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Juvenal's Fifteenth Satire: A Reading

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

D. Singleton
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Extract

It is probably still true to say that the satires of Juvenal's last two books, apart from the tenth, continue to suffer an undeserved popular neglect (using that phrase in a somewhat special sense by virtue of which it may permissible to suggest that, say, the Odes of Horace or the Amoves of Ovid do not suffer ‘popular neglect'). Certainly, one recent critical work on Roman satire contains no analysis of any of the Juvenal satires later than the sixth. Satires 11–15, and obviously not 16, do not generally receive the supreme accolade of being ‘set’ by the examiners for the Advanced level of the G.C.E.; they occasionally do not feature even in university examinations. There has indeed been no lack of recent scholarly interest in the later satires, but it would be optimistic to believe that that interest is good evidence for the poems’ actually being more generally, or more attentively, read.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , October 1983 , pp. 198 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1983

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References

Notes

1. Witke, C., Latin Satire (Leiden, 1970)Google Scholar.

2. Some commentators would argue for a rather earlier change in tone. See especially Anderson, W. S., CPh 57 (1962), 145–60Google Scholar and Univ. Cal. 19 (1964), 174–91Google Scholar.

3. Pace Anderson, (Univ. Cal. 19)Google Scholar, who argues that the ‘persona’ adopted in the later satires is based on the character of Democritus as it appears in Seneca's De Tranquillitate Animi.

4. I am not assuming an equivalence between ‘the satirist’ and the author. For the application of the theory of the persona to the study of Juvenal see Anderson, W. S., YCS 17 (1961), 3–93Google Scholar and for a general, if somewhat ponderous, discussion of the idea see ‘The Concept of the Persona in Satire: a Symposium,’ Satire Newsletter 3 (1966), 89–153Google Scholar.

5. See Fredericks, S. C., ICS 1 (1976), 174–89Google Scholar for an analysis of the poem that argues that the satire modulates between the vice of ira and the virtue of humanitas.

6. Der echte und der unechte Juvenal (Berlin, 1865)Google Scholar.

7. Coffey, Michael, Roman Satire (London, 1976), p. 136nGoogle Scholar.

8. Duff, J. W., Fourteen Satires of Juvenal (Cambridge, 1898), p. xxixGoogle Scholar.

9. Rooy, C. A. Van, Studies in Classical Satire and Related Literary Theory (Leiden, 1965), p. 78Google Scholar.

10. Op. cit. p. 135.

11. I have deliberately phrased this somewhat tentatively. It is worth noting that all Juvenal actually claims to have personal experience of (45) is the luxuria of Egypt. See Powell, B., RhM 122 (1979), 185–92Google Scholar.

12. Powell, , op. cit., p. 185Google Scholar, with references.

13. See Highet, G., CJ 45 (1949–1950), 94–6Google Scholar.

14. Similarly it is not relevant to this issue to suggest, as Powell (op. cit.) does, though the suggestion is an interesting one, that what Juvenal saw, and misinterpreted, was an instance of ritual cannibalism.

15. Excellently discussed by Rankin, H. D., Hermes 97 (1969), 381–4Google Scholar.

16. Pace Highet, G., The Anatomy of Satire (Princeton, 1962), p. 60Google Scholar.

17. See above, p. 199.

18. Quoted by Duff, ad. loc.

19. See Cicero, Phil. 13.6.14.: ‘licere id dicimus, quod legibus, quod more maiorum institutisque conceditur. neque enim quod quisque potest, id ei licet.’

20. See Duff on 3.264.

21. Cf. Suetonius, , Vit. 13Google Scholar: ‘intempestivae ac sordidae gulae homo.’

22. For a discussion of this, see Anderson, , Univ. Cal. 19 (1964), 139ff.Google Scholar