The Themes of The Poem
The author commences Satire VI by setting his poem in opposition to the version of Roman women seen in the poems of Catullus and Propertius:
- I believe that, when Saturn was king, Chastity lingered
- on the earth and was seen for a time - when a cold cave
- provided little homes, and enclosed fire, household gods, cattle,
- and the masters of the household in common darkness.
- A mountain wife spread out her woodsy bed
- with leaves, straw, and skins of local wild animals,
- - hardly similar to you, Cynthia, nor to you
- whose wet eye the dead sparrow stirred up -
- but offering breasts that needed suckeding to huge babies,
- just as often hairier than her acorn-burping husband.
|
- Credo Pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam
- in terris uisamque diu, cum frigida paruas
- praeberet spelunca domos ignemque laremque
- et pecus et dominos communi clauderet umbra,
- siluestrem montana torum cum sterneret uxor
- frondibus et culmo uicinarumque ferarum
- pellibus, haut similis tibi, Cynthia, nec tibi, cuius
- turbauit nitidos extinctus passer ocellos,
- sed potanda ferens infantibus ubera magnis
- et saepe horridior glandem ructante marito.
- (6.1-10)
|
In the view of Peter Green, "'Cynthia' was the pseudonym which Propertius used to indicate his mistress Hostia in his poems; the girl who wept for her sparrow was 'Lesbia,' the mistress of Catullus, whose real name was Clodia." While the equation of these pseudonyms with historical women is debatable, the reference within Satire VI to Propertius and Catullus is clear. In opposition to the sophisticated, urban woman of the elegiac ideal, the woman of the mythical golden age was a simple rustic. The constant touchstone of the remainder of the poem is the deviance of contemporary Roman women from an amorphous ideal located in the unspecified past. Though it is frequently decried as a misogynistic rant, feminist scholar Jamie Corson has pointed out:
- Satire VI is not merely a diatribe against women, but an all-out invective against marriage. .. This decaying of Rome’s social and moral standards has caused marriage to become the offspring of greed and corruption. Men have become weak, and allow women to challenge male supremacy so that marital power relations now favour women.
The author sets the frame for his satire with a hyperbolic presentation of the options available to the Roman male – marriage, suicide, or a boy lover:
- Are you even in this day and age preparing both a prenup
- and an engagement, and getting a trim from a master
- barber, and you have even perchance given the pledge to her finger?
- You certainly used to be healthy. Postumus, are you getting married?
- Tell me by what Fury and by what vipers you are goaded.
- Can you endure any Master-ess when there are so many good strong ropes,
- When high, vertiginous windows are wide open,
- when the Aemilian bridge offers itself to you – just right next door?
- Or if from so many options no mode of death strikes your fancy,
- Surely you think it better that a supple boy sleep with you?
- A boy, who does not conduct a nocturnal lawsuit at you, who wheedles
- no little gifts from you as he lies there, and neither complains because
- you are going easy on him, nor because you don’t gasp as much as he demands.
|
- conuentum tamen et pactum et sponsalia nostra
- tempestate paras iamque a tonsore magistro
- pecteris et digito pignus fortasse dedisti?
- certe sanus eras. uxorem, Postume, ducis?
- dic qua Tisiphone, quibus exagitere colubris.
- ferre potes dominam saluis tot restibus ullam,
- cum pateant altae caligantesque fenestrae,
- cum tibi uicinum se praebeat Aemilius pons?
- aut si de multis nullus placet exitus, illud
- nonne putas melius, quod tecum pusio dormit?
- pusio, qui noctu non litigat, exigit a te
- nulla iacens illic munuscula, nec queritur quod
- et lateri parcas nec quantum iussit anheles.
- (6.25-37)
|
Juvenal was concerned with the morality and actions of the Roman elite; Satire VI can equally be read as an invective against the men who have permitted this pervasive degradation of the Roman world. The author harshly criticizes avaricious husbands who marry not for love but for the dowry and subsequently allow their rich wives to do whatever they wish (6.136-141). Similarly, men who care only for the fleeting beauty of their wives, and then divorce them as it fades, merit condemnation (6.142-48). While women are prone to temptation, Juvenal casts men as agents and enablers of the feminine proclivity toward vice. In the written Roma of the Satires, men will even impersonate eunuchs to get unmonitored access to corrupt a woman (6.O-20-30). The literary trope of luxury imported into Roma along with the spoils of conquest and the goods (and banes) of the world is employed by Juvenal to explain the source of degradation:
- Even so, do you ask from what spring these prodigies?
- Humble fortune defended the chaste Latin women then,
- nor did their labor, short slumbers, hard hands irritated
- by Tuscan wool, Hannibal close to the city,
- and husbands standing guard at the Colline tower
- allow their little shelters to be stained with vices.
- Now we suffer the evils of a long peace, luxury more savage than arms
- presses its attack and takes vengeance for the conquered world.
- No crime or act of lust is absent from where
- Roman poverty has perished. To here, to these hills,
- Sybaris, and Rhodes, and Miletus – flowed here -
- and Tarentum too crowned and with drunken impudence.
- First tainted money carried in foreign
- ways, and effeminate riches shattered the ages with
- foul luxury. …
|
- unde haec monstra tamen uel quo de fonte requiris?
- praestabat castas humilis fortuna Latinas
- quondam, nec uitiis contingi parua sinebant
- tecta labor somnique breues et uellere Tusco
- uexatae duraeque manus ac proximus urbi
- Hannibal et stantes Collina turre mariti.
- nunc patimur longae pacis mala, saeuior armis
- luxuria incubuit uictumque ulciscitur orbem.
- nullum crimen abest facinusque libidinis ex quo
- paupertas Romana perit. hinc fluxit ad istos
- et Sybaris colles, hinc et Rhodos et Miletos
- atque coronatum et petulans madidumque Tarentum.
- prima peregrinos obscena pecunia mores
- intulit, et turpi fregerunt saecula luxu
- diuitiae molles. …
- (6.286-300)
|