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Who would not swear by every awful name,
If Milo murder, Verres theft, should blame,

born near a century before their time. They proposed an Agrarian law, and to get it passed, struck at the root of that liberty of which they professed themselves the champions; and were guilty of unjustifiable violence—conceiving, perhaps, with other hasty reformers, that the end justified the means. They were murdered with every circumstance of barbarity; Tiberius, in the midst of his followers, by Scipio Nasica; and Caius, some time after, by a mob more powerful, and more profligate, than his own.

As Juvenal calls them factious, we may be sure he thought them so; and the opinion of so decided a friend to the liberties of his country, must necessarily have great weight in determining the justice of their fall. But the mischief, unfortunately, did not end with them: they had shewn what might be effected by an unbridled multitude; and ambitious men, inferior indeed to the Gracchi in ability, but greater adepts in the easy arts of corrupting and inflaming the ignorant, learnt from their example, to make a more effectual use of the tremendous engine they first set in motion.* Elections were carried on by violence and outrage, and men of moderate and patriotic views were driven from the service of the state. Then followed a dreadful scene-ardebant cuncta, et fracta compage ruebant. Sylla, and Marius, and Cinna, appeared upon the stage in succession, and thinned the world by their bloody proscriptions. Others followed, equally sanguinary, till the people, weary of being disturbed to no end, and fatigued without direction or object, threw themselves, almost without a struggle, into the torpid arms of tyranny, as the only remaining refuge from anarchy and perpetual irritation.

The reader will find some account of Verres, Clodius, &c. in the subsequent pages.

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* Here are some of the immediate effects of the conduct of the Gracchi, e' αρχαι τα νενομισμένα έπρασσον. Τα δε δικαςηρια επεπαυτο, καὶ συμβολαιον ουδεν εγιγνετο αλλ ̓ ἡ τε ταραχη καὶ ἡ ακρισια πανταχε πολλη ην καὶ ονομα πόλεως έφερον, ςρατοπεδε δε εδεν απείχον Dio. Frag. 87.

Clodius

pursue adulterers to the bar,

Caius tax Catiline with civil war,

Or Sylla's pupils, aping every deed,

Against his TABLES of PROSCRIPTION plead?
Yet have we seen,-O shame for ever fled!
Warm from th' embrace of an incestuous bed,
A barbarous prince those rigid laws awake,
At which the Powers of War, and Beauty quake,

VER. 41. Or Sylla's pupils, &c.] There were two Triumvirates, but Juvenal alludes to the last, which was the most bloody, and composed of Augustus, Antony, and Lepidus. Both, indeed, took Sylla for their master, and both might have said with Shylock, "the villainy you teach us, we will execute, and it shall go hard but we will better the instruction."

VER. 45. A barbarous prince, &c.] The old scholiast will needs have Claudius to be meant here, but without reason: and, indeed, every circumstance marks out Domitian so strongly, that it is wonderful he should have overlooked it. Claudius neither revived the laws against adultery, nor caused his niece to procure abortions. Domitian did both. He did worse: stained with every enormity, he affected an outrageous zeal for the propagation of morality; and under this hypocritical mask, indulged his savage disposition in the punishment of numbers, who probably thought themselves secure by his example.

One curious instance of this I have already given (p. 16) from Dio; but I forgot to add what immediately follows: that during this fit of virtue, he put to death a woman convicted of unrobing herself before one of his statues!

The "law" mentioned in this line, was the Julian de Adulteriis, introduced by Augustus, and so called, not as some have supposed from his daughter, but from his great uncle, the Dictator, whose name at first he bore. It had fallen into disuse, but had lately been revived in all its force by Domitian; for which Martial and Statius pay him many pretty compliments. His unfortunate niece Julia (v. 48), soon after this was written, followed her "abortive fruit" to the tomb; being killed by a potion stronger than ordinary. Pliny speaks with

E'en while his drugs were speeding to the tomb
The abortive fruit of Julia's teeming womb !-
Ye hypocrites! the worst of men shall hear
Your fulsome admonitions with a sneer;
And, while their flagrant vices ye arraign,
Turn, like the trampled asp, and bite again.
A reverend brother late, amidst the crowd,
With deep-dissembled virtue, cried aloud,
"Where sleeps the Julian law?" His zealous strain,
Enraged, Laronia heard, and smiled disdain-

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O, blest," she cried, "be these discerning times, "That made thee censor of our heinous crimes!

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Blush, Rome, and from the sink of sin arise; "CATO THE THIRD's descended from the skies! "But mirth apart; in what sequester'd street "Did you, most fragrant sir, that essence meet,

great indignation of Domitian's barbarous hypocrisy, in an allusion to this very circumstance. Nec minore scelere quam quid ulcisci videbatur Dom. absentem, inauditamque (Corneliam) damnavit incesti, cum ipse fratris filiam incesto non polluisset solum, verum etiam occidisset! Lib. IV. xi.

VER. 56. Enraged, Laronia, &c.] Britannicus supposes this advocate for the sex to be the Laronia mentioned by Martial (Lib. 11. 32.); but this is little, if at all probable. The person, however, is immaterial; and I only mention her for the sake of observing, that the fable of the Lion and the Painter is admirably illustrated by her attack-which not only does away, in advance, several of the heaviest charges brought against the women in the Sixth Satire, but retorts them with good effect on the men.

"Which scents your bristly hide? What! does it shame

"Your reverence to disclose the vender's name?

"If ancient laws must reassume their course, "Give the Scantinian first its proper force; 66 Men, lordly men, examine, and confess "Their vices greater, their indulgence less : "Yet, unappall'd, their shrouded phalanx stands, "Safe in its numerous, and united bands.

"I know your monstrous leagues; but can you find "Our sex in interdicted pleasures join'd?

"E'en Flora, though her life in lewdness past,

66

Slept with Catulla, and with Cluvia, chaste; "While Hippo's brutal itch both sexes tried,

"And proved, by turns, the bridegroom and the bride. "WE ne'er, with mis-spent zeal, explore the laws, "We throng no forum, and we plead no cause;

VER. 65. If ancient laws must reassume their course,

Give the Scantinian, &c.] This was a law against unnatural lust. It took its name from C. Scantinius, tribune of the people, who in the 707th year of Rome was convicted by C. Marcellus of an assault upon his son. The punishment at this time was a fine, but under the Christian Emperors the offence was made capital.

Others, however, contend that the law was so called from Scantinius Aricinus, who procured it to be passed; it not being usual (as they say) for laws to receive their titles from those who are the objects of them, but from those who introduce them. It may be so; though this is not always the case-but the matter is of no great consequence.

"Some few, perhaps, may wrestle, some be fed, "To aid their breath, with strong athletic bread : "YE twirl the distaff with unmanly grace, "And spin more subtly than Arachne's race, "Bent o'er your daily task, like the poor jade "That, tether'd to a block, pursues her thriftless

trade.

"Why Hister's freedman heir'd his wealth, and

why

"His wife, while yet he lived, was bribed so high, "Who knows not? She must thrive who, sway'd by gain,

"Can make a third in bed, and ne'er complain.—

"On smother'd secrets gold and jewels wait,

"Then wed, my girls; be silent, and be great. "Yet these are they who, loud in Virtue's cause, "Consign our venial frailties to the laws,

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"Turba suos. Quicquid multis peccatur, inultum est."

VER. 80. See Sat. XI. v. 27.

VER. 83. Bent o'er your daily task, like the poor jade

That, tether'd to a block, pursues her thriftless trade.]

"Mistresses

of families," says the old scholiast, "if they suspected their female slaves of too great familiarity with their masters, used, by way of punishment, to fasten them to a large log of wood before the door, and keep them to incessant labour, by dint of blows."

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