combination of
showing and comment as Juvenal’s self-conscious projection of himself as moralizing
spectator. In depicting the audience (including himself), the stage he sets metatheatrically
encompasses not only the action onstage, but offstage as well. He deliberately puts
himself and his reaction on view. When the noble Lentulus plays Laureolus (a fictitious
highwayman in a crufixion mime), Juvenal indignantly remarks that Lentulus is worthy
of a “real cross” (Laureolum velox etiam bene Lentulus egit,/ me iudice dingus vera
cruce, 8.187-88). Juvenal depicts Lentulus as operating in a dangerous liminal space
when, as a noble, he takes up a part meant for a low actor; in his comment, Juvenal
collapses the performance and reality.76 By “offering a critical response to the shows [the
Romans] watch,” 77 Juvenal essentially inserts himself into the action, continuing the
collapse of boundaries that the noble mime (mimus/ nobilis, 8.198-199) embodies.78
76
Indeed, the collapse is actually a little more complex. This theatricality was already at play in Roman
practice, as evidenced both by Shadi Bartsch’s discussion of the effect of Nero’s spectatorship on Imperial
audiences at events (Bartsch 1994: 1-35) and by what Kathleen Coleman has catalogued as “fatal
charades,” the punishment of a criminal in a role-playing situation, often involving a perverted
mythological situation (Coleman 1990). As she discusses (64-65), the development of the situation of
Laureolus (a bandit-leader) into fatal charade took three steps: first, the actual career of Laureolus, ending
with his execution by crucifixion; then, the creation of a mime where an actor was mock-executed; finally,
a re-enactment of that mime with a real execution, as documented in Mart. Spect. 7, where Laureolus,
though eventually eaten by a bear, was “hung on a real cross” (non falsa pendens in cruce, l. 4; cf. Bartsch
1994: 51-53 on Spect. 7). Juvenal thus adds a fourth step, collapsing the Laureolus execution and Laureolus
mime into a suitable penalty for the transgressive noble.
77
Keane 2006: 34.
78
The enjambment between these words especially emphasizes the oxymoronic incoherence in meaning.
112
Yet Rome, as depicted here and elsewhere, undoubtedly had a strong taste for
spectacle.79 Here he turns to the crowd and lambasts them for their endurance of these
sights:
Nec tamen ipsi
ignoscas populo; populi frons durior huius,
qui sedet et spectat triscurria patriciorum, 190
planipedes audit Fabios, ridere potest qui
Mamercorum alapas.
(8.188-192)
Nor should you forgive the people themselves; hard is the front of this populace, which
sits and watches the three-fold-jesters of the nobles, who listen to flat-flooted Fabii, who
can laugh at the Mamerci’s boxed ears.
Juvenal’s field of vision encompasses all of Rome, from viewer to performer. Yet this
move is inherently dangerous: in morally collapsing spectacle and spectator, he implicitly
threatens his own audience. For what is Juvenal’s satire here but a restaging of nobles on
stage, for the self-congratulating delight in partaking in vice vicariously?80 If his project
in Satire 8, as defined at the outset, is to delineate the boundaries of the “nobility” and to
combat the permeability which figures like noble actors create, here he himself
participates in collapsing those boundaries. Though the moral distance of the readers of
satire does not make us completely equivalent to the spectators that Juvenal criticizes,
surely those readers can also be said to “laugh at the Mamerci’s boxed ears.”
He continues this restaging of marginal figures with the return of Gracchus from
Satire 2. Whereas there Juvenal combined Gracchus’ performance as retairius with a
story about his sexual deviance, here the performance stands on its own. As with
Lateranus, the introduction of the name is dramatically delayed for maximum impact:
79
Edwards 1993: 120. Besides the evidence in Juvenal (here, or in the famous condemnation of Rome’s
elevating “bread and circuses” over suffrage), one could identify this trend already in Horace (Cf. Epist.
2.1.182-207).
80
Here I may hesitantly accept the truth of one of Kernan’s paradoxes of the satirist, that of “saint vs.
sensationalist” as laid out by Anderson 1982: 305-8.
113
“What is there left except the gladiatorial school? There, you have the shame of the city,
fighting not in the arms of a murmillo, Gracchus, nor with shield nor curved hook” (haec
ultra quid erit nisi ludus? Et illic/ dedecus urbis habes, nec murmillonis in armis/ nec
clipeo Gracchum pugnantem aut falce supina, 8.199-201). As in Satire 2, Gracchus, to
his even greater shame, fights as a retiarius rather than a murmillo or Thraex.81 Even
more grotesque in Juvenal’s accouting, Gracchus allows himself to be recognized in the
costume of a Salian priest. Juvenal vividly82 restages for us the recognition of Gracchus,
not only by the spectators but by the gladiators themselves:
Movet ecce tridentem.
postquam vibrata pendentia retia dextra
nequiquam effudit, nudum ad spectacula voltum
erigit et tota fugit agnoscendus harena.
credamus tunica, de faucibus aurea cum se
porrigat et longo iactetur spira galero.
ergo ignominiam graviorem pertulit omni
volnere cum Graccho iussus pugnare secutor.
205
(8.203-210)
Behold! he brandishes a trident. After he has uselessly released the hanging net from his
poised right hand, he raises his naked face to the crowd and flees, recognizable, in the
entire arena. We should trust in the cloak, when the golden cord shows itself forth from
the entrance-way and is cast about from the long Salian cap.83 Thereupon who but the
chaser bears a heavier shame than any wound, upon being bid to fight with Gracchus.
Here again Juvenal inserts a metatheatrical moment. Rather than equating role
with reality as with the crucifixion mime described above, here a participant in the
spectacle (the secutor assigned to attack Gracchus, who has apparently become helpless
without his net, if we take the lines as recreating a single performance) replicates the
81
Cf. his licet ipsum/ admoveas cuius tunc munere retia misit, 2. 147-48. For the low status of the retiarius,
even amongst gladiators see 6.O7-11, where he is even said to fight “nude” (i.e. wearing only a
sugligaculum, without even a tunic).
82
Note especially the force of ecce at l. 203 in establishing the visual enargeia so pervasive in Juvenal. Cf.
Schmitz 2000: 26-27, who notes that at such spots, ecce is external in that it points to the reader/listener of
Juvenal’s satires.
83
This follows the interpretation of Courtney on ll. 207-210, where the spira is the cord that holds up the
galerus (his Salian cap, with which Gracchus is not supposed to appear outdoors) by the chin.
114
reaction of the crowd: horror and shame. Or, rather, this should be the audience’s
reaction, but there is no indication that the crowd, who must recognize this deviant Salian
priest (agnoscendus, 206; ad spectacula, 205)—and who readers recognize from his
appearance in the second Satire—share this reaction. In a further move towards
incoherence, just as the high-born man shames himself by appearing in gladiatorial
combat, only the (implicitly) low-born gladiator has the correct reaction to it. Juvenal
uses the uncomfortable position of siding with the judgment of a mere gladiator as an
example of the topsy-turviness of the world in which his project is trying to operate.
Earlier in the satire, nobles had forfeited their claims to “nobility” by resting on
the prominence of their station, even while committing official and personal misdeeds.
Here, even more destructively, Juvenal’s spectacle-loving patricians have renounced their
nobility by acting entirely or, worse, attempt to bridge the yawning gap between the
significance of their station (emblematized by Gracchus’ cap) and their behavior (his
fighting in the arena). Of course, the image of Gracchus appearing in his Salian garb is
profoundly ridiculous; indeed, it perfectly summarizes how Juvenal’s compression of
meaning into juxtaposed images can take on a mercenary quality. Verisimilitude is
sacrificed for effective visual point: Gracchus’ contradictory appearance in the arena
matches the clashing identities of Salian priest and lowly retiarius. Moreover, this
incoherence applies to Juvenal as well, since only by concocting a ridiculous and
unrealistic image can he effectively capture the intensity of Gracchus’ transgression. Just
as before, nobles embraced the living death of their statuary (cf. 8.55, tua vivit imago),
Gracchus is an oxymoron come to life.
115
But it is Nero who climactically encapsulates the boundary-collapsing effects of
the betrayal of status and the metatheatrical. Juvenal has already hinted that, in his satire
restructured as an account of ever-escalating noble decline, Nero will serve as the nadir.
Through another grotesque contradiction in terms, the “noble mime” is only fitting for an
era led by a “balladeer-cum-emperor”: res haut mira tamen citharoedo principe mimus/
nobilis (8.198-199). After denouncing Nero’s patricide (one punishment isn’t enough for
Nero, 8.213-214), Juvenal makes an extended comparison between Juvenal and Orestes
which introduces the destabilizing significance of Nero’s fondness for playacting:
par Agamemnonidae crimen, sed causa facit rem
dissimilem. quippe ille deis auctoribus ultor
patris erat caesi media inter pocula, sed nec
Electrae iugulo se polluit aut Spartani
sanguine coniugii, nullis aconita propinquis
miscuit, in scena numquam cantavit Oresten,
Troica non scripsit.
215
220
(8.215-221)
His crime was equal to the son of Agamemnon’s, but the reason makes the case different.
For that one, with the gods’ directing, was the avenger of the father, cut down amongst
his cups, but he did not befoul himself with the cut throat of Electra nor the blood of the
Spartan wife, he did not mix wolf’s-bane for any relatives, he never sang an “Orestes” on
the stage, he did not write “The Fall of Troy.” 84
Unraveling all the implications of line 220 (in scena numquam cantavit Oresten) in
particular, concerning Juvenal’s claim that Orestes never played “Orestes” on stage,
entails re-igniting the confusion that that Nero’s theatrical habits sparked. For the idea is
both that Nero played the character “Orestes” in some tragedy and that Nero played
himself, who, as a person, was the extreme reenactment of a modern-day Orestes;
84
Though Clausen’s text follows the codices in reading Orestes, Weidner’s reading of Oresten followed by
e.g. Braund, Bartsch 1994: 49-50, and Courtney is probably better. The reading Orestes as nominative is a)
unnecessary since ille is already clear enough as representing Orestes as the subject and b) less effective,
since the accusative will bring into the focus the various metatheatrical boundaries which Nero steps over,
both in playing himself and in “playing” “himself”. Even the original reading, however, underscores this
point by introducing an ambiguity between the “two” Orestes (this Orestes and “that” one), which
underscores the transgression of the boundaries of identity.
116
Orestes, of course, is said to have done neither, which would have been one and the same
for him. As Robert Cowan remarks, noting that Nero is supposed to have acted using a
mask that resembled his own face,85 “Nero’s portrayal of Orestes, wearing a Nero mask,
does not simplistically mean that he is portraying himself. Rather it blurs the distinction
between playing Orestes and playing Nero until the distinction between Orestes and Nero
is itself blurred.”86
The metatheatrical conceit, which might be paraphrased by Shadi Bartsch on this
instance as an inability to choose between one of the two mutually exclusive frames of
real and representational, underlines the problems of definition and identity which
underpin the entire satire. 87 As we have seen throughout the satire, the meaning of
nobility is muddied by Juvenal’s use of names with a two-fold significance: they
represent the prestige earned by the noble ancestors but also the degenerate state of their
current holders. Juvenal aligns Nero’s metatheatrical boundary-crossing with the
transgression of his high lineage and his nationality: “these were the works and these the
arts of our noble emperor, who loved to prostitute himself on the foreign stage with a foul
85
This affectation leads to a memorable anecdote in Suetonius Ner. 21.3, where a soldier seeing Nero
wearing a Nero mask depicting Hercules in chains rushed on stage to save his emperor from confinement.
Bartsch 1994 46-50 discusses this incident as yet another instance of general rise of “theatrical” behavior
amongst an audience whose reactions were under constant surveillance and where the wrong response
could have devastating implications.
86
Cowan 2009: 79. Indeed, as Cowan continues (80-83), Juvenal’s contrasting synkrisis actually fails since
Orestes is constantly associated in drama with deception and role-playing. The best example is surely
Orestes’ appearance in Sophocles’ Electra, where he, playing a messenger bearing news to Clytemnestra of
Orestes’ death, invents an elaborate and detailed account of a chariot accident which never happened (ll.
680-764).
87
Cowan 2009 argues that Nero is thus a representative of the problematic semantics of “identity” in Satire
8 (“Identity and the ability of names to establish it are at issue”) and claims that “since virtuous commoners
are preferable to degenerate aristocrats,” noble lineage is irrelevant (83). He also wishes to extend this
confusion to the identity of Juvenal’s persona (87). What I claim instead is that this blurring has a different
kind of poetological implication on the operation of the satire; in fact, Juvenal cannot completely dismiss
the claim that noble lineage is relevant because doing so would upset the metonymic mechanics of his
satire, which depends on the resonance of nobility in its instantiations in names to have meaning.
117
song and to have earned the parsley-crown of Greece” (haec opera atque hae sunt
generosi principis artes,/ gaudentis foedo peregrina ad pulpita cantu/ prostitui
Graiaeque apium meruisse coronae, 8.224-226). Though we may think that Juvenal
overstates the moral implications of Nero’s play-acting, we must take seriously not only
the real significance that acting would have had in the Roman moral imagination,
particularly in the figure of the emperor,88 but also its effect on Juvenal’s poetics. Nero’s
transgression is symbolic of the disorder of the Roman universe depicted in Satire 8. This
disorder is summarily envisioned at the climax of the passage:
maiorum effigies habeant insignia vocis,
ante pedes Domiti longum tu pone Thyestae
syrma vel Antigones aut personam Melanippes,
et de marmoreo citharam suspende colosso.
(8.227-230)
Let your ancestors’ statues hold the rewards for your voice, you, place before the foot of
Domitius the trailing tragic robe of Thyestes or Antigone or the mask of Melanippe, and
hang your citha from the marble colossus.
Two elements of Nero’s identity symbolically clash. The ancestral statues
(maiorum effigies, pedes Domiti, 227-28) stand for the noble lineage that Nero has
systematically abandoned through his dramatic and lyric performances, concretized as
performative accoutrements (syrma Thyestae, personam Melanippes, citharam, 228-30).
Indeed, insignia vocis stands as a kind of oxymoron, for these insignia represent not the
triumphs to be earned by a vigorous emperor, but rewards “for his voice.” Juvenal
88
Edwards 1993 136: Through his appearance as actor, “[Nero] revealed himself a dissembler, of uncertain
gender, whose words could not be trusted, whose actions had no consequences, in sum, that antithesis of
(Ro)manhood, an actor.” For more on the referential chaos that the imperator scaenicus (Plin. Paneg. 46.4)
raised in the Roman records, see Edwards 1994, esp. 93: “Under the actor-emperor, appearance and reality
were confused, categories collapsed. The relationship between sign and meaning was irredeemably
corrupted.”
118
envisions a grotesque colossus from which Nero is to hang up his cithara,89 physically
representing the enormity of Nero’s transgression against gender and class. Thus, the
metatheatrical gestures of this scene, both in content (nobles conflating life and death in
the Laureolus mime; Nero’s various personae) and in form (Juvenal’s own staging and
his insertion of himself into the audience) animates the transgression which the nobles
enact in their performances in spectacle.90
E. The History Lesson
This abandonment of noble ancestry by the most powerful man in Rome serves as
transition to the final section of Juvenal’s poem, wherein he further undercuts the value
of noble origins by continuing to proceed backward in time, ending with the figure of
Romulus, and questioning the very foundation of the connection of noble lineage to
“noble” virtue (231-275). In the previous section Juvenal had attacked walking
contradictions like Lateranus, Gracchus, and Nero, who had willingly crossed class- and
status-boundaries, thereby undermining the meaning of those boundaries. This smashes
headlong into the original intentions of Juvenal’s stated project—What is nobility? What
does nobility do?—which depended on a crisp delineation of noble from ignoble to instill
the proper connection of true nobility to virtue. As with the provincial governors, the
figures in Juvenal’s history lesson are unquestionably of noble origin and poor character.
89
It is not universally accepted this is meant to represent the colossal statue he constructed of himself
during his lifetime (Sue. Nero 31). Courtney denies this possibility because Nero’s Colossus was made of
bronze, but it is hard to imagine what else Juvenal would be referring to.
90
It is thus even more pronounced that Cicero’s strategy of metaphorically subsuming Clodius into an actor
(a mime actor, to boot) at Pro Sestio 116ff. For more on Cicero’s invective logic there, see Parker 1999:
175.
119
He begins as explosively as possible: “What, Catiline, will anyone find more
high-flown than your birth and that of Cethegus?” (quid, Catilina, tuis natalibus atque
Cethegi/ inveniet quisquam sublimius?, 8.231-232). At line 232 tamen emphasizes how
Catiline and Cethegus should be thought to violate not just the boundaries of nobility, but
of Romanitas itself: despite their Roman birthlines, their actions bespeak Gallic origins.
Juvenal, making references to the Gallic sack of Rome in 390 B.C.E. (ut bracatorum
pueri Senonumque minores, 8.234), implies that their crimes have transformed them into
non-Romans, projecting them into a field even further removed from that of Roman
nobility. Juvenal then summons the character of Cicero as a counterpoint, not just to
Catiline and Cethegus’s destructive intentions towards Rome, but to their origins as well,
describing Cicero as novus, a municipalis eques, and, most importantly, ignobilis (8.237238). Finally fulfilling the implication of the definition of nobility at the outset of the
poem, nobility is conferred onto Cicero by his virtue (tantum igitur muros intra toga
contulit illi,/ nominis ac tituli, 8.240-241), though the description of those gains is
undercut by the reference in the next lines to the wholesale slaughter by Augustus at
Philippi and Actium (8.241-243).91 What seems to be overlooked is the central point of
the passage: despite Cicero’s virtue, the existence of Catilines and Cetheguses, even
before contemporary times of the opening lines or the Neronian milieu of Lateranus,
Gracchus, and Nero himself, challenges the very notion of nobility as a meaningful
category to correlate with virtue. Juvenal’s satire here parodies the reliance on a
straightforward meaning of “then” and “now”, where “then” is supposed to indicate a
91
One should note how contulit in 8.240, of Cicero’s achievements, is contrasted with abstulit, describing
Augustus’. Juvenal likewise uses Octavius, rather than the honorific Augustus or Caesar, in order to
denigrate Augustus’ position.
120
time of virtue and “free Rome” (Roma…libera, 8.244) and “now” (which itself has a
slippery definition in this poem) represents a moment of unstoppable decline.92
Juvenal makes a similar points in the next lines about Marius, who begins,
according to Juvenal, as merces and an arator, yet ends up conquering the Cimbri and
Teutones in 102-101 B.C.E. (8.245-53).93 Though it is difficult to judge the exact tone of
the passage on Marius,94 a similar point is made about the usefulness, or lack thereof, of
ideas of nobility and their connection to success or virtue. For Marius’ noble colleague,
whose lineage is emphasized by leaving him unnamed except for the attribute nobilis
(nobilis ornatur lauro collega secunda, 8.253), receives second place to this man of
humble origins.
In the next lines (8.254-58), Juvenal remarks on the Decii and their devotiones in
340, 295, and 279 B.C.E. and draws a contrast between their plebeian origins and their
service to Rome. Here again Juvenal is ensnared by a central paradox in discussing the
contrast between those who are virtuous but ignoble, and those who are noble but
impious or treacherous. His criticism is founded on a traditional definition of “nobility”,
where high birth corresponds to virtue and low birth does not; there must be boundaries
92
A similar point might be made at 6.340ff about the contrast between “then” and “now” which likewise
undercuts the straightforward meaning of describing “then.” There Juvenal describes how modern-day
women pervert the celebration of the Bona Dea, ending with the memorable tag sed nunc ad quas non
Clodius aras? (“now, to what altars does not a Clodius come?”, 6.345). Yet Juvenal’s ability to use Clodius
as a rhetorical resource nevertheless prefigures his existence. Surely, he is meant to be an aberration of the
times “then” (quis tunc hominum contemptor numinis…?, 6.342), yet one could answer Juvenal’s questions
at 6.341-345 with “Clodius, that’s who.”
93
Courtney ad 246, argues that, in fact, accounts of Marius’ origins, drawn from, inter alios, Pliny the
Elder (NH 33.150), were exaggerated by Juvenal’s time in the rhetorical schools.
94
Winkler 1983: 34-5 argues that the reference to rods being broken on Marius’ back (nodosam post haec
frangebat vertice vitem, 8.247) are intended to undercut Juvenal’s nostalgic description of the past. One
might also add the macabre detail describing the surprise of crows eating the dead flesh at the magnitude of
the bodies of the Cimbri (qui numquam attigerant maiora cadavera corvi, 8.252). Still, falling back on a
sarcastic or ironic persona hardly seems necessary to assert, since the content of the passage is enough to
show the emptiness of relying on models of nobility.
121
for Nero or Gracchus or Catiline to transgress for the discourse on nobility to be
meaningful. The repetition of tamen and its adversative force (232, 249, 255) now takes
on another meaning, as it demonstrates that the notion of plebeia nomina (plebeiae
Deciorum animae, plebeia fuerunt/ nomina, 8.254-255) still has meaning; indeed the
syntactical structure of these lines implicitly equates the “names” of the Decii with their
“lives,” even as it seeks to show how they overcame that equation.95 Again, for the
description of Servius Tullius that follows (ancilla natus trabeam et diademe Quirini/ et
fascis meruit, 8.259-260), Juvenal, even as he offers a counter-example, relies on the
assumption that being born to a slave relates to one’s moral value.
The final set of historical exempla takes the reader back to the founding of the
Republic and the conspiracy of sons of Brutus with Lars Porsenna to restore Roman
monarchy. They are described as “sons of the consul himself” (iuvenes ipsius consulis…,
8.262), thereby confirming their noble origins, and simultaneously marking them as fit to
act virtuously on behalf of the state (…et quos/ magnum aliquid dubia pro libertate
deceret, 8.263). The et, which Courtney describes as “harsh,”96 is significant, as the
polysyndeton underscores the implied equation between nobility reckoned as birth and
virtue that Juvenal is showing to be inadequate. That his ignoble but virtuous foils to
95
Housman, followed by Clausen and Braund, deletes 8.258, “for the Decii were worth more than those
things which are saved by them” (pluris enim Decii quam quae servantur ab illis), describing it as a
marginal summary of Juvenal’s thought which found its way into the text. Yet perhaps this introduces a
slightly new idea, that the definition of “noble” and “ignoble” in Juvenal’s historical account are reversed.
In this world, nobility almost seems to guarantee vice, and humility virtue. Juvenal had argued similarly
above, in the section on antiphrasis. S.C. Fredericks argues that these lines are intended as a parody of
historical projects like that of Livy, which “justified the pride of the noble houses in their family traditions,
whereas Juvenal does just the opposite and shows their claims are not so important” (Fredericks 1971a:
130).
96
Courtney ad 261-2.
122
noble corruption include a woman (virgo, 8.265) and a slave (servus, 8.266) serves to
further challenge the point of defining “nobility” at all.97
Juvenal concludes the satire with a short passage that exemplifies the problems of
reading and evaluating character based on birth. Juvenal first compares two mythological
exempla, Thersites representing low birth and Achilles high, then moves on to the very
origins of Rome itself:
malo pater tibi sit Thersites, dummodo tu sis
Aeacidae similis Volcaniaque arma capessas,
quam te Thersites similem producat Achilles.
et tamen, ut longe repetas longeque revolvas
nomen , ab infami gentem deducis asylo;
maiorum primus, quisquis ille fuit, tuorum
aut pastor fuit aut illud quod dicere nolo.
270
275
(8.269-275)
I prefer your father be Thersites, as long as you yourself are like to Achilles and take up
arms made by Volcan, than that an Achilles brought you forth similar to Thersites. And
still, though you seek back a name a long ways and unfurl a long ways, you spin out a
race from an infamous exile; the first of your ancestors, whoever he was, was a shepherd
or something I don’t want to name.
Juvenal again relies on already established symbols which we are meant to read
straightforwardly: Achilles is not only of high birth, but this high birth is reflected in his
actions; Thersites is not only of mean origins, but equally base in his deeds, though
Thersites’ misdeeds are never explicitly mentioned.
Yet it is the final lines that are the most challenging, for Juvenal undoes the very
meaning of gentility. The destabilizing sting of the tail has not gone unrecognized,98 but
few have teased out its implications towards satiric discourse itself. By claiming that no
97
The lines reference Cloelia, who escaped the clutches of Lars Porsenna by swimming across the Tiber
(quae/imperii finis Tiberinum virgo natavit, 8.264-265), and Vindicus, who revealed the conspiracy of
Brutus’ sons (occulta ad patres produxit criminal servus, 8.266).
98
Winkler 1983: 36 sees this sting, but he is more concerned with the persona’s ironic attitude towards the
Roman past. Braund 1988: 121-22, in her argument on the pseudo-moralizing persona, sees these lines as a
final move which undoes the credibility of the speaker by not returning to the moralizing underlying the
satire, but simply ending.
123
one is truly noble, since all family lines can be traced back to humbler origins eventually,
Juvenal challenges the reading of the Roman world based on birth, which he himself had
just employed in characterizing Thersites and Achilles. He does not merely “attack the
origins of aristocratic pride,”99 as in the previous section debunking a straightforward
reading of Roman history; he attacks the very existence of a definition for nobility.
Throughout the discussion of virtue and nobility in Satire 8, Juvenal has relied on
external signs, especially in his visualizing material or his employment of loaded Roman
names, which must be read as clear-cut signs to be meaningful. Yet in this final section,
where he notes that Rome itself originated from those seeking asylum (infami…asylo,
8.273), the idea that anyone can be a “noble” Roman by birth collapses.
This cannot but have an effect on the way we read the long satire that has
preceded. Just as it reveals nobilitas to be a broken word—just as often indicating the
very opposite of what it says and which is no longer able to correspond to a
uncomplicated meaning—it challenges the satirical technique that underlies the creation
of Juvenal’s discourse. In a dilemma of modern resonance, Juvenal must use language to
describe a world where language is broken.
Juvenal’s satire has reached a symbolic impasse. For the issue at stake is not
merely the meaning of nobilitas and the relationship of the noble past and its
accompanying discourse with the creation of Romanitas (as John Henderson would have
it), but also the meaning of satire itself. The conservative nature of the Juvenal’s
worldview on nobility and sexuality, where boundaries are meaningful and clear-cut,
clashes with the depiction of a world which, simply put, has become difficult to read. It
already signals from the start a retreat into a world of ideas paradoxically divorced from
99
Fredericks 1971a: 131
124
the intensely visualized nature of Juvenal’s satire. When we cannot read the world, how
are we to read the world of satire?
125
Chapter 3: Laughter and Myopia: the Worldview of Juvenal 10
Though it is a truism that Juvenal enacts a new phase of his satirical career with
Satire 10, upon closer inspection, Juvenal continues to focus on the problems of meaning
and interpretation that I have spotlighted at emerging the outset and middle of his oeuvre.
Commentators have found the monumental shift from the “indignant” satirist of Bks. 1-2
to the more hopeful and “rational” 1 satirist that we see in Bks. 4-5 emblematized in a
passage, universally agreed to be programmatic, which portrays Heraclitus’ and
Democritus’ contrasting reactions to human pursuit and folly (10.28-53). Though I do not
discount the change in tone, this chapter will, in the course of a close reading of Satire 10,
show how this passage on Heraclitus and Democritus fits into a larger satiric program
challenging straightforward attempts to make and interpret meaning, which has already
been identified in Satires 2 and 8. Whether focusing on Roman vice or human folly,
Juvenal emphasizes the indecipherability of the world and the consequent effect of this
atmosphere on the representative project of satire itself.
In Satire 2, Juvenal had emphasized the contrast between external features and
true nature (through those explicitly branded hypocrites or nobles whose behavior
diverged from their essential lineage) while simultaneously relying on a coherent set of
external signs to create satirical meaning. In Satire 8, his discourse had absorbed the
definitional tensions accompanying contemporary nobility; the logic of his mockery
depended on retaining the essentializing associations of high birth, even while the content
1
Using the terms of Anderson 1982: 288ff. Though the causes of this shift shifted from biographical claims
(e.g. Lindo 1974) to artistic choices with the advances of Anderson’s persona approach, the shift is agreed
on just the same.
126
of his exempla argued that it should be dispensed with. Here, though the program is
similar, insofar as it often relies on externalized depictions of folly or the tragic results of
folly, there is an added nuance. For, by careful reading, we will come to understand that
these depictions in Satire 10 are self-consciously framed as only one individual’s
overwhelmingly negative, reading of the world. The “objective” nature of that world thus
eludes our grasp. Juvenal’s text will use the stand-in satirist of Democritus to demonstrate
its own contingency, problematizing the notion of interpreting the world “correctly” by
setting forth a self-consciously slanted interpretation.
As with Satires 2 and 8 Juvenal immediately states the problem at the outset of
the satire:
Omnibus in terris, quae sunt a Gadibus usque
Auroram et Gangem, pauci dinoscere possunt
vera bona atque illis multum diversa, remota
erroris nebula. Quid enim ratione timemus
aut cupimus? Quid tam dextro pede concipis ut te
conatus non paeniteat votique peracti?
Evertere domos totas optantibus ipsis
di faciles. Nocitura toga, nocitura petuntur
militia; torrens dicendi copia multis
et sua mortifera est facundia; viribus ille
confisus periit admirandisque lacertis ;
sed pluris nimia congesta pecunia cura
strangulat et cuncta exuperans patrimonia census
quanto delphinis ballaena Britannica maior.
5
10
(10.1-14)
In all the lands, which stretch from Gades all the way to the land of the rising sun and the
river Ganges, few are able to distinguish true goods and things quite far apart from them,
once the cloud of error has been lifted. For what do we fear or desire out of reason? What
project do you begin on such a lucky note that you don’t regret the attempt and the wish
once it is fulfilled? The gods easily overturn whole houses—and the people ask them for
it! The toga inevitably harms us, so does military might, yet we seek them anyway. A
gushing torrent of words and eloquence are their own poison. That one died because he
trusted in his strength and his marvelous arms; but more do our money-piles throttle with
overwhelming anxiety along a with a property—overwhelming entire fortunes to the
same extent that whales are bigger than dolphins.
127
Not only do these lines expand the geographical and temporal scope of Juvenal’s satire,
as has been noted,2 but they also reintroduce a dilemma central to the satires so far
examined, namely the inability to correctly read and decipher (dinoscere, 2), here
between fruitful and self-destructive wishes. Rome—and the world in general—is
clouded by confusion (nebula erroris, 4), and there is a constant discrepancy between our
intentions and their results. Our desires and fear are not based on a rational interpretation
of facts (quid enim ratione timemus/ aut cupimus, 4-5); instead, in our pursuits we blindly
ignore the possibility or, for Juvenal, the likelihood of failure (quid tam dextro pede
concipis/ ut te conatus non paeniteat votique peracti, 5-6). Indeed, the ironic force of
ipsis optantibus and petuntur in lines 7 and 8, where men voluntarily, indeed willfully,
seek the very things that lead to their demise, emphasizes that this demise originates in
the misformulation of desire. Simply put, men overvalue things that they should not. The
gods’ apparent delight in granting destructive wishes, intimated in di faciles (8) will come
to match the cynical cackle that characterizes Juvenal’s depiction of Democritus
(rigidi…cachinni, 10.31).
Juvenal, in response then to man’s failure to read the world properly, provides in
Sat. 10 his own reading of the world. He reveals, however, through the techniques he
uses to portray that world, that his own vision is equally tendentious and contingent upon
his own satirical perspective. Juvenal professes that he will show the world as it really is
and thus posits Sat. 10 as objective counterpoint to men’s misconceptions of the world.
His discourse, however, will come to replicate the flawed and incomplete perspective of
the human figures he is satirizing and addressing.
2
E.g. Anderson 1982: 345.
128
In short, the world of Juvenal 10 is partial in two senses: it originates from a
biased interpretation of the world (embodied within the satire by Democritus) and, in
turn, is not the completely realized vision that Juvenal claims it to be. Juvenal invokes the
problems and difficulties of interpretation itself (globalized from strongly Romanized
portrayals of this problem in Satires 2 and 8) and simultaneously offers a self-reflexive
representation through satire. Juvenal dramatizes, often ironically, an epistemological rift
between “the” world (which he claims to expose) and the world of satire, with interesting
complications for what satire can be thought to communicate and for our own
interpretations of it.
This rift can open with even a carefully placed ambiguous word, which, in
context, expresses the opposite meaning that it should express in describing the world. In
lines 10-11, Juvenal argues that physical prowess is no match for the vicissitudes of life:
viribus ille/ confisus periit admirandusque lacertis (“that man, trusting in his strength and
his admirable arms, perished because of that strength”).3 With the carefully deployed
word and visually loaded admirandus, Juvenal draws our visual attention to the arms and
comments on them positively, implying that, indeed, the arms are impressive. Yet this
word occurs in a negative context, whereby those very features initially determined to be
good are, when read “correctly,” actually self-destructive. That visual marker should
thus conjure a mental image of Milo’s gruesome death and how it was that very strength,
seemingly so “impressive,” that contributed to it. Of course, to be more precise and
sensitive to the word order, this operation occurs in reverse: first Juvenal gives the
negative context through reference to Milo’s fate at the hands of his hands
3
Taking viribus apo koinou with both the participle and the main verb, as Courtney ad loc recommends.
The lines are a reference to Milo of Croton who was attacked by wolves after jamming his arms too deeply
into a tree he was trying to split barehanded (cf. Strabo 6.1.12; Pausanias 6.14.8).
129
(viribus…periit) and then remarks retroactively on the incredible nature of his strength.
We glimpse two simultaneous readings of Milo, one, the athlete of inspiring feats of
power, and the other, a foolish man whose overconfidence in those feats resulted in his
death.
What this satire will dramatize then, is whether the latter reading (death,
overconfidence) should necessarily supersede the former, or whether, in fact, they exist
as complementary though contradictory readings in an uneasy balance. Juvenal’s
attempts to offer a final reading of the world will be programmatically unsuccessful,
whether because of clashes of tone and perspective or a cognitive dissonance between
what Juvenal is depicting and how he is depicting it; the world of Satire 10 is necessarily
incomplete.
Similarly in this opening section, facundia in line 10 implies a praise of eloquence
but matched with the admittedly deprecating expression, “the churning supply of words
at hand” (torrens dicendi copia, 9)4 and in a context where that eloquence “seals its own
fate” (sua mortifera, 10). At the end of this long statement of purpose, Juvenal lurches
into a downright absurd reading, comparing the ever-increasing money piles that throttle
us with anxiety, increasing one over another at the discrepancy in size between a whale
and a dolphin (quanto delphinis ballaena Britannica maior).5 The incongruity and
irrelevance of the juxtaposition of whale/dolphin is not just a passing joke, positioned as
4
Cf. the reference to the sly foreigners that flood Rome in the third Satire: ingenium velox, audacia perdita,
sermo/ promptus et Isaeo torrentior (3.73-74).
5
Plaza 2006 uses this passage as an example of what she terms “non-aligned” humor, through the
association of the whale with other comical monstrosities in Juvenal, wherein “the laughter spreads wider
than the one straight direction” since the image does more than just prove the point (316-17).
130
it is at the beginning of the satire. Instead, it will show itself to be an index of the
worldview of the satire.
In the following section, on the way that excessive possessions lead inevitably to
misery, even death, Juvenal seemingly ignores his own previous depictions of Rome’s
unsavory characters and of debilitating poverty. Several times in Satire 10, Juvenal will
rewrite his own world through ironic recollections and re-evaluations of material from
previous satires (or even of material from earlier in this very satire!). Villains will
become victims, and miseries will become advantages. We are told an entire cohort of
soldiers besieged the “outstanding” house of the Laterani (egregias Lateranorum obsidet
aedes/ tota cohors, 17-18), Juvenal referencing the fate of Plautius Lateranus, killed by
the order of Nero in 65 C.E. (iussuque Neronis, 15). As with admirandis above, labeling
the home of the Laterani egregias has an ironic force, for Juvenal argues that these
estates’ very outstanding quality which makes them attractive targets. Even more,
disregarding Juvenal’s historical inaccuracy, this is arguably the same Lateranus who
Juvenal notoriously depicted as a mulio consul in Sat. 8, flying shamefully past the ashes
of his own ancestors (praeter maiorum cineres atque ossa volucri/ carpento rapitur
pinguis Lateranus, 8.147-48) and associating at the pub with sailors, coffin-makers and
other low-lifes (8.173-76).6 Whereas there Lateranus was an emblem of the confusion
6
As Courtney notes ad 8.147, Plautius Lateranus never reached his suffect consulship in 65 C.E. because
of his execution, despite Juvenal depicting his Lateranus at 8.150ff. as a consul (finitum tempus honoris/
cum fuerit, 8.150-51). The identity of the two figures is controversial. Ferguson 1987: 134 argues forcefully
that the man from Satire 8 is T. Sextius Magius Lateranus, cos 94 C.E., but he is forced to completely
dismiss an explicit reference to Nero there (8.170) as a metonymy for Domitian, adducing 4.38 as evidence
(where Domitian is called a “bald Nero”, calvo…Neroni). Yet the reference at 4.38 is paired with an
explicit mention of Domitian (Flavius…ultimus, 4.37-8), and the milieu of the entire poem is explicitly
Domitianic, particularly the catalogue of councilors (4.73-118), which has long been recognized as a
parody of De Bello Germanico, an epic poem by Statius on Domitian’s triumphs, the only traces of which
are preserved by the scholiast of Juvenal. Conversely, Ferguson’s other evidence of “Nero” used for
Domitian, Mart. 11.38, makes no reference which must necessarily refer to Domitian; in fact, it references
131
instantiated in transgression of the boundaries of nobility, there is no such dissonance
here, as he is here categorically elided into wealthy victims of Nero along with Seneca
and Longinus in line 15-16.7
Juvenal similarly reworks his depiction of poverty when he claims that one
advantage of poverty is the lack of interference by soldiers (rarus venit in cenacula miles,
“rarely do you get a soldier entering the garrets,” 10.18). Yet these same garrets
(cenacula) are the neglected homes on the verge of collapse in Sat. 3 (3.190-96) and
prone to fire: “I [Umbricius, speaker of Sat. 3, on the verge of departure from Rome]
have to live where there are no fires or nightly fears” (vivendum est illic ubi nulla
incendia, nulli/ nocte metus, 3.197-98). When fire in the lower stories breaks out, “you”
are so high that “you” aren’t even aware (3.199-202).8 After a short catalogue of the
meager possessions of an archetypal pauper named Cordus (contrasted later with an
expansive catalogue of the impressive possessions of a rich man which are
enthusiastically replaced by the community, 3.215-222), we are told, in a profoundly
pitiful phrase, that Cordus lost “the entire nothing” he has (nil habuit Cordus, quis enim
negat? et tamen illud/ perdidit infelix totum nihil, 3.208-9).
the “leek-green” faction at the Circus (prasinus, ll. 1, 4), said by Suetonius to be a favorite of Caligula and
Nero (Suet. Ner. 22). Nor then is the inscription (CIL XV.7536) at St. John Lateran, commemorating the
house of the Sexti Laterani on the Caelian Hill, necessarily connected (for the controversy, see Lexicon
Topigraphicum Urbis Romae s.v. Domus Laterani). Thus, the figure from Satire 8 should be considered the
Neronian Lateranus and thus identical to the Lateranus mentioned here, with the inaccuracies to be traced
to a “willingness to embroider [historical fact] without checking the accuracy of his statements” (Courtney
ad 8.146).
7
Though the name of the latter actually represents the property of C. Cassius Longinus (cf. Tac.
Ann.13.48, 14.43-5), as the syntax shows (Longinus is an accusative parallel to hortos in l. 16 and aedes in
l. 17).
8
Tabulata tibi iam tertia fumant:/ Tu nescis (3.199-200): The indeterminancy of the reference of tu
(certainly not Umbricius’ dramatic addressee Juvenal, but Cordus is not named for several more lines)
helps to universalize the danger Rome poses.
132
There is further contradiction in his contrast in Satire 10 of two men at night
making for home, one fearful for the money he is carrying (10.19-21), the other strolling
fearless with empty pockets, even humming a tune (cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator,
10.22), if one recalls the man assaulted in the street by young thugs despite his poverty,
also in Satire 3 (278-301). While giving him a sound thrashing, these thugs abuse him
verbally, berating him about the low quality of the meal from which he is returning
(3.292-94) and even calling him a beggar (in qua te quaero proseucha, “in what
synagogue should I look for you?”, 3.296). The only “freedom” of poverty (libertas
pauperis, 3.299), as Juvenal had earlier formulated, is the ability to beg that you be
allowed to keep your teeth (adorat/ ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde reverti, 3.300-1).
A. Who’s Laughing Now?
With these ironies in place (the double valence of admirandus, facundia, and
egregias; the reversal of the value of poverty and villainy) Juvenal then begins the
famous section on Democritus and Heraclitus (10.28-53). He chooses these two figures to
embody two interpretations of the Roman world: for Heraclitus, the world is an endless
font of tears, but, for Democritus, it is a wellspring of laughter:
Iamne igitur laudas quod de sapientibus alter
ridebat, quotiens a limine moverat unum
protuleratque pedem, flebat contratius auctor?
Sed facilis cuivis rigidi censura cachinni:
mirandum est unde ille oculis suffecerit umor.
Perpetuo risu pulmonem agitare solebat
Democritus, quam non essent urbibus illis
praetexta, trabeae fasces, lectica, tribunal.
30
35
(10.28-35)
And do you now praise what one of the philosophers used to laugh at, whenever he
stepped foot outdoors, while the opposing philosopher used to weep? But for anyone easy
is the corrective power of the giddy cackle: it’s wonder that one could ever find a supply
133
of tears! Democritus used to shake his sides with unending laughter, and he didn’t even
have in his towns youths or stripes or rods or litters or the speaker’s platform.
Juvenal gives a portrait of Democritus and Heraclitus, in characterizations popularized by
Seneca,9 confronting the world in opposite ways (contrarius auctor, 30). The world is
both a generalized one (implied in quod in 28) and a specifically Roman one, which
Juvenal objectifies by listing a series of Roman institutions, material and spatial:
praetextae, trabeae, fasces, lectica, tribunal (35). Between those two perspectives—tears
and laughter—Juvenal demonstrates a clear favorite, sardonically dismissing Heraclitus’
dejection (“You’d think he’d run out of tears eventually”) and foregrounding Democritus’
reaction to Roman spectacle in the following lines (36-53). Most critics embrace this
passage as indicating Juvenal’s new adoption of a Democritean persona, whose tone will
shift from indignant anger to cynical laughter.10
Yet there is an important additional nuance to these lines that commentators up to
now have left unnoticed, encapsulated in the position of Heraclitus. For this passage
operates in tandem with the opening: if the opening lines depict the problem of a world
that men have trouble deciphering, these lines depict two opposing interpretations of that
world and thus make the choice of a single perspective contingent upon the viewer. When
Juvenal claims that the choice of laughter is the easiest way “for anyone at all” (facilis
cuivis…censura), he seemingly ignores the existence of any opposing viewpoint. Indeed,
9
Cf. Courtney ad 28-30 and Anderson 1982: 341-44.
10
The thought goes back to Hendrickson 1927: 52-55, but the most influential reading of this shift is
Anderson 1982: 288ff and 340-61, originally printed in 1962 and 1964 respectively. He saw Democritus as
representative of a new program guided by reason, rather than anger, the prototype of the satirist in Juvenal
10-16, and in him an “ironic withdrawal from the passions of mankind” (1982: 348). Braund 1988: 184-189
claims that, in Book 4, Juvenal crafts a specifically “Horatian” persona, drawing parallels with Horace’s
subject, scope, and tone in Satires 10, 11, and 12. See also Keane 2006: 35-37, Courtney 1980: 446, Plaza
2006: 32-37, and Eichholz:1956 (who, prior to Anderson, recognized that this Democritus was a symbolic
rather than historical figure).
134
before Anderson’s influential account of the place of the “Democritean satirist,” it was
argued by Gilbert Lawall that Juvenal himself vacillates between adopting a Heraclitan
and Democritean view (though he conceded that Juvenal tends towards the cynical rather
than the pathetic).11 It is hard to argue that Juvenal’s satire is entirely fueled by harsh
cackling (cachinni, 31) when one encounters such pitiful situations as the parade of
funerals experienced by those “blessed” to grow old (10.240-242). Juvenal, even while he
asserts a monolithic view of the world, creates the possibility of other views, with the
corresponding danger that his own attempt to interpret the world for his reader is merely
his own.12
Juvenal continues by depicting Democritus absorbing the Roman spectacle of the
pompa circensis, in which the president of the games, imitating a triumphal procession in
Juvenal, initiated the games at the Circus Maximus:
Quid si vidisset praetorem curribus altis
extantem et medii sublime pulvere circi
in tunica Iovis et pictae Sarrana ferentem
ex umeris aulaea togae magnaeque coronae
tantum orbem, quanto cervix non sufficit ulla?
Quippe tenet sudans hanc publicus et, sibi consul
ne placeat, curru servus portatur eodem.
Da nunc et volucrem, sceptro quae surgit eburno,
illinc cornicines, hinc paecedentia longi
agminis officia et niveos ad frena Quirites,
defossa in loculos quos sportula fecit amicos.
tum quoque materiam risus inuenit ad omnis
occursus hominum, cuius prudentia monstrat
summos posse uiros et magna exempla daturos
ueruecum in patria crassoque sub aere nasci.
ridebat curas nec non et gaudia uolgi,
11
40
45
50
Lawall 1958.
12
It is perhaps the internalization by critics of this monolithic view that has led to a surprising paucity of
extended criticism of Satire 10, despite its “classic” status, confirmed by its reception, particularly in
English poetry (cf. Ben Jonson’s play Sejanus: His Fall [1603] and Samuel Johnson’s version of Satire 10
in English “The Vanity of Human Wishes” [1749]).
135
interdum et lacrimas, cum Fortunae ipse minaci
mandaret laqueum mediumque ostenderet unguem. (10. 36-53)
But if he had seen the praetor standing out from the high chariot covered in dust in the
middle of the circus in Jove’s tunic while carrying Tyrian hangings—more like
curtains—and the orb of a huge crown, which his neck can’t even hold up. For a sweating
slave holds it and, so the consul doesn’t flatter himself too much, is carried in the same
chariot. While you’re at it, add a bird, which rises from an ebony scepter, horners on that
side, and over here the studiousness of a long company walking in front, and snow-white
Romans (!) at the bit, the ones whom an offering—buried in their pocketbooks—turned
into friends. At that time too he found material for comedy at man’s every meeting, he
whose prudence shows that great men, men who provide great examples, can be born in
the land of mutton and in a, so to speak, “dense” atmosphere. He was laughing at the
crowd’s cares, and their joys too; and while he was at it, their tears, while he for his part,
would offer Fortune a noose when she loomed and showed her his middle finger.
Catherine Keane has analyzed this passage against a similar portrayal of
Democritus creating a spectacle for himself at Horace Epistles 2.1.194ff., where
Democritus gazes out at a slack-jawed crowd enraptured by an exhibition of exotic
animals and subsequently turns the audience itself into an object of spectacle.13 Whereas
Horace’s Democritus “creates” the spectacle in Horace, Keane sees Democritus here as a
passive spectator in a prefabricated Roman entertainment.14 Yet this approach ignores a
central idea in the lines immediately following: tum quoque materiam risus invenit (“at
that time too he found material for mockery,” 10.47). Democritus doesn’t simply stumble
upon the object of his derision. On the contrary, Juvenal depicts his stand-in as an active
participant in the construction of satirical object. The following lines, then, are not a
“transcription” of spectacular Roman folly, but a construction focalized through the
imaginary viewpoint of Democritus. What Juvenal depicts is not Democritus watching
13
Cf. Juv.14.256-264, where Juvenal himself performs a similar operation. Maier 1983: 49, in her
argument that the major figures in Sat. 10 are not only emblems but actors, states the similarity between the
pompa circensis and a procession from a tragedy. Schmitz 2000: 27-28 also recognizes a theatrical context
where Democritus is spectacularized himself, as we look upon Democritus looking at the procession.
14
She adds that this “lack of autonomy underscores the programmatic theme of degradation associated with
theatre and shows” (Keane 2003: 73); cf. Keane 2006: 37, where she describes Democritus’
“disempowered, scripted, theatrical role.”
136
the Roman world and acting as a mere mocking observer of quotidian affairs; instead,
Democritus creates his own interpretation of that world, based on a pre-existing
perspective of cynicism and contempt (revealed by the universality of his mockery at
lines 51-52). In this light, we must reread the many humorous, exaggerated, or cynical
details in this now self-aware depiction—the praetor covered in dust (medii sublimem
pulvere circi, 37), wearing a toga long enough to be a theater curtain and a crown which
his head could not support (ferentem/ ex umeris aulaea togae mangaeque coronae/
tantum orbem, quanto cervix non sufficit ulla, 38-40),15 while the servant carrying it
sweats (sudans, 41); the bird on the scepter prioritized syntactically over the scepter itself
(da nunc et volucrem, sceptro quae surgit eburno, 43); the clients walking in front
equated syntactically with cornicines (all the objects of da, 43) and ironically referred to
as “snow-white” Quirites (niveos ad frena Quirites, 45)16 whose venal friendships were
purchased by the dole ([Quirites] quos sportula fecit amicos, 46)—these details are to be
read as Democritus’ own personal reading of the spectacle unfolding before him.17
Indeed he finds all business laughable (tum quoque materiam risus invenit ad
omnis occursus hominum, 47), just as Juvenal in the opening satire had found the
overwhelming tide of vice surrounding him unbearable. The two words are central in the
picture of Democritus which Juvenal adopts as his stand-in: omnis signals Democritus’
15
Schmitz 2000: 27-28 notes how the term aulaea is both appropriate (considering the spectacular context)
and exaggerating: “the outward heightening proves to be empty appearance” (Der aüßerliche
Erhöhung…erweist sich als nichtiger Schein, 28). This notion of appearance (Schein) has perhaps an
additional connotation, namely that the term underscores the “depictedness,” if you will, of the entire
passage.
16
Courtney ad loc argues that the use of the technical term for citizen “ironically hint[s] that they abase
their station by servility.” There is a discrepancy, then, between what the word implies and the social role
they actually take.
17
D.E. Eichholz had already argued this (“Everything hencreforth is to be viewed through the pitiless eye
of a Democritus” with the magistrate’s procession as a “foretaste” of the whole satire”, 65) but did not
reflect on the poetological impact of dramatizing the adoption of a jaded worldview.
137
universal cynicism and mockery, and occursus recalls the earlier image of Juvenal in
Satire 1, an embedded “reporter” in the hostile territory of Rome (cf. occurrit matrona
potens, 1.69). Maria Plaza has made the connection between the “easy” laughter of
Democritus (sed facilis cuivis rigidi censura cachinni, 10.31) and the “ease” of writing
indignant satire for Juvenal (difficile est saturam non scribere, 1.30).18 Further, it was
argued convincingly long ago that the sweeping objects of Democritus’ mockery cover
the same ground as the topics Juvenal claims to address in the opening satire.19 Compare
then the lines on Democritus’s satirical objects to Juvenal’s in his original programmatic
satire: ridebat curas nec non et gaudia vulgi,/ interdum et lacrimas, (51-52) pair neatly
with “whatever men do, their wishes, fears, anger, pleasures, joys, their bustling—these
will be the fodder for our meager volume” (quidquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira,
voluptas,/ gaudia, discursus, nostri farrago libelli est, 1.85-86). 20
By combining these observations, we can see an added significance of Juvenal
eliding himself into Democritus. Despite Democritus’s detachment in tone—cynical
laughter rather bitter anger—he is depicted here as an engaged viewer, who actively
interprets the world according to his own cynical rubric. Democritus gives Fortune the
finger (mediumque ostenderet unguem, 10. 53), dismissing the goddess who most
18
Plaza 2006: 35. She also astutely notes that sed facilis in 10 and difficile est in 1 occupy the same
metrical position. The litotes of difficile…non, not technically identical to facilis, fits into the mock-modest
program of Juvenal 1, fulfilled later in the connection of his satire to neither to ars nor ingenium, but
indignatio and his facetious comparison of his own work to some contemporary poetaster (si natura negat,
facit indignation versum/ qualemcumque potest, quales ego vel Cluvenius, 1.79-80).
19
Hendrickson 1927: 55.
20
There is certainly a parallel between farrago (“fodder”) at 1.86 and materiam at 10.47, though the former
is a considerably more rich term. For more on the exact significance of the term farrago, see the contrasting
views of Powell 1987 and Braund 1996a ad 1.85-6.
138
represents a destabilizing element that changes the value and meaning of things.21
Despite this rejection of Fortune, his use of Democritus shows that Juvenal himself will
depict a world that, although with pretense of being the correct interpretation of social
and historical realities, is necessarily limited.
It may seem platitudinous to claim that Juvenal is innovating by giving his own
selective interpretation of the world, a practice which would certainly apply to the other
satirists and likewise to any historiographer. Two points make Juvenal exceptional. One,
he actually stages himself in these lines, through his proxy Democritus,22 selectively
depicting the world, focusing on its tendency towards the laughable. Second, he slyly
portrays this operation in the very satire in which he questions other men’s ability to
correctly evaluate and interpret their own intentions. Mechanically, Juvenal offers us this
newly realized, “correct” worldview by employing external depictions to create this
world matter-of-factly, 23 even as it was the outer appearance of the world that led us
astray. In short, Juvenal claims men cannot read the world, but offers little justification
for the reliability of his own reading beyond the plausibility of his externalized
representations. The rest of this chapter will closely examine the main body of Satire 10
to demonstrate how Juvenal’s discourse reveals a displacement between the world and
Juvenal’s representation of it, focusing particularly, but not exclusively, on those places
where the mechanics attempt the generate the matter-of-fact interpretation which Juvenal
had initially denied to others.
21
See the discussion below, in section D.
22
For convenience’s sake, I will use “Juvenal” throughout the rest of this chapter to indicate the
focalization of this Democritean view of the world.
23
Cf. Jenkyns 1982: 209, on how Juvenal uses the technique of “literalism” in Satire 10 to “see through the
fog of convention to see what is truly there.”
139
Indeed, internal and external correspondence is already challenged in this very
section. For, a fixed characteristic of Democritus, namely his birth in Abdera, conflicts
with his demonstrable prudentia: cuius prudentia monstrat/ summos posse viros et magna
exempla daturos/ vervecum in patria crassoque sub aere nasci (10. 48-50). Democritus
should be as “dense” (crassus) as the environment he was born into, yet his intelligence
manages to betray the inaccuracy of this supposedly straightforward association. The
lines are also a demonstration of Juvenal’s “Democritean” mockery directed at his very
inspiration; though he explicitly praises Democritus’ wisdom, Juvenal can’t resist
associating him with the lands of lunkheads. The lines are thus an appropriate cap to the
ironization of straightforward meaning and satiric mockery introduced in this opening
section.
The Satire that follows is one of Juvenal’s neatest. After his brief statement of
purpose, Juvenal gives a cleanly structured catalog (though internally the episodes can
messily spill into one another, especially in the opening section on Sejanus) of misguided
wishes: power (56-113), eloquence (114-132), military success (133-187), long life (188288), and beauty (289-345). He closes with a problematic solution to the problem of the
right orientation of prayers (346-366).
Though he frames his project with the image of pious supplication and requests
from the gods (propter quae fas est genua incerare deorum? 10.55), similar to Persius
2,24 he makes it clear here that his goal is to show men the true value of the goods they
desire by identifying those which are “empty” or “destructive” (ergo supervacua aut
24
For the parallels, see e.g. Highet 1954: 276 n.1; the key point that distinguishes the two satires, as
Fishelov 1990: 372-75 has shown, is that the falseness of the petitioners in Persius 2, who cover up their
real desires with socially acceptable ones (cf. Pers.2.39-40: negato,/ Iuppiter, haec illi, quamvis te albata
rogarit), is shifted onto the objects of the desires themselves.
140
quae perniciosa petuntur? 10.54). David Fishelov has plotted the dynamic of Sat. 10 as
one that reenacts for readers the notion of wish-fulfillment on the part of the actors.25
That is, just as the players in Juvenal’s human drama mistakenly understand the
consequences of their prayers and are eternally frustrated in their pursuits, so too are the
reader’s hopes for a positive outcome continuously thwarted. Fishelov describes Satire 10
as a “zigzag curve, where the apexes of the curve stand for the content of human wishes
while the sharply falling curve—on which Juvenal likes so much to linger—represents
the pernicious outcomes.”26 He then forms an analogy between these prayers and the
wishes of the reader hoping finally for a good outcome, only to be continually frustrated.
Before Juvenal embarks, he frames the discussion that follows as orientated
around a central discrepancy between the value that men wrongly attach to certain goods
and their actual fates when acquiring them. This discrepancy will, in turn, point to a
subtle but fundamental assumption that Juvenal’s methods will undercut, namely that
Juvenal can deliver a final version of reality.27 With this mind, we move into the first, and
most energetic, section of the satire, on political ambition.
25
Fishelov 1990.
26
Fishelov 1990: 376. Others have noted Juvenal’s exclusive focus on the disastrous and inevitable
consequences of wishes. Cf. Courtney 1980, commenting on Juvenal’s statement of theme (ergo
supervacua aut quae perniciosa petuntur?, 10.54), suggests that Juvenal focuses on the destructive because
“supervacua are not so well suited to satire” (446).
27
John Henderson has seen a somewhat similar dynamic operating in the totalizing preface of Tacitus’
Annales, which move from foundation to empire in only 68 words: the neat teleological drive towards
empire “fragments and dissipates its own authority as narration, not least by directing its readers
unmistakably to notice its narratology, the fix of it all” (Henderson 1989: 172). See too his reflection on
how Tacitus’ depiction of the manipulation of maiestas in the Tiberian books could apply to Tacitus
himself: maiestas in Tacitus is about “power as power over meaning. Wor(l)d Power. The misnomer
maiestas de-stabilizes Roman discourse. Systematically. Into Pieces.” (177).
141
B. Have You Heard the News about Sejanus?
The first subject that Juvenal addresses is the desire for power (potentia, 10.56),28
beginning with a staging of the fall of Sejanus that has become one of the most famous
scenes of the poem (10. 58-89). The incident dramatically re-enacts the drastic
reinterpretation by contemporary Romans of the value of one supremely powerful
individual (though Juvenal, with characteristic slyness, delays an explicit mention of
Sejanus’ name until line 63).29 The section is ostensibly about Sejanus’ own
misinterpretation of “what ought to be wished for” (ergo, quid optandum foret, ignorasse
fateris/ Seianum, 10.103-4),30 but it also records a radical shift in attitude by the people of
Rome towards authority. Juvenal’s historical quasi-drama (especially the depiction of
lively dialogue amongst those celebrating Sejanus’ death)31 represents a paradox:
Juvenal’s externalizing mechanic sets up a clear interpretation of a scene, the purpose of
which is to demonstrate the fickleness of the crowd and the inability to trust in
categorical or permanent judgments. That valued objects (here, external honors and
authority) are sometimes subject to destructive re-evaluation conflicts with Juvenal’s
project (a categorical correction of our valuations) and means (transparent depiction,
made both vivid and convincing through its abundance of visual detail). Juvenal therefore
cannot guarantee the definitiveness of his vision.
28
The entire phrasing of the line is significant: subiecta potentia magnae/ invidiae, 10.56-57. Juvenal
immediately reveals his focalization, then, of the depiction of power; as I will show, not every section will
begin as overtly negatively.
29
Keane 2012: 420-24 has given a rich reading in how the delayed employment of Sejanus’ name shows
the permeability between human and material, where it is unclear when Juvenal is talking about the man
and when about the statue.
30
Note how the lines feature the same enjambment used at the introduction of Sejanus at line 63.
31
See Maier 1983: 50; cf. Mason 1963: 111, who states that Juvenal’s effects for Sejanus are “mainly for
the outer eye.” Schmitz 2000: 29 further comments that “the reader becomes a spectator not only of the
downfall of power but also the reaction of his one-time adherents.” (29)
142
At the outset of the scene, Juvenal metaphorically dramatizes the very action
which he is engaging in and shows how objects, in this case statues of Sejanus, can be
changed from one form into another:
Descendunt statuae restemque secuntur,
ipsas deinde rotas bigarum inpacta securis
caedit et inmeritis franguntur crura caballis.
Iam strident ignes, iam follibus atque caminis
ardet adoratum populo caput et crepat ingens
Seianus, deinde ex facie toto orbe secunda
fiunt urceoli, pelves, sartago, metallae.
60
(10.58-64)
The statues come down and chase the rope, the axe dashed upon them then cuts the very
wheels of the carts and the legs of horsies undeserving are broken. Now the fires are
roaring, and in the furnaces and bellows that once beloved head is burning and great
Sejanus crackles, then out of that face which was, in the whole world, second only to the
emperor—you get little jars, basins, frying pans, and pisspots!
The viewer is plunged in medias res into a scene of destruction without being told who is
being condemned.32 We only see at first the destruction of someone’s status, a re-reading
of someone’s worth, physicalized in the treatment of the statues.33 Sejanus, when finally
introduced, has been objectified into his own statue (crepat ingens/Sejanus, 62-63),
crackling as it is shoved into the furnace.34 Juvenal means to show us what these statues
really represented all along: “jars, basins, saucepans, and pisspots” (64). The last item in
particular, through its coarseness, represents a verbal humiliation to match the physical
one the statue suffers. Yet even Juvenal must admit that this was not Rome’s original
32
Courtney ad 58 suggests that an audience alive at the death of Domitian may have been familiar with
such a scenes of the desecration of public statues.
33
Schmitz 2000: 29 notes how the transformation of the statue into objects shows the fall of Sejanus “in
visual ways” (in anschaulicher Wiese). See Stewart 2003: 265-79 for a discussion of the significance of
statue destruction in cases of damnatio memoriae. Note especially his point (276-78) that the ill treatment
of statues, meant to efface them from the material record (ironic, of course, as these condemnations are
preserved in the historical record: cf. the sarcasm of Tacitus when the Senate “reminds” doddering
Claudius of Messalina’s death by issuing a damnatio, 11.38.3), is a reversal of the honor once bestowed on
them.
34
Cf. the degrading materialization of the degenerate nobles into Sat. 8 to broken herms (see Ch. 2. C)
143
conception of Sejanus, for the statue represents a man once “adored by the people”
(adoratum populo caput, 62). Juvenal’s text simultaneously shows two separate
“readings” of Sejanus, temporally distanced through the use of a past participle
(adoratum) and the present active main verb (ardet). In one, Sejanus is a beloved figure;
in the other, a man beyond contempt.
In the next lines, Juvenal shows the joyous populace sacrificing (65-66) and
reemphasizes the spectacular aspect of Sejanus’ downfall (Seianus ducitur unco/
spectandus, “Sejanus—you have to see him—is being dragged by the hook,” 10.66-67).
He then draws us into a short dialogue between two onlookers which dramatically
emphasizes the shift in status that has taken place: “What lips he had! And that face!
Never, if you trust me at all, did I love this man” (‘quae labra quis illi/ vultus erat!
Numquam, si quid mihi credis, amavi/ hunc hominem,’ 10.67-69). Sejanus’ visage is
scornfully taken as manifest evidence of his true character, even after Juvenal has shown
that his face was not originally “read” this way. Further, Juvenal subtly indicts the
anonymous man for his very fickleness, having him introduce a disclaimer (si quid mihi
credis, 68) before unequivocally stating his hatred for Sejanus. The aside implies that we
should not trust the sincerity of the man’s condemnation, or, rather, that we should
believe that he loved Sejanus just as sincerely before as he hates Sejanus now.
A little later in this same playlet, Juvenal offers a metapoetic nod to the power of
words to reconfigure the “true” nature of a man’s position. For, in discussing the source
of Sejanus’ ruin, one speaker notes that he was executed not after a trial but after the
dispatch of a mere letter from Tiberius on Capri (verbosa et grandis epistula venit/ a
Capreis, 10.72-73). Catherine Keane has read this as a cue of the association between
144
violence, law, and language and the “potential of language to function as a weapon.”35
Beyond this there is, I believe, another layer of nuance, namely the hint of the satirist’s
own ability to reconfigure the world through verbal discourse.36 In his ability to not just
show the re-evaluation of Sejanus that Tiberius’ letter sparks, but to perform that same
act through satire, Juvenal occupies a position parallel to Tiberius’s.
Juvenal similarly turns on the capriciousness of the crowd, whom he attacks
directly:
Sed quid
turba Remi? Sequitur fortunam ut semper et odit
damnatos. idem populus, si Nortia Tusco
fauisset, si oppressa foret secura senectus
75
principis, hac ipsa Seianum diceret hora
Augustum.
(10.73-77)
And what about the crowd of Remus? It follows fortune as always and hates men
once they have been condemned. The selfsame populace, if Nortia had favored the
Etruscan, if the guarded old age of the emperor had been snuffed out, that very hour
would declare Sejanus Augustus.
Besides the scorn of the loaded word Remi (73),37 Juvenal expressly states the
principle of instability of meaning that he had shown in the previous lines of animated
dialogue. The people follow whomever Fortune favors and, as soon as a man’s status
changes, so too does their reckoning of him. In the condition in the following lines (7477), where Juvenal states that, were circumstances different, Sejanus would be emperor,
the stress should be laid on idem populus (74). Whereas before Heraclitus’ and
35
Keane 2006: 99.
36
Juvenal perhaps even makes a joke at his own expense since verbosa and grandis could surely apply to
his own discourse.
37
Courtney points out that Remi is frequently used for Romuli in the poets for metrical reasons (as the
cretic of Romuli is incommensurable with dactylic hexameter). Yet considering the contemptuous context,
it is hard to ignore a fuller, negative reading of the word. For more on Remus’ place in the foundational
imagination of Rome, see Wiseman 1995, esp. 1-17 and 103-50.
145
Democritus’ notional perspectives were diametrically opposed, thus precipitating their
varying reactions to the world around them, here we have the same “reader” (namely, the
people) radically changing its viewpoint based on shifting circumstances. Their own
viewpoint is completely contingent on external factors. Nor is it difficult to extend that
contingency to Juvenal’s own viewpoint, which begins from a Democritean premise of
universal folly.
Juvenal then memorably digresses, describing how the people have surrendered
their agency and interest in politics and now care about only two things: the dole and the
races (nunc se/ continent atque duas tantum res anxius optat,/ panem et circenses, 10.7981). Though Catherine Keane is concerned with the social aspects of Juvenal’s shifting
blame onto the people for its lust for games,38 what is equally pertinent here is the basic
shift in the attitude and interest of the people away from political concerns (effudit curas,
10.78.) to what Juvenal chides as frivolous spectacle. Another notable feature is that this
shift, rather than being tied to the machinations of Fortune, is chosen willingly by the
people. Juvenal’s claim that this began “ever since we sold our right to vote for nothing”
(ex quo suffragia nulli/ vendimus, 10.77-78) suggests a doubling of perspectives between
Juvenal and the rest of Rome. The active verb implies a conscious and willing adoption
of a new set of values (“we did it”), yet Juvenal’s sneer that we did it “for nothing” (nulli)
casts this turn to spectacle in a negative light. The consequences of the shift in concern
are more dangerous than frivolous (for Rome and for Juvenal), for they represent the
larger implication that any system of values is necessarily impermanent. This, then, is the
38
Indeed, Keane 2006: 36-37 challenges Juvenal’s assessment, arguing that “Juvenal’s transformation of
that populi is highly over-determined, airing several conflicting justifications for the political
rearrangement.” Edwards 1993: 24, discussing the notional exemplarity of the social elite in Roman
society, states, “Juvenal implies that social betters were to blame.”
146
relevance, for the dramatic change in circumstances in Sejanus’ disgrace piece shows not
just the folly of ambition but the tangible power of perspective, how Rome can cast her
eyes twice upon the same thing and see two different images, with vicious consequences.
The dialogue which Juvenal interrupted at line 72 continues, exposing the fear of
the noblemen in not appearing hostile enough towards Sejanus’ corpse and memory.
They then launch into a remarkable exclamation, which caps the concern with
interpretation throughout this section:
Curramus praecipites et,
dum iacet in ripa, calcemus Caesaris hostem.
sed servi videant, ne quis neget et pavidum in ius
cervice obstricta dominum trahat.
85
(10.85-88)
Let’s run right away and, while he’s lying on the river bank exposed, tread the enemy of
Caesar underfoot. But make sure the servants see it, so no one could deny it and drag a
trembling master into court with his neck restrained.
Whether or not the noble’s recommendation belies a sincere hatred of Sejanus or not, it
reveals a powerful concern with how his actions will be seen by others, especially his
slaves. Besides being another indictment of the widespread atmosphere of play-acting
which Juvenal attacks,39 it shows again the power of interpretation and the impossibility
of a unitary reading. The very concern that he will be dragged into court and betrayed by
his slaves (ne quis neget et pavidum in ius/cervice obstricta dominum trahat, 87-88)
demonstrates the fragility of meaning, where the same action (desecrating the corpse)
might be read in two different ways. Indeed, Juvenal even inserts a sly bit of his own
perspective into the speech of the noble. For the noble describes himself, in another
example of Schmitz’s “uncharacteristic speech,” as pavidum dominum, a word which
39
See Keane 2006: 29-32.
147
truly applies to the master but which he would hardly use of himself.40 Yet the word can
be pushed harder; Juvenal, in this brief moment of anti-focalization, if you will, nods to
his own construction of a scene, even he depicts the noble intending to construct their
own theatrical scene.
Moving away from the vividness of Sejanus’ ruin, Juvenal stages a new dialogue,
this time with his satiric audience (10.90-113). There is a high concentration of second
person verbs (e.g. visne, 90; vis, 94; cupias, 96, etc.) and the style immediately becomes
less visually intense. He starts by asking his interlocutor if he would like to be “greeted
like Sejanus” (visne salutari sicut Seianus, 10.90). At the outset of Juvenal’s exchange
with his audience, salutari has a double valence frequent in Satire 10: looking backward
it recalls the disgusted reaction of the nobleman to Sejanus’ mangled face; looking
forward, it will (in the text) also symbolize Sejanus’ real temporal authority. He then
proceeds to summarize the extent of Sejanus’ power with a series of increasingly vivid
descriptions, from wealth (habere/ tantundem, 10.90-91) to assigning military commands
(illum exercitibus praeponere, 10.92), and ends with a sardonic description of Tiberius’
later years: “to be considered the protector of an emperor sitting on the narrow crag of
Capri with his Chaldean flock” (tutor haberi/ principis angusta Caprearum in rupe
sedentis/ cum grege Chaldaeo, 10.92-94). In this last phrase, we see again the
perspectivizing of Juvenal through a Democritean lens. From a neutral description of
Sejanus’ extent of influence, Juvenal shades into the cynical with several humorous
40
Schmitz 2000: 32 specifically notes this occurrence. In addition, the shift from 1st person plural
(curramus… calcemus, ll. 85, 86) to speaking about himself in the 3 rd person singular sounds odd. Perhaps
Juvenal has him refer to himself in the third person in order to imply that this fear was rampant among the
entire populace. Freudenburg 2001: 12 further suggests a metapoetic charge to the grim horror of kicking
the prone body of Sejanus; it insinuates Juvenal into this picture because of the way it makes us reconsider
Juvenal’s program of attacking the dead as introduced at the end of the first Satire (1.170-1).
148
verbal details: Tiberius needs a tutor as if he were a minor, he sits idly (sedentis, 93),
pasturing a flock of astrologers (in particular Thrasyllus).41 Juvenal, as he will do
throughout the satire, uses humor or sarcasm to stack the deck, aiming to “reveal” the
ridiculous even as he constructs it.
A little later, there is again an example of ambiguity through the use of positive
terms in a negative context. Juvenal asks, “But what outstanding and prosperous things
are worth so much that the measure of evils [associated with them] is equal to pleasant
occurrences?” (sed quae praeclara et prospera tanti,/ ut rebus laetis par sit mensura
malorum, 10.97-98). The perspective becomes confusing, for praeclara et prospera do
not appear to be the appropriate words to describe the excesses of power that leads to
utter ruin and disgrace. Juvenal, following a Roman topos,42 sees Sejanus building a
veritable tower, the height of which corresponds to the intensity of its precipitous
collapse: “he was preparing a multi-storied turret on high, from where his fall could be
higher and the collapse of tower, once pushed, precipitous” (numerosa parabat/ excelsae
turris tabulata, unde altior esset/ casus et inpulsae praeceps inmane ruinae (10.105-7).43
In any other place, praeclara and prospera would be unambiguously positive, so it is
interesting that they do not neatly correspond to the context here. Again, Juvenal gives a
slight glimpse of the limits of his worldview, where his words do not necessarily
correspond with their expected meanings, and demonstrating the possibility of alternate
perspectives.
41
I am indebted to Courtney’s commentary for noticing these details, though he does not draw any larger
conclusions from them.
42
E.g. [Seneca] Octavia 379.
43
Juvenal cannot help but to literalize the metaphor by using tabulata, as if Sejanus were continually
adding stories to his ill-fated “tower.”
149
This becomes more obvious when Juvenal gives the reader an absurd set of
alternatives:
Huius qui trahitur praetextam sumere mavis
an Fidenarum Gabiorumque esse potestas
et de mensura ius dicere, vasa minora
frangere pannosus vacuis aedilis Ulubris?
100
(10.99-102)
Do you prefer to take the toga praetexta of the one who was dragged or to be the
figurehead of Fidenae and Gabii and to proclaim justice about weights and measures, and
clad in rags at Ulubri (ugh!) to break smaller vases.
We are given a choice between two equally unappealing alternatives: a predetermined
ignominious death or a minor post determining weights and measures in deserted
backwaters (vacuis Ulubris, 102).44 The description of the rural post again builds to a
sarcastic anticlimax in the duties at Ulubrae, smashing petty vessels (minora vasa, 101)
while clothed in rags even during official duties (pannosus…aedilis, 102). The
exaggeration of pannosus is is not just humorous but meaningful, for it emphasizes
Juvenal’s creation of a paradox. The choice is not between power and no power, but selfdestructive power and meaningless power. Here, even the structurally positive option is a
parody of a desirable post. When Juvenal asks immediately afterward if the reader will
confess that Sejanus had mistaken desires and had miscalculated value (ergo quid
optandum foret ignorasse fateris/ Seianum, 10.103-4), one is tempted perhaps to say
44
Nor do we have to take Juvenal at face value. Gabii, Fidenae, and Ulubri are described by Augustan and
Neronian writers as remote and deserted: Livy calls the Gabii of his day a mere statio on the via
Praenestina (Liv. 1.53.4); Horace describes uses Gabii and Fidenae as exempla of ghost towns (Gabiis
desertior atque/ Fidenis vicus, Hor. Ep.1.11.7-8) and Pliny calls Ulubri abandoned (HN 3.64). Yet, in the
case of Gabii, there is evidence of a revival in the Hadrianic era, including the construction of an aqueduct
(cf. CIL 14.2797). If Juvenal was aware of this development, perhaps we also have here an ironic warning
not to take literature at face value.
150
“No!” when the only safe alternative is a gloomy minor administrative assignment in
some godforsaken burg.45
Several other details which cast power in an inevitably poor light litter the end of
the section. When describing the first triumvirate, Crassus and Pompey are left without
modifiers, while Caesar is described as one “who lead conquered Romans down towards
the lash” (ad sua qui domitos deduxit flagra Quirites, 10.109). Juvenal locates their
downfall in “great prayers which were attended by the gods—malicious gods, that is”
(magnaque numinibus vota exaudita malignis, 10.111), where the delay of malignis until
the end of the line makes us reconsider the gods’ benevolence in fulfilling prayers. Men’s
destruction is assured by granting their desires, indicating their inability to understand the
mechanisms of the world, or at least Juvenal’s world.46
C. All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Speeches…
After concluding with a sententia about the unlikelihood of a peaceful death for
kings (ad generum Cereris sine caede ac vulnere pauci/ descendunt reges et sicca morte
tyranni, 10.112-113), 47 Juvenal shifts gears to discuss a new topic: the eloquence and
fame of orators (eloquium ac famam Demosthenis aut Ciceronis, 10.114). Unlike the
introduction of potentia, which is already painted as destructive from the outset (cf.
10.55-56), the aim of eloquentia is not immediately dismissed as valueless. Juvenal will
45
That temptation would again demonstrate that Juvenal’s apparently unitary perspective an be challenged
by alternate viewpoints.
46
Cf. Lawall 1958, which sees the underlying theme of the satire as “a basic and universal frustration of
man’s attempt to exploit or control the world in which he lives” (30); Fredericks 1979: 189, argues that Bk.
4 in general shows the “total perversion of the human capacity to evaluate what is worth doing.”
47
Again, seemingly trivial details such as the roundabout identification of Pluto as the “son-in-law of
Ceres” help to emphasize the presence of Democritus’ sardonic filter.
151
establish, however, his mocking interpretation of the worth of eloquence through his
portrait of the people who value it. We will see the two contrasting perspectives of value
of eloquence, one refracted through the other; namely, Juvenal shows the schoolboys who
hope for the gift of rhetorical success, but shows them in such a way as to make them
look silly and frivolous:
eloquium ac famam Demosthenis aut Ciceronis
incipit optare et totis quinquatribus optat
115
quisquis adhuc uno parcam colit asse Mineruam,
quem sequitur custos angustae uernula capsae.
(114-117)
He begins to desire the eloquence and the subsequent fame of Demosthenes and Cicero
and he keeps on desiring through every Quinquatratia, whoever still worships stingy
(parcam) Minerva with a single penny, whom the bonded guardian of a constricted purse
follows.
Juvenal gives three roundabout ways of imagining the schoolboy, none of which
involves him actually being in school: on holiday, celebrating the feast of Minerva (totis
quinquatribus, 114-15); paying a fee to his teacher to be deposited in Minerva’s treasury
(116) 48; and accompanied by a house-slave on his way to school (117). 49 One should
note the somewhat desperate resonance of incipit optare…optat (“he starts to desire and
keeps on desiring,” 115), depicting the boy with a constant desire to wring out his hopedfor rhetorical prowess. Through this accumulation of scenarios for the schoolboy away
from his lessons proper, Juvenal’s omission demonstrates the empty results of that
schooling, which can, in reality, be broken down to holidays, fees, and guardianship.
48
The force of parcam is disputable, for it can be to read as “stingy,” thus casting Minerva herself in a
negative light. Courtney ad loc sees parcam as either transferred from asse, or perhaps as “’thrifty,’
building up her treasure from tiny contributions” (this positive application is followed at TLL s.v. col.
342.46, which refers to Courtney’s commentary). The word is illustrative for our dilemma as critics and
readers, for it is impossible to use “context” to determine a definitive denotation, since Juvenal has no
qualms mocking the august (cf. 13.83 on divine “weapon-cubbies” armamentaria caeli) or the tragic (cf.
10.252 on the “burning beard” as a synecdoche for the corpse of Nestor’s son on the pyre).
49
Cf. Courtney on vernula ad loc: “Even he only rates a modest dimunitive.”
152
Of course, this is not the first time that Juvenal has portrayed the emptiness of
school lessons. In Satire 7.217-244, Juvenal depicted the petty frustrations of the
grammaticus, the lowest tier of introductory rhetorical teacher in Rome. To use only one
example of Juvenal’s perspectivizing there, Juvenal depicts the very air of the
schoolrooms as oppressive and smoky, staining the very busts (or texts)50 of the
introductory authors: “…as long as it doesn’t go to waste that you had to breathe as many
lamps as there were boys on their feet, while the entire Flaccus gets stained and soot
accumulates on Vergil and makes him black” (…dummodo non pereat totidem olfecisse
lucernas/ quot stabant pueri, cum totus decolor esset/ Flaccus et haereret nigro fuligo
Maroni, 7.225-27). There, Juvenal is depicting the irritations of school from the
perspective of the teacher, rather than the pupil, and focuses on the poor returns of
intellectual work, but the same feeling of emptiness pervades the description.51
Yet what distinguishes the depiction of school in Satire 7 from Satire 10 are the
lines which immediately follow: “But both orators [i.e. Demosthenes and Cicero]
perished because of their eloquence, and the generous and overflowing fountain of talent
gave each to death” (eloquio sed uterque perit orator, utrumque/ largus et exundans leto
dedit ingenii fons, 10.118-19). Again, with the partial perspective Juvenal has adopted,
eloquence leads not merely to frustration and failure, but inevitably to death! The very
hyperbole of the interdiction of Satire 10 when compared with the depiction of
50
See Courtney ad 7.226 for the difficulty of establishing whether the metonymies Flaccus and Maroni
there represent busts or texts of the poets.
51
Cf. the final lines of Satire 7, where Juvenal quotes the stingy parent (with another example of
uncharacteristic speech, namely the interjection victori populus quod postulat): ‘haec’ inquit, ‘cura; sed
cum se verterit annus,/ accipe, victori populus quod postulat, aurum’ (7.242-43). Of course, throughout
that satire, Juvenal is simultaneously satirizing the intellectuals for embarking on this unfulfilling work. For
more on this aspect of Sat. 7, see Weisen 1973 and Braund 1988: 24-68, who considers the double-pronged
attack of Juvenal in Sat. 7 to be representative of a new “ironic” persona.
153
intellectuals and declaimers in Satire 7 indicates how the Democritean worldview that
Juvenal has adopted is inevitably compromised in its objectivity. Failure is one thing, but
eloquence as a guarantee of destruction simply goes too far.52
Nor does Juvenal depict Cicero in the most charitable light. Even when depicting
Cicero’s bloody epilogue, his body dismembered and displayed on the rostra, Juvenal
implicitly describes him as a mere petty lawyer (nec umquam/ sanguine causidici
maduerunt rostra pusilli, 10.120-21) rather than a noble orator.53 But to Juvenal Cicero is
equal parts tragic and ridiculous; his gift of words guaranteed his death, yet one form of
speech he practiced—his poetry—was hilariously amateurish, and harmless to boot:
'o fortunatam natam me consule Romam:'
Antoni gladios potuit contemnere si sic
omnia dixisset. ridenda poemata malo
quam te, conspicuae diuina Philippica famae,
uolueris a prima quae proxima.
125
(10.122-126)
“Since I was consul, O happy the fate of the Roman state because of my birth date!” He
could have brushed off the swords of Antony if he had said everything this way. I prefer
those laughable poems, though, to you, blessed Philippics of remarkable repute, which
you have to unroll next to the first one.
Quoting from Cicero’s Suus Consulatus, Juvenal brings Cicero’s notorious line of poetry
to the forefront, boiling down Cicero’s rhetorical virtuosity to a piece of doggerel. 54 By
ignoring Cicero’s real achievements, Juvenal creates both an inevitably partial picture of
Cicero and a limited and partial view of the world.55 Indeed, Juvenal continues by
52
Cf. Fishelov 1990: 376, reviewing ll. 67-72, the display of the body of Sejanus: “This self-propelling
dynamics [sic] is the hallmark of Juvenal’s poetics. The drive to explore more and more striking
illustrations for the ruinous outcomes of the fulfillment of prayers seems to overshadow everything else.”
53
Cf. 7.106-49 for the abject humility of the causadici, though they outrank the grammatici and rhetores.
54
Juvenal was not alone in his dismissal of Cicero’s poetry; cf. Quint. Inst.9.4.41, who derides the line for
the excessive play of sound.
55
Even more, Winkler 1988 argues, from an allusion he sees at 14.179-88 to Cicero’s memorable series of
prosopopoiiai from the Pro Caelio, that Juvenal actually acknowledges Cicero’s rhetorical gift even while
154
mocking Cicero’s line by making the same play on sound in his own voice, with the
assonance of si sic at line 123 (emphasized by the placement of the two monosyllables,
unusually, at the end of the line).56
These lines in their way even go so far as to acknowledge a prejudiced view of
Cicero by alluding to and then directly mentioning one of the highlights of his rhetorical
career (and the speech which most contributed to his proscription), his Second Philippic.
First, the lines allude to the fearless declaration Cicero cast at Antony, “I contemptuously
ignored the blades of Catiline; I do not shrink back from yours” (contempsi Catilinae
gladios, non pertimescam tuos, Cic. Phil 2.118 ~ Antoni gladios potuit contemnere,
10.123). Juvenal then goes on to say that he actually prefers Cicero’s “laughable poems”
(ridenda poemata malo, 10.124) to his Philippics, presumably because of the way that
they sealed his fate. Even his mention of the Second Philippic is not free from sardonic
wit: at first introduced with unambiguous praise (conspicuae divina Philippica famae,
10.125), our reception of the speech is then framed with a convoluted periphrasis for the
ordinal number “second” (volveris a prima quae proxima, 10.126).57 Whatever the value
of the speech itself, it’s clear that it can be discursively envisioned in two contradictory
ways. Indeed, Juvenal highlights the obvious eminence of the speech (note conspicuae
famae, 10.125),58 mirroring the Democritean program of the poem in recognizing the
folly of apparent goods which in fact contribute to human misery. Words do not have the
meaning they should have; in the logic of the satire, the meaning of praise and reputation
openly or subtly mocking his poetry or other shortcomings at various places throughout his oeuvre. Juvenal
does not deny Cicero’s rhetorical power but instead gives a new interpretation of its significance for Cicero.
56
Courtney ad 122; Winkler 1988: 86.
57
Winkler 1988 86; Courtney ad loc.
58
Here representing the sense of both subiectum oculis and insigne; cf. TLL s.v. col 498.56 – 499.52.
155
has become reversed. Juvenal, then, exercises his limited perspective in two ways: first,
he mentions only the speech that brought Cicero’s downfall, and second, he mostly
ignores that speech in favor of a mocking assessment of Cicero’s poetic shortcomings.
The success of Demosthenes is similarly undercut in the next lines (10.126-132).
After a description of the rapture in which he held the Athenian assembly (quem
mirabantur Athenae/ torrentem et pleni moderantem frena theatri, 10.127-28), Juvenal
gives a lavish and vivid description of Demosthenes’ humble origins, specifically the
distorted view of Demosthenes’ father as a sword-maker, “bleary-eyed from the soot of
the burning lumps” (ardentis massae fuligine lippus, 10.130). 59 The proliferations of
concrete objects (the burning mass, coal, tongs, swords, an anvil;
massae…carbone…forcipibus…gladiosque…incude, 10.130-32) in this scene not only
have the effect of increasing the vividness, but also of reducing Demosthenes’ origins to
a cache of blacksmith paraphernalia. Just as Juvenal re-read Cicero as a pathetic poet,
Juvenal re-reads Demosthenes as a soot-stained youth.60 Thus, as with the options given
to the ambitious (10.90-104), the alternatives to the apparent goods promised by
eloquence (ridenda poemata, the sword-factory) are portrayed in a similarly negative
light; in Juvenal’s satirical world, there are no positive alternatives to destructive
eloquence.
Juvenal returns to a strong emphasis on the physical and concrete construction of
satirical meaning in the following section, which discusses fame as earned through
59
I suggest that this physical limitation of sight is matched by a mental one, in the inability to see the true
value, results in his dispatching his son to the rhetorical school. Cf. the metaphor of “clouded” judgment in
the opening: erroris nebula, l. 4. There is probably an additional significance in the repeated sound between
Philippica and lippus, used only here in Juvenal. Courtney ad 130-2 discusses the contrast between
Demosthenes’ father’s actual occupation (the wealthy owner of a sword-factory) and the use to which that
occupation was put in the rhetorical schools.
60
Winkler 1988: 85.
156
military victory.61 At the start, military glory is heavily reified through the use of concrete
objects, but, what is more, many of those objects take on a particular moral interpretation:
bellorum exuuiae, truncis adfixa tropaeis
lorica et fracta de casside buccula pendens
et curtum temone iugum uictaeque triremis
aplustre et summo tristis captiuos in arcu
humanis maiora bonis creduntur.
135
(10.133-37)
The remnants of battles, armor nailed to a tree stripped bare, the broken cheekpieces hanging off of a broken helmet, and the yoke truncated of its pole and the
ornament of a conquered trireme and sad captives in the highest citadel—these are
believed to be greater than human goods.
The passage starts objectively (in two senses) enough, with the mention of trophies, but
then takes on a decided spin through the accumulation of meaningful moral detail: the
cheek-piece is broken (fracta…buccula, 134), the chariot is incomplete (curtum…iugum),
the trireme is represented by stern ornament alone (victaeque triremis/ aplustre, 135-36),
and the captives are—unsurprisingly—gloomy (tristis captivos, 136). Previous
commentators, including Edward Courtney and Richard Jenkyns, have certainly noticed
this, comparing the scene to the opening statues of Satire 8 (8.1-19).62 As in Satire 8,
where Juvenal used broken objects to represent the ills of the contemporary nobility but
subtly hinted at the self-aware construction of the symbolic language of condemnation,
here too trophies can also be seen as both marking the hollowness of military victory and
simultaneously drawing attention to the satirical lens through which Juvenal presents the
world (and through which we view it as we read Satire 10). He makes clear that the issue
at hand is military glory (as depicted in the wreckage of battle) misunderstood as “greater
61
It is significant that mentions of fama and gloria effectively act as bookends for the passage (ll. 140 and
187) yet the passage focuses exclusively on the inevitability of physical death (Hannibal and Alexander)
and failures of military success (Xerxes).
62
Jenkyns 1982: 209-212; Courtney ad loc.
157
than man’s goods” (humanis maiora bonis creduntur, 137). Especially in this passage,
the unconvincing and contradictory nature of the exempla further the possibility that
Juvenal’s revision of value is neither singular nor exclusive.
The mention of a “foreign commander” (barbarus induperator, 10.138) shows
again how words themselves change reference and resonance in Juvenal. It is originally
an august word, appearing first in Ennius in place of imperator, which is metrically
forbidden in dactylic hexameters (e.g. Enn. Ann.83). In fact, the change of resonance of
induperator takes place in two stages in Juvenal: it is a savagely sarcastic description of
Domitian in Satire 4, utterly undermined by juxtaposition with the coarsely physical
glutisse: “this was the sort of banquet we think the emperor glugged down…” (qualis
tunc epulas ipsum glutisse putamus/ induperatorem, 4.28-9).63 Here, Juvenal goes even
further in using it to exhibit the emptiness of title and prestige, as it is applied to a foreign
general. The manipulation of multiple connotations of a single word at once are typical of
Juvenal’s procedure in this satire.
Nor is “emptiness” even the sole way of reading military glory in Juvenal. Even
as Juvenal opines, in strongly physical language, that “so much more is the thirst for fame
than for that of virtue” (tanto maior famae sitis quam/ virtutis, 10.140), he ignores his
own previous depiction of virtue embodied in accomplishments, including military.
Indeed, as we saw, he had previously chided Postumus in Satire 8 that he has received all
of his prestige from his ancestors, rather than earned it: “so we can be amazed by you, not
your paraphernalia, give me something personal which I could carve as inscriptions on
your tomb beyond those honors which we gave and keep giving to those, to whom you
owe everything.” (privum aliquid da/ quod possim titulis incidere praeter honores/ quos
63
Anderson 1980: 236.
158
illis damus ac dedimus, quibus omnia debes, 8.68-70).64 Surely those honors can be
imagined to include military success as well as political office.
Indeed, here again achievement is markedly physicalized through inscriptions
(tituli), with the full implications of their “concrete” nature, including its vulnerability:
Quis enim virtutem amplectitur ipsam,
praemia si tollas? patriam tamen obruit olim
gloria paucorum et laudis titulique cupido
haesuri saxis cinerum custodibus, ad quae
discutienda ualent sterilis mala robora fici,
145
quandoquidem data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulcris. (10.142-146)
Who embraces virtue on its own, if you were to take away the rewards? This
destroyed the fatherland once, the glory of a few and desire for praise and
inscriptions stuck on rocks which guard but ashes, and which the evil branches of
the infertile65 fig tree is strong enough to crack, when the fates of the tombs
themselves are considered.
It is paradoxical that Juvenal counteracts mankind’s excessive concretization of virtues,
reducing them to words and physical monuments (laudis titulique, 143) by concretizing
their folly, showing the transience of the tombstones themselves and implying that
achievement is similarly short-lived (besides being destructive, patriam tamen obruit
olim, 142). Yet the satirical technique opens up the same interpretative possibilities
outlined already, namely, that by conveying a fixed view of the world which is markedly
different from the conventional one, the satire opens up the possibility of other new
worldviews. For example, the passage above seems to ignore that these tombs, though
transient, are mere physical symbols of an intangible repute which is permanent. Juvenal
64
See Ch. 2.C for more on the particular charge this exhortation to accomplishment has on the intersecting
discourses of nobility in Satire 8.
65
Courtney ad loc. relates the significance of this detail: “The wild fig cannot propagate itself; nor can their
hoped-for fame, which cannot resist it.” There is perhaps the possibility that we recall the theme of sterility
in Sat. 2 and how it underscored the problems of gender definition by showing one concrete way that
effeminate men cannot be women (cf. Miller 1998 on sterility in satire).
159
refuses to recognize that the ephemerality of the physical monument might actually
highlight, by contrast, the eternity of immaterial glory.
This inherent danger of a revisionist program should be in our minds as Juvenal
recounts what he sees as the three foremost examples of his idea that military glory
ignores the transience of life or leads to an ignominious death: Hannibal (147-167),
Alexander (168-173), and Xerxes (173-187). He begins by deflating Hannibal into a mere
body, measured out in ounces alone: “Weigh up Hannibal: how many pounds will you
find in the highest commander?” (expende Hannibalem: quot libras in duce summo/
invenies?, 10.147-48). Juvenal slyly transforms what we would expect to be the
metaphorical meaning of expendo into its core physical meaning halfway through the
line, precisely at the strong caesura (expende Hannibalem: || quot libras) 66. The satirical
conceit, created by this reduction of Hannibal to his material substance, certainly betrays
its own absurdity: why should we think of Hannibal in mere pounds alone?
Considering the imaginary exhortation of the imperative here, it is useful to a
moment to consider the use of the second person singular throughout the poem. Besides
the imperative and second singular verbs here (expende and invenies, 147, 148) Juvenal
uses a second person singular three times in his summary of the section on Sejanus
(visne, 90; vis, 94; mavis, 100). At the start of the section on old age, he projects a wish
directly into the audience’s mouth: ‘da spatium vitae, multos da, Jupiter, annos (10.188).
Though this could be counted as a symptom of Juvenal’s tendency to switch between
first, second, and third person to convey vividness, there is a further significance here.
Juvenal projects onto the reader the misguided view of the world that he attributes to
humankind in general and which he seeks to correct. Yet this insinuation also opens up
66
TLL s.v. col. 1639.44-45.
160
the possibility of our reading against his interpretations of value and meaning. We readers
of this satire are told that we misread the world, so perhaps we should turn the tables on
Juvenal himself.
The passage continues in a physical vein as it briskly moves through Hannibal’s
achievements—whether to downgrade their value or merely to enhance the rhetorical
presentation is not clear—by saying that Africa could not “contain” Hannibal (10.148-50;
capit, 148).67 Juvenal then, through a direct quote, stages Hannibal, fresh from his
struggles in the Alps and about to launch his assault on Rome: “‘Count nothing done,’”
he said, ‘unless with my Punic army we break the gates and I place my standard right in
the middle of…the Subura!’” (‘acti’ inquit, ‘nihil est, nisi Poene militae portas/
frangimus et media vexillum pono Subura,’ 10.155-56). Here, ironically through the
voice of Hannibal himself (more “character-inconsistent speech”), Juvenal gives his own
jaundiced vision of Rome, now “reduced to its least patrician district.”68 What Juvenal
has been doing to him, Hannibal does to Rome. Immediately afterward, Juvenal draws
our visual attention to Hannibal’s face: “And what a face he had—worthy of some kind
of account, that’s for sure—when the Gaetulian beast was carrying the gimp-eyed man!”
(o qualis facies et quali digna tabella,/ cum Gaetula ducem portaret belva luscum,
67
A somewhat bizarre sidenote to this passage is the obscurely allusive use of alios elephantos (...rursus ad
Aethiopum populos et alios elephantos, 10.150) to identify eastern Africa near Elephantine among the
peoples and places conquered. Pliny the Elder distinguishes between three kinds of elephants, specifically
dividing African and “Ethiopian” elephants (NH. 8.32). The periphrasis is, in fact, thematically relevant, as
with Juvenal’s strange denotation of the Second Phillipic (10.126): the force of the periphrasis is not just an
allusive play but a game of linguistic reference, showing how language can be used to obfuscate through
obscurity just as much as to enlighten through clarity.
68
Gold 1999: 61, after surveying various uses of the Subura in Juvenal. Is it coincidental that this is the
very district that Martial’s famous epigram on Juvenal (12.18) imagines him walking around in? (Dum tu
forsitan inquietus eras/ clamosa, Iuvenalis, in Subura, 12.18.1-2).
161
10.157-58). The spectacle climaxes with a sardonic reference to one particular physical
feature of Hannibal, his missing eye (luscum), and omits all others.
This satirical abjection appropriately glides into a historical one, Hannibal’s
disgrace after the battle of Zama in 202 B.C.E. Juvenal records that Hannibal eventually
became a “remarkable servant” (mirandusque cliens, 10.161)69 at the court of Bithynia,
ending with another ironic anticlimax with the object of his suicide, a ring, denoted with
a diminutive (anulus, 10.166) in which he carried poison, rather than swords or rocks or
weapons (gladii…saxa…tela, 10.164). Juvenal seems to forget his own point, quoted
above, that the powerful rarely avoid violent and sudden death (10.113-14). Yet the
ultimate spectacle of indignity for Juvenal is Hannibal’s afterlife as a subject of
rhetorical exercise, doomed to constantly reenacted by inept schoolboys (I, demens, et
saevas curre per Alpes,/ ut pueris placeas et declamation fias, 10.166-67). Of course,
Juvenal is using Hannibal in essentially the same way, turning Hannibal into a mere
exemplum in a catalogue of misguided human folly. His comments reflect back on the
rhetorical and satirical exercise of his own poetry, though his performance is self-aware
in a way that the pupils’ suasoriae are not.
Throughout this passage, the reification of Hannibal throughout, as body weight,
as one-eyed, as declamation, has two distinct significances, one poetic, one poetological.
On the one hand, it obviously serves the satiric purpose of the passage by reducing the
grandeur of Hannibal and, in turn, his achievements. Yet satirical perspectivizing has
again come into play as one of many ways of reading the world, flouting Juvenal’s
69
Courtney’s exclamation ad 161, is notable: “Roman customs are observed in Bithynia!...Hannibal has to
get up early [namely, for the salutatio] like a Roman client.” The suggestion that Hannibal “plays” a
Roman client is an interesting one, another instance of spectacle and play-acting. Note too another ironic
use of mirandus.
162
attempt to impose a singular view. We are by no means forced to accept Juvenal’s
reduction of Hannibal’s body to a single feature or his claim that the true extent of
Hannibal’s fame is his resurrection by schoolboys.
In the short passage on Alexander, Juvenal vacillates between Alexander’s point
of view and the satirical perspective he is preaching:
unus Pellaeo iuueni non sufficit orbis,
aestuat infelix angusto limite mundi
ut Gyarae clausus scopulis paruaque Seripho;
170
cum tamen a figulis munitam intrauerit urbem,
sarcophago contentus erit. mors sola fatetur
quantula sint hominum corpuscula.
(10.168-173)
One globe is not enough for Alexander, who burns unlucky at the narrow limits of the
world as if he penned in on the crags of Gyara or little Seriphus. Still, when he enters the
city fortified by potters, he will fit his coffin. Death alone can confess how little men’s
bodies are.
In the first part of the passage, Juvenal focalizes Alexander’s point of view, a kind of
megalomaniacal claustrophobia: the world’s boundaries are too “narrow” (angusto, 169),
and Alexander feels “as if he were cooped in” (ut clausus, 170) on Gyara or “small”
Seriphus (parva, 170), two desolate locales of exile. The irruption into the satiric
discourse of a viewpoint almost sympathetic to Alexander’s frustrations and anxieties
offers a brief, but meaningful, glimpse into another world, a world where Alexander’s
motivations make sense. This kind of lapse (which becomes increasingly prominent in
the second half of the poem) briefly jeopardizes the satire’s conceit, which relies on the
self-explanatory foolishness of human desires, when seen “correctly”, that is, as they
actually “are.”
But when he describes Alexander’s triumphant entrance into Babylon, Juvenal
reverts to deprecation through a colorful satirical description, referring to Babylon
allusively as a “city fortified by potters” (a figulis munitam…urbem, 171). Continuing his
163
Democritean procedure of universal mockery (see 10.48, quoted above), Juvenal again
manipulates the features of his satirical object; even more, he enacts this procedure
against something basically tangential to his main point (though reducing Babylon’s
grandeur to its materiality helps to undercut Alexander’s achievements). Using the same
conceit of concretization that he used to denigrate Hannibal, Juvenal concludes by
returning to the idea of extent with which he began, for outsized Alexander still will fit
inside a coffin. The two diminutives (quantula…corpuscula, 173) in the final line of the
section underscore this reduction of magnitude.
With the first word of the next passage concerning Xerxes, creditur (10.173),
Juvenal shifts his attack. Rather than belittle the body or achievements of the ambitious
general, he dismisses their credibility. If Hannibal and Alexander are reduced to mere
mortal bodies, Xerxes’ impressive feats—crossing the Hellespont by pontoon bridge, his
army draining rivers dry (10.175-178)—are reduced even to a pure rhetorical existence.
They are words, nothing more than “whatever deceptive Greece dared [to report] in its
histories” (quidquid Graecia mendax/ audet in historia, 10.174-75, with line-end
emphasis on mendax) and “what Sostratus chimes with drenched armpits” (madidis
cantat quae Sostratus alis, 10.178). 70 Here, we the audience (credimus, 10.176) are
subtly accused of constructing another false image of the world, this one based on false
report rather than false hopes.
Yet Juvenal depends equally on the veracity of this account in his condemnation
of Xerxes. For the marvelous deeds for which Juvenal lambasts Xerxes are likewise
70
Cf. 14.240 (si Graecia vera); similarly Pliny N.H. 5.4 portentose Graeciae mendacia. The scholiasts
identify Sostratus as a poet, but Thomson 1951 suggests that this may be the same figure that Aristotle
referred to as Sosistratus, an example of a rhapsode overly gesticulates like a bad actor (Arist. Poet. 26.
1426a). If the identification with a poet is correct, a deep irony certainly reflects back onto Juvenal himself
164
drawn from “lying Greece”: Xerxes considered the winds his private chattel to be
whipped (in Corum atque solitus saevire flagellis barbarus, 10.180-81); he enchained the
Hellespont (ipsum conpedibus qui vinxerat Ennosigaeum, 10.182), stopping just short of
tattooing it like a runaway slave (“what? did he not think worthy of the tattoo?”; non et
stigmate dignum/ credidit, 10.184).71 As part of his general revisionist project, Juvenal
tries to challenge our reading of historical achievement by challenging history itself; but,
in his rush to create the exemplum of an evil tyrant who receives of the just punishment of
total destruction (10.185-87), he fails to extricate himself from the grasp of history.
It is worth considering here the role of exempla in Juvenal’s project here in Satire
10 and how they reinforce the contingency of the satirical vision. Earlier, I reviewed
exempla in their place in Roman visual culture,72 but it seems necessary here to further
consider a further essential trait of exempla, namely their malleability. It is not enough to
say that Juvenal simply employs traditional commonplaces: as Andrew Feldherr has
remarked on Livy’s use of the tradition, “questions of sources and of the historian’s
originality become less relevant than tracing connections that give his choices meaning
within this larger whole. For my purposes, even if the ‘content’ of Livy’s narrative of an
episode, even some of the language itself, derives from an earlier source, the task of
interpreting its significance in Livy’s text still remains.”73
71
Cf. Herodotus 7.35. See Jones 1987 for an explanation of terminology and procedures of ancient
tattooing and an argument that stigma does not mean “brand,” despite frequent assumptions to the contrary.
Courtney 1980: 470 points out the various manipulations and inaccuracies that Juvenal makes of
Herodotus’ account, e.g. solitus for an action only said to be performed once and directed against the
Hellespont, not the winds.
72
See Introduction, section B.
73
Feldherr 1998: x.
165
Jane Chaplin has used the narrative of the incident at the Caudine Forks in Livy
Bk. 9, where the Romans surrendered disgracefully to the Samnites, as an instance where
the same event can shift in meaning diachronically or mean different things, depending
on the motivations of the speaker summoning an incident as exemplum. She shows how,
in the story of Caudium, while debating whether or not to surrender to the Samnites, the
earlier Capitoline Siege by the Gauls (narrated by Livy in Bk. 5) is called to mind by
internal speakers in two different ways.74 As Chaplin argues, the “instability of exempla”
is deeply involved in negotiations with the past and its continuity with the present.75
Yet for Juvenal, especially in Satire 10, the emphasis has shifted; for, if Livy’s
concern is using the volatility of exempla to chart and model a more dynamic relationship
between history and contemporary life, Juvenal’s interest lies squarely with the selfconscious malleability itself. One of his primary concerns in Satire 10 is the way that
figures unintentionally set themselves up as models, which Juvenal in turns reads
“against the grain,” so to speak. Velleius Paterculus once cautioned that exempla often
take on a life of their own:
Quod haut mirum est: non enim ibi consistunt exempla, unde coeperunt, sed
quamlibet in tenuem recepta tramitem latissime evagandi sibi viam faciunt, et ubi
semel recto deerratum est, in praeceps pervenitur, nec quisquam sibi putat turpe,
quod alii fuit fructuosum.
(Vell. Pater. 2.3.3-4)
This is not surprising: for exempla do not stand in place, whence they began, but, though
set out on a narrow track, they make a passageway for themselves for wandering far and
wide, and, once it has been set to wandering, it veers headlong, nor does anyone think
foul for himself, what was profitable for another.
74
Chaplin 2000: 39-40. She continues by showing how the surrender at Caudium itself is interpreted
internally in different ways (41-47); similarly, the multiple meanings of Cannae as event and exemplum are
underscored by different interpretations in the text itself (70).
75
Chaplin 2000: 40. For more on Livy between past, present, and future, see Chaplin 2000 137-67.
166
Michele Lowrie, in a recent discussion of the complexities of exemplarity and
exceptionality, has recently pointed out that Cicero himself was a good model for this
fact, for the exempla he evokes in the First Catilinarian to justify his summary executions
were turned against him by Clodius to secure his exile.76
Juvenal subtly demonstrates how exempla are a form of textual discourse
masquerading as history. They are a constructive principle used to persuade, and, in
Satire 10, both terms of that statement are thematized: the aim of Juvenal’s text is both to
sway us from the false allure of eloquence or beauty or longevity but also to point to its
own textuality. We are meant to interrogate their use and ask whether the singular figures
that Juvenal employs are outstanding models of a “universal” truth or simply exceptional;
would they have persuasive value if they were “mere” exceptions?77 If an exemplum can
be thought by ancient definitions to have three elements, content, function, and
discourse,78 Juvenal simultaneously playfully engages all three. By framing his content
(res gestae) in unusual ways, he exposes the manipulation (suasio) inherent in deploying
exempla (commemoratio) in the first place.
Thus, through his use of exempla, Juvenal shows himself reading world history
(as refined by the schools of declamation into self-contained gems) in a way that reminds
one of Eric Auerbach’s literary approach of reading mimesis in fictional narratives,
76
Lowrie 2007: 93-96.
77
Similarly Lowrie 2007 on the “paradoxical” nature of an exemplum: “do these things stand out in their
singularity or are they part of the norm?” (105).
78
Cf. Quin.5.11.6: potentissimum autem est inter ea quae sunt huius generis, quod proprie vocamus
exemplum, id est rei gestae aut ut gestae utilis ad persuadendum id quod intenderis commemoratio (where
res gestae is the content, suasio is the function, and commemoratio is the discourse).
167
where fictionalized particulars become representative of larger social or universal
meaning.79 As stated tendentiously by Lubomír Doležel:
The dubious epistemological foundation of this interpretative practice becomes especially
obvious if we note that an Auerbachian critic performs a double operation. First, he
selects an interpretive system (ideological, psychological, sociological, etc. [in our case,
the emptiness and self-destructiveness of human prayers, ergo supervacua aut quae
perniciosa petuntur, 10.54]) and transcribes reality into its abstract categories; second, he
matches the fictional particulars with the postulated interpretive categories. Since one and
the same person performs both the categorization of reality and the matching of fictional
individuals, we should not be surprised by the high ratio of “success” of universalist
interpretations.80
It is this selectivity that comes to the fore in exempla that seem out of place or puzzling.
Exempla necessarily flatten historical and mythological figures into a singular distinctive
trait but dismiss all other traits as irrelevant. Whatever the implications of Juvenal’s use
of exempla on the Roman project of the past, it is clear that their role in Satire 10 is to
self-consciously draw attention to the malleability and contingency of that project.
D. …Long After the Thrill of Living is Gone
The notion of fragile bodies, exemplified by Hannibal’s weight and Alexander’s
coffin, comes to the fore in the next section, a repudiation of the desire for old age. As
discussed above, Juvenal here projects the desire onto the viewer through direct
quotation, ‘da spatium vitae, multos da, Iuppiter, annos.’/ hoc recto voltu, solum hoc et
pallidus optas (“‘Jupiter, give me expanse of life, give me many years’. This is what you
hope for with face upright, this when you are shivering with fear,” 10.188-189).81 Juvenal
79
Auerbach 1953.
80
Doložel 1988: 478.
81
Braund follows Guyet and Markland in deleting line 189, which is filled with difficulties in the
manuscripts and interpretation, but it should be retained for its contribution thematically to the
uncontroversial line with precedes it, especially in the use of the 2 nd person verb optas.
168
dismisses this overestimation of a long life with an exasperated exclamation: “But old
age is filled with so many constant perils!” (sed quam continuis et quantis longa
senectus/ plena malis!, 10.190-91); the disjunctive sed announces a strong objection and
underscores again that the direction of desire is mistaken.
Juvenal offers his own satirically morbid view of old age in the following lines,
which should perhaps be divided into the infirmities of old age (191-232, transiting with
a brief discussion of dementia, 233-239) and the turbulent sadness incumbent upon a long
life (240-288). In the first section, Juvenal offers his limited perspective in yet another
physicalizing way. He effectively dismembers and deconstructs the body of the elderly
man until he becomes entirely a complex of twisted joints, impotent members, and lost
sense.82 It is not that Juvenal is alone in plotting the sinking topography of old age.83
Rather, by setting his catalogue of the infirmities of old age within the framework of Sat.
10, wherein he is ostensibly attacking the misguided selectivity of worldviews that lead to
misguided wishes, he implicates that catalogue as another manifestation of the same
impulse. His vision is ironically seductive because of, not despite, its repulsiveness, for it
is this quality which gives it the air of capturing “truth.” Indeed, this seductive quality is
exactly what aligns it with the analogous seductiveness of the desire to have lengthened
years. Of course rejection of old age is tempting if it spotlights only its infirmities and
deformities, and old age—even eternal life—is equally tempting if one ignores these
82
Fredericks 1979: 188 remarks that it is the accumulation of infirmities which is absurd. He argues that
Juvenal is sincerely countering wish-fulfillment, however, even through ironically unrealistic pictures of
the dangers of longevity or beauty. I, on the other hand, am trying to suggest that in addition to the
discourse of countering wish-fulfillment, Juvenal is reflecting on the limitations of the satiric discourse
itself. That is, satire, by being satire, is a necessarily limited way of reading the world and transmitting the
“truth” about it, even as it claims to do just that.
83
One could compare, from the satiric tradition, Lucil. frag. 331: quod deformi’ senex, arthriticus ac
podagrosus/ est, quod mancu’ miserque, exilis, ramice magno.
169
conditions. For, if growing old is as manifestly and obviously unpleasant as Juvenal
depicts it to be—not even apparently good—why would it be desirable in the first place?
Juvenal immediately draws our attention again to the face, just as we had gazed
upon Sejanus and Hannibal, as a self-explanatory marker of the perils of old age:
Sed quam continuis et quantis longa senectus
Plena malis! Deformem et taetrum ante omnia uultum
dissimilemque sui, deformem pro cute pellem
pendentisque genas et talis aspice rugas
quales, umbriferos ubi pandit Thabraca saltus,
in uetula scalpit iam mater simia bucca.
(10.190-195)
But long senescence is overflowing with evils—constant and excessive! Look! deformed
and foul—above all—is the face, not even looking like itself, a deformed pelt rather than
skin and the drooping cheeks and wrinkles like the kind—where Thabraca extends its
shady groves—the momma ape claws in her old cheek.
The verb aspice is particularly powerful as it draws the attention of the viewer whom
Juvenal had just depicted making the ill-fated prayer in the previous lines. We are invited
to “read” the lines on the old man’s face as a self-explanatory object lesson on why to
avoid old age. He not only begins by reducing a man to merely a face (as he had reduced
Hannibal and Sejanus), he further reduces that face to a disconnected string of repellent
features: leathery skin, sagging cheeks, and furrowed wrinkles. The face has become
discordant to itself, making him unrecognizable (dissimilem sui, 192); old age changes
the very definition of a man’s makeup, as externalized through his face.84 Juvenal rereads human skin (pro cute, 192) as if animal pelt (pellem, 192). The wrinkles are given a
particularly satirical touch: in a dynamic that is particularly Juvenalian, he introduces a
comparison with an elevated phrase (quales…saltus, 194, particularly the compound
umbriferos) only to demolish that elevation in the immediately following line, where the
84
Juvenal will play with a similar notion in his discussion of women’s cosmetics; see the discussion of the
scene of the women at toilette in Satire 6 (6.457-473; 487-506) at Ch. 4.B.
170
wrinkles become like…to a mommy monkey’s cheeks (in vetula…mater simia bucca,
195).85
Thus, while young people differ from each other in various ways, in strength, in
beauty, etc., “there is only one face for the old” (una senum facies, 10.198).86 Focusing
mostly on the face, Juvenal’s old man is just bald head, runny nose, and mashing gums:
cum voce trementia membra/ et iam leve caput madidique infantia nasi;/ frangendus
misero gingiva panis inermi (10.199-200).87 Juvenal cannot resist the satirical jab that the
old man’s ugliness is enough to disgust not just his wife and children, but even the
captator Cossus (usque adeo gravis…ut captatori moveat fastidia Cosso, 10.201-2). Old
age is so repellent that the captator forgets his satirical own role of defrauding the old
man and pities him instead.
Expanding beyond merely the face, but staying squarely in the physical realm,
Juvenal then moves southward from the palate (non eadem vini atque cibi torpente
palato/ gaudia, 10.203-4) to the penis, where he dramatizes an incident of impotence in
the old man: “if you try, that little organ with its hernia is taking a nap and, although it’s
massaged all night, it will keep sleeping.” (vel si/ coneris, iacet exiguus cum ramice
nervus/ et quamvis tota palpetur nocte, iacebit, 10.204-6). Juvenal slyly inserts the
85
Courtney ad loc. argues for parody from an unidentified sources. This procedure of undercutting any
pretenses to the so-called Grand Style by immediately introducing some low or vulgar verbal element is
well documented by Powell 1999; Schmitz 2000 points to this passage in particular as an example of
Juvenal’s employment of a single word to puncture stylistic registers (97-107; 106-7 on umbiferos).
86
There is a certain irony in the anonymity of the old here, considering truisms about the veristic style of
Roman portraiture, particularly in the Republic.
87
Plaza 2006 finds the effect of old age as “leveling” similar here as at the climax of Hor. Serm.1.8, where
the wooden Priapus’ side-splitting (literally) fart breaks down the witch’s defenses and sends them
scattering. Citing an incidence of Bahktin’s material bodily stratum, she states that [Priapus’] victims are
exposed as overwhelmingly human, and all attention is focused on their old age, nakedness, and fear—
degrading and leveling phenomena.” (71). Yet, in Juvenal’s picture, any of the regenerative implications of
the lower bodily stratum have been completely displaced, thus underlining the problem of easy equations of
Roman satire and Bahktinian thought on laughter in Rabelais (cf. Miller 2001).
171
viewer into the scene via the second person verb coneris, though it is unclear whether this
makes us the impotent man or, perhaps, his partner (palpetur at line 206 is frustratingly
passive). In the next line, he turns the groin into a new face, grotesquely visualizing the
whitened pubic hairs: “Is the salt-and-pepper of your infirm groin able to expect
anything?” (anne aliquid sperare potest haec inguinis aegri/ canities?, 10.206-7).
Canities, set off by enjambment, usually refers to the whiteness or greyness of hairs on
the head (or the grey-white hairs themselves), but here is transferred concretely—and
vulgarly—to pubic hair.88
Juvenal then bids us turn our attention (aspice again in line 209) to a new kind of
infirmity, the loss of hearing. As this infirmity cannot be physically mapped onto the
external body, Juvenal instead stages a vignette of hearing damage involving an act of
spectatorship in the theater. The old man is unable to hear the musicians in the theater,
either singers or cithaerodes or pipe-players. What difference does it then make where
you sit, Juvenal asks, when you can barely hear the clattering of the orchestra (10.210215). The depiction of the old man’s worn out perception here has a triple significance.
For the discrepancy between the actual volume and the volume inside the old man’s head
(clamore opus est ut sentiat auris, 10.214-215) is a symbol of the decline of old age and,
more subtly, of the gap between hopeful expectations of old age and the actual realities of
old age, once attained. Even more, though, by externally staging the scene for us (one
almost imagines a man cartoonishly raising an old-fashioned ear trumpet), Juvenal
simultaneously flattens its meaning, for he has completely ignored any of the moral
88
Cf. TLL s.v. col. 260 30-84. The TLL lists this occurrence under the transferred sense of old age (col.
261 4-5); but it seems clear that the reference is meant to be concrete and grotesque.
172
connotations with which he often imbues dramatic and musical performance in Rome.89
Perhaps it would be better, according to Juvenal’s other appraisals of music and the
theater, for the old man not to hear.
Juvenal then turns for the first time to more internal ailments, such as tendency to
fever (10.217-18). He uses this introduction to launch into one of the most memorable
and bizarre digressions in his corpus:
Praeterea minimus gelido iam in corpore sanguis
febre calet sola, circumsilit agmine facto
morborum omne genus, quorum si nomina quaeras,
promptius expediam quot amauerit Oppia moechos,
quot Themison aegros autumno occiderit uno,
quot Basilus socios, quot circumscripserit Hirrus
pupillos, quot longa uiros exorbeat uno
Maura die, quot discipulos inclinet Hamillus;
percurram citius quot uillas possideat nunc
225
quo tondente grauis iuueni mihi barba sonabat.
220
(10.217-26)
Beyond this, the lack of blood in a now frigid body warms up only with a fever, and
every kind of disease surrounds him in assembled formation, which, if you wanted me to
search for their names, more quickly could I enumerate how many adulterers Oppia
bagged, how many sick men Themison laid low in a single autumn, how many allies
Basilus hoodwinked—and Hirrus how many students—how many men vigorous Maura
sucked down in a single day, how many students Hamillus bent over; more swiftly will I
run through how many villas are owned now by the guy who used to shave my beard
when I was young!
Up to now, besides the scene incident on the introduction of Democritus, Satire 10 has
mostly ignored the world of “Roman satire,” which (for Juvenal) is oriented on the
pervasive spread of vice throughout the city and embodied by a troupe of evil-doers. And
though the form points back to epic catalogue, the milieu is decidedly satirical in its list
of characters which spring from that world: the female adulterer, the baleful doctor, 90 the
89
E.g. Sat 6.379ff, on women’s excessive adoration of musicians.
90
The theme is more common in Martial’s epigrams. Cf. Mart. 1.30, 1.47 (about one Diaulus who changed
careers from doctor to undertaker), 8.74.
173
schemer and the fraud, the “generous” prostitute,91 the corrupting tutor, 92 the prosperous
nouveaux riche. In Satire 10, for the most part (with Xerxes as the primary exception),
the satirical targets are less immoral than misguided, incorrectly judging the value of
ostensible goods. Here, we have a much more blatant satirical voice, one that cannot
resist framing even a simple number of diseases in terms of moral vice.93 Indeed, the final
tag of the digression is a direct quote from his first satire, where it similarly occurs in a
catalogue and makes reference to the inordinate property now possessed by the once
humble barber (patricios omnis opibus cum provocet unus/ quo tondente gravis iuveni
mihi barba sonabat, 1.24-25).94
These lines, then, act as a kind of interjection from the world of Roman satire.
Here Juvenal shows a vacillation between the sardonic cynicism of Democritus and the
directly indignant voice of “old” Juvenal, especially when one considers parallels
between the lines and the similar catalogues of Satire 1 (e.g., the series of cum-clauses
beginning at line 1.32 and continuing to some extent until line 1.62). We should recall
that there Juvenal depicted himself as “standing in the middle of a crossroads filling huge
tablets” with his account of Roman vices (licet medio ceras implere capaces/quadrivio,
1.63-64). In Satire 1, Juvenal had staged for his audience the very act of composing satire
in which he is engaged, with the conceit of merely recording the world around him rather
91
We should recall the voraciousness of Messalina in Sat. 6, who closes up shop at the brothel every night,
“worn out by the men but not yet satisfied”(lassata viris necdum satiata recessit, 6.130).
92
Though the parallel is not exact, the lines should bring to mind the fraudulent guardian of Sat. 1, who
ends up prostituting the child to whom he is assigned (hic spoliator/ pupilli prostantis, 1.46-47).
93
Fishelov 1990: 378-79 remarks on the irrelevance of the catalogue and its inconsistency with the topic at
hand, but does not expand upon the poetological possibilities of this gap and the way it recalls other satires
of Juvenal.
94
Courtney ad 225-26 mentions Griffith’s omitting 10.225-26 as a “decency-interpolation” for the previous
sexually charged lines, who adduced the repetition itself as evidence. This ignores the richness of the
intratextual interjection.
174
than creating it. Yet, when we consider how Democritus both observes and creates satire
through the lens with which he observes the world, one should similarly see Juvenal there
writing a distinctly satirical construction.95 Thus the catalogue in Satire 10 is a heavyhanded wink towards the construction of its “satirical” vision and its concomitant
limitations. The suddenness of the intrusion, giving the sense that the lines are out of
place (though not un-Juvenalian)96 reinforces the notion that the cross-section of the
world presented in Sat. 10, intended to be final and definitive, is anything but.
Juvenal returns to physical discourse following this satirical interjection: his rapid
catalogue dismembers the human body into loci of possible degeneration: the shoulder,
the groin, the side, the eyes, the lips, the fingers (ille umero, hic lumbis, hix coxa debilis;
ambos perdidit ille oculos et luscis invidet; huius/ pallida labra cibum accipiunt digitis
alienis, 10.227-29). Yet, for all its apparent “gravity,” Juvenal shows himself again
unable to resist a mocking footnote, claiming that the blind envy the one-eyed and
portraying the infirm man being fed as a drooling, slack-jawed chick receiving food
regurgitated by a mother swallow (ipse ad conspectum cenae diducere rectum/ suetus
hiat tantum ceu pullus hirundis, ad quem/ ore volat plena mater ieiuna, 10.230-32).
The next brief section on the onset of dementia (233-239) acts as a transition
between the satirical discourse of physical ailments of the elderly and the more tragic
exempla of the perils of a long life to follow. In two descriptions of the effects of
dementia on the old man’s relationships, the first (a pitiful description of forgetfulness,
95
It must be mentioned that one need not have recourse the “persona” theory concerning Juvenal’s
construction of the speaker of the satire still almost universally accepted as true, since the notion of selfconsciously assuming a worldview is staged within Satire 10 itself.
96
Cf. Courtney 1980: 48 on Juvenal’s verbositry; he even advises a few places where Juvenal could have
trimmed “unnecessarily long lists,” including this passage.
175
10.234-36)97 is more straightforward, pointing ahead to the mostly uncomplicated
exempla to follow. In the second, Juvenal presents a scene of a last will and testament
guaranteed to the fellatrix Phiale rather than to his own children:
nam codice saeuo
heredes uetat esse suos, bona tota feruntur
ad Phialen; tantum artificis ualet halitus oris,
quod steterat multis in carcere fornicis annis. (10.236-240).
For in his unsympathetic will, he forbids his own sons to be heirs and instead all the
goods are conveyed to Phiale; so strong was the “breath” (wink) of her skillful mouth,
which had stood for many years in the cell of the brothel.
The scene points backwards to the “satiric” actors we last saw at lines 217-226 and
recollects a world of vice to contrast with the world of tragic and historical exempla to
follow. One should note the editorial comment of saevo codice and the additional detail
that the girlfriend is not merely a prostitute but a fellatrix, especially looked down upon
in Roman society.98
Juvenal then moves stridently into the realm of the tragic. Even if one outlasts all
these troubles, Juvenal states flatly, one will inevitably run into the helplessness of
watching others succumb to them: “assuming your senses remain vigorous, still the
funeral processions of your children will go forth, you will have to gaze upon the beloved
wife’s pyre, and the brother’s, and you will fill urns with what was once your sisters” (ut
vigeant sensus animi, ducenda tamen sunt/ funera natorum, rogus aspiciendus amatae/
coniugis et fratris plenaeque sororibus urnae, 10.240-42). Juvenal provides the blanket
impression that the perils of old age are completely inescapable, confirming in miniature
97
One could suggest that this “failure of recognition” in the old man’s forgetfulness (nomina servorum nec
voltum agnoscit amici/ cum quo praeterita cenavit nocte, nec illos quos genuit, quos eduxit) mirrors the
failure that the once young hopeful petitioner displayed in wishing for long life.
98
For the moral register of oral sex in Rome, see Williams 2010: 218-24.
176
his intention of crafting a vision of the entire world. One should compare the allembracing sweep of the lines to his outright refusal in Satire 6 of admitting the existence
of the worthwhile woman (6.161-66). In that satire, an unnamed interlocutor, perhaps a
stand-in for the exasperated audience, asks: “Does no woman from so great a flock seem
worthy [of marriage]?” (‘nullane de tantis gregibus tibi digna videtur’, 6.161). Juvenal
replies that she could be beautiful, chaste, rich, fertile, and yet that these very virtues
would make her unbearable (quis feret uxorem cui constant omnia?, 6.166). Here,
Juvenal again opens up the possibility of hope—old age without dementia or infirmity (ut
vigeant sensus animi, 10.240)—only to smash it with the promise of funerals; to
Fishelov, Juvenal’s real purpose is merely to display catastrophe.99
It is valuable to reconsider Gilbert Lawall’s older argument that rather than the
Democritean, mocking perspective being the exclusive viewpoint of the satire, Juvenal
vacillates between Democritean and “Heraclitan” examples, that figure who could not
control his tears once he crossed his threshold. Though Lawall acknowledges that the
former perspective, where mocking humor undercuts potentially tragic moments, reigns
throughout most of the poem, he is right to assert a connection in this section between the
exempla of the tragedies of a long life (Nestor, Peleus, Priam, Marius, and Pompey) and
“tearful” Heraclitus.100 Yet, where Lawall considers this vacillation between mockery and
tragedy to be a grasp towards universality embraced by the two divergent approaches, 101 I
would argue, as with the catalogue at line 220-26, exactly the opposite. The interjection
99
Fishelov 1990: 380.
100
Lawall 1958: 27.
101
Lawall 1958: 29; he argues later that a Stoic perspective can help one escape the cycle of tragedy and
mockery (31).
177
of a second, “Heraclitan” perspective in this section dramatizes the limitations of
Juvenal’s universalizing conceit. He claims to present the world before our eyes as it
truly is, yet the alternation of the tragic here only intensifies the focus throughout the
satire on the interpretative act taking place through the earlier stand-in “Democritus.”
There is an internal disagreement in perspective displayed here, an acknowledgment that
it is futile to encapsulate the world with a single voice—beyond simply declaring
everyone else wrong.
Further, Juvenal begins not with atemporal personal catastrophe or with historical
exempla, but, for the first time in Satire 10, with mythological illustration. It is ironic that
Juvenal, who had previously sought to discredit the achievements of Xerxes as inventions
by Greek historians eager to please audiences hungry for wonders (cf. 174-175), falls
back on fictional exempla here. Though the examples here are more straightforwardly
tragic and thus less “satirically” filtered, the effect of using these fictional examples
should not be overlooked. Juvenal begins the satire in a rationalizing manner, hoping to
clear the “error which clouds” (erroris nebula, 10.4) our judgment. Similarly,
Democritus’ appearance is imagined as unveiling the hollowness of Roman social
practices. Here, however, Juvenal lapses into mythological stories, which, though
illustrating his intended point (the figures do, in fact, demonstrate the possibility of
outliving one’s kin), ignore his previous program. He introduces Nestor, but then
immediately calls his entire Homeric narrative into question (rex Pylius, magno si
quicquam credis Homero, 10.246). We see another example of the kind of satirical irony
in words with double valence, as Juvenal calls Homer “great” at the very moment that he
questions his credibility.
178
In the mythological section (246-272), the employment of tragic and fictional
details reinforce the clutter of perspectives which has rendered the universal conceit of
Juvenal’s project invalid. Even as he moves into the historical world (273-288), the
jarring effect of the tragic, even sympathetic details, maintain the same function. The
opening lines of the section, which describe the punishment for a long life as “constantly
reliving the house’s downfall in great grief and unending sadness and growing old in
mourning clothes” (haec data poena diu viventibus, ut renovata/ semper clade domus
multis in luctibus inque/ perpetuo maerore et nigra vesta senescent, 10.243-45), function
in a parallel way to, e.g., the selective dismemberment of the elderly body of the previous
section, in that they serve as a textual manifestation of the limited vision of Sat. 10: there
“satirical,” here “tragic.”
It is not necessary to survey these tragic notes in as much detail, as they are not as
subtly worked out and since the thematic significance, I suggest, is the sudden change of
perspective itself. Yet some points bear remarking. Juvenal begins an extended sentence
on Nestor’s plaints about too long an apportionment of life (nimio de stamine, 10.253),
with a request to his audience: “Please, give your attention for a second …” (oro
parumper/ attendas…, 10.250-51). He draws in the audience again—though not
necessarily indicting them as before with mistaken views of the world—for a
dramatization of Nestor’s woes (perhaps evoking an actual dramatic representation, as
Courtney suggests).102 We are told to look upon Nestor as Nestor himself looks upon the
pyre of his son Antilochus (cum videt acris/ Antilochi barbam ardentem, 10.252-53); here
again, metaphorical dramaturgy is employed to attempt to create a flat and
102
Courtney ad 251, suggests that Juvenal may be evoking an actual dramatic representation, putting
forward Aeschylus’ Memnon as a possibility.
179
straightforward reading of the world. And indeed, the scene is straightforward enough as
is (though the odd synecdoche of the “burning beard”, barbam ardentem at line 253, hints
at the tone adopted through the rest of the satire),103 but the straightforward has already
been discounted in this satire. Paradoxically, even those elements which are
straightforward only help to confirm the divergent currents running through the poem.
Juvenal, for his depiction of Priam, constructs an even more pitiful scenario,
staging the imaginary funeral that would have taken place “if he [Priam] had died at a
different time, when Paris had not yet begun to build his bold ships” (si foret extinctus
diverso tempore, quo non/ coeperat audaces Paris aedificare carinas, 10.263-64). In this
scene, all the actors from the Priam’s family who later succumbed to tragic fates have a
role: Hector carries the body (Hectore funus/portante, 10.259-60) with his brothers (ac
reliquis fratrum cervicibus, 10.260), and Cassandra and Polyxena lead the lamentations
(ut primos edere planctus/ Cassandra inciperet scissaque Polyxena palla, 10.263).
Subtly, Juvenal projects a bit of wish-fulfillment here himself, as if Priam’s “untimely”
death (i.e. coming too late, rather than too early) precipitated Troy’s collapse. Yet he
makes the real significance completely clear: the only difference that the timing of
Priam’s death would make is whether he would see Troy falling (omnia vidit/ eversa et
flammis Asiam ferroque cadentem, 10.265-66), not whether Troy would survive or not.
He does not claim that the grim fates of the funeral participants, alluded to by their very
mention at Priam’s own “funeral,” would have been forestalled in any way.
103
There may be a similar infelicity, of a metrical variety in a the lines coming just afterwards about the
sorrows of Peleus and Laertes, where the word lugere is repeated twice in two lines and almost overlaps in
metrical position (…cum luget Achillem/…lugere natantem, 10.256-57), to say nothing of the rhyming
jingle usually avoided in Latin poetry or the description of Odysseus the “swimmer” (natantem) rather than
the “son” (natum).
180
The overwhelming tragic atmosphere reaches it pinnacle in Juvenal’s brief
reenactment of Priam’s death in the Aeneid at the hands of Pyrrhus (Aen.2.506-558). Yet
Juvenal, even here, injects a bit of gallows humor. He compares Priam to an “oldie” oxen
(ut vetulus bos, 268) and then later recounts Hecuba’s transformation into a dog: “and
grim she barked from her dog’s jaws—the wife who had survived this one” (sed torva
canino/ latravit rictu quae post hunc vixerat uxor, 10.272). Juvenal here ties the old age
of these august figures to the bodily discourse of the earlier section on old age, returning
to the animal imagery of old age that he had begun in the comparison of the feeble old
man to the chick being fed.
Juvenal continues his tragic account with Roman examples, passing briefly over
Croesus and Mithridates (10.273-275), though not without summoning the famous
confrontation between Solon and Croesus from Herodotus 1.32 (et Croesum, quem vox
iusti facunda Solonis/ respicere ad longae iussit spatial ultima vitae, 10.274-75). The
seemingly coincidental line tidily condenses some of the themes and concerns of the
satire so far. First, the use of facunda implies an incoherence with Juvenal’s previous
discussion of the ill rewards for eloquence (10.10, sua mortifera est facundia),
underscoring the difficulties that Juvenal embraces when positing the worldview of
Democritus as all-embracing and correct. Next, with respicere, Juvenal again reinforces
the theme of “mis-reading” the world in visual terms, with Croesus unable to comprehend
the final bounds of life through the agency of his interpretative gaze. Third, respicere also
recalls our own efforts at “looking” at Juvenal’s poem.104 Indeed, the realization of the
104
Cf. Elsner 2007: 67-8, with references, on how in scenes of ekphrasis the narrated act of the gaze on an
object, piece of art, landscape, or scene can function as an analogue for the reader’s visual consumption of
the text.
181
limitation of Juvenal’s perspectives on the world has to be enacted in our own experience
of reading his satirical construction.
Finally, the line allows Juvenal to restage the debate of Solon on the best end of
life in Roman terms: when is the ideal moment for a Roman to perish? The answer that
Juvenal provides is fascinating:
exilium et carcer Minturnarumque paludes
et mendicatus uicta Carthagine panis
hinc causas habuere; quid illo ciue tulisset
natura in terris, quid Roma beatius umquam,
si circumducto captiuorum agmine et omni
280
bellorum pompa animam exhalasset opimam,
cum de Teutonico uellet descendere curru? (10.276-282)
Exile and prison and the swamps of Minturnae and begging for bread in conquered
Carthage had their origins from this; what thing more blessed could nature in all the lands
give than that citizen, what could Rome ever give, if, while he was flanked by company
of captives and all the pomp of wars, he had exhaled his final breath, when he was
desiring to come down from the Teutonic chariot?
Juvenal uses Marius as his example, whom Juvenal inaccurately implies ended his life as
a poor outcast in the swamps at Minturnae (10.276-77), ignoring his return to Rome and
his eventual death.
How then should he have died? At the height of his glory, Juvenal claims, during
his triumphal procession after his victory over the Teutoni and Cimbri in 105 B.C.E. The
incoherence of these lines with the previous viewpoints taken at various places in the
satire is stunning. Nothing could be “more blessed” (beatius, 279) than Rome and
nature’s endowment of the world with Marius in his triumph, with none of the ironic
charge of the description of Nestor as “too happy” (felix nimirum, 10.248). Marius would
have released the best last breath at this point in his career (animam exhalasset opimam,
281). To create this image, Juvenal is forced to completely ignore his own earlier
complete dismissal of the value of military triumph, which he had reified into, amongst
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other things, the “trophies of war” (bellorum exuviae, 10.133; cf. omni/ bellorum pompa,
280-81, in the same metrical position) and “sad captives at the top of the citadel” (summo
tristis captivos in arcu, 10.136; cf. circumducto captivorum agmine, 280).
Further, the triumphal procession resembles Juvenal’s earlier presentation of the
pompa circensis, the very spectacle which would have made Democritus burst into
laughter; indeed, they match in the detail of the slave accompanying the presider/victor so
as to avoid Nemesis (cf. quippe tenet sudans hanc publicus et, sibi consul/ ne placeat,
curru servus portatur eodem, 10.41-42).105 In the accumulation of scornful details in the
earlier scene, the reader saw earlier how Democritus “re-wrote” that scene through his
own satirical lens; yet here that lens is seemingly abandoned. The significance of such a
blatant contradiction is surprising, another manifestation of the fragmentation of
perspectives in the second half of the satire. Just as the tragic depictions of old age clash
with the mordant discourse which preceded, so too do these details explicitly conflict
with the views taken elsewhere in this very satire. One could write this off as merely a
flaw of Juvenal’s style in the satire, more interested in scenes than large scale
operations,106 or as an example of Juvenal’s satirical “opportunism.”107 Yet the very point
of Satire 10 is its universal scope of re-evaluating human goods. Contradictions are not a
mere commentator’s inconvenience, but run contrary to the program of the whole
105
In fact, it appears that Juvenal has imported this detail into the scene of pompa circensis to reinforce that
we are meant to read the two processions against each other.
106
E.g., Courtney, who sees Juvenal as typical of the era’s poets: “The final summing-up must be that this
poem, fine as it is, is less successful in the whole than the sum of its parts. This is very characteristic of
Silver Latin generally, and it is due to the methods and canons of composition promoted by the practice of
recitation, which encouraged concentration on small-scale effects at the expense of sustained execution of a
well-planned overall design” (454).
107
See esp. Tennant 1995, in disagreement with previous scholars’ remarks on the inconsistencies and
problems of Satire 15 as a sign of Juvenal’s satirical object being the voice of the speaker itself.
183
poem—or, rather, the stated program, for these contradictions, on the other hand, neatly
coincide with the undercurrent of indecipherability and impossibility of finality in
imaging the world.
The subsequent section revives the program considering the misinterpretation of
worldly goods using poor Pompey, already a victim of ambition (10.198). Juvenal begins
from Pompey’s sickness in 50 B.C.E., which he, with now familiar irony, describes as
“desirable” fevers (febres/ optandas, 10.283-84). He then portrays how the misguided
prayers of the people preserved him for a worse fate: “many cities and public prayers
won out; thereupon, the very man’s and the city’s Fortune cut off the conquered man’s
head, which had been preserved” (sed multae urbes et public vota/ vicerunt; igitur
Fortuna ipsius et urbis/ servatum victo caput abstulit, 10.284-86).108 One notable facet of
this grimly ironic turn of events is that it is not Pompey himself, but his supporters, who
contribute to his ignominious downfall by not allowing the fevers to take him. Indeed,
throughout this section on the reversals of life’s fortune inherent in living for a long time,
it is not clear that these long lives were desired by the actors inhabiting them. Fortune is
described as the agent who precipitates Pompey’s (and by extension, Marius’, Priam’s,
etc.) late-life disasters.
Fortune as personified goddess is an interesting figure in Juvenal’s satires in
general and makes three important appearances in this poem. The first comes at the end
of the description of Democritus, where he is pictured telling Fortune to toss off and
throwing it an obscene gesture: cum Fortunae ipse minaci/ mandaret laqueum
mediumque ostenderet unguem (10.52-53). Maria Plaza has discussed how Fortune and
108
These prayers are not an invention of Juvenal’s: for evidence, see Cic. Ad Att. 8.16.1, Vell. Pat. 2.48.2,
CIL 13.128.
184
money (a man’s personal fortuna) act as destabilizing elements in Juvenal’s world, for
they elevate the actors of the world beyond the status determined by their ethical
worth.109 Reflecting on Demoncritus’ middle finger, she connects his materialistic world
view, with all existence determined by a fixed and predictable movement of atoms, to
Juvenal’s “deterministic world-view in moral and social terms, [his desire for] a world
where all could be explained by every person’s intrinsic value, which would lead to his
fair advance or downfall with the same clear exactitude as in the movement of the
atoms.”110 She connects this impulse through a structural parallel to what she sees as the
satirist’s own operation of raising his targets artificially in order to give himself a lowered
position from which to humorously attack (and thereby lower them).111 In this way,
Juvenal as satirist can be thought to take control back from Fortune.
Yet Maria Plaza does not touch upon the possible implications of the invocation
of Fortune here at 10.285. For, upon closer inspection, we can see the limitations of
Democritus’ attempt to establish a totalizing and determined worldview. Fortune is here
personified as a powerful goddess who manipulates and exploits the designs of men for
the worse. The world that Fortune governs is far from a pre-determined world, whose
causes and processes can be read definitively, either through knowledge of the atoms of
through the intercession of the satirist’s vision. The machinations of Fortune represent the
world “kicking back,” undercutting Democritus’ view of the world as predictable and
109
Plaza 2006: 125ff. She elaborates that “Fortuna, like money, is a force that moves people up and down
on the scale of well-being and power without taking account of their intrinsic merits…He [Juvenal] dreams
of a static world based on innate merit (moral-intellectual-aesthetic), a world that will not be disturbed and
turned upside down by the workings of such fleeting and destabilizing forces as Fortune and Money” (12526).
110
Plaza 2006: 125-27 (quote, 126).
111
Plaza 2006: 127; for this procedure of humorously raising and lowering through satiric attack in Juvenal,
see Plaza 2006: 105-166, in her section on “Object-Oriented Humour.”
185
readable and, in turn, metapoetically challenging the ways in which the satire tries to
impose those views (such as a myopic focus on the physicality of Alexander and
Hannibal). Democritus’ rejection of Fortune and its implied imposition of order and
readability upon the world fails in the face of the operations of Fortune as described
here.112 Fortune makes a final appearance in an extremely ambiguous section of the
ending of the poem and so I will hold off considerations of her until reached there.
After this allusion to Fortune engineering Pompey’s decapitation, Juvenal invokes
a downright bizarre contrast to the fate of the Catilinarian conspirators: “Lentulus was
spared this torture, Cethegus this punishment—and he fell, his body not missing
anything, and Catiline lay dead, his corpse complete” (hoc cruciatu/ Lentulus, hac poena
caruit ceciditque Cethegus/ integer et iacuit Catilina cadavere toto, 10.286-88). This
appraisal is vastly different than the last appearance of the archetypal Republican
conspirators in Juvenal’s corpus (8.231-235) where the very mention of them conjures a
“crime that deserves a tunica molesta” (ausi quod liceat tunica punire molesta, 8.235).
To say that the ends of their lives outrank Pompey’s, simply because their bodies
remained intact, is roundly absurd and demonstrates the flaws in Juvenal’s worldview in
this poem. His absolutizing Democritean perspective forces him to sometimes absurd
statements to maintain a consistent view of the flaws of interpretation that men have in
112
Fortune has in fact already represented a moment where Juvenal’s attempt to craft a totalizing satiric
perspective has slipped. In Sat. 7, where Juvenal argues, essentially, for the universal poverty of
intellectuals, an unnamed interlocutor objects by citing Quintillian as an example of a successful rhetor :
‘unde igitur tot/ Quintilianus habet saltus?’ (7.188-89). Juvenal is forced to concede that Quintilian is felix
(though he implies that this exception proves the rule) and cites the disruptive powers of Fortune: si
Fortuna volet, fies de rhetore consul;/ si volet haec eadem, fiet de consule rhetor (7.197-98), the latter
referring to Valerius Licinianus, also appearing in Pliny Ep.4.11, though he was only a praetor, not a
consul. Plaza 2006: 126 discusses this reference to Fortune, but does not account for the contradiction it
implies with the context.
186
their desires for a long life. Juvenal ends his long discussion on old age on this precise
note of reductio ad absurdum, before brusquely transitioning to the next topic.
E. Eye of the Beholder
The final object of desire Juvenal means to debunk is beauty. It is appropriate that
a satire which often relies on externalized images to expose the vast divide between
expectation and fulfillment should climax in an object which is by its nature external. In
fact, this section will replay the dynamic of the satire in miniature. First, Juvenal will
identify how prayers for beauty stem from the misreading or misunderstanding of its
value; he will then attempt to supplant that viewpoint with the “correct” one which
exposes the “real” nature (and costs) of beauty and which veers inevitably into the
satirical, in both content and tone. Again the central paradox lies in this turn, in the
paradox between the stated program and the mechanics of accomplishing it. For it will
again reveal the limitations in a program of “revelation,” where one contingent
perspective on the world is replaced with another.
As with the pupils of rhetoric hoping for the benefits of facundia (10.114-17) and
the wish for old age projected onto the reader (10.188), this section begins with a
depiction of the actual wish itself:
formam optat modico pueris, maiore puellis
murmure, cum Veneris fanum uidet, anxia mater
usque ad delicias uotorum. 'cur tamen' inquit
'corripias? pulchra gaudet Latona Diana.'
sed uetat optari faciem Lucretia qualem
ipsa habuit, cuperet Rutilae Verginia gibbum
accipere †atque suum† Rutilae dare.
290
295 (10.289-95)
The solicitous mother desires beauty for her children, with a modest murmur for her sons,
a louder one for her daughters, when she visits the temple of Venus, to excesses of
prayers. She says, “Why then would you criticize me? Latona took joy in beautiful
187
Diana.” But Lucretia would bid such a face as she herself had not be desired, Verginia
would like to take Rutila’s hump and give [her face] to Rutila.113
The dynamic of this introduction is revealing. Juvenal here actually allows his
object to respond to the implied criticism of excess in her prayer (usque ad delicias
votorum, 291), only to cruelly cut her down. When the mother responds with a typically
“misguided” sentiment, calling on the precedent of Latona’s delight in Diana’s beauty,
Juvenal seizes on the note of virginity coincident with mention of Diana. He retorts with
an allusion to the sexual assaults of Lucretia and Verginia in early Roman history. Not
only would Verginia relinquish her beauty she would exchange it for a hunchback (29495).
The procedure should be familiar by now. Mother makes foolish prayer based on
a mistaken impression,114 that beauty for children is a good in which even the gods
delight. Juvenal corrects mother’s impression with reference to exempla, countering
mythological with historical. What completes the dynamic that Satire 10 has enacted
throughout is the force of the physical deformity, gibbum. Whereas physical ailments and
deformities have been used previously for mockery (in particular, mocking the one-eyed
Hannibal astride his elephant)115 or to reify the ills of old age in physical form, here a
hunchback becomes an ironically desirable trait. Just as with the emblems of power in the
113
The received atque in l. 295 requires emendation. The easiest solution, reflected in my translation is the
change to osque, leading to the paleographical error otque. There is another appealing suggestion made by
Housman, followed by Courtney, which transforms the sentence into an address to Verginia herself
(cuperetcuperes in l. 294 and suumtuum in l. 295). If accepted, there would be something distinctively
Juvenalian about this technique of rapid shift in addressees, especially as the lines already involve
interaction between the poet and his subjects.
114
The transition from the people’s misguided prayers for the safety of Pompey in ll. 284-5 to the mother’s
is not inconsequential, demonstrating that the agency of prayer does not necessarily coincide with the
inevitably “punished” recipients of those wishes.
115
Juvenal, of course, is not alone in mocking the deformed; see Garland 1995:73-86 for other examples in
the ancient world.
188
section on Marius above, Juvenal reverses the previously established register of words or
concepts in order to make a new satirical point. Just as positive words like admirandus
and egregius had come to be used in negative contexts, gibbus thus takes on a new
meaning in light of beauty’s devaluation.
This shift in the meaning and register of terms is important as Juvenal shifts into
the main discourse of the topic on beauty: the vulnerability of beautiful young men to
either overly indulge their appetites or to become victims of the appetites of voracious
women. The discussion shifts markedly with the introduction of filius autem at line 295,
for the rest of the section (295-345) will concern itself with the beauty of young men,
rather than women.116 Juvenal opens with a paradox familiar to readers of Satire 10 by
now, whereby a word of assumedly positive connotation is given a negative one by the
context. Here that word is again egregius, where the possibility of a son’s outstanding
beauty leads, paradoxically, to miserable, rather than overjoyed, parents (filius autem/
corporis egregii miseros trepidosque parentes/ semper habet, 10.295-97). The
universality of semper should likewise be recognizable by now by the exhausted reader
as a possible opening for rebuttal (“Really Juvenal? Always?”).
What comes next will focus on a key satiric discrepancy in the universe of Satire
10, between external beauty and internal modesty: rara est adeo concordia formae/ atque
pudicitiae (10. 297-98), already signaled by the paradox of egregius. The prototypical
boy is provided with a good family background (though one should not ignore the absurd
humor of horrida…domus, 10.298-99, nor that this externalization of rustic, manly virtue
in “hairiness/bristliness” has its own problems; cf. 2.11, hispida membra) and even an
116
Even though the primary focus of the mother’s prayers was beauty for her daughters: cf. formam optat
modico pueris, maiore puellis/ murmure, 10.289-90. Juvenal’s focus on young men is a deflection, an
enactment of the unpredictable way Fortune brings wishes to pass.
189
inborn pure nature (castum ingenium voltumque modesto/ sanguine ferventem, 10.300-1).
But the lines climax with the explosive satiric sexual tag, non licet esse viro (“he is not
allowed to be—a real man,” 10.304). He will inevitably play the passive role in
intercourse.117 Beauty has apparently disrupted the proper definition of manhood, as
those with the former cannot but have an absence of the latter. From here on, the satire
takes a turn into the distinctly satirical world of sexual impropriety, first suggested by the
elaborate digression on numbers in the section on old age (cf. quot discipulos inclinet
Hamillus, 10.224).
Yet where that section introduced a mere peek back into that satirical world as a
counterpoint to the world of Satire 10 as a demonstration of the impossibility of final
readings, at this point, we return fully to that “earlier” Juvenalian world, where the
impudent corruptor attempts to ply the parents of a desirable boy with bribes (10.304-6).
The paradox of “useful ugliness” crashes headlong into another irruption, from the world
of declamatio, which itself then elides into the historical world:
Nam prodiga corruptoris
Improbitas ipsos audet temptare parentes:
tanta in muneribus fiducia. nullus ephebum
deformem saeva castravit in arce tyrannus,
nec praetextatum rapuit Nero loripedem nec
strumosum atque utero pariter gibbo tumentem.
(10.304-309)
For the generous depravity of the corruptor dares to tempt the parents themselves: such a
good investment in gifts! No tyrant—sitting in his savage tower—ever castrated an ugly
youth, nor did Nero ever snatch up a gimp-footed or scrofulous or—ugh--hunchbacked
and swollen-bellied Roman youth.
117
Williams 2010: 157, discussing this line, points out that Roman discourses about masculinity are not
always as straightforward as they are here. Roman masculinity is not embodied in sexual practices (such as
the passive role in intercourse or adultery); rather an effeminate man is imagined as dominated, whether by
another person or their own desire. He also surveys the evidence for the appeal of young men as sexual
object, a concern not exclusive to satire (78-84).
190
The paradox of the shifting signification of beauty and ugliness—whereby having a
physical deformity becomes advantageous because it does not attract the sexual attention
of dastardly predators—is jointed meaningfully with the shift from the “world” of satire
(the corruptor), to that of declamation, populated by evil tyrants, to the Roman world of
“historical” tyrants.118
Whereas in previous sections, the shift into a “satirical” world—and the
limitations necessarily coupled with that shift—were enacted by the sardonic mockery of
Democritus’ voice or selective perspectivization, here that shift comes from the
selectivity of the topic embraced by Juvenal for the next forty lines, adultery. We may
lose sight somewhat of Democritus’ voice in the ensuing section, but the key feature of
that voice—its selectivity—certainly features in Juvenal’s discussion of the perils of
beauty.
Bracketing the section off with another second person appeal to the hopeful
parent, this time in the form of an injunction to “go off now and be delighted in the
beauty of your youth” (i nunc et iuvenis specie laetare tui, 10.310), Juvenal warns of the
“dangers” (discrimina, 10.311) which await the young charge even after he grows up.
Rather than be the target of sexual predators, as before, he will become a celebrated
mercenary lover himself (adulter/ publicus, 10.311-12) and thereby run the risk of getting
caught by a jealous husband and suffering satirically escalating penalties: “death…bloody
lashes…and, for certain lovers, one mullet up the gullet” (necat…cruentis/ verberibus,
quosdam moechos et mugilis intrat, 10.316-317). Juvenal climaxes with the punishment
(perhaps) least physically serious but most humiliating—and thus, most appropriate to
118
Courtney ad loc. lists examples of declamatory topoi in each element of the depiction of the tyrant. Nero
is said to have castrated and then taken as bride one Sporus, who, unlike the ephebum above, was decidedly
not freeborn (Suet. Nero 28; Dio Cass. 62.28.3).
191
satire.119 Though these dangers do not have much other mention in Juvenal,120 they
certainly have a satirical pedigree in Horace. One need recall not only the hilarious
climax in Sermones 1.2, which features a Horace fleeing for his life with his pants around
in ankles in fear for his safety (metuat…egomet mi./ discincta tunica fugiendum est ac
pede nudo, ne nummi pereant aut puga aut denique fama./ deprehendum miserum est, H.
Serm.1.2.131-134), but also the list of sufferings endured by sexually unrestrained, which
include scourging, as here (ille flagellis/ ad mortem caesus, H. Serm.2.1.41-42), being
thrown off a building, ransoming, and even (in Horace’s own crescendo) castration (H.
Serm.2.1.37-46).
Closer to Juvenal’s heart is the turn to insatiable female desire with which the rest
of the section is occupied, recalling various salacious sections of Satire 6. First, assuming
the man becomes a willing adulterer, Juvenal describes the abjections to which the
women will sink out of desire (10.318-323).121 The claim that the women drunk on
passion will hand over her jewelry to her lover (exuet omnem/ corporis ornatum, 320-21)
is especially forceful in light of the attachment that women have to jewelry and ornament,
according to “earlier” Juvenal (nil non permittit mulier sibi, turpe putat nil/ cum viridis
gemmas collo circumdedit et cum/ auribus extentis magnos commisit elenchus, 6.457-59).
Similarly, the attribution of women’s character to “dripping loins” (udis/ inguinibus,
10.321-22) mirrors the moist imagery of women’s reactions to the pantomime early in
Satire 6: chironomon Ledam molli saltante Bathyllo/ Tuccia vesicae non imperat (6.63119
That is, the forcible insertion of the grey mullet into the anus (cf. Catullus 15.16ff), similar in kind to the
Greek punishment for adultery, raphanizô, as at Aristophanes Nub.1083.
120
Though Cf. 6.44: quem totiens texit perituri cista Latini, referring to the protagonist of the adultery
mime, though the punishment is not mentioned. For more on the scene in context, see Ch. 4, Section D.
121
It is not immaterial that Juvenal loses sight of his main point for a moment, that is, the inherent dangers
of beauty whether being the active pursuer or the passive recipient of passion.
192
64). Finally, Juvenal references his previous turn back at lines 219-226 into the world of
satirical assault and away from the Democritean task of realigning incorrect impressions
of the world by mention of the notorious adulteress Oppia (sive est haec Oppia sive
Catulla, 10.322). Again, these details and cross-references back to another brand of
Juvenalian satire reflect the failure of his discourse to be the all-embracing vision which
he intended at the outset. Earlier in Satire 10 Juvenal’s single-minded focus on the
negative and the satiric techniques that underscored that myopia disenabled his “new”
approach.122 Here it is those direct references back to past obsessions that cloud Juvenal’s
ability to depict the “real” world, rather than an imaginary cesspool of vice and sin.
This impression is only increased when, in the next sections, Juvenal tackles
women who are not only insatiable but aggressive and thereby deadly. There comes
another imaginary outburst, objecting that Juvenal’s equation of forma and improbitas is
not the inevitable conclusion that Juvenal claims: “‘But what harm can beauty due to a
chaste soul?’” (‘sed casto quid forma nocet?’, 10.324). No matter, says, Juvenal, since
the beautiful man will be subject to the passionate and destructive whims of powerful
women. Though the text of the following lines is garbled,123 Juvenal makes clear
reference to two dramatic exempla of amorous fervor: Stheneboea towards Bellerophon
and Phaedra towards Hippolytus.124 It is no coincidence that the figures are drawn from
the stage: not only does it re-introduce the motif of satirical spectacle that is enacted in
122
Though one may note the satiric force of the deflation of myth in calling the rich matrona’s lover tuus
Endymion (10.318), mocking the pretensions of focalizing one’s desires through mythological models;
Mars is similarly deflated as an example of an adulterer caught in the act at ll. 313-14—a good pedigree!
123
Markland claimed a missing line after 325, which Courtney supplements, e.g. as hospita cum stuprum
suaderet sive noverca, Courtney ad 325. Knoche deleted line 326, omitted in one ms., entirely.
124
Euripidean characters, likewise paired at Arist. Fr. 1043ff. by Aristophanes’ Aeschylus, speaking of
shameful matter—women in love—which he himself would not produce.
193
the following scene of Messalina redux, but it is also resembles a similar catalogue of
female murderousness using characters from Greek tragedy in Sat. 6: “Many Danaids and
Eriphylas run into you in the streets, every morning! Nor does any district lack its
Clytemnestra” (occurrent multae tibi Belides atque Eriphylae/ mane, Clytemnestram
nullus non vicus habebit, 6.655-56).125 The implication in occurrent—that you can’t help
but “bump into” these vicious women—of the overlap between modern life and the tragic
stage is especially relevant here, where Phaedra and Stheneboea, the most vicious women
(mulier saevissima, 10.328) are depicted as if real dangerous Roman matrons.
Indeed, Juvenal transitions from the mythological to the historical, similarly given
a dramatic cast,126 moving on to perhaps the most notorious figure from Satire 6, the
meretrix Augusta herself, Messalina. Here, Juvenal stages the sham marriage forced onto
Gaius Silius, dispensing with concerns about realigning values and moving to pure
satirical attack and exposure. He begins by simplifying for his reader the dilemma of poor
Gaius: “Tell me, what you do you think should be said to the one whom the wife of
Caesar has become fixated on?” (elige quidnam/ suadendum esse putes cui nubere
Caesaris uxor/ destinat, 10.329-31). Whereas Juvenal must go “undercover” to depict
what happens behind the curtain at the brothel,127 Juvenal depicts Messalina staging
herself for all to see (palam…in hortis, 334) with the props appropriate for a Roman
wedding: a veil (parato/ flammeolo, 10.333-34); a dowry (ritu decies centena dabuntur/
125
For a full account of the dramatic and metatheatrical implications of the lines, see Ch. 4.D.
126
See Maier 1983, though, as with the Sejanus scene, she fails to consider the possible satirical
implications of the techniques of the theater.
127
For the problems of satiric reliability in depicting what happens “behind closed doors” in Juvenal, see
Braund and Raschke 2002: 63-70.
194
antiquo, 10.335-36); witnesses: (veniet cum signatoribus auspex, 10.336).128 He
addresses Messalina herself, questioning whether she believes she can keep the truth
from being exposed: “did you really think these things could stay secret, committed to
only a few? (haec tu secreta et paucis commissa putabas? 10.337).
Yet the narrative of Silius also serves to conjure a competing version. Not only
does the account of the doomed marriage previously appear in Tacitus’ Annales (11.2638), but Juvenal certainly means for us to compare the two accounts. Indeed, his account
is incomplete unless one recognizes its allusion to Tacitus’ version, because he never
explicitly names his exemplary victim of beauty and female lust, only alludes to him as
“the best and most beautiful youth of the patrician class…” (optimus hic et formonissimus
idem/ gentis patriciae, 10.331-2).129
As Christopher Nappa has shown, the main discrepancy between Juvenal’s
version and Tacitus’ is the agency of Silius: in Tacitus, he is energetic and proactive in
pursuing a marriage with Messalina in order to overthrow Claudius (11.26.1-2), while
Juvenal’s Silius is the passive victim of the lust of a powerful woman (rapitur miser,
10.332).130 Nappa argues that for each author the scene is a paradigm of some larger
point in his thematic program. For Tacitus, Messalina’s marriage and subsequent
downfall is illustrative of the instability of Claudius’ court; for Juvenal, Messalina
128
See Hersch 2010 for these symbols of a legitimate wedding. They certainly evoke another perverted
marriage in Juvenal, that of Gracchus and the cornicen in Sat. 2 (cf. flammea summit, 2.124;
quadringenta…sestertia dotem, 2.117).
129
Keane 2012: 423.
130
Nappa 2010: 198, points out that Silius is not the subject of a single active verb in the whole passage.
195
represents an example of his broader satiric topos of the control of powerful and
dangerous women, over even supremely powerful men.131
When Juvenal does return to how the misguided wish for beauty is selfdestructive, he does so in a formally unusual way. In the following lines, he projects the
dilemma of Silius onto the reader himself:
non nisi legitime uolt nubere. quid placeat dic.
ni parere uelis, pereundum erit ante lucernas;
si scelus admittas, dabitur mora paruula, dum res
nota urbi et populo contingat principis aurem.
dedecus ille domus sciet ultimus. interea tu
obsequere imperio, si tanti uita dierum
paucorum. quidquid leuius meliusque putaris,
praebenda est gladio pulchra haec et candida ceruix.
(10.338-345)
340
He does not want to be given away in marriage, unless it’s lawful. Tell me what you
would want to do. If you do not wish to obey, you’ll have to die before morning; if you
give in, you’ll the tiniest of delays until the matter becomes known to the city and people
and reaches the ear of the princeps. That one is always the last to know the shame of his
household. Meanwhile you follow the command, if life for a few more days is worth that
much to you. Whatever you think lighter and better, you still have to hand over your
pretty white neck to the executioner’s sword.
This conceit to project Silius’ dilemma onto the audience, and the subsequent
pointlessness of “choice” that the dilemma illustrates, also serves to prioritize Juvenal’s
version of events as the real lesson of the story. The irony of erasing Silius’ choice is that
it paradoxically underscores Juvenal’s in constructing his satiric argument. Silius is
already doomed no matter what he chooses; his neck is destined for execution because of
the desire of Messalina (344-45).
Further, the inevitability of the choice underscores the meaningless of the
intention of the whole satire: no matter what concrete thing one prays for, it leads
131
Nappa 2010: 201-2 compares the scene to 6.614-26 where Caesennia and Messalina are “responsible”
for the insanity and senility of their respective husbands.
196
inevitably to death or, at best, simple misery. Juvenal has yet to give a positive standard
for “reading the world,” a method of interpretation and valuation that would reorient our
(inevitably foolish) desires. Juvenal had initially claimed to correct our impressions, but
instead has merely demolished them. Are we to wish to be an ugly, short-lived,
inglorious, dull-tongued, powerless Roman? Juvenal has exhaustively depicted only one
half of the world, the perniciosa and supervacua (10.54) and has entirely ignored the task
of redirecting those wishes. By projecting the reader into Silius’ hopeless position,
Juvenal at the climax of his satire has left us without tether, without escape from an
overwhelmingly bleak and incomplete vision of the world. Though lines 344-45 cap the
discussion of beauty, if one removes the significant words candida and pulchra, they
form a nice climax to the entire satire: whatever one chooses, one is cast inevitably into
doom.
F. The Answer Behind the Curtain
Juvenal detects this exasperation on our part and immediately voices it himself:
“Will men then desire nothing?” (nil ergo optabunt homines?, 10.346). Yet Juvenal, in
the next twenty lines, answers this question in a deliberately unsatisfying and ironic way.
Juvenal seems to only begrudgingly address our concerns with si consilium vis at line 346
(“if you really want my advice…”) and he directs our concerns to the gods themselves:
“Allow the divine powers themselves to weigh out what is suitable for us and what is
advantageous to our affairs. For the gods will give the fittest rather than the pleasant”
(permittes ipsis expendere numinibus quid/ conveniat nobis rebusque sit utile nostris;/
nam pro iucundis aptissima quaeque dabunt di, 10.347-49). The gods read the world
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better than men and thus can provide the “fittest” goods (aptissima, 10.349). Juvenal
returns explicitly to the notion of misery arising out of misinterpretation, confirmed in the
next line, in which men are described as “lead by the whim of our hearts and a blind,
powerful desire” (nos animorum/ inpulsu et caeca magnaque cupidine ducti, 10.350-51).
The metaphors and analogues from vision that Juvenal has peppered throughout the satire
are brought to bear by caeca at line 351: we misread and misunderstand what the gods
can see clearly (cf. line 352-53: illis/ notum qui pueri qualisque futura sit uxor).132 In a
return to his original conceit, Juvenal paints himself as revealing the world to our eyes as
it truly is.
The seemingly begrudging tone of line 346 (si consilium vis) becomes even more
prominent in the lines which precede the famous declaration orandum est ut sit mens
sana in corpore sano (10.356): “Well, so you can ask for something and make at your
precious temples an offering of guts and the blessed sausagettes of a bright white
piglet…” (ut tamen et poscas aliquid voveasque sacellis/ exta et candiduli divina
tomacula porci, 10.354-55). The cynical cast is unmistakable here, starting with the
opening words ut tamen. The introduction of a final clause paired with an adversative
particle provides the sense that the reader, inattentive to the entire train of thought of the
previous 350 lines, is desperate to find some purposeful sacrifice. If he must, Juvenal
sighs, he will provide that purpose. This irony continues in the explosion of dimunitives,
132
Considering the use of the 1st person in this passage (nos...petimus, ll. 350, 352), one must consider
where Juvenal positions himself in order to gain such preternatural understanding. Though some see this
rooted in a philosophical background (the seemingly Stoic references to the agency of the gods in ll. 348ff.,
the reference to Hercules in Juvenal’s final summation of what to wish for, Herculis aerumnas…saevosque
labores, l. 361; Dick 1969 argues for a Senecan background to the entire satire; Highet 1949 identifies an
Epicurean streak running through the conclusion of the poem), one could just as well see it rooted in
nothing at all, which confirms the operation of the Democritean filter coloring the supposedly “objective”
content. There is a certainly at least a hint of arrogance appropriate to the satirist in monstro quod ipse tibi
possis dare at line 364.
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three in only two lines (sacellis, candiduli, tomacula), which deride the place of sacrifice
and the offering itself, twice over. Traditionally line 356 was read as a positive
exhortation without reading the two lines which precede it.133 Exposing his Democritean
lens through his deflating choice of vocabulary, Juvenal has upended the straightforward
meaning of the text itself, prompting us to question how to read it.
It must be admitted that the lines that follow (357-362) are more
straightforward.134 They describe a seemingly positive set of desirable wishes, all internal
(freedom from fear and anxiety, a natural limit to age, steadfastness in the face of
adversity) as a counterpart to the externalized wishes already listed in the bulk of the
satire or the pleasures of sex or dining or comfort (et venere et cenis et pluma
Sardanapalli, 10.362). Besides the way those little sausagettes color these lines,135 one
might additionally point out the implications of cupiat nihil in line 360: Juvenal here
invalidates the choice of wishes altogether, just as he had problematized the possibility of
meaningful choice in the case of Gaius Silius just before. We are to surrender our agency,
which makes our worldview—to correcting which Juvenal has directed much of his
effort—meaningless anyway.
133
Mason 1963:121 had already noticed this discrepancy, as part of his interpretation of Juvenal’s main
purpose to demonstrate his wit and facility and power of expression. Lawall 1958 acknowledges the
problem of the “Democritean character” of the lines (following Eichholz 1956) but insists that Juvenal “is
going beyond the tragedy and mockery symbolized by Heraclitus to a semi-philosophical conclusion” (31).
Courtney, too, ad loc., has recognized that the “irony is hardly opportune here as it casts doubt on the
sincerity of the following advice,” without considering that this might be the very point.
134
Still, Fishelov 1990 points to a certain clumsiness in the lines, particularly in the triple rhyme of
labores/potiores/labores at lines 359-61, as well as the reuse of the labores itself as a sign of the “playful
tone hidden in the description of the Epicurean sage” (382). Cf. the jingle mentioned above in lines 256-57.
135
E.g. Fishelov 1990 believes that even the “desirable picture of the Epicurean sage depicted on lines 35762” seems to be in doubt (382). For Fishelov, this doubt is cast by the mechanism of the “continual
pendulum” of Satire 10’s momentum, wherein the reader’s wishes for positive outcomes are repeatedly
squashed.
199
His final estimation should sound strikingly familiar: semita certe/ tranquillae per
virtutem patet unica vitae (“A one and only path of a tranquil life lays open: virtue,”
10.363-64). This recalls, with remarkable coincidence, Juvenal’s definition of nobility in
Sat. 8: nobilitas sola est atque unica virtus (8.20). Just as that line had helped to activate
the problems of definition of nobility which plagued Satire 8, reflecting and manifesting
the slipperiness of noble roles in Rome, so too does this line cap a satire also concerned
with the practical implications of definition and interpretation. Previous scholars have
identified the overwhelming cynicism of the Democritean tone adopted in Satire 10, but
their conclusions fail to point to any possible larger meaning to this cynical outlook, other
than as a progression in the development of Juvenal’s voice.
Yet I think that the notion of a singular, unitary path (semita certe…unica) to
tranquility has been severely ironized by the flashes of different modes of perspectivizing
throughout the poem. The poem aims at singularity, yet its mechanics reveal multiplicity.
Juvenal uses the perspective of Democritus to open up a question of interpretative choice:
will we buy into Democritus’ interpretation of the world? Certainly many have. I think,
however, that the self-conscious adoption of a lens itself is meaningful; it embodies a
program of problematizing arrival at a fixed meaning for the world and for satire, the
difficulty in establishing permanent values for social roles, physical objects, or outward
signs.
This conflict has bled over into the world of satire itself, with satire presenting an
endless feedback loop where it demonstrates and reflects the problem of establishing
meaning in Rome, and meaning in satire itself. Satire 10 concerns itself with an objective
presentation of the world and claims to realign our misreading of the values which we
200
have attached to goods, such as longevity, beauty, power, or position which are decidedly
“apparent,” both in the sense of being illusory and externalized by the mechanics of satire
itself. That Juvenal offers his reading as explicitly colored by the gaze of Democritus
upon the ridiculous crowd at Rome reinforces the very problem of establishing fixed and
objective value. Though Juvenal moves beyond Rome in Satire 10, employing exempla
from mythological and legendary storerooms, it intimately shares the problems
expounded in Satires 2 and 8. The issues raised apply not only to Rome but to satire:
external appearances and actions are an untrustworthy guide to internal meaning, the
definition and significance of terms is slippery, value is attached to things in an arbitrary
and misguided way.
The final lines (“You have no power—at least if we had good sense; it is we, we
who have made you a goddess, Fortune, and who helped you ascend heavenward”;
nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia: nos te,/ nos facimus, Fortuna, deam caeloque
locamus, 10.365-66)136 feature the final appearance of Fortune at a key juncture. They
have been seen as a positive reflection of Juvenal’s Democritean persona, which, as we
recall, raised its middle finger to Fortune. Yet, as with Pompey, Fortune simultaneously
recalls instability of position—smiling as it lifts and casts down mankind pell-mell
(Fortuna…adridens, 6.605-6)—and the subsequent inability of Juvenal to arrive at a final
meaning. The overlap between Juvenal and Democritus is confirmed in this final tag, as
well as all of the implications of that overlap. Juvenal speaks for himself “through”
136
It is controversial whether these lines should be included or not. They are repeated nearly verbatim at
14.315-316, though the final half-line has been changed. Knoche, following Guyet, in his edition deleted
them, which leaves the line on virtue as the final line of the poem. A neat conclusion to be sure, but
unsatisfying in a different way, since it provides a false impression of simplicity and neatness that the poem
demonstrably lacks. It is appropriate to retain them, as Clausen and Braund do in their editions.
201
Democritus, but, in the end, his totalizing project comes to naught, in a suitable reflection
of the world he aims to depict.
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Chapter 4: The Devils Inside: Female “Threats” to Roman Satire in Juvenal 6
By the standards of one conception of Juvenal’s body of work, as “saeva
indignatio,” the Sixth Satire may well be Juvenal’s masterpiece. Despite the intractability
of its structure,1 it contains some of Juvenal’s most arresting and outrageous images,
crowned early by the scandalous depictions of the nocturnal dalliances of Messalina, the
meretrix Augusta (6.118).2
Keeping in mind this imagistic quality and the self-reflexive mechanics of both
identifying and reflecting referential and representational transgression that were
identified in Satires 2, 8, and 10 (dramatization, objectification, schemes of metonymic
correspondence), this study will now embark on a reading of Satire 6. Each of these
readings demonstrated explicit “crises of meaning” at play in Juvenal’s Rome: the
cognitive dissonance of Roman masculinity in Satire 2; the erosion of the discourse of
nobilitas in Satire 8; the inability to properly interpret and value the world in Satire 10.
Further, as I argued, there were metapoetic directions in each of these satires that the
issues discussed would be self-consciously exhibited and enacted by Juvenal’s satirical
mechanics; thus, Juvenal’s literary product became a homologous representation of those
1
There has yet to be a fully successful exposition of the structure: the attempts of Highet 1954: 267-68 n.2,
and Anderson 1982: 255-76 (orig. 1952) are dismissed by Coffey 1976: 246n.3, who notes that the
catalogue form was often used in antiquity for misogynistic literature. Courtney 1980: 259 similarly
suggests that the poem may originally have been conceived with a tighter structure, but became crowded
with secondary points which suggested themselves to Juvenal as he was composing it. Smith 1980 argues
that the poem is structured as a narrative, which traces Postumus’ marriage and subsequent misery, finally
culminating in his murder by his bride. The reading is ingenious, but, for obvious reasons, not entirely
convincing.
2
The visual quality of the satire is well noticed. For example, Smith 2005: 126 describes the satire’s “little
vignettes”; Weisen 1989: 730, discussing Satire 6, notes that Juvenal excels in presenting subjective
situations externally; Plaza 2006 posits an “alternating rhythm between theatrical showing and dismissive
commentary in Juvenal’s portrait of women” (138).
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crises. To turn to a poem which contains similar problems but which does not internally
challenge its representational authority, Satire 6, this chapter will demonstrate how the
notion of Juvenal’s problematization of his mechanics can still be profitably applied in
considering the intersection between content and method in other satires. Although I will
draw especially on the pertinent parallels in content and technique between Satire 2 and 6
(which taken together form a unit on the apocalypse of Roman gender), concerns about
language and perspectivization will also be examined.
In Satire 6, the offenses of Roman women (and certain men) are shown to
challenge fixed notions of masculinity and femininity, and thus to challenge the
ideological ground on which Roman identity is based.3 Juvenal’s satire is forced to
grapple with women who are changing the blueprints of Roman language and thought,
while using the very categories which are being renegotiated by these women. Juvenal’s
depiction of women who blithely rewrite rules of gender and society will thus run counter
to his satirical techniques of depicting these women. In an analysis of the final lines, I
will suggest that one important reason Juvenal fulminates so vigorously against women
here is the danger they pose not just to Rome, but specifically to his literary enterprise.
Using the insights about satiric meaning and technique unlocked in my readings
of Satires 2, 8, and 10, I will discuss selected scenes from Satire 6 which focus on Roman
women changing their sex, or their natural appearance, or their social status, and reflect
3
See Henderson 1999: 175-179 for the centrality of ‘woman’ as a lens for constructing cultural categories,
usually hierarchal, with sexual difference used as the basis for creating other differences. Johnson 1996 is
the most thorough reading on the way that Satire 6 unconsciously reflects the decline of Roman masculinity
and power, inverse to the increase in liberated femininity depicted. Overall, he discusses the gender
performance of men—self-construction, in psychoanalytic terms—and how the Roman sign-system went
haywire. Similarly, Gold 1998 claims that Satire 6 is less about “women” than what they symbolize,
namely, rips in the ideological system. As I remarked in reference to Henderson 1997 and Satire 8 (see Ch.
2, Section B), I hope to add another dimension to these discussions by showing the poetological (rather
than ideological) implications of the world Juvenal creates.
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on the implications these scenarios have on satire’s project of depicting Rome. I will
address, in turn, some of Juvenal’s “unsexed” 4 creations (such as the female gladiator or
the gender-bending men in the O fragment); Juvenal’s portrayal of women distorting their
appearance (particularly through makeup); and Juvenal’s revelations on the sexual
indiscretions of women (especially with actors, their social inferiors). In the end, I will
offer a new reading of the closing section (beginning with the famously programmatic
lines comparing his satire to a new-fangled form of tragedy, 6.634-38) based on the
notion that the feminine perversions Juvenal has attempted to document have irreparably
“damaged” the DNA of satire itself.
Before discussing these portraits, I wish to make some preparatory remarks
regarding some differences between Satires 2 and 6 and, in turn, my discussions of the
two satires. First, rather than offer a exhaustive and sequential reading of the poem, as I
have performed with Satires 2, 8, and 10, I will only discuss significant selections. This is
not to thoughtlessly sidestep the unwieldy and messy reality of the satire itself. Instead,
this reading of significant parts of Satire 6 will also take account of the poem’s overall
structure, which is framed by three significant moments: the Golden Age scene (6.1-20),
the discussion of Rome’s decline (6.286-305), and the final paragraph on the overlap
between tragic villainesses and contemporary Roman women (6.634-660). This reading
will reflect an understanding about the way satire works gleaned from reading Satire 2
from start to finish as written.
Second, this reading will uncover slightly different tensions tied to Juvenal’s
satiric depiction in Satire 6 versus Satire 2. There is a significant distinction to be made
4
This odd word is used by, inter alios, Courtney 1980: 257 to refer to the section on the “blue-stocking”
(434-56), itself an odd (and unintentionally revealing) anachronism: see n. 25 below.
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between the leading ideological dyad of Satire 2 (masculinity/perversity) and that of
Satire 6 (masculinity/ femininity). The internal quality “masculinity” is essentially
inscrutable and “subjective”; that is, inner character and perversity can only be
represented (by satirist and Roman alike) by outer qualities. Certainly the Romans had
standards for what behavior would constitute deviations from masculinity,5 yet it is
exactly a tension between conflicting external self-representations which ignites the
opening of Satire 2, on hypocritical moralists. According to Juvenal’s traditional Roman
ideology, on the other hand, sex, like birth, is an “objective” characteristic, an essential
internal quality which should correspond to a predefined set of external traits. More
recent feminist perspectives aside,6 I will stand firm to a binary between the biological
fact of “sex” and the societal norm “gender” which is predicated upon that fact because
Satire 6 is so concerned with showing moments where the latter should, but does not,
conform to the former.
A result of this shift between ideological binaries (from masculinity and its
deviants to masculine vs. feminine) is a subsequent shift in conception of Juvenal’s
mechanic. For, while Juvenal’s technique (as he demonstrates them for us) might be
termed “revealing” or “exposing” in Satire 2, it is relegated more to “admiring” and
“recording” in Satire 6.7 This “relegation,” so to speak, from active exposer to more
passive transcriber, will have significant implications for satire’s impotent perspective on
5
Williams 2010: 137-245.
6
E.g. Henderson 1999: 177-78, which, reflecting perhaps more radical recent feminist arguments, suggests
that the assertion of the “fact” of chromosomal difference is yet another ideological strategy of ordering the
body.
7
Even activities that take place in broad daylight in Satire 2, such as Creticus’ see-through garment, rely on
a model of satirical exposure, visually highlighting for the audience something that we would have seen
without the intervention of the satirist; see the discussion of the multivalence of perluces (2.78) above (Ch
1. B).
206
the events it records throughout Satire 6, a new facet to the notion of satirical
problematization of categories. Juvenal’s language depends on a fixed paradigm of
moral resonance in its depiction of Rome, yet the objects of Juvenal’s scorn will blatantly
ignore this resonance.
Finally, I should note that in many ways my reading will intersect with previous
readings which discuss, through a feminist lens, how women in Juvenal are reinventing
the normative codes of Roman gender.8 I will venture in a new direction, however, by
suggesting the metapoetic implications of this social development (as Juvenal depicts it).9
Juvenal begins his satire with a famously ambiguous section on an imagined
Golden Age that immediately suggests that moral interpretation of the past, and the
8
E.g., Gold 1998: 382; Johnson 1996: 176-77. Roman women could also fit into Knoche 1970’s account of
the topsy-turvy dynamism of Juvenal’s Rome, where social orders are similarly coming undone (508ff.)
9
As throughout this work, this parenthesis is a nod to the necessary gap between the “actual” Roman world
and the Rome as Juvenal depicts it. Yet this is especially relevant here, when one risks taking Juvenal’s
description of Roman women run mad at face value. Indeed, our reaction to Satire 6 taps directly into the
significance of reading Juvenal in the 21st century: do we see Juvenal as a representative of patriarchy,
verbally raping women by depicting them as almost daemonically powerful in order to give Roman men
further reason to quash them? (Richlin 1983: 202-206; Gold 1994 and Gold 1998; cf. Shumate 2006: 19-32,
who notes how women collapse into a monolithic Other along with effeminates and foreigners). Is this
speaker merely a parody of angry Roman patriarchy who would have been rejected by the enlightened
Roman audience, as persona theorists suggest (e.g. Winkler 1983: 207-35)? Is there a hidden triumph of
women, as suggested by the ingenious “resisting reading” of Maria Plaza (Plaza 2006: 127-55)? Was there
really an upsurge in female authority in the home in the early 2nd century C.E.? John Henderson reminds us
of how Classics as a field, in its construction of Rome, is implicated in a similar process of gendering
ideology as Rome itself (Henderson 1999: 178-79); one does not forget that Gilbert Highet as recently as a
half century ago seemed to sympathize with the “truth” of Juvenal’s position (Highet 1954: 100). I do not
suggest that these issues are irrelevant, but rather that, for my reading, these issues are subordinate to a
more fundamental crisis that Juvenal depicts concerning categorical thinking and the ability of language to
encompass reality. Indeed, part of the scope of this project is to suggest a contemporary resonance to
Juvenal, not merely as a document of Roman ideological attitudes, many of which have become repugnant
(cf. Richlin 1991: 158-79, on rape in Ovid’s corpus as a reminder of the continuing relevance of depictions
of gendered violence in antiquity), but as an example of a writer grappling with serious issues on the
meaning and purpose of literature by depicting it entangled in a contemporary external (i.e.
social/ideological/etc.) crisis. There is an analagous impulse in the Roman historiographers, who draw on a
tradition which equates recording great deeds with doing them (cf. Livy Prae.; Sall. Cat. 1-5; Tac. Agr. 1.1,
Ann. 1.1-3; see e.g. Feldherr 1998: 32, who discusses the significance of this cultural impulse in Livy). A
similar complexity can be found in reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and its tortured attitude to
colonialism in a postcolonial world. Paul Armstrong 2011: 102-104, has recently proposed that Heart of
Darkness is best read in a simultaneously bifurcating way: it is certainly a product of its time (and is thus
“racist,” as Nobel laureate Chinua Achebe controversially accused), but it also presciently grapples with the
contradictions of colonialism that would be explicitly confronted decades after Conrad’s death in 1924 .
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categories which underpin this interpretation, are no longer straightforward in the present
age:
Credo Pudicitiam Saturno rege moratum
in terris visamque diu, cum frigida parvas
praeberet spelunca domos ignemque laremque
et pecus et dominos communi clauderet umbra,
silvestrem montana torum cum sterneret uxor
frondibus et culmo vicinarumque ferarum
pellibus, haut similis tibi, Cynthia, nec tibi, cuius
turbavit nitidos extinctus passer ocellos,
sed potanda ferens infantibus ubera magnis
et saepe horridior glandem ructante marito.
5
(6.1-10)
I believe that Chastity lingered around on the land and was seen for a while, while Saturn
was king, while a cold cave would provide scanty shelter and would enclose the hearth
and home and flock and masters with a common shadiness, while a country wife would
spread a forested bed with leaves and straw and the skins of neighboring animals—not
like you at all, Cynthia, nor you whose dainty shining eyelets the dead sparrow wrecked,
but a woman with great udders for the drinking by big children and often hairier than her
acorn-belching groom.
Besides the somewhat disquieting affect of the opening word credo,10
Commentators have long pointed out that the features of his primitive couple Juvenal
chooses to foreground are less than complimentary. To review: while creating a homey
domestic scene of marital simplicity, some of the details by which Juvenal defines the
couple, such as the hairiness of the wife (montana…uxor…horridior, 5, 10) and her large,
pendulous breasts (properly, “udders”: potanda ferens infantibus ubera marito, 9), and
climaxing with an uncouth belch from her partner (glandem ructante marito, 10), seem
by their flippancy to introduce ambivalence towards idealizing the past.
10
Why does Juvenal cast this opening gambit into indirect discourse? By the very fact of emerging from
the mouth of the speaker, it is clear that this is what he believes. Courtney points out the contrast of credo
at line 1 with forsitan at line 16, but this hardly answers the question. Though I agree with recent
commentators’ identifications of serious methodological flaws in the persona-readings inaugurated for
Juvenal by William Anderson (see the objections in Introduction, Section A), this may perhaps be a piece
of objective textual evidence that Juvenal’s words are refracted through a speaker with a discernibly
different personality; Nadeau 2011 17-19 (ad 1-2) recognizes a similar fracture at credo and pursues this
notion aggressively, though not convincingly, in his commentary, arguing for Satire 6 as a dialogue
between two voices, whom he names Decimus and Iunius—analogous to a vaudeville act with straight man
and a funny man (14-16).
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The presence of this ambivalence has led to widespread and continuing debate on
the moral seriousness of the passage. To simplify, there are three main schools. One,
Juvenal retains his traditional title of laudator temporis acti.11 Two, Juvenal is depicting
the past seriously, without idealizing its harsher features.12 Three, Juvenal is actually
mocking the notion of praising the past, by casting it in ridiculous terms.13
Rather than give a definitive answer, I propose that the ambiguity of Juvenal’s
portrayal of the primitive couple here has another function. Considering the numerous
concrete details which Juvenal uses to realize his picture (the creation of the cave as a
backdrop, 2-3; the pile of leaves and animal skins which functions as a bed, 5-7), might
not the ambivalence created in lines 10-11 suggest that straightforward reading of such
signs is inherently problematic? Juvenal uses externalizing details—which are intended to
promote straightforward reading, a moral transitive property where a = b = (im)moral—to
11
Scott 1927: 101-102, for example, recognizes the Golden Age descriptions as sincere, even if they
contain a certain light mockery; cf. Tennant 2002: 164-67; Jenkyns 1982: 162-68. Some complexities:
Plaza 2006: 325-337, in a close reading of this passage alongside two other extended depictions of an
idealized past in Juvenal from later satires (13.38-52 and 14.166-71), places the inhabitants of the Golden
Age among Juvenal’s “monsters”, yet assert that they should counted as positive models, even if admittedly
placed at the periphery of Juvenal’s overall dim view of life. Though Braund does not take Juvenal’s
depiction of Rome at face value, she does seem to argue that the moral symbolismof the past, such as the
country as the place of moral purity, depicted at 6.1-20 straightforwardly reflects Roman attitudes,
particularly towards historical decline (Braund 1989: 45). Anderson 1982: 258 sees ambivalence in the
prologue—perhaps the world of the past is not so desirable—but asserts that the lines introduce the theme
of Pudor and its absence in contemporary Rome.
12
Singleton 1972 examines in detail some of the intellectual background behind the prologue to Juvenal 6,
particularly the harsh primitivism of Lucretius 5.925-1104 (though this flattens similar issues in Lucretius
on the nature of the prehistoric age: cf. Campbell 2003: 10-15), and concludes that Juvenal is heralding
civilization over an ideal primitive state while recognizing that civilized development necessarily implies
the emergence of sin. Courtney ad 6.1-24 also points out that Juvenal’s harshness, according to the model
of decline introduced later (6.286ff.), “links morality with a hard life” though Courtney also recognizes that
Juvenal “likes to deflate even what he holds up for imitation.”
13
Winkler 1983: 23-58 argues that objects of the past are consistently degraded in Juvenal, and identifies
this cynicism with the real Juvenal. Weisen 1989: 724 notes that the origin of both of the straw-women
depicted here, the Golden Age wife and the contemporary lovers, are drawn from literature, with the lovers
transformed into characters from Roman love poetry (Cynthia and Lesbia in her sparrow poems, Cat. 2 and
3). Weisen uses this as fuel for his argument that part of Juvenal’s project involves an attack on “the
vacuity of culture of luxury and material abundance and of highly sophisticated language (as demonstrated
by the poem itself)” (724).
209
contradictory ends here, showcasing a picture once homely and ridiculous.14 Likewise,
doesn’t Juvenal’s momentary slip into the voice of the elegiac poet in line 8—the death
of Lesbia’s sparrow disturbs not her “eyes” (oculos) but her “little eyes” (ocellos)—
jeopardize the transparency of language? That the scene is set definitively in the distant
past defines the contemporary world as one where language and the categories they
create have already long been problematic. These lines appropriately set the stage for the
war between competing systems of meaning that is currently waged on the streets and in
the houses of Rome.
A. She Takes Just Like a Woman…
As we read those instances where Juvenal’s women openly flaunt traditional
gender categories, we should keep the opening in mind, because it introduces a satirical
universe where moral standards, as encased in visual signs, are muddled. For instance,
after a short but note-worthy depiction of the female litigator (6.242-45, including the
detail at line 244 of the libellos, i.e. legal briefs, which they carry around),15 Juvenal
introduces one of his most memorable creations in Satire 6, the female athlete:
Endromidas Tyrias et femineum ceroma
quis nescit, vel quis non vidit vulnera pali,
14
There may be a similar effect in Petronius’ Satyricon; when Encolpius enters the hut of the witch
Oenothoe, the narrative erupts into a rapturous song describing her hut in idealizing terms which are meant
to recall Callimachus’ Hecale (Cf. Courtney 2001: 203). Yet the “objective” picture Encolpius offers in
prose shows the ramshackle and shabby dwelling as it really is. Beck 1973: 48-49 analyzes the scene as
showing how Encolpius the narrator highlights the naivete of his “earlier” self through the inconcinnity of
prose and verse. The relevance to this passage is to remind ourselves that the “real” version of our
conception of our environment is continually negotiated and contingent.
15
Courtney ad loc is troubled by the dissonance between these lines and Laronia’s explicit rejection of
women acting as advocates at 2.51-52 (numquid nos agimus causas, civilian iura/ novimus aut ullo strepitu
for a vestra movemus?). Yet, as Braund 1995: 211-213 shows, Laronia’s (or rather Juvenal-throughLaronia’s) concern at that moment is to deflect claims that women are entering male societal roles (she also
denies female participation in active sexuality and athletics, 2.49 and 53, respectively) as a way to spotlight
men entering the female sphere.
210
quem cavat adsiduis rudibus scutoque lacessit
atque omnis implet numeros dignissima prorsus
Florali matrona tuba, nisi si quid in illo
pectore plus agitat veraeque paratur harenae?
quem praestare potest mulier galeata pudorem,
quae fugit a sexu? vires amat. haec tamen ipsa
vir nollet fieri; nam quantula nostra voluptas!
250
(6.246-254)
Who doesn’t know about the Tyrian-red cloaks and ladies’ mud, or who hasn’t seen the
wounds on the stake, which the matron hollows out with blow after blow of the sword
and strikes with the shield and she also follows all the steps, right and ready for the sound
of the tuba at the Floralia—except if she aims at something more in her heart and is
prepared for the real arena? What shame can a helmeted woman display, who flees from
her sex? She loves the violence. Not that she actually would want to become a man—for
we don’t get enough pleasure!
Even from the outset, Juvenal’s language reflects the normative tension these
athletes embody. The opening details are explosively paradoxical: a coarse outer wrap
used during strenuous exercise to prevent a chill (endromidas, 246) has become luxurious
with the addition of the attribute “Tyrian” (Tyrias, 246); the adjective “womanly”
(femineum, 246) comes to modify a wrestling-ring (ceroma, 246)!16 Juvenal proceeds to
make clear how widespread this spectacle is: “who doesn’t know, who doesn’t see” (quis
nescit, vel quis non vidit, 247). There is a certain self-defeating irony in Juvenal’s ploy of
“anti-praeteritio,” his display to us of a representative of the disorder of gender in Rome
followed by an insistence on our familiarity with it.
It is precisely this paradoxical context which endows mere vivid description (such
as the nicks in the training post, described as “wounds,” vulnera, 247) with a moralizing
character: something that would be ordinary for a male gladiator becomes preposterous
and dangerous in the hands of a woman. Similarly, the insertion of matrona (250) in
reference to women’s games at the Floralia has the effect of recasting something ordinary
16
Plaza 2006: 139 argues that these details are added to make the figure less threatening by reminding the
reader that she is still biologically female: “She is meant to be a monster, neither male nor female, but the
imagery in fact suggests that she is both.”
211
to something perverse.17 The visual image of the “helmeted woman” (mulier galeata, 252)
is echoed immediately by explicit verbal comment in the relative clause, describing her
“fleeing from her sex” (quae fugit a sexu, 253).
Juvenal posits this woman as the realization of the porousness of gender, and each
new concrete or objectified detail, though morally neutral on its own, contributes to this
picture because of the context. The subsequent catalogue of gladiatorial props put up for
auction—her “baldric and arm-guards and crest and the half of a shin guard for her left
leg” (balteus et manicae et cristae crurisque sinistri/ dimidium tegimen, 6.256-57) or her
“greaves” (ocreas, 6.258)—is enough to conjure the absurd yet unsettling image of the
female gladiator.18 Yet these possessions appropriate from the men’s arena are
immediately put into stark relief by the insubstantial feminine garments which cause
discomfort: “These are the same ones who sweat in a thin robe, whose sensitive bits even
a silken scrap irritates” (hae sunt quae tenui sudant in cyclade, quarum/ delicias et
panniculus bombycinus urit, 6.259-60).19
This inconsistency reinforces why the female gladiator is so problematic: she
occupies a perverse liminal territory between woman and man. The visualized nature of
17
According to the scholiast ad loc, prostitutes used to fight at the Floralia like gladiators (meretrices nam
Floralibus ludis armis certabant gladiatoriis atque pugnabant). For more on the Floralia in the Republic
and early Empire, see Wiseman 1999. Courtney ad loc. points out the loaded juxtaposition (typical of
Juvenal) between Florali, a festival associated with prostitutes, and matrona. Plaza 2006: 136-137
discusses how this association is especially effective because of the stereotypical disjunction between
Roman lady and prostitutes that is itself manifest externally though the prostitutes’ donning of the toga. She
continues, “This matron skips the middle stage of the prostitute, and goes directly to invade the athlete’s
equipment, the male outfit at the maximum remove from her matronly role” (136).
18
Lines 256-57 (until the full stop) should be noted for combining, in a virtuosic sweep, Juvenal’s satirical
techniques of morally loaded inanimate objects (Cf. Jenkyns 1982 212 and Weisen 1989 728) and
dismembering objects into constituent and fragile parts (Weisen 1989 727; in the context specifically of
women’s bodies in Satire 6, Gold 1998 373ff.), since each item evokes the body part of the woman it
protects.
19
Cf. the discussion below (Section D) on women’s “selective” sea-sickness (ll. 93-102)
212
concrete detail (Juvenal specifically bids us to “look!” [aspice] at line 261) urges us
towards singular readings of Juvenal’s language (and, in turn, the ideology they promote),
yet his satiric object’s re-gendering is exactly the reason those objects have moral
significance. A paradox emerges: to portray an environment in which the line between
man and woman is becoming indistinct, he employs satiric objects whose moral charge
has altered because of that very environment. To land its punches, his satire must
accommodate the shifting ground which it ostensibly deplores.20 Juvenal does not merely
depends on his object’s existence to fuel his attack; the very linguistic methods with
which he attacks them depends on their subversion of convention.
Maria Plaza, in an in-depth study of the humor of Satire 6 using the feminist
technique of “resisting reading” pioneered by Judith Fetterly, includes this scene as an
example of a moment where the balance of power shifts from Juvenal’s dismissive
comments to the woman he portrays.21 According to Plaza, Juvenal’s attempts to assert
satiric authority over his objects fails, partially because their display is more captivating
than his comment.22 Plaza’s reading is certainly enticing for the modern progressive
20
Indeed, one could note the numerous transliterated Grecisms in this passage, e.g. endromidas or cyclade
(246, 259), which Courtney ad locc. identifies as critical. Doesn’t this, however, simultaneously point to
another disputed border, that between Latin and Greek? Juvenal himself lambasts women for the fashion of
speaking omnia Graece (6.187), while allowing himself the liberty of using untransliterated Greek (ζωὴ καὶ
ψυχή, l.195). In only one other place does Juvenal speak Greek in his own voice (the injunction γνῶθι
σεαυτόν at 11.27, ironically reapplied to financial rather than moral “self-knowledge”), and it is not
coincidental that the fascinating gender transgressor Naevolus is the only other direct Greek speaker in
Juvenal, characteristically perverting a quotation of the Odyssey at 9.37 (αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐφέλκεται ἄνδρα
σίδηρος, Od.16.294, 19.13 αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐφέλκεται ἄνδρα κίναιδος.). Here the common process of codeswitching in the Empire (On code-switching in Latin, focusing on Cicero as a case-study, see Adams 2003
297-416) takes on a thematic and moral significance. This foil of Foreign/Greek vs. Latin(ity) similarly
underlies Juvenal’s attack on the devotion of Roman women to foreign cults and astrologers that makes a
large portion of the end of Satire 6 (6.508-591).
21
Plaza 2006: 127-55.
22
In her formulation, “the overwhelming presence of triumphing transgressive women will not be erased by
a lesser amount of commentary” (Plaza 2006: 154).
213
reader, but her discussion may misread the import of Juvenal’s techniques. For Plaza, in
positing a twofold dynamic of women displayed and then subsequently attacked by the
satirist, seems to ignore the satiric value of the display itself. In fact, this very method of
display is the attack itself, and, if women appear to come out on top, it only reinforces the
atmosphere of crisis which pervades the satire. Depiction of their “empowerment” is both
the object and the substance of Juvenal’s attack.
The climax of the scene urges the audience to laugh when a woman is forced to
admit her femininity by using the ancient chamber-pot used exclusively by women (ride
positis scaphium cum sumitur armis, 6.264). Yet, as Plaza points out, the structure of the
sentence, which brackets scaphium cum sumitur with positis armis, leaves the weapons
set aside in view, so to speak, of the reader.23 Though here Juvenal gets the last laugh
(ride) by having “sex” conquer “gender” (biology over cultural construction),24 the line
nonetheless encapsulates the contradiction that Juvenal’s female gladiator embodies, a
clash of outward signs indicating the difficulty of reading gender in Juvenal’s Rome.
Juvenal both reflects and even participates in this trend. Our laughter is certainly uneasy.
Juvenal elsewhere explicitly points to women’s transgressions into male territory.
In his attack on female intelligentsia (6.434-56),25 he claims that “the woman who wants
to look like she’s overly learned and eloquent ought to hike up her slacks to mid-calf,
sacrifice a pig to Silvanus, and be bathed for a penny” (nam quae docta nimis cupit et
23
Plaza 2006: 138.
24
Cf. Gold 1998: “Women are often described as trying to emulate men in their behavior, but they cannot
ever become men in substance or mind since their fundamental beings are characterized by qualities
completely opposite to those ascribed to men.” (376)
25
It is interesting that modern commentators in English have often employed the outmoded euphemism
“blue-stocking,” referring to a stratum of female intellectuals in 18 th-century England, when referring to
this treatment of educated women. It is a vivid reminder of the troubling continuities of ideology that we
sometimes perpetuate in our efforts towards “objective” commentary of the past.
214
facunda videri/ crure tenus medio tunicas succingere debet,/ caedere Silvano porcum,
quadrante lavari, 6.445-47).26 If she wants to look smart and eloquent (i.e. she wants to
look like a man), Juvenal says, she should go whole-hog, namely by adopting other
external signs (wearing a tunica instead of a stola) and behaviors of masculinity
(sacrificing to the slave- and farmer-god Silvanus or paying the men’s fee in the bath).27
Underlining the dissonance created by this image, Juvenal juxtaposes with this gender
grotesque of woman-as-man a prescription of what intellectual background a Roman lady
should—or rather should not—have (non habeat matrona… dicendi genus, etc., 6.448ff.).
On the other hand, we must recognize that even as Juvenal lambasts this woman’s
attempts to redefine her gender (or so Juvenal sees it), he himself transforms her from
human into clattering noise-machine, comparing her torrent of words to the clang of
wash-basins or bells or horns (verborum tanta cadit vis,/ tot pariter pelves ac tintinnabula
dicas/ pulsari. iam nemo tubas, nemo aera fatiget…, 6.440-42). This transfiguration
conforms to Juvenal’s style of satiric attack, but it also flirts with the very permeability of
categories of meaning for which Juvenal criticizes her.28
The very line between subject (namely, our speaker Juvenal) and object may be
dissolving. There is a tiny hint that Juvenal takes the aspirations of the know-it-all quite
26
The place of these lines in the section has become somewhat disputed. In Clausen’s OCT, following the
mss. the lines come in the middle of the section discussing the know-it-all ending with a joke where
Juvenal begs her to ignore her husband’s grammatical mis-steps (opicae castiget amicae/ verba:
soloecismum liceat fecisse marito, 6.455-56). Braund 2004, following Heinrich, transposes ll. 445-47 to
immediately after l. 456. Though her text is certainly tempting (and places what I am arguing are
thematically central lines in climactic position), I believe that Juvenal would more likely have written it as
the manuscripts record, climaxing in an exasperated joke about allowance for husbands’ grammatical slips
(cf. the list of dangers in Rome ending with Augusto recitantes mense poetas, 3.9).
27
Cf. Cato De Agr. 83. Cicero makes a salacious accusation against Clodia involving her entering the
men’s section of the baths (Pro Caelio 62).
28
Though, perhaps, from Juvenal’s standpoint, the lady transforms herself into these objects, and he is
merely recording that transformation.
215
personally: “I hate the woman who,…like some dusty old librarian, has at her command
verses that I don’t” (odi/ hanc quae…ignotosque mihi tenet antiquaria versus, 6.451-52,
454).29 Does this woman have a better command of Rome’s poetic past than Juvenal? Is it
possible that, behind Juvenal’s denunciation of the obnoxiousness of her discussions of
Vergil at dinner (quae cum discumbere coepit/ laudat Vergilium, periturae ignoscit
Elissae, 6. 434-35), lies a genuine fear of the generic implications of her intellectual
ambitions? The jab at her learning30 means that at least she won’t be writing satire, right?
The gossip (398-412) represents another figure who both displays some of
Juvenal’s qualities qua poet and is depicted as bridging the gap between male and
female.31 Juvenal dramatizes her flitting around the city:
Sed cantet potius quam totam pervolet urbem
audax et coetus possit quae ferre virorum
cumque paludatis ducibus praesente marito 400
ipsa loqui recta facie siccisque mamillis.
(6.398-401)
But better she sing than zip boldly around the whole city and be one who is able to handle
the commerce of men and to speak with uniformed generals—while her husband is right
there!—look them in the eye with dried out breasts.
29
Johnson 1996: 175, in his discussion of Juvenal’s portrait of the decline of male power, pinpoints the
underlying attitude of inferiority in these lines.
30
Is there the possibility of a programmatic Callimachean tag in those “antiquarian verses,” where the lines
might allude to the celebrated opening of Horace’s Roman Odes: Odi profanum uolgus et arceo/ Fauete
linguis: carmina non prius/ audita Musarum sacerdos/ uirginibus puerisque canto (Hor. Carm. 3.1.1-4)?
The lines might then be, like 1.1-14 another programmatic statement about Juvenal’s relationship with
contemporary poetry, but again negotiated in an ironic way, for the programmatic meaning would only
“activate” if one recognized the allusion.
31
Umurhan 2011 has similarly discussed the parallels between gossip and Juvenal (cf. Umurhan 2011: 23033 for a more detailed list of the overlaps), seeing an element of self-mockery in Juvenal’s depiction of her
gender confusion. Umurhan argues that the satirical volleys he lobs at the gossip, who is his satiric stand-in,
reflect back onto him, creating an echo chamber of mockery: “We, the audience, laugh at Juvenal, who
laughs at us for those very moral failings we laugh at him for showcasing” (241). I assert instead that the
gossip represents a threat in her similarity to Juvenal, a menacing figure whose confusion of gender
boundaries is also metapoetically equated with a collapse of the boundaries between satiric subject and
object.
216
Juvenal posits this woman as another gender grotesque in two ways. On the one hand, he
drains her of femininity by depicting her breasts as dried-out (siccis mamillis, 401).
Barbara Gold has analyzed the “iconography” of breasts (as well as genitals) in Satire 6,
and Juvenal maps the gossip’s indeterminate gender onto her body.32 Second, Juvenal
stages her in commerce with other men, even generals (coetus possit quae ferre virorum/
cumque paludatis ducibus, 399-400), as if an equal. Juvenal even adds the galling detail
of her husband’s (emasculated) presence (praesente marito, 400). She simultaneously
tries to play the role of a man while failing to fulfill the physical role of a woman.
Yet what makes her truly unsettling is how much she knows and how eager she is
to share. The extent of her universal knowledge (haec eadem novit quid toto fiat in orbe,
6.402) covers not only historical or political events (such as a passing comet, 6.407, or
the flood of the Niphates, 6.409-411) ,33 but also more tawdry matters, particularly
regarding illicit love (6.403-406). In fact, the catalogue of erotic dealings that Juvenal
presents her knowing strongly resemble the kind of sensational details that Juvenal revels
in.34 The gossip knows what words the lovers use in bed (quibus verbis concumbat
quaeque, 6.404), and so does Juvenal (concumbunt Graece, 6.191). Even where the
verbal parallels are not as close, there is a sense that the gossip embraces the same kind of
nocturnal, titillating material as Juvenal’s satires. One could compare the secreta the
32
Gold 1998: 373-74, in her discussion of Juvenal’s constant emphasis on women’s corporeality and
materiality. She rightfully notes the contrast between the infertility implied by siccis mamillis and the
swollen breasts of the primitive women at line 9. This “modern” infertility is also brought to the foreground
in a discussion of abortifacients at 6.592ff.; see Miller 1998 for a more general discussion of the images of
sterility in Roman satire. I believe, however, she misses the satirical ambivalence in Juvenal’s “model” for
fertility (see above) and the poetological problems that it creates at the opening of the satire.
33
Syme 1979a: 251-52 closely examines these lines in reference to Juvenal’s chronology, arguing they
need not imply that Juvenal composed while the catastrophe of the earthquake in 115 was still fresh (cf.
6.407: instantem regi Armenio).
34
For Juvenal’s sensationalism, see, e.g., Anderson 1982: 305-8.
217
gossip spreads (6.403) with the details of the orgy of the Bona Dea earlier in the satire
(6.314-345), or, in Satire 1, the man who earns his inheritance the “old-fashioned way,” if
you will (qui testamenta merentur/ noctibus, 1.37-38).35
Even further, she is driven to share her chatter incessantly, to any unfortunate
passerby: “at any-old crossroad, whomever she meets, she’ll tell her story” (quocumque
in trivio, cuicumque est obvia, narrat, 6.412). We cannot help but recall Juvenal’s own
dramatization of himself composing satire at a crossroads (nonne libet medio ceras
implore capaces/ quadrivio, 1.63-64), describing the criminals who are constantly
jostling him (cum te summoveant…occurit, 1.37, 69).36 Is not the almost pathological
desire for the gossip to spread rumor (emphasized by the universalizing force of the
indefinites quocumque and cuicumque) similar to Juvenal’s depiction of his own
composition of satire as motivated by the outpouring of emotion (difficile est saturam
non scribere…facit indignatio versum, 1.30, 79). This gender-bender assumes a role not
unlike that of the satirist himself; as Juvenal depicts, she not only crosses the line
between male and female but also between subject and target. The most troubling
implication about this overlap? Juvenal claims that, while this gossip has her finger on
the pulse, she’s not immune from occasionally taking a few poetic liberties with her
material (famam rumoresque illa recentis/ excipit ad portas, quosdam facit, 6.409).
Nor are women the only figures who blend male and female together in the world
of Satire 6. In the difficult O-fragment of Satire 6, which appears only in a single
35
Cf. the discussion of Braund 1988: 163-70 on secreta as part of the thematic interplay in Sat. 9.
36
Larmour 2007: 180 argues for the metapoetic significance of quadrivium in Juvenal: “By positioning
himself at the quadrivium, the speaker reminds us that satire is a genre formed by the conglomeration of
disreputable exempla and by the confluence of different literary, forms, conventions, and techniques.”
There may be an additional joke that Juvenal’s gossip doesn’t quite reach his level for she only stands in a
trivium instead of a quadrivium (a much rarer word in literary contexts).
218
manuscript and remained undiscovered until 1899,37 Juvenal focuses his attack on the
morally debauched house companions of women. Everywhere in Rome, Juvenal intones,
men who are by all appearances cinaedi are actually full-blooded heterosexuals,38 eager
to couple with Roman matrons when the husband lets down his guard. These men, to
unmetrically appropriate Ovid’s designation of the minotaur,39 are the semifeminae viri to
the semiviri feminae elsewhere in the satire, equal counterparts in gender confusion in
Rome.40 Unlike the gossip or the female intellectual, these men do pervert not only their
own sexuality alone but the secure sexuality of others. Their category-crashing is
contagious, for, as Juvenal tells us, they will morally pollute the entire household:
wherever they are, “you will find everyone’s filthy and just like cinaedi” (invenies omnis
turpes similesque cinaedis, 6.O3).41
Not only do these supposed un-men openly declare their feminity (professus/
obscenum), they displays it through signs, namely a quavering hand (et tremula
37
Though prominent scholars of the past debated the authenticity of the fragment (to give two only notable
examples, it was accepted by Housman in his text, while it was rejected as spurious by Anderson 1982
[orig. 1956]: 266-68), it is now safe to say that the fragment, though understandably riddled with corruption,
is unanimously accepted as genuine and it seems no longer necessary to rehearse arguments for or against.
Nadeau 2011: 230-35, in his argument for a radical rearrangement of the lines, gives a detailed account of
the controversies surrounding where the lines should be placed (in the O manuscript, after line 365; in, e.g.,
Braund, after line 345).
38
I use this term for lack of a more precise one in English, though with some hesitation, as Roman
conceptions of masculinity would have condemned, as effeminate, both a desire to be penetrated by another
man as well as unrestrained sexual cravings (see Edwards 1993: 81-84 and Williams 2010: 157-170 on the
Roman type of the “womanish womanizer”). Juvenal, however, draws a clear line between the open
cinaedus and the sexually voracious heterosexual (whom he calls a purum…virum, 6.O28).
39
The original line describes the minotaur as a semibovemque virum, semivirumque bovem (AA.2.24).
40
See Williams 2010: 177-248 for the fullest discussion of cinaedi and their place in the moral discourse of
sexuality in Rome. In fact, cinaedi simultaneously embody gender transgression and ethnic permeability,
for the word, as Williams argues, necessarily carries Eastern connotations (even if the original meaning of
“Eastern style of dancer” had long since dissolved).
41
For language of contagion, see 2.78-81, as well as Williams 2010: 197-200.
219
promittens omnia dextra, 6.O2).42 Later in the passage, this unsavory character looks
identical to the participants of the topsy-turvy Bona Dea festival in Satire 2 (2.83-116):
he “feeds the eyes with mascara” (oculos fuligine pascit, 6.O21; cf. ille supercilium
madida fuligine tinctum/ obliqua producit acu pingitque trementis/ attollens oculos, 2.9294); he wears flamboyantly colored garments (distinctus croceis, 6.O22; cf. galbina rasa,
2.97) 43 and a hair net (reticulatus, 6.O22; cf. reticulumque comis auratum ingentibus
implet, 2.96); he speaks in an affected tone of voice (vox mollior, O23; cf. fracta voce
loquendi, 2.111).44
These later details from the O-fragment about the manner of dress of the wouldbe cinaedus are couched in lines where Juvenal calls into question the house companion’s
sexuality, but in a paradoxically reversed way from his previous accusations. Juvenal
began Satire 2 by identifying a phenomenon whereby apparently virile and outspokenly
“moral” men—at least according to their external attributes—were secretly and
hypocritically effeminate pathic homosexuals. I previously suggested the serious
repercussions a statement like this has for Juvenal’s moral evaluations: for, if external
signs of manliness were shown to have no correspondence with internal sexual morals,
what could be the basis for determining real Roman men? And then there was the
42
Following here the text of Braund, who accepts von Winterfield’s emendation of the metrically corrupt
manuscript reading, et tremula promittit.
43
Cf. Petr. 67.4, where galbina is a specifically female garment worn by Fortunata.
44
Winkler 1983: 176-180 remains one of the few close readings of the passage and is especially astute in
drawing parallels between details which characterize the objects of Satire 2 and here. Though Winkler
(178) notes that “In view of the close parallels between him and the perverts of Satire 2 it is remarkable that
this man, although called a cinaedus (cf. 2.10) and evidently highly effeminate, is also a heterosexual
adulter (O 22) of great virility (in lecto fortissimus, O 25),” I argue that this contradiction is essential to the
place of the passage within the categorical permeability thematized by this satire as a whole.
220
possibility of the converse: if men who acted masculine were really effeminate, could
men who acted effeminate be masculine?
The answer, evidently, is yes:
suspectus tibi sit, quanto vox mollior et quo
saepius in teneris haerebit dextera lumbis.
hic erit in lecto fortissimus; exuit illic
personam docili Thais saltata Triphallo.
quem rides? aliis hunc mimum! sponsio fiat:
purum te contendo virum. contendo: fateris?
an vocat ancillas tortoris pergula?
O25
(6.O23-29)
The softer his voice and the more often his hand is hanging onto his tender loins, the
more suspect he is to you. He will be the strongest man around—in bed; that one has
stripped off his mask, a Thais danced by a well-trained Triphallus. “Who are you
laughing at? Save this charade for others! Let’s make a wager: I bet you’re a real man. I
bet: do you confess? Or does the torturer’s rack need to summon the attendants?
Though Juvenal does not represent these men’s sexuality as any more acceptable than the
corrupt philosophers of Satire 2, there is no question that they are “men” by his
definition—and what men they are (in lecto fortissimus, Triphallo; O25, O26)!45 Juvenal
compares the house companion’s performance of effeminacy to a comedy (as if a
courtesan character Thais) and reveals who he really is when he takes off his “mask”
(personam, O26). He then jarringly changes perspective,46 dramatically projecting his
words through the mouth of the husband in a fit of pique (O27-34).47 The reader’s
difficulty in understanding the exchange reflects, as I see it, the difficult position that the
45
Edwards 1993: 82-84, esp. n. 71, locates this paradox in a nexus of Roman sources, ranging in time from
Lucilius (cf. Lucil. 1058, inberbi androgyni, barbati moechocinaedi, though the context of this line is lost)
to Ovid to Clement of Alexandria. Though Edwards demonstrates here that excessive lust for women was
interpreted by the Romans as a sign of effeminacy, this fact does not negate the notion of Juvenal
employing the paradox here for reasons that relate to his own satirical procedure as much as Roman society.
46
As Courtney ad loc points out, this use of prosopoiia differs from the instance earlier in the same satire
(6.172-73), where Amphion had loudly condemned Niobe’s pride, by lacking any formal introduction
(such as Amphion clamat, 6.172; cf. Pontia at the end, clamat Pontia, 6.638).
47
Winkler 1983: 85 posits an elaborate scenario for these lines (the husband discovering the wife in bed
with this lover), but it seems unnecessary to posit a scenario more specific than the husband simply
confronting the ersatz cinaedus.
221
pervert creates as regards assessing gender.48 In the confrontation, the husband points out
the resemblance to the stage (“save this show for others!”; aliis hunc mimum, O27).49 In
light of how dramatized the scene becomes as it races to a conclusion, there arises a
complex of ideas about dramatic presentation, both the pervert’s and Juvenal’s. Simply
put, Juvenal role-plays even as he denounces deceptive role-playing. Rome has taken on
a foul comic air in Juvenal.
The sense of confusion between male and female continues into the next section,
where Juvenal describes Roman ladies’ passion for eunuchs (6.366-378). Here, the
internal paradox of the virile effeminate is enacted onto the body of Roman men,
particularly in the case of a man transformed into a eunuch by order of a Roman matron
(a domina factus spado, 6.376). Unlike the boys who are castrated before maturity (and
are left with only shriveled genitals, compared cruelly to a chickpea: mangonum pueros
vera ac miserabilis urit/ debilitas, follisque pudet cicerisque relicti, 6.373A-B), these
broken men—whose testicles are removed after pubescence (quom iam calida matura
iuventa/ inguina traduntur medicis, 6.369-70)—retain enough virility to penetrate both
women and men (6.376-78). Here, even biological sex is up for grabs; Juvenal’s crucial
point is that the normative havoc that the intersex figure of the eunuch wreaks results
from the active agency of Roman women.
48
One could similarly consider the interplay between the harsh complexity of Persius’ language, especially
in his first Satire, and gender perversion; see especially Freudenburg 2001: 162-65 on the full force of the
vexed image of the “coming eye” (patranti ocello, Pers.1.18): “Thus the moment of climax in this
performer’s tear-jerking(-off) show, the point where he breaks into breathy, quavering tears, Persius figures
as a climax of a very different kind.” (164)
49
Courtney ad 6.O27 insists that there is no connection to the stage in mimum, since masks were not a part
of the mimic performance. Yet elsewhere he points to the “inconcinnity” (ad 25) of the passage, especially
the use of the word saltata (more appropriate to a pantomimic performance, such as that described at 6.63,
chironomon Ledam molli saltante Bathyllo), which he argues that Juvenal employs merely to connect to his
previous description as instructing the household women in forbidden dances (his clunem atque latus
discount vibrare magistris, 6. O19).
222
Through a series of grotesque portrayals of masculinized women and effeminized
men, Juvenal has demonstrated that what can be thought to constitute “male” or “female”
can no longer be taken for granted in Rome. Even as he counters these attempts to rewrite
gendered meaning, Juvenal cannot help be but implicated in them, since his satire’s
effectiveness similarly depends on imbuing objects and situations with new meaning, a
moralizing distortion.
B. Ugly on the Inside: Women, Cosmetics, and Deception
Satirical distortion comes to the fore in the depictions of women actively
changing their outer appearances (6.457-473, 487-506). Along with their gender
transgressions, perhaps the most common underlying accusation towards women in Satire
6 is their deceptiveness. Juvenal outlines various situations in which Roman women
deceive their husbands (such as boldfaced lying about their adulterous liaisons, cf. 6.279285), but, in the sections on cosmetics, Juvenal advances the notion that women’s very
forms are untrustworthy. 50
Nancy Shumate and Martin Winkler both apply the key dictum frontis nulla fides
from 2.8 to women in Satire 6 in general, 51 but the parallels are most apt here, in a
discussion where the deceptiveness of women is projected directly onto aspects of their
external appearance. At Satire 2.11-13, Juvenal, through his stand-in the “laughing doctor”
(medico ridente, 2.13) had turned the hypocrites’ bodies against them, satirically
exposing the body parts that revealed their true character. Likewise here Juvenal relies on
the self-evident ridicule of exposure:
50
Gold 1998: 372.
51
Shumate 2006: 24; Winkler 1983: 169.
223
Interea foeda aspectu ridendaque multo
pane tumet facies aut pinguia Poppaeana
spirat et hinc miseri viscantur labra mariti.
ad moechum lota veniunt cute. quando videri
vult formonsa domi? moechis foliata parantur,
his emitur quidquid graciles huc mittitis Indi.
Tandem aperit vultum et tectoria prima reponit,
incipit agnosci, atque illo lacte fovetur
propter quod secum comites educat asellas
exul Hyperboreum si dimittantur ad axem.
sed quae mutatis inducitur atque fovetur
tot medicaminibus coctaeque siliginis offas
accipit et madidae, facies dicetur an ulcus?
465
470
(6.461-473)
Meanwhile, her face, foul to look upon and laughable, swells with all the bread or she
exhales rich Poppaean unguents and her lips get stuck to those of the wretched husband.
To her lover, she comes with skin washed. When does she want to seem beautiful at
home? It’s for the paramours that aromatics are gotten, for them that whatever you skinny
Indians send here is bought. Finally she opens her face and scrapes away the primer
layers, she begins to be recognized, and she is refreshed by that milk for which the exile
would hire out companion-asses with herself if she were exiled to the Hyperborean pole.
But that which is coated and reinvigorated by so many changed blends and receives the
52
clumps of cooked, wet dough—should it be called a face or an sore?
The paradox of beautification, as described by Juvenal, is twofold: the woman
becomes uglier, both morally and physically. For, in the former case, Juvenal implies the
danger of female cosmetics by associating it with adultery (464-66).53 This gambit
implicitly allies the cosmetic behavior with the other deceptions practiced on behalf of
erotic rendezvous, such as the mother-in-law outwitting guards or feigning illness to
52
Braund follows Ruperti in printing 464-66 after 470, which creates a more coherent scene by grouping
together the beautification process (461-63, then 467-70) and then giving a motivation for the cosmetics,
rather than have lines 464-66 stand as a somewhat awkward parenthesis in the description of the process.
As I argue below, however, the placement of 464-66 as transmitted is crucial in connecting feminine beauty
with deception, not just in relation to adultery but to identity itself.
53
As Watson 2007b demonstrates, Juvenal’s technique in Satire 6, and especially in this section, is to “take
a scenario which is not in itself out of the ordinary but distort it in such a way as to make the everyday
appear both sinister and ludicrous” (376), specifically here by the association with adultery, profligacy
(6.457-59, 465-66), and, intertextually, with meretrices through allusion to their cosmetic behavior in
Roman elegy and beyond (Watson 2007b: 382-384). For more on the connection between elegy and Satire
6, see Watson 2007a and her bibliography.
224
assist in her daughter’s assignations (decipit illa/ custodes aut aere domat. tum corpore
sano/ advocat Archigenen onerosaque pallia iactat, 6.234-36).54
Even more ironic in Juvenal’s portrayal of the beautified woman is her seemingly
obvious ugliness. During the first stage of the process, Juvenal mocks her face as a
grotesque accumulation of beauty product, “foul” and “laughable” (foeda…ridenda, 461);
he further evokes olfactory and tactile disgust, describing the perfumed creams she
applies and the image of her husband’s lips caught in the viscous unguent (462-63).
Further on, the built up glop of various kinds of authentic ancient beauty treatments
(particularly the vivid image of the sloppy clumps of dough applied to her face,
coctaeque siliginis offas/…et madidae, 472-73)55 renders the face indistinguishable from
an oozing sore (facies dicetur an ulcus?, 473).
Still, the heart of the section reveals a bizarre paradox of identity: after she peels
away the beauty products, as if they were layers of stucco (prima tectoria, 467), to reveal
her face, she “begins to be recognized” (or, perhaps, “recognizable”; incipit agnosci, 468).
Thus, the Roman woman’s “true” face, according to Juvenal, requires cosmetics to
become realized. According to the order of the lines in the manuscript, Juvenal forges a
necessary link between beauty and deceit as he describes how women pursue beauty for
deceitful purposes (or, more precisely, for purposes requiring deception). Yet it is the
face which the woman reveals at the end of the process which Juvenal considers her “true”
one: her counterfeit beauty reflects a similarly duplicitous character. The Roman
54
Such is the interpretation of lines 235-36 by the scholiast ad loc.: simulat aegritudinem socrus ut habeat
facultatem ad se filia veniendi causa adulterii. Braund 1992: 76 lists the almost obsessive ubiquity of
adultery in Satire 6, even in places where it is not the main object of attack.
55
Watson 2007b : 382ff. describes the historical background for these products, while also pointing to a
second stroke of satirical attack, namely the associations with some of the products with medical treatments
for ulcerated sores.
225
woman’s external beauty in Juvenal should be regarded as both “false”—insofar as it
conceals what she actually looks like—and “true”—insofar as its accurately reflects an
identity founded on duplicity. After all, she only wants to “seem” beautiful (videri/ vult
formonsa, 464-65).56
In Juvenal’s Rome, the woman is indeed accurately defined by the façade she
creates—or, rather, he creates. For we as readers must reconcile this connection of
outward appearance with innate deceptiveness with Juvenal’s own satiric logic of
“revealing” grotesqueries, whereby makeup becomes stucco (467) and faces become
ulcers (473). Just as the laughing doctor at 2.13 relied on a competing set of external
signs (the piles on the depilated anus) even as Juvenal challenged the very notion of
trusting externals, here Juvenal connects external appearance with deception even while
using external visualizations to his satiric advantage. He is no more willing to present an
unvarnished woman for appraisal than the women are themselves. There is a maddening
irony between Juvenal’s appropriation of the correspondence of reality and appearance
(which provides him with the vehicle of exposing the behavior of Roman women) and his
implication that Roman women’s appearance is necessarily bogus.
In the following section on women’s daily activites (474-511), Juvenal frequently
returns to this connection between the modern Roman woman’s appearance and
deception, consequently reawakening the paradoxes about his own depiction of women.
The scene is considerably more dramatic than before, with Juvenal staging an extended
56
As Bartsch 2006: 115-16 shows, using it a departure point for a discussion of the intersection of the
moral and visual at Rome, that there was a more general paradox in moral thought in Rome, for virtue was
supposed to be sincere (the maxim esse quam videri; e.g. Cic. Amit.98: Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi
praediti esse quam videri volunt) and yet highly visible.
226
vignette of a woman bullying her attendants after a marital quarrel (475-486) and then
being dressed before a tryst (487-507).
The first scene of her mistreating her servants does not directly concern her
appearance. Being sandwiched between the two rants on cosmetics and dressing,
however, it will come to evoke moments where meaning is distorted, both by the
imperious women and, metapoetically, by the satirist. After a nocturnal argument with
her husband, the woman retaliates by turning on her staff. One slave is punished for
supposedly arriving late: “the Liburnian is said to have come late and is forced to pay the
penalty for another person’s sleep” (tarde venisse Liburnus/ dicitur et poenas alieni
pendere somni/ cogitur, 6.477-79). Juvenal subtly reveals how the woman’s emotions
have distorted reality; either the mistress simply invented a reason for the slave to be
beaten, settling on lateness, or she is so upset that she actually thinks the slave is late,
though the dicitur at line 478 indicates that the charge is false. Whether malicious
invention or emotional confusion, either case could be thought to have metapoetic
implications. That is, it is possible to imagine Juvenal, structurally positioned in the same
spot as the Roman matron,57 either spitefully creating images of Roman women out of
thin air to satirize or not recognizing the stained lens of his own perception of the Roman
matrons occupying the world around him and transmitting those smudged images down
to us.58
57
For the way that Juvenal’s satire metapoetically registers itself as abusive “attack” and abuse, see Keane
2006: 63-72; cf. 65-66 on Umbricius’ role in Satire 3 in putting “the pauper into situations that are
increasingly physically threatening,” as well as degrading.
58
This mise en abyme is especially unsettling, for its depiction of either of tainted cognition or selfdeception applies to the matron’s “reading” of the slave’s behavior, Juvenal’s “reading” of Roman women,
and our own “reading” of Juvenal’s text. This hall of mirrors, I think, is exactly what Juvenal’s text so
rewarding. Cf. Kennedy 1993: 8-9 on how acknowledging these kinds of complexities does not lead to
227
A little later, the effectiveness of the metrical structure underlines the artifice of
the scene as linguistically depicted and jeopardizes the self-evident force of dramatizing
the accusations. Juvenal stages the procession of activities the mistress goes through,
such as powdering her nose, admiring her clothes, and checking the household books,
while slaves are continually assaulted in the background:
verberat atque obiter faciem linit, audit amicas
aut latum pictae vestis considerat aurum
et caedit, longi relegit transversa diurni
et caedit, donec lassis caedentibus “exi”
intonet horrendum iam cognitione peracta.
(6.481-485)
She beats them and meanwhile she powders her nose, listens to her friends or inspects the
golden embroidered stripe of the painted dress—and beats them—she rereads the vertical
rolls of the long account-book—and beats them—until, when the beaters are tired out,
she shouts “Get out!” monstrously, now that the trial is over.
The identical placement of et caedit in lines 483-84 mimics the casual, repetitive brutality
of the beatings and thus underlines the callousness of her nonchalance. Yet, the structure
of the words also undercuts the images, even as they enhance them, because they bring to
the fore the artificiality of satiric language.
These activities help to introduce the extended scene of the Roman matron at
toilette, which begins with a conscious decision to embellish her appearance for the sake
of her lover (nam si constituit solitoque decentius optat/ ornari etc., 6.487ff.).59 She
lashes out at her hairdresser Psecas, again inventing a charge as grounds on which to
punish her servant mercilessly. “Why is this curl so high?” (‘altior hic quare cincinnus?’,
6.492), the lady accuses; but Juvenal identifies the real source of her rancor, addressing
the matron directly: “Why is it the slave-girl’s fault that you don’t like your nose?”
“silence or madness,” for we can strike a balance between concerns of historical contextualization and
textuality.
59
For the amorous connotation of constituo, cf. the sacrilegious intimation on the real nature of Numa’s
late-night meetings with the nymphs at 3.12: hic, ubi nocturnae Numa constituebat amicae, etc.
228
(quaenam est hic culpa puellae,/ si tibi displicuit nasus tuus?, 6.694-95). Again, as line
464-66, Juvenal associates the act of embellishing one’s appearance with adulterous
deception. Again, as at lines 477-79, there is ambiguity in the matron’s accusation, for
she demonstrates either a lack of self-awareness (a self-deception, not recognizing that
her anger at her appearance derives from something out of the hairdresser’s control) or a
deceptive maliciousness (consciously redirecting her frustrations about her fixed
appearance onto the hairdresser). Just as before, the lines helps bring into focus the
possible extent of Juvenal’s fingerprints in this section: scenes of beautification become a
locus of distortion, perhaps willful, both at the matron’s level and Juvenal’s.
The following lines cast the “debate” over style as a bizarre parody of a Senate
meeting or a meeting of the emperor’s council:
Est in consilio materna admotaque lanis
emerita quae cessat acu; sententia prima
huius erit, post hanc aetate atque arte minores
censebunt, tamquam famae discrimen agatur
aut animae: tanta est quaerendi cura decoris.
500
(6.497-501)
Sitting in council is her mother’s slave, who was promoted to woolworker after serving
her time in the needle brigade; she gets sententia prima; after her the subordinates in age
and skill give their advice, as if the matter being handled were concerning repute or life
and death: that’s how much care is taken in seeking beauty.
The mother’s slave casts the first “vote” (sententia prima, 498) based on her seniority
(for she has “retired” from the hairpin corps, emerita, 498)60 and the others gives their
opinions (censebunt, 500) in turn, based on rank and age (aetate atque arte minores, 499),
in the actual procedure of the Senate.61 Juvenal appeals to a two-fold disgust, both at the
60
For this metaphorical sense of emerita, see TLL emereo col. 471.67.
61
Watson 2007b: 391n.66, discusses which details would fit with either Senate adjudication or consilium
principis, but the picture is intentionally muddled. It’s not that Juvenal is unconcerned or ignorant of the
procedural details—he uses technical terms like prima sententia and censere, after all—as much as he
229
amount of effort devoted to something as frivolous as ornament (500-501) and, implicitly,
at Roman women’s impersonation of the male public sphere.62
The context of Juvenal’s argument, however, against a devotion to the deceptive
external undercuts the employment of a dramatized parody such as this. The metaphors of
the next line counteract the matron’s attempt at beauty by transforming her into a
building: tot premit ordinibus, tot adhuc conpagibus altum/ aedificat caput (6.502-3).63
Returning to the building metaphor of line 467 (tectoria), the matron adds “stories” to the
construction of her hair,64 making her unrecognizable (“you will see an Andromache in
front, but in back, you’d believe she was a different woman,” Andromachen a fronte
videbis, post minor est, credas aliam, 6.503-4). Yet this is exactly what Juvenal is doing,
altering a Roman woman going through, by all accounts, a fairly ordinary scene in
domestic life and transforming it into something sinister and ridiculous.65 Juvenal
associates women’s pursuit of aesthetic perfection with deception at his own peril, for
Juvenal shows himself falling back onto the hairpins and beauty creams (given the
wants to convey the ridiculousness of the scene from as many avenues as possible. The gold standard for
the mock-council on frivolous matters is Domitian’s council on the Fate of the Fish in Sat. 4.72ff.
62
Cf. 6.484-86, done lassis caedentibus ‘exi’/ intonet horrendum iam cognitione peracta./ praefectura
domus Sicula non mitior aula, where the matrons’ treatment of their servants is compared to a judicial
inquisition at a court harsher than those of Sicilian tyrants.
63
As a counterpart to this phenomenon (Juvenal transforming the animate into the inanimate), Weisen 1989:
728 points to line 493, when Juvenal sarcastically claims that the matron’s hair has committed a crime
(flexi crimen facinusque capilli), anthropomorphizing the inanimate.
64
Despite the insistence at Watson 2007b: 392, that the hairstyle parodied is a contemporary one (for “the
picture would lose all impact in Juvenal’s readers were not familiar with it from recent experience”), it is
unnecessary to assert that Juvenal is attacking a contemporary hairstyle. Even if the fashion of elaborately
constructed vertical curls was no longer in fashion, the reader can easily abstract the underlying theme of
the scene (the excessive focus of women on beauty and deception) and apply it to any era or hairstyle.
65
Watson 2007b recognizes Juvenal’s techniques of distortion and morally dubious association (the
callbacks to meretrices or the acting profession through the mention of the high-soled boots of the tragic
actor, nullis adiuta coturnis, 6.506), but she does not go further and assert their troublesome implications
on Juvenal’s satiric project.
230
context, perhaps they should be “ugly creams”?) of satire: dramatic scenes and
externalized details which are purportedly transparent. Just as the short woman would
appear ridiculous, having to stand on her tippy-toes to kiss her husband, without the
support of her high-heels (6.504-7), so would Juvenal’s satire fall flat without its reliance
on grotesque metaphors and distorted language.66
C. The Bleeding Heart Show
This paradox in Juvenal is an enactment of the paradox in Rome, whereby the
conception of Roman “men” and “women” has become permanently unrecognizable.
Juvenal, in an earlier section of Satire 6, had himself addressed the source of this change:
“So you ask where all these monsters come from, what source?” (unde haec monstra
tamen vel quo de fonte requiris?, 6.286). The answer is not entirely surprising. Juvenal,
in a narrative that had long become familiar at Rome,67 claims that Rome’s victory in the
Punic Wars deprived her of poverty, which had kept her honest, and in return provided
her with the luxury which continues to sap her lifeblood (6.292-295).68
Juvenal thus locates this shift in meaning decisively in the past, effectively
perverting the relationships and actions of woman in the present day. He segues
seamlessly into a description of contemporary misconduct, connecting sexual
66
Indeed, there is a parallel in that both are said to wear high-soled cothurni (l. 506 of the matron; l. 634 of
Juvenal, or, more precisely, his satire: satura sumente coturnum)
67
E.g. Sallust BC 10. See Courtney ad 6.290-1 for further references. Suffice to say that the narrative of
decline arising from the successes of the Punic War was not unique; for Weisen 1989: 731, the literary
nature of this answer to unde monstra is exactly the point, insofar as it exemplifies a world bereft of
original ideas, where the hollowness of values is underscored by the creative vacuum of the language
transmitting those values.
68
Anderson 1982: 263-64 identifies this as the moment the theme of the poem shifts from pudor
(introduced in the opening section by the flight of Pudicitia in the Golden Age, 6.1ff.) to luxuria, pointing
out the verbal juxtapositions of luxury and sexual impropriety: obscena pecunia, turpi…luxu, divitiae
molles (6.298, 299, 300).
231
improprieties with luxury: the woman who slurps down oysters and parties all night until
the room is spinning (6.302-305) doesn’t “know the difference between her crotch and
her face” (inguinis et capitis quae sint discrimina nescit, 6.301).69 Juvenal then brings
into focus how luxury enables gender confusion in a scene of two debauched women:
i nunc et dubita qua sorbeat aera sanna
Maura, Pudicitiae veterem cum preaeterit aram,
Tullia quid dicat, notae collactea Maurae.
noctibus hic ponunt lecticas, micturiunt hic
effigiemque deae longis siphonibus implent
inque vices equitant ac Luna teste moventur,
inde domos abeunt: tu calcas luce reversa
coniugis urinam magnos visurus amicos.
308
307
310
(6.306-313)
Go on—ask yourself why Maura takes in air with a sneer, when she passes by the old
altar of Chastity, what Tullia says, the foster-sister of notorious Maura. At night they put
their litters down here, here they pee and cover the statue of the goddess with long spurts
and take turns riding each other and “moving” around—with the Moon as my witness—
and then they go home. You, when light returns, tread on your wife’s piss on the way to
visit your great friends.70
Juvenal expands on his portrayal of the late night party just described by
following the dissipated activities of two participants. These women pervert gender in
any numbers of ways. They engage in lesbian activity, sketchily described. 71 The
69
The tense of the verbs shifts similarly from perfect (perhaps to be considered present perfects?) to
presents at lines 299-300 (et turpi fregerunt saecula luxu/ divitiae molles. quid enim venus ebria curat?).
70
I follow Clausen’s OCT in taking the order of the lines as preserved in the ms. K Vat. Reg. 2029;
Courtney, noting that some mss. omit line 307, suggests they might be spurious, but this depends on his
mistaken interpretation that the series of plural verbs beginning with ponunt at l. 309 should be ascribed to
“women in general, the coniuges of tu” and not the Maura and Tullia just mentioned.
71
It is not thematically insignificant that inque vices equitant and particularly the vague moventur (l. 311)
do not really elucidate exactly what the women are doing. Nor is Juvenal afraid of exhibiting perversity in
matter-of-fact detail: cf. the vivid description a little later of a woman submitting herself to penetration by
an ass (quo minus inposito clunem summittat asello, 6.634) or the obscene description of on-the-job hazard
of male prostitution (9.43-44). Horse-riding is a common enough metaphor for sex in Greek and Latin (cf.
Adams 1990: 34, 74 n.2, 165; for Greek, Henderson 1991: 165), but not typically of an encounter between
two women. Female homoeroticism in Rome usually recalls the tribas, the female-penetrating-female
monster described by, e.g., Martial 7.67 (featuring the notorious Philaenis, who even penetrates men, thus
evoking the masculinization of Roman women), yet that is not a secure fit with the mechanics described by
equitant. For more on the tribas in Latin literature, see most recently Swancutt 2007 who lists this passage
as an instance of tribadism even though, by her own admission “Juvenal does not name their act as tribadic”
232
depiction of long streams (longis siphonibus) of urine are more appropriate for male
rather than female urination.72 The final insult is that their husbands will unknowingly go
traipsing through their wives’ urine come morning (312-13); the power relations are
reversed, and women are ascendant. Considering the passage as a whole, the train of
thought is clear: stemming from Rome’s victory in the past, present-day Roman women
are no longer women (and, conversely, men are no longer men).73
The only witness to this degradation, Juvenal tells us, is the moon (Luna teste,
311).74 The heavenly body must look upon Rome’s degradation but lack the agency to
stop it. In Juvenal 6, not only must the husband feebly look upon his wife’s activities; so
too must Juvenal’s satiric audience. Thus, another effect of Juvenal’s relentless
dramatization in Sat. 6 is to reinforce the permanence of the topsy-turvy state of Rome
(ironically inaugurated by her military success over Carthage) and to instill in the reader[53]. Nadeau 2011: 180-184, claiming the language of urination is concerned here with sexual activity, has
most recently proposed an elaborate and unlikely scenario where the women are thought to penetrate the
statue of Pudicitia with strap-on phalluses (olisboi, which he finds in the text at siphonibus) My alternate
suggestion is that the vagueness of the scene (especially for an author known for florid concrete description)
matches a kind of intellectual horror at the developments of Roman women since the Punic War; Juvenal’s
language is inadequate in capturing exactly what these women do, which is precisely what makes them so
horrible.
72
Richlin 1983: 206. The lines may also hint at male ejaculation as well; see Adams 1990: 142 for the
conflation of urination and ejaculation, as well as Horace S. 2.7.52 and Persius 6.73. In general, Juvenal is
not always precise when describing sexual organs (cf. vetulae vesica beatae, 1.39, where “bladder” stands
in for, e.g., vulva).
73
Johnson 1996 focuses in his discussion of this passage (174-179) particularly on the hyper-masculine
model of the soldier-husbands at the gate (stantes Collina turre mariti, 6.291) and its contemporary absence
in Juvenal’s Satire, where men are constantly helpless spectators (cf. above on praesente marito, 6.400).
Stewart 1994: 317-21, though she does not discuss this passage on the Punic Wars, connects the depiction
of the intergender threat with Roman anxieties of an “eastern” threat to the empire (in fact, stated explicitly
here: saevior armis/ luxuria incumbit victumque ulciscitur orbem, 6.292-93). These ideological concerns
are important, but what I am more concerned with here are “threats” posed not to the Roman poet qua
Roman, but to the Roman poet qua poet.
74
I retain the ms. reading Luna over Hendry’s suggestive emendation nullo (followed by Braund). Though
nullo opens up some linguistic possibilities (namely, allowing for a pun on testis, “witness” or “testicle”),
there are no difficulties with Luna (the idea appears elsewhere in Juvenal, when discussing Lateranus in Sat.
8: nocte quidem, sed Luna videt, sed sidera testes/ intendant oculos). Further, Luna fits better with the
strain of helpless spectatorship that runs throughout Sat. 6.
233
viewer a sense of his inability to correct Roman women’s transgressions. Juvenal
employs the language of the concrete and objective in order to portray rampant gender
and social confusion, yet this language simultaneously distances the satiric audience from
its object. Because of Juvenal, we can clearly see the horrors of Rome, but we are limited
to seeing alone.
The first substantial section of the poem (6.38-135) after the prologue on Pudicitia
(1-24) and the introduction of the rhetorical situation, namely, dissuading Postumus for
marriage (25-37) concerns adultery, particularly with actors and gladiators, and unites
many of the themes already discussed. It will serve to set the issues which will surface
throughout the rest of the poem, both among Roman women and in Juvenal’s mechanics,
such as categorical confusion and satirical impotence. This section finds women creating
semiotic chaos across social rather than sexual boundaries: rather than acting like men,
Roman women choose lovers from outside the confines of the pool of appropriate
partners, especially in their rabid attraction to actors and gladiators. Further, unlike
various misdeeds at night, such as Messalina’s excursions after dark in or Maura and
Tullia’s impiety above, the women in this section challenge Juvenal’s rhetoric of
exposure by engaging in unseemliness in broad daylight. Juvenal’s women here seem
enormously unconcerned with exposure, raising the question, “What is there left for satire
to do?”
Spectacle and real life bleed together in these opening sections, with
consequences both for Rome and for the poem. A little before Juvenal directs his gaze
towards the theaters and auditoria, Juvenal turns to the infamous adulterer Ursidius as an
example of the unpredictable and chaotic world of sexual politics at Rome:
234
Quid fieri non posse putes, si iungitur ulla
Ursidio? Si moechorum notissimus olim
Stulta maritali iam porrigit ora capistro,
Quem totiens texit perituri cista Latini?
(6.41-44)
What would you think couldn’t happen, if a woman marries Ursidius—if the former
world champion of adulterers submits his dumb head to the marital yoke—the guy that
time after time had to hide in the trunk of Latinus, about to get it?
On one level, there is an inverted humor in Juvenal’s categorical expectations for
Ursidius: it’s immoral, but if you’re going to be an adulterer at least be consistent!75
Juvenal himself activates a generic confusion in these lines with the mention of
the famous mime-actor Latinus.76 In Satire 1, Juvenal had used a mime plot involving
Latinus trying to cozy up to his co-star Thymele with gifts as a parallel to the abject
toadying that men (even other delatores)77 would submit themselves to in order to avoid
the condemnation of a powerful delator: in Juvenal’s gallery of rogues, you might spot
“behind this guy, an informer against his powerful friend, and intending to snatch what’s
left from the picked over carcass of nobility—even Massa is afraid of him and Carus
placates him with a gift like a Thymele sent secretly by a nervous Latinus” (Post hunc
75
Juvenal is not as vituperative about Ursidius’ erotic dalliances as one might expect. Juvenal is more
critical of his stupidity: in the lines that follow, Juvenal points out that any expectations for fidelity
Ursidius has might not be well thought out: quid quod et antiquis uxor moribus illi/ quaeritur? O medici,
nimiam pertundite venam (6.45-46). Indeed, considering the ubiquity of adultery in Sat. 6, Juvenal’s
condemnation is curiously one-sided towards the female participants; only when the adulterer is
simultaneously a gender-pervert does he come under serious fire (see above on 6.O20ff.).
76
He appears in several epigrams of Martial (e.g. 1.4.5, with Thymele; 2.72.3; 5.51.7, etc.) as well as
mentioned in passing in Suet. Dom. 15.3.
77
Specifically Baebius Massa and Mettius Carus, both infamous informers under Domitian (cf. Tac. Agr.
45.1, where they appear together, Tac. Hist. 4.50.2, and Mart. 12.25.5, which, written under Trajan, uses
Carus as a byword for a Domitianic informer). For a recent treatment on delatores in the empire, see
Rutledge 2001, especially 202-4 and 245-6 for prosopographical information on Baebius and Mettius,
respectively.
235
magni delator amici/ et cito rapturus de nobilitate comesa/ quod superset, quem Massa
timet, quem munere palpat/ Carus, ut a trepido Thymele summissa Latino, 1.33-36).78
Juvenal here in Satire 6 evokes a particularly popular mime plot-form involving
an adulterer, a woman, and a cuckolded husband.79 The comparison with a farcical
comedy in Satires 1 and 6 does not merely play up the atmosphere of play-acting and
identity negotiation rampant in Juvenal’s Rome.80 Here, the play between Roman and
dramatic character goes even further.81 Whereas Thymele-Latinus was used purely as
analogy (with ut accepted at 1.36), here Ursidius blends permeably with the mime role:
are we supposed to imagine that Ursidius himself was often forced to take cover in a
closet to prevent being discovered or simply that this scene is a simply a stand-in to recall
Ursidius’ illicit exploits? One could argue that the former seems over-determined by
literature and thus implausible even to Juvenal, but Juvenal makes no such allowances for
not allowing elegiac scenarios into Satire 6 throughout.82 Is this dramatic reference the
medium of the satirical reality or a representation of actual reality? Juvenal elides the
boundaries between dramatic fiction and satirical reality while he describes a character
who violates his own category of “adulterer.”
78
Accepting ut for the mss. et l. 36, since while sources indicate that Latinus was close to Domitian (cf. the
scholium on 4.53, quoting the 3rd cent. C.E. biographer Marius Maximus that Latinus was among the
potentes apud Domitianum), there is little evidence that he was himself a delator. Contra Rutledge 2001:
244, which, though acknowledging a lack of contemporary evidence, supports the manuscripts’ sense,
given the reliability of the scholiasts in identifying delatores.
79
For a complete account of this mime family (“The Adultery Mime”), encompassing its variants and
witnesses including early Christians, see Reynolds 1946. Another notable reenactment of the scenario in a
non-dramatic context occurs in the so-called “Tale of the Tub” in Apul. Met. 9.22-28, with the narrator
taking a similar moralistic tack.
80
For this notion of theatricality in Juvenal, see Keane 2006: 29-32.
81
To say nothing of the confusion of role and actor, since Juvenal technically means not “Latinus” but “the
role that Latinus played.”
82
E.g. an illicit exchange of letters at 6.233-34, advice Ovid similarly gives to women at AA 3.475.
236
Juvenal makes it clear that Roman matrons now lack the fidelity and chastity
which used to define them. Finding a woman “of the old character” and “a matron with a
chaste mouth” (antiquis…de moribus, 6.45; capitis matrona pudici, 6.49) calls for a
celebration in this day and age. Juvenal even jokes that Roman matrons are as likely to
embrace the idealized chaste woman encapsulated by the term univira as to become oneeyed (uniocula, perhaps?): “Does one husband suffice for Hiberina? You’d sooner twist it
out of her that she be content with one eye” (unus Hiberinae vir sufficit? Ocius illud/
extorquebis, ut haec oculo contenta sit uno, 6.53-54).83 Nor does the “backwoods”
woman retain the same valence as before: at the objection that a woman living on her
father’s country estate has great repute, Juvenal counters that she is unlikely to continue
living that way even in remote places like Gabii or Fidenae, let alone at Rome (magna
tamen fama est cuiusdam rure paterno/ viventis. Vivat Gabiis ut vixit in agro,/ vivat
Fidenis, et agello cedo paterno, 6.55-57).
Thymele too reappears in Satire 6 a moment later when Juvenal moves into the
seedy epicenter of Roman female immorality: the porticoes and, especially, the theater
(porticibusne tibi monstratur femina voto/ digna tuo? Cuneis an habent spectacula totis/
quod securus ames quodque inde excerpere possis?, 6.60-62). There is a humorous crosspollination of genres activated here, as these sites of Rome were exactly those places
which Ovid suggested one start hunting for available women in the opening of the first
83
Keane 2006: 63 sees this line as an example of Juvenal’s predilection towards grotesques in the form of
missing eyes (cf. Juvenal’s description of luscus Hannibal at 10.158) and contrasts this with Persius’
dismissal of this sort of humor as cheap in his first satire (non hic qui in crepidas Graiorum ludere gestit/
sordidus et lusco qui possit dicere ‘lusce’, Pers.1.127-8). See Lightman and Zeisel 1977 for an account of
how the use of univira did in fact change over the course of Roman history, being “adapted to cultural and
social transformations within society” (19).
237
book of the Ars Amatoria.84 But the theater becomes in Juvenal a particularly
symptomatic locus of female degradation, acting both as a physical site of female
impropriety (from which he launches an extended critique of women’s outrageous sexual
appetites) and a symbol of Rome’s perverted tastes.85 Juvenal begins by describing
abandoned behavior at the show itself:
chironomon Ledam molli saltante Bathyllo
Tuccia vesicae non imperat, Apula gannit
[sicut in amplexu, subito et miserabile longum.]
attendit Thymele: Thymele tunc rustica discit.
65
(6.63-66)
While “graceful” Bathyllus dances a gesticulating Leda, Tuccia can’t control her bladder,
Apula snarls, [as if in an embrace, all of a sudden and for a long wretched time.] Thymele
is paying attention: at that moment, she’s the bumpkin who has something to learn.
The show in Juvenal’s text is two parts. First there is the sexually charged
pantomime of Leda, “smoothly” acted out by the Bathyllus (where molli almost certainly
has double force, considering the importance of the word in Roman moral discourse),86
who has a thing or two to teach even to the experienced mime-actress Thymele. The other
half of Juvenal’s spectacle comes in the reaction of Tuccia and Apula, who grunt and wet
themselves with pleasure. Juvenal thus heightens the intensity of our outrage with the
contrast between Thymele’s model of viewing, scouring Bathyllus’ performance for
84
Scattered amongst various landmarks, including temples, Ovid mentions the Portico of Livia at AA 1.7172 (Nec tibi vitetur quae, priscis sparsa tabellis,/ porticus auctoris Livia nomen habet) and the theater at
1.89 (Sed tu praecipue curvis venare theatris). Watson 2007a correctly sees references like these as part of
overall generic program in Juvenal 6 to equate the Roman matrona with the fickle, imperious, and sexually
unrestrained meretrix/puella of Roman elegy.
85
Winkler 1983: 195 n. 21 argues for a pun of cuneis (cuneis an habent spectacular totis, 6.61) and cunnis,
recalling the wedge shapes of the sections of seats; the place for spectating—as captured by Juvenal’s
language—then already evokes female genitals even before Juvenal narrates Roman women’s unrestrained
craving for men on stage.
86
Pace Courtney ad loc. who reads it strictly in regards to the “sensuous movement of the dancer’s pliant
limbs.” See Edwards 1993: 63-97 and Williams 139-45 for a full discussion of the discourse of mollitia in
Rome.
238
pointers as a fellow craftsperson in the perverted arts, and the abandoned sexuality of the
Roman matronae.
Whatever the “sophistication” of the spectatorship of the matrons,87 two basic
points which will affect our understanding of the rest of the section concerning Roman
women’s fascination with men on stage are clear. One, Juvenal has transformed their
behavior at a spectacle into the spectacle itself, by turning his satirical lens towards
them.88 Second, and even more important, the Roman women are so consumed with
desire for the man underneath the costume that they are completely unconcerned with
Juvenal’s satirical attack. Their unrestrained sexual behavior takes place in broad daylight
without concern for being observed by fellow spectators.
This second point sets up a key paradox between Juvenal’s satirical methods and
their accomplishment in this section of the satire. Juvenal aims to “expose” the naughty
behavior of women, but they take no effort to hide it. The women in these lines and
following are completely open in their devotion to their actor, and the lines depict their
gradual progression from admiration to more “intimate” contact. As he proceeds, Juvenal
87
Freudenburg 2001: 254-55, reads the passage as a mirror of how Juvenal turns the camera on himself
and, as he portrays himself as spectator to the wicked “realities” of Rome, becomes a frothing spectacle; he
finds the actions of both sets of spectators rooted in “failing to separate myth from lived experience,”
causing each to lose control (255). Keane 2006: 38-40 counters by pointing out the savvy of the female
audience, despite being the object of satire, for, they “look past the dramatic illusion itself and fixate, with
strong emotion, on the mechanics of the production,” in a structurally similar way to Juvenal’s program of
exposing the real nature criminals and hypocrites (40). In her discussion, Keane notably retains line 65 (“as
if in a long embrace…”), deleted by Guyet (and followed by Housman, Clausen, Courtney, and Braund)
because of the difficulties of interpreting the mss.; the line seems to indicate that the women project
themselves into the show on stage (sicut in amplexu), imagining themselves as part of the sexual spectacle.
Nadeau 2011 also retains the lines, altering subito to subitum with the following punctuation: sicut in
amplexu, subitum et miserabile. Longum/ attendit Thymele.
88
This conceit—the viewers of one spectacle becoming the object of a satirical spectacle—is not new,
appearing in, e.g., Horace (Ep. 2.1.194-98, on Democritus’ expected reaction to being inserted into a
contemporary Roman audience: spectaret populum ludis attentius ipsis, 197). Indeed, the Roman public’s
awareness of itself being watched in the stands takes on ominous tones under Nero and his expectations of
audience participation; see Bartsch: 1994: 1-35.
239
moves away from the overt spectacle-within-the-spectacle with which he began, even as
he continues to discuss the perverted spectatorship of Roman women. For, even when
games and theatrical displays are not in progress (6.67-68), women sentimentally fondle
the dramatic equipment and (Juvenal’s climax) undergarments of their favorite actors
(tristes/ personam thyrsumque tenent et subligar Acci, 6.69-70).
The relationships become more obviously sexual when the women begin to
interfere in their lovers’ dramatic practices for the sake of their erotic appetites, such as
the woman who bribes the comic actor to undo the infibulation preventing sexual activity
and thus thought to preserve his voice (solvitur his magno comoedi fibula, 6.73).89 They
reach the highest degree of brazenness when the husband is able discern the performerlover’s appearance in “his” son:
accipis uxorem de qua citharoedus Echion
aut Glaphyrus fiat pater Ambrosiusque choraules.
longa per angustos figamus pulpita vicos,
ornentur postes et grandi ianua lauro,
ut testudineo tibi, Lentule, conopeo
nobilis Euryalum murmillonem exprimat infans.
80
(6.76-81)
You are taking a wife that made a father out of the guitar-player Echion and Glaphyrus
and the piper Ambrosius. Let’s erect long platforms through the narrow neighborhoods!
Let’s decorate the lintels and door-jambs with huge wreaths of laurel, just so your high
born infant, in his tortoise-shell cradle, can exhibit to you, Lentulus, the face of Euryalus
the gladiator!
The visualizing mechanic reinforces not only the horror of the incident (by concentrating
it into a single point—the baby’s face)90 but also its obviousness. The Roman wife’s
89
See Nadeau 2011: 85 and 235-36 for more on infibulation; Celsus 7.25.3 describes the process and it is
mentioned as preserving the singing voice in Martial 7.82 and 14.215, apparently a tag to be attached to an
actual fibula.
90
See Edwards 1993: 52-53 on the simultaneous violation of status distinctions and Roman sexual mores at
play in this interaction between upper-class woman and lower-class man. Note too how the Latin words for
the infant’s face (nobilis…exprimat infans) bracket the identity of the real father.
240
infidelity has become literally as plain as the nose on her child’s face.91 Juvenal’s tactics
fail to “expose” any adultery, as it is already clearly discernible from the appearance of
the bastard; ironically, this appeal to revelation only underscores the openness of
women’s behavior. Juvenal’s satires shows us that the ubiquity of female crime is already
there for us to read, yet also demonstrates, through this rhetoric of “showing” vice, that
we are insufficient to contain it.
Our notions of “uncovering” hidden female vice take on another wrinkle in the
following extended vignette, detailing the exploits of Eppia, a senator’s wife, in her
pursuit of a gladiator named Sergius across the sea (6.82-114). Juvenal explicitly
confirms Roman women’s lack of regard for how they are morally received, linking it,
somewhat paradoxically, with their high status: “Long ago she had dismissed her
reputation, the loss of which registered little amongst her soft sedans” (famam
contempserat olim,/ cuius apud molles minima est iactura cathedras, 6.89-91).92
What is more curious to Juvenal is their disregard for the hardships of sea travel
in their pursuit of their paramours, despite their pampered upbringing (6.88-90). Yet
Juvenal paints an arresting picture of their double natures when confronted with the perils
of the sea:
Tyrrhenos igitur fluctus lateque sonantem
pertulit Ionium constanti pectore, quamvis
mutandum totiens esset mare. iusta pericli
91
Juvenal returns to this image (a baby manifestly not from his father’s stock) at the end of the Satire, in a
section on Roman matrons’ avoidance of child-bearing: if she were willing to have a child, Juvenal says, it
probably wouldn’t be yours! (nam si distendere vellet/ et vexare uterum pueris salientibus, esses/ Aethiopis
fortasse pater, mox decolor heres, etc…6.598-600). It is another case of Juvenal’s obsessive tendency to
return to adultery in this satire, among the reasons Braund 1992 labels the satire on the whole as more
oriented to dissuading marriage than defaming women.
92
Juvenal connects this disregard of moral judgment elsewhere with wealth, where wealth buys a
husband’s complicity (Caesennia’s unnamed husband at ll. 136-141: vidua est, locuples quae nupsit avaro,
6.141)
241
si ratio est et honesta, timent pavidoque gelantur
pectore nec tremulis possunt insistere plantis:
fortem animum praestant rebus quas turpiter audent.
si iubeat coniunx, durum est conscendere navem,
tunc sentina gravis, tunc summus vertitur aer:
quae moechum sequitur, stomacho valet. illa maritum
convomit, haec inter nautas et prandet et errat
per puppem et duros gaudet tractare rudentis.
95
100
(6.92-102)
Therefore she endures the Tyrrhenian waves and the Ionian sounding far and wide with
an unmoved heart, although the sea will change—as it must—so often. If the reason for
the danger is just and honest, they are afraid and are frozen along with her shivering
breast and cannot even stand on wobbly feet: they provide a brave heart to those things
which they do foully. If their husband should order it, it’s a demanding just to board the
ship: then the bilge is intense, then the sky above starts spinning. If she is following her
paramour, she is strong in stomach. The former vomits all over the husband, the latter
eats among the sailors and wanders around through the poop and rejoices in drawing
coarse ropes.
Juvenal offers two contradictory portraits of women on board, showing the connection
between their actions open to view and their inner fortitude for their lovers (constanti
pectore, 93). Juvenal offers the faint-hearted steps (tremulis plantis, 96) and sea-sickness
(illa maritum/ convomit—the extra sting that she vomits in the lap of her husband, 100-1)
of the woman accompanied by her husband, contrasted with the bold-hearted
fraternization and exploration of the adulterous woman (inter nautas et prandet et errat/
per puppem, 101-2). Although Juvenal marks this contrast by opposing demonstratives
(illa, 100, of the husbanded matron; haec, 101, of the lover-bound), what is clear is that
this contradiction could be embodied within a single woman. Nor is it strictly a matter of
mere play-acting. With their husbands in tow, they do not pretend to be afraid of the boat:
they are afraid (timent, 95). His attention to the external shows that the woman is not
“acting” around her husband only to reveal her true resilience when in pursuit of a lover;
rather, she is a necessarily two-faced creature.93
93
Weisen 1989 sees this scene as dramatizing the poverty of genuine emotions in the intellectually
deadened environment of Satire 6 (“In a world where inertness so completely dominates vivid intelligence,
242
Yet the continuity between the woman on board and adulterous woman, exposed
through the infant’s face, comprises more than the mere similarity of choice of paramour.
Her vacillation between timidity and audacity is not hypocrisy; unlike with the moralists
which open Satire 2, Juvenal does not open up a hidden reservoir of guilt. Her behavior is,
in fact, the opposite of active concealment of those moralists or the controlled play-acting
of the notorious Greek flatterer who belches and shivers in tune with his mark (3.100109), leading Juvenal to dub “this whole nation a sitcom” (natio comoeda est, 3.100). It is
merely the expression of a profoundly self-contradictory identity. What can satire do, if
women have no qualms about openly displaying her allegiances this way? Satire
pinpoints the significance of their incongruous behavior on the boat, yet the analytical
distance established through observation of the behavior only furthers the notions of
women as overwhelming and reduces the satiric audience to helplessness.
Herein lies the significance of the choice of lover: even as women collapse the
distance between performer and audience, satire consequently increases it. The more
Juvenal shows women’s behavior in pursuit of their erotic objects, the more we realize
how detached we are from it. The externalizing mechanics of Juvenal, aiming at exposure,
are disrupted by the women in this section of Satire 6, for they hide nothing.94 Juvenal
ends this section by aiming to debunk the mystique of Sergius:
what role is there for genuine human emotions? Who can even tell the difference between honest behavior
and acting?” 729), though I see it as reflecting the paradox of the mechanics of visualization in this section
of the satire.
94
Though these notions on the helplessness of the satiric audience overlap with some of the notions of
Plaza’s resisting reading of Satire 6, what distinguishes this reading from that is twofold. First, Plaza’s
reading is posited as deliberately in contradiction with the ideology espoused by Satire 6, while I am
arguing that many of these contradictions can be extracted merely from the paradox which Juvenal’s
satirical techniques themselves galvanize. Second, and an extension of the first, my conclusions aim at
conceiving of Juvenal’s program as failed, not because Roman women could be read from a feminist
perspective as getting the uncontested upper hand in the world of Satire 6, but because the world that
243
qua tamen exarsit forma, qua capta iuuenta
Eppia? quid uidit propter quod ludia dici
sustinuit? nam Sergiolus iam radere guttur
105
coeperat et secto requiem sperare lacerto;
praeterea multa in facie deformia, sicut
attritus galea mediisque in naribus ingens
gibbus et acre malum semper stillantis ocelli.
sed gladiator erat. facit hoc illos Hyacinthos;
110
hoc pueris patriaeque, hoc praetulit illa sorori
atque viro. ferrum est quod amant. hic Sergius idem
accepta rude coepisset Veiiento videri.
(6.103-113)
So what form was Eppia set on fire by, by what youth was she captured? What reason did
she see for enduring being called a gladiator’s groupie? For her precious Sergius had by
then begun to shave his throat and to hope for retirement with his arm slashed. In addition,
there is much out of place on his face, like a huge wart, worn raw by his helmet and right
in the middle of his nose as well as a nasty problem of an always dripping eyelet. But he
was a gladiator. This makes them Hyacinths; this is what they prefer to their children and
fatherland and sister and husband. It’s the iron that they love. This same Sergius, once he
got his retirement sword, would have begun to look like Veiiento.
Just as with the women in makeup, Juvenal aims to show us the ugly truth that lies behind
the charisma of the performer, warts and all (pun intended). Juvenal contrasts this
depiction of Sergius’s true ugliness with the fawning obliviousness of Eppia’s devotion.
Indeed, Juvenal actually acts out her devotion, for he focalizes the gladiator’s name
through Eppia as “Sergiolus” (105) and similarly refers to his weeping “eyelet” (ocelli,
109; cf. the use of ocellos at line 8 of Lesbia).95 He then reveals the “true” source of her
affection (ferrum est quod amant) and argues that, without his sword, Sergius becomes as
unattractive…as any other Roman man.96
Juvenal aims to capture in his Satires is so steeped in contradictions of meaning that the generic devices to
depict these contradictions necessarily break down.
95
Cf. Courtney ad 105 for Juvenal’s use of the “caressing dimunitive” (hypokorisma).
96
Courtney ad 113 and Ferguson 1987: 238-9 go through the options for the identity of Veiento, equating
him with the Domitianic character from Satire 4’s council room (cf. 4.113, prudens Veiiento) or suggesting
that he is the senatorial husband of Eppia or a “repulsive old man.” Neither of these suggestions seem
necessary, in light of the joke at 6.75: “What do you think they’re going to go for? Quintillian?” (an
expectas ut Quintilianus ametur?, part of Juvenal’s generally unflattering portrait of Quintillian throughout
244
Yet even as Juvenal exhibits Sergius’ actual loathsomeness, he also demonstrates
that he cannot undo Eppia’s devotion. Indeed, his determination of the key facet of
Sergius’ charm—the “iron” of his profession—might very well not be a revelation to
Eppia herself, for the women Juvenal has made a spectacle of show a conscious selfawareness that the source of their affections lies in the spectacular nature of their
boyfriends’ professions. After all, we see their passion to the actors either while they are
onstage (64,71-2) or in caressing not the actors themselves, but the articles of their
profession (70).97 And when are the women the most crestfallen (tristes, 6.69)? Between
the theatrical seasons, when their lovers are not on stage (6.67-69). Juvenal’s women are
one step ahead again.
Although, the discourse of exposure becomes meaningful again in the next section,
concerning Messalina’s prostitution (114-135), since Messalina would slink off at night
to the brothel, clothed in nocturnos cucullos (6.118), the feeling of helplessness sinks in
again on the part of the audience. Besides being set in the past, the incident shows how
even men in the highest echelons of power are forced to endure women’s offences: “look
at rivals of the gods, hear what things Claudius endured.” (respice rivales divorum,
Claudius audi/ quae tulerit, 6.115-6).98 Juvenal visualizes the scene immediately with the
imperative respice; even more, the following imperative audi refers not only to the act of
listening to the poet recite, but to the more immersive act of imagining the aural backdrop
the satires; see Anderson 1982: 398-402). In this case, he need only represent an average Roman,
unattractive purely for his lack of performative mystique.
97
Cf. the way the music-crazed woman fondles her instruments (6.379-84).
98
One wonders if there is perhaps a glancing evocation of Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis here, considering the
ironic word order juxtaposing Claudius’ “divinity” with his humiliation.
245
for the following visual spectacle.99 Indeed, the intensity of the show evokes other senses,
such as the foul “smell of the brothel” she tracks home (fumoque lucernae/ foeda
lupanaris tulit ad pulvinar odorem, 6.131-2) or the extreme heat of the prostitute’s booth
(calidum veteri centone lupanar, 6.121). We are forced to inhabit the foul scene without
any escape route.
The spectacle ends with each side unsatisfied: just as Messalina begrudgingly
heads back to the palace wanting more (adhuc ardens rigidae tentigine volvae/ et lassata
viris necdum satiata recessit, 6. 129-30), so too does Juvenal himself, forced to endure
and present this lurid spectacle, hand it off to us like a rotten baton, and Juvenal’s
audience further fails to achieve any satisfaction from the show. Juvenal ends with a
praeteritio promising that this is not even the worst:
hippomanes carmenque loquar coctumque venenum
privignoque datum? faciunt graviora coactae
imperio sexus minimumque libidine peccant.
(6.133-35)
Should I speak about horse-rage and spells and poisons, cooked and given to the step-son?
Women do worse evils, forced by the command of being a woman, and err the least
because of pleasure.
Assuming the text is retained,100 Juvenal, with a wink, rounds off the end of his
discussion of perverted sexuality and simultaneously points out to what will be the true
climax of “typically” female behavior: murderousness.
99
Though Juvenal does not use any specifically onomatopoetic words or other words specifically of sound,
there are certainly moments which evoke sound, such as the elided command of the proprietor dismissing
the women at the end of the shift (mox lenone suas iam dimittente puellas, 6.127) or the problematic line
evoking the rhythmic thumping of sexual intercourse (continueque iacens cunctorum absorbuit ictus, 6.
126; cf. the sound evoked by describing adultery as “shaking another’s bed,” alienum lectus/ concutere,
6.21-22). The latter line is usually deleted because of poor manuscript authority; see Courtney ad loc for
the mss. issues and possible variants.
100
Braund, following Gruppe and Ribbeck, delete the lines; Courtney ad loc insists that minimumque ought
to be replaced with either summum or peius as a “corruption of some word of exactly the opposite sense.”
The entire escalating section on adultery, proceeding from unnamed matrons and even poor women (such
as Aelia at l.72) to a senator’s wife (the extended story of Eppia) to the empress herself at the seat of
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D. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet
Near the end of Satire 6, Juvenal again brings up potions and spells
(cantus…philtra, 6.610-11), used to madden the mind of the husband, either deliberately
or inadvertently. The potion concocted by Caesonia unlocked the daemonic energies of
Caligula and unleashed a rain of destruction down on Rome, which makes Agripinna’s
poisonous mushroom pale in comparison in destructiveness (6.614-626). Juvenal grows
more intense as he proceeds to women’s homicidal impulses towards their young
stepchildren and fatherless charges (pupilli), who must be constantly wary of a mother’s
poison (materno…veneno, 6.631).
Though these scenes are less visually concretized than others (though Juvenal
gives us the memorable image of a petrified tutor forced to act as poison-tester for his
charge, timidus praegustet pocula papas, 6.633), Juvenal involves his audience into both
of these sections through the use of second person verbs and imperatives. In the first
instance, the victim of the potion, a generalized Roman man, become doddering and
vulnerably senile, is elided into the audience: “…philters, with which she might be able
to disturb the mind of the husband and smack his buttocks with a shoe. This is the source
of your madness, this is the cause of your foggy mind…” (…philtra, quibus valeat
mentem vexare mariti/ et solea pulsare natis. quod desipis, inde est,/ inde animi caligo…,
Roman power (Messalina), expects some kind of commenting cap from Juvenal, especially given the rapid
formal transition to the next section (framed in a question-and-answer format). Similarly, Courtney’s
objection to the transmitted text does not seem necessary given that Juvenal will return to exactly these
crimes later in the satire, even using some of the same language (e.g. privigno, l. 134 ~ privignum, l.628;
hippomanes, 133 ~ totam tremuli frontem…pulli, 617). Juvenal even connects the two sections through the
appeal to the empress as models of criminality for other Roman women: Cf. ll.115-16, quoted above, and l.
617: quae non faciet quod principis uxor? Instead, we should see this as a typically Juvenalian anticlimax
and an acknowledgment of, and play on, the length and scope of a satire where an action as shocking and
outrageous as Messalina’s brothel-hopping doesn’t constitute the climax of its own poem.
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6.611-13). In the second use, we are projected into the role of the rich but helpless ward
and given advice on how preserve our health: “You too, wards, I warn, whoever has a
rather expansive property, guard your lives and trust no table: the sweetcakes grow hot
and dark from mother’s poison” (vos quoque, pupilli, moneo, quibus amplior res est,/
custodite animas et nulli credite mensae:/ livida materno fervent adipata veneno, 6.63032). As with the conversion of Silius’ dilemma to our own in Satire 10 (see Ch. 3, E), the
reader is implicated into the text by these second person verbs and enveloped by Roman
vice; they also point forward to the way that “tragic” viciousness will seep through the
“fourth wall” between stage and audience and into the streets of Rome.
From the introduction of poisons and homicidal tendencies (motivated by greed,
as touched on by Juvenal’s warning to wards who are explicitly wealthy, quibus amplior
est res), Juvenal launches into one of the most controversial programmatic statements in
his corpus:
fingimus haec altum satura sumente coturnum
scilicet, et finem egressi legemque priorum
grande Sophocleo carmen bacchamur hiatu,
montibus ignotum Rutulis caeloque Latino?
nos utinam uani.
635
(6.634-38)
Are we making this up—surely we are!—my satire’s slipping on its high tragic boot,
and, exceeding the limit and law of our predecessors, are we now frenzying an imposing
song from our Sophoclean crack, a song unheard of to the Rutulian mountains and the
Latin sky? I wish we were making it up.
The interjection of these lines into an otherwise cohesive train of thought (610-626, on
potions given to husbands; 627-633, on murdering children; 638-661, on murdering
children and husbands, with tragic exemplars) marks them as significant and to be read
carefully with what follows. This passage completes the chronological triad which
structures Satire 6, begun with the opening portrait of the Golden Age (1-24) and
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continued with the traditional portrait of Rome in decline after the Punic Wars (286-300).
Each of these three sections engages with the legendary, historical, or mythological past
in order to presage the present breakdown. These lines effectively round off the subtle
crescendo of Satire 6’s structural frame and trump the other two passages in emotional
intensity. The ironic detachment marking the Golden Age section in its portrayal of the
ideal couple (e.g. the belching husband at 6.10) proceeds to the stern moralizing of the
section on the origin of Roman vice, peaking here in the utter hysteria of “tragic” Rome.
There are several issues involving tone, satiric program, and genre, which have
been unpacked by previous scholars. Are we meant to take the lines at their feverish face
value? Are these lines meant to act as a defense against a supposed objection by the
audience (implied by scilicet, 6.635) or imply an actual break with Juvenal’s previous
satiric program? What do the lines imply about the relationship between Juvenal’s satire
and tragedy? My view owes a debt to these many of these discussions, but my
introduction of the paradox of visualized meaning (explicitly identified in Satire 2) into
the discourse of Satire 6 adds another layer of significance to these lines.
In addressing some of these questions, I will show how these lines fit into the
overall scheme of Satire 6’s engagement with the various problems of meaning and genre
in Juvenal’s Rome, especially how those issues have been activated by the intensely
visualized discourse of Juvenal’s satire. What women have done through their
promiscuity, vanity, and authority is to subvert the stability of Roman society, dependent
on a steady (and hierarchal) relationship of men and women, and have dismantled the
genre of Roman satire along with it. The accumulation in Satire 6 of so much female
mischief and crime exposes, according to Juvenal, the generic fissures of satire; by
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rewriting a dynamic definition of contemporary womanhood—in license, in appearance,
and in sexuality—Roman matrons have debased not only static social categories but also
generic ones.
A few points must be acknowledged before looking closely at the lines
themselves and the climactic picture of a Rome brimming with tragic villainesses. First,
the lines should not be regarded as any kind of revision of Juvenal’s satiric program.101
Though we must dismiss out of hand the literal implication that Juvenal is “introducing”
tragedy to Roman shores (esp. line 637), Catherine Keane has shown how the lines posit
Juvenal as an importer.102 They evoke the entrance of tragedy and drama into Rome as
controversial103 and suggest a parallel between the destructive force of mixing native
Roman stock with foreign influences.104 By this logic, Juvenal associates himself with
transgression, exactly that quality which he posits as so dangerous in the women of Satire
6. The lines show how transgression operates on two levels in satire: definitional
101
Though Morford 1972 correctly understands how Juvenal’s world has become so extreme that the
boundaries between tragedy and satire have dissolved and the whole world has essentially become another
satiric stage, he argues that this picture contrasts with Juvenal’s previous denunciation of contemporary
tragedy and that it forms a defensive revision of his satiric plan from Satire 1. Yet the tone and language of
the lines is not dramatically different from the overall language of Juvenal’s first two books of satires, and
the references to the poor quality and irrelevance of contemporary tragedies in Satire 1 (cf. inpune diem
consumpserit ingens/ Telephus aut summi plena iam margine libri/ scriptus et in tergo necdum finitus
Orestes, 1.4-6) have more to do with the worthlessness of “modern” authors than the genre of tragedy itself.
Indeed, as Freudenburg 2005a has shown, already in Satire 1 characters drawn from the fictional worlds of
epic and satire make their appearance in Juvenal’s satire: epic monsters, rather than acting as a benchmark
for epic “unreality” (as they do in, e.g., Martial 10.4.9-10: non hic Centauros, non Gorgonas Harpyiasque/
invenies: hominem pagina nostra sapit) are imported into satirical “reality.”
102
Keane 2003: 267-69
103
One controversial version of this narrative can be found at Livy 7.2; for more on Livy’s account, notable
for giving Roman satire a dramatic origin, see Coffey 1976: 18-22 and Feldherr 1998: 178-87, where he
argues for its programmatic use as a foil by Livy to his own spectacular techniques.
104
Keane 2003: 267, giving examples such as the noble actor or the influx of foreign customs (e.g.
Juvenal’s metaphor from streams merging together at 3.60-63: non possum ferre, Quirites,/ Graceam
urbem. quamvis quota portio faecis Achaei?/ iam pridem Syrus in Tiberim defluxit Orontes/ et linguam et
mores etc.).
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inconsistencies are, on one level, satiric objects, exampled by the anathema Juvenal pours
onto women in Rome attempting to straddle the gendered boundaries between men and
women. Yet they are also embodied in the various contradictions of the text itself; it is at
this moment when Juvenal finally acknowledges how these problems have spilled out
into his own verse. Even as he then goes on to enact this generic paradox in a
phantasmagoric vision of murderous tragic protagonists still stalking the earth, this vision
of havoc should also be projected on Juvenal’s generic project itself. Indeed, Roman
women, Juvenal corrects himself, are worse than these tragic models because of the
baseness of their motives: “And those women used to dare great monstrosities in their
own times, but not for money!” (et illae/ grandia monstra suis audebant temporibus, sed/
non propter nummos, 6.644-46).105
Indeed, the tragic and satiric overlap merely in subject matter, but in form, as
Juvenal immediately launches into a highly dramatic confrontation with one of these
dastardly murderers:
sed clamat Pontia 'feci,
confiteor, puerisque meis aconita paraui,
quae deprensa patent; facinus tamen ipsa peregi.'
tune duos una, saeuissima uipera, cena?
tune duos? 'septem, si septem forte fuissent.'
640
(6.638-642)
But Pontia shouts, “I did it, I confess, I prepared wolfsbane for my boys—which was
found out and is now public! Still, I accomplished this deed all on my own!” You did it,
two children at one dinner, you most vicious viper? Two? “And I would done seven, if I
happened to have seven!”
105
There is a similar ironic joke, where Juvenal takes an already scandalous assertion about the past
(women murdering husbands and children!) and then finds a present circumstance which manages to top it,
at 15.116-119, where Iphigenia’s (attempted) sacrifice in Tauris is contrasted positively with Egyptian
cannibalism since “at least Iphigenia only had to worry about the sacrificial knife!” (ulterius nil/ aut
gravius cultro timet hostia).
251
Though the use of sed at line 638 makes such a reading tempting in its literalness, we
should dismiss the urge to take seriously Juvenal’s claims or worries about credibility
expressed just before.106 Instead, we should focus on how these lines mirror moments
from throughout the rest of Satire 6 and transition to enacting in satire the conflict taking
place on Roman streets. Pontia’s boldness in admitting her guilt represents the same
unconcerned dismissal of Juvenal’s moral protestations as we saw in the shameless loves
early in Satire 6.107 Further, the disbelief of Juvenal’s question tune duos, emphasized by
the anaphora at lines 641-42, stems from her violation of gender norms: Juvenal cannot
imagine that a woman would be capable of this.
Yet the interjection immediately preceding it gives the reader a new lens to view
the form of the lines as well. These moments of drama reflect an irruption of the
problems of Rome into satiric verse itself; Roman women are, day by day, becoming
more like tragic villainesses and, just as “worrisome,” satire is becoming more like
tragedy in form and content.108
106
Powell 1999, arguing strongly against using this or any passage as evidence for the intrusion of the high
style into Juvenal, asserts that Juvenal is merely asserting the credibility of the subject matter to follow,
rather than making any implications about his style. He notes that Pontia which immediately Juvenal’s
declaration (ll. 638-40) speaks in ordinary, unpoetic Latin, completely unlike a character from, e.g., a
tragedy of Seneca. This reading, besides being uninspiringly literal, ignores previous uses of hiatus to
indicate a high style: quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu, Hor.AP.138 (cf. fabula seu maesto
ponatur hianda tragoedo, Pers. 5.3). Indeed, although Powell correctly plots how Juvenal is constantly
undercutting his own use of high language (e.g. pairing the solemnly archaic induperatorem with the rough
glutisse at 4.28-29), he doesn’t fully address what effect the prevalence of this language has in Juvenal,
however much it comes to parody. Add, now, Nadeau 2011 Appendix 1 (358-439) for a systematic
appraisal of Juvenal’s (ab)use of the Grand Style.
107
Cf. the outrageous defense of the wife caught in flagrante delicto earlier in the satire (just before the
interlude on the Punic War), comically calling on Quintillian for a rhetorical strategem (dic aliquem sodes
hic, Quintiliane, colorem, 6.280) and climaxing in her assertion, ’homo sum’ (6.279-285).
108
Keane 2006: 15-18 is right to emphasize the ambiguity of 6.634ff., arguing that the reader must
determine for him/herself what is Juvenal’s exact relationship with drama. Keane uses these lines as a
springboard into a discussion of the “dramatic project” of satire, where satirists play directors, performers,
and spectators, one and all, and inhabit a world defined by performance and theatricality. Her observations
about how to read satire’s continual fascination with the theatrical and the spectacular remain valuable, but
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The remainder of the satire bounces between “actual” Roman women and their
tragic models; indeed, it is sometimes unclear whether Juvenal is discussing Roman
women through the lens of tragic heroines (i.e. Roman women are like Clytemnestras and
Danaids, but worse) or if he is commenting on the new-found plausibility of tragedy in
light of contemporary “tragic” crimes (credamus tragicis quidquid de Colchide torva/
dicitur et Procne, 6.643-44). Juvenal contrasts how acts of passion and anger—tragic
motivations—incur less astonishment (minor admiratio, 6.646) 109 than cold-blooded
murder of women today (scelus ingens/ sana facit, 6.651-52). The permeability of
boundaries in Rome is thus reflected in the metatheatrical gestures that cap the section,
for Juvenal. He climaxes with a nightmarish hallucination of Roman streets teeming with
tragic murderesses: “Many Danaids and Eriphylas will run into you every morning, no
neighborhood will be without its Clytemnestra” (occurent multae tibi Belides atque
Eriphylae/ mane, Clytemnestram nullus non vicus habebit, 6.655-56). In Juvenal, tragic
villainesses step off of the dramatic stage and into the world of Rome; the world of the
theater messily spills over into the world of satire. The evocation of the image in Satire 1
of being jostled and bumped by all the dregs and criminals of Rome (cf. cum te
summoveant qui…, 1.37; occurit matrona potens, quae…, 1.69)110 is a fitting bookend to
in this section the primary issue is the one of transgression that she herself had fleshed out in an earlier
study (Keane 2003: 267-69). My concern lies not with the general relationship of satire and
drama/spectacle, but with the way that Juvenal posits tragedy, at this moment, as intruding into his satiric
discourse and suggesting that this intrusion is programmatic in a new way. Namely, it underscores how the
behavior of the women in Rome, depicted by Satire 6 as muddying conceptual waters in Rome, has the
same clouding effect on satiric discourse as well.
109
The word is strongly visualizing and the notion of the Roman reader “watching” a tragedy unfold is
mirrored almost immediately in the image of watching a dramatic performance an Alcestis (spectant
subeuntem fata mariti/ Alcestim, 6.652-3; are the subjects/spectators clueless husbands himself?), and the
contrast of this drama with actual female behavior in Rome (similis si permutation detur,/ morte viri
cupiant animam servare catellae, 6.653-4).
110
Indeed, the “powerful matron” from 1.67ff. is a poisoner of her husband herself!
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the unit formed by Books 1 and 2 of Juvenal’s Satires, yet the image from Satire 6 goes
further. Rome has become so unstable because of the female behavior depicted in Satire 6
that the lines between tragedy and satire and the lines between fact and fiction have
become permeable.
Juvenal wraps up the satire with an anti-climactic joke (that women use poison
instead of axes these days, only resorting to good old-fashioned butchery if you’ve inured
yourself to poison like Mithridates, 6.657-61), but the damage has been done. Juvenal
offers an apocalyptic vision for Rome and for Roman satire, wherein the deviancy
rampant in the former infects the latter.111 Note that the verbs at lines 655-56 are not
present, but future (occurent, habebit): the reader is left with an overwhelming feeling
that Rome has reached some kind of critical mass, yet will somehow continue to get
worse.112 The rigidity of Juvenal’s categories (gender and genre) has been permanently
undermined, and, in depicting Rome, Juvenal’s dependence on categorical thought
implicates his satire in the same struggle for meaning that Roman conceptions of gender
have been experiencing. The gloomy end of the satire makes it clear who “wins” this
struggle.
111
Juvenal famously uses idea of vice as infection in a non-programmatic way at 2.78-81: dedit hanc
contagio labem/ et dabit in plures, sicut grex totus in agris/ unius scabie cadit et porrigine porci/ uvaque
conspecta livorem ducit ab uva.
112
Cf. 1.147-49: nil erit ulterius quod nostris moribus addat/ posteritas, eadem facient cupientque
minores,/omne in praecipiti vitium stetit.
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Conclusion
Juvenal’s satiric picture of Rome is complicated by an interpretative paradox. On
one hand, the backdrop of Rome which Juvenal so memorably presents throughout the
satires, whether focusing on concrete social and moral perversions in the first three books
of Satires or framing more universal ethical considerations with a peculiarly Roman
flavor in later books,1 is a chaotic and unstable place: the proper value of things has been
overturned, words point to their opposites, and social and moral categories have been
diametrically reversed. Juvenal’s way of envisioning Rome, on the other hand, relies on
stable correspondences: that external features, bodily or otherwise, can carry a single,
recognizable meaning; that dramatic reenactment of vice and folly can serve on its own to
reveal those failures; that names and exempla can be deployed unproblematically to refer
to traits to follow or avoid.
Juvenal’s satire can hardly escape unscathed from the environment that it creates
and that it claims to originate from. Indeed, the contradiction between these two
concerns—the muddle of signs at Rome and the straightforward references of satiric
discourse—emerges most aggressively at those moments in which Juvenal attempts to
impose satirical order on Rome’s semiotic conflicts. This study has targeted Satires 2, 8,
and 10 because each of these satires alerts the reader metapoetically to the underlying
logical contradiction between Juvenal’s mechanics and his objects; this recognition
authorizes the reader to fashion a new critical lens which especially highlights referential
1
E.g. the pompa circensis in Sat. 10 (discussed at Ch. 3.A); the irruption of a harangue against captatores
(12.93-130) into the account of a friend’s homecoming in Sat. 12; the evocation of villas at Caieta, Tibur,
and Praenestina as emblems of self-destructive consumption in Sat. 14 (14.87-95). Indeed, though one need
not fully accept the thesis of Anderson 1985 (that Juvenal is trying to criticize the “prejudices” of the
speaker of Satire 15), Anderson is convincing in showing that the view of foreign inhumanity (and the
hypocritical disavowal of the same faults by Romans) is particularly Roman.
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paradox as an integral part of Juvenal’s satiric program. Juvenal’s satire becomes, on this
model, not just a picture of the ills of contemporary Rome, but a demonstration of how
those ills complicate the very process of recording them.
In Satire 2, Juvenal crafts one of his most visually arresting and imaginative
pictures of Roman sexual deviance; his approach initially founds itself on “exposure,”
drawing to the surface the grimy secrets which Rome’s inhabitants have kept under wraps
or in their bedrooms, until it climaxes with the figure of Gracchus, a publically social and
moral self-contradiction: a noble who crosses lines of class to fight in the arena and a
man who is married as bride to another man. Juvenal clothes and stages his Roman actors
not as they do look but as they should, so as to reveal to the reader’s imagination their
true natures. Yet Juvenal’s opening conceit, that manly external appearances have
become an unreliable token of internal sexual propriety, destabilizes the foundation of
Juvenal’s envisioning from the outset. Appearing at the opening of Juvenal’s satiric
corpus, Satire 2 reveals a subtle dimension of Juvenal’s depiction of widespread
perversion at Rome: satire, in its attempt to document the interpretative crises rampant
in Rome, will inevitably absorb them.
Juvenal opens Satire 8 with a vivid tableau of noble dissipation to win the reader’s
sympathy for a systematic rebranding of Roman nobilitas. It begins uncontroversially
enough, with Juvenal insisting that the prestige that birth conveys ought to be correlated
instead with virtue; nobilitas should again become a watchword for virtus. Yet as
Juvenal’s picture of Roman nobility develops, his satire remains unable to find a point in
the Roman past where the virtuous mos maiorum was, in fact, the rule. Likewise, his
attacks on the evaporating social boundaries between the noble-born and the vulgar
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(emblematized by Lateranus and the patricians on stage, 8.146-230) become meaningless
if his concern is to realign virtue with benefits conferred by birth. His discussion
vacillates in its concern between nobility (the reified class of patrician Romans whose
transgressions Juvenal catalogs) and “nobility” (the essential characteristic which is the
origin of that class’ elevated ideological position and which should coincide with virtus).
His techniques reveal and reflect this instability: his metatheatrical conceits generically
replicate the transgressions of the Roman nobles, and his metonymic use of names is
paradoxically founded on a stable reference to ideas of “nobility” and “virtue.” The
reoccurrence of the same referential tensions that arose in Satire 2 demonstrates that the
instability of meaning and its self-conscious reflection in satire’s discourses is a problem
that acts across books of Juvenal’s corpus, regardless of the changes in tone or mode
(more ironic, less vivid) between them.
Though Book 3 remains solidly grounded in critique of Roman society (patronage
and vice), the first satire in Book 4, Satire 10, moves immediately to more global
concerns. Despite Juvenal’s evolving mode of satire, there is an underlying continuity to
his concerns and outlook. He continues to hone in on tears in the fabric of interpretation
by insisting that the way we have become accustomed to evaluating the world is simply
wrong. He proposes to replace our damaged perspective with that of Democritus, who
Juvenal claims saw the folly of the world as it actually was and whose personal remedy
for the blindness of others was universal mockery. Yet his process of recasting reveals
itself as necessarily contingent; Democritus’ authority for the accuracy of his worldview
rests only on the self-evident folly of the world as he envisions it. The introduction of the
stand-in figure of Democritus is exactly what makes the reader realize how provisional
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the satiric worldview is and ironizes its claims to be totalizing. The straightforward
understanding of Juvenal’s visual practices in Satire 10, which purports to demonstrate
unequivocally the world’s irrationalities, is undercut by a self-conscious recognition that
they are projections, rather than reflections, of Rome.
Indeed, when one reads these three satires against each other, one can see not just
an underlying concern with meaning and value compromised by vice or folly; more
precisely, one can understand how Juvenal’s explicit discussion of the problems of
meaning at Rome locates satire itself within her boundaries. Satire, in Juvenal’s hands,
becomes a metapoetic reflection of the very crises which it depicts. This understanding
opens up valuable new avenues in satires which manifest problems of reference without
explicitly addressing them. Through an application of this model to Satire 6, the reader
becomes aware of how the mechanics of Juvenal’s satire manifests some of the very traits
which he lambasts in Roman matrons. Female deceptiveness, for example, captured in
Roman women’s love for cosmetics designed to redefine external features, finds its
counterpart in Juvenal’s love of externalized depiction and satiric condensation. This
intersection between mechanics and object reaches its fulfillment in the coincidence of an
apocalyptic vision of Rome overrun by murderous women and a poetological declaration
that the boundaries of Roman satire have been penetrated by Greek tragedy.
This work does not claim to be a singular, final view of Juvenal or visuality in
Roman verse satire. It does not rigorously examine the full range of categories or tools of
ancient visual criticism that the poet trained in rhetorical schools of the 1st century C.E.
would have had at his disposal. It is also true that the visualizing model becomes weaker
in the later satires of Juvenal, though often the logic of correspondence, which fuels
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Juvenal’s visual practices, remains. Still, Book 5 too can be read profitably in light of the
critical model of this study. Indeed, Satire 14, one of the most ignored satires in Juvenal’s
corpus,2 adds a new facet to visual imagination in Juvenal, for it considers the effect of
satiric vision on its imagined audience. Satire 14 begins by claiming that we pass on our
vices to the next generation through example, using dice-games as its first illustration of
dissolution:
Plurima sunt, Fuscine, et fama digna sinistra
et nitidis maculam haesuram figentia rebus,
quae monstrant ipsi pueris traduntque parentes.
si damnosa senem iuvat alea, ludit et heres
bullatus parvoque eadem movet arma fritillo.
5
(14.1-5)
There are very many things, Fuscinus, worthy of a bad reputation and fixing a
stain sure to stick on splendid things, which parents themselves show and hand
down to their children. If prodigal dice-games amuse the old man, his heir, still
with his youthful amulet, plays too and dispatches his troops with a little dicebox.
There is a metapoetic resonance to these lines to unpack, for what has Juvenal’s project
been but to show (monstrant, 3) his reader examples of Roman vice? Later in the satire,
Juvenal says precisely that, likening his picture of the world to a spectacle which bests
any “official” show: “I am showing an outstanding pleasure, which you couldn’t find the
equal to in any theater or on any platforms of a luxurious praetor, if you should watch…”
(monstro voluptatem egregiam, cui nulla theatra/ nulla aequare queas praetoris pulpit
lauti/ si spectes…, 14.256-68). When Juvenal associates “showing” vice and
“transmitting” it (tradunt, 3), he endangers his own project by making it vulnerable to the
reproach that it contributes to the very phenomenon it describes.
2
The only studies up to this point are Keane 2007: 35-41, Corn 1992, and Stein 1970, though none are
outstanding.
259
In fact, this opening intertextually “inherits” (heres, 4) a satirical conceit already
used twice in Juvenal, the derisive comparison of a dice game to warfare. In the opening
satire, the bankrupts playing dice acted as a symbol of Rome’s rich supply of vice, their
tools compared to armories and their games to battles:
et quando uberior uitiorum copia? quando
maior auaritiae patuit sinus? alea quando
hos animos? neque enim loculis comitantibus itur
ad casum tabulae, posita sed luditur arca.
90
proelia quanta illic dispensatore uidebis
armigero!
(1.87-92)
And when has there been a richer reserve of vices? When has a greater opening for greed
laid open? When has dice <more fouled> these minds? For there is no journey to the
fortune of the gaming table with mere pocketbooks as companions; instead they play with
an entire safe wagered. How many battles will you see there with the accountant as shield
bearer!
We have likewise seen this image used in the opening scene of Satire 8, where Juvenal
pictures Roman nobles shaming their forebears by staging their dice games as debased reenactments of their ancestors’ military achievements (8.9-12; see Ch. 2. A). Satire 14
thus opens by destructively demonstrating its own message, for Juvenal’s previous satires
have “handed down” the image of the dice-battle for the later one to “learn.” Indeed, a
detailed reading of Satire 14 would reveal that a great deal of the satire collects and
repeats satiric accounts of vice and foolishness already discussed in different contexts in
Juvenal. The model posited by this study could in turn shed a new poetological light on
these repetitions, by demonstrating how they connect with a larger program of selfdefeating discourse.
By closely analyzing the logical consequences of Juvenal’s mechanics, the reader
recognizes that Juvenal programmatically undercuts his goal of representing Rome as it
is. Yet, paradoxically, this difficulty is also what makes Juvenal’s satire an accurate
260
depiction of Rome. As our reading attempts to make sense of the motley clatter of
Juvenal’s text, we can be thought to re-enact the same referential struggles that Juvenal’s
text envisions as integral to experiencing contemporary Rome. Juvenal’s singular
achievement is a text truly representative of Rome, a behemoth of labyrinthine
complexity, in which we must try not to get lost.
261
Appendix: Juvenal and Modern “Self-Consuming” Literature
The model of reading Juvenal that this study has proposed, which identifies one
aspect of satire’s content as the referential difficulties of Rome, activated self-consciously
by mechanics in depicting it, should be familiar to readers of modern novels, particularly
literature produced in Europe and America since the end of the Second World War. I
would like to offer a survey of a few seminal texts of contemporary literature (Don
DeLillo’s White Noise [1985], Paul Auster’s City of Glass [1985], and Julio Cortazar’s
Hopscotch [Spanish: Rayuela; 1963, 1966]) to demonstrate some recent examples of
reflexive poetics incorporated into a strategy of cultural representation. Despite the vast
differences in time, form, and ideology, each of these novels investigates, and integrates
in its construction, some of the same issues of reference and representation as Juvenal’s
Satires.
These citations are not meant to be anachronistic intimations that Juvenal was
secretly a “postmodern classic” all along.1 Rather, I discuss them to argue for the value of
my approach as a prismatically “contemporary” reading of Juvenal, where the notion of
contemporaneity refracts in two directions. On the one hand, I feel that those concerns
which have become centrally manifest on my reading of Juvenal—reference,
contingency, indeterminancy—remain “live” issues in the cultural and literary discourse
of the 21st century. They give us a reason to read (and re-read) Juvenal beyond the appeal
of a documentary or artifact (of society, of rhetoric, of ideology). Nor is a historicist
1
Cf. the now-ironic title of Kevin McCabe’s interrogation of the applicability of modern critical theory to
Juvenal: “Was Juvenal a Structuralist?” (McCabe 1986). The article is enlightening as a critical specimen,
for it is now dated on two fronts: it rejects out of hand any “modern” critical approach to Juvenal as more
appropriate for the decadent and impoverished texts of Pound and Eliot, and it uses a more or less discarded
term, which rarely exists in critical discussion in its “pure” form, as a watchword for all modern theory.
262
approach irrelevant here (as I have shown in my references to Roman cultural practices
and history), for Juvenal’s text positions itself self-consciously as a project of its time.
The metaficational projects of DeLillo, Auster, and Cortázar are likewise selfconscious artifacts of their own time and can be profitably analyzed as documents of the
issues and concerns of their cultural origins (Latin America in the 1960s, the United
States in the 1980s). Patricia Waugh’s succinct 1984 survey of the explosion of selfconscious experimental fiction in the decades after World War II offers a specimen of a
contemporary reading of those works which envisions them as representational. For
Waugh, the experimentation of post-war metafiction is a particular way of inscribing the
world—described in some ways that seem remarkably similar to the “Rome” of
Juvenal—in a text:
The historical period we are living through has been singularly uncertain, insecure, selfquestioning and culturally pluralistic. Contemporary fiction clearly reflects this
dissatisfaction with, and breakdown of, traditional values…Contemporary metafictional
writing is both a response and a contribution to an even more thoroughgoing sense that
reality or history are provisional: no longer a world of eternal verities but a series of
constructions, artifices, impermanent structures. The materialist, positivist, and empiricist
world-view on which realistic fiction is premised no longer exists.
(Waugh 1984, 6-7, emphasis mine)
Though Juvenal’s text is certainly a less radical negotiation of societal instability
than, e.g., Alain Robbe-Grillet’s La Maison de rendez-vous (1965), in which the “same”
fictional events are retold several times over in radically different configurations
(different settings, different endings, different characters), the notion that Juvenal’s text
reflects, and reflects on, its world in a serious way is what has energized this study. These
modern works are valuable analogues to Juvenal because an account of what constitutes
their “content” must include not just their thematic concerns but their mechanics, i.e. how
the text itself manifests that content.
263
Don DeLillo’s classic Reagan-era novel, White Noise (1985) examines our
processes of making sense of a world of unceasing, unfiltered data. One particularly
cogent flashpoint for the over-driven world in which we are embedded is the modern
grocery store. Early in the novel, the protagonist, Jack Gladney, a professor of “Hitler
Studies” at an imaginary Midwestern American liberal arts college encounters a fellow
professor, Murray Jay Siskind, an outsider who is particularly fascinated with American
consumer culture:
We ran into Murray Jay Siskind at the supermarket. His basket held generic food and
drink, nonbrand items in plain white packages with simple labeling. There was a white
can labeled CANNED PEACHES. There was a white package of bacon without a plastic
window for viewing a representative slice. A jar of roasted nuts had a white wrapper
bearing the words IRREGULAR PEANUTS. Murray kept nodding to Babette [Gladney’s
wife] as I introduced them.
“This is the new austerity,” he said. “Flavorless packaging. It appeals to me. I feel
I’m not only saving money but contributing to some kind of spiritual consensus. It’s like
World War III. Everything is white. They’ll take our bright colors away and use them in
the war effort.
He was staring into Babette’s eyes, picking up items from our cart and smelling
them.
“I’ve bought these peanuts before. They’re round, cubical, pockmarked, seamed.
Broken peanuts. A lot of dust at the bottom of the jar. But they taste good. Most of all I
like the packages themselves. You were right, Jack. This is the last avant-garde. Bold
new forms. The power to shock.”
(DeLillo 2009: 18-19)
Murray reflects on bland packaging as a kind of “empty signifier,” where the blankness
of outer contextual reference serves to simultaneously frame and obfuscate our
experience of what’s within. Yes, the jar of “IRREGULAR PEANUTS” does contain
unusual shapes and much refuse, but this label does not necessarily determine the final
“meaning” of the peanuts: “But they taste good,” Murray asserts.
Indeed, DeLillo’s own peculiarly objective style in the novel also positions the
novel as another instantiation of our ways of filtering and deciphering meaning, in which
the reader has to go through the same procedures as the protagonists (who are, after all,
264
contemporary to the original audience). A little later, DeLillo gives another description of
a supermarket:
Steffie took my hand and we walked along past the fruit bins, an area that extended about
forty-five yards along one wall. The bins were arranged diagonally and backed by mirrors
that people accidentally punched when reaching for fruit in the upper rows. A voice on
the loudspeaker said: “Kleenex Softique, your truck’s blocking the entrance.” Apples and
lemons tumbled in twos and threes to the floor when someone took a fruit from certain
places in the stacked array. There were six kinds of apples, there were exotic melons in
several pastels. Everything seemed to be in season, sprayed burnished, bright. People tore
filmy bags off racks and tried to figure out which end opened. I realized the place was
awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and
coffee-making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and
unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human
apprehension.
(DeLillo 2009: 36).
As with perluces at 2.78 (where the “transparency” of Creticus’ garment has a metapoetic
signifiance by bringing to mind the mechanical correspondence of external detail to inner
characters and the problems of that equation)2 the deployment of the word “noise” comes
at exactly the right moment of the description to take on two significations at once,
including a self-reflexive one. “Noise” is a metaphor for the experience of modern life as
an unfiltered barrage of semiotic data one must filter, process, and frame to avoid being
overwhelmed.3 But at the very moment of its deployment it also symbolizes that
DeLillo’s negotiation with that “noise,” namely the discussion of his text, also embodies
it. In its pedestrian evocation of apples and melons and lemons and sounds, it poses itself
as a representative of the larger system of meaning which it explicitly questions.4 His text
2
Cf. the full discussion at Ch. 1, B.
3
Note, for example, the evocation of an ominous cloud of insects (locusts, ants, bees, or the like) by the
intimations of the ambient hum of activity in the store (the “skid” of carts, the “loudspeaker”, the “cries,”
the “roar”) and the metaphor of pulsating “swarm” of noise, just under (or on top of?) the surface.
4
Nor has the harmony of inquisition and style endeared him to every reader. See especially Myers 2001,
which, in an attack on the prestige of fashionably “literary” writers (Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy, Don
DeLillo, Paul Auster, and David Guterson), discusses DeLillo under the rubric of “edgy” prose: “This is
the sort of writing, full of brand names and wardrobe inventories, that critics like to praise as an ‘edgy’ take
on the insanity of modern American life. It's hard to see what is so edgy about describing suburbia as a
265
thus forces us to determine what words or images are meaningful and what is "noise" in
DeLillo's world.
What constitutes the “reality” of the experience of life in DeLillo’s novel then?
This confrontation plays out in the plot of the novel through the main characters’
exposure, during what is euphemistically dubbed an “airborne toxic event,” to a
potentially lethal chemical agent. Gladney’s obsession with his mortality comes to frame
his motivations and interactions with the other characters of the work, particularly his
wife. But as the passage shows, the question remains unsettled. Here, DeLillo
ambivalently locates the “noise” as both an externalized feature and an internalized
character of life, for the roar is “unlocatable”: “over it all, or under it all”? [my
emphasis]. In Juvenal’s world of visual reference, is the truth (the “noise” in DeLillo’s
structure) on the surface or under it? Because Juvenal’s chosen mode is more compressed
than the expansive modern novel, we do not necessarily have to sift through a plethora of
verbal details to grasp the significance of Juvenal’s moral sketches; yet the “noise” in
White Noise and the moral iconography of Juvenal require the same active interpretative
process to decipher, with the possibility of short-circuiting.
Likewise, modern novels have been particularly rich in their explorations of the
semoitic breakdown that Satire 8 manifests in its discussion of nobilitas. In Paul Auster’s
novel City of Glass, one character (Peter Stillman) seeks to create a new utopia in
America by “repairing” language and recreating the scenario of the Tower of Babel
wasteland of stupefied shoppers, which is something left-leaning social critics have been doing since the
1950s. Still, this is foolproof subject matter for a novelist of limited gifts. If you find the above shopping
list fascinating, then DeLillo's your man. If you complain that it's just dull, and that you got the message
about a quarter of the way through, he can always counter by saying, ‘Hey, I don't make the all-inclusive,
consumption-mad society. I just report on it.’” [final emphasis mine]. Besides simply different aesthetic
viewpoints, what I think Myers fails to appreciate about DeLillo is that the “consumerism” of White Noise
is itself just a metaphor for a more interesting, and less obviously temporally bounded, process.
266
where all men could collaborate through a shared language. He provides a long rambling
manifesto about what might be described as broken words, the gap of meaning that opens
up between language and its corresponding objects:
“For our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt
confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken
apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. They
have not adapted themselves to the new reality. Hence, every time we try to speak what
we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent. It’s made a
mess of everything…Consider a word that refers to a thing—‘umbrella,’ for example.
When I say the word ‘umbrella’ you see the object in your mind. You see a kind of stick,
with collapsible metal spokes on top that form an armature for a waterproof material
which, when opened, will protect you from the rain…What happens when a thing no
longer performs its function? Is it still the thing, or has it become something else? When
you rip the cloth off an umbrella, is the umbrella still an umbrella? You open the spokes,
put them over your head, walk out into the rain, and get drenched. Is it possible to go on
calling this object an umbrella? In general, people do…Because it can no longer perform
its function, the umbrella has ceased to be an umbrella…[The word] is imprecise; it is
false; it hides the thing it supposed to reveal.”
(Auster 2006: 76; emphasis mine)
These words fittingly coincide with the way that the form of Auster’s novel
clashes with its plot. Ostensibly, City of Glass is a detective novel. The opening words
propel it dramatically into the world of hard-boiled detective fiction, but immediately
introduce a tension between two of the central themes of the work, retrospective
interpretation (making sense of narratives) and indeterminancy through chance (which
counteracts our attempts to control it):
It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of
night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. Much later, when he
was able to think about the things that happened to him, he would conclude that nothing
was real except chance…The question is the story itself, and whether or not it means
something is not for the story to tell.
(Auster 2006: 1)
The protagonist, Daniel Quinn, is sent on a quest to follow the speaker of the harangue
above (Peter Stillman), who eventually disappears. The story will eventually “fail” as
detective fiction, for the conventions of the detective novel dictate searching for, and
267
arriving at, an absolute “solution” which resolves all the loose ends of the story. Auster’s
plot ends in mystery and without finals answers or determinations.5 So too does Juvenal
manipulate the discourse of nobilitas which he has inherited from his satiric and
moralizing predecessors without coming to a final determination on what “nobility” is,
what connection it has with virtue, even who should be considered noble.6 In Satire 8,
Juvenal frustrates our search to find a final signification for nobilitas and, in turn, the
prestige it can confer.
In Satire 10, Juvenal expanded that indeterminancy to our interpretation of the
whole world. There, using the proxy figure of Democritus within the poem, he crafted a
deliberately partial viewpoint and demonstrated along the way the limitations and
contradictions that confront a “Democritean” view of the world, even as he asserted that
there was no other “correct” perspective. Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch (Spanish: Rayuela)
creates a similarly manifold text through an experimental use of non-linear narrative. His
novel consists of 155 chapters which do not need to be read consecutively, though in the
preface (“Table of Instructions”) he gives two “authorized” schemes (either to read the
first 56 chapters linearly and then stop or to follow an elaborate leaping “hopscotch”
through the chapters).7 Even to compare the authorized schemes reveals two radically
different ways for the reader to situate himself in the narrative. Chapter 1 begins an
elliptical but clearly personal tale, situated in a precisely mapped Parisian landscape:
5
Contrast this with Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1980, trans. 1983), a similar fusion of detective
story and exploration of hermeneutics. For all the mystery of the Benedictine abbey, we do find out in the
end who the “real killer” was.
6
See my discussion of the final four lines (8.272-76) in Ch. 2.E.
Besides these two schemes, the number of possible combinations is staggering: 4.78 * 10273, which
outnumbers the number of atoms in the universe, though this uncountably huge variety remains dwarfed by
the uncountable infinitude of books in Borges’ “Library of Babel” (La biblioteca de Babel, 1941).
7
268
Would I find La Maga? Most of the time it was just a case of my putting in an
appearance, going along the Rue de Seine to the arch leading into the Quai de Conti, and
I would see her slender form against the olive-ashen light which floats along the river as
she crossed back and forth on the Pont des Arts, or leaned over the rail looking at the
water. It was quite natural for me to climb the steps to the bridge, go into its narrowness
and over to where La Maga stood. She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as
she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite…
(Cortázar 1966, 3)
In the alternate version, Cortázar bids us to begin at Chapter 73, which contains a
larger, more depersonalized landscape (though still Paris) and whose language is more
evocative, reflective, and self-conscious:
Yes, but who will cure us of the dull fire, the colorless fire that at nightfall runs along the
Rue de la Huchette, emerging from the crumbling doorways, from the little
entranceways, of the imageless fire that licks the stones and lies in wait in doorways, how
shall we cleanse ourselves of the sweet burning that comes after, that nests in us forever
allied with time and memory…How often I wonder whether this is only writing, in an age
in which we run towards deception through infallible equations and conformity machines.
But to ask one’s self if we will know how to find the other side of habit or if it is better to
let one’s self be borne along by happy cybernetics, is that not literature again?...The very
fact that one asks one’s self about the possible choice vitiates and muddies up what can
be chosen. Que sí, que no, que en ésta está . . . It would seem that a choice cannot be
dialectical, that the fact of bringing it up impoverishes it, that is to say, falsifies it, that is
to say, transforms it into something else … … No one will cure us of the dull fire, the
colorless fire that at nightfall runs along the Rue de la Huchette. Incurable, perfectly
incurable, we select the Great Screw as a ture, we lean towards it, we enter it, we invent it
again every day, with every wine-stain on the tablecloth, with every kiss of mold in the
dawns of the Cour de Rohan, we invent our conflagration, we burn outwardly from
within, maybe that it is the choice, maybe words envelop it the way a napkin does a loaf
of bread and maybe the fragrance is inside, the flour puffing up, the yes without the no, or
the no without the yes, the day without manes, without Ormuz or Ariman, once and for
all and in peace and enough. [end of chapter] (Cortázar 1966, 383, 384-5)
At the end of this short chapter, Cortázar directs us back to Chapter 1, giving us
an entirely new frame of reference in which to view the action of the protagonists of
“main” story (Horacio Oliveira and La Maga, his mistress). Even more relevant for our
purposes is his discussion of the complexities of “choice,” which he ironizes in two ways.
On one level, it brings to our attention the non-linearity of the novel form as he has cast
269
it; but, of course, Cortázar just as quickly takes it away, for he directs us to follow his
alternate, but still fixed, route (shades of semita certe from 10.363).
Cortázar as author plays with the notion of will in the world, projecting the issues
of choice onto the agency of the reader: will we follow “his” path or make our own?
Juvenal similarly plays with choice in Satire 10, especially in the final conceit of his last
major topic, where he turns Gaius Silius’ dilemma into our own (10.338-345).8 Even as
Juvenal’s main thrust in Satire 10 is to posit a singular, monolithic view of value and
human motivation, he challenges the authority of that view by subtly giving an alternate
“table of instructions,” which self-reflexively highlights the gaps and fissures of the text
in an ultimately familiar way.
8
See my discussion in Ch. 3. E.
270
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