Introduction |
Juvenal: Satire 1 Latin | Satire 1 English | Satire 1
English/Latin
Juvenal: Satire 2 Latin | Satire 2
English | Satire 2 English/Latin
Juvenal: Satire 3 Latin | Satire 3 English | Satire 3
English/Latin
THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL
SATIRE II
MORALISTS WITHOUT MORALS
I would fain flee to Sarmatia and the frozen Sea when people who ape the Curii[1] and
live like Bacchanals dare talk about morals. In the first place, they are unlearned
persons, though you may find their houses crammed with plaster casts of Chrysippus;[2] for
their greatest hero is the man who has brought a likeness of Aristotle or Pittacus,[3] or
bids his shelves preserve an original portrait of Cleanthes.[4] Men's faces are not to be
trusted; does not every street abound in gloomy-visaged debauchees? And do you rebuke foul
practices, when you are yourself the most notorious delving-ground among Socratic
reprobates? A hairy body, and arms stiff with bristles, give promise of a manly soul: but
sleek are your buttocks when the grinning doctor cuts into the swollen piles. Men of your
kidney talk little; they glory in taciturnity, and cut their hair shorter than their
eyebrows. Peribomius[5] himself is more open and more honest; his face, his walk, betray
his distemper, and I charge Destiny with his failings. Such men excite your pity by their
frankness; the very fury of their passions wins them pardon. Far worse are those who
denounce evil ways in the language of a Hercules; and after discoursing upon virtue,
prepare to practise vice. "Am I to respect you, Sextus," quoth the ill-famed
Varillus, "when you do as I do? How am I worse than yourself?" Let the
straight-legged man laugh at the club-footed, the white man at the blackamoor: but who
could endure the Gracchi railing at sedition? Who will not confound heaven with earth, and
sea with sky, if Verres denounce thieves, or Milo[6] cut-throats? If Clodius condemn
adulterers, or Catiline upbraid Cethegus;[7] or if Sulla's three disciples[8] inveigh
against proscriptions? Such a man was that adulterer[9] who, after lately defiling himself
by a union of the tragic style, revived the stern laws that were to be a terror to all
men-ay, even to Mars and Venus-at the moment when Julia was relieving her fertile womb and
giving birth to abortions that displayed the similitude of her uncle. Is it not then right
and proper that the very worst of sinners should despise your pretended Scauri,[l0] and
bite back when bitten?
36 Laronia could not contain herself when one of these sour-faced worthies cried
out, "What of you, Julian Law?[11] What, gone to sleep?" To which she answered
smilingly, "O happy times to have you for a censor of our morals! Once more may Rome
regain her modesty; a third Cato has come down to us from the skies! But tell me, where
did you buy that balsam juice that exhales from your hairy neck? Don't be ashamed to point
out to me the shopman! If laws and statutes are to be raked up, you should cite first of
all the Scantinian:[12] inquire first into the things that are done by men; men do more
wicked things than we do, but they are protected by their numbers, and the tight-locked
shields of their phalanx. Male effeminates agree wondrously well among themselves; never
in our sex will you find such loathsome examples of evil. . . .
51 "Do we women ever plead in the courts? Are we learned in the Law? Do your
court-houses ever ring with our bawling? Some few of us are wrestlers; some of us eat
meat-rations: you men spin wool and bring back your tale of work in full baskets when it
is done; you twirl round the spindle big with fine thread more deftly than Penelope, more
delicately than Arachne,[l3] doing work such as an unkempt drab squatting on a log would
do. Everybody knows why Hister left all his property to his freedman, why in his life-time
he gave so many presents to his young wife; the woman who sleeps third in a big bed will
want for nothing. So when you take a husband, keep your mouth shut; precious stones[14]
will be the reward of a well-kept secret. After this, what condemnation can be pronounced
on us women? Our censor absolves the raven and passes judgment on the pigeon!"
64 While Laronia was uttering these plain truths, the would-be Stoics made off in
confusion; for what word of untruth had she spoken? Yet what will not other men do when
you, Creticus, dress yourself in garments of gauze, and while everyone is marvelling at
your attire, launch out against the Proculae and the Pollittae? Fabulla is an adulteress;
condemn Carfinia of the same crime if you please; but however guilty, they would never
wear such a gown as yours. "O but," you say, "these July days are so
sweltering!" Then why not plead without clothes? Such madness would be less
disgraceful. A pretty garb yours in which to propose or expound laws to our countrymen
flushed with victory, and with their wounds yet unhealed; and to those mountain rustics
who had laid down their ploughs to listen to you! What would you not exclaim if you saw a
judge dressed like that? Would a robe of gauze sit becomingly on a witness? You, Creticus,
you, the keen, unbending champion of human liberty, to be clothed in a transparency! This
plague has come upon us by infection, and it will spread still further, just as in the
fields the scab of one sheep, or the mange of one pig, destroys an entire herd; just as
one bunch of grapes takes on its sickly colour from the aspect of its neighbour.
82 Some day you will venture on something more shameful than this dress; no one reaches
the depths of turpitude all at once. By degrees you will be welcomed by those who in their
homes put long fillets round their brows, swathe themselves with necklaces, and propitiate
the Bona Dea with the stomach of a porker and a huge bowl of wine, though by an evil usage
the Goddess warns off all women from entering the door; none but males may approach her
altar.[15] "Away with you! profane women" is the cry; "no booming horn, no
she-minstrels here!" Such were the secret torchlight orgies with which the Baptae[16]
wearied the Cecropian[17] Cotytto. One prolongs his eyebrows with some damp soot staining
the edge of a needle, and lifts up his blinking eyes to be painted; another drinks out of
an obscenely-shaped glass, and ties up his long locks in a gilded net; he is clothed in
blue checks, or smooth-faced green; the attendant swears by Juno like his master. Another
holds in his hand a mirror like that carried by the effeminate Otho: a trophy of the
Auruncan Actor,[18] in which he gazed at his own image in full armour when he was just
ready to give the order to advance--a thing notable and novel in the annals of our time, a
mirror among the kit of Civil War! It needed, in truth, a mighty general to slay Galba,
and keep his own skin
sleek; it needed a citizen of highest courage to ape the splendours of the Palace on
the field of Bebriacum,[19] and plaster his face with dough! Never did the quiver-bearing
Samiramis[20] the like in her Assyrian realm, nor the despairing Cleopatra on board her
ship at Actium. No decency of language is there here: no regard for the manners of the
table. You will hear all the foul talk and squeaking tones of Cybele; a grey-haired
frenzied old man presides over the rites; he is a rare and notable master of mighty
gluttony, and should be hired to teach it. But why wait any longer when it were time in
Phrygian fashion to lop off the superfluous flesh?
117 Gracchus has presented to a cornet player-or perhaps it was a player on the
straight horn-a dowry of four hundred thousand sesterces. The contract has been signed;
the benedictions have been pronounced; a crowd of banqueters seated, the new made bride is
reclining on the bosom of her husband. O ye nobles of Rome! is it a soothsayer that we
need, or a Censor? Would you be more aghast, would you deem it a greater portent, if a
woman gave birth to a calf, or a cow to a lamb? The man who is now arraying himself in the
flounces and train and veil of a bride once carried the nodding shields[21] of Mars by the
sacred thongs and sweated under the sacred burden!
126 O Father of our city, whence came such wickedness among thy Latin shepherds? How
did such a lust possess thy grandchildren, O Gradivus? Behold! Here you have a man of high
birth and wealth being handed over in marriage to a man, and yet neither shakest thy
helmet, nor smitest the earth with thy spear, nor yet protestest to thy Father? Away with
thee then; begone from the broad acres of that Martial Plain[22] which thou hast
forgotten!
132 "I have a ceremony to attend," quoth one, "at dawn to-morrow, in the
Quirinal valley." "What is the occasion?" "No need to ask: a friend is
taking to himself a husband; quite a small affair." Yes, and if we only live long
enough, we shall see these things done openly: people will wish to see them reported among
the news of the day. Meanwhile these would-be brides have one great trouble: they can bear
no children wherewith to keep the affection of their husbands; well has nature done in
granting to their desires no power over their bodies. They die unfertile; naught avails
them the medicine-chest of the bloated Lyde, or to hold out their hands to the blows of
the swift-footed Luperci![23]
143 Greater still the portent when Gracchus, clad in a tunic, played the gladiator, and
fled, trident in hand, across the arena-Gracchus, a man of nobler birth than the
Capitolini, or the Marcelli, or the descendents of Catulus or Paulus, or the Fabii: nobler
than all the spectators in the podium;[24] not excepting him who gave the show at which
that net[25] was flung.
149 That there are such things as Manes, and kingdoms below ground, and punt-poles, and
Stygian pools black with frogs, and all those thousands crossing over in a single
bark-these things not even boys believe, except such as have not yet had their penny bath.
But just imagine them to be true-what would Curius and the two Scipios think? or Fabricius
and the spirit of Camillus? What would the legion that fought at the Cremera[26] think, or
the young manhood that fell at Cannae; what would all those gallant hearts feel when a
shade of this sort came down to them from here? They would wish to be purified; if only
sulphur and torches and damp laurel-branches were to be had. Such is the degradation to
which we have come! Our arms indeed we have pushed beyond Juverna's[27] shores, to the
new-conquered Orcades and the short-nighted Britons; but the things which we do in our
victorious city will never be done by the men whom we have conquered. And yet they say
that one Zalaces, an Armenian more effeminate than any of our youth, has yielded to the
ardour of a Tribune! Just see what evil communications do! He came as a hostage: but here
boys are turned into men. Give them a long sojourn in our city, and lovers will never fail
them. They will throw away their trousers and their knives, their bridles and their whips,
and thus carry back to Artaxata the manners of our Roman youth.
[1] A famous family of early Rome.
[2] The eminent Stoic philosopher, pupil of Cleanthes.
[3] One of the seven wise men of Greece, b. circ. B.C. 652.
[4] Pupil and successor of Zeno, founder of the Stoic School, from about B. C. 300 to
220. Famous for his poverty and iron will.
[5] Some villainous character of the day.
[6] Alluding to the faction-fights between Clodius and Milo, B.C. 52. Clodius violated
the rites of the Bona Dea; see vi 314-341 and note on p. 24.
[7] A partner in the Catilinarian conspiracy, B.C. 63.
[8] i.e. the second triumvirate (Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus) who followed the
example of Sulla's proscriptions.
[9] The emperor Domitian. Domitian was a lover of his niece Julia, daughter of his
brother Titus.
[10] One of the most famous families of the later Republic.
[11] In reference to the law passed by Augustus for encouraging marriage (Lex lulia
de maritandis ordinibus).
[12] A law against unnatural crime.
[13] A Lydian maiden who challenged Athene in spinning and was turned into a spider.
[14] Cylindrus, a cylinder, is here used for a precious stone cut in that shape.
[15] None but women could attend the rites of the Bona Dea. Hence the scandal
created in B.C. 62 by Clodius when he made his way into the house of Caesar, where the
rites were being celebrated, disguised as a woman. Hence Caesar put away his wife Pompeia,
as "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." In the present passage Juvenal
refers to some real or imaginary inversion of the old rule, by which none but males,
clothed in female dresses, were to be admitted to the worship of the Goddess.
[16] Worshippers of the Thracian deity Cotytto.
[17] i.e. Athenian, Cecrops being the first king of Athens.
[18] The words Actoris Aurunci spolium are a quotation from Virg. Aen. xii
94. The suggestion seems to be that Otho was as proud of his mirror as if it had been a
trophy of war, like the spear which King Turnus captured from Actor.
[19] The battle in which Otho was defeated by Vitellius.
[20] Mythical founder of the Assyrian empire with her husband Ninus.
[21] Gracchus was one of the Salii, priests of Mars who had to carry the sacred shields
of Mars (ancilia) in procession through the city.
[22] i.e. the Campus Martius.
[23] The Luperci were a mysterious priesthood who on certain days ran round the
pomoerium clad in goat-skins and struck at any woman they met with goat-skin thongs in
order to produce fertility.
[24] The podium was a balustrade, or balcony, set all round the amphitheatre,
from which the most distinguished of the spectators witnessed the performance.
[25] For the disgrace incurred by Gracchus in fighting as a retiarius against a
secutor, see the fuller passage viii. 199-210 and note.
[26] The battle in which 300 Fabii were killed.
[27] lreland.
