Page images
PDF
EPUB

Lurking in silence, maddens with delay,
And in his own impatience melts away.

Nor think this strange: what mother e'er was known
T' inculcate morals purer than her own?

No;-with their daughter's lusts they swell their stores,
And thrive as bawds, when out of date as whores!
Women support the bar: they love the law,

And raise litigious questions for a straw.-
They meet in private, and prepare the Bill,
Draw up the Instructions with a lawyers' skill,
Suggest to Celsus, where the merits lie,

And dictate points for statement or reply.

Nay more, they FENCE! who has not mark'd their

oil,

Their purple rugs, for this preposterous toil?

VER. 374. Suggest to Celsus, &c.] An orator of those times, says the scholiast, who left behind him seven books of institutes. If by "those times" be meant the age of Juvenal, there is a manifest error, for Celsus died in the reign of Tiberius. He is now better known as a physician than a lawyer.

There is, indeed, a Junius (Juventius) Celsus mentioned by Grangeus; and this, perhaps, may be the person to whom the scholiast alludes. But as he flourished under Adrian, (somewhat too late a period for the date of this satire,) I still incline to believe that our author gives, as is customary with him, the name of the well-known rhetorician, to some cotemporary master of the art.

VER. 377. Their purple rugs, &c.] I have already mentioned these rugs (endromide) in the third Satire. (p. 83,) They were usually put on after violent exercise. It only remains to note with what ingenuity the ladies contrived to make even their tilting pursuits subservient to their vanity. Their rugs are

Room for the lady....see! she seeks the list,
And fiercely tilts at her antagonist,

A post! which, with her buckler, she provokes,
And bores, and batters with repeated strokes ;
'Till all the fencer's art can do, she shows,
And the glad master interrupts her blows.

O worthy, sure, to head those wanton dames,
Who foot it naked at the Floral games;

ornamental, and they grow cool in Tyrian purple! How happened it that this escaped Martial ? `

VER. 385.

the Floral games;] Flora, the Romans

say, was a lady of pleasure, who, having acquired an immense fortune in the honest way of trade, left it to the people, on condition that the interest of it should be annually laid out in a merry meeting, which was to be held on her birth-day, and called, after her own name, Floralia. The senate took the money, and, out of gratitude (out of shame, Lactantius thinks,) to so exquisite a benefactress, made her a goddess forthwith, and put the flowers under her protection! The people, good souls! made no objection to the promotion of their old friend, and kept her birth day, now her festival, more zealously than ever! Except the audacious claim put in by Greece on behalf of Rhodope, (" a customer," like the former,) to the erection of one of the pyramids, which was built before that country had yet given shelter to a few naked savages; nothing was ever more impudently urged than this idle story. The flowers of Italy had a presiding power, ages before Rome or her senate was heard of. Varro supposes Flora to have been a Sabine deity; and adds, that Numa first gave her a priest. Ovid puzzles himself sorely to account for the singular manner in which she was worshipped in his time, but is at no loss about the rest of her story. He translates her name into Greek, proves her to have acted as a midwife at the birth of Mars, &c. and has some beautiful verses on her marriage with Zephyrus, who gave her the charge of blossoms, and flowers, for a dowry. -But enough of this.

Unless to nobler daring she aspire,

And tempt the Arena's truer fight, for hire!

The Floralia were first sanctioned by the government in the consulship of Claudius Centho, and Sempronius Tuditanus, (a. U. C. DXCIII.) out of the fines then exacted for trespasses on the grounds belonging to the people: (this is Ovid's story :) even then they were only occasional; but about eighteen years afterwards, on account of an unfavourable spring, the senate decreed that they should be celebrated annually, as the most effectual method to propitiate the goddess of the season.

This is the best account I can find of them: my own opinion is, that they had their rise in a very remote age, and, like the Lupercalia, were the uncouth expressions of gratitude of a rude and barbarous race, handed down by tradition, adopted by a people as yet but little refined, and finally, degenerating into licentiousness amidst the general corruption of manners.

These games were celebrated on the last day of April, and the first and second of May; and with an indecency hardly credible amongst a civilized people. Strumpets, taken from the dregs of the populace, appeared upon the stage, and exhibited a variety of obscene dances, feats of activity, &c. The people claimed a privilege of calling upon these miserable wretches, to strip themselves quite naked; which was regularly done with immense applause! Val. Maximus says, that when Cato once happened to be present at these games, the spectators were ashamed to call upon the ladies to strip as usual; Cato, who, I suppose, expected it, asked his friend Favorinus why they delayed; and was answered, out of respect to him; upon which he immediately left the theatre, to the great joy of the people, who proceeded to indemnify themselves for their reluctant forbearance. Martial has an epigram on this story, in which he puts a very pertinent question. "Why," says he to Cato, "since you knew the nature of these games, did you go into the theatre? was it merely that you might come out again!"

Holyday tells us "that these vile strumpets were wont to dance naked about the streets, to the sound of a trumpet, to which the poet alludes here more particularly." I cannot find it " so set down;" but they were certainly assembled by the sound of a trumpet; and, at any rate, the leader of this immodest band must have required all the impudence, and all the profligacy, which Juvenal sees in his female fencer.

What sense of shame is to that woman known,
Who envies our pursuits, and hates her own?
Yet-though she madly doat on arms and biood,
She would not be a man, e'en if she cou'd,
For there's a thing she loves beyond compare,
And we, alas! have no advantage there.-
O, how it must delight thee to behold
Thy wife's accoutrements in public sold;
And auctioneers, displaying to the throng
Her crest, her belt, her gauntlet, and her thong!
Or, if in other frolics she engage,

And take her private lessons for the stage,

Then double, treble joy must fill thy breast,
To see her

greaves "a-going" with the rest.

Yet these are they, the tender souls! who sweat In muslins, and in silks expire with heat. Mark, with what force, as the full blow descends, She thunders "hah!" again, how low she bends Beneath the opposer's stroke, how firm she rests, Pois'd on her hams, and every step contests, How close tuck'd up for fight, behind, before, Then laugh to see her squat, when the vile farce is o'er. Tell me, ye daughters of Metellus old,

Æmilius, Gurges, did ye e'er behold

A fencer's trull, and be the truth confest,
Thus tilting at a stake, thus impudently drest?
'Tis night; yet hope no slumbers with thy wife;
The nuptial bed is still the scene of strife:

There lives the keen debate, the clamorous brawl,
And quiet "never comes, that comes to all."
Fierce as a tigress plunder'd of her young,
Rage fires her breast, and loosens all her tongue,
When, conscious of her guilt, she feigns to groan,
And chides thy want of love, to hide her own;
Rails at the produce of thy loose amours,
And twits thee with imaginary whores :
Then opes the fruitful fount of tears, and bids
The impassion'd showers fall copious from her lids,
For at their posts, like marshall'd troops, they stand,
Prepar'd to flow, to pour, at her command.

VER. 413. Thus tilting, &c.] We have now seen the ladies exhibiting as fencers, prize-fighters, gladiators, &c. Occupations so abhorrent from the nature of the sex, that the mere difficulty of conceiving it possible they should ever engage in them, has probably led many to imagine the whole to be the invention of the poet. But this is to be ignorant of the history of those times. We have but to open the pages of cotemporary writers to be convinced that, far from inventing, he does not even exaggerate.

I had once a design of tracing the progressive infamy of the Roman women from Nero, when female decorum received its first great shock, to the period of this Satire: but I dropt it from mere irksomeness. Those, however, who delight in such humiliating speculations may find abundant gratification in the pages of Tacitus, Suetonius, Dio, &c.

« PreviousContinue »