SATIRE XI

Juvenal

EXTRAVAGANCE AND SIMPLICITY OF LIVING

    IF Atticus dines sumptuously, he is thought a fine
gentleman; if Rutilus does the same, people say he
has lost his senses: for at what does the public laugh
so loudly as at an Apicius ² reduced to poverty?
Every dinner table, all the baths, lounging-places
and theatres have their fling at Rutilus; for while
still young, active, and warm-blooded, and fit to wear
a helmet, he plunges on till he will have to enroll
himself--not compelled indeed, nor yet forbidden by
the Tribune ³--under the rules and royal mandates
of a trainer of gladiators. You may see many of these
gentry being waited for by an often-eluded creditor
at the entrance to the meat-market--men whose sole
reason for living lies in their palate. The greater
their straits--though the house is ready to fall, and
the daylight begins to show between the cracks--the
more luxuriously and daintily do they dine. Mean-
while they ransack all the elements for new relishes;

² A notorious and wealthy glutton; see Sat. iv. 23.
³ i.e. a tribunus plebis, whose permission would be neces-
sary.

no cost ever stands in the way of their desires;
if you look closely into it, the greater the satisfaction,
the more that is paid. So when they want to raise
money to go after the rest, they think nothing of
pawning their plate, or breaking up the image of their
mother; and having thus seasoned their gluttonous
delf at a cost of four hundred sesterces, they come
down at last to the hotch-potch of the gladiatorial
school. It matters much therefore who provides
the feast; what is extravagant in Rutilus, gets a fine
name in Ventidius, and takes its character from his
means.
    Rightly do I despise a man who knows how much
higher Atlas is than all the other mountains of
Africa, and yet knows not the difference between
a purse and an iron-bound money-box. The maxim
"Know thyself " comes down to us from the skies;
it should be imprinted in the heart, and stored in
the memory, whether you are looking for a wife,
or wishing for a seat in the sacred Senate: even
Thersites never asked for that breastplate of Achilles
in which Ulysses cut such a sorry figure.^l If you
are preparing to defend a great and difficult cause,
take counsel of yourself and tell yourself what
you are--are you a great orator, or just a spouter
like Curtius and Matho? Let a man take his own
measure and have regard to it in things great or
small, even in the buying of a fish, that he set not
his heart upon a mullet, when he has only a gudgeon
in his purse. For if your money-bag is getting empty
while your maw is expanding what will be your
end when you have sunk your paternal fortune and
all your belongings in a belly which can hold capital
and solid silver as well as flocks and lands? With
such owners the last thing to go is the ring;

¹ Referring to his contest with Ajax for the arms of
Achilles.

poor Pollio, his finger stripped, has to go a-begging!
It is not an early death or an untimely grave that
extravagance has to dread: old age is more terrible
to it than death.
    The regular stages are these: money is bor-
rowed in Rome and squandered before the owner's
eyes; when some little of it is still left, and the
lender's face grows pale, these gentlemen give leg
bail, and make off for Baiae and its oyster-beds--for
in these days people think no more of absconding
from the Forum than of flitting from the stuffy
Subura to the Esquiline. One pang, one sorrow only,
afflicts these exiles, that they must, for one season,
miss the Circensian games! No drop of blood lin-
gers in their cheek: Shame is ridiculed as she flees
from the city, and few would bid her stay.
    Today, friend Persicus, you will discover
whether I make good, in deed and in my ways of
life, the fair maxims which I preach, or whether,
while commending beans, I am at heart a glutton:
openly bidding my slave to bring me porridge, but
whispering "cheese-cakes" in his ear. For now that
you have promised to be my guest, you will find in
me an Evander;¹ you yourself will be the Tirynthian,
or the guest less great; than he,² "though he too came
of blood divine--the one by water, the other borne
by fire,³ to the stars. And now hear my feast, which
no meat-market has supplied. From my Tiburtine
farm there will come a plump kid, tenderest of the
flock, ignorant of grass, that has never yet dared to
nibble the twigs of the lowly willow-bed, and has
more of milk in him than blood; some wild asparagus,

¹ Alluding to the entertainment of Hercules by Evander
(Virg. Aen. viii. 359-365).            ² Aeneas.
³ Both heroes were deified; Hercules met his death by
burning, Aeneas by drowning.

gathered by the bailiff's wife when done with her
spindle, and some lordly eggs, warm in their wisps of
hay, together with the hens that laid them. There will
be grapes too, kept half the year, as fresh as when they
hung upon the tree; pears from Signia and Syria,
and in the same baskets fresh-smelling apples that
rival those of Picenum, and of which you need not
be afraid, seeing that winter's cold has dried up
their autumnal juice, and removed the perils of
unripeness.
    Such were the banquets of our Senate in days
of old, when already grown luxurious; when Curius,¹
with his own hands, would lay upon his modest hearth
the simple herbs he had gathered in his little garden
--herbs scoffed at nowadays by the dirty ditcher
who works in chains, and remembers the savour of
tripe in the reeking cookshop. For feast days, in
olden times, they would keep a side of dried
pork, hanging from an open rack, or put before the
relations a flitch of birthday bacon, with the addition
of some fresh meat, if there happened to be a sacri-
fice to supply it. A kinsman who had thrice been
hailed as Consul, who had commanded armies, and
filled the office of Dictator, would come home earlier
than was his wont for such a feast, shouldering the
spade with which he had been subduing the hill-
side. For when men quailed before a Fabius or a
stern Cato, before a Scaurus or a Fabricius--when
even a Censor might dread the severe verdict of his
colleague ²--no one deemed it a matter of grave and
serious concern what kind of tortoise-shell was swim-
ming in the waves of Ocean to form a fine and
noble head-rest for our Troy-born grandees. Couches

¹ Manius Curius Dentatus, the conqueror of Pyrrhus, type
of the simple noble Roman of early times.
² For the quarrel between the censors, see Livy, xxix. 37.

in those days were small, their sides unadorned: a
simple headpiece of bronze would display the head of
a be-garlanded ass, beside which would romp in play
the children of the countryside. Thus house and
furniture were in keeping with the food.
    The rude soldier of those days had no taste for,
or knowledge of, Greek art; if he discovered cups
made by great artists in his share of the booty from a
captured city, he would break them up to provide gay
trappings for his horse, or to emboss a helmet that
would then display to a dying foe the image of the
Romulean beast - bidden by Rome's destiny to grow
tame, with the twin Quirini beneath a rock, and the
nude effigy of the God ¹ coming down in a swoop
with spear and shield. Therefore their grain was
served in bowls of earthenware; such silver as there
was glittered only on their weapons--to envy all this
you would have to be a bit the jealous sort. The
authority of the temples was also more closely felt;
then was heard a voice throughout the silent city,
about midnight, telling how the Gauls were
advancing from the shores of Ocean, the Gods
taking on themselves the part of prophecy. Such
were the warnings of Jupiter, such the care which
he bestowed on the concerns of Latium when he
was made of clay, and undefiled by gold.
    In those days our tables were home-grown,
made of our own trees; for such use was kept some
aged chestnut blown down perchance by a South-
eastern blast. But nowadays a rich man takes no
pleasure in his dinner--his turbot and his venison
have no taste, his unguents and his roses seem to
smell rotten--unless the broad slabs of his dinner-
table rest upon a lofty, gaping leopard of solid

¹ i.e. the god Mars.

ivory, made of the tusks sent to us by the swift-footed
Moor or from the portal of Syene,^l or by the still
duskier Indian--or perhaps shed by the monstrous
beast in the Nabataean ² forest when too big and too
heavy for his head. These are the things that give
good appetite and good digestion; for to these gentle-
men a table with a leg of silver is like a finger with an
iron ring. For this reason I will have none of your
haughty guests to make comparisons between him-
self and me, and look down upon my humble state.
So destitute am I of ivory that neither my dice nor
counters are made of it; even my knife-handles are
of bone. Yet the viands are not tainted thereby,
nor does the pullet cut up any the worse on that
account. Nor shall I have a carver to whom the
whole school must bow, a pupil of the teacher
Trypherus, in whose school is cut up, with blunt
knives, a magnificent feast of hares and sows'
paunches, of boars and antelopes, of pheasants
and tall flamingoes and Gaetulian gazelles, until the
whole Subura rings with the clatter of the elm-wood
banquet. My raw youngster, untutored all his days,
has never learnt how to filch a slice of venison or the
wing of a guinea-fowl, unpractised save in the theft
of tiny scraps. Cups of common ware, bought for a
few pence, will be handed round by an unpolished
lad, clad so as to keep out the cold. No Phrygian or
Lycian youth, none bought from a dealer at a huge
price, will you find; when you want anything, ask for
it in Latin. They are all dressed alike; their hair cut
close and uncurled, and only combed today because
of the company. One is the son of a hardy shepherd;

¹ Now Assouan, on the Roman frontier. The phrase
"portal of Syene" means "the portal consisting of Syene,"
Syene itself constituting the portal.
² The Nabataei were an Arabian tribe. But there are no
elephants in Arabia. [ Nor do they shed their tusks as
Rudd points out. Ramsay says "are" and not "were" - see
http://nabataea.net/elephants.html]

another of the cattle-man: he sighs for the mother
whom he has not seen for so long, and thinks wist-
fully of the little cottage and the kids he knew so
well; a lad of open countenance and natural modesty,
such as those ought to be who are clothed in glowing
purple.¹ No noisy frequenter of baths is he, nor do his
his armpits produce hair to pluck, nor does he need
an oil-flask to conceal his groin. He will hand you a
wine that was bottled on the hills among which he was
born, and beneath whose tops he played--for wine
and servant alike have one and the same father-
land.
    You may look perhaps for a troop of Spanish
maidens to win applause by immodest dance and
song, sinking down with quivering buttocks to the
floor--such sights as brides behold seated beside
their husbands, though it were a shame to speak of
such things in their presence. . . . My humble home
has no place for follies such as these. The clatter
of castanets, words too foul for the strumpet that
stands naked in a reeking archway, with all the arts
and language of lust, may be left to him who spits
wine upon floors of Lacedaemonian marble; such
men we pardon because of their high station. In
men of moderate position gaming and adultery are
shameful; but when those others do these same
things, they are called gay fellows and fine gentle-
men. My feast today will provide other perform-
ances than these. The [words of the] author of the
Iliad will be sung, and contest the sublime sound of
Maro's poetry for the palm. Tell me, does it matter
whose voice verse like these are read?

¹ Referring to the purple stripe on the toga praetexta worn
by all free-born boys.

    And now put away cares and cast business
to the winds! Present yourself with a welcome
holiday, now that you may be idle for the entire
day. Let there be no take of money, and let there
be no secret wrath or suspicion in your heart because
your wife is wont to go forth at dawn and to come
home at night with . . . crumpled hair and flushed
face and ears. Cast off straightway before my thresh-
old all that troubles you, all thought of house and
slaves, with all that slaves break or lose, and above all
put away all thought of thankless friends.
    Meantime the solemn Idaean rite of the
Megalesian napkin ¹ is being held; there sits the
Praetor in his triumphal state, the prey of horse-
flesh; and (if I may say so without offence to the
vast unnumbered mob) all Rome today is in the
Circus. A roar strikes upon my ear which tells me
that the Green ² has won; for had it lost, Rome
would be as sad and dismayed as when the
Consuls were vanquished in the dust of Cannae.
Such sights are for the young, whom it befits to
shoot and make bold wagers with a smart damsel
by their side: but let my shrivelled skin drink in
the vernal sun, and escape the toga. You may go
at once to your bath with no shame on your
brow, though it wants a whole hour of midday.³
That you could not do for five days continuously,
since even such a life has weariness. It is rarity
that gives zest to pleasure.⁴

¹ The Megalesian games (April 4-10) were held in honour
of Cybele ([Greek]); the praetor gave the signal for
starting the chariot-race by dropping a napkin.
² There were four factions in the Circus, consisting of the
supporters of the four charioteering colours, White, Red ,
Green, and Blue. The Green it seems was the popular colour,
being usually favoured by the emperor.
³ The bath was usually not taken till the eighth hour.
⁴ This would seem to be almost a translation from
Epictetus (Flor . 6. 59). "The rarest pleasures give most
delight."

beast : A she-wolf. The Quirini were Romulus and Remus.

earthenware : Literally "Tusco .. catino" or "Tuscan ware" as Rudd has it. Tuscany is associated with the simple country life.

iron ring : Sign of the lower class or plebeians. Here silver is meant as inferior to ivory.

Trypherus : This sounds a bit like "Triphallus" from Satire VI :

" Mistrust him the more for his show of effeminacy; he is a valiant mattress-knight; there Triphallus drops the mask of Thais [a woman]."

Pherus might mean "uncivilized"'; in any case it sounds like an effeminate sexual character just like a "Phrygian or Lycian youth" and without exploring the matter further there may be an underlying sexual message going on here.

pheasants : Literally "Scythicae volucres" - "Scythian birds". The "guinea-fowl" is literally "Afrae .. avis" - "African bird".

Lacedaemonian : Spartan.

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