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The Persona and the Addressee in Juvenal Satire 11

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

F.M.A. Jones
F.M.A. Jones*
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

The approach to the Satires of Juvenal via the persona theory is well-known and has been productive. Somewhat less notice has been given to the fact that a considerable number of the satires have their persona moulded around another character, an addressee or an interlocutor, or sometimes an important narrative figure. Such characters ‘justify’ the persona, which can now be seen as a kind of ad hominem irony. This matter is intricately linked with the role of indignatio. Thus indignation, programmed in the first satire, becomes a little suspect in Laronia's mouth in the second. Laronia is a small scale character, but the techniques used in her regard appear again in the third satire, where the difference between Juvenal and Umbricius reveals the inadequacy of indignatio a little more clearly. The difference between the treatment of Crispinus and of Domitian in the fourth satire carries this process further. In the fifth, Juvenal tries to rouse the abject Trebius, but in his own apostrophe to Virro (Sat. 5.107f.) shows that indignatio is not, perhaps, appropriate at all. The role of indignatio diminishes further in the later satires, noticeably in the ninth, where Juvenal's tone is one of banter and Naevolus reveals his own unpleasantness. Much of this process has been charted by S. Braund in a book on the seventh, eighth, and ninth satires. The argument can be resumed with the eleventh satire where there is a further development. In the earlier satires which use address or dialogue there is an impressive realism in dramatic terms about the confrontation and psychology. In the eleventh (and even more, the twelfth) the development of the techniques of irony begins to intrude on the dramatic plausibility: the voice assumed in the poem becomes more aware of the audience as well as the addressee. As the beginning of a demonstration of this change I now provide an analysis of the use of Persicus in the eleventh satire.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , 1990 , pp. 160 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1990

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References

I am grateful to Mr P.A. George and the anonymous referee for comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to the HSRC for financial aid.

1. Braund, S., Beyond Anger: A Study of Juvenal’s Third Book of Satires (Cambridge 1988)Google Scholar.

2. Cf. Catull. 13; Anth. Pal. 11.44; Hor. C.1.20; Epp. 1.5; Mart. 5.78; 10.48; 11.52; Sidon. 17.15ff.; cf. Petr. 46.2; Pliny Ep. 1.15; cf. Edmunds, L., AJP 103 (1982), 184ffGoogle Scholar.

3. See Jones, F., ACl 26 (1983), 104ffGoogle Scholar; on Persicus’ name see ibid., 107 n.25, and Courtney, E., A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (London 1980), 492Google Scholar.

4. Jones (n.3 above).

5. Cf. the beginnings of the first three satires of Horace’s first book (in Sat. 1.3 Tigellius is contrasted with himself); note esp. Hor. Sat. 1.2.11, laudatur ab his, culpatur ab illis (‘he is praised by these, blamed by those’; cf. Juv. 11.1 f.) and, dealing with food, 2.2.46–66.

6. Courtney (n.3 above), 489f.; cf. Weisinger, K., ‘Irony and Moderation in Juvenal XI’, CSCA 5 (1972), 229fGoogle Scholar. For refert quis (‘it matters who…’, 11.21) cf. Pliny Ep. 6.24.1.

7. Cf. Sen. Ep. 87.9; 99.13; Quint. 8.5.12 for bankrupt nobles turning gladiator. Cf. Adamietz, J., Untersuchungen zu Juvenal (Wiesbaden 1972), 124Google Scholar; [Quint] DecL Min. 302.4.

8. Plato Philebus 48c ff.

9. On e caelo descendit see Courtney (n.3 above) at Juv. 2.40; Hollis, (Ovid Ars Amatoria Book 1 [Oxford 1977]Google Scholar) at AA 1.43; cf. Vagellius 1 (FPL [Morel], 124). On the allusion to the judgment of arms and Thersites’ proper sense of place at Juv. 11.30f. see Courtney ad Loc.

10. See Goodyear, F.R.D., PACA 16 (1982), 58Google Scholar, for out and bucca.

11. Cf. Jordan, H., M. Catonis praeter librum de re rustica quae exstant (Leipzig 1860), 97Google Scholar; Polybius 31.25.5a; Plut. Cat. Mai. 8. Perhaps Cato’s dictum is suggested also at Juv. 4.25f.

12. See Jones (n.3 above); cf. Hor. Sat. 2.2.96–99; for Juv. 11.44f. cf. esp. [Quint.] Decl. Min. 276.10.

13. There is no difficulty in this: Persius defers his point from 1.12 to 1.121, practically the end of the satire.

14. Jones (n.3 above).

15. Highet, G., Juvenal the Satirist (Oxford 1954), 279Google Scholar n.2, suggests that Juv. 11.152f. already show that the dinner does not occur on the farm. This is perhaps overstated, since we are not told the boy’s origins. It is the setting of 11.193–206 that makes the location clear. The wording of de Tiburtino… agro (‘from my Tiburtine estate’, 65), written as it is to an addressee not yet at the meal, proves nothing.

16. Cf. also Petr. 14.3 where the heroes go to the market (somewhere on the Campanian coast) to buy food without much money.

17. For Pliny see Sherwin-White, A.N., The Utters of Pliny (Oxford 1966), 120ffGoogle Scholar., Ep. 1.15; see also Stat. Silv. 4.6.Iff. For the rich being offered simple fare as a pleasant change cf. [Quint.] Decl. Min. 301.10 with Winterbottom’s note (M.|Winterbottom, The Minor Declamations ascribed to Quintilion [Berlin 1984]Google Scholar), citing Hor. C. 3.29.13); for the rich playing (lusus) at being poor cf. Sen. Ep. 18.7 with Summers, W.C. (Select Letters of Seneca [London 1910]Google Scholar) ad he.

18. See Anth Pal. 11.44; Hor. C. 1.20; more examples up to Sidonius Carm. 17.15 are provided by Nisbet, and Hubbard, , A Commentary on Horace Odes Book 1 (Oxford 1970), 245Google Scholar; Courtney (n.3 above), 491; cf. also Petr. 46.2; Pliny Ep. 1.15; Edmunds (n.2 above).

19. See e.g. Juv. 11.1 62ff. with Courtney (n.3 above), 492; already in ‘Juvenaliana’, BICS 13(1966),43Google Scholar.

20. Pliny Ep. 1.15.3; cf. Juv. 11.16ff.; Mart. 5.78.26ff.

21. Cf. Walsh, P.G., The Roman Novel (Cambridge 1970), 211 and 250Google Scholar, and Dowden, K., ‘Apuleius and the Art of Narration’, CQ 32 (1982), 419–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for Apuleius interfering with his narrator from the outside.

22. Courtney (n.3 above), 492.

23. Bramble, J., Persius and the Programmatic Satire (Cambridge 1974), 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on the general question see ibid. 29–34 and also Bramble in Kenney, E.J. and Clausen, W. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (Cambridge 1982), ii. 619ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. See Courtney (n.3 above) at Juv. 11.77 and 89; Ogilvie, R.M., A Commentary on Livy Books 1–5 (Oxford 1978)Google Scholar, on Livy 3.11–14; add Livy 7.39.11f. (T. Quinctius); Sen. Contr. 2.1.8 with Winterbottom’s note; Sen. Ep. 51.10 on soldiers in general; Pliny NH 19.87 (Manius Curius); the general at the plough was largely a fiction of ruling class propaganda: see G.E.M.|de Ste Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London 1982), 121fGoogle Scholar.; Syme, R., The Roman Revolution (Oxford 1939), 449–52Google Scholar; Wilkinson, L.P., The Georgics ofVirgil (Cambridge 1969),50–55Google Scholar.

25. See Hollis, Ovid Metamorphoses Book VIII (Oxford 1970), 106fGoogle Scholar. and at 8.646–48; Courtney (n.3 above) at Juv. 11.77.

26. On the description of rustic virtue in Juv. 11, and the contrast with contemporary decadence cf. Weisinger (n.6 above), 234–36.

27. For other examples of such a technique cf. Juv. 3.153 as punctuated by Clausen; Cic. Cael. 62 (mulier ingeniosa); Sen. Contr. 9.2.21; cf. also [Quint.] DecL Min. 269.15 with Winterbottom (n.17 above) ad loc., and Sen. Contr. 2.1.24.

28. On the text of the passage see: Bailey, Shackleton, JRS 43 (1953), 224Google Scholar; Griffith, , CR 11 (1961), 57Google Scholar; Smutny, R.J., CPh 52 (1957), 248–51Google Scholar; Courtney, , BICS 22 (1975), 149Google Scholar; Goodyear (n.10 above), 59; Reeve, M.D., CR 33 (1983) 32fGoogle Scholar. The usual strategies have been removal of 165f. together with 168b-169a, or removal of 165–170. Griffith, Shackleton Bailey, Goodyear and Reeve are unconvinced in part or whole by the excisions.

29. Cf. Juv. 11.2If; 23ff.; cf. 129–31; see Weisinger (n.6 above), 239f.

30. See Courtney (n.3 above), 492; already at Courtney (n.19 above), 43. For the passage beginning forsitan see esp. Juv. 8.113f.

31. Cf. Hor. Epp. 1.5.10f, 30f. and Courtney (n.3 above), 491.

32. See Weisinger (n.6 above), 240; Courtney (n.3 above), 491. For Juv. 11.186–89 cf. 8.128–30, and see Rudd, N., The Satires of Horace (Cambridge 1966), 263Google Scholar.

33. It seems that when fenus means interest it is to be regarded as income, but when it means capital it is more flexible (like ‘loan’): at Juv. 11.40 either might be meant, at 48, capital; here either could be intended (but compare Plaut. Cas. 22–24). Cf. Sailer, R., ‘The Meaning of faenus in Juvenal’s Ninth Satire’, PCPS 29 (1983), 72–76Google Scholar.

34. See Ruperti, G.A., D. Junii Juvenalis Aquinatis Saturae XVI (Glasgow 1825)Google Scholarad loc. On early bathing and dining see Mayor, J.E.B., Thirteen Satires of Juvenal (London 1886)Google Scholar and Courtney (n.3 above) ad loc. and at Juv. 1.49.

35. Cf. Cic. de Or. 3.98f; Sen. de vita beata 7.4; Pliny Ep. 7.3.3; cf. also Plato Phaedo 60b-c; Hor. C. 3.29.13; Sen. Contr. 2.6.3.

36. I have modified the position I held at ACI 26 (1983), 106. The interpretation given here takes iam nunc… licet vadas and talis quoque in a more natural way. Possis (206) is a general second person.

37. Hodgart, M., Satire (London 1969), 130Google Scholar, quoted at Courtney (n.3 above), 43.