authors, such as Plautus and Terence, and even Ennius and Naevius: this movement was powerfully favoured by the personal influence of the emperor Hadrian (Vit. Hadriani, c. 16). Horace predicted his own fate, cf. Ep. i. 20. 17, 18 Hoc quoque te manet, ut pueros elementa docentem Occupet extremis in vicis balba senectus. Quintilian preferred Vergil as a text-book to Horace, i. 8. §§ 5, 6. Cf. Suet. de Illust. Gramm. 16. 228. The tribunus plebis, who was under the empire invested with the power of a police magistrate; Mommsen, Die röm. Tribus p. 50. See also Tac. Ann. xiii. 28, who implies that the tribuni had the power of summoning (vocandi) citizens to their tribunal; Quintil. Decl. 380 uses the expression 'tribuni cognoscunt non utrum scriptum sed quare scriptum sit.' 'Rare indeed is the fee which can be got in without a decision of the tribune.'

229. 'But, instead of sympathising with all his troubles, you parents bring him under a pitiless code-he is to be faultless in his grammar, to peruse every history, have all literature at his finger-ends; nay, he must be able to pass his examination in such details as Anchises' nurse or Anchemolus' stepmother: he must be morally faultless and a stern disciplinarian-and all this for a nominal fee!'

230. ut praeceptori. 'That the rule for the words should be at the teacher's call.' For regula verborum cf. regula emendate loquendi Quintil. i. § 5. For constare, in the sense of 'to be ready to hand,' cf. Juv. Sat. vi. 166 Quis feret uxorem cui constant omnia? In 1. 231 praeceptor is the nom. to legat, and is supplied from the sense of the line.

233. Phoebus was a libertus of Vespasian; cf. Tac. Ann. xvi. 5. Here he is mentioned as a keeper of private baths (balnea meritoria). Balnea was the ordinary name for baths of any kind; the public bathing establishments were known by the plural word balineae. Thermae was the special name given under the empire to the luxurious establishments, constructed upon the plan of the Greek gymnasium, which contained, besides baths, rooms for conversation, porticoes, apparatus for gymnastic exercises, &c. The chief thermae were the Agrippinae, the Neronianae and the Titianae. See Becker's Gallus, scene vii. Excursus I.

234. Vergil tells us the name of Aeneas' nurse, Caieta, Aen. vii. I : the teacher has to know actually the name of the nurse of his father.

For pedantic enquiry into such useless literary questions cf. Sueton. Tiberius 70, who used to affect the society of grammatici and catechize them as to the name of Hecuba's mother; the name borne by Achilles among the maidens; the tunes sung by the Sirens.

235. Anchemoli. Vergil again, Aen. x. 389, tells us of Anchemolus thalamos ausum incestare novercae.

Acestes. Verg. Aen. v. 73 aevi maturus Acestes.

236. Quot Siculi. Cf. Verg. Aen. i. 195, 196 Vina bonus quae deinde cadis onerarat Acestes Litore Trinacrio dederatque abeuntibus heros.

237. 'Yes, pray require him not merely to know these useless trifles, but to train morals as well': he is to be the 'professional parent' of the boys under him. ducere is to model in wax and clay. See Pers. v. 40, and Hor. Ep. ii. 2. 8; A. P. 163; cf. also Plato, Legg. p. 633 θωπείας κολακικὰς αἳ τοὺς θυμοὺς μαλάττουσαι κηρίνους ποιοῦσιν. Cf. Sen. ad Helv. 16 altius praecepta descendunt quae teneris imprimuntur aetatibus. Cf. too Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. § 25 an imprimi, quasi ceram, animum putamus?

238. cera. Cf. Ov. Rem. Am. 723 et ceras remove; quid imagine muta Carperis? of the portrait of a mistress.

242. Inquit, 'is the word,' iii. 153. For such points of contact between active and passive constructions see Paul's Principles of Language (Translation), p. 307. This is your charge, and when the time comes for payment, get as much pay as the victor in the games of the circus got.' For the enormous sums lavished upon such champions see Friedländer, ii. 3. p. 328 sqq., and see the inscriptions on famous agitatores, p. 515 sqq.

SATIRE VIII.

ON THE DEGENERACY OF THE ARISTOCRACY. THIS is a Satire on the degeneracy of the aristocracy of Juvenal's time. It appears in the form of a letter to Ponticus. Some of Horace's Epistles (as ii. 1. 251, &c.) contain satirical passages; but on the whole their tone is more gentle and breathes a spirit of more bonhomie than the satires written by Juvenal. Of Valerius Ponticus, to whom this letter is addressed, we know nothing. Martial has several epigrams on a Ponticus whom, in vii. 100, he describes as an impostor and nullus homo; in iv. 86 he describes him as a niggard like Virro; in ii. 82 he describes him as having cut out his slave's tongue; in iii. 60 he describes him as having invited the poet to dinner, and having set before him worse food than was set before himself; in ii. 32 Martial describes him as a timeserving friend; in ix. 20 he is spoken of as a man who cenat bene. He may have been an offensive aristocrat; and, if he was the victim of Martial's lampoons, it will appear that he must have possessed the very vices which Juvenal satirizes.

The eighth Satire seems to have been written in the reign of Trajan. The allusion to Marius shows that it was composed after 100, when he was convicted of misgovernment in Africa; and the allusions to the necessity of guarding the frontier on the side of Armenia and Syria seem to belong to the latter part of the reign, A.D.115-117, when Trajan received the submission of the king of Armenia, unless we refer it to 105, when A. Cornelius Palma conquered the territory from Damascus to the Red Sea. The earlier date would agree better with the mention of war on the Danube, as the Dacian war was concluded in 106.

ARGUMENT.

What is the good of a pedigree, of ancestral pictures, and mutilated busts, if you are a gambler, or greedy of gain, or effeminate? 11. 1-18. An honourable life is the only title of honour; and if you are a man of blameless life and stubborn virtue, the people may greet your appearance with as many plaudits as welcome the discovery of Osiris in Egypt, 11. 19-30; but be unworthy of your name, and it will seem to have been given you in mockery, ll. 30-38.

I am speaking to you, Rubellius Blandus1, who think that the mere fact of being born into your family raises you above the crowd, ll. 3946. Noble as you are, you may need a plebeian orator to defend you; and a plebeian soldier may be saving the empire, while you are only an animated bust, 11. 47-55. You know how it is with horses: we value them for their performance, not for their pedigree, 11. 56-67. Give us something special of your own to admire, 11. 68–70.

Enough of this extreme instance. What I want you, Ponticus, to understand is, that you must be the maker of your own honour, ll. 7178. Consider that it is not life to fare sumptuously or to live, but to be a brave soldier or an upright citizen, 11. 79-86. If you gain the highest prize and become governor of a province, think what the laws intend and what judgment may overtake the spoiler, 11. 87-94; think ever how little is now to be gained, and how dangerous it is to provoke fierce men with arms in their hands, ll. 95-124. Keep the harpies of your household from flagrant wrong, and you may boast the noblest of your race your ancestor. Sell justice or oppress the innocent, and your crimes will stand out revealed by the light of your forefathers' great names, 11. 124-139; the statues and temples of the dead will but blazon out your perjuries and adulteries, 11. 140-145.

Lateranus drives his own chariot by night while he is consul, and in broad day when he is out of office, and mixes with grooms and tavernkeepers, ll. 146-162. Do you speak of these as youthful follies? He is a veteran; but if he is wanted for service, he must be looked for in a cookshop among the lowest ruffians, ll. 163-178. You would send a slave with such habits to the plantations. Are they seemly in a patrician?

11. 179-182.

Look again at the deeper infamy of Damasippus and Lentulus, who act on the stage, 11. 183-199; of Gracchus, who fought, and fought badly, in the arena, ll. 199-210. Would not the people, if they had been free, have chosen Seneca before Nero the parricide? 11. 211-214. And Nero's parricide was not like that of Orestes, urged on by the gods; he was a poisoner and a man incapable of shame, who wrote bad poems and fiddled for a prize in Greece, 11. 215-230.

1 This is the reading of most of the MSS., which has been changed to Rubellius Plautus, apparently because we know something about him. But what we know of him is good, and it is very unlike Juvenal to attack the memory of a blameless man whom Nero had put to death.

Never were men better born than Catiline and his confederates, who had ruined Rome but for the plebeian, Cicero, whom Rome unconstrained saluted as the father of his country, ll. 231-244. Another plebeian, Marius, saved Rome from the Cimbri, 11. 245-253. The Decii, who dedicated themselves for fatherland, were plebeians, ll. 254258. The last good king of Rome was the son of a slave, and the Tarquins were of royal blood, II. 259–265. Vindicius, who discovered the plot for bringing back the Tarquins, was a slave; and the men who plotted and who died justly were nobles, ll. 265-268.

Better the good son of a low-born father than to be Thersites with Achilles for your sire; but really, wherever your pedigree goes back to, it can only end in a shepherd or a felon, ll. 269-275.

1-18. 'Of what use are pedigrees and ancestry to one who disgraces them by his gambling and luxury?'

1. stemmata. The imagines were the most striking ornaments of the atrium of a Roman nobleman. They consisted of coloured masks of wax fitted to busts. These were placed in small cases (armaria), under which were inscriptions commemorating the titles and exploits of each man's ancestors: and were connected by painted lines, so as to represent the genealogical tree of the family. The custom of keeping ancestral imagines originated in the primitive belief that the deceased lived, after being buried, in his grave; and his relatives thought it desirable to remind themselves of the departed one by masks resembling him: cf. Tac. Ann. iii. 76, of the funeral of Junia, clarissimarum familiarum imagines antelatae sunt. See Marq. vol. vi. p. 234. Stemma was the name given to the imagines and lineae together. Cf. Plin. N. H. xxxv. 2. 6 stemmata vero lineis discurrebant ad imagines pictas. So Mart. iv. 40. I Atria Pisonum stabant cum stemmate toto: Sen. de Ben. iii. 28, Val. Max. v. c. 7. § 3. In viii. 6. 3 Mart. uses the word for the pedigree of plate and antiquities, argenti fumosa sui cum stemmata narrat: cf. 1. 8. For facio in the sense of 'to profit' cf. Ovid, Trist. iii. 23.

longo sanguine. 'To be valued for antiquity of blood.' Cf. Sen. Ep. lxxvi. 9 Id in homine primum solumque est quo et probatur et improbatur. The more that the Senate was degraded by the admission into its ranks of provincials and men of inferior rank, the more pride was displayed by the genuine old families who could point proudly to their family trees. It is clear from the language of Juvenal and Seneca that the feeling was general that birth, as such, entitles its owner to respect and reverence. Pliny, Paneg. § 69, counts it a special merit in Trajan to have preferred men of birth to fill high offices of state-a policy which Domitian's timidity and suspicious nature refused to adopt. See

Friedl. i. 3. p. 242. The ablative sanguine (v. 74 laude) is simply a

variety of the ablative of price; cf. the sentence multo sanguine Poenis victoria stetit with Eratosthenes varia doctrina censebatur, Suet. Gramm. 10.

2. The picti vultus are the masks referred to above.

3. Those ancestors who had enjoyed a triumph were naturally looked on with the greatest pride: sometimes they were honoured with a statue in the front court, as in Sat. vii. 125. stantes. Standing as triumphal statues in their triumphal cars.

Aemilianos. The younger Scipio, the son of L. Aemilius Paulus, when adopted by Scipio the elder, became P. Cornelius Scipio Aemili

anus.

4. M'. Curius Dentatus, the conqueror of Pyrrhus. dimidios, 'mutilated': cf. Mart. x. 2. 10,' triumphal statues will be mutilated'; dimidios Crispi mulio ridet equos, i.e. the muleteer jokes over Crispus' broken horses; but literature will live: cf. also Sat. xv. 57, where the word is used of mutilated living bodies.

umeros, a Greek construction, as in Sil. It. Punic. iii. 42 frontemque minor truncam amnis Acarnan. Quintilian notices the use of the acc. after adjectives as a Grecism, ix. 3. 17.

5. M. Valerius Corvinus. See Sat. i. 108: though poor, he was of the highest nobility: see Tac. Ann. xiii. 34 and Lucan, Phars. vii. 584.

Galba, some ancestor of the Emperor, who, as Suetonius tells us in his Life, § 2, was fond of referring to Jove as his ancestor : Galba imperator ut qui stemma in atrio proposuerit quo paternam originem ad Iovem referret. One of his ancestors (Suet. § 3) was Servius Galba consularis (A. U. c. 610). The family of Galba seems quoted, like the others, as typical of high nobility. His extraction,' says Plutarch, 'was of the noblest from the family of the Servii.'

·

6-8. Some editors omit these verses as an interpolation. The repetition of Corvinus's name seems harsh: the expression multa virga, whether it means 'a long wand' or 'broom,' or, as more probable, 'through many a branch,' is very obscure; and there is a meaningless bathos in the descent from the triumphales to the mere tabula generis. 'What boots it to show proudly a Corvinus on a wide picture of your lineage; and then to claim connexion by many branches with smokebegrimed Masters of the Horse and Dictators!' contingere is the regular word for 'to trace one's family up to': cf. Sat. xi. 62; Amm. xxi. 16. 8 Constantius cunctos sanguine et genere se contingentes stirpitus interemit; and the virgae seem to be the lineae referred to above on v. 1, called also rami by Persius, iii. 28; Sen. de Benef. iii. 28. 2; Ep. xliv. 5 non facit nobilem atrium plenum fumosis imaginibus, nemo in nostram gloriam vixit nec quod ante nos fuit, nostrum est. Plin. Paneg. c. 39 tells us that Trajan especially favoured the scions of old families in the conferring of posts; Domitian had adopted a different course from fear and jealousy. At the end of the Republic there remained about fifty families claiming to be of Trojan descent (Dion. Halic. i. 85), the principal of which was the Julian family. The Antonii claimed Hercules as their ancestor. The Pisones (Calpurnii) derived their origin from Numa: Gnaeus Piso, the head of the house of Calpurnii, under Tiberius, looked upon the Emperor's sons with disdain: see Tac. Ann. iv. 9; Friedländer, i. p. 238.