Custodite animas, et nulli credite mensæ: Fingimus hæc, altum Satirâ sumente cothurnum, veighs against those unnatural mothers, who would poison their own children, that they might marry some gallant, and their children by him inherit what they had. Pupillus denotes a fatherless manchild, within age, and under ward. 629. Take care of your lives.] Lest you be killed by poison. -Trust no table.] Be cautious what you eat. 630. The livid fat meats, &c.] The dainties which are set before you to invite your appetite are, if you examine them, black and blue with the venom of some poison, and this prepared by your own mother. 631. Let some one bite before you, &c.] Have a taster for your meat before you eat it yourself, if it be any thing which your mother has prepared for you. 632. The timid tutor.] Pappas was a servant that brought up and attended children, and, as such, very likely to be in the mother's confidence; if so, he might well fear and tremble if set to be the children's taster. 633-5. Surely we feign these things, &c.] q. d. What I have been saying must appear so monstrous, as to be regarded by some as a fiction; and, in 630 635 640 645 stead of keeping within the bounds and laws of satire, I have taken flights into the fabulous rant of tragedy, like Sophocles, and other fabulous writers of the drama. Hiatus, lit. a gaping-an opening the mouth wide. Hence bawling. Metaph. like actors of highflown tragedy. 636. Unknown to the Rutulian mountains, &c.] Such as no Roman satirst ever before attempted. The Rutuli were an ancient people of Italy-Latium also a country of Italy. Or perhaps the poet's allusion is to the subjects on which he writes; which, for their enormity and horrid wickedness, were unknown to former ages. 637. Pontia.] The poet, to clear himself from suspicion of fiction, introduces the story of Pontia, the daughter of Tit. Pontius, who had done what is here mentioned of her. Holyday, in his illustrations, mentions an old inscription upon a stone, to the following purpose; viz. "Here I Pontia, the daughter of "Titus Pontius, am laid, who, out of "wretched covetousness, having poisoned my two sons, made away with my"self." 639. "Which discovered," &c.] q. d. Take care of your lives, and trust no table; The livid fat meats are warm with maternal poison. you, 630 635 Surely we feign these things, satire assuming the lofty buskin; Having exceeded the bound and law of all that went before, We rant forth lofty verse in Sophoclean strains, Unknown to the Rutulian mountains, and to the Latin climate. I would we were false! but Pontia cries out-" I have done it! "I confess I have prepared poisons for my boys;"Which discover'd are evident: but the deed I myself per"petrated" 639 "Didst thou, O most savage viper, destroy two at one meal? "Didst thou two?"—" Yes, seven, if haply seven there had "been." Let us believe whatever is said in tragedies of cruel Colchis, and Progne. I endeavour nothing against it and those women 645 Dared in their day (to commit) great enormities, but The fact being discovered needs no question; but yet I avow it. 642. Let us believe, &c.] q. d. After such a fact as this we may believe any thing. 643. Colchis.] Medea, the daughter of Eta, king of Colchis, who fled away with Jason, and, being pursued by her father, cut her brother Absyrtes in pieces, and scattered the limbs in her father's way, to retard his pursuit. -Progne.] Daughter of Pandion king of Athens, and wife to Tereus king of Thrace, who having ravished her sister Philomela, she, in revenge, killed her son Itys, and served him up to her husband to eat. -I endeavour nothing against it.] If you say you believe these things, I shall offer nothing to the contrary. 645. Little wonder is due, &c.] To be sure those women did monstrous things, but then not for the sake of money, which is the case with our women; this still is almost incredible: as for what VOL. I. the sex will do through anger, or revenge, or malice, there is nothing that they are incapable of, when thoroughly provoked. See l. 134, note. 648. As stones, &c.] Women as naturally precipitate into mischief and cruelty, when in a passion, as stones fall down from the top of an eminence, when that which supports them is removed from under them. The poet supposes large stones, or rocks, on the summit of a high cliff on the top of a mountain, and, by an earthquake, the mountain sinking, and the cliff receding from under the bases of the rocks: of course these must not only fall, but threaten ruin wherever they alight. This simile is very apt and beautiful to illustrate his description of women, who, when provoked, so that all reserve is taken away, their mischief will fall headlong, (like the rock from the top of the cliff,) and destroy those on whom it alights. 2 G Subtrahitur, clivoque latus pendente recedit. 655 Illam ego non tulerim, quæ computat, et scelus ingens 650 Sana facit. Spectant subeuntem fata mariti Alcestim; et, similis si permutatio detur, Morte viri cuperent animam servare catellæ. Occurrent multæ tibi Belides, atque Eriphylæ: Mane Clytemnestram nullus non vicus habebit. Hoc tantum refert, quod Tyndaris illa bipennem Insulsam et fatuam, dextrâ lævâque tenebat : At nunc res agitur tenui pulmone rubetæ; Sed tamen et ferro, si prægustârit Atrides Pontica ter victi cautus medicamina regis. 651. While in her sound mind.] In cold blood, as we say. -Alceste, &c.] The wife of Admetus, king of Thessaly, who being sick, sent to the oracle, and was answered that he must needs die, unless one of his friends would die for him: they all refused, and then she voluntarily submitted to die for him. The ladies of Rome saw a tragedy on this subject frequently represented at the theatres; but, so far from imitating Alceste, they would sacrifice their husbands to save the life of a favourite puppy-dog. 654. Belides.] Alluding to the fifty daughters of Danaus, the son of Belus, who all, except one, slew their husbands on the wedding-night. See HoR. lib. iii. ode xi. 1. 25—40. -Eriphylæ.] i. e. Women like Eriphyla, the wife of Amphiarus, who for a bracelet of gold discovered her husband, when he hid himself to avoid go 660 ing to the siege of Troy, where he was sure he should die. 655. Clytemnestra.] The daughter of Tyndarus, and wife of Agamemnon, who living in adultery with Ægisthus, during her husband's absence at the siege of Troy, conspired with the adulterer to murder him at his return, and would have slain her son Orestes also; but Electra, his sister, privately conveyed him to king Strophius. After he was come to age, returning to Argos, he slew both his mother and her gallant. 656. What Tyndaris.] i. e. That daughter of Tyndarus-Clytemnestra. Juvenal, by the manner of expression, illa Tyndaris, means to insinuate, that this name belonged to others beside her, viz. to many of the Roman ladies of his time. 656, 7. Held a stupid and foolish axe, &c.] The only difference between her and the modern murderers of their husbands is, that Clytemnestra, without 650 Is withdrawn, and the side recedes from the hanging cliff. I could not bear her, who deliberates, and commits a great crime While in her sound mind. They behold Alceste undergoing the fate Of her husband, and, if a like exchange were allowed, They would desire to preserve the life of a lap-dog by the death of an husband. Many Belides will meet you, and Eriphylæ: 655 No street but will have every morning a Clytemnestra.. This is the only difference, that that Tyndaris held a stupid And foolish axe, with her right hand and her left: But now the thing is done with the small lungs of a toad; But yet with a sword too, if cautious Atrides has beforehand tasted The Pontic medicines of the thrice-conquer'd king. any subtle contrivance, but only with a foolish, bungling axe, killed her husband. Comp. HOR. lib. i. sat. i. 99, 100. Whereas the Roman ladies, with great art and subtlety, destroy theirs, by insinuating into their food some latent poison, curiously extracted from some venomous animal. See sat. i. 70. 659. With a sword too, &c.] Not but they will go to work as Clytemnestra did, rather than fail, if the wary husband, suspecting mischief, has prepared and taken an antidote to counteract the poison, so that it has no effect upon him. -Atrides.] Agamemnon, the son of Atreus. Juvenal uses this name, as descriptive of the situation of the husband, 660 whom the modern Clytemnestra is determined to murder, for the sake of a gallant. Thus he carries on the severe, but humourous parallel, between the ancient and modern scenes of female treachery, lust, and cruelty. 660. The Pontic medicines, &c.] Mithridates, king of Pontus, invented a medicine, which, after him, was called Mithridate; here the Pontic medicine, an antidote against poison. -Thrice-conquer'd king.] He was conquered by Sylla, then by Lucullus, and then by Pompey. After which, it is said, he would have poisoned himself, but he was so fortified by an antidote which he had invented, and had often taken, that no poison would operate upon him. 4 SATIRA VII. ARGUMENT. This Satire is addressed to Telesinus, a poet. Juvenal laments the neglect of encouraging learning. That Cæsar only is the patron of the fine arts. As for the rest of the great and noble Romans, they gave no heed to the protection of poets, ET spes, et ratio studiorum in Cæsare tantum : Line 1. The hope and reason, &c.] i. e. The single expectation of learned men, that they shall have a reward for their labours, and the only reason, therefore, for their employing themselves in liberal studies, are reposed in Cæsar only. Domitian seems to be meant ; for though he was a monster of wickedness, yet Quintilian, Martial, and other learned men, tasted of his bounty. Quintilian says of him, Quo nec præsentius aliquid, nec "studiis magis propitium numen est." See 1. 20, 1. 2. The mournful Muses.] Who may be supposed to lament the sad condition of their deserted and distressed votaries. 4. Bath at Gabii, &c.] To get a livelihood by. Gabii was a little city near Rome. Balneolum, a small bagnio. -Ovens.] Public bakehouses, where people paid so much for baking their bread. 5 10. 6. Criers.] Præcones-whose office at Rome was to proclaim public meetings, public sales, and the like—a very mean employment; but the poor starving poets disregarded this circumstance" any "thing rather than starve❞—and indeed, however meanly this occupation_might be looked upon, it was very profitable. See sat. iii. 1. 157, note. -Aganippe.] A spring in the solitary part of Boeotia, consecrated to the nine Muses. 7. Hungry Clio.] One of the nine Muses, the patroness of heroic poetry: here, by meton. put for the starving poet, who is forced, by his poverty, to leave the regions of poetry, and would fain beg at great men's doors. Atrium signifies the court, or court-yard, before great men's houses, where these poor poets are supposed to stand, like other beggars, to ask alms. |