Essay Questions

What very famous metaphor about working or studying well into the deep of night is found in Juvenal’s Satires?

Essay VII’s title pretty much gives the game away: “Fortuna (or the Emperor) is the Best Patron.” Suffice to say that the narrator is a great believer in the importance of luck—good fortune—in determining the success of a person. This was not always the case: remember that the narrator has been complaining the whole time that Rome isn’t what she used to be. Things have changed and not for the best. Time was that Rome—as a metonym of the comprehensive reality of Roman government and society—supported the arts.

Alas, by the time Juvenal is writing, this is determined to no longer be the case. Hard work is required without the beneficence of the state—the Emperor—leaving poets, historians, teachers and the like on their own. The best they can hope for is that fate will smile upon them. This really is the only hope left to them, as hard work is not going to do the job for, as the poet observes: ‘‘And is your labour more fruitful, writers of history? More time is wasted here, and more oil.” This has effectively been determined to be the origin of a phrase which would only come into popular usage about a millennium and a half—give or take—later: “burning the midnight oil.”

What very specific sin (or crime) does Juvenal assert began in the Silver Age and what does he mean by the Silver Age?

Juvenal is satirizing the concept of a Golden Age with the concept of the Silver Age supplanting it. Silver has long been known as the “second metal” because it was deemed inferior to gold. But all Golden Ages are really just myth brought about by nostalgia and the seemingly natural inclination of some humans to resist change. Juvenal sets aside just one sin as belonging to the Silver Age; the rest arrive with the succeeding Iron Age. That sin is adultery and there is a very specific reason for this strange choice. Of course, the most obvious is the assertion that Chastity belonged to the Golden Age, choosing to the earth goodbye with the coming decadence of the collapse of Rome’s grand period. More importantly, however, is the other reason that it is to the Silver Age to which adultery owes its rising popularity: the narrator is trying to convince his friend Postumus not to get married. And so begins a raucously misogynistic tirade—satirically to a point—against women. Or, more specifically, against wives.

John Dryden’s 1693 translation of Juvenal’s Satires introduced what proverbial warning against pushing things too far which has since become a cliché?

Almost at the very end of Satire XIII, Juvenal’s narrator is contemplating the unwise course of seeking vengeance too robustly. Some translations directly engage the voice of conscience as the thing which holds men back best. In some of the more flowery translations than Dryden’s, this point in time at which a decision must be made is compared to the rosy glow of cheeks turned red under temper, for instance. In more mundane versions, it is described as a settling of judgement against being rash. But it was Dryden’s translation that has stuck and made Juvenal the author of yet another—of what is obviously by now—commonly used idea or concept even direct phrase which is at this point merely trying to avoid becoming too much the cliché that it falls into disuse:

“Fear not, but pleas'd with this successful Bait,

Thy Perjur'd Friend will quickly tempt his Fate;”