18 DESULTORY REMARKS ON JUVENAL. (1.) Atque ideo nulli comes exeo, tanquam I need not remind the reader that the person represented as here speaking is a Roman of the old stamp, who, finding himself quite out of his element in a corrupt and degenerate city, quits it for a remote solitude. The last line has given infinite trouble to the commentators; as indeed a passage of any difficulty always will do to those, who, instead of deducing the sense of it from a rigorous construction of the words, fix the sense first and then try to construe the words accordingly. A vague idea has occupied them that Umbritius intended to compare himself to a withered or an amputated hand. Therefore we are told that the expression corpus non utile extinctæ dextræ is by a certain monstrous figure put for extincta dextra non utilis corpori. The idea has infected some of the translators. "Juvenal," (says the author of a recent and spirited version)" means, though, his words are lax, that, as a withered hand is useless to the body, so is an honest man to Rome." If Juvenal meant this, he must have meant more; for, to complete the comparison, we must suppose him to imply that as a withered and useless hand is separated from the body, so is an honest man from Rome. But I never heard that persons who had the misfortune of having maimed or disabled limbs made a point of amputating them; and as little can I conceive that Juvenal would have used the maimed and perverted mode of expressing himself, which this construction supposes. Besides, is it probable that in the same sentence and the same line he would have compared Umbritius both to the body which had lost the band, and to the hand which had lost the body? But this must be maintained by the critics in question; for mancus indisputably means one who is maimed or disabled in the right hand. The rest of the line therefore must be so translated as to barmonize. with “mancus ;" and it would not be unnatural to expect that it was only a periphrastical mode of expressing the same idea. This sort of periphrastical amplification is usual with Juvenal; witness the very next couplet, "Conscius,-et cui fervens, &c. &c." Accordingly, the literal rendering of the words before us, (only taking extinctæ dextræ as the genitive case,) is "the incapacitated body of a destroyed right hand;" that is, the incapacitated body attached to a destroyed right hand; or more simply, the body which has its right hand destroyed. The laxity, or rather the harshness, of the passage consists wholly in this, that Juvenal speaks of the body as belonging to the hand, whereas we usually speak of the hand as belonging to the body. But both modes of expression are admissible; nor do I think it necessary to read with Markland "extinctá dextra" though certainly the sense would be made clearer by the change. The object of Umbritius undoubtedly is, to compare himself to a soldier who being disabled in the sword-hand, retires or is dismissed from the ranks as unserviceable. (2.) "Miratur vocem angustâm, qua deterius nec Ib. vv. 90, 91. It would not be worth our while to bestow any attention on the line which forms the second of this couplet, were it not that it illus❤ trates a characteristic peculiarity of the author. Juvenal is fond of periphrasis; and especially of designating particular persons, objects or places by circumlocutory expressions; as where, having occasion to allude to Socrates, he does not name him, but describes him as dulci senex vicinus Hymetto. Sometimes these circuitous designations have great beauty or propriety; at others, they are mere excrescences, or have no other effect than to give our poet's composition a sort of mock-heroic air. Examples of the latter class are where, instead of a soldier, he tells us of the man qui tegitur parma et galea; or where he talks of a sacrifice, not to Minerva, but to her who pugnavit Gorgone Maura; or where he describes the dead as going down; not to Pluto, but ad generum Cereris; or where he counsels a poor poet to consign his verses, not to the flames, but Veneris marito. In these and similar instances, the circumlocution has no particular force ; it -seems only the effect of manner, and perhaps does not bespeak the best taste. Surely then it is quite in character for the same writer, where he would speak of a cock, to designate the animal as galline maritus, or, which is the same thing, as ille quo utitur gallina marito ̧ or as ille quo mordetur gallina marito. This, in my opinion, is atf that is meant to be conveyed by that line; and the trouble and the folly that it has cost some of the commentators might have been saved, had they been more attentive to the characteristic peculiarities of their author's manner, and less ingenious in conjecturing his meaning. I will only add that the words " quo marito" must be considered as a case of what is called (I say not how properly) the ablative abso lute. Nor do I see that to say "illo marito mordetur" is harsher than such an expression as "illo magistro eruditur," which would be good Ciceronian Latin. As to the objection that the ancients sometimes considered the tone of a cock's voice as peculiarly manly, it is too ridiculous to deserve attention. (3.) "Surgitur et misso proceres exire jubentur Sat. iv. vv. 144-6. By attonitos, some commentators understand that the senators had been astonished by the suddenness of Domitian's summons. But the senators were always liable to be summoned suddenly by the chief magistrate; and the emperors found them such convenient tools, that the exercise of this power under the imperial government could not but be sufficiently frequent. I apprehend therefore that attonitos here means anxious or dismayed; feelings without which Domitian's senates probably never met their master. It is difficult for a modera reader to bear in mind that the ancient word attonitus has not the confined sense of its derivatives in the modern languages, but implies almost any suspension or violent derangement of the faculties, from whatever cause. Yet some of the versions render the word as meaning astonished both here and in other parts of Juvenal, where the poet does not appear so to have intended it. Vid. Sat. iv. 77, Sat. vii. 67, et Sat. xiv. 306. (4.) "Templorum quoque majestas præsentior; et vox, Sat. xi. v. 111. et seqq. |