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Juvenal's Libellus – A Farrago?*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2009
Extract
Little attention has been paid to the implications of the form of the ancient book for literary, as opposed to textual, criticism until very recently. The Arethusa volume entitled ‘Augustan Poetry Books’ (13.1.(1980)) has begun to plug that gap and has provided the impetus for the present article. The ancient book as known to the Classical authors was very different from the vellum codex which superseded it under Christian influence in the Early Empire and in turn formed the model for the modern printed book. We wish to draw attention to one aspect of the papyrus roll which has important implications for the ancient writer and reader.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1982
References
Notes
1. Van Sickle, J.Arethusa 13.1 (1980), 5Google Scholar: and see his whole paper (5–42) for further discussion of ancient books, especially 7–12 on the length of Greek and Roman poetry books.
2. Hence Priscian (6th century) cites Juv. Sat. 8.85 as ‘Iuvenalis libro III’ (GLK III. 222.13–4). Similarly, in elegy it is sometimes unclear whether two consecutive poems are a diptych or one longer poem presenting two aspects of the same theme. Propertius in particular supplies a number of examples, e.g. 3.4–5, 2.13, 2.31–2.
3. Thus ‘suspension of judgement’ is urged by Williams, G. in his latest book, Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry (New Haven and London, 1980) (x, index, esp. pp. 52, 113)Google Scholar when we read a Latin poem – but this and his discussion of ‘thematic anticipation’ (ch. 5) may readily be extended to apply to whole books too.
4. Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 128–43Google Scholar.
5. The Design of Virgil's ‘Bucolics’ (Rome, 1978)Google Scholar; also Arethusa (n. 1), 16–29 and his other publications listed in the bibliography to the volume.
6. Cancik, H., Untersuchungen zu Senecas Epistulae Morales (Diss. Tübingen, Hildesheim, 1967)Google Scholar; Maurach, G., Der Bau von Senecas Epistulae Morales (Heidelberg, 1970)Google Scholar.
7. Maurach (n. 6), pp. 38–41.
8. E.g. J. E. G. Zetzel in Arethusa (n. 1) on Sermones I; Ludwig, W., ‘Die Komposition der beiden Satirenbucher des Horaz’ Poetica 2 (1968), 304–25Google Scholar on Sermones I and II; McGann, M. J., Studies in Horace's First Book of Epistles Collection Latomus c (Brussels, 1969) especially pp. 89–100Google Scholar.
9. For example, abuse of Juvenal's first Satire on structural grounds has become almost a ritual. Nettleship's expostulation (J. Philol. 16 (1888), 62)Google Scholar is cited in Duff's edition of Juvenal of 1898 and again in Duff-Coffey (1970): ‘The first satire is a series of incoherent complaints … all these are hurried together in no intelligible order… the ill-proportioned piece ‘. Scholars from Stegemann, W. (De Iuvenalis Dispositione (Diss. Leipzig, 1913)Google Scholar) onwards and notably Anderson, W.S. (‘Studies in Book I of Juvenal’ YCS (1957), 33–90)Google Scholar have demonstrated the poetic skill exhibited in Juvenal's individual poems.
10. The view that such a ‘literary’ approach should be applied only to the Augustan poets – possibly an underlying assumption of the Arethusa volume and explicitly expressed by e.g. G. Williams in his introduction to Figures of Thought (n. 3) – on the grounds that later poetry was ‘intended for public performance to a large audience with whom its success would have to be measured in terms of its immediate impact’ (Williams, x) is countered most obviously by the case of Greek tragedies, plays written for a single performance and relying on immediate effect but which no-one would wish to deny are regularly subjected to ‘literary’ analysis with great success.
11. Anderson, (CP 57 (1962), 145–60)Google Scholar and Lindo, L. I. (CP 69 (1974), 17–27)Google Scholar have recognized that the different books have differing characteristics – but to our knowledge no detailed analysis has been conducted. Griffith, J. G. outlines accurately Book I's themes in passing (G & R 16 (1969), 137)Google Scholar; earlier Highet, G. (Juvenal The Satirist (Oxford, 1954), pp. 85, 89–90)Google Scholar had devoted a few paragraphs to the Book as a whole, but his sketch is marred by his biographical approach; Heilmann, W. (RhM 110 (1967), 366–70)Google Scholar, who follows Highet closely, has little to add.
12. For convenience only, we adopt the traditional enumeration of the Satires.
13. We make no claim that our analysis is definitive, but we hope that it will alert Juvenal's readers to his poetic skill and inspire further investigations of this sort. Nor are the themes and motifs we find exclusive to Book I, of course.
14. Respectively the Penguin translation of P. Green (Harmondsworth, 1967) and the Loeb of G. G. Ramsay (London and New York, 1918).
15. Coffey, M. discusses the various derivations of satura in Roman Satire (London, 1976), pp. 11–18Google Scholar.
16. This manipulation of several themes throughout a book is basically the technique found in Seneca's Letters (see above) and perhaps most notoriously in Tibullus, whose first sympathetic critic was probably Schuster, M. with his Tibull-Studien (Vienna, 1930)Google Scholar: summarized and reviewed by Rowell, H. T.AJP 63 (1942), 230–38Google Scholar.
17. The size of this piece is equalled in earlier extant Roman hexameter satire only by Hor. Serm. 2.3, Damasippus' ‘out-of-control’ sermon (326 lines). Juvenal proceeds to cap this with his tour de force, Satire 6 (= Book II, 700 lines long, accepting the authenticity of the Oxford fragment).
18. Not that we wish to suggest that satires were never performed individually. But Satire 6, i.e. Book II, was presumably recited whole.
19. Anderson, ‘Anger in Juvenal and Seneca’ Univ. of Calif. Publ. in Class. Philol. 19 (1964), 127–95Google Scholar. We follow Anderson (127–30) in our use of the term ‘the satirist’ to denote not Juvenal the real man but his creation, the angry character, who is not unlike Alf Garnett in his fatuity and bigotry – and entertaining for all that.
20. For a full account see our article in LCM 6 (1981), 195–208, esp. 207–8Google Scholar.
21. Cf. Witke, E. C.Hermes 90 (1962), 244–8Google Scholar = Latin Satire: The Structure of Persuasion (1970), pp. 128–34.
22. In utilizing verbal links, there is a temptation to over-emphasize the trivial or purely fortuitous in order to suit one's case. We have tried to avoid this by regarding words as significant only if intrinsically interesting, unusual, occurring rarely within the Book or closely connected with a prominent theme. Such links, on our view, can only complement and reinforce existing motifs, not establish their presence.
23. See Anderson, Studies (n. 9), 51Google Scholar on the military theme in Sat. 2 and 77–8 in Sat. 4. In addition, ‘the mock-epic form [sc. of Sat. 4] serves as an implicit standard of reference, representative of the now mythical Roman courage’, 79.
24. Not dissimilar is the alternating sequence of the Eclogues; compare too their ‘recessed panels’ arrangement with the symmetric disposition of the Satires in Juvenal's first Book.
25. See LCM 6 (1981), 203–4Google Scholar.
26. See Anderson, Studies (n. 9), 84–6Google Scholar on the alternation of menus in Sat. 5.
27. Not that there is anything like the development of Horace's persona in Sermones I which poses largely as autobiographical self-revelation. Instead the focus in Juvenal's first Book is on Rome and consequently the satiric persona is more or less static: for characterization of the persona of Books I and II see Anderson, Anger (n. 19), 129, 131–48Google Scholar.
28. One function of the prologue to Satire 3 (1–20) is to make clear this overlap: see Fredericks, S. c.Phoenix 27 (1973), 62–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.