The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius
their great generals, Marcellus, Scipio, etc., this age saw M. Porcius
Cato; the historians Fabius Pictor and Cincius Alimentus; the poets
Livius Andronicus, Ennius, Nævius, Pacuvius, Plautus, etc.; and among
the Greeks, Archimedes, Chrysippus, Eratosthenes, Carneades, and the
historians Zeno and Antisthenes.
[1580] _Sententia dia._ Hor., i., Sat. ii., 31, "Macte Virtute esto,
inquit _sententia dia_."
[1581] _Prisci Catonis._ Priscus is, as Dusa shows on the authority
of Plutarch, not the _epithet_, but the _name_ of Cato, by which he
was distinguished. So Horace, iii. Od., xxi., 11, "Narratur et Prisci
Catonis sæpe mero caluisse virtus." (But cf. Hor., ii., Ep. ii., 117.)
[1582] _Catonis._ Both Horace and Sulpicia have imitated Lucilius,
"Valerî sententia dia." Fr. incert., 105.
[1583] _Staret._ Nasica, as Sallust tells us, in spite of Cato's
"Delenda est Carthago," was always in favor of the preservation of
Carthage; as the existence of the rival republic was the noblest spur
to Roman emulation.
[1584] _Defendere._ Livy shows throughout, that the only periods of
respite from intestine discord were under the immediate pressure of war
from without. The particular allusion here is probably to the time of
Hannibal. So Juv., vi., 286, _seq._, "Proximus Urbi Hannibal et stantes
Collinâ in turre mariti." Liv., xxvi., 10. Sil. Ital., xii., 541,
_seq._ Sallust has the same sentiment, "Metus hostilis in bonis artibus
civitatem retinebat." Bell. Jug., 41.
[1585] _Convenit._ The next four lines are hopelessly corrupt. The
following emendations have been adopted: _domus arxque movetur_ for
_Arce Monetæ_: _pax secura_ for _apes secura_: _laborum_ for _favorum_:
_patres_que for _mater_, or the still older reading, _frater_; of which
last Dusa says, "Neque istud verbum emissim titivillitio."
[1586] _Exitium pax._ Juv., vi., 292, "Sævior armis Luxuria incubuit
victumque ulciscitur orbem." Compare the beautiful passage in Claudian
(de Bell. Gild., 96), "Ille diu miles populus qui præfuit orbi," etc.
[1587] _Romulidarum._ Cf. ad Pers., i., 31.
[1588] _Smyrna peribat._ Smyrna was attacked by Gyges, king of Lydia,
but resisted him with success. It was compelled, however, to yield to
his descendant, Alyattes, and in consequence of this event, it sunk
into decay and became deserted for the space of four hundred years.
Alexander formed the project of rebuilding the town in consequence of
a vision. His design was executed by Antigonus and Lysimachus. Vid.
Herod., i., 14-16. Paus., Bœot., 29. Strabo, xiv., p. 646. (An allusion
to Phocæa or Teos would have been more intelligible. Cf. Herod., i.,
165, 168. Hor., Epod. xvi., 17.) The next three lines are corrupt:
the reading followed is, "Vel denique quid vis: Te, Dea, quæso illud
tantum."
[1589] _Caleno._ Calenus, the husband of Sulpicia, probably derived
his name from Cales in Campania, now Calvi. (Hor., i., Od. xx., 9.
Juv., i., 69.) It was the cognomen of Q. Fufius, consul, B.C. 47. The
readings in the next line vary: _pariter ne obverte_; _pariterque
averte_; _pariterque adverte_. Dusa's explanation is followed in
the text. Sulpicia prays that her husband may not be induced by
the allurements of inglorious ease to remain longer in Rome or its
neighborhood, now that all that is really good and estimable has been
driven from it by the tyranny of the emperor. In line 66, read _ecce_
for _hæc_: _in ore_ for _honore_. If "dignum laude virum Musa vetat
mori," Hor., iv., Od. viii., 28, so he may be said "Doubly dying to go
down to the vile dust from whence he sprung," who lives only in the
sarcasm of the satirist.
[1590] _Laureta Numæ._ Cf. ad Juv., iii., 12, _seq._, the description
of Umbritius' departure from Rome.
[1591] _Comite Ægeria._ It is not impossible there may have been
some allusion to Numa and Egeria in Sulpicia's lost work on conjugal
affection; and hence Mart., x., Ep. xxxv., 13, "Tales Egeriæ jocos
fuisse Udo crediderim Numæ sub antro."
[1592] _Apollo._ Hor., i., Ep. iii., 17, "Scripta Palatinus quæcunque
recepit Apollo." Juv., vii., 37.
FRAGMENTS OF LUCILIUS.[1593]
INTRODUCTION.
If but little is known of the personal character and life of the
other Satirists of Rome, it is unfortunately still more the case with
Lucilius. Although the research and industry of modern scholars have
collected nearly a hundred passages from ancient writers where his
name is mentioned, the information that can be gleaned from them with
respect to the events of his life is very scanty indeed; and even of
these meagre statements, there is scarcely one that has not been called
in question by one or more critics of later days. It will be therefore,
perhaps, the most satisfactory course to present in a continuous
form the few facts we can gather respecting his personal history;
and to mention afterward the doubts that have been thrown on these
statements, and the attempts of recent editors to reconcile them with
the accredited facts of history.
Caius Lucilius, then, was born, according to the testimony of S.
Hieronymus (in Euseb., Chron.), B.C. 148, in the first year of the
158th Olympiad, and the 606th of the founding of the city (Varronian
Computation), in the consulship of Spurius Posthumius Albinus and
Lucius Calpurnius Piso. There was a plebeian Lucilian gens, as well
as a patrician, but it was to the latter that the family of the poet
undoubtedly belonged. Horace says of himself (ii. Sat, i., 74),
"Quidquid sum ego, quamvis infrà Lucili censum ingeniumque tamen me
cum magnis vixisse invita fatebitur usque Invidia." Porphyrion, in his
commentary on the passage, says Lucilius was the great uncle of Pompey
the Great; Pompey's grandmother being the poet's sister. But Acron says
he was Pompey's grandfather. Velleius Paterculus (ii., 29), on the
other hand, says that Lucilia, the mother of Pompey, was daughter of
the brother of Lucilius and of senatorian family.
His birthplace was Suessa, now Sessa, capital of the Aurunci, in
Campania; hence Juvenal (Sat. i., 19) says, "Cur tamen hoc potius
libeat decurrere campo, per quem magnus equos Auruncæ flexit alumnus,
Si vacat et placidi rationem admittitis edam;" and Ausonius (Ep. xv.),
"Rudes Camænas qui Suessæ prævenis." At the age of fifteen, B.C. 134,
he accompanied his patron, L. Scipio Africanus Æmilianus, to the
Numantine war, where he is said to have served as eques. Vell. Pat.,
ii., 9, 4. Here he met with Marius, now about in his twenty-third year,
and the young Jugurtha; who were also serving under Africanus, and
learning, as Velleius says, "that art of war, which they were afterward
to employ against each other." In the following year Numantia was taken
and razed to the ground, and Lucilius returned with his patron to
Rome, shortly after the sedition and death of Tiberius Gracchus; and
lived on terms of the most familiar friendship with him and C. Lælius,
until the death of Scipio, B.C. 129; and even at that early age had
already acquired the reputation of a distinguished Satirist. According
to Pighius (in Tabulis), he held the office of quæstor, B.C. 127, two
years after Scipio's death, and the prætorship, B.C. 117. Van Heusde
is also of opinion that he acted as publicanus; and from a passage
in Cicero (de Orat., ii., 70), some suppose he kept large flocks of
sheep on the Ager publicus. Besides Africanus and Lælius (with whose
father-in-law Crassus, however, he was not on very good terms, vid.
Cic., de Or., i., 16) he is said to have enjoyed the friendship of the
following distinguished men, Sp. Albinus, L. Ælius Stilo, Q. Vectius,
Archelaus, P. Philocomus, Lælius Decimus, and Q. Granius Præco. He had
a violent quarrel with C. Cælius, for acquitting a man who had libeled
him. He is said to have lived under Velia, where the temple of Victory
afterward stood, in a house built at the public expense for the son
of king Antiochus when hostage at Rome. (Asc. Pedian. in Ciceron.,
Orat. c. L. Pisonem, p. 13.) He made a voyage to Sicily, but for what
cause, or at what period of his life, is not stated. His closing years
were spent at Naples, whither he retired to avoid, as some think, the
effects of the hatred of those whom his Satire had offended; and here
he died, B.C. 103, in his forty-sixth year, and was honored, according
to Eusebius, with a public funeral. He had a faithful slave named
Metrophanes, whose honesty and fidelity he rewarded by writing an
epitaph for his tomb, quoted by Martial as an instance of antique and
rugged style of writing, xi. Ep., 90.
"Carmina nulla probas molli quæ limite currunt,
Sed quæ per salebras altaque saxa cadunt:
Et tibi Mæonio res carmine major habetur
Luceili Columella heic situ' Metrophanes."
The name of his mistress is said to have been Collyra, to whom the
sixteenth book of his Satires was inscribed. He wrote thirty books of
Satires, of which the first twenty and the last are in Heroic metre.
The other nine in Iambics or Trochaics. He is not to be confounded
with a comic poet of the same name, mentioned by the Scholiast on
Horace and by Fulgentius.
Such is the traditional, and for a long time currently-believed,
story of Lucilius' life. The greater accuracy, or greater skepticism,
of modern scholars has called into question nearly every one of
these meagre facts. Even the method of spelling his name has been a
subject of fierce controversy. In the best manuscripts, especially
those of Horace, Cicero, and Nonius Marcellus, the name of Lucilius
is invariably spelt with one l. Yet in spite of this testimony,
in order to square with some preconceived notions of orthography,
the l was doubled by Hadrian Turnebe, Claude de Saumaise, Joseph
Scaliger, Lambinus, Jos. Mercer, and Cortius. The propriety, however,
of omitting the second l has been fully established by an appeal to
MSS. and inscriptions; and to Varges and Ellendt the credit is due
of successfully restoring the correct mode of spelling. (Cf. Rhenish
Philolog. Museum for 1835, and Ellendt on Cicero, de Orat, iii., 43.)
Again, his prænomen is by some stated to be Lucius; whereas, not to
mention others, Cicero and Quintilian always speak of him as Caius.
But far more serious doubts, and with great probability, have been
cast upon the dates assigned by S. Hieronymus for his birth and death.
Bayle, in his Dictionary, was the first to suggest them; and they were
taken up and urged with great zeal and learning by Van Heusde (in his
Studia Critica in C. Lucilium Poetam, 1842), who accused Jerome of
negligence and incorrectness in the dates he assigns to many other
events: e. g., the overthrow of Numantia, the deaths of Plautus,
Horace, Catullus, Lucretius, and Livius the tragedian, and the birth
of Messala Corvinus. The charge against the chronographer has been
repeated, and with some show of truth, by Ritschel in the Rhenish
Museum, 1843. Van Heusde's line of argument is simply this, that the
dates of Hieron. are inconsistent with what Horace and Velleius say of
Lucilius, and with what the poet says of himself--that it is absurd to
suppose that a lad of fifteen could have served as an eques; or that so
young a person would have been admitted to such intimate familiarity
with men like Scipio Africanus and Lælius; and that at the time of
Scipio's death, when, as it is said, Lucilius had already gained a
great reputation as a Satirist, he could have been barely over nineteen
years old; that if he had died at the age of forty-six, Horace would
not have applied to him the epithet "Senex"--that the year of his
birth must be therefore carried back at least six years, and his death
assigned to a much later period, as he mentions the Leges Liciniæ and
Calpurnia, passed some years after the time fixed by Hieron. for his