SATIRE VII

Juvenal

LEARNING AND LETTERS UNPROFITABLE

   ON Caesar alone hang all the hopes and prospects
of the learned; he alone in these days of ours has
cast a favoring glance upon the sorrowing Muses--
at a time when poets of name and fame thought of
renting out baths at Gabii, or bakehouses in Rome, while
others felt no shame in becoming public criers, and
starving Clio herself, bidding adieu to the vales of
Aganippe,¹ and leaving for the auction rooms. For if
you see no prospect of earning a dime within the
Muses' grove, you had better put up with Machaera's ²
name and profits and join in the battle of the
sale-room, selling to the crowd wine jars, tripods,
book-cases and cupboards--the Alcithoe of Paccius,
the Thebes or the Tereus ³ of Faustus! How much
better that than to say before a judge " I saw " what
you did not see! Leave that to the Knights of Asia,⁴
of Bithynia and Cappadocia too, and gentry that
were imported bare-footed ⁵ from New Gaul.
    But from this day forth no man who weaves the
tuneful web of song and has bitten Apollo's laurel
will be compelled to endure toil unworthy of his
craft. To your task, young men! Your Prince is
looking around and goading you on, seeking objects
for his favour. If you expect patronage from any other
place, and in that hope are filling up the parchment
of your saffron tablet, you had better order firewood
at once, Telesinus, and present your work to
the spouse ⁶ of Venus; or else put away your tomes,
and let bookworms bore holes in them where they
lie. Break your pen, poor wretch; destroy the battles
that have robbed you of your sleep--you that are
writing lofty strains in a tiny attic, that you may
come forth worthy of a scraggy bust ⁷ wreathed with
ivy! No hope have you beyond that; your rich miser
has now learnt only to admire, only to commend the

¹ An aspiring spring on Mt. Helicon, scared to the Muses.
² Apparently an auctioneer.        ³ Apparently names of
tragedies.   ⁴ Easterns originally imported as slaves, who had
risen to be equites .    ⁵ i.e. as slaves from Galatia. ⁶ Vulcan.
⁷ The busts of poets were wreathed with ivy (doctarum
hederae praemia frontium , Hor. Od . I . i. 29).

the eloquent, just as boys admire the bird of Juno.¹
Meantime the years flow by that could have endured
the sea, the helmet, or the spade; the soul becomes
wearied, and an eloquent but penniless old age curses
itself and its own Terpsichore! ²
    And now learn the devices by which the patron
for whose favour you desert the temples of the
Muses and Apollo seeks to avoid spending anything
on you. He writes verses of his own; yielding the
palm to none but Homer--and that only because of
his thousand years. If the sweets of fame fire you to
give a recitation, he puts at your disposal a tumble-
down house in some distant quarter, the door of
which is closely barred like the gate of a beleaguered
city.   He knows how to supply you with freedmen
to sit at the end of the rows, and how to distribute
about the room the stalwart voices of his retainers:
but none of your great men will give you as much
as will pay for the benches, or for the tiers of seats
resting on hired beams, or for the chairs in the
front rows which will have to be returned when done
with. Yet for all that, we poets stick to our task;
we go on drawing furrows in the thin dust, and turning
up the shore with unprofitable plough. For if you
would give it up, the itch for writing and making a
name holds you fast as with a noose, and becomes
inveterate in your distempered brain.
    But your real poet, who has a vein of genius all
his own--one who spins no hackneyed poems, and

¹ i.e. the peacock.         ² Properly the Muse of Dancing:
used here, like Clio above, for poetry in general.

whose pieces are struck from no common mint--such
a man as I cannot point to, and only feel--is the
product of a soul free from care, that knows no
bitterness, that loves the woodlands, and is fitted to
drink at the Muses' spring. For how can unhappy
Poverty sing songs in the Pierian cave and grasp the
thyrsus when it is short of cash, which the body has
need of both by night and day? Horace's stomach was
well filled when he shouted his cry of Evoe! Where
can genius find a place except in a heart stirred by
song alone, that shuts out every thought but one, and
is swept along by the lords of Cirrha and of Nysa! ¹
It needs a lofty soul, not one that is dismayed at the
cost of a blanket, to have visions of chariots and
horses and Gods' faces, or to tell with what a mien the
Fury confounded the Rutulian:² had Virgil possessed
no slave, and no decent roof over his head, all the
snakes would have fallen from the Fury's hair; no
dread note would have boomed from her voiceless
trumpet. Do we expect Rubrenus Lappa to be as
great at tragedy as the ancients, when his Atreus
has to be pawned for his cloak and crockery? Numi-
tor, poor man, has nothing to give to a needy friend,
though he is rich enough to send presents to his
mistress, and he had enough, too, to buy a tamed
lion that needed masses of meat for his keep. It
costs less, no doubt, to keep a lion than a poet; the
poet's belly is more capacious!
    Lucan,³ indeed, reclining amid the statues of
his gardens, may be content with fame; but what
will ever so much glory bring in to Serranus, or to
the starving Saleius, if it be glory only? When

¹ Apollo and Dionysus.
² Turnus. See Virg. Aen. vii. 445 - 450.
³The famous author of the Pharsalia, M. Annaeus
Lucanus, A. D. 39-66.

Statius¹ has gladdened the city by promising a [recital] day,
people flock to hear his pleasing voice and his loved
Thebais; so charmed are their souls by his sweetness,
with such rapture does the multitude listen to him.
But when his verses have brought down the house,
poor Statius will starve if he does not sell his virgin
Agave to Paris: ² for it is Paris who appoints many to
military commands; it is Paris who puts the golden
ring round the poet's finger after six months of ser-
vice.³ You can get from a stage-player what no great
man will give you: why frequent the spacious
ante-chambers of the Camerini or of Barea? It is
Pelopea ⁴ that appoints our Prefects, and Philomela ⁴
our tribunes! Yet you need not begrudge the bard
who gains his living from the stage: who now-
adays will be a Maecenas ⁵ to you, a Proculeius, or a
Fabius? who another Cotta, or a second Lentulus?
Genius in those days met with its due reward; many
then found their profit in pale cheeks and in giving up
drinking all through December.⁶
    And is your labour more remunerative, ye
writers of history? More time, more [lamp] oil, is
wasted here; regardless of all limit, the pages run up
to thousands; the pile of paper is ever mounting to
your ruin. So ordains the vast array of facts, and
the rules of the craft. But what harvest will you
gather, what fruit, from the tilling of your land?
Who will give to an historian as much as he gives to
the man who reads out the news?

¹ P. Papinius Statius, author of the Thebais, circ. A.D. 61-96.
² Paris, a famous pantomimic dancer. There were two of
the name; one a favorite of Nero, executed by him as a
rival, A.D. 67; the other a favorite of Domitian, also
executed, A.D . 87. See Introduction.
³ The commanding officers ( tribuni ) of a Legion became
equites after serving six months. Claudius instituted the
practice of making honorary appointments, without service,
so as to bestow the title of eques on his favourites.
⁴ Names of pantomime plays.
   ⁵ A noble patron of letters, especially of Horace; for
Proculeius, see Hor. Od. II . ii. 5. Paulus Fabius Maximus
was the patron of Ovid, Cotta is panegyrised by Ovid, Epp.
ex P . II. viii.; P. Lentulus Spinther helped to recall Cicero
from banishment.
⁶ In reference to the festive season of the Saturnalia.

    "O but historians are a lazy crew, that delight
in lounging and the shade." Tell me then what do
pleaders get for their services in the courts, and for
those huge bundles of papers which they bring with
them? They talk big enough, especially if a creditor¹
of their own happens to be listening: or if, more
urgent still, they get poked in the ribs by one who
has brought a huge ledger to claim a doubtful debt.
Then indeed do their capacious bellows pant forth pro-
digious lies! Then are their breasts be-slobbered ! ² and yet, if you want to discover their real gains,
you may put on one side the fortunes of a hundred
lawyers, on the other that of a single jockey of
the Red ! ³ The great men are seated; you rise, a
pale-faced Ajax,⁴ to declaim before a bumpkin judge
in a case of contested liberty. Strain your lungs, poor
fool, until they burst, that when exhausted by your
labours some green palm-branches may be put up to
adorn your stairs.⁵ What fee will your voice bring
in? A dried-up ham; ⁶ a jar of small tuna; some old
onions which would serve as a month's rations for a
Moor, or five flagons of wine that has sailed down the
Tiber.⁷ If you have pled on four occasions, and been
lucky enough to get a gold piece, a bit of it, as part of
the compact, will go to the attorneys. Aemilius will
get the maximum legal fees though he did not plead
so well as we did; but then he has a bronze chariot in
his forecourt, with four stately steeds, and an effigy

¹ The creditor is one to whom the advocate owes money,
and before whom he wishes to make a good appearance; the
acrior illo is a litigant whom the advocate hopes to secure
as a client.
² Spitting or slobbering on the breast was considered
lucky, to obviate the evil results of boasting.
³ Lacerta is apparently the name of a charioteer.
⁴ Alluding to the contest between Ajax and Ulysses for
the arms of Achilles.
⁵ The advocate who had won a case would have his stair
decorated.
⁶ Lawyers received presents in kind from their country
clients.
⁷ i.e. poor wine; like the vile Sabinum of Her. Od. I . xx. 1.
⁸ Aemilius was a noble; the Lex Cincia ( B.C. 204) placed
a limit upon lawyer's fees.

of himself, seated on a gallant charger, brandishing
from afar a bending spear, and practising for battle
with one eye closed. That is how Pedo¹ becomes
bankrupt, and how Matho¹ fails; and such will be
the end of Tongilius, who frequents the baths with a
huge oil-flask of rhinoceros horn, and disturbs the
bathers with a mob of dirty retainers. His Maedian
bearers are weighed down by the long poles of his
litter as he passes through the Forum on his way to buy
slave boys, silver plate, agate vases and country houses;
for that foreign robe of his, with its Tyrian purple,
gains him credit. And yet these gentlemen get profit
out of this display; the purple or the violet robe
brings practice to a lawyer; it pays him to live with a
racket and an appearance beyond his means, and
wasteful Rome sets no limits to extravagance.
    Trust in eloquence, indeed? Why, no one
would give Cicero himself two hundred pence now-
adays unless a huge ring were blazing on his finger.
The first thing that a litigant looks to is: have you
eight slaves and a dozen retainers? Have you a
litter to wait on you, and gowned citizens to walk
before you? That is why Paulus used to hire a sard-
onyx ring; that is why he earned a higher fee than
Gallus or Basilus. When is eloquence ever found
beneath a shabby coat? When does Basilus get the
chance of producing in court a weeping mother?
Who would listen to him, however well he spoke?
Better go to Gaul or to Africa,² that nursing mother of
lawyers, if you would make a living by your tongue!
    Or do you teach rhetoric? O Vettius! what
iron bowels must you have when your troop of
scholars slays ³ the cruel tyrant: when each in turn

¹ These men are ruined by imitating the extravagance of
their betters.
² Flourishing schools of rhetoric were established under
the early Empire in Gaul, Spain, and Africa.
³ i.e. in a rhetorical exercise.

stands up, and repeats what he has just been study-                [conning]
ing in his seat, reciting the self-same things in the
self-same verses! Served up again and again, this                    [the]
cabbage is the death of the unhappy master. What                [cabbage?]
complexion¹ should be put on the case; within what
category it falls; what is the crucial point; what hits
will be made by the other side--these are things                            [on]
which everyone wants to know, but for which no one
is willing to pay. "Pay indeed? Why, what have I
learnt?" asks the scholar. It is the teacher's fault, of
course, that the Arcadian youth feels no flutter in his
left breast when he dins his "Horrible Hannibal " into                [dire]
my unfortunate head on every sixth day of the week,
whatever be the question which he is pondering:
whether he should make straight for the city from
the field of Cannae, or whether, after the rain and
thunder, he should warily lead around his cohorts, all
dripping after the storm. Name any sum you please
and you shall have it: what would I give ² that the
lad's father might listen to him as often as I do!
So cry half-a-dozen or more of our sophists ³ in one
breath, entering upon real lawsuits ⁴ of their own,
abandoning "The Ravisher" and forgetting all
about "The Poisoner" or "The Wicked and Ungrate-
ful Husband," or the mortar that cures the chronic
blind.
    And so, if my counsel goes for anything, I would
advise the man who comes down from his rhetorical
shade to fight for a petty sum that would buy a trum-
pery corn-ticket ⁵--for that's the most handsome fee
he will ever get--to present himself with a discharge,⁶

¹ Color is a technical term in rhetoric, denoting an argu-
ment which puts a favourable or palliative light on some act.
² The English idiom would be "What would I not give."
³ i.e. teachers, especially of rhetoric.
⁴ The rhetor goes to law to recover his fees.
⁵ A ticket for the gratuitous distribution of corn.
⁶ A retiring gladiator received a wooden sword or quarter-
staff (rudis ) as a token of discharge.

and enter upon some other walk of life. If you ask
what fees Chrysogonus and Pollio¹ get for teaching
music to the sons of our great men, you will tear up
the Rhetoric of Theodorus.²
    Your great man will spend six hundred thousand
sesterces upon his baths, and something more on
the colonnade in which he is to drive on rainy days.
What? Is he to wait for a clear sky, and bespatter
his beasts with fresh mud? How much better to
drive where the mules' hoofs will remain bright and
spotless!   Elsewhere let a banqueting hall arise,
supported on lofty pillars of African marble, to catch
the winter sun. And cost the house what it may, there
will [still] come a man to arrange the courses skillfully,
and the man who makes up the tasty dishes. Amidst
expenditure such as this two thousand sesterces will
be enough, and more than enough, for Quintilian:³
there is nothing on which a father will not spend
more money on than on his son. "How then," you ask,
"does Quintilian possess those vast domains?" Skip
by cases of rare good fortune: the lucky man ⁴ is both
beautiful and brave, he is wise and noble and high-
born; he sews on to his black shoe the crescent
of the Senator. He is a great orator too, a good
javelin-man, and if he happens to have caught a cold,
still sings well. For it makes all the difference by
what stars you are welcomed when you begin to utter
your first cries, and are still red from your mother['s
womb]. If Fortune so chooses, you will become a                            [choose]
Consul from being a rhetoric instructor; if again she                                     [rhetor? latin "rhetore"]
so wills, you will become a rhetor from being a Consul.

¹ Chrysogonus was a singer, Pollio a player on the
cithara.
² A rhetorician at Rhodes.    ³ M. Fabius Quintilianus,
the famous Roman rhetorician, A.D. 40-100.
⁴ Juvenal sarcastically assigns to the lucky man all the
qualities which the Stoics attributed to the sapiens. See
Her. Epp. I. i. 106-108. Juvenal probably had an eye to
that passage.

What of Ventidius¹ and Tullius? ² What made their
fortunes but the stars and the wondrous potency of
secret Fate? The Fates will give kingdoms to a slave,
and triumphs to a captive! Nevertheless that for-
tunate man is rare--rarer than a white raven. Many
have regretted the Professor's empty and unprofitable
chair; witness the ends of Thrasymachus ³ and
Secundus Carrinas.³ Him too did thou see in
poverty, O Athens, him who thou had nothing
better to bestow on than a cup of cold hemlock!⁴
Grant, O Gods, that the earth may lie soft and light
upon the spirits of our forefathers: may the sweet-
scented crocus and a perpetual spring-time bloom
over their ashes; who deemed that the teacher
should hold the place of a revered parent! Achilles
trembled for fear of the rod when already grown,
singing songs in his native hills; nor would he
then have dared to laugh at the tail of his musical
instructor.⁵ But Rufus and the rest are beaten
each by his own pupils--that Rufus ⁶ whom they
have so often styled "the Allobrogian Cicero."
    Who pours into the lap of Celadus, or of the
learned Palaemon,⁷ as much as their grammatical
labours deserve? And yet, small as the fee is--
and it is smaller than the rhetor's wage--the pupil's
unfeeling ⁸ guardian nibbles off a bit of it for himself;
so too does the man that pays the bills. But give in,

¹ P. Ventidius Bassus rose from nothing to be consul
B.C. 43; he triumphed over the Parthians. [ Cicero was
"Born at Arpinum, of common blood"; he was also consul
and put down the Catiline conspiracy. See sat. viii]
² Cicero.
³ Both rhetoricians. Carrinas was banished by Caligula,
and apparently hanged himself.
⁴ The reference must surely be to Socrates; though illum
would have been more appropriate than hunc.
⁵ Achilles was instructed in the lyre by the Centaur
Chiron.
⁶ Rufus was apparently an Allobrogian. The Allobroges
occupied the country between the Rhone and the Isère.
⁷ Q. Remmius Palaemon, a famous Roman grammarian in
the time of Tiberius and Caligula.
⁸ Acoenonoetus is one of those Greek terms whose use
Juvenal wishes to ridicule. The Scholiast explains it as
communi sensu carens [to be without public feeling].
See Mayor.

Palaemon; suffer some diminution of your wage, like
the peddler who sells rags and white Gallic blankets
for winter wear, if only it does not go for nothing that
you have sat from midnight in a hole which no black-
smith would put up with, nor workman who teaches
how to comb wool with slanting tool: if only it does
not go for nothing to have snuffed up the odour
of as many lamps as you had scholars in your class
while thumbing a discoloured Horace or a soot-
begrimed Virgil.
    But it is seldom that the fee can be recovered
without a judgment of a tribune. And yet be sure,
ye parents, to impose the strictest laws upon the
teacher: he must never be at fault in his grammar;
he must know all history, and have all the authorities
at his finger-tips. If asked a chance question on his
way to the baths, or to the establishment of Phoebus,^l
he must at once tell you who was the nurse of
Anchises, what was the name and birth-place of An-
chemolus' ² step-mother, to what age Acestes lived,
how many flagons of Sicilian wine he presented to
the Trojans.³ Require of him that he shall mould
the young minds as a man moulds a face out of wax
with his thumb; insist that he shall be a father to
the whole brood, so that they shall play no nasty
game, and do no nasty trick--no easy matter to watch
the hands and sparkling eyes of so many youngsters!
"See to all this," you say, "and then, when the year
comes round, receive the golden piece which the
mob demands for a winning jockey."

¹ Probably a private bathing establishment.
² A warrior slain by Pallas. Virg. Aen. x. 389.
³ Aen. v. 73 foll.

Caesar : Hadrian it is believed.

Clio : Muse of heroic poetry.

I saw : i.e. To be a false informer in court.

Prince : i.e. Caesar, who is looking to revive the arts.

Apollo : God of poets.

Vulcan : I can only guess that he is telling this fellow to get wood for smelting instead of literary works as Vulcan was a blacksmith. He is also the God of artisans.

peacock : I guess what Juvenal is saying is that the rich man's admiration is superficial.

palm : i.e. saying no one is better but Homer.

shore : i.e. writing in the sand.

Pierian cave: where the Muses were.

"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

thyrsus : A long rod, staff, or wand; associated with the worship of Bacchus or Dionysos. Juvenal is saying that you can't enjoy yourself, or enjoy wine, women, and song without money.

Evoe : "euhoe"; "cry of joy used by the votaries of Bacchus" Whitaker.

Camerini : "... the most ancient Roman gentes, producing a succession of distinguished men, from the foundation of the Republic to the imperial period. The chief families of the Sulpicii during the republican period bore the names of Camerīnus, Galba, Gallus, Rufus, and Saverrio." Peck

Barea Soranus : Roman Senator.

Red : One of the teams or factions at the Circus.

Maedian : "

"The Maedi (also Maidans, Maedans, or Medi) were a Thracian tribe who, in historic times, occupied the area between Paionia and Thrace, on the southwestern fringes of Thrace, along the middle course of the Strymon and the upper course of the Nestus (now the Mesta) rivers. Their capital city was Iamphorynna.

They were an independent tribe through much of their history, and the Thracian king Sitalkes recognized their independence, along with several other warlike "border" tribes ....." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maedi

Tyre : Important Phoenician port (Lebanon today); the purple dye which it was famous for came from shellfish.

Arcadia : Mountainous area in Southern Greece. Perhaps due to the distance and mountains the area was a bit more isolated than other places.

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