Studies in the Poetry of Italy, I. Roman Part 11

Gifford.

The Christian tone of Persius is perhaps best seen in the second satire, which is a sermon on prayer. The tone throughout is far above the level of the thinking of his time, and shows a lofty conception of the deity and of spiritual things. In the closing lines especially, he reaches so high and true a spiritual note that he seems almost to have caught a glimpse of those high conceptions which inspired his great contemporary, the apostle Paul. This sermon might well have had for its text the inspired words of the Old Testament prophet Hosea: "For I desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of G.o.d more than burnt offerings."

That the Romans were not without their own light as to the acceptable offering to heaven is further seen in an ode of Horace, in which he voices the same high truth, that the thought of the heart is of more moment in the sight of G.o.d than the offering of the hand. This fine ode ends with the following stanza:

If thy hand, free from ill, the altar touch, Thou shalt the offended G.o.ds appease as much With gifts of sparkling salt and pious meal As if thy vows more costly victims seal.

Hawkins.

But let us now return to our poet's sermon on prayer. Persius addresses it to his friend Plotius Macrinus, congratulating him upon the returning anniversary of his birthday.

Health to my friend! and while my vows I pay, O mark, Macrinus, this auspicious day, Which, to your sum of years already flown, Adds yet another--with a whiter stone.

Amid the prayers to his tutelary genius this day, Macrinus will not offer those selfish and impious prayers with which men are too p.r.o.ne to come before the G.o.ds, prayers which they would not dare to utter to a man, or even in the hearing of men.

Indulge your genius, drench in wine your cares: It is not yours, with mercenary prayers, To ask of heaven what you would die with shame, Unless you drew the G.o.ds aside, to name; While other great ones stand, with downcast eyes, And with a silent censer tempt the skies!-- Sound sense, integrity, a conscience clear, Are begged aloud, that all at hand may hear; But prayers like these (half whispered, half suppressed) The tongue scarce hazards from the conscious breast: "O that I could my rich old uncle see In funeral pomp!--O that some deity To pots of buried gold would guide my share!

O that my ward, whom I succeed as heir, Were once at rest! Poor child, he lives in pain, And death to him must be accounted gain.-- By wedlock thrice has Nerius swelled his store, And now--he is a widower once more!"

The ingenious manner in which this prayer is framed so as to calm the conscience of the votary is admirably pointed out by Gifford. "The supplicant meditates no injury to any one. The death of his uncle is concealed under a wish that he could see his magnificent funeral, which, as the poor man must one day die, is a prayer becoming a pious nephew.

The second pet.i.tion is quite innocent.--If people will foolishly bury their gold and forget it, there is no more harm in his finding it than another. The third is even laudable; it is a prayer uttered in pure tenderness of heart, for the relief of a poor suffering child. With respect to the last, there can be no wrong in mentioning a fact which everybody knows. Not a syllable is said of his own wife; if the G.o.ds are pleased to take a hint and remove her, that is their concern; he never asked it."

One question, friend, an easy one, in fine: What are thy thoughts of Jove? "My thoughts?" Yes, thine.

Wouldst thou prefer him to the herd of Rome?

To any individual?--But to whom?

To Statius, for example. Heavens! a pause?

Which of the two would best dispense of laws?

Best s.h.i.+eld th' unfriended orphan? Good! Now move The suit to Statius, late preferred to Jove: "O Jove! Good Jove!" he cries, o'erwhelmed with shame, And must not Jove himself "O Jove!" exclaim?

Or dost thou think the impious wish forgiven, Because, when thunder shakes the vault of heaven, The bolt innoxious flies o'er thee and thine, To rend the forest oak and mountain pine?

Because, yet livid from the lightning's scath, Thy smoldering corpse, a monument of wrath, Lies in no blasted grove, for public care To expiate, with sacrifice and prayer; Must, therefore, Jove, unsceptered and unfeared Give to thy ruder mirth his foolish beard?

What bribe hast thou to win the powers divine Thus to thy rod?--The lungs and lights of swine!

Again, the ears of heaven are a.s.sailed by ignorant and superst.i.tious prayers, against which the poet inveighs. Then follows a rebuke to those who pray for health and happiness, but who, by their vices and folly, thwart their own prayer.

Why do men pray so impiously and foolishly? It is because they entertain such ignorant and unworthy conceptions of the G.o.ds, because they think that they are beings of like pa.s.sions with themselves. No, no! the G.o.ds have no such carnal pa.s.sions, nor do they care for gold and the rich offerings of men's hands. They regard the heart of the wors.h.i.+per, and if this is pure, even empty hands may bring an acceptable offering.

O grovelling souls, and void of things divine!

Why bring our pa.s.sions to the Immortals' shrine, And judge, from what this carnal sense delights, Of what is pleasing in their purer sights?

This the Calabrian fleece with purple soils, And mingles ca.s.sia with our native oils; Tears from the rocky conch its pearly store, And strains the metal from the glowing ore.

This, this, indeed, is vicious; yet it tends To gladden life, perhaps, and boasts its ends; But you, ye priests (for sure ye can), unfold-- In heavenly things, what boots this pomp of gold?

No more, in truth, than dolls to Venus paid, The toys of childhood, by the riper maid!

No! let me bring the Immortals what the race Of great Messala, now depraved and base, On their huge charger, cannot;--bring a mind Where legal and where moral sense are joined With the pure essence; holy thoughts that dwell In the soul's most retired and sacred cell; A bosom dyed in honor's n.o.blest grain, Deep-dyed;--with these let me approach the fane, And heaven will hear the humble prayer I make, Though all my offering be a barley cake.

Gifford.

4. DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALIS

When one has read his Horace, one feels personally acquainted with the poet, so frankly biographical is he. This is true, though to a much less extent, of Persius. But Juvenal is almost sphinxlike in regard to himself. What little we know is gained from a few indirect references in his writings themselves, and from the numerous and contradictory ancient lives which have come down to us prefaced to the different ma.n.u.scripts of Juvenal's satires. From these we gather that he was born sometime between 48 and 55 A. D., at the town of Aquinum in Latium, and was the son of a well-to-do freedman who left him a patrimony sufficient for his modest maintenance through life. He had a good education in grammar and rhetoric, and devoted himself through a large part of his earlier life to rhetorical declamation; though he seems not to have made any professional or profitable use of the talent which he undoubtedly possessed for the vocation of the advocate. He enjoyed some unimportant though honorable civil employment under t.i.tus and Domitian, and served for one period of his life in the army, probably in Britain, with the rank of military tribune.

In Juvenal's later life he seems to have given offense either to Domitian by some lines which he wrote upon a favorite pantomime dancer of the emperor, or to Hadrian for a similar cause. By one or the other of these emperors, according to tradition, he was practically exiled by an appointment to a command of a legion in Africa. The date of his death is as uncertain as that of his birth, but it seems to lie between 128 and 138 A. D.

It will be seen, therefore, that our poet was contemporaneous with ten Roman emperors, his life covering the period from Nero to Hadrian, inclusive. It was during the reign of Domitian, however, that Juvenal, now already well advanced to middle life, took up his residence in Rome and began that work which was to be his material contribution to life and letters.

Life in Rome under Domitian!--what a challenge to the satirist! what a field for the preacher! These were the crowning years of well-nigh a century of ever-increasing horror. With the downfall of liberty and the republic, both of which had perished in fact long before their name and semblance vanished, wealth and luxury had poured into Rome from the conquered provinces, and with these that moral laxity against which Horace had aimed his satire, then in four successive reigns Rome had cringed and groaned under the absolute sway of cynic, madman, fool, and flippant murderer, each more recklessly disregardful than the last of civic virtue and the lives and common rights of man. Then three puppets within a year involving the world in civil strife were themselves swept off the stage by Vespasian and t.i.tus, who did indeed give pa.s.sing respite to the state. And then for fifteen years--Domitian! Of these fifteen years Tacitus, just emerging into the grateful light of Nerva's and of Trajan's reigns, indignantly exclaims:

They had besides expelled all the professors of philosophy, and driven every laudable science into exile, that naught which was worthy and honest might anywhere be seen. Mighty, surely, was the testimony which we gave of our patience; and as our forefathers had beheld the ultimate consummation of liberty, so did we of bondage, since through dread of informers and inquisitions of state, we were bereft of the common intercourse of speech and attention. Nay, with our utterance we had likewise lost our memory, had it been equally in our power to forget as to be silent.... Few we are who have escaped; and, if I may so speak, we have survived not only others, but even ourselves, when from the middle of our lives so many years were rent; whence from being young we are arrived at old age, from being old we are nigh come to the utmost verge of mortality, all in a long course of awful silence.--_Galton._

Somewhat earlier than this, though within the same generation, Paul the apostle to the Gentiles, _the_ preacher of that dark age, had written a letter to the infant Christian church at Rome in which he had drawn a terrible picture of what human society can become when it has thrown off all checks and abandoned itself to profligacy. His picture, we may be sure, was drawn from the life.

And even as they refused to have G.o.d in their knowledge, G.o.d gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to G.o.d, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of G.o.d, that they which practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practice them.

Upon such a world as this did Juvenal, in the prime of manhood, his powers of reason, observation, and expression fully ripened, look out from his home in the Roman Subura;[C] with the product of such times did he mingle in the crowded reception-rooms of rich and n.o.ble patrons. He looked upon society and noted it, and long restrained his speech. But at last, as Tyrrell has well expressed it, "the flood of indignation, pent up in furious silence for forty years, once loose, carried away on its current or tossed aside every obstacle that impeded its onward rush."

[C] A quarter in Rome given up to markets and tenement-houses.

And this is that which mainly distinguishes him from Horace--his tremendous moral earnestness, his fiery indignation. His spirit did not allow him to play with his theme; there were hard blows to strike at outbreaking sins, and he would strike them. And if venial faults were struck as hard as more serious offenses, that was a proof not of inconsistency, but of an earnestness that could not stop to distinguish; if he writes of practices too shameful for telling in the hearing of polite ears, it is because his righteous indignation was in no mood to mince words, but would hold up vice in all its hideousness to the fatal light. He speaks with frankness of shameful sins, but only to hurl his denunciations at them. He is always in a rage,--strenuous where Horace is gently satirical and whimsical; didactic and straightforward where Horace is conversational and dramatic. At the same time he paints most vivid pictures, filling in the lines with tremendous sweeps of his rhetorical brush.

He tells us that he was fairly driven to write satire by the very atmosphere and daily occurrences of folly and sin around him.[D]

[D] The quotations from Juvenal which follow are taken from the excellent prose version of Leeper.

For who so tolerant of this wrong-headed city, who so callous, that he can contain himself when lawyer Matho's brand-new litter comes along, filled with his Greatness, and after him the betrayer of his distinguished friend, who will soon finish off the remnants of our n.o.bility already preyed upon.... Is not one moved to fill a bulky note-book right in the middle of the cross-roads, when a man is carried past, already indulging in six bearers, showing himself to view on both sides--a forger who has made himself aristocrat and millionaire with a little tablet and a damp seal? Now you are confronted by a lady of position, who, when her husband is thirsty, just before she hands him the mild Calenian, puts in a dash of poison, and, like a superior Lucusta, teaches her unsophisticated kinswomen to carry their livid husbands to burial right through the town and all its gossip.... It is to crime that men owe their pleasure-grounds, their castles, banquets, old silver, and goblets with goat's figure in relief.... When nature refuses, sheer scorn produces verse--the best it can.

He cannot abide the Greeks. His national pride is touched at the thought that not only do they swarm in Rome, monopolizing by their superior shrewdness all profitable employments, but that Rome itself has gone crazy after them, and things Greek are all the rage.

And now I will at once admit to you,--no false shame shall stop me,--what cla.s.s is most in favor with our wealthy men, and whom most of all I am flying from. I cannot abide, fellow-citizen, a Greecized Rome.... Your yeoman citizen, Quirinus, dons his Greek boots and wears a Greek collar upon a neck rubbed with Greek ointment.... What a quick intellect, what desperate effrontery, what a ready tongue, surpa.s.sing Isaeus himself in fluency. Tell me now, what do you take him for? In his own person he has brought us--why, whom you will--critic, rhetorician, geometer, painter, trainer, prophet, rope-dancer, doctor, sorcerer. The starveling Greek knows everything.... Mark how that race, so adroit in flattery, extols the foolish friend's conversation, the ill-favored friend's features; how they compare some weakling's scraggy neck with the throat of a Hercules, or admire a harsh voice which is not a whit better than the cry of a c.o.c.k.... The whole breed of them are actors. If you but smile, your Greek shakes his sides with heartier merriment; he weeps, if he has spied a tear in his friend's eye, and yet he feels no grief. If you ask in winter time for a bit of a fire, he takes an overcoat: should you remark, "I feel warm," he is in a sweat.

Juvenal complains bitterly of the unproductiveness of honest toil in literature and the professions. It's all very well to talk about the poet's inspiration, but Pegasus does not fly upon an empty stomach.

He has dined, has Horace, when he shouts his "Evoe." ... Were Vergil left without a slave and a decent lodging, then every snake would tumble from his locks: his trumpet would be hushed, and sound forth no more impressive notes.... Historians, is your toil more productive? It demands more time and more oil. Each of you, doubtless, has his pages rising by the hundred, knowing no limit, growing towards bankruptcy with the pile of papyrus. But what is your harvest--what does opening up that field yield you? Who will pay a historian as much as he would pay a reporter?... Then say what public services and the ever-present big packet of doc.u.ments bring in to our advocates. Would you know their real gains? In one scale set a hundred advocates' estates; in the other just that of Lacerna, the Red Jockey.

The teacher fares no better:

Who places in Celadus' and learned Palaemon's lap a due reward for their scholastic toils? Yet, little as it is, the pupil's stupid body servant takes the first bite, and the steward will snip off a something for himself. Submit to it, Palaemon; let something be abated of your due, as if you were a-huckstering winter blankets and white counterpanes.

Here is his exhortation to those degenerate Roman n.o.bles who prided themselves upon their blue blood and ancient names, but whose lives belied their birth. The sentiment may seem a commonplace, but it still inspires our modern poets, as in Tennyson:

'Tis only n.o.ble to be good.

Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood.

Of what avail are pedigrees? What boots it, Ponticus, taking rank by length of descent, and having one's ancestors' portrait-masks to show off? What do you gain by the display of a Corvinus in your big family roll, or by your affinity with smoke-begrimed Masters of the Horse, if you live a life of shame in the very face of the Lepidi?... No, though time-honored waxen likenesses adorn the length and breadth of your hall, still virtue is the sole and only n.o.bility. Be a Paulus, a Cossus, or a Drusus in _character_. Rank that above the statues of your ancestors. The first thing you are bound to show me is a good heart. If by word and deed you deserve the character of a blameless man, one who cleaves to the right--good: I recognize the n.o.ble; I salute you, Gaetulicus be you, or Sila.n.u.s, or of whatever other blood you come.... For who will call "n.o.ble" one who shames his race, and challenges notice by the l.u.s.ter of his name alone?

The very horse is ranked and valued by what he does; so much more man, and besides, _n.o.blesse oblige_:

He is a "n.o.ble" steed, whatever gra.s.s he comes from, who takes rank above his fellows--in pace, and who raises the dust upon the course ahead of all; but the progeny of Coryphaeus and Hirpinus are "stock for sale"--if Victory has rarely perched on their collar.

_There_ is no regard for ancestors, no favoritism toward the shades of the departed.... Therefore, so that we may admire yourself and not your belongings, give me something of your own to carve 'neath your statue, beyond the honors which we have rendered, and render still, to those who made you all you are.

Juvenal's most famous satire is the tenth, upon the theme "The Vanity of Human Wishes." It is more general in scope than the other satires, but is nevertheless full of the moral earnestness that everywhere characterizes the author. Here is the broad thesis:

Through all lands but few are they who can clear themselves of the mists of errors, and discriminate between the real blessings and what are quite the reverse. For in what fear or wish of ours are we guided by reason's rule? No matter how auspiciously you start with a plan, do you not live to regret your efforts and the attainment of your desire? Whole households have been overthrown ere now, at their own pet.i.tion, by a too gracious heaven. By the arts of peace and war alike we strive for what will only hurt us.