THE SATIRES BY JUVENAL
The Roman poet Decimus Junius Juvenalis, of whose life little is known, wrote five books of satires, the first variously dated between 100 and 115 and the last no earlier than 127. Written in a tone of righteous indignation underlain with sardonic humour, they are a priceless source of knowledge of Roman life in the early 2nd century.
Presented here is everything in the Satires of Greek love interest. The translation here is by Susanna Morton Braund for the Loeb Classical Library volume 91, published by the Harvard University Press in 2004.
Book One
I
In this satire, Juvenal, set out his plan and theme and justifies his choice of genre.
| Why should I describe the immense rage burning in my fevered guts, when the people are intimidated by the herds that follow someone who’s defrauded his ward and reduced him to prostitution. […] | [45] quid referam quanta siccum iecur ardeat ira, cum populum gregibus comitum premit hic spoliator pupilli prostanti. […] |
Advising that it’s safer to write about mythological subjects than to confront successful criminals with their misdeeds:
| You can pit Aeneas against the fierce Rutulian without fear, and no one’s offended by a perforated Achilles or by a Hylas much searched-for when chasing his pitcher.[1] | [162] securus licet Aenean Rutulumque ferocem committas, nulli gravis est pertusus Achilles aut multum quaesitus Hylas urnamque secutus: |
II
This satire attacks effeminate men and pathics (men taking the passive sexual role), turning only at the end to the phenomenon of foreign youth being morally corrupted during their visits to Rome.
| “And yet one Armenian, Zalaces, who was more effeminate than all other Eastern lads, is said to have yielded himself to an impassioned tribune.” Look at the effects of international relations: he had come as a hostage, but here we create—human beings! And if such boys put on Roman ways by staying here longer, they’ll never lack a lover and they’ll abandon their trousers, knives, bridles, and whips. That’s how they take teenage Roman morality back in triumph to Artaxata.[2] | “et tamen unus Armenius Zalaces cunctis narratur ephebis [165] mollior ardenti sese indulsisse tribuno.” aspice quid faciant commercia: venerat obses, hic fiunt homines. nam si mora longior Vrbem induerit pueris, non umquam derit amator, mittentur bracae, cultelli, frena, flagellum. [170] sic praetextatos referunt Artaxata mores. |
III
In an attack on Greek comic actors working in Rome by the poet’s friend Umbricius, who feels driven to leave Rome, partly by the influence of foreigners there, especially Greeks:
| Besides, nothing is sacred to him or safe from his crotch—not the lady of the house, not the virgin daughter, not even her fiancé, still smooth-faced, not the son, uncorrupted[3] till then. | praeterea sanctum nihil illi et ab inguine tutum, [110] non matrona laris, non filia virgo, nec ipse sponsus levis adhuc, non filius ante pudicus. |
V
Part of an attack on present-day patrons who do not see the value of generosity and no longer treat their clients as equals:
| If the master’s stomach is fevered with food and wine, distilled water cooler than Thracian frosts is ordered.[4] Was I complaining just now that you are not served with the same wines? You drink different water too. And your cup will be handed to you by a Gaetulian[5] footman or the bony hand of a dark Moroccan, a character you’d not want to run into in the middle of the night while being conveyed past the tombs on the hilly Latin Way. Before Himself stands the bloom of Asia, bought for a price higher than the total assets of warrior Tullus and Ancus[6] and, to be brief, the entire bric-a-brac of the kings of Rome. Since that’s the case, you must catch the eye of your African Ganymede[7] when you are thirsty. A boy purchased for so many thousands cannot mix drinks for paupers. But of course his good looks and his youth justify his sneer. But when will your waiter ever get around to you?[8] When will the server of hot and cold water respond to your request? It’s beneath him, you know, to obey an old client. He resents your asking for things and your reclining while he’s standing. | Si stomachus domini fervet vinoque ciboque, [50] frigidior Geticis petitur decocta pruinis. non eadem vobis poni modo vina querebar? vos aliam potatis aquam. tibi pocula cursor Gaetulus dabit aut nigri manus ossea Mauri et cui per mediam nolis occurrere noctem, [55] clivosae veheris dum per monumenta Latinae. flos Asiae ante ipsum, pretio maiore paratus quam fuit et Tulli census pugnacis et Anci et, ne te teneam, Romanorum omnia regum frivola. quod cum ita sit, tu Gaetulum Ganymedem [60] respice, cum sities. nescit tot milibus emptus pauperibus miscere puer, sed forma, sed aetas digna supercilio. quando ad te pervenit ille? quando rogatus adest calidae gelidaeque minister? quippe indignatur veteri parere clienti [65] quodque aliquid poscas et quod se stante recumbas. |
Book Two
VI
A satire attempting to dissuade one Postumus from getting married with all the miseries that it will entail:
|
Alternatively, if you don’t like any of these many ways out, don’t you think it would be better to have a boy sleep with you? A boy won’t enter into nocturnal disputes, won’t demand little presents from you as he lies there, and won’t complain that you’re not exerting yourself or that you’re not panting as much as you’re told to.[9] […] The bed with a bride in it is always full of disputes and mutual recriminations. Not much sleep there. That’s when she’s terrible to her husband, that’s when she’s worse than a tigress who’s lost her cubs. Guilty about her secret misdemeanours, she pretends she’s upset, detesting your slave boys or complaining about some made-up mistress.[10] She always has floods of tears ready at their station, just waiting for her to tell them exactly how to flow. […] |
aut si de multis nullus placet exitus, illud nonne putas melius, quod tecum pusio dormit, [35] pusio, qui noctu non litigat, exigit a te nulla iacens illic munuscula, nec queritur quod et lateri parcas nec quantum iussit anheles. […] Semper habet lites alternaque iurgia lectus in quo nupta iacet; minimum dormitur in illo. [270] tum gravis illa viro, tunc orba tigride peior, cum simulat gemitus occulti conscia facti, aut odit pueros aut ficta paelice plorat uberibus semper lacrimis semperque paratis in statione sua atque expectantibus illam, [275] quo iubeat manare modo. […] |
Book Three
VII
On how poets amongst others need the support of generous patrons if they are to produce great work:
| A great soul, not one perplexed about buying a blanket, is needed for visions of chariots and horses and the gods’ faces and the kind of Fury that drove the Rutulian crazy.[11] After all, if Virgil hadn’t had a slave boy and decent lodgings,[12] all the snakes would have fallen from the Fury’s hair and no terrifying blast would have sounded from her silent war trumpet. | magnae mentis opus nec de lodice paranda attonitae currus et equos faciesque deorum aspicere et qualis Rutulum confundat Erinys. nam si Vergilio puer et tolerabile desset [70] hospitium, caderent omnes a crinibus hydri, surda nihil gemeret grave bucina. |
Book Four
X
This satire is roughly about what it is wise to wish for, though the first of the two passages quoted here is a homourous aside.
|
If you ask their names, I could sooner state the number of Oppia’s lovers, of Themison’s patients murdered in a single autumn, of the partners swindled by Basilus and the wards swindled by Hirrus, the number of men sucked off by generous Maura in a single day, the number of pupils laid by Hamillus.[13] […] Yes, and a son with a superlative body always makes his parents miserable and nervous, since beauty so rarely coincides with purity. Though his house has a tradition of rustic, pure morality, copying the ancient Sabines,[14] and though kind Nature endows him generously with an innocent disposition and a face that glows with modest blushes—after all, what more can a boy receive from Nature, who is more powerful than any guardian and vigilance?—he is not permitted to take the male role. The reason? The lavish unscrupulousness of the seducer, which brazenly tempts even the parents. So much confidence they have in their bribes. No ugly adolescent has ever been castrated by a tyrant in his barbaric castle. No teenager with a limp or scrofula or bulging belly and hump was ever raped by Nero.[15] Go on, then, take pride in your lad’s good looks—there are greater dangers that await him. |
quorum si nomina quaeras, [220] promptius expediam quot amaverit Oppia moechos, quot Themison aegros autumno occiderit uno, quot Basilus socios, quot circumscripserit Hirrus pupillos, quot larga viros exorbeat uno Maura die, quot discipulos inclinet Hamillus; […] [295] filius autem corporis egregii miseros trepidosque parentes semper habet: rara est adeo concordia formae atque pudicitiae. sanctos licet horrida mores tradiderit domus ac veteres imitata Sabinos, [300] praeterea castum ingenium voltumque modesto sanguine ferventem tribuat natura benigna larga manu (quid enim puero conferre potest plus custode et cura natura potentior omni?), non licet esse viro. nam prodiga corruptoris [305] improbitas ipsos audet temptare parentes: tanta in muneribus fiducia. nullus ephebum deformem saeva castravit in arce tyrannus, nec praetextatum rapuit Nero loripedem nec strumosum atque utero pariter gibboque tumentem. [310] I nunc et iuvenis specie laetare tui, quem maiora expectant discrimina. |
XI
An invitation to dinner with the poet, laying out what can be expected, but probably spiced with some irony:
| Ordinary cups, bought for a few coins, will be handed round by a slave boy not dressed elaborately but wrapped up warmly, not a Phrygian or a Lycian got from the dealer at great expense. When you want something, ask for it in Latin. All my slaves are dressed alike, their hair is cut short and straight, and it’s only been combed today because of the party.[16] This one’s the son of a tough shepherd, that one’s a cattleman’s son. He sighs for the mother he hasn’t seen in ages, and pines for his little cottage and the young goats he knew so well. There is a noble decency in the boy’s face and behaviour, the kind that suits lads clothed in glowing purple.[17] His voice hasn’t broken, he doesn’t cart his teenage testicles into the baths, he hasn’t yet presented his armpits to be plucked bare, and he doesn’t nervously shield his thick penis behind an oil flask.[18] | [145] plebeios calices et paucis assibus emptos porriget incultus puer atque a frigore tutus, non Phryx aut Lycius, non a mangone petitus quisquam erit et magno: cum posces, posce Latine. idem habitus cunctis, tonsi rectique capilli [150] atque hodie tantum propter convivia pexi. pastoris duri hic filius, ille bubulci. suspirat longo non visam tempore matrem et casulam et notos tristis desiderat haedos ingenui voltus puer ingenuique pudoris, [155] qualis esse decet quos ardens purpura vestit, nec pupillares defert in balnea raucus testiculos, nec vellendas iam praebuit alas, |
[1] Hylas, a boy loved by the mythical hero Herakles, accompanied him on the expedition of the Argonauts. Stopping on the way, Hylas was sent to fetch water from a pool and was abducted by amorous nymphs. Herales abandoned the expedition to search for him in vain.
[2] Artaxata was the capital of Armenia, which was normally a buffer kingdom between the Roman and Parthian empires, but was briefly and precisely at this time a Roman province. It was common for the adolescent sons of neighbouring kings to be sent as hostages to Rome. They would generally be well-treated and educated in Roman ways, sometimes resulting in their returning home as rulers friendly to Rome. Orientals were generally regarded by Romans as effete, making it paradoxical that they should be be learning to take the passive sexual role in Rome.
[3] Pudicus, here translated as uncorrupted, means more precisely chaste or sexually pure and undefiled. It was shameful for any freeborn Roman male to be pedicated, and much more so for a highborn one to be pedicated by a foreigner such as a Greek.
[4] The winters of Thrace were notoriously cold. Cooled water was a great luxury before mechanical refrigeration, and sometimes attacked as such.
[5] The Gaetuli were nomadic tribes who lived just outside the Roman Empire on the southern slopes of the Atlas mountains and adjoining desert south of the Roman province of Mauretania (Morocco). Like the Mauretanians and Numidians, they were Mauri (Moors/Berbers).
[6] Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Martius were the third and fourth Kings of Rome in the 7th century BC and fabulously rich.
[7] Ganymede was a beautiful Trojan boy with whom the King of the gods fell in love and abducted to be both his catamite (catamitus, a word which deives from his name) and the cupbearer of the gods. He thus combined the two best known functions of the pueri delicati, what are being referred to here, beautiful boys who were shown off, sometimes naked, serving wine to their master’s guests. Juvenal is complaining that the boys who served wine to the clients were much inferior in value, looks and competence to those who served the patron. In view of this, his expression “African Ganymede” is probably meant to be sarcastic.
[8] The good looks, youth and high price of the master’s pretty Asian cupbearers may justify their sneers, but an attitude of disdain on the part of the clients’African waiters is intolerably humiliating.
[9] The translator’s “boyfriend” has been replaced here by”boy” as a more accurate translation of pusio. Though “boyfriend” happens not to be literally wrong in this case, its usage in modern English for a male lover of any age gives a false impression of what Juvenal said and meant. In suggesting a boy would be better than a wife, Juvenal fails to mention how he could begin to substitute for a wife in begetting children, which was, after all, widely agreed to be the main purpose of marriage.
[10] From a Roman point of view, a husband’s liaisons with boys or other women were not the grounds for entirely reasonable complaint that they would come to be considered in Christian or later times. Roman society saw nothing wrong with a man, married or not, having sex with boys (so long as they were not freeborn Romans) or females (provided they were not freeborn maidens or someone else’s wife). Adultery was a crime, but meant only sex between a man and another man’s wife.
[11] The Rutulian is the legendary King Turnus, whose fury was magnificently described by Vergil in his Aeneid VII 445–66.
[12] Martial’s epigram VIII 55 describes how when Virgil had been despoiled of his land, the emperor Augustus’s rich and powerful friend Maecenas, a famous patron of the arts, came to his rescue, amongst other things giving him the slave-boy Alexis, who became his beloved and the inspiration for his second Eclogue. Virgil’s “decent lodgings” in Rome wwre on the Esquiline, close to the gardens of Maecenas, according to Suetonius’s Life of Virgil 13.
[13] The reason for including this passage is Hamillus. The verb inclinet as used on several occasions by Juvenal suggests bending over: Juvenal seems to be saying that Hamillus was prone to pedicating his pupils. Schoolmasters were frequetly suspected of having sexual designs on their pupils. Some have taken this Hamillus to be the exhibionist pedicator of his name described in Martial’s epigram VII 62, but there is no reason ap[art from the name to associate them.
[14] The Sabines, one of two peoples who made up the early population of Rome, were famous for their chastity. See, for example, Livy, History of Rome I 18 iv or Ovid, Amores II 14 xv.
[15] Amongst other sexual outrages, the emperor Nero, just after his accession in AD 54, raped his 14-year-old step-brother Britannicus before murdering him, and later had the boy Sporus castrated with a view to “marrying” him in replacement of his murdered wife whom Sporus resembled.
[16] The poem is informative about Greek love in setting out the antithesis of the puer delicatus, who apparently stands for everything Roman men desired in boy. “Apparently” is an important qualification because much of what is implicitly derided is show and pretence. Both Juvenal and Martial make it clear that so much effort went into showing off one’s slave-boys an inviting envy that these might often be their purpose as much as satisfying lust. Juvenal’s slave waiter is dressed up warmly, ie. practically in implicit contrast to other pueri delicati who presumably often endured cold in orde to be scantily dressed or naked for the delectation of the guests. He is an ordinary Latin-speaking local boy with whom one can converse, rather than an exotic foreign beauty bought at great expense. His slave’s hair is short, in contrast to the long hair characteristic of pueri delicati and straight, suggesting some pueri delicati curled their hair to make themselves prettier.
[17] The glowing purple is of the strpe in the toga praetexta worn by freeborn boys. Hence Juvenal is suggesting this slave has a natural nobility like a freeborn boy’s.
[18] The innuendo in this sentence is sexual. In contrast to Juvenal’s slave, pueri delicati the same age were likely to have broken voices as various ancients claimed this was brought on by sexual activity. “The implication of defert is that the degenerate youth has testicles which require effort to be carried, swollen and heavy as they are with excessive sexual desire: […] Malodorous armpits were a problem for the ancients and a source of mockery and embarrassment […]. The best remedy was the removal of armpit hair by singeing, plucking and the use of depilatories […]:the degenerate youth is imagined hiding his genitals behind an oil-flask: the Romans used oil as we use soap and so it is plausible that the youth had nothing else in his hand with which to maintain his modesty. [… Juvenal’s] slave here is innocent of such seductive behaviour and displays both his ingenui pudoris (154) and his inguina without shame, possibly as he has no arousal to indicate interest in others.” (Juvenal: Satires Book IV edited with a […] commentary by John Goodwin, Oxford: Oxbow, 2016, pp. 170-1).
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