Review of Roman Verse Satire Lucilius to Juvenal

Roman Verse Satire is an excellent, short introduction to satire and the Roman satirists. For in-translation students, it provides a taste of the heady meat on satire's platter.

Satura quidem tota nostra est
Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 10.1.93

The etymology and history of satire are as mixed up as the stuffed sausage from which it may get its name. Even those who wrote it used other terms. Horace called his satires sermones 'talk' and Juvenal called his farrago 'stuffing'. However, these glimpses of daily life, mixed with wit, invective, and obscenity, formed a recognized genre and source of pride for the Romans in that they could claim it as their own.

There were two types of satire: the one traced to Lucilius, in hexameter; the other, traced to Varro, in the mixed prose and verse we now call Menippean. Although Lucilius is called the father of satire, he didn't invent it out of whole cloth. Ennius and Pacuvius had already written satirical poems. Even earlier, the great Greek epic poets had staked a claim to the meter Lucilius chose. As William J. Dominik and William T. Wehrle point out in Roman Verse Satire: Lucilius to Juvenal, this choice of the grand meter, dactylic hexameter, is deliberate parody.

Dominik and Wehrle, as the title explains, look only at the verse form, represented by Lucilius, Persius, Horace, and Juvenal.

In this slim volume they gather the authors together into a small anthology and present the Latin of representative satires side-by-side with an English translation so literal it acts as commentary. More than one quarter of the book is notes.

Lucilius

O curas hominum! o quantum est in rebus inane!
(Oh the cares of human beings! Oh how much emptiness there is in things!)

The selected fragmentary passages from Lucilius (180-102/1 B.C.) show the diversity of his subject matter: virtue, corruption, beauty, decay, and the emptiness of human cares. These topics will be picked up by his successors. Because the passages are only fragmentary, it is often hard to figure out exactly what they mean.

In fragments 567-573 on women, Dominik and Wherle translate

"num censes calliplocamon callisphyron ullam
non licitum esse uterum atque etiam inguina tangere mammis
Surely you don't think that any woman with beautiful locks and beautiful ankles
could not touch her belly and even her groin with her breasts"

Even the very literal translation and implicit explanation of the Greek borrowings calliplocamon and callisphyron don't fully reveal what Lucilius is talking about -- especially with foreknowledge of the scathing indictments of women yet to come in Juvenal. In such a case the notes Dominik and Wherle provide (explaining that no people are free of fault) are particularly useful.

Horace

"quid, cum est Lucilius ausus
primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem,
detrahere et pellem, nitidus qua quisque per ora
cederet...."
"What! When Lucilius first dared
to compose his work's poems in this manner,
and to peel off the skin in which each paraded gleaming
in public...."
Satire 2.8 62-65

The second satirist, Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 B.C.), is generally more familiar than the other 3. Dominik and Wehrle only include 2 of his sermones.

As the authors explain, Horace, writing during the more socially uncertain Augustan period, is restrained. The setting of Satire 2.8 is a dinner party conversation. The setting of 1.9 is the accidental meeting between Horace and a pest. In the notes to these satires, Dominik and Wehrle provide background information on the times, including a diagram of the dinner party seating.