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

MARTIAL AND JUVENAL
Now autumn
With its pestilential winds was yielding to winter's frosts;
Now patients were hopeful for milder, third-day fevers,
And icy blasts helped keep the turbot refrigerated.
On sped the fisherman, as though blown by a south wind,
Till below him lay the lakes where Alba, though in ruins,
Still guards the flame of Troy and the lesser Vestal shrine.
A wondering crowd thronged around him, blocking his way for a little
Till the doors on their smooth hinges swung inward, the crowd gave way,
And the Senators — still shut out — saw the fish admitted to
The Imperial Presence.
Domitian is anyone but Atrides, a second Agamenmon. He is as unworthy of
that title as the Senate are of theirs - and that idea is paralleled by the epic
paraphernalia about the time of year: another context might deserve it, but
certainly not the present, where nature does her utmost, in the highest of all
diction, to keep the turbot fresh. Similarly, the palace doors swing open with
too much drama. But Juvenal is not just mocking the apotheosis of the trivial:
the Trojan fire and Vesta remind us of Rome's heritage, saving the epic parody
from its potentially negative status. For we remember that such language has
a more appropriate, noble use, and that memory once stirred gives direction
to the satire.
Not that Juvenal's cynicism normally falls into abeyance when he has past
ideals in mind. One of his favourite formulae is the contrast olim. . .mine :' the
present is quite ghastly, but the past is seldom entirely spared. Sometimes his
anarchic instinct will not leave well alone, and then all values seem to crumble.
But more often than not, there is a saving humour which leaves the principle
intact, even though the myth might be inadequate in some ways. We catch
him on the verge of dissolving our convictions — but usually he stops short of
the seemingly inevitable iconoclasm, by converting his disillusionment into
a joke, or importing the insinuation that salvation might be possible, if only
we were more subtle, less dedicated to the search for facile panaceas, and more
prone to acquiesce in a recognized second best. His third satire is full of this —
a realistic spirit which refuses to regard a rustic moral archaism as a simple or
obvious cure. Where Horace had no doubts about the ethical value of his
farm — the medicinal properties of his stream, the simplicity of his diet, above all,
the mental hygiene of a life in accordance with nature — Juvenal's moral pastoral,
like the 'frugal' dinner of Satire n, has no mildness or composure, no
pretence to self-assurance. In his account of the country festival at lines iyiff.,
he comes nearest to commitment, but even here there is something which fails
to convince us entirely — a brittleness of tone, and something ridiculous in the
1 See Bramble (1974) 30 n. 1.
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