Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Part 47

661. Catull. xvi. 5; Ov. _Tr._ ii. 354; Apul. _Apol._ 11; Auson. 28, _cento nup._; Plin. _Ep._ vii. 8.

662. We might also quote the beautiful

extra fortunam est quidquid donatur amicis: quas dederis solas semper habebis opes (v. 42).

What thou hast given to friends, and that alone, Defies misfortune, and is still thine own.

PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH.

But the needy poet may have had some _arriere-pensee_. We do not know to whom the poem is addressed.

663. Cp. the description of the villa of Faustinus, iii. 58.

664. Their only rival is the famous Sirmio poem of Catullus.

665. Even Tennyson's remarkable poem addressed to F. D. Maurice fails to reach greater perfection.

666. e.g. Arruntius Stella and Atedius Melior. Cp. p. 205.

667. Cp. the poems on the subject of Earinus, Mart. ix. 11, 12, 13, and esp. 16; Stat. _Silv._ iii. 4.

668. Mart. vi. 28 and 29.

669. The remaining lines of the poem are tasteless and unworthy of the portion quoted, and raise a doubt as to the poet's sincerity in the particular case. But this does not affect his general sympathy for childhood.

670. 101 provides an instance of Martial's sympathy for his own slaves.

Cp. 1. 5:--

ne tamen ad Stygias famulus descenderet umbras, ureret implicitum c.u.m scelerata lues, cavimus et domini ius omne remisimus aegro; munere dignus erat convaluisse meo.

sensit deficiens mea praemia meque patronum dixit ad infernas liber iturus aquas.

671. i. 13.

672. i. 42.

673. i. 21. He is perhaps at his best on the death of Otho (vi. 32):

c.u.m dubitaret adhuc belli civilis Enyo forsitan et posset vincere mollis Otho, d.a.m.navit multo staturum sanguine Martem et fodit certa pectora tota manu.

sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Caesare maior: dum moritur, numquid maior Othone fuit?

When doubtful was the chance of civil war, And victory for Otho might declare; That no more Roman blood for him might flow, He gave his breast the great decisive blow.

Caesar's superior you may Cato call: Was he so great as Otho in his fall?

HAY.

674. It is to be noted that even in the most worthless of his epigrams he never loses his sense of style. If childish epigrams are to be given to the world, they cannot be better written.

675. Cp. Juv. 5; Mart. iii. 60, vi. 11, x. 49; Plin. _Ep_. ii. 6.

676. v. 18. 6.

677. This is doubly offensive if addressed to the poor Cinna of viii. 19. Cp. the similar vii. 53, or the yet more offensive viii.

33 and v. 36.

678. More excusable are poems such as x. 57, where he attacks one Gaius, an old friend (cp. ii. 30), for failing to fulfil his promise, or the exceedingly pointed poem (iv. 40) where he reproaches Postumus, an old friend, for forgetting him. Cp. also v. 52.

679. See p. 252.

680. Cp. the elaborate and long-winded poem of Statius on a statuette of Hercules (_Silv._ iv. 6) with Martial on the same subject, ix. 43 and 44.

681. Cp. viii. 3 and 56.

682. Bridge and Lake, Introd., _Select Epigrams of Martial_.

683. The ancient biographies of the poet all descend from the same source: their variations spring largely from questionable or absurd interpretations of pa.s.sages in the satires themselves. The best of them, if not their actual source, is the life found at the end of the codex Pithoea.n.u.s, the best of the MSS. of Juvenal. It was in all probability written by the author of the scholia Pithoeana--to whom Valla, on the authority of a MS. now lost, gave the name of Probus--and dates from the fourth or fifth century.

684. L. 41. Cp. Plin. _Ep._ ii. 11.

685. xiii. 17 's.e.xaginta annos Fonteio consule natus'. xv. 27 'nuper consule Iunco'.

686. _Vita_ 1 (O. Jahn ed.): 1 a (Durr, _Das Leben Juvenals_). A life contained in Cod. Barberin. viii. 18 (fifteenth century), says _Iunius Iuvenalis Aquinas Iunio Iuvenale patre, matre vero Septumuleia ex Aquinati municipio, Claudio Nerone et L. Antistio consulibus_ (55 A. D.) _natus est; sororem habuit Septumuleiam, quae Fuscino nupsit._ This may be mere invention on the part of a humanist of the fifteenth century.

The life contains many improbabilities and the MS. is of suspiciously late date. But see Durr, p. 28.

687. _Vitae_ 2 and 3 'oriundus temporis Neronis Claudii imperatoris'.

_Vit._ 4 'decessit sub Antonino Pio'.

688. So Cod. Paris. 9345; Vossian. 18 and 64; Bodl. (Canon Lat. 41); Schol. Pith, ad _vit._ 1.

689. So all ancient biographies except 1. In _Sat._ iii, Umbricius, addressing Juvenal, speaks of _tuum Aquinum_: cp. also the inscription found near Aquinum and quoted later.

690. This is only conjecture, but the son of a rich citizen of Aquinum would naturally be sent to Rome for his education. For his rhetorical education cp. i. 15-17.

691. _Vita_ 1.

692. Cp. especially the whole of xvi; also i. 58, ii. 165, iii. 132, vii. 92, xiv. 193-7.

693. _C.I.L._ x. 5382.

694. _C.I.L._ vii, p. 85; Hubner, _Rhein. Mus._ xi (1857), p. 30; _Hermes_, xvi (1881), p. 566.

695. Satt. 3, 11, 12, 13. Trebius in 5 is perhaps an imaginary character.

696. vi. 75, 280, vii. 186.

697. vii, 82.

698. Mart. vii. 24, 91, xii. 18.

699. vi. 57.

700. xi. 65.