The satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis / translated into English verse by William Gifford.

  • Juvenal
Date:
1802
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis / translated into English verse by William Gifford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    98/574 (page 18)
    / While great Pelides sought superior bliss, And toy’d, and wanton’d with his master-miss. Who would not, reckless of the swarms he meets, Fill his wide tablets in the public streets With angry verse? when, through the mid-day glare. Born by six slaves, and in an open chair. The forger comes, who owes his lavish state To a wet seal, and a fictitious date; Comes, like the soft Maecenas, lolling by, And impudently braves the public eye ! Or the rich widow, who, in secret, bruised A filthy toad, and the rank juice infused Into sweet Calene wine, and, tender soul! Reach’d to her thirsty spouse, the treacherous bowl.— Ver. 112 Comt&, like the soft Mtzcenas, ^c.] This great man seems to have been, at once, a beau and a sloven. Seneca says, he used to walk abroad with his tawdry tunic about his heels. He was so indolent, that when the praefect of the guards came to him for the countersign, or watch-word, he generally received him half undrest. His effeminacy is again noticed in the twelfth Satire. > Ver. 114. Or the rich widozv, ^c.] The person hei'e alluded to, says Madan, was Agrippina, the wife of Claudius, &c. It is not unusual (and I speak it for the sake of critics of a much higher order than Mr. Madan), for a commentator to note what is immediately befoi'e him, without deigning to cast an eye to the right hand or the left. The husband, in the text, is poisoned by a draught of wine; Claudius was dispatched by a mushroom: but it is needless to pursue the subject. Poisoning husbands, unluckily, was not so rare an event in those days, that we should set an author at variance with himself to appropriate it. It is sad to see Britannicus fall into this error; sed aliquando bonus.—For the next line, see Sat. in. ver. 5.