Go then, prepare to bring thy mistress home,
And dress thy door with garlands ere she come :
But tell me; will one man her fancy please?

Alas! one eye may do't, with equal ease.
And yet there runs, I hear, a wond'rous tale,
Of some chaste maid that lives in some lone vale;
There she may live; but let the phoenix, plac'd
At Gabii, or Fidenæ, still prove chaste

VER. 77. Go then, prepare to bring thy mistress home,

And dress thy doors with garlands ere she come :] There are frequent allusions to this custom, which it will be sufficient once for all, to mention. Previously to bringing home the bride, the door-posts of the bridegroom were adorned with wreaths of flowers, branches of laurel, &c. while scaffolds were erected before the front of the house, for the accommodation of the people who flocked to see the nuptial procession. It must be understood, that I speak of the better sort :-though the poor were not altogether without their garlands, and their processions on this important occasion.

Holyday thinks that hæc and illud are used emphatically to express the author's suspicions of Ursidius' destined wife; while Jortin fancies they serve only as props to keep up the verses. Jortin is evidently right; the lines are careless and unpoetical.

VER. 84. At Gabii, or Fidene, &c.] The translators do not appear to have felt the full force of the satire here. Stapylton calls Gabii and Fidenæ, " great towns," and Holyday seems to admit, that though they were exceedingly inferior to Rome, yet they were likely, from the number of their inhabitants, to corrupt the maidens' virtue. But these "great towns" had scarce any inhabitants.

As at her father's farm-Yet who can swear

That nought was done in night, and silence there?
The gods have oft, in other times, we're told,
With many a nymph, in rocks and caves, made bold;
And still, perhaps, they may not be too old.
Survey our public places: sce'st thou there,
One woman worthy of thy serious care?

Sce'st thou, through all the crowded benches, one
Whom thou might'st take, with prudence, for thy own?
Lo! while Bathyllus, with his flexile limbs,
Acts Leda, and through every posture, swims,

Even in Horace's time they were proverbial for their deserted state, Gabiis desertior, atque Fidenis: and that they had not improved when Juvenal wrote, appears from the way in which he speaks of them in the tenth Satire. In short, they were wretched hamlets, and almost abandoned by every body. What the poet, therefore, means to insinuate is, that though these places differed but little, in point of populousness, from her father's farm; yet that little, such was the frail texture of female purity, was sufficient to endanger it.

VER. 94. Lo! while Bathyllus, &c.] As Juvenal has frequent allusions to these amusements, and to the extravagant fondness of the people for them, I will endeavour to give the best account I can find, of their rise, progress, and final disappearance.

Before the time of Augustus, the Romans were acquainted only with mimes and farces of the lowest kind. Buffoons from Tuscany were the performers in these pieces, which were introduced between the acts of their tragedies, and comedies, and consisted of little more than coarse and licentious ribaldry, and the most ridiculous and extravagant gestures.

In this state the stage was found by Pylades and Bathyllus; the latter of whom was a native of Alexandria, and one of Mæcenas's slaves. He had seen

Tuccia delights to realize the play,

And in lascivious trances melts away;

Pylades dance in Cilicia, and spoke of him in such terms to his master, that he sent for him to Rome. Here these two men formed the plan of a new kind of spectacle, which pleased Mæcenas so much, that he gave Bathyllus his freedom, and recommended both him and his friend to Augustus.

This new spectacle was a play performed by action alone; it was exhibited on a magnificent theatre raised for the purpose, and being accompanied by a better orchestra than Rome had yet seen, it astonished and delighted the people so much, that they forsook, in some measure, their tragic and comic poets, for the more expressive ballets of Pylades and Bathyllus.

To say the truth, these were very extraordinary men. The art which they introduced, they carried to the highest pitch of perfection; and however skillful their followers may have been, they do not appear to have added any thing to the magnificence of the scene, or the scientific movements of the first performers.

We can form no adequate idea of the attachment of the Romans to these exhibitions; it degenerated into a kind of passion, and occupied their whole souls. Augustus regarded it with complacency, and either from a real love for the art, or from policy, conferred honours and immunities on its professors. By an old law, magistrates were allowed to inflict corporal punishment on mimi and players; pantomimi (such was the expressive name given to these new performers) were exempted from this law: they were besides allowed to aspire to honours from which the former were excluded. Such protection produced its natural effects: insolence in the dancers, and parties among the people. Pylades excelled in tragic, and Bathyllus in comic subjects: hence arose disputes on their respective merits, which were conducted with all the warmth of a political question. Augustus fancied he should re-establish tranquillity by banishing the former; but he was mistaken: the people found they had lost one great source of amusement by his absence, and their clamours occasioned his immediate recall.

The death of Bathyllus, soon after this event, left Pylades without a rival. He did not bear his faculties meekly; he frequently insulted the spectators for not comprehending him, and they endeavoured to make him feel the weight of

While rustic Thymelè, with curious eye,

Marks the quick pant, the lingering, deep-drawn sigh,

their resentment. He had a favourite pupil named Hylas; this youth they opposed to the veteran, who easily triumphed over his adversary, though he could not humble him. We hear no more of Pylades; but Hylas fell under the displeasure of the emperor soon after, and, if I understand Suetonius right, was "contrary to the statute in that case made and provided," publicly whipped at the door of his own house.

It appears from this, that Augustus kept the superintendance of these people in his own hands. Tiberius left them to themselves, and the consequence was, that the theatres were frequently made a scene of contention and blood, in which numbers of all ranks fell. A variety of regulations, as we learn from Tacitus, were now made to check the evil, which they only exasperated; and in conclusion, the emperor was obliged to shut up the theatres, and banish the performers.

In this state were things at the accession of Caligula. His first care was to undo every thing that had been done. Under this profligate madman, the ballets took a licentious turn, and hastened the growing degeneracy of manners. Claudius left them as he found them; but under Nero, the bloody disputes to which they constantly gave birth, reluctantly compelled that excellent prince to 'banish them once more. He was too fond of the fine arts, however, to suffer so capital a branch of them to languish in neglect, and therefore, speedily brought back the exiles. From this time, the pantomimi seem to have flourished unmolested, until Paris, the Bathyllus of Domitian's reign, raised the jealousy of that wretched tyrant, who put him, and a young dancer who resembled him, to death, and drove the rest from Rome. They were recalled the instant the emperor was assassinated, and continued through the whole of Nerva's, and some part of Trajan's reign; but they were now become so vitiated by the shameful indulgence of Caligula and Nero, that, if we may believe Pliny, (which I am not much inclined to do in this case,) that prince finally suppressed them, at the unanimous desire of the people.

From this long, and, as I fear I shall be told, unnecessary note, which I have painfully collected from various commentators, but principally from Salmasius and Cahousac, I return to my text.

And, while her cheeks with burning blushes glow, Learns this,-learns all the city matrons know. Others, when of the theatres bereft,

And nothing but the wrangling bar is left, In the long interval that, 'twixt the shows, (The Megalesian and Plebeian,) flows,

Sicken for business, and assume the airs,

The dress, and so forth-of their favourite players.
Some hire buffoons their wanton mirth to raise,
In a loose jig; poor Ælia doats on these:

In a very profound treatise on dancing, which I only know by an extract in the Encyclopædia Britannica, the author cites this passage in Juvenal to prove that there was a female dancer of the name of Chironomon. Pape! the Chironomon here mentioned, was a ballet of action founded on the well known amour of Leda, in which some favourite dancer (probably Paris) was the principal performer. Whether he played the swan or the lady, cannot now be told; but in a story so wantonly framed, and in an age where so little restraint was imposed on an actor, enough might be done in either to interest and inflame the coldest spectator.

VER. 105. (The Megalesian and Plebeian, ) &c.] The former games were celebrated on the 5th of April, and the latter on the 15th of November; so that here really was a long interval to exercise the patience of the ladies.

VER. 109. In a loose jig;] In the original, gestibus Autonoës. All that is known of Autonoë is that she was daughter to an unhappy father, (Cadmus,) and mother to an unhappy son, (Acteon.) How such a "lamentable tragedy" as her life presents, could be "mixed full of pleasant mirth," as we find it was, is not easy to conceive. Probably it was a burlesque of some serious ballet on the subject. Ælia, mentioned in the same verse, was of a noble family, long since fallen into decay. If Rome had been less corrupt, or fur