SATIRE IV

Juvenal

A TALE OF A TURBOT

    CRISPINUS once again! a man whom I shall often
have to call up before you, a monster of wickedness
without one redeeming virtue; a sickly libertine,
strong only in his lust, which spares none save the
unwedded, what does matters it then how spacious
are the colonnades which tire out his horses, how
large the shady groves in which he drives, how many
acres near the Forum, or how many palaces, he has
bought? No bad man can can be happy: least of
all the unholy seducer with whom lately lay a
filleted³ priestess, doomed to pass beneath the
earth with the blood still warm within her veins.

³ The vitta, or fillet, was worn round the hair by Vestal
Virgins.

    Today I shall tell of a less heinous deed, though
had any other man done the same, he would have fallen
under the censor's lash: for what would be shameful
in good men like Seius or Titius sat gracefully on
Crispinus. What can you do when the man himself
is more foul and monstrous than any charge you call
bring against him? Crispinus bought a mullet for
six thousand sesterces--one thousand sesterces for
every pound of fish, as those would say who make
big things bigger in the telling of them. I could
praise the man's cunning if by such a lordly gift he
secured the first place in the will of some childless
old man, or, better still, sent it to some high-born
mistress who rides in a closed, broad-windowed
sedan. But nothing of the sort; he bought it for
himself: we see many a thing done nowadays
which poor frugal Apicius ¹ never did. What? Did
you, Crispinus--you who once wore a strip of
native papyrus round your loins--give that price for a
fish? A price bigger than you need have paid for the
fisherman himself, a price for which you might buy
a whole estate in some province, or a still larger one
in Apulia. What kind of feasts are we to suppose
were guzzled by our Emperor himself when all those
thousands of sesterces--a fraction and mere side-
dish of a modest meal--were belched up by a purple-
clad buffoon of the august Palace--one who is now
Chief of the Knights, and who once used to sell,
at the top of his voice, damaged goods in the form of
his fellow countrymen the sprats? Begin, Calliope!
let us take our seats. This is no story to sing--a true
tale is being told; tell it forth, you maidens of Pieria,
and let it profit me that I have called you maids!

¹ A celebrated gourmand.

    When the last of the Flavii was flaying a half-
dead world, and Rome was enslaved to a bald-
headed Nero,¹ there in the Sea of Hadria, in front
of the shrine of Venus held aloft on Dorian
Ancona, a turbot of wondrous size was caught,
filling up the net,--a fish no less huge than those
which lake Maeotis conceals beneath the ice till
it is broken up by the sun, and then sends forth,
sluggish through inactivity and fattened by long cold,
to the mouths of the pouring Pontus. This monster
the master of the boat and net intends for the High
Pontiff;² for who would dare to put up for sale or
buy so big a fish in days when even the sea shores
are crowded with informers? Inspectors of seaweed,
scattered about, would immediately have stripped the
barely-clad oarsman of his rights, ready to affirm that
the fish was a run-away that had long feasted in Caesar's
fishponds; having escaped from there, he must be
restored to his former master. For if Palfurius³ is to
be believed, or Armillatus,³ every rare and beautiful
thing in the wide ocean, in whatever sea it swims,
belongs to the Imperial Treasury. The fish there-
fore, that it be not wasted, shall be given as a gift
    And now death-bearing Autumn was giving way
before the frosts, fevered patients were hoping for a
quartan,⁴ and bleak winter's blasts were keeping the
booty fresh; yet on sped the fisherman as though
the South wind were at his heels. And when below
him lay the lake where Alba, though in ruins, still
holds the Trojan fire and worships the lesser Vesta,⁵
a wondering crowd barred his way for a while;
as it gave way, the gates swung open on easy

¹ i.e. the emperor Domitian.
² The Pontifex Maximus, i.e. Domitian himself.
³ These were two lawyers.
⁴ i.e. a fever recurring every fourth day--an improvement
upon a "tertian," one recurring every third day.
⁵ i.e. as compared with the larger temple of Vesta in Rome.

hinge, and the excluded senators gazed on the dish
that had gained an entrance. Admitted to the
Presence, "Receive," said he of Picenum, "a fish
too big for a private kitchen. Let this be a
festive day; hasten to fill out thy belly with fat
fare, and devour a turbot that has been preserved
to grace thy reign. The fish himself wanted to be
caught." Could flattery be more gross? Yet the
Monarch's comb began to rise: there is nothing that
divine Majesty will not believe concerning itself
when lauded to the skies! But no platter could be
found big enough for the fish; so a council of mag-
nates is summoned: men hated by the Emperor,
and on whose faces sat the pallor of that great and
perilous friendship. First to answer the Liburnian's
call "Haste, haste! he is seated!" was Pegasus,
hastily catching up his cloak--he that had newly
been appointed as bailiff over the astonished city.
For what else but bailiffs were the Prefects¹ in
those days? Of whom Pegasus was the best,
and the most righteous expounder of the law,
though he thought that even in those terrible days
there should never be a sword in the hand of
Justice. Next to come in was the aged, genial
Crispus,² whose gentle soul well matched his style
of eloquence. There would have been no better
adviser than he for the ruler of lands and seas and
nations if only he had been free, under that scourge
and plague, to denounce cruelties and offer honest
counsels. But what can be more dangerous than
the ear of a tyrant on whose caprice hangs the life
of a friend who has only come to talk of the rain or
the heat or the showery spring weather? So Crispus
never struck out his arms against the torrent, nor

¹ The Praefectus Urbi, under the Emperors, was the head
magistrate in Rome, and exercised many important functions.
² Vibius Crispus; see Tac. Hist . ii. 10.

was he one to speak freely the thoughts of his
heart, and stake his life upon the truth. Thus was
it that he lived through many winters and saw his
eightieth solstice, shielded, even in that Court, by
weapons such as these.
    Next to him hurried Acilius, close in age to
himself, and with him the youth¹ who little merited
the cruel death that was so soon hurried on by his
master's sword. But to be both old and noble has
long since become as rare as a prodigy; hence I
would rather be a giant's ² little brother. Therefore
it didn't help the poor youth that he had speared
Numidian bears in close combat, stripped like a hunter
upon the Alban arena. For who nowadays would
not see through patrician tricks? Who would now
marvel, Brutus, at that old-world cleverness of yours? ³
Its an easy matter to fool a king that wears a beard.
    Nor cheerful-looking, though of common
blood, came Rubrius, condemned long since of a
crime that may not be named, and yet more shame-
less than a reprobate who writes satire. There
too was present the unwieldy paunch of Montanus;
and Crispinus, reeking at early dawn with odors
enough to out-scent two funerals; more ruthless
than he Pompeius,⁴ whose gentle whisper would cut
men's throats; and Fuscus,⁵ who planned battles in
his marble halls, keeping his flesh for the Dacian
vultures. Then along with the prudent Veiento came
the death-dealing Catullus,⁶ who burnt with love for
a maiden whom he had never seen--a great and

¹ Acilius Glabrio the younger was exiled, and afterwards
put to death by Domtian.
² i.e. "son of a clod." Giants were supposed to be sprung
from earth. [expression means "a nobody" Green]
³ Brutus feigned madness to elude suspicion of Tarquin.
A simple "bearded" monarch was easily imposed upon.
⁴ Evidently an informer.
⁵ Cornelius Fuscus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard. He
was killed in Domitian's Dacian wars, A.D. 86-88.
⁶ Fabricius Veiento and Catullus Messalinus, informers
under Domitian.

distinguished monster even for these days: a blind
flatterer, an awful courtier well suited to beg by a
bridge at the wheels of carriages and blow soft kisses
at them as they roll down the Arician hill. None
marvelled more at the fish than he, turning to the left
as he spoke; only the creature happened to be on
his right. In similar fashion he would praise the thrusts
of a Cilician gladiator, or the machine which whisks up
the boys into the awning.
    But Veiento was not to be outdone; and like
one of your priests inspired, O Bellona, he
bursts into prophecy: "A mighty omen has thou,
O Emperor! of a great and glorious victory. Some
King will be thy captive; or Arviragus¹ will be
hurled from his British chariot. The brute is foreign
born: does thou not see the prickles bristling upon
his back?" Nothing remained for Fabricius but to
tell the turbot's age and birthplace.
    " What then do you advise?" quoth the Em-
peror. "Shall we cut it up?" "No, no," rejoins
Montanus; "let that indignity be spared him. Let
a deep vessel be produced to gather his huge dimen-
sions within its slender walls; some great and un-
foreseen Prometheus is destined for the dish! Haste,
haste, with clay and wheel ! but from this day forth,
O Caesar, let potters always attend upon thy camp!"
This proposal, so worthy of the man, gained the
day. Well known to him were the old debauches
of the Imperial Court, which Nero carried on to
midnight till a second hunger came and veins were
heated with hot Falernian. No one in my time had
more skill in the eating art than he. He could tell
at the first bite whether an oyster had been bred

¹ A British prince, as in Cymbeline [by Shakespeare] .

at Circei, or on the Lucrine rocks, or on the beds
of Rutupiae;¹ one glance would tell him the native
shore of a sea-urchin.
    The Council rises, and the councillors are dis-
missed: men whom the mighty Emperor had dragged
in terror and hot haste to his Alban castle, as if to
give them news of the Chatti, or the savage Sycambri,²
or as if an alarming dispatch had flown in from some
remote quarter of the earth.
    And yet it would have been better to have spent on
follies such as these all those days of cruelty when he
robbed the city of its noblest and choicest souls, with
none to punish or avenge them! He could steep himself
in the blood of the Lamiae;³ but when once he became
a terror to the common herd he met his doom.⁴

¹ Richborough [England].
² The Chatti and the Sycambri were two of the most
powerful German tribes, between the Rhine and the Weser.
³ Taken as a type of the ancient noble families of Rome.
⁴ Domitian was murdered, as the outcome of a conspiracy,
by the hand of a freedman, Stephanus, on September 18,
A.D. 96.

warm : she was buried alive for breaking her vow of chastity. Some think this was the chief Vestal Virgin Cornelia executed by Domitian somewhere from 90-93 A.D. (different people give different dates.)

Apulia :

"A district which included, in its widest signification, the whole of the southeast of Italy from the river Frento to the promontory Iapygium. In its narrower sense it was the country east of Samnium , on both sides of the Aufidus ... The country was very fertile, especially in the neighbourhood of Tarentum, and the mountains afforded excellent pasturage." Peck

Apicius : "He lived during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. Having spent 100,000,000 sesterces ($3,600,000) in procuring and inventing rare dishes, he balanced his accounts and found only 10,000,000 sesterces ($360,000) remaining. Unwilling to starve on such a pittance, he killed himself." Miller
This book is dated 1909 so an inflation adjustment is needed on the figures. And needless to say, Juvenal is being sarcastic calling him "poor frugal".

sprats : This Crispinus, mentioned in Satire I, was from Canopus (near Alexandria); he must have imported fish for sale and apparently this occupation was not well thought of..

Calliope: the "fair-voiced" Muse of epic poetry.

maidens : "Muses" Miller. Green has "virgins" in place of maidens. The latin used is "puellae", commonly translated as "girls" and as such might sound as if the flattery is based on age and not chastity. But seeing how Juvenal's jibes at sexual misconduct are ubiquitous "virgins" seems more likely.

Pieria :

"A narrow strip of country on the southeastern coast of Macedonia , extending from the mouth of the Peneus in Thessaly to the Haliacmon , and bounded on the west by Mount Olympus and its offshoots. A portion of these mountains was called by the ancient writers Piĕrus, or the Pierian Mountain. The inhabitants of this country, the Pieres, were a Thracian people, and are celebrated in the early history of Greek poetry and music, since their country was one of the earliest seats of the worship of the Muses, hence called Pierĭdes, and Orpheus is said to have been buried there. After the establishment of the Macedonian kingdom in Emathia in the seventh century B.C. Pieria was conquered by the Macedonians, and the inhabitants were driven out of the country." Peck

Sea of Hadria : Adriatic Sea : "The ancient writers frequently speak of it as dreaded by sailors for its sudden storm" Peck

Dorian Ancona :

"or Ancon ( Ankôn ). A town in Picenum, on the Adriatic Sea, lying in a bend of the coast between two promontories, and hence called Ancon, or an “elbow.” It was built by the Syracusans in the time of the elder Dionysius, B.C. 392. The Romans made it a colony. It possessed an excellent harbour, completed by Trajan, and was one of the most important seaports of the Adriatic." Peck

Pausanius writes how the "Dorians were migrating to Sicily". Description of Greece

Lake Maeotis : Sea of Azov, which freezes in the winter and which lies just north of and is connected to the Black Sea.

Pontus : the Black Sea.

Alba : " Alba Longa, the most ancient town in Latium , is said to have been built by Ascanius , and to have colonized Rome. It was called Longa from its stretching in a long line down the Alban Mount towards the Alban Lake. It was destroyed by Tullus Hostilius, and was never rebuilt; its inhabitants were removed to Rome. At a later time the surrounding country was studded with the splendid villas of the Roman aristocracy and emperors (e. g. Pompey's and Domitian's), each of which was called Albanum." Peck

friendship : from a "friend of Caesar"- sort of like a "friend of the court", a term of office and not real friendship. (Green).

patrician :"In contrast to the plebeians, the patricians thus formed a hereditary aristocracy..." Peck

tricks: the "trick" seems to be for the patrician to seem more amenable to the "bread and circuses" demanded by the common man, and to be more agreeable to degrade himself in the arena so as not to seem so superior to the average man. The problem is that the people have become more sophisticated and more corrupt and will now see through attempts to deceive them. The "beard" of the king refers to an earlier time when people were not so sophisticated.

Dacia :

"(Dakia), as a Roman province, lay between the Danube and the Carpathian Mountains , and comprehended the modern Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, and part of Hungary. The Daci were of the same race and spoke the same language as the Getae, and are therefore usually said to be of Thracian origin. They were a brave and warlike people. In the reign of Domitian they became so formidable under their king, Decebalus, that the Romans were obliged to purchase a peace of them by the payment of tribute. Trajan delivered the Empire from this disgrace. He crossed the Danube, and after a war of five years (A.D. 101-106) conquered the country, and made it a Roman province..." Peck.

Arician hill :

"Now Riccia; an ancient town of Latium at the foot of the Alban Mount, on the Appian Way, sixteen miles from Rome . It was subdued by the Romans , with the other Latin towns, in B.C. 338, and received the Roman franchise. In its neighbourhood were the celebrated grove and temple of Diana Aricina, on the borders of the Lacus Nemorensis. Diana was worshipped here with barbarous customs; her priest, called Rex Nemorensis , was always a runaway slave, who obtained his office by killing his predecessor in single combat." Peck

Bellona :

"(1) The Roman goddess of war, in early Latin called Duellona. An old Italian divinity, probably of Sabine origin. She was supposed to be the wife or sister of Mars , and was identified with the Greek Enyo ( Enuô ). Her temple, which was situated in the Campus Martius, outside the old Pomerium, was used for meetings of the Senate when it was dealing with the ambassadors of foreign nations, or Roman generals who claimed a triumph on their return from war, for it must be remembered that under such circumstances a general might not enter the city. The pillar of war ( Columna Bellica ) stood hard by. It was from this, as representing the boundary of the enemy's territory, that the Fetialis threw his lance on declaring war. See Fetiales.

(2) Quite a different goddess is the Bellona whom the Roman government brought from Comana in Cappadocia towards the beginning of the first century B.C., during the Mithridatic War. This Bellona was worshipped in a different locality, and with a service conducted by Cappadocian priests and priestesses. These Bellonarii moved through the city in procession at the festivals of the goddess, in black raiment, and shed their own blood at the sacrifice, wounding themselves for the purpose in the arms and loins with a two-edged axe, and prophesying amid a wild noise of drums and trumpets." Peck.

prickles : The commentary in the Cambridge book says Rudd translates the phrase as "the spikes that march up his spine" and that we have a militaristic analogy. Be that as it may, there seems to be a far less strained analogy as the Britons and Germans coming from a colder climate and less accustomed to clothing would display hair, or more hair, on their backs relative to the Romans.

Circeii : in southern Latium.

Lucrine : Lucrine Lake known for its oyster beds, near the coast in Campania.

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