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Title: The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius Author: Juvenal Gaius Lucilius Persius Sulpicia Translator: Lewis Evans William Gifford Release date: December 10, 2015 [eBook #50657] Most recently updated: October 22, 2024 Language: English Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50657 Credits: Produced by Richard Tonsing, David Starner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL, PERSIUS, SULPICIA, AND LUCILIUS *** THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL, PERSIUS, SULPICIA, AND LUCILIUS, Literally Translated into English Prose, WITH NOTES, CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES, ARGUMENTS, &c. BY THE REV. LEWIS EVANS, M.A., LATE FELLOW OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD. TO WHICH IS ADDED THE METRICAL VERSION OF JUVENAL AND PERSIUS, BY THE LATE WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1881. HARPER'S NEW CLASSICAL LIBRARY. COMPRISING LITERAL TRANSLATIONS OF CÆSAR. VIRGIL. SALLUST. HORACE. TERENCE. TACITUS. 2 Vols. LIVY. 2 Vols. CICERO'S ORATIONS. CICERO'S OFFICES, LÆLIUS, CATO MAJOR, PARADOXES, SCIPIO'S DREAM, LETTER TO QUINTUS. CICERO ON ORATORY AND ORATORS. CICERO'S TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS, THE NATURE OF THE GODS, AND THE COMMONWEALTH. JUVENAL. XENOPHON. HOMER'S ILIAD. HOMER'S ODYSSEY. HERODOTUS. DEMOSTHENES. 2 Vols. THUCYDIDES. ÆSCHYLUS. SOPHOCLES. EURIPIDES. 2 Vols. PLATO (SELECT DIALOGUES). 12mo, Cloth, $1 50 per Volume. ☞ HARPER & BROTHERS _will send either of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price_. PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR. While the poetical versions of Juvenal deservedly hold a very high place in the literature of this country, it is a curious fact that there exists no single prose translation which can stand the test of even ordinary criticism. Whether it be that the temptation to a metrical version of a poetical writer is too great with some, or whether the labor of faithfully representing the genius of confessedly the most difficult writer in the Latin language has deterred others, the fact is undeniable, that there is no prose version from which the unclassical reader can form any adequate idea of the writings of the greatest of Satirists. Madan, though faithful, is utterly unintelligible to any one who has not the Latin before him. Sheridan is far too free, in every sense of the word, to be either a fair expositor of his original, or to suit the taste of the present day; and without any disparagement of the labors of Sterling, Nuttall, Smart, or Wallace, it was found impossible to adopt any one of them even as the _basis_ of a version which should be worthy of a place in the present series. The accompanying translation, therefore, is entirely original; and the translator is not aware of having copied a single line from any previous version. How far he has succeeded in giving a faithful transcript of the author, and in, at the same time, infusing some spark of the fire and spirit of the original, must be for others to determine; all that he dares venture to assert is, that he has brought to the task an enthusiastic admiration of his author, and a careful study of many years. The same remarks apply to the translation of Persius. The notes are to a considerable extent original, and the English, perhaps even the classical, reader may not be displeased at the occasional introduction of passages from metrical versions in which the sense appeared to be the most forcibly given. A Chronological Table has been added, which the labors of Mr. Clinton have enabled the Translator to present in a far more correct form than heretofore. The poetical version by Gifford has been annexed, as having the greatest hold on the public favor, and as being perhaps the best, because the most equal; though, unquestionably, in all the Satires which Dryden translated, he has immeasurably surpassed Gifford in fire and spirit, as Hodgson has in elegance and poetic genius, and Badham in taste, scholarship, and terse and vigorous rendering. But Gifford is always equal, and generally faithful. The remains of Sulpicia and Lucilius appear now for the first time in English. Of the value of the latter, and of the propriety of appending his Fragments to a translation of the great Roman Satirists, no scholar-like reader of Juvenal and Horace can entertain a doubt. The recent labors of foreign scholars have presented us with the text in a purer form than almost any collection of Fragments of the older Latin writers. In the Arguments prefixed to the several Books, and in the notes, will be found the essence of the criticisms of Jan. Dousa, Van Heusde, Corpet, Schoenbeck, Schmidt, Petermann, and especially of Gerlach, whose readings have in general been preferred. L. E. CONTENTS. PAGE LIFE of Juvenal, by Gifford i Essay on the Roman Satirists, by Gifford xii Chronology of Juvenal, Persius, and Sulpicia xxxix On the date of Juvenal's Satires xlix Arguments of the Satires of Juvenal lvii THE SATIRES OF JUVENAL 1 THE SATIRES OF PERSIUS 199 SULPICIA 269 FRAGMENTS OF LUCILIUS 280 Juvenal in verse, by Gifford 369 Persius in verse, by Gifford 488 THE LIFE OF JUVENAL, BY WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ. Decimus Junius Juvenalis,[1] the author of the following Satires, was born at Aquinum, an inconsiderable town of the Volsci, about the year of Christ 38.[2] He was either the son, or the foster-son, of a wealthy freedman, who gave him a liberal education. From the period of his birth, till he had attained the age of forty, nothing more is known of him than that he continued to perfect himself in the study of eloquence, by declaiming, according to the practice of those days; yet more for his own amusement, than from any intention to prepare himself either for the schools or the courts of law. About this time he seems to have discovered his true bent, and betaken himself to poetry. Domitian was now at the head of the government, and showed symptoms of reviving that system of favoritism which had nearly ruined the empire under Claudius, by his unbounded partiality for a young pantomime dancer of the name of Paris. Against this minion, Juvenal seems to have directed the first shafts of that sat |