Part 13

FOOTNOTES:

[78] Cumæ, a small city in Campania, near Puteoli, or Puzzolo, as it is called. The habitation of the Cumæan Sybil.

[79] Baiæ, another little town in Campania, near the sea: a pleasant place.

[80] Prochyta, a small barren island belonging to the kingdom of Naples.

[81] The poets in Juvenal's time used to rehearse their poetry in August.

[82] Numa, the second king of Rome, who made their laws, and instituted their religion.

[83] Ægeria, a nymph, or goddess, with whom Numa feigned to converse by night; and to be instructed by her, in modelling his superstitions.

[84] We have a similar account of the accommodation of these vagabond Israelites, in the Sixth Satire, where the prophetic Jewess plies her customers:

----_cophino, fænoque relicto._

Her goods a basket, and old hay her bed; She strolls, and telling fortunes, gains her bread.--EDITOR.

[85] Dædalus, in his flight from Crete, alighted at Cumæ.

[86] Lachesis is one of the three destinies, whose office was to spin the life of every man; as it was of Clotho to hold the distaff, and Atropos to cut the thread.

[87] Arturius means any debauched wicked fellow, who gains by the times.

[88] In a prize of sword-players, when one of the fencers had the other at his mercy, the vanquished party implored the clemency of the spectators. If they thought he deserved it not, they held up their thumbs, and bent them backwards in sign of death.

[89] Verres, præter in Sicily, contemporary with Cicero, by whom accused of oppressing the province, he was condemned: his name is used here for any rich vicious man.

[90] Tagus, a famous river in Spain, which discharges itself into the ocean near Lisbon, in Portugal. It was held of old to be full of golden sands.

[91] Orontes, the greatest river of Syria. The poet here puts the river for the inhabitants of Syria.

[92] Romulus was the first king of Rome, and son of Mars, as the poets feign. The first Romans were herdsmen.

[93] Athens, of which Pallas, the Goddess of Arms and Arts, was patroness.

[94] Antiochus and Stratocles, two famous Grecian mimics, or actors, in the poet's time.

[95] Publius Egnatius, a stoick, falsely accused Bareas Soranus, as Tacitus tells us.

[96] Grecians living in Rome.

[97] Lucius Metellus, the high priest, who, when the temple of Vesta was on fire, saved the Palladium.

[98] Roscius, a tribune, ordered the distinction of places at public shows, betwixt the noblemen of Rome and the plebeians.

[99] Alluding to the secession of the Plebeians to the Mons Sacer, or Sacred Hill, as it was called, when they were persecuted by the aristocracy. This very extraordinary resignation of their faculty, on the part of the common people, was not singular in the Roman history. It argues a much more inconsiderable population than the ancient writers would have us believe. EDITOR.

[100] The meaning is, that men in some parts of Italy never wore a gown, the usual habit of the Romans, till they were buried in one.

[101] Any wealthy man.

[102] The Romans used to breed their tame pigeons in their garrets.

[103] Codrus, a learned man, very poor: by his books, supposed to be a poet; for, in all probability, the heroic verses here mentioned, which rats and mice devoured, were Homer's works.

[104] Herbs, roots, fruits, and sallads.

[105] Corbulo was a famous general, in Nero's time, who conquered Armenia, and was afterwards put to death by that tyrant, when he was in Greece, in reward of his great services. His stature was not only tall above the ordinary size, but he was also proportionably strong.

[106] The birth-place of Juvenal.

THE

SIXTH SATIRE

OF

JUVENAL.

THE ARGUMENT.

_This Satire, of almost double length to any of the rest, is a bitter invective against the fair sex. It is, indeed, a common-place, from whence all the moderns have notoriously stolen their sharpest railleries. In his other satires, the poet has only glanced on some particular women, and generally scourged the men; but this he reserved wholly for the ladies. How they had offended him, I know not; but, upon the whole matter, he is not to be excused for imputing to all, the vices of some few amongst them. Neither was it generously done of him, to attack the weakest, as well as the fairest, part of the creation; neither do I know what moral he could reasonably draw from it. It could not be to avoid the whole sex, if all had been true which he alleges against them; for that had been to put an end to human kind. And to bid us beware of their artifices, is a kind of silent acknowledgment, that they have more wit than men; which turns the satire upon us, and particularly upon the poet, who thereby makes a compliment, where he meant a libel. If he intended only to exercise his wit, he has forfeited his judgment, by making the one half of his readers his mortal enemies; and amongst the men, all the happy lovers, by their own experience, will disprove his accusations. The whole world must allow this to be the wittiest of his satires; and truly he had need of all his parts, to maintain, with so much violence, so unjust a charge. I am satisfied he will bring but few over to his opinion; and on that consideration chiefly I ventured to trans late him. Though there wanted not another reason, which was, that no one else would undertake it; at least, Sir C. S., who could have done more right to the author, after a long delay, at length absolutely refused so ungrateful an employment; and every one will grant, that the work must have been imperfect and lame, if it had appeared without one of the principal members belonging to it. Let the poet, therefore, bear the blame of his own invention; and let me satisfy the world, that I am not of his opinion. Whatever his Roman ladies were, the English are free from all his imputations. They will read with wonder and abhorrence the vices of an age, which was the most infamous of any on record. They will bless themselves when they behold those examples, related of Domitian's time; they will give back to antiquity those monsters it produced, and believe, with reason, that the species of those women is extinguished, or, at least, that they were never here propagated. I may safely, therefore, proceed to the argument of a satire, which is no way relating to them; and first observe, that my author makes their lust the most heroic of their vices; the rest are in a manner but digression. He skims them over, but he dwells on this; when he seems to have taken his last leave of it, on the sudden he returns to it: It is one branch of it in Hippia, another in Messalina, but lust is the main body of the tree. He begins with this text in the first line, and takes it up, with intermissions, to the end of the chapter. Every vice is a loader, but that is a ten. The fillers, or intermediate parts, are--their revenge; their contrivances of secret crimes; their arts to hide them; their wit to excuse them; and their impudence to own them, when they can no longer be kept secret. Then the persons to whom they are most addicted, and on whom they commonly bestow the last favours, as stage-players, fiddlers, singing-boys, and fencers. Those who pass for chaste amongst them, are not really so; but only, for their vast doweries, are rather suffered, than loved, by their own husbands. That they are imperious, domineering, scolding wives; set up for learning, and criticism in poetry; but are false judges: Love to speak Greek, (which was then the fashionable tongue, as French is now with us). That they plead causes at the bar, and play prizes at the bear-garden: That they are gossips and newsmongers; wrangle with their neighbours abroad, and beat their servants at home: That they lie-in for new faces once a month; are sluttish with their husbands in private, and paint and dress in public for their lovers: That they deal with Jews, diviners, and fortune-tellers; learn the arts of miscarrying and barrenness; buy children, and produce them for their own; murder their husbands' sons, if they stand in their way to his estate, and make their adulterers his heirs. From hence the poet proceeds to show the occasions of all these vices, their original, and how they were introduced in Rome by peace, wealth, and luxury. In conclusion, if we will take the word of our malicious author, bad women are the general standing rule; and the good, but some few exceptions to it._