Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

MARTIAL AND JUVENAL
Curius quid sentit et ambo
Scipiadae, quid Fabricius manesque Camilli,
quid Cremerae legio et Cannis consumpta iuuentus,
tot bellorum animae, quotiens hinc talis ad illos
umbra uenit? (i. 15 3-7)
how wou/J our great dead captains
Greet such a new arrival? And what about the flower
Of our youth who died in battle, our slaughtered legionaries,
Those myriad shades of war?
Here, the indignation is pure, unsullied by comedy — even though Juvenal
has only recently made a farce out of the infernal geography inhabited by the
great ghosts. Likewise, pace Mason, the divina tomacula porci at the end of the
tenth satire are merely a humorous, indignant finale to a solid and stoical
comment on life: yes, by all means pray, for something that matters, but
please avoid nonsensical ritual. But elsewhere epic allusion has no obvious
moral function — as, for example, in the reference to Meleager during the fifth
satire's lavish menu:
anseris ante ipsum magni iecur, anseribus par
altilis, et flaui dignus ferro Meleagri
spumat aper. post hunc tradentur tubera, si uer
tune erit et facient optata tonitrua cenas
maiores. 'tibi habe frumentum,' Alledius inquit,
'O Libye, disiunge boues, dum tubera mittas.' (5.114—19)
Himself is served with a force-fed goose''s liver,
A capon as big as the goose itself, and a spit-roast
Boar, all piping hot, well worthy of fair-haired
Meleager s steel. Afterwards, if it's spring time,
And there's been sufficient thunder to bring them on,
Truffles appear. 'Ah Africa. 1 ' cries the gourmet,
' You can keep your grain supply, unyoke your oxen,
So long as you send us truffles/'
In this passage, the mythological reference is cynical, serving to do little more
than amaze us with the host Virro's propensity for show: the moral sting is
reserved for Alledius' words, with their insistence on gourmandise to the detriment
of nature, and ordinary people. As in the case of the black image of the
pike fed on sewage at line 105, the idea is one of a natural order perverted by
civilized whim — a notion found slightly earlier in this satire, at lines 92ff.,
where greed is described as having despoiled all the seas.
Epic and tragic allusions are rife, often positive, as reminders of bygone ideals,
sometimes negative, as reinforcements of Juvenal's caricatures of evil, but
sometimes merely neutral, yet another aspect of his fondness for epideixis.
A favourite device is the intrusion of vernacular elements: obscenities, diminu-
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