Page images
PDF
EPUB

SATIRE III

Argument.

UMBRITIUS, an Aruspex,* and a friend of our Author, disgusted at the prevalence of vice, and the total disregard of needy, and unassuming virtue, is introduced on the point of quitting Rome. The Poet accompanies him some little way from the city, when the honest exile, no longer able to suppress his indignation, stops short, and in a strain of animated invective, acquaints him with the causes of his retirement.

This Satire is managed with wonderful ingenuity. The way by which Juvenal conducts his friend out of the city, is calculated to raise a thousand tender images in his mind; and when, after lingering a moment at the gate, Umbritius stops to look at it for the last time, in a spot endeared by religion, covered with the venerable relics of antiquity, and in itself eminently beautiful; we are tempted to listen with uncommon attention to the farewell of the solitary fugitive.

What he says may be arranged under the following heads, that Flattery and Vice are the only thriving arts at Rome; that in these, particularly the first, foreigners have a manifest superiority over the natives, and consequently engross all favour; that the poor are universally exposed to scorn and insult; that the general habits of extravagance render it dif ficult for them to subsist; and that a crowded capital subjects them to numberless inconveniences unknown in the country (on the tranquillity and security of which he feelingly dilates): He then adverts again to the peculiar sufferings of the poorer citizens from the want of a well regulated police: these he illustrates by a variety of examples, and concludes in a strain of pathos and beauty, which winds up the whole with singular effect.

Tacitus says, that on the day Galba was murdered, Umbritius predicted the impending treachery (Hist. lib. 1. xxvii.); in which he is followed by Plutarch. Pliny calls him the most skilful Aruspex of the age, Umbritius Aruspicum in nostro ævo peritissimus.

K

SATIRE III.

v. 1-5.

GRIEV'D though I am, to see the man depart,
Who long has shared, and still must share, my heart,

I yet applaud his firm resolve, to live

At lonely Cumæ, and the Sibyl give

One citizen at least, one virtuous fugitive.

VER. 4. At lonely Cuma, &c.] Juvenal gives the epithet vacue to Cumæ, which puzzles honest Barten; for how, says he, can a place be empty which is described, just below, as a thoroughfare to Baia? This, too, seems to be the opinion of the commentators, who, alarmed for the veracity of the poet, explain the word by quieta, otiosa, non tam plenæ hominum quam est Roma, &c. But there is no need-a place may be uninhabited though numbers pass through it daily; and this, in truth, is what the author satirically hints at: that Baiæ, which Seneca calls diversorium vitiorum, should have such attractions for the Romans, as to draw them all to it,-in despite of the many delightful spots in its vicinity, through which they were obliged to pass, and of whose charms, therefore, they could not be ignorant.

The next line-atque unum civem donare Sibyllæ,-appears to me to have been constantly mistaken. Holyday translates it

[blocks in formation]

"To good Sibylla one inhabitant more;"

and he is followed, I think, by all the rest, without exception. I have little doubt, however, but the poet meant to insinuate, that Cuma was entirely deserted. No great compliment to the good sense of his contemporaries; for the situation was well chosen, and the country about it delightful. Whether

Full on the road to Baix, Cuma lies,
And many a sweet retreat her shore supplies-
Though I would make e'en Prochyta my home,
Bare as it is, ere the throng'd streets of Rome;
For what rude, desert spot, can more affright
Than fires, wide blazing through the gloom of night,
Houses, with ceaseless ruin, thundering down,
And all the horrors of this hateful town,
Where poets, while the dog-star glows, rehearse,
To gasping multitudes, their barbarous verse!

the taste of the Romans improved, I know not; but this town was afterwards inhabited, and, in the reign of Justinian, stood a long and severe siege.

I did not mention in its place, that Cuma was dedicated to the Sibyl, who had a temple here. It was here, too, that Dædalus (v. 41) alighted, in his flight from Crete.

VER. 8. Though I would make e'en Prochyta, &c.] Prochyta was a bare and rugged rock in the Tuscan Sea, not far from the Promontory of Misenus. It is now a fertile, and a pretty spot.

VER. 14. Where poets, &c.] The humourous malice of the author! Who, enumerating the dreadful dangers of an overgrown capital-fires, falls of houses, &c. finishes with the most dreadful of all-poets reading their works in the dog-days. Metastasio's translation of this Satire, though it be neither remarkable for vigour, nor for a right apprehension of the drift of the original, has yet many well turned passages. This is one of them:-to those who have experienced an Italian summer, it must be peculiarly striking :

[blocks in formation]

"Della città trovarsi esposto, e al folle

"Cicalar de' poeti a' giorni estivi."

He follows the rest, in his rendering of the passage above

"Che a far s'en vada alla Sibilla il dono

“D'un nuovo cittadin.”

Now had my friend, impatient to depart,
Consign'd his little all to one poor cart-
For this, without the town he chose to wait ;
But stopt a moment at the Conduit-gate.
Here Numa erst his nightly visits paid,

And held high converse with the Egerian maid:
Now the once-hallow'd fountain, grove, and fane,
Are let to Jews, a wretched, wandering train,
Whose wealth is but a basket stuff'd with hay:-
For every tree is forced a tax to pay;

VER. 20. Here Numa erst, &c.] We lately (Sat. 11.) had occasion to notice one of the pious frauds of this good king; here is another not less pure in its nature, and not less salutary in its effect.

Livy tells us, that, just without the walls of Rome, there was a little grove, watered by a perennial spring, which rose in the middle of it. To this, Numa, who had probably contracted, in the privacy of his former life, a love of solitude, which followed him to the throne, used frequently to retire: and here he seems, soon after his accession, to have conceived the design of turning his darling propensity to the advantage of his new subjects. For this purpose, he gave out, that, in this lonely recess, he met the goddess Egeria, who furnished him from time to time with the statutes to be observed by the city. A rude and uninformed race of warriors listened with awe to the dictates of Heaven : and Numa had the secret satisfaction of seeing his institutions not merely received, but revered.

VER. 24. Whose wealth is but a basket stuff'd with hay:-] The commentators, not content with the obvious meaning of this passage, have laboured to find a mystery in it. Britannicus, in his observations on the Sixth Satire, (where the same words are again used,) says, the hay served them to lie on. This is rational enough; but how, rejoins Holyday, could they carry about sufficient for such a purpose? He, therefore, inclines to think, with Lyranus, that the hay was not so much a mark of their poverty, as of their servitude in Egypt, which, it seems, they gloried in obtruding upon the notice of the Romans: by

« PreviousContinue »