Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis, lived ca. 60 C.E. - ca. 131 C.E.)
was Rome's greatest satirical poet. But he also found much at fault
with the Rome of his day. The following excerpts from his Satires
provide insight into life in the Empire's capital.
The Third Satire is an aggressive attack on the internationalization of the city Rome. Juvenal, as most satirists, writes from a conservative perspective. In this e-text, the first few lines, in which Juvenal describes his friend's Umbricius' decision to leave Rome for Cumae, are omitted. The text takes up where Umbricius begins to speak.
Since at Rome there is no place for honest pursuits, no profit to be got by honest toil---my fortune is less to-day than it was yesterday, and to-morrow must again make that little less---we purpose emigrating to the spot where Daedalus put off his wearied wings.... Let those continue in it who turn black to white; for whom it is an easy matter to get contracts for building temples, clearing rivers, constructing harbors, cleansing the sewers, the furnishing of funerals, and under the mistress-spear set up the slave to sale.
It is that the city is become Greek, Quirites, that I cannot tolerate... Besides, there is nothing that is held sacred by these fellows, or that is safe from their lust. Neither the mistress of the house, nor your virgin daughter, nor her suitor, unbearded as yet, nor your son, heretofore chaste.... There is no room for any Roman here, where some Protogenes, or Diphilus, or Erimanthus reigns supreme; who, with the common vice of his race, never shares a friend, but engrosses him entirely to himself. In exact proportion to the sum of money a man keeps in his chest, is the credit given to his oath. Though you were to swear by all the altars of the Samothracian and our own gods, the poor man is believed to despise the thunder-bolts and the gods, even with the sanction of the gods themselves. Why add that this same poor man furnishes material and grounds for ridicule to all, if his cloak is dirty and torn, if his toga is a little soiled, and one shoe gapes with its upper leather burst; or if more than one patch displays the coarse fresh darning thread, where a rent has been sewn up. Poverty, bitter though it be, has no sharper pang than this, that it makes men ridiculous. "Let him retire, if he has any shame left, and quit the cushions of the knights, that has not the income required by the law, and let these seats be taken by the sons of pimps, in whatever brothel born! Here let the son of the sleek crier applaud among the spruce youths of the gladiator, and the scions of the fencing-school.
Who was ever allowed at Rome to become a son-in-law if his estate was inferior, and not a match for the portion of the young lady? What poor man's name appears in any will? When is he summoned to a consultation even by an aedile ? All Quirites that are poor, ought long ago to have emigrated in a body. Difficult indeed is it for those to emerge from obscurity whose noble qualities are cramped by narrow means at home; but at Rome, for men like these, the attempt is still more hopeless; it is only at an exorbitant price they can get a wretched lodging, keep for their servants, and a frugal meal. A man is ashamed here to dine off pottery ware, which, were he suddenly transported to the Marsi and a Sabine board, contented there with a coarse bowl of blue earthenware, he would no longer deem discreditable. Here, in Rome, the splendor of dress is carried beyond men's means; here, something more than is enough, is taken occasionally from another's chest. In this fault all participate. Here we all live with a poverty that apes our betters. Why should I detain you? Everything at Rome is coupled with high price. What have you to give, that you may occasionally pay your respects to Cossus? that Veiento may give you a passing glance, though without deigning to open his mouth? One shaves the beard, another deposits the hair of a favorite; the house is full of venal cakes.
If you can tear yourself away from the games in the circus, you can buy a capital house at Sora, or Fabrateria, or Frusino, for the price at which you are now hiring your dark hole for one year.... Here full many a patient dies from want of sleep; but that exhaustion is produced by the undigested food that loads the fevered stomach. For what lodging-houses allow of sleep? None but the very wealthy can sleep at Rome. Hence is the source of the disease. The passing of wagons in the narrow curves of the streets, and the mutual reviles of the team drivers brought to a standstill, would banish sleep even from Drusus and sea-calves. If duty calls him, the rich man will be borne through the yielding crowd, and pass rapidly over their heads on the shoulders of his tall Liburnian, and, as he goes, will read or write, or even sleep inside his litter, for his sedan with windows closed entices sleep. And still he will arrive before us. In front of us, as we hurry on, a tide of human beings stops the way; the mass that follows behind presses on our loins in dense concourse; one man pokes me with his elbow, another with a hard pole; one knocks a beam against my head, another a ten-gallon cask. My legs are coated thick with mud; then, anon, I am trampled upon by great heels all round me, and the hob-nail of the soldier's caliga remains imprinted on my toe.
Tunics that have been patched together are torn asunder again. Presently,
as the tug approaches, the long fir-tree quivers, other wagons are conveying
pine-trees; they totter from their height, and threaten ruin to the crowd.
For if that wain, that is transporting blocks of Ligustican stone, is upset,
and pours its mountain-load upon the masses below, what is there left of
their bodies? Who can find their limbs or bones? Every single carcass of
the mob is crushed to minute atoms as impalpable as their souls. While,
all this while, the family at home, in happy ignorance of their master's
fate, are washing up the dishes, and blowing up the fire with their mouths,
and making a clatter with the well-oiled strigils, and arranging the bathing
towels with the full oil-flask. Such are the various occupations of the
bustling slaves.
Now revert to other perils of the night distinct from these....Nor
is this yet all that you have to fear, for there will not be wanting one
to rob you, when all the houses are shut up, and all the fastenings of
the shops chained, are fixed and silent. Sometimes too a footpad does your
business with his knife, whenever the Pontine marshes and the Gallinarian
wood are kept safe by an armed guard. Consequently they all flock thence
to Rome as to a great preserve. What forge or anvil is not weighed down
with chains? The greatest amount of iron used is employed in forging fetters;
so that you may well fear that enough may not be left for plowshares, and
that mattocks and hoes may run short. Well may you call our great-grandsires
happy, and the ages blest in which they lived, which, under kings and tribunes
long ago, saw Rome contented with a single jail.
To these I could subjoin other reasons for leaving Rome, and more numerous than these; but my cattle summon me to be moving, and the sun is getting low. I must go. For long ago the muleteer gave me a hint by shaking his whip. Farewell then, and forget me not! and whenever Rome shall restore you to your native Aquinum, eager to refresh your strength, then you may tear me away too from Cumae to Helvine Ceres, and your patron deity Diana. Then, equipped with my caliga, I will visit your chilly regions, to help you in your satires---unless they scorn my poor assistance.
From Satire VI: The Ways of Women
Nevertheless, in these days of ours, you are preparing for a covenant, a marriage-contract and a betrothal; you are by now getting your hair combed by a master barber; you have also perhaps given a pledge to her finger. What! Postumus, are you, you who once had your wits, taking to yourself a wife? Tell me what Tisiphone, what snakes are driving you mad? Can you submit to a she-tyrant when there is so much rope to be had, so many dizzy heights of windows standing open, and when the Aemilian bridge offers itself to your hand? Or if none of all these modes of exit hit your fancy, how much better to take some boy-bedfellow, who would never wrangle with you o' nights, never ask presents of you when in bed, and never complain that you took your ease and were indifferent to his solicitations!...
Some small faults are intolerable to husbands.What can be more offensive than this, that no woman believes in her own beauty unless she has converted herself from a Tuscan into a Greekling, or from a maid of Sulmo [birthplace of the poet Ovid] into a true maid of Athens? They talk nothing but Greek, though it is a greater shame for our people to be ignorant of Latin. Their fears and their wrath, their joys and their troubles--all the secrets of their souls--are poured forth in Greek; their very loves are carried on in Greek fashion. All this might be pardoned in a girl; but will you, who are hard on your eighty-sixth year, still talk in Greek? That tongue is not decent in an old woman's mouth. When you come out with the wanton words [Greek], you are using in public the language of the bed-chamber. Carressing and naughty words like these incite to love; but though you say them more tenderly than a Haemus or a Carpophorus, [names of actors] they will cause no fluttering of the heart--your years are counted upon your face!
If you are not to love the woman betrothed and united to you in due form, what reason have you for marrying? Why waste the supper, and the wedding cakes to be given to the well-filled guests when the company is slipping away--to say nothing of the first night's gift of a salver rich with glittering gold inscribed with Dacian or Germanic victories? If you are honestly uxorious, and devoted to one woman, then bow your head and submit your neck ready to bear the yoke. Never will you find a woman who spares the man who loves her; for though she be herself aflame, she delights to torment and plunder him. So the better the man, the more desirable he be as a husband, the less good by far will he get out of his wife. No present will you ever make if your wife forbids; nothing will you ever sell if she objects; nothing will you buy without her consent. She will arrange your friendships for you; she will turn your now-aged friend from the door which saw the beginnings of his beard. Panders and trainers can make their wills as they please, as also can the gentlemen of the arena; but you will have to write down among your heirs more than one rival of your own....
Give up all hope of peace so long as your mother-in-law is alive. It is she that teaches her daughter to revel in stripping and despoiling her husband; it is she that teaches her to reply to a seducer's love-letters in no unskilled and innocent fashion; she eludes or bribes your guards; it is she that calls in Archigenes [a fashionable doctor of the day] when your daughter has nothing the matter with her, and tosses about the heavy blankets; the lover meanwhile is in secret and silent hiding, trembling with impatience and expectation. Do you really expect the mother to teach her daughter honest ways--ways different from her own? Nay, the vile old woman finds a profit in bringing up her daughter to be vile....
The bed that holds a wife is never free from wrangling and mutual bickerings; no sleep is to be got there! It is there that she sets upon her husband, more savage than a tigress that has lost her cubs; conscious of her own secret slips, she affects a grievance, abusing his boys, or weeping over some imagined mistress. She has an abundant supply of tears always ready in their place, awaiting her command in which fashion they should flow. You, poor worm, are delighted, believing them to be tears of love, and kiss them away; but what notes, what love-letters would you find if you opened the desk of your green-eyed adulterous wife! ...
I hear all this time the advice of my old friends--"Put on a lock and
keep your wife indoors." Yes, but who will ward the warders? The wife arranges
accordingly and begins with them. High or low their passions are
all the same. She who wears out the black cobble-stones with her bare feet
is no better then she who rides upon the necks of eight stalwart Syrians.
HW Prep:
1. What does Juvenal reveal about life in Imperial Rome (compile as extensive a list of topics as you can)? What would it be like to live there?
2. Describe Juvenal's estimation of women and marriage?
Why might he come to have such opinions? What does this indicate
about gender relations (and roles) in Imperial Rome?
From: the Internet
Ancient History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public
domain and copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history.