Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookire which was destined to make the most powerful vices tremble, and shake the masters of the world on their thrones. He composed a few lines[3] on the influence of Paris, with considerable success, which encouraged him to cultivate this kind of poetry: he had the prudence, however, not to trust himself to an auditory, in a reign which swarmed with informers; and his compositions were, therefore, secretly handed about among his friends.[4] By degrees he grew bolder; and, having made many large additions to his first sketch, or perhaps re-cast it, produced what is now called his Seventh Satire, which he recited to a numerous assemblage. The consequences were such as he had probably anticipated: Paris, informed of the part which he bore in it, was seriously offended, and complained to the emperor, who, as the old account has it,[5] sent the author, by an easy kind of punishment, into Egypt with a military command. To remove such a man from his court must undoubtedly have been desirable to Domitian; and, as he was spoken of with kindness in the same Satire, which is entirely free from political allusions, the "facetiousness" of the punishment (though Domitian's was not a facetious reign) renders the fact not altogether improbable. Yet, when we consider that these reflections on Paris could scarcely have been published before LXXXIV., and that the favorite was disgraced and put to death almost immediately after, we shall be inclined to doubt whether his banishment actually took place; or, if it did, whether it was of any long duration. That Juvenal was in Egypt is certain; but he might have gone there from motives of personal safety, or, as Salmasius has it, of curiosity. However this may be, it does not appear that he was ever long absent from Rome, where a thousand internal marks clearly show that all his Satires were written. But whatever punishment might have followed the complaint of Paris,[6] it had no other effect on our author, than that of increasing his hatred of tyranny, and turning his indignation upon the emperor himself, whose hypocrisy, cruelty, and licentiousness, became, from that period, the object of his keenest reprobation. He profited, indeed, so far by his danger or his punishment, as to recite no more in public; but he continued to write during the remainder of Domitian's reign, in which he finished, as I conceive, his second, third,[7] fifth, sixth,[8] and perhaps thirteenth[9] Satires; the eighth[10] I have always looked upon as his first. In XCV., when Juvenal was in his 54th year, Domitian banished the philosophers from Rome, and soon after from Italy, with many circumstances of cruelty; an action, for which, I am sorry to observe, he is covertly praised by Quintilian. Though Juvenal, strictly speaking, did not come under the description of a philosopher, yet, like the hare in the fable, he might not unreasonably entertain some apprehensions for his safety, and, with many other persons eminent for learning and virtue, judge it prudent to withdraw from the city. To this period I have always inclined to fix his journey to Egypt. Two years afterward the world was happily relieved from the tyranny of Domitian; and Nerva, who succeeded him, recalled the exiles. From this time there remains little doubt of Juvenal's being at Rome, where he continued his studies in tranquillity. His first Satire after the death of Domitian, seems to have been what is now called the fourth. About this time, too, he probably thought of revising and publishing those which he had already written; and composed or completed that introductory piece,[11] which now stands at the head of his works. As the order is every where broken in upon, it is utterly impossible to arrange them chronologically; but I am inclined to think that the eleventh Satire closed his poetical career. All else is conjecture; but in this he speaks of himself as an old man, "Nostra bibat vernum contracta cuticula solem;" and indeed he had now passed his grand climacteric. This is all that can be collected of the life of Juvenal; and how much of this is built upon uncertainties! I hope, however, that it bears the stamp of probability; which is all I contend for; and which, indeed, if I do not deceive myself, is somewhat more than can be affirmed of what has been hitherto delivered on the subject. Little is known of Juvenal's circumstances; but, happily, that little is authentic, as it comes from himself. He had a competence. The dignity of poetry is never disgraced in him, as it is in some of his contemporaries, by fretful complaints of poverty, or clamorous whinings for meat and clothes: the little patrimony which his fosterfather left him, he never diminished, and probably never increased. It seems to have equaled all his wants, and, as far as appears, all his wishes. Once only he regrets the narrowness of his fortune; but the occasion does him honor; it is solely because he can not afford a more costly sacrifice to express his pious gratitude for the preservation of his friend: yet "two lambs and a youthful steer" bespeak the affluence of a philosopher; which is not belied by the entertainment provided for his friend Persicus, in that beautiful Satire which is here called the last of his works. Farther it is useless to seek: from pride or modesty, he has left no other notices of himself; or they have perished. Horace and Persius, his immediate predecessors, are never weary of speaking of themselves. The life of the former might be written, from his own materials, with all the minuteness of a contemporary history: and the latter, who attained to little more than a third of Juvenal's age, has left nothing to be desired on the only topics which could interest posterity--his parent, his preceptor, and his course of studies. FOOTNOTES: [1] "Junius Juvenalis liberti locupletis incertum filius an alumnus, ad mediam ætatem declamavit, animi magis causa, quam quod scholæ aut foro se præpararet." The learned reader knows that this is taken from the brief account of Juvenal, commonly attributed to Suetonius; but which is probably posterior to his time; as it bears very few marks of being written by a contemporary author: it is, however, the earliest extant. The old critics, struck with its deficiencies, have attempted to render it more complete by variations, which take from its authenticity, without adding to its probability. [2] I have adopted Dodwell's chronology. "Sic autem (he says) se rem illam totam habuisse censeo. Exul erat Juv. cum Satiram scriberet xv. Hoc confirmat etiam in v. 27, scholiastes. 'De se Juv. dicit, quia in Ægypto militem tenuit, et ea promittit se relaturum quæ ipse vidit.'" Had not Dodwell been predisposed to believe this, he would have seen that the scholium "confirmed" nothing: for Juvenal makes no such promise. "Proinde rixæ illi ipse adfuit quam describit." So error is built up! How does it appear that Juvenal was present at the quarrel which he describes? He was in Eg |