Does this inscription refer to Juvenal himself or to a member of his family? We have seen that he mentions (3, 319) his connexion with Aquinum, and the goddess to whom the offering was made. Also, if the son of a rich freedman, he was a likely person to hold the highest municipal magistracies. Again, the mention of the worship of Vespasian points to the reign of the Flavian dynasty, i.e. the end of the first century. It is certainly possible that Juvenal served in the army, and reached the rank of tribune (which carried with it the privileges of the equestrian order) in his younger days before he turned his attention to satire. And this hypothesis has generally been accepted.

It is, however, beset with difficulties. The first, and best, sentence of the Biography says nothing of a military career but rather seems to exclude it by the account there given of Juvenal's occupations until middle age. Again, Juvenal, like Persius, does not generally, and especially in the satire devoted to the subject, speak with favour of a military life. Again, if Juvenal was rich enough to fill these municipal offices, which were a considerable burden upon their occupants1, how can we account for the complaints of poverty, whether of clients or literary men, with which the satires abound? Again, the evidence of the satires goes to prove that Juvenal lived habitually in Rome, at least after the end of the first century : is it not surprising that the first satire, which represents the author as familiar with all the conspicuous figures in the crowded streets of Rome and with all the scandals attached to them, should be written by a country gentleman with a dignified position and a comfortable fortune? The language of the satires is the language of a poor and disappointed man. Lastly, it must be noticed that the inscription did not contain

conduct his worship: this was Mark Antony: cf. Cic. Phil. ii 110; Suet. Jul. 76. The distinction was granted to all the deified Emperors.

1 These magistrates were not only unpaid, but had to pay a considerable sum, called honorarium, as a contribution to the town treasury. In the second century, it became difficult to find candidates for the offices.

the poet's praenomen, which is known from the Lives and Scholia to have been Decimus.

The conclusion is that here again certainty is beyond our reach. My own belief is that the local magnate of Aquinum was not the poet himself, but a kinsman by blood or adoption. But it is possible that the fact is otherwise; and there are allusions in the satires which are most easily explained by the hypothesis that Juvenal was for a time an officer in the Roman army.

The Evidence of Martial.

We shall consider next what light is thrown on Juvenal's life and occupations by the poet Martial. There is no positive proof that Martial's Juvenal is our Juvenal; but their identity is highly probable and has generally been accepted by scholars as a matter of course. Though Juvenal never mentions Martial, directly or indirectly, Martial speaks of Juvenal as a very intimate friend and addresses two epigrams to him personally. One wonders what the satirist thought of Martial's flattery of Domitian. Now the 'books' of Martial's epigrams can be accurately dated by internal evidence. The seventh, in which Juvenal is twice mentioned, was published in the autumn of 92; and the twelfth, which contains the last mention of the satirist3, was published in 101 or 102 after Martial had returned to Spain.

The epigrams prove that Juvenal was living, and had been living for some time past, at Rome in the year 92, and that he was again at Rome in 101 or 102. Thus it is possible that he may have been in exile between these dates: he is not mentioned during the interval by Martial; and it is known that Nerva recalled many who had been exiled by Domitian.

Two other points are to be noticed in the epigrams. In

1 Metre alone would make it impossible for Martial's name to occu in Juvenal's verse.

2 vii 24 and 91.

D. J.

3 xii 18.

Martial applies to Juvenal the epithet facundus. Does the epithet show that Juvenal was known to him as a poet, or as a rhetorician? Neither inference can be drawn with certainty, as Martial elsewhere applies the word both to Virgil and to Cicero. But, if Juvenal had written no satires at that time and was only known to Martial as a student of rhetoric, the epithet is perfectly appropriate. On the other hand, if Juvenal had written satires before this date, or even before 101, it is inconceivable that Martial, so ready to praise far humbler literary efforts of his friends, should not mention them. This is another proof that Juvenal did not publish satires till after the death of Domitian.

In the second place, the last epigram (xii 18) represents Juvenal's life very much as he represents it himself: Martial contrasts his own easy days and restful nights in Spain with the annoyances Juvenal continues to undergo while toiling up the hilly streets, in the noise and heat of Rome, on his way to pay court to the rich and powerful.

It may be added here that there are some obvious imitations or reminiscences of Martial in the satires, especially the earlier ones, and also that there is a remarkable correspondence between the work of the two writers, 'not only in their views of literature, but in the subjects they treat, the persons they mention, their language and expression, and their general tone1.' Ample evidence of this will be found in the notes to this edition; but it seems unnecessary, in order to account for this likeness, to suppose, as Nettleship does, that they were in the habit of working together. The facts which have been stated above, go to prove that Martial ceased to write about the time when Juvenal began; and the resemblance will not seem more than can be accounted for, if we believe that Juvenal, having already a thorough knowledge of Martial's epigrams, began to direct his satires against the same period and persons whom Martial had already riddled with his lighter artillery.

A caution may be useful against the practice, which was

1 Nettleship Journ. of Phil. xvi p. 47.

carried too far by the older editors, of supposing that, wherever the same name occurs in the two poets, they both refer to the same person. This is a mistake. For Martial, as we know from himself1, consistently used fictitious names in his satirical epigrams. Juvenal's practice was quite different. He only attacked persons who were not in a position to resent it—those who were no longer living, or had been condemned by a judicial sentence, or were of no social importance. Hence he mentions many persons of whom we know nothing from any other source; but there is no reason to believe that he uses any fictitious names, with the possible exception of the correspondents (Postumus, Ponticus, Calvinus, Gallius) to whom some of the later satires are addressed.

II. THE SATURA BEFORE JUVENAL.

It was the boast of Roman writers and critics3 that satire was a genuine national creation, that they had invented for themselves, and not borrowed from Greece, at least one important kind of literature. The claim of originality must be allowed, although satire was much influenced, at more than one period of its history, by Greek example.

Roman satire, however, has nothing to do with the Satyric drama of Athens. The word satura probably means 'medley,' being a feminine noun derived from satur, like dira 'a curse' and noxia 'a hurt.' It seems to have been applied originally

1 Mart. i praef.; ii 23; ix 95; x 33. For the practice of combining real and fictitious names in satirical writing, cf. Pliny Epp. vi 21, 5 (of Vergilius Romanus who had composed a play in imitation of the Old Comedy) insectatus est vitia, fictis nominibus decenter, veris usus est apte.

2 See below, p. xxxiii foll.

3 Horace, Satt. 1 10, 66 Graecis intacti carminis; Quintil. x 1, 93 satura quidem tota nostra est.

to a dish, containing various ingredients, and, by metaphor, to a law, comprising miscellaneous enactments. It is generally supposed that the term, by a similar metaphor, was applied to a form of literature, treating of various subjects and written in a mixture of prose and verse; and it is apparently for this reason that Juvenal speaks1 of nostri farrago libelli.

The word itself, however, is much older than the kind of literature to which it became eventually restricted. For the early history of the word, our chief guide is a passage in Livy, where, tracing the rise of scenic representations at Rome, he incidentally refers to saturae, as one of many native Italian forms of the drama. He describes it as an improvised dialogue of rude and unpolished verse, which was first raised to the rank of a dramatic representation, by union with certain Etruscan performances, consisting of music and dancing only. In this improved form, saturae, supplemented by music, continued to hold the stage at Rome, until they were superseded by the Greek play introduced by Livius Andronicus about 240 B.C. Livy's words seem to imply that a satura differed from a regular play in having no plot. Dialogue it possessed from the beginning; but the scenes, of which it was composed, had no connexion with each other. It consisted, apparently, of a succession of scenes, drawn at random from common life, in which the Fescennine spirit of rude and offensive banter disported itself with little pretensions to art and less to decorum. Supplemented by musical accompaniment borrowed from Etruria, and appropriate gesticulation, this form of art held its ground until it was banished from the stage by the higher form introduced by Livius Andronicus from Greece. Thus, the essential features of the original satura were dialogue and the absence of a plot; and these characteristics it still preserved, when it was driven from the stage and transferred to paper by men of letters.

Of these, the earliest was Ennius (239-169 B.C.). His saturae have perished; but we may gather, from certain allusions