Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookopuli tractas?_ from the Greek περὶ τῶν τοῦ δήμου πραγμάτων βουλεύεσθαι. The imitations of the First Alcibiades are very close throughout the Satire. Even in our own day, in looking back upon ancient history, it would be difficult to find two persons so nearly counterparts of each other as Nero and Alcibiades; not only in their personal character but in the adventitious circumstances of their life. Both came into public life at a very early age. Nero was emperor before he was seventeen years old, and Alcibiades was barely twenty at the siege of Potidæa. Seneca was to Nero what Socrates was to Alcibiades. Both derived their claims to pre-eminence from the _mother's_ side: Nero through Agrippina, from the Julian gens; Alcibiades through Dinomache, from the Alemæonidæ. The public influence of both extended through nearly the same period, thirteen years. Both were notorious for the same vices: love of self-indulgence, ambition of pre-eminence, personal vanity, lawless insolence toward others, lavish expenditure, and utter disregard of all principle. It would be very easy to carry out the parallel into greater detail. Comp. Suet., Nero, c. 26, with Grote's Greece, vol. vii., ch. 55. [1387] _Barbatum._ Cf. Juv., xiv., 12, "Barbatos licet admoveas mille inde magistros." Cic., Fin., iv., "Barba sylvosa et pulcrè alita inter hominis eruditi insignia recensetur." Hor., ii., Sat. iii., 34, "Tempore quo me solatus jussit sapientem pascere barbam." [1388] _Cicutæ._ Cf. ad Juv., vii, 206. [1389] _Pupille._ Alcibiades was left an orphan at the age of five years, his father, Clinias, having been killed at the battle of Coronea; when he was placed with his younger brother Clinias, under the guardianship of Pericles and his brother Ariphron, to whom his ungovernable passions, even in his boyhood, were a source of great grief. Of this connection Alcibiades was very proud. Cf. Plat., Alc., c. 1. Nero lost his father when scarcely three years old; and at the age of eleven, he was adopted by Claudius and placed under the care of Annæus Seneca. It is curious that the first public act of both was an act of liberality to the people. Compare the account of Nero's proposing the Congiarium (Suet., Nero, c. 7), with the anecdote of the quail of Alcibiades told by Plutarch (in Vit., c. 10). There is probably also a bitter sarcasm in the word "pupille," as it was the term of contempt applied to Nero by Poppæa, who was impatient to be married to him, which the control of his mother Agrippina, and the influence of Seneca and Burrhus, delayed. Cf. Tac., Ann., xiv., I, "Quæ (Poppæa) aliquando per facetias incusaret Principem et _pupillum_ vocaret qui jussis alienis obnoxius non modo imperii sed libertatis etiam indigeret." Some imagine _pericli_ to be intended as a pun, "One that would prove _dangerous_ hereafter;" as Alcibiades was compared to a lion's whelp, Arist., Ran., 1431, οὐ χρὴ λέοντος σκύμνον ἐν πόλει τρέφειν ἤν δ' ἐκτρέφῃ τις, τοῖς τρόποις ὑπηρετεῖν. [1390] _Majestate manûs._ Ov., Met., i., 205, "Quam fuit illa Jovi: qui postquam voce, _manuque_ Murmura compressit, tenuere silentia cuncti." So Lucan says of Cæsar, "Utque satis trepidum turbâ coeunte tumultum Composuit vultu, _dextrâque_ silentia jussit." Cf. Acts, xiii. 16. [1391] _Curva._ The Stoic notion that virtue is a straight line; vices, curved: the virtues occasionally approaching nearer to one curve than the other. Cf. Arist., Eth., II., vii. and viii.; and Sat., iii., 52, "Haud tibi inexpertum _curvos_ deprendere mores, Quæque docet sapiens braccatis illita Medis Porticus." [1392] _Nigrum Theta._ The Θ, the first letter of θάνατος, was set by the Judices against the names of those whom they adjuged worthy of death, and was hence used by critics to obelize passages they condemned or disapproved of; the contrary being marked with Χ, for χρηστόν. Cf. Mart., vii., Ep. xxxvii., 1, "Nosti mortiferum quæstoris, Castrice, signum, Est operæ pretium discere theta novum." Auson., Ep. 128, "Tuumque nomen theta sectilis signet." Sidon., Carm., ix., 335, "Isti qui valet exarationi Districtum bonus applicare theta." (It was also used on tomb-stones, and as a mark to tick off the dead on the muster-roll of soldiers.) [1393] _Summâ pella decorus._ The personal beauty of Alcibiades is proverbial. Suetonius does not give a very unfavorable account of Nero's exterior, "Staturâ fuit prope justâ, sufflavo capillo, vultu pulchro magis quam venusto, oculis cæsiis." The rest of the picture is not quite so flattering. It should be observed, by the way, that Suetonius speaks in terms by no means disparaging of Nero's verses, which, he says, flowed easily and naturally: he discards the insinuation that they were mere translations, or plagiarisms, as he says he had ocular proof to the contrary. Suet., Vit., c. 51, 2. [1394] _Caudam jactare_, a metaphor either from "a dog fawning," or "a peacock displaying its tail." Hor., ii., Sat. ii., 26, "Rara avis et pictâ pandat spectacula caudâ." [1395] _Anticyras._ Cf. ad Juv., xiii., 97. Hor., ii., Ep. ii., 137, "Expulit helleboro morbum bilemque meraco." Lucian, ἐν Πλοίῳ, 45, καὶ ὁ ἑλλέβορος ἱκανὸς ποιῆσαι ζωρότερος ποθείς. _Meracus_ is properly applied to unmixed _wine_; _merus_, to any _other_ liquid. [1396] _Curata cuticula sole._ Cf. ad Juv., xi., 203, "Nostra bibat vernum contracta cuticula solem." Alluding to the _apricatio_, or "sunning themselves," of which old men are so fond. Line 33. Sat. v., 179. Cic., de Senect., xvi. Mart., x., Ep. xii., 7, "I precor et totos avida cute combibe soles, Quam formosus eris, dum peregrinus eris." Plin., Ep. iii., 1. "Ubi hora balinei nuntiata est, in sole, si caret vento, ambulat nudus." iv., Ep. 5, "Post cibum sæpe æstate si quod otii, jacebat in sole." Cic., Att., vii., 11. Mart., i., Ep. lxxviii., 4. Juv., ii., 105, "Et curare cutem summi constantia civis." Hor., i., Ep. iv., 29, "In cute curandâ plus æquo operata juventus." iv., 15, "Me pinguem et nitidum bene curatâ cute vises." Cf. Sat. ii., 37, "Pelliculam curare jube." [1397] _Dinomaches._ Vid. line 1. Plut., Alc., 1. It appears from Plat., Alc., cxviii., that it was a name Alcibiades delighted in. [1398] _Ocima._ Properly the herb "Basil," _ocimum Basilicum_, either from ὠκὺς, from its "rapid growth," or from ὄζειν, from its "fragrance." [1399] _Mantica._ From Phædrus, lib. iv., Fab. x., "Peras imposuit Jupiter nobis duas: propriis repletam vitiis post tergum dedit: Alienis ante pectus suspendit gravem. Hâc re videre nostra mala non possumus: alii simul delinquunt, censores sumus." So Petr., Frag. Traj., 57, "In alio peduclum vides: in te ricinum non vides." Cat., xxii., 20, "Suus quoique attributus est error: Sed non videmus manticæ quod in tergo est." [1400] _Quantum non milvus |