Part 15

FOOTNOTES:

[107] When Jove had driven his father into banishment, the Silver Age began, according to the poets.

[108] The poet makes Justice and Chastity sisters; and says, that they fled to heaven together, and left earth for ever.

[109] When the Roman women were forbidden to bed with their husbands.

[110] She fled to Egypt, which wondered at the enormity of her crime.

[111] He tells the famous story of Messalina, wife to the Emperor Claudius.

[112] His meaning is, that a wife, who brings a large dowry, may do what she pleases, and has all the privileges of a widow.

[113] A ring of great price, which Herod Agrippa gave to his sister Berenice. He was king of the Jews, but tributary to the Romans.

[114] Cornelia was mother to the Gracchi, of the family of the Cornelii, from whence Scipio the African was descended, who triumphed over Hannibal.

[115] He alludes to the known fable of Niobe, in Ovid. Amphion was her husband. Pæan was Apollo; who with his arrows killed her children, because she boasted that she was more fruitful than Latona, Apollo's mother.

[116] He alludes to the white sow in Virgil, who farrowed thirty pigs.

[117] Women then learned Greek, as ours speak French.

[118] All the Romans, even the most inferior, and most infamous sort of them, had the power of making wills.

[119] The _Bona Dea_, or Good Goddess, at whose feasts no men were to be present.

[120] He alludes to the story of P. Clodius, who, disguised in the habit of a singing woman, went into the house of Cæsar, where the feast of the Good Goddess was celebrated, to find an opportunity with Cæsar's wife, Pompeia.

[121] A famous singing boy.

[122] That such an actor, whom they love, might obtain the prize.

[123] He who inspects the entrails of the sacrifice, and from thence foretels the success of the prayer.

[124] The ancients endeavoured to help the moon, during an eclipse, by sounding trumpets.

[125] A woman-grammarian, who corrects her husband for speaking false Latin, which is called breaking Priscian's head.

[126] _i. e._ of the milk asses.

[127] Sicilian tyrants were grown to a proverb, in Latin, for their cruelty.

[128] Bellona's priests were a sort of fortune-tellers; and their high priest an eunuch.

[129] A garment was given to the priest, which he threw, or was supposed to throw, into the river; and that, they thought, bore all the sins of the people, which were drowned with it.

[130] Chaldeans are thought to have been the first astrologers.

[131] Otho succeeded Galba in the empire, which was foretold him by an astrologer.

[132] Mars and Saturn are the two unfortunate planets; Jupiter and Venus the two fortunate.

[133] A famous astrologer; an Egyptian.

[134] The Brachmans are Indian philosophers, who remain to this day; and hold, after Pythagoras, the translation of souls from one body to another.

[135] Juvenal's meaning is, help her to any kind of slops which may cause her to miscarry, for fear she may be brought to bed of a black Moor, which thou, being her husband, art bound to father; and that bastard may, by law, inherit thy estate.

[136] The Romans thought it ominous to see a black Moor in the morning, if he were the first man they met.

[137] Cæsonia, wife to Caius Caligula, the great tyrant. It is said she gave him a love-potion, which, flying up into his head, distracted him, and was the occasion of his committing so many acts of cruelty.

[138] The hippomanes, a fleshy excrescence, which the ancients supposed grew in the forehead of a foal, and which the mare bites off when it is born. It was supposed to be a sovereign ingredient in philtres. EDITOR.

[139] Agrippina was the mother of the tyrant Nero, who poisoned her husband Claudius, that Nero might succeed, who was her son, and not Britannicus, who was the son of Claudius, by a former wife.

[140] The widow of Drymon poisoned her sons, that she might succeed to their estate: This was done in the poet's time, or just before it.

[141] The Belides were fifty sisters, married to fifty young men, their cousin-germans; and killed them all on their wedding-night, excepting Hipermnestra, who saved her husband Linus.

THE

TENTH SATIRE

OF

JUVENAL.

THE ARGUMENT.

_The Poet's design, in this divine Satire, is, to represent the various wishes and desires of mankind, and to set out the folly of them. He runs through all the several heads, of riches, honours, eloquence, fame for martial achievements, long life, and beauty; and gives instances in each, how frequently they have proved the ruin of those that owned them. He concludes, therefore, that, since we generally choose so ill for ourselves, we should do better to leave it to the gods to make the choice for us. All we can safely ask of heaven, lies within a very small compass--it is but health of body and mind; and if we have these, it is not much matter what we want besides; for we have already enough to make us happy._