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Juvenal, Statius, and the Flavian Establishment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

John G. Griffith
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Extract

Juvenal's Fourth Satire has not attracted the critical attention to which its interest and literary merits entitle it. It has a further claim to extended discussion inasmuch as it is precisely those features that make it an untypical specimen of Juvenal's work as a whole which throw light on his technical resources and, paradoxically perhaps, on some of the distinctive qualities of his own particular brand of satire.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , October 1969 , pp. 134 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1969

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References

page 134 note 1 A list of writings on this poem previous to 1935, comprehensive rather than critical, can be found in Ercole, P., Studi Giovenaliani, ch. iii, 161 f.Google Scholar; see too Highet, G., Juvenal the Satirist (Oxford, 1954), 260 fGoogle Scholar. Recent discussion has concentrated on the question of the piece's unity. Thus Helmbold, W. C. and O'Neil, E. C. (AJPh 77 [1956], 68 f.)Google Scholar see in Crispinus a reflection of the larger, more savage, Domitian (but if gluttony is among the common factors, this runs counter to Suetonius, , Dom. 21)Google Scholar. Anderson, W. S. (YCS xv [1957], 68f.)Google Scholar relies on thematic keywords and metaphors, repeated contrasts, and the like. All very well, as far as it goes; it is, however, common literary experience that echoes of words and ideas within a relatively short stretch of an author's work may quite often be unconscious rather than deliberate, while hard-worked concepts such as luxuria, virtus, saevitia, and the rest, may be too general to be very helpful in this connection. More recently Heilmann, W. (Rh. Mus. 110 [1967], 358 f.)Google Scholar has attempted to carry Anderson's approach further, but discussion of repeated words such as monstrum (iv. 2 and 115; op. cit. 360–1) and the stressing of a ‘tone of bitter scorn’ and so forth do not seem to take us very far.

page 134 note 2 See, for some excellent observations on this device in other literatures, Buchan, John (Lord Tweedsmuir) in Homilies and Recreations (London, 1926), 181 f.Google Scholar (chapter entitled ‘Topography and Literature’).

page 135 note 1 See Highet, , op. cit. 11–12Google Scholar, and cf. Syme, R., Tacitus (Oxford, 1958), 776.Google Scholar

page 135 note 2 This may be, as Mr. A. Hudson-Williams kindly points out to me, an expansion of the locus de crudelitate taken over from the rhetorical schools; cf. De Dekker, J., Juvenalis Declamans, 1913, 51f.Google Scholar

page 135 note 3 So Nägelsbach, C. F. in Philologus 3 (1848), 469 fGoogle Scholar. See also Highet, , op. cit. 256–7 n. 2.Google Scholar

page 136 note 1 There is, I think, in fact a connection between these two motifs, which I hope to develop elsewhere.

page 136 note 2 In this connection one thinks of the artifice of the Imaginary Opponent, introduced by φησίν, inquit, or dicet aliquis (cf. Juv. viii. 163et al.Google Scholar; see too Quint, , ix. 2. 36)Google Scholar. This can be traced from ancient diatribe right down into the repertory of the Christian preachers: see Norden, E., Die Antike Kunstprosa (Leipzig, 1898), 129Google Scholar n. 1 (with references). The writers of the Second Sophistic may well have been the intermediaries through whom features of Cynic, Stoic, and other diatribe passed into the mainstream of Christian preaching: see Lejay, , Œuvres d'Horace, Satires (1911), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar and nn. 1 and 2.

page 136 note 3 By Gsell, S., Essai sur le règne de l'empereur Domitien (Paris, 1894, 61 n. 6Google Scholar, citing Friedländer, L., Sittensgeschichte Roms i. 45 fGoogle Scholar. Cf. Dio lxxv. 16. 2 (a whale). The Emperor was the obvious recipient for such miracula.

page 137 note 1 See a good note of Highet, , op. cit. 261 n. 16Google Scholar, calling attention to the obsequious haste of the amici in responding to the summons (75–6, 94), the studied periphrasis of artificial courtesy in 130–1, and the flattery of the Emperor's generalship in 124–8.

page 137 note 2 Though some, as Mattingly, H. and Crook, J. A. (Consilium Principis [Cambridge, 1955]. 50 n. 2)Google Scholar, disagree, and suspect a blunder, presumably in the Digest, as the reference to the (Juvenal) scholiast must be a slip. Syme, too (Tacitus, 805)Google Scholar queries the date of Pegasus' appointment, but only because to him Juvenal's line suggests a Domitianic initiative. Not to me.

page 137 note 3 Listed by Syme, , op. cit., Appendix 13, 644–5.Google Scholar

page 138 note 1 On him see Wessner, , Scholia in luvenalem Vetustiora (1931), pp. xx–xxiii.Google Scholar

page 138 note 2 prope here may well be the source of Juvenal's proximus in 94, as Mr. A. Hudson-Williams has suggested to me.

page 138 note 3 The P-scholiast on Crispus (p. 61, Wessner) speaks of consulatus duos, but as he goes on to mention uxores duas, the possibility of confusion, whether textual or psychological, is manifest. Crispus' third term can be fitted in among the suffecti for 82 or 83.

page 138 note 4 Neither surely would a forger have been content to let the noun lumina stand as it does in grammatical isolation (see below, p. 142).

page 138 note 5 As at Geo. iv. 175Google Scholar (repeated in Aen. viii. 453)Google Scholartenaci forcipe massam and Aen. viii. 549Google Scholar, secundo defluit amni.

page 138 note 6 That Statius wrote and ‘published’ at least two poems on Domitianic happenings seems a fair, if not a necessary, inference from the wording of Silv. iv. 2. 66–7Google Scholar (on his successes at the poetic contests on the Alban Mount): cum modo Germanas acies, modo Daca sonantem / proelia, Palladio tua me manus induit auro.

page 139 note 1 Quintilian mentions him as not long dead when the Institutio was produced (xi. 2, 31) and Juvenal says he lived to be 80.

page 139 note 2 Cf. Quint, , viii. 5. 15Google Scholar (his remark on seeing a man wearing a breastplate while walking in the forum: Quis tibi sic timere permisit?) or his reply to the man who asked whether anyone was with Domitian in his study ‘ne musca quidem’ (Suet. Dom. 3)Google Scholar, in allusion to that Emperor's engaging foible for catching and pin-sticking flies.

page 140 note 1 civis carries this meaning in passages such as Tac. Ann. i. 42Google Scholar: militesne appellatis qui filium imperatoris vestri … circumsedistis? an cives, quibus tam proiecta senatus auctoritas? See further Walker, B., The Annals of Tacitus (Manchester, 1952), 198 fGoogle Scholar. Lucan's rhetoric often turns on this nuance, as at vii. 319, al.

page 140 note 2 Both Trajan and M'. Acilius Glabrio were still in office on that day, as is shown by the Acta Arvalia (CIL vi. 2067: Henzen, , p. cxxviii).Google Scholar

page 140 note 3 Such evidence as there is will be found in Highet, , op. cit. 259–60 n. 14, with documentation.Google Scholar

page 141 note 1 Tacitus' editors usually take this to mean a ‘(mock) will’; so too Highet, (op. cit. 261 n. 10)Google Scholar. Home truths too dangerous for the living to utter might be expressed in a will, with the testator beyond the reach of vengeance, and not uncommonly were (cf. Suet. Aug. 56Google Scholar and Dio lviii. 25)Google Scholar. But at this time Veiento was still very much alive. For the use of codicilli as the title of such pamphlets see Roberts, C. H., ‘The Codex’, in Proc. Brit. Acad. 40 (1954), 196 n. 2, quoting this passage.Google Scholar

page 141 note 2 This diploma is fully discussed and its dating settled by Degrassi, A. in Parola del Passato 2 (1947), 349–56.Google Scholar

page 141 note 3 The dedication may date from the year 97, as Mommsen suggested (ref. apud Dessau).

page 142 note 1 On the idiom quid das, ut… in such bargaining formulas see Morse, C. J., CR 70, N.s. 6 (1956), 196–8.Google Scholar

page 142 note 2 Though sustained parody is hardly found in Roman satire elsewhere, it is worth noting that Bion of Borysthenes enjoyed a great reputation for his skilful manipulations of earlier literature: thus Diog. Laert. iv. 52 says: εὐφυὴς γὰρ ν (sc. Bion) καὶ παῳδῆσαι, οῑά ἐστιν αὐτοῦ καὶ ταῦτσ

πέπον 'Αρχύτα, ψαλληγενές, όλβιότυφε,

τῆς ὑπάτης ἐρίδος πάντων ἐμπειρότατ' άνδρῶν.

Cf. Iliad iii. 182Google Scholar ( μάκαρ 'Ατρείδη, μοιρηγενές, ὀλβιόδαιμον) and i. 146 with xviii. 170 (πάντων ἐκπαγλότατ' άνδρῶν).

page 142 note 3 As suggested by Bücheler, , Rhein. Mus. 39 (1884), 283–5Google Scholar, and accepted by Syme, , op. cit. 5 n. 5.Google Scholar

page 143 note 1 The suggested emendations quaestus (Grotius) or inquies (sc. cupidine, Meiser) kill the point of the contrast with the following words acerrimam bello facem praetulit. The MS. reading is convincingly defended by Hill, H. in CR 41 (1927), 124.Google Scholar

page 143 note 2 So Syme, , CAH xi. 171.Google Scholar

page 144 note 1 I forbear from speculation on the identity of the commander and troops named in the casualty-list on the altar near Tropaeum Traiani at Adamklissi in the Rumanian Dobrudja; see ILS 9107.

page 144 note 2 A bearer of this name appears in the fasti for A.d. 90 (Degrassi, A., I Fasti Consolari (Rome, 1952), 27Google Scholar; cf. Syme, , op. cit. 640)Google Scholar but there is a long list of suffecti in that year and no room for an unpaired addition. In any case, 90 would be too late to fit the presumed chronology of Pegasus' career.

page 145 note 1 Op. cit. 260 n. 14.

page 145 note 2 See RE xiv. 2Google Scholar s.v. Marcius 107, col. 1597.

page 146 note 1 We now know of another distinguished figure, Tiberius Claudius Julius Alexan der, who held the praefectura Aegypti and was later praefectus praetorio, as Pap. Hibeh 215 attests. On this man see Turner, E. G. in JRS 44 (1954), 44 f.Google Scholar

page 146 note 2 No name is reported between Lupus, T. lulius (?70–72)Google Scholar and Priscianus, C. Tettius Africanus (80–2, 12 02 or later).Google Scholar As three years seems an average length of tenure, at least two names are missing here: see RE xxii. 2 (1954), col. 2370, 33 f.Google Scholar

page 146 note 3 See, however, Crook, J. A., Consilium Principis (Cambridge, 1955), 51Google Scholar and n. 1, for a possible identification with Cn. Licinianus, Pompeius Ferox (PIR 1 P, 461).Google Scholar

page 146 note 4 Though the remark is quoted to make a paradox-point, there is no reason to question the attribution to Trajan or to take it at other than its face value.

page 146 note 5 On this use see Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford, 1957), 263Google Scholar. I see no ground for deleting line 73, as Knoche does, following Jachmann.

page 147 note 1 From SirHayter, William, The Kremlin and the Embassy (1966) 113Google Scholar; Sir Osbert Sitwell had coined the phrase ‘a committee of sabre-toothed tigers’.

page 147 note 2 Fraenkel, , op. cit. 103Google Scholar. Traces of a catalogue-presentation can perhaps be detected in the fragments of Lucilius' 26th book, the first in order of ‘publication’: see Fraenkel, ibid. 131–2, regarding Lucil. fr. 593 (Marx).

page 148 note 1 In an expanded form, this masquerade-motif may offer a clue to understanding the structure of satire vi, which I hope to pursue elsewhere.

page 149 note 1 Cf. Dig. x. 2, 8. 1Google Scholar (Ulpian 632, quoting Pomponius). See too Buckland, W. W., Manual of Roman Private Law (Cambridge, 1939), second edn., 139.Google Scholar

page 149 note 2 Notably the hoax played on Nero by Caesellius Bassus in A.d. 65, recorded in Tac. Ann. xvi. 1–3Google Scholar (cf. Suet. Nero 31)Google Scholar. The story told of Apollonius of Tyana and a distressed father of four daughters who had sacrified to Earth in the hope of a relief to his poverty (Philostr. Vita Apoll. vi. 39, pp. 250–1, Kayser)Google Scholar reflects the prevalence of such wishful thinking at the time.

page 150 note 1 There is, however, a point in considere (34). The Muses usually sang standing up (cf. αἱ Μοῦσαι άναστᾱσαι δον, Lucian, , Icaromen. 27)Google Scholar: here the theme is a res vera and a trivial one at that. Nevertheless, there will be epic overtones, so the reader might reflect that they could perhaps have stood up after all.

page 150 note 2 This paper was delivered, substantially in its printed form, to the meeting of the Classical Association at Sheffield on 17 April 1968. I am very grateful for suggestions made to me afterwards by members of the audience, and imprimis to Mr. Alun Hudson-Williams for his acute and valuable comments.