SOURCE: "Lascivia vs. Ira: Martial and Juvenal" in Essays on Roman Satire, Princeton University Press, 1982, pp. 362-95.

[In the essay below, Anderson contrasts the function of wit in Martial and Juvenal by an extended comparison of their poetry, particularly Martial's epigram 3.52 and Juvenal's third satire. He calls attention to significant differences in tone and purpose—even when the basic material is the same—and distinguishes between Martial's primary interest in humor and Juvenal's subordination of wit to serious thematic issues.]

Sandwiched between two lighthearted epigrams on the dubious physical attractions of a Galla and a Chloe, there appear in Martial's Third Book the following four elegiac lines:

empta domus fuerat tibi, Tongiliane, ducentis:
  abstulit hanc nimium casus in urbe frequens.
conlatum est deciens. rogo, non potes ipse
  videri
  incendisse tuam, Tongiliane, domum?
(3.52)

Martial has so contrived his development that each line begins with a crucial verb, each marking an important stage in the total situation, and the final one driving home the witty point. The first couplet establishes the situation in general terms: the cost of the house, then its total destruction (cause unspecified). To correct the impression of disaster, however, to make sure that we grasp Martial's attitude and correctly view the character of Tongilianus, the second couplet reports the huge profit made from the fire because of public contributions (again, cause undefined), then ever so politely raises the question of arson. What might have been mistaken for sympathy in the first couplet has changed to ridicule, while Tongilianus has been transformed from a pitiable victim to a criminal.¹ The careful placing of domus close to the start of line 1 and domum at the end of line 4; the alliterative use of personal pronoun tibi and possessive tuam with vocative Tongiliane respectively in 1 and 4; the variation between the structure of the first couplet (one clause in each line) and of the second (one clause in a half-line, the next expanding to a line and a half); the use of three verbs to express the various nuances of Martial's suspicions in 3 and 4—these are some of the principal artistic devices employed to enhance this witty epigram. The incident with which it plays was no doubt one of the common scandals of the day, somewhat analogous to cases of arson today when a man sets fire to his house or factory in order to collect fraudulently on insurance. And Martial has treated this arson with the naughty laughter which is so typical of him.

Twenty to twenty-five years after the appearance of Martial's epigram, Juvenal published Satire 3, in which there occurs a sequence remarkably like that of those four elegiac lines.

si magna A
sturici cecidit domus, horridamater,
pullati proceres, differt vadimonia praetor.
tum gemimus casus urbis, tunc odimus ignem.
ardet adhuc, et iam accurrit qui marmora
  donet,
conferat impensas; hic nuda et candida signa,
hic aliquid praeclarum Euphranoris et
  Polycliti,
haec Asianorum vetera omamenta deorum,
hic libros dabit et forulos mediamque
   Minervam,
hic modium argenti. meliora ac plura reponit
Persicus orborum lautissimus et merito iam
suspectus tamquam ipse suas incenderit aedes.
(3. 212-222)

Juvenal has devoted eleven lines to his development, which he presents as a number of related scenes leading up to the same point as Martial's. Instead of talking to the arsonist, the speaker addresses the audience. Thus, he does not inquire or report the price of the mansion, but focuses on the disaster to the building and the immediate public outcry that it provokes. The first three lines, it might be said, represent an elaboration of the single line in which Martial recorded and affected to deplore the total destruction of Tongilianus' house. Martial's equally terse and generalized report of contributions is also amplified here by a list of six contributors and donations, five of which are organized by means of anaphora with the initial demonstrative. After devoting a full line in 217, 218, and 219 to three contributors, Juvenal rapidly closes the list after the first half of 220. Then he starts to develop his point on the arson. First of all, what may have been somewhat puzzling in Martial, namely, why people should contribute so heavily to a victim of fire, receives explanation from Juvenal: his arsonist Persicus is one of the richest men in Rome and has no immediate heirs; hence, people are contributing so as to earn a profitable place in his will. Then, with the conjunction et followed by merito and a monosyllable, Juvenal deliberately creates a harsh ending to the hexameter of 221 and a jerky beginning of the enjambement into 222. Instead of the mockingly polite construction of three verbs employed by Martial, Juvenal cleverly exploits the line division to hold us in suspense as to what Persicus has "deservedly" accomplished, before placing suspectus in its prominent position at the beginning of 222. Martial's naughty question becomes a statement, and the satirist voices a decisive bias about the popular scandal: it has a likely basis in fact.

Martial and Juvenal have worked with the same kind of scandalous incident and built towards the same witty point, though Juvenal has gone at the situation with greater amplitude than Martial. Taken in isolation, too, this Juvenalian scene might appear to be using its wit in the same amused and amusing way as that of the epigram. Suppose we knew Juvenal's poetry only through this excerpt, found in some anthology of the tenth century: could we accurately assess its tone? Might we not be tempted to believe, especially after seeing the parallel in Martial, that the speaker of these lines was not seriously engaged with the criminal behavior of Persicus, but, like Martial, intent on the manipulation of words and details so as to extract from the well-told anecdote the maximum amount of wit for the audience's pleasure? The problem which I have set myself forms part of the larger traditional problem involving Martial and Juvenal. For years, scholars have inquired into the connections between epigrammatist and satirist, in an attempt not only to define but also to explain them. I shall briefly review this scholarship, then proceed to the particular problem involving Martial and Juvenal which seems to have the most contemporary importance for us. I may put it this way: to what extent does Juvenal accept, along with the material, the basic method of Martial; to what extent is his wit a clever variation on Martial's? In terms of my title, to what extent can we regard Juvenal's announced mood of indignatio and ira as an instrument of a dominant wit that closely parallels the integrated witty mood of lascivia proclaimed by Martial?

In reviewing the main facts about the relationship of Juvenal and Martial and the theories erected on these facts, we may classify the facts as biographical and literary. Evidence can be drawn from the life and times of the two poets and (as has been done at the beginning of this paper) from common material in their poetry. To begin in conventional manner with the biographical facts of the older poet, Martial, born in Spain about A.D. 40, came to Rome in the early sixties, hoping perhaps to gain advancement through the other Spaniards who had acquired influence at the court of Nero, for example, Seneca and the family of Lucan.² Although the Pisonian Conspiracy ended that particular hope, Martial remained in Rome nearly thirty-five years, at first forced to struggle for survival, then gradually establishing himself as a clever poet who merited patronage, whose epigrams deserved not only to be recited in Rome but also to be published and read all over the empire. He produced a slight volume to mark the inauguration of the Colosseum in 80, when Titus ruled; his major works, however, twelve books of Epigrams, appeared more or less year by year after 85, all but the last during the reign of Domitian.³ Success came to him, then, when he was about 45. Having been conditioned by early years in Spain, by the chaos of Nero's last years, and by the decade of Vespasian's sound rule, Martial flourished under the Flavian brothers, as Rome somewhat relaxed from the necessarily austere ways of their father.

Juvenal arrived in Rome during those years when Martial first began to enjoy fame. Born about 60 and raised, it appears, in the Italian town of Aquinum, he proceeded to Rome at approximately the same period as his contemporaries Tacitus and Pliny, though with entirely different hopes.⁴ They immediately entered upon the political career to which their background and influence entitled them; both progressed steadily and had reached high positions during the reign of Domitian while Juvenal remained insignificant.⁵ Since we hear nothing of Juvenal's political career, indeed virtually nothing at all of his experience, we assume that his background and influence (not his innate talent) were negligible.⁶ He apparently settled for a literary career, first perhaps as a teacher of rhetoric, then later as a more or less independent poet under the patronage of various men of wealth. Martial counted Juvenal as a friend by 92, for in Book 7 published that year, he mentioned him twice (7.24 and 91). Exactly when Juvenal began to develop his satiric talents and write the Satires we now possess, is uncertain. Most of the earliest poems, it is generally agreed, were written during the reign of Trajan; and Book I does not seem to have been published before 110.⁷ Since Martial had by then been dead five years and since Juvenal avoids giving specific details about himself and his friends, we should not be surprised to find no reference to Martial by name in the Satires. Assuming that Juvenal, like Martial, remained in Rome during the eighties and nineties—I find the evidence for Juvenal's exile at this time or any time unconvincing—we may conclude that both were involved contemporaneously, if not alike, for about fifteen years in the literary activities of the city, Juvenal as a tyro, Martial as an established figure. Martial left Rome in 98 and returned to his native Spain, from which he addressed to Juvenal a last epigram (12.18). Juvenal's success, which came under Trajan and Hadrian, sprang from conditions considerably different from Martial's.

Though twenty years younger than Martial, then, Juvenal did know him during the nineties and shared the literary scene in Rome with him at a significant period of his own poetic development. So much for the biographical facts linking the two. Now for the facts provided by the poems. In Juvenal's earliest Book of Five Satires, four out of five have basic themes that appear frequently as the material of Martial's epigrams;⁸ and the single exception, Satire 4, uses as the partial occasion of its drama an oversize turbot (rhombus), which is also a topos in Martial.⁹ Satire 6, large enough to qualify by itself as Book II, surveys women's sexual proclivities; nobody needs to be reminded that Martial and his audience enjoyed the same subject. Book III, consisting of three Satires, was published probably early in the reign of Hadrian, some twenty years after Juvenal had last seen Martial. Nevertheless, Satire 7 describes the plight of poets and other practitioners of verbal arts in Rome, and Satire 9 toys with the world of male homosexuals: both topics occur over and over again in Martial. Finally, Satires 11 and 12 and the description of old age in Satire 10, all from Book IV, and to a lesser extent parts of Satires 13 and 14 in Book V show continued preoccupation with material common to Martial. In short, there can be little doubt that between A.D. 110 and 130 Juvenal used topics and themes which had earlier won wide favor in the epigrams published by Martial between 85 and 101. It is a significant exercise to go systematically through Juvenal's Satires, especially the earlier ones, and point out line by line, passage by passage, what he shared with the epigrams of his Spanish friend.¹⁰

We have a combination of biographical and literary facts: the two poets were both in Rome and knew each other fairly well, and after Martial's death Juvenal wrote poems which repeatedly parallel in significant detail the epigrams of Martial. How can we interpret these facts so as to illuminate the relationship between the two? Modern preoccupation with this problem received major stimulus from an article published in 1888 by Henry Nettleship, who, while assessing Juvenal's achievement in general, took time to put forth a provocative explanation for the links between Martial and Juvenal, Epigrams and Satires.¹¹ According to him, Martial and Juvenal worked side by side in Rome during the nineties, but independently of each other, each drawing upon a common store of literary material then available in the city. And to make his thesis more plausible, Nettleship argued that the major portions of the Satires of Book I were composed, like the Epigrams, in the nineties.

Most scholars have rejected Nettleship's dating of the early Satires as well as his view of Juvenal's originality or independence. Thus, J. D. Duff, in the commentary which was first published in 1898, wrote: "The resemblance [between the two poets' themes] will not seem more than can be accounted for, if we believe that Juvenal, having already a thorough knowledge of Martial's epigrams, began to direct his satires against the same period and persons whom Martial had already riddled with his lighter artillery."¹² That same year, Harry Wilson printed his significant paper, which he had read in 1897 to the American Philological Association, on "The Literary Influence of Martial upon Juvenal." The title alone indicates that he stood with Duff against Nettleship on the question of independence.¹³ Studying the mechanics of Martial's influence rigorously, Wilson argued that Juvenal used the typical techniques of imitatio normal for Latin poets; he knew Martial by heart, but did not simply copy him word for word. He either reused Martial's ideas in different words or used Martial's words in an altered context, to create Satires that were substantially different from the Epigrams.

The meticulous argument of Wilson and the general likelihood of his and Duff's assumptions that the older, successful poet influenced, but did not totally dominate, the younger have continued to prevail. There are, however, some questions which they did not face. Duff, for example, in stating that Juvenal dealt with the same period and persons as Martial, did not go on to explain the effect intended or achieved. What did the people and events of the eighties and nineties mean to Juvenal and his audience twenty to thirty years later? What was the point of being indignant over the dead past when Martial had treated it with his charming lascivia? By substituting heavy artillery for light (to keep Duff's image), was Juvenal moving farther away from reality or closer to the feelings of his audience? Wilson, too, left unexplained the fundamental literary connection between Juvenal's artful variations on Martial's wording and what he regarded as the evident difference between their respective styles and poetic purposes. If, as he wrote, "the high moral purpose and seriousness of the former [Juvenal] stand in sharp antithesis to the mocking triviality of the latter [Martial],"¹⁴ one wonders about the range of Juvenal's imitatio. Assuming that we can distinguish the "high moral purpose" in the account of Persicus' arson from the "mocking triviality" of Tongilianus' arson in Martial, can we also say that this is a function of imitatio? Was Juvenal doing anything like Horace who used Lucretian language to comment on epic enthusiasm and on Epicurean exaggerations? That is, did Juvenal allude to the whole context of Martial and subtly differentiate his own attitude on all levels, or was he merely playing with Martial's words and, from quite another perspective, aiming at a moral purpose and seriousness to which the borrowings from Martial had no relevance?

Granted, then, that Juvenal did make use of Martial, both his words and his epigrammatic situations, the question remains: what was the extent of this use; what was its effect with the audience? It is not really an adequate answer to respond that Martial was a kind of satirist and so Juvenal drew from him what was naturally "satiric," for satire is so amorphous in form and manner (even without Martial) that turning Martial, for the purposes of argument, into a satirist says very little about how he might be utilized by Juvenal.¹⁵ In theory it would be possible to argue that, because Juvenal regards Roman society with the dissatisfied eye of a wretched client and the literary situation in Rome with the unhappiness of a poet struggling for recognition, and because Martial earlier exhibited similar attitudes, Juvenal adopted his attitude from Martial. In fact, the shared viewpoints serve scholars rather to document the relative continuity of Roman conditions and the basis of the two poets' friendship: Juvenal is supposed to have felt the situation as personally as Martial.¹⁶

In more recent years, two scholars have offered more comprehensive answers to the problem of this relationship, directing attention as much to how the borrowings were made as to what was borrowed. Gilbert Highet, while discussing the broad tradition from which Juvenal drew, commented on Martial's part in it as follows: "So many of Juvenal's jokes and satiric ideas and proper names and turns of phrase are adapted from Martial that the epigrams of Martial were clearly one of the chief influences that trained him to be a satirist. What he did was to take Martial's keen perception, his disillusioned but witty sense of contrast, his trick of epigram, and his peculiar blend of suave poetry and vulgar colloquialism, to clean them up, to give them a moral purpose, and to build them into poems of major length."¹⁷ This seems promising, especially because it does not exploit the invidious contrast between Martial's "triviality" and Juvenal's "high seriousness," but gives full credit to the artistry of the Epigrams. Highet represents Juvenal as a skillful poet who engages himself creatively with the art of Martial at every level and extracts from it material to which he can give new shape and life. Unfortunately, in his analysis of the individual Satires, Highet did not attempt to work out this view of a Juvenal trained by Martial. His emphasis upon the satirist as an unhappy, hypersensitive person who has experienced profound personal suffering and upon the passionate personal truth of the Satires obscures any concern with the creative poet who saw merits in and exploited Martial's obvious assets.

It was in patent disagreement with Highet's emphasis that in 1962 H. A. Mason published his influential essay entitled: "Is Juvenal a Classic?"¹⁸ In order to deny the crucial assumption of Highet and other biographical critics that Juvenal's Satires tell us the truth about himself and his period, Mason resorted to Martial. As he explained this tactic, "the key to Juvenal's art lies in the study of Martial. The two poets appeal to the same taste and presuppose the same habits in their listening and reading public."¹⁹ Later, by way of conclusion, he imaginatively elaborated what he believed Juvenal presupposed in his public, wording it cleverly as if the satirist were making prefatory remarks to an edition of the Satires:

Dear readers, you have enjoyed Martial; now come and see whether I cannot give extra point to his favorite topics by setting them, as it were, to a different tune: the declaimer's mode. But I assume you understand what Martial was doing when he confined his poems to the conventional jokes of polite society. You will know then that to enjoy us you must both suspend and apply your critical and moral sense. We are not called on in our art to give you all the facts (you know them as well as we) or to assume all the moral attitudes (we are not moral censors) but to take those that allow the maximum witty play of the mind. Prepare yourselves, therefore, dear readers, to find in my poems all the butts of Martial's epigrams, and in particular, the comically obscene situations you enjoy so much in the mime. You will see from my rewritings of Martial that I have my own notes, particularly the sarcastic and the mock-tragic and epic, and that by fitting my sections together I can exhibit more attitudes to the same episode than you will find in any one of his epigrams.²⁰

Mason offers the most detailed literary explanation of Martial's influence known to me, and he extends the range of this influence farther than any other interpreter: not only has Juvenal used his predecessor with great creativity but he also agrees with the basic attitude of Martial. In both poets wit is the main device for achieving effects: the essential manner of both is witty. So the answer to the question in Mason's title would be: Juvenal is a classic of wit.²¹ Accordingly, "he was more interested in literature than social conditions and … he lacks any consistent standpoint or moral coherence. Indeed his whole art consists in opportunism and the surprise effects obtainable from deliberate inconsistency."²² Whereas earlier commentators plunged into problems because they insisted on the basic difference in attitude and technique of Juvenal even when he was using Martial, Mason has eliminated that problem by insisting on the identity of the two poets' subjects, witty manners, and audiences. Juvenal has become Martial set to a slightly different tune.

There can be no question that Mason has at last properly emphasized one of the most important elements of Juvenal's art and most cleverly employed Martial to demonstrate his thesis. Wit is important in the Satires. However, in order to win his argument, he has claimed too much. He has, I believe, tended to overstress wit at the expense of other important factors of Juvenalian art and to force Juvenal too harshly into the mould of Martial. Aside from the fact that Juvenal himself had different origins from Martial and a personality of his own, it is evident that the eras of Trajan and Hadrian differed markedly from that of Domitian, and it seems dubious to posit an audience for Juvenal equipped with the "same taste" as Martial's. To limit one's attention, as Mason does, to verbal opportunism or manipulation of the Latin language is risky. To defend these limits by asserting that there is no sustained theme of significance in Juvenal's Satires, no engagement with genuine moral issues is to provoke a protest from those who read Juvenal otherwise. Martial may provide "the key to Juvenal's art" in a way quite different from what Mason believes: his work happens to be the most conveniently available to show how much Juvenal reshaped his literary heritage to fit his own purposes. In the remainder of this paper, I shall criticize Mason's thesis more fully, particularly by reference to Satire 3 and other Satires of Book I, in the hope of estimating more satisfactorily the function of Juvenalian wit and of defining its relation to the announced mood of indignation that characterizes the earlier Satires.

Now that I have sketched out the lines of controversy, I return to the passage of Satire 3 with which I began. I had posed the problem of the tone behind Juvenal's wit and suggested that, taken in isolation, the passage about the arsonist-profiteer might possibly be interpreted like the parallel epigram of Martial, as a cleverly reported joke of Roman society. That would be Mason's view of the passage and the entire Satire; he would add only that Juvenal's tune differed and that the satirist was able to accumulate more attitudes around the episode by reason of his broader scope. Nevertheless, according to Mason, Juvenal's audience responded here, as they were meant, primarily to the joke; all other effects in the passage are subordinate to that.

When we study this arson narrative in relation to its context, I believe, it becomes evident that Juvenal has drastically altered Martial (assuming that he did work here under some influence of Martial). Above all, he has shaped what was supposed to be only a joke so that it no longer is an end in itself, but has become subordinate to what must be called larger thematic purposes. First of all, take the matter of names. Martial called his arsonist Tongilianus. We can be sure that the name did not identify anyone, because Martial has fabricated this odd name.²³ Since the name possesses no automatic connotations, the narrative determines the identity of the arsonist. Probably Martial's audience was expected to substitute for this fantastic name the name of a real Roman or wealthy alien resident to whom scandal attributed arson. Calling him Tongilianus, Martial caught the alliteration and supported the light-hearted purposes of his wit. Juvenal, on the other hand, offers two names: Asturicus (212) and Persicus (221).²⁴ These names are meaningful in themselves: we are to think of remote Asturia in Spain and of Persia in the East, and then we imagine the nobility and wealth that could be won by Romans in these exotic spots.²⁵ We are not expected to play drawing-room games and guess the identity of Juvenal's arsonists: the names identify them as Romans from distinguished families.

Second, Juvenal has totally altered the narrative occasion and thereby changed our attitude toward the arsonist. Martial pictures himself, the irreverent Spaniard, striking up a conversation with Tongilianus, affecting to be sympathetic as the latter reports on his fire, then naughtily raising the question of arson at the end. In Satire 3, the speaker who recounts the episode is Umbricius, a character especially created by Juvenal for the poem.²⁶ He is not talking with the arsonist but with us, and he could never affect sympathy or amusement over this arson. Thus, the narrative has no real surprise, as Martial's does; it builds steadily toward its climax. For Umbricius, Asturicus and Persicus represent villains to whom he points with anger as he addresses each of us in the second person singular. The reasons for this anger, which are obvious from the fuller context (soon to be discussed) may be summarized in this way: he is a victim of the Rome which allows a distinguished Roman like Persicus to profit, not be executed, as a result of his criminal arson. The altered point of view and altered form of dialogue in turn decisively shape the wit here deployed.

Finally, Martial's totally independent joke, told for itself, has been subordinated by Juvenal to a larger context and thematic purposes. This case of arson is introduced in 212 in a conditional clause, to produce an antithesis to an actual instance of accidental fire, when the apartment of a poor man named Cordus was burned and all its miserable contents consumed (203-211). The list of people who react with horror at Asturicus' plight corresponds ironically to a heavily emphasized nobody (nemo in anaphora 211) who answered Cordus' need. The list of precious things contributed by "friends" to Asturicus corresponds to the list of diminutive, pathetically cherished possessions of Cordus which the fire destroyed (203-207). Whereas Umbricius summarizes Persicus' situation by saying that he recovered more and better things than he had before his planned fire, his pathetic summary of Cordus' plight dwells on the "nothing" he really possessed to begin with, all of which paltry "nothing" was lost without chance of replacement (nil rhetorically repeated 208-209). The antithesis rather than the verbal manipulation of the arson anecdote determines the ultimate effect of Juvenal's wit here. Cordus, the innocent, pathetic victim of a fire over which he had no control, decisively qualifies our attitude toward Persicus, profiteer from his act of arson. We can now conclude that Juvenal did not amplify Martial's anecdote with his lists of people sympathetic to Asturicus and of donors and donations merely to enhance his narrative with vivid details and so increase the final point. The expansions serve the antithesis, which in turn functions to express a pervasive theme about the injustice and un-Roman degeneracy controlling Rome. I think I can safely claim Martial never portrays a poor man as genuinely pathetic, never allows his audience to engage its emotions with problems of Roman justice.

Juvenal places the two contrasting stories about Cordus and the arsonists in a larger context that begins with Umbricius' question in 190:

quis timet aut timuit gelida Praeneste ruinam?

Beside Praeneste, Umbricius names three other charming towns of Latium or Southern Etruria, which implicitly offer pleasant, secure if humble homes in contrast with the Roman apartments that constantly threaten collapse. The contrast is worked out by a description of us (nos urbem colimus 193ff) fearfully sleeping when ruina is imminent (196). Then, the subject turns to fires, another aspect of urban residential danger, and "your" plight, anyone of "you" in the audience, as Umbricius suggests that outside Rome no fires occur at night, no sudden scares (197-198). He pictures "you" trapped on the top floor of a highly combustible apartment as fire races up the flimsy structure: "you" are doomed, it appears, when he suddenly abandons the desperate scene to describe Cordus' troubles (198-202). Plainly, though, "you" and Cordus are alike victims of fire in contrast with the arsonists, except that "you" will not survive, whereas Cordus did escape with nothing and became a beggar. Having closed the antithesis with what now we would call savage wit about profitable arson, Umbricius returns to "you." He offers "you" a fine home—a place of safety from that menacing fire—for the price you now pay annually for your dark Roman garret, away from Rome in three typical towns of Latium (223ff). These three towns obviously balance the four names in 190ff. And the paragraph closes with an elaboration of the attractions of rusticity, both charming and witty, as "you" are invited to entertain the vision of a small plot of land which you yourself work, at last the master of something you can count on, if only a lone lizard. "You" seem to have a choice between death in Rome and secure life in the country, between losing your few possessions in Rome (where arsonists profit) or enjoying them undisturbed elsewhere, between victimization in Rome and honorable rustic independence. How can "you" hesitate? Umbricius, the angry speaker, is now about to abandon this corrupt city, and the whole trend of this paragraph is to persuade "you" to follow his example.

Juvenal, then, has re-worked the naughty wit of Martial's light epigram to voice anger and serve the needs of a thematic antithesis. And this revised joke about arson is not the only wit in the passage to be so shaped. Umbricius starts with hyperbole: nos urbem colimus tenui tibicine fultam (193); note the alliteration used to enhance the wit. The closest analogy to this—and not very close at that—Mayor found in witty Ovid, who described a modest farm house "standing by means of a prop" (stantem tibicine villam, Fast. 4.695). To give substance to his exaggeration, Umbricius goes on to describe how the agents of apartment owners criminally conceal the structural faults in a building, then "urge renters to sleep soundly in the face of imminent collapse" (securos pendente iubet dormire ruina 196). Sound sleep, used paradoxically here, might well remind Juvenal's audience of the way Horace idealized the condition of the simple countryman in terms of easy, peaceful slumber.²⁷ When the fire starts in "your" apartment, "you" learn of it by the shouts and bustle of "your" downstairs neighbor Ucalegon (199). In this instance, the wit inheres in the phrasing of the Latin and the choice of the name, which echo a passage from Aeneid 2.²⁸ Aeneas had a next-door neighbor in Troy, whose house was already afire when Aeneas awoke from his last sleep in his home, then rushed out to fight. The modern Ucalegon is an impoverished "son of Troy," and his neighbor, the modern Aeneas, is "you" in your garret, about to be burned unheroically to a cinder. Martial commonly uses metonymy with names of mythical heroes, but you would never find him using the trope in this thematic manner, to underline the degeneracy of Rome from the noble ideals of the Aeneid.

Umbricius shifts to Cordus, characterizing his few possessions by diminutives. "Cordus owned a bed that was too short for little Procula" (who was apparently a dwarf, 203). An old bookcase contained his tiny Greek texts (206); illiterate mice gnawed on the divine poetry of Greece (207):²⁹et divina opici rodebant carmina mures. With this witty hexameter, shaped as a Golden Line, Juvenal concludes his detailed list of Cordus belongings. The mice and poetry, illiteracy and divinity, all linked by the pungent verb, establish the clever paradox, which contains both pathos and humor. While Cordus loses his precious diminutive library, Asturicus will be gaining one, expensive tomes plus bookshelves and ornamental busts.' Umbricius then epitomizes Cordus' condition with a witty sequence on the word nil / nihil. Nothing was what Cordus really owned, and yet he lost all that nothing: the key word begins and ends the sentence (208-209). To make sure we react here in a way different from Martial's audience, Juvenal adds the adjective infelix and makes Cordus "poor, pathetic." He does what Vergil and Ovid frequently did to direct sympathy. Martial uses infelix to characterize people who cause unhappiness, not suffer it. Thus, in the Epigrams, only an ungenerous patron, an unfaithful wife, and a lion that has killed two children can be called infelix.³⁰

After reworking Martial's epigram on arson, Umbricius returns nastily to "you" and starts: "If you can tear yourself away from the Circus" (si potes avelli circensibus 223), then goes on to offer "you" a pleasant home in a country town. The implication here, as on the other occasions when Juvenal uses this common motif, is that most Romans let themselves be lulled by the exciting spectacles of the Circus and Colosseum into quiescence about the indignities they were suffering.³¹ Umbricius' attitude suggests a man of moral integrity: we find it exhibited by Cicero earlier and near Juvenal's time by Pliny.³² Martial, on the other hand, wrote epigrams expressing in witty terms marvel and delight with the shows in the Colosseum. Umbricius resorts to wit to give a prejudiced picture of the garret "you" rent in Rome: tenebras conducis (225). Martial, as commentators note, describes an ill-lit public bath in terms of tenebrae, without, however, aiming at or achieving this typical Juvenalian pathos.³³ In the country, "you" can raise vegetables in your little garden, an idyllic scene which Umbricius punctuates wittily with a relative clause neatly worked into a complete hexameter: unde epulum possis centum dare Pythagoreis (229). Again, we are dealing with a joke that does not belong to Martial's repertoire and is not employed in Martial's manner. Juvenal also attaches pathos to the same joke in 15.173. Horace and Ovid handle differently the familiar jibe at the Pythagoreans and their foolish beans.³⁴ Finally, Umbricius brings the paragraph to a close on the hyperbolical note of "becoming master of a lone lizard" (321). Commentators cite analogues in both Martial and Pliny for this figure of speech, but I dare say that a formula existed, learned in school, for this kind of expression.³⁵ What counts here is not the verbal parallel, but the special thematic way in which Juvenal uses the figure to support Umbricius' jaundiced view of Rome as a place where one securely owns nothing so long as one is afflicted with paupertas.³⁶

We may now pause to draw some conclusions about how Juvenal uses wit in this section of Satire 3, before extending our analysis to other passages.

1. Juvenal obviously knew Martial's epigrams well, prized their wit and used it.
2. Juvenal also drew his wit from many other sources in his extensive literary tradition, not only from witty writers of earlier times such as Horace and Ovid, but also dead-serious epic poets like Vergil.
3. Wit saturates this passage: every two or three lines exhibit an example.
4. Juvenal uses a number of methods to introduce wit: (a) he brings a development to a neat close in a single hexameter, often in the form of a relative clause (229) or some surprising descriptive detail (207, 222); (b) he punctuates with hyberbole (231) or paradox (196); (c) he focuses attention on a single word in metonymy (193, 225) or a single resonant name (199, 205, 219, 221); (d) he manipulates a telling word like nil / nihil (208-209).³⁷
5. Not only does each instance of wit enliven its lines, but it also serves the thematic purpose of the larger context.
6. The versatility of Juvenal's wit in respect of sources and mechanism, together with its crucial thematic functions, gives it a tone very remote from Martial's: it is either utterly angry or a blend of anger and humor, but never the naughty, basically tolerant lascivia which Martial rightly assigned to his nugae.

It seems to me that these conclusions place us somewhere between the positions occupied by Mason and Highet. Mason, conducting a polemical argument, tried to answer those like Highet who stress Juvenal's truth and moral sincerity, so he emphasized the factor of wit and depicted Juvenal as "a supreme manipulator of the Latin language."³⁸ This manipulator, according to him, negates the business of truth and moral fervor. However, his view of Juvenal's artistry is so confined as to be half-damning, for Mason feels obliged to deny the satirist any systematic themes and to insist on opportunism as Juvenal's dominant poetic strategy. Such a conception may, I think, arise from overemphasis of Martial's relevance. Although Mason rightly points out the common use of wit by Juvenal and Martial and frequently of the same witty situations, it does not follow that, because Martial's brief epigrams cannot develop themes and must limit themselves to mere verbal manipulation, Juvenal's broader scope must be similarly confined and represented as Martial set "to a different tune."

It is important to establish the fact of the special tonal and thematic qualities of Juvenalian wit, in opposition to Mason, and I shall first take another passage from this same Satire 3, then look at other Satires. We have seen what Juvenal did to Martial's slight arson joke in order to make it pulsate with indignation and sustain the theme of the poor native Roman victimized by a now-hostile Rome. Although the wit continued to act as a final point, it fitted the angry character and speech of Umbricius. Now let us look back to the beginning of Umbricius' tirade.

He rages first (21-57) because there is no place in Rome for the native honesty which conservative, rigidly moral Roman upbringing bred in him. He is always being pushed aside by men more willing to adapt to circumstances and stoop to unscrupulous actions. Such men, we might reasonably infer, are Italians. Then, however, Umbricius continues at greater length (58-125) by attacking the scoundrels who most flagrantly succeed in worming their way into the confidence of the rich: they are Greeks, Levantines, and other "sewage" from the East. Now, commentators often cite a short epigram of Martial in relation to these hundred lines of Juvenal. Like the arson joke, it can help us appreciate the special features of Juvenal's wit.

vir bonus et pauper linguaque et pectore
   verus,
   quid tibi vis urbem qui, Fabiane, petis?
qui nec leno potes nec comissator haberi
  nec pavidos tristi voce citare reos
nec potes uxorem cari corrumpere amici
  nec potes algentes arrigere ad vetulas,
vendere nec vanos circa Palatia fumos
  plaudere nec Cano plaudere nec Glaphyro:
unde miser vives? "homo certus, fidus amicus
  …
  hoc nihil est: numquam sic Philomelus eris.
(4.5)

Martial imagines himself meeting Fabianus, an Italian of the good old type (as the first line indicates) who is coming to Rome to live, and he expostulates with the newcomer. Martial is clearly not angry; he is wryly amused, sympathetic but cynical at the purpose of this incredibly naive "nice guy." What Fabianus cannot do is far more important than the simple virtue he possesses; hence the long list (3-8). The point is made succinctly at the end: for all his Italian honesty, Fabianus is doomed to starve in Rome because he is not Greek. The name Philomelus connotes not only riches, but also the unscrupulous devices by which alone a poor man can achieve wealth in Rome, devices that come instinctively to Greeks, not honest Italians. By restricting his point to the bare name, however, Martial avoids anger or any deep feeling against Greeks, and he keeps our attention trained on Fabianus, a comic figure in his unrealistic expectations.

Although this epigram covers the general contents of Juvenal's hundred lines, it does not follow that Juvenal has merely elaborated Martial in his specially witty manner, opportunistically manipulating his language regardless of theme. Again, for example, he has drastically altered the dramatic situation, as he did with the arson joke. As Satire 3 opens, Juvenal encounters Umbricius at the Porta Capena on the edge of Rome, but Umbricius is leaving, not arriving. He is a native Roman, born on the Aventine and raised in Rome; he is not an enterprising Italian with stars in his eyes. Having lived some thirty-five to forty years in the city, increasingly unable to survive by natural honesty and equally unable to compromise his conservative Roman standards, Umbricius has desperately decided to abandon this hostile environment, with vague hopes of making a go of it in a lonely rural region south near Cumae. All we know about Fabianus is that he is not Roman, a good man riding the crest of vain hope before being plunged into the sobering, disappointing realities of Rome. Fabianus speaks only four words, which help to define his simple-mindedness but gain him no sympathy; whereas Juvenal quickly yields to Umbricius, who dominates the Satire with his angry speech denouncing the Rome which has forced him out of his very home. Thus, the basic theme assumes shape: Rome is no place for the genuine Roman (119), for it has expelled, virtually exiled him.³⁹ Compare the angry tone of Umbricius, apparently fully approved by the silent satirist, with the amused cynicism of Martial who, by himself dominating the epigram, keeps us coolly distant from such passions as might be generated by the situation. Remember, too, that Martial always keeps his audience aware that he himself speaks as neither Roman nor Italian, but as a Spanish visitor.

In line with our earlier conclusions, we find that Juvenal's verses are saturated with wit, employed to elaborate the pathos of Umbricius' defeat in Rome and to create strong animosity against his successful rivals, above all Greeks and Easterners. Thus, what Martial cleverly implied in a single name requires, because of Juvenal's important changes, nearly seventy lines.

Umbricius says that he leaves his native Rome to the unscrupulous entrepreneurs who profit from it. These people, who once eked out their existence as hired attendants at the arena, now have the ill-gotten wealth to stage gladiatorial shows there and give the verdict of death with public approval (occidunt populariter 37). Then, from the dignity of the arena they go home to contract for building public latrines! These are the kind of sports that Fortune exalts when it jests (40). Now what can Umbricius do in a Rome like that? He lists a series of evil acts he neither knows how to nor can perform (cf. Martial) and concludes sarcastically: I am spurned like a useless cripple (48). Hyperbole follows: who is a friend these days unless also an accomplice? After amplifying this charge, he moves with particularly sparkling wit against the Greeks.

We all remember Umbricius' exaggeration in calling Rome a Greek city (61), then angrily qualifying his statement with the assertion that the Syrian river Orontes has flown into the Tiber and swept along in its polluted waters a series of vicious types. His list (63-72) develops in a variety of witty impulses. To represent the ingenious adaptability of these intruders, he comes to a point with the incredible assertion: "Tell one to fly, and he will" (78). He protests against yielding priority to someone who came to Rome imported for sale like other Eastern products, plums and figs (83). These people are past masters in adulation, he continues (86). Although he might speak the same words, only a Greek would be believed (92). After all, Greeks are consummate actors. They play female parts so convincingly that—gratuitous obscenity—you would expect to find on examination that they have a woman's anatomy (96-97). They are a nation of actors (100). Then follows a list of adulatory acts, concluding with pointed vulgarity: Greeks can lavish praise for a belch or good aim in pissing (107). Umbricius continues with a list of household members who are subject to the Greeks' indiscriminate lust, and he saves for the end the most flagrant example: the aged grandmother who is laid (112). At this line, we reach a precise parallel with Martial's list (cf. line 6 of the cited epigram). Juvenal's obscenity makes a conclusive angry point, whereas Martial drops in his similar comment about old hags almost indifferently among a series of unordered acts, the last of which is the trivial one of applauding Greek musicians.

Picking out a few of the above examples of Juvenal's wit, Mason objects that the satirist "is out to make any point he can regardless of consistency."⁴⁰ But are these points indiscriminate and inconsistent? I do not think so. These hundred lines, dramatically shaped to produce quite different effects from the slight ones of Martial's epigram, give a consistent impression of continuous anger and of the personality of the angry speaker, and the techniques of wit—the choice sordid details, the hyperbole, the sweeping generalizations, the vivid rhetorical language—all fit the violent mood of this self-styled Roman and his outrageous view of un-Roman Rome.

The wit of Satire 3, then, functions differently from the characteristic wit of Martial: it is subordinated to the angry speech and indignant themes of the Satire; its jokes enhance individual lines without destroying the dominant thematic concerns of the larger context. The next problem is to determine how far these conclusions, valid for Satire 3, can be extended to other Satires. Mason seems not to recognize the difficulties involved in making generalizations about Juvenal's wit, for he applies his ideas equally to Satires 1, 3, 6, 9, 10, and 13. But just as there is a temporal gap between the audiences of Martial and those of Juvenal which might well presuppose a change in tastes, so at least twenty-five years separate Satires I or 3 and 13, and in those years we know from observation that Juvenal changed his methods, including those of wit.⁴¹ The most obvious change occurs between Book II and Book III, as is indicated by the opening of Satire 7, large parts of Satire 8, and the entire cast of Satire 9. It is then methodologically unsound to equate the wit of the later Satires with that of Satires I through 6. Mason is particularly unsound because he starts his analysis of Juvenal's wit and initiates his argument for regarding Martial as the key to Juvenal's art by developing an admittedly brilliant, but misapplied, analysis of wit in Satire 9. Satire 9 indeed can be profitably likened to much of Martial. However, if we are treating Juvenal's wit with due consideration for his own development as a poet, we should be able to appreciate the differences between the manner of Satire 9 and that of the earlier Satires, and, if we do start with Satire 9 as akin to Martial, the soundest move to make next would be to consider the early poem on a similar subject: Satire 2. Then we would encounter, not Martial's wit, but the indignant, thematically relevant wit that, on the basis of our analysis of Satire 3, we should expect of Juvenal in Book I.

Satire 9 deals with a type familiar in Martial, and it gives him a name that occurs five times in Martial. We are introduced to one of those interesting "professionals" who hires himself out as both adulterer and satisfier of male homosexual desires. Naevolus' current employer requires his ambidextrous services for himself and for his wife.⁴² To open the Satire, Juvenal uses a method reminiscent of Martial. Having bumped into Naevolus on the street (occurras 2), the satirist solicitously asks what is wrong, why Naevolus looks so badly. For about 25 lines he elaborates with seeming concern on his "friend's" condition, and only after this clever build-up does he surprise us by revealing the source of Naevolus' income: he is notorious throughout Rome as both moechus and cinaedus. This is precisely the tone of affected concern punctured by cynical realism that we met in the Tongilianus epigram and that can be found in numerous poems of Martial. Juvenal maintains that same tone of nonreproving realism to the end of the Satire, letting Naevolus dominate the conversation and voice his complaint in detail.

I hardly need to note that Naevolus bears little resemblance to Umbricius of Satire 3, and the satirist's mockery in Satire 9 differs radically from his sympathy in the earlier Satire. But it is interesting and important to recognize that in Book I Juvenal does not touch such a versatile character as the moechus-cinaedus, ideal for a Martial-like display of wit as it would be. When he encounters an adulterer or a homosexual in Book I, he exchanges no words of solicitous concern with them; the mere sight of them and the awareness of what they are sends him into paroxysms of rage. This is clear from Satire I where, claiming that what justifies his indignant satire is the variety of depraved people he meets in his beloved Rome, he cites as illustration the professional gigolo who ministers to the lust of rich hags (39ff), the husband who connives like a pander with the adulterer of his wife (55), the man who seduces his own daughter-in-law (77), and the adolescent who sets out on his affairs sporting his juvenile robe (praetextatus adulter 78), already corrupted.

Adultery is among the vices that stimulate indignation in Satire 1. Although Juvenal's vignettes are phrased cleverly and memorably, it is plain that he is not joking, like Martial, about the gigolo, husband-abetted adulterer, father-in-law, or juvenile adulterer. He leaves to Satire 6 more elaborate and lurid scenes that feature the adulteress, but his mood of indignation is essentially the same.⁴³ In Satire 2, he vents his rage on homosexuals without clouding the issue or attenuating the picture of corruption by amusingly combining cinaedus with moechus. Again, he expects us to picture him meeting people on the street, not conversing with them but erupting in anger as he realizes what they represent for Rome. "What Roman street," he asks, "is not crowded with perverts masquerading as strict moralists?" (quis enim non vicus abundat tristibus obscenis? 2.8-9). Even worse, as he strolls through the Forum and other public places, he must listen to these people orating piously against female adultery; for these are not just average perverts: they come from distinguished families and so exercise influence in Roman politics as Senators and Censors (29ff). Juvenal attacks them in two phases in Satire 2. First, he roars at the crypto-homosexuals who pose as Puritans; then, having stripped off their disguise, he pours his wrath on various homosexual acts which presumably are practised in secret by these same people, members of the "gay set" in Rome.

Martial treats these topics, as we would expect, with clever good humor. A favorite homosexual-joke in Rome exploited the unmistakable meaning of the verb nubere: to put on the marriage veil for another, that is, to marry. It must properly describe the act of a woman, a bride. Martial uses this topos in two epigrams published more than ten years apart, in each case to play with a situation that Juvenal in Satire 2 presents as outrageous. The first provides a useful contrast to the opening of the Satire:

aspicis incomptis ilium, Deciane, capillis,
  cuius et ipse times triste supercilium,
qui loquitur Curios adsertoresque Camillos?
  nolito fronti credere: nupsit heri.
(1.24)

Martial points out to a companion a shaggy, severe-looking moralist who is apparently orating, denouncing contemporary corruption and citing the great virtuous Roman examples of the early Republic. The three lines of build-up are then suddenly broken by the surprise of 4: the "moralist" was married yesterday, to another man! Our amusement is not disturbed by complicated feelings about the pervert, for Martial has not identified his class.

Now compare the opening of Satire 2:

ultra Sauromatas fugere hinc libet et glacialem
Oceanum, quotiens aliquid de moribus audent
qui Curios simulant et Bacchanalia vivunt …
frontis nulla fides; quis enim non vicus
  abundat
tristibus obscenis? castigas turpia, cum sis
inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinaedos?
(1-3, 8-10)

Juvenal is indignant from the first line, ready to leave Rome in disgust for the remotest spot beyond the limits of the Roman Empire, and he makes no witty surprise of his reason. Line 3 is memorable and frequently cited, but it is significantly different from Martial's line 3 and elicits a quite different response from the audience. Martial has a "moralist" talking of two virtuous old patriotic types, and this line forms part of his deceptive build-up to the surprise of line 4. Juvenal epitomizes in his two phrases, each occupying half the line, the outrageous paradox that provokes his indignation: people are pretending to be virtuous according to ancient Curio, but in fact living perversely. The same paradox is repeated neatly in tristibus obscenis and Socraticos cinaedos. Juvenal brands the pretense from the start, and he indicates, by the phrase about posing as a Curio, as well as by subsequent details, that he is dealing exclusively with the Roman upper classes, whose perversion gravely affects the whole character of Rome.⁴⁴

Martial's second epigram starts from the surprise use of nupsit, develops the scene of marriage, then proceeds to an unexpected final question.

barbatus rigido nupsit Callistratus Afro
 hac qua lege viro nubere virgo solet.
praeluxere faces, velarunt flammea vultus,

 nec tua defuerunt verba, Talasse, tibi.
dos etiam dicta est. nondum tibi, Roma,
  videtur
  hoc satis? expectas numquid ut et pariat?
(12.42)

Martial constructs his first line brilliantly: the pair of initial adjectives, which imply that we have to do with a bearded moralist⁴⁵ and a stern Catonian personality, are startlingly related by the verb, upon which follow the pair of identifying names. Callistratus, who has grown a beard so as to masquerade as a Cynic, has married Afer, a man as seemingly stern as the proverbial rigidi Catones of Martial 10.19.21. It has been a Roman ceremony, even though Callistratus has hardly been the usual virgo. So Martial apostrophizes Rome and asks her what she is waiting for, for Callistratus to have a baby? There is, I believe, some impatience behind the question, but the incredible hyperbole manipulated into the final word shows that Martial's emphasis is, as usual, on the joke. Callistratus appears a few epigrams earlier, also as a pervert, upon whom Martial comments with his typical cool amusement, without the slightest impatience.⁴⁶ Furthermore, in choosing a Greek name for Callistratus, Martial has weakened the force of the appeal to Rome: she is not being asked to punish one of her degenerate children, but to drive out a foreigner who is polluting the scene. After, who has a Roman name, receives little emphasis, and furthermore he plays the less disgraceful role in this marriage.

Juvenal breaks the elements of this epigram of Martial into two dramatic sequences involving "marriages" between males (2.117-142).⁴⁷ In the first (117-132), he gives a detailed description of the marriage-ceremony, then angrily apostrophizes Mars without using the special joke of Martial; in the second (132-142), he first listens to someone else eagerly represent the occasion as one of the "society weddings" of the season, then angrily denounces such corruption, consoling himself with the thought that at least children cannot be born from such unnatural unions. Juvenal's point is totally different from Martial's and entirely consistent with his stance in Satires I and 3 as an indignant Roman: Rome has become unmanned, and its once-heroic families now produce effeminates. The "bride" in 117ff is now not a Greek Callistratus but a Roman Gracchus, scion of one of Rome's most distinguished families. The groom, a nameless trumpeter, probably a Greek or Easterner, further establishes the disgraceful qualities of this "marriage." And it is not by chance that Juvenal apostrophizes Mars. As he constructs the scene, the bridal attire of Gracchus forms a sharp antithesis to the military setting of the ceremonies in honor of Mars in which he participated as a Salian priest (124-126). So how can Mars ignore the disgrace? In disgust, he tells Mars to quit his own Campus Martius, for, if he permits this marriage, then he is no longer the warlike Roman Mars.

The second marriage involves no names, but every indication suggests that the "bride" again is a "man of distinction." The first three lines (132-135) are organized as a rapid conversation which conceals its point until the end, and we might well see in them some of the successful touches of Martial.

                      'officium cras
primo sole mihi peragendum in valle Quirini.'
quae causa officii? 'qwid quaeris? nubit
  amicus
nec multos adhibet.'
(132-135)

Somebody starts talking to Juvenal about the important officium which he just must perform the very first thing in the morning. It sounds important, cast as it is in the traditional Roman terms of public responsibility. So Juvenal inquires about the officium. The social butterfly replies without the slightest shame that he has been invited to an exclusive wedding where a male friend will be the "bride." That ends the Martial-like sequence. Note the difference, however: the shocking point is placed in the mouth of a despicable member of the "gay set"; it is not the amused observation of the satirist. As a result, Juvenal is free to comment, and the remainder of the passage consists of savage denunciation, in typical Juvenalian manner, of this perversion that threatens Rome itself. Instead of producing the incredible fantasy of Martial to end his scene, he consoles himself with the thought that at least these vile marriages can produce no offspring, no matter how much a Gracchus wishes to hold his/her "husband." Thus, Satire 2 establishes the typical tactics of Juvenal's angry wit, whereas Satire 9 (which Mason wrongly employed to define the standard of Juvenalian wit) reflects a later stage in Juvenal's development, when he was moderating his indignant manner and experimenting with the cynical humor of Martial.

Up to this point, my effort has been to answer Mason by describing the angry wit of Juvenal's poetry and showing its thematic function in the early Satires. We are to accept the statement of the satirist in Satire I that he is indignant; we should be able to feel the same indignation coursing through Satire 2; and Umbricius substitutes for the indignant satirist in Satire 3.⁴⁸ The indignation determines the immediate effect of the wit; hence, it cannot possibly resemble the wit which Martial uses to support his lascivia. However, despite the consistency of Juvenal's angry wit, the response of the audience is neither indignation nor anger. At this point, then, I wish to turn to Juvenal's audience, that of his time and of our time, in order to explain how the consistently manifested Juvenalian ira, his famous saeva indignatio, achieved its ultimately pleasurable effect. I shall continue to use Satire 3 as my touchstone, because that is the masterpiece of Book I and because Mason has provided us a hypothesis concerning its ultimate impression that fits his view of Juvenal's wit, but, I believe, does not adequately account for the different sensitivities of Martial's and Juvenal's audiences.

Mason makes the following suggestions with regard to Satire 3: "I am inclined to suspect and certainly hope that there is a special point in the external structure and the general tone: that, in a word, Umbricius is not Martial, but Juvenal himself recalling in verse the recitations he had so often delivered in prose and laughing both at himself in that rôle and at the attempt by contemporary writers of solemn hexameters to take themselves seriously. The poem in that case would be a genuine and witty drama and a piece of literary not social criticism."⁴⁹ Mason has earlier argued for the similarity between Umbricius (or Juvenal) and Martial; I have been arguing against that interpretation. Now, he attempts to give Juvenal some special credit by suspecting and hoping that Juvenal himself functions through Umbricius, that the satirist mocks the style of prose recitations and solemn hexameters through the words of his character Umbricius. If so, Satire 3 would become witty drama and literary, not social, criticism. The audience would presumably recognize the literary mockery and so sit back and enjoy this Martial-like figure Umbricius.

Although I agree that Satire 3 did strike Juvenal's audience and should strike us as a witty drama, I believe that the mechanism of this drama and the actual impression it left (and leaves) is quite different from what Mason assumes. If I am correct in denying the close resemblance between Martial and Umbricius, then most of the details of Mason's hypothesis collapse. I should prefer to start from the observed differences between Martial and Umbricius (or Juvenal in the other Satires of Book I), from the evident fact that Juvenal subordinates wit to his announced mood of indignatio. Umbricius in Satire 3 and the satirist himself in the other Satires of Book I loudly declare their outrage over the degradation of Rome. It is my contention that these loud declarations in the form of Satires constitute self-consistent dramas, whose mood of rage is realistic enough to be accepted at face value. However, there is little doubt in my mind that Juvenal did not share the extremist ideas of his dramatic characters, Umbricius in 3 and "the satirist" elsewhere, and there is no doubt whatsoever that the sophisticated Roman audience repeatedly smiled and applauded at this superb display of "honest indignation." As I see it, then, in the interaction between Satire 3 and the Roman audience occurs the "dramatic effect." That effect depends upon the different personal experience of audience and Umbricius and the different attitudes that audience and indignant speakers draw from their experience of Rome. It is quite unnecessary to assume, as Mason does, that every indignant speaker is parodying somebody else and consequently that the dramatic participation of the audience is the merely supine experience of recognizing Martial smirking inside Umbricius.⁵⁰

What I have in mind is that Juvenal devised angry satire in order to exploit the long moralistic tradition of Roman culture and to utilize the possibilities for ambivalence in the rôle of the indignant moralist. This is much more than literary criticism, although we are compelled to document this moralistic tradition by citing literature like Cato, Sallust, speeches in Livy, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, and others. Juvenal was involving his Roman audience with attitudes that were fundamental to their inherited and acquired idea of Rome. But since traditionalistic morality and the fierce appeal to it did not expire with Alaric's capture of Rome, since angry extremism is a phenomenon of all human experience, we should not be too distrustful of any inclination to react to Juvenalian indignation in the complicated way we react today to a speech in real life or, better still, in a work of literature or drama that waxes indignant and extremist over social and political issues.⁵¹ When we and others are indignant, we know, we are often capable of superb touches of wit, which we mean angrily. The sweeping generalization, cleverly vicious character assassination, brilliant use of metonymy or obscenity to color the picture, hyperbole of all sorts—these and many other devices have long been recognized as features of angry speech. What we may say so tellingly in honest indignation does not necessarily strike our audience in the same simple manner; cooler listeners may register our indignation, but refuse to share it. Having so refused, they are open to other impressions, separate or combined: sympathy for our excitement, amusement at our hot language, condemnation of us as immature, irrational, or otherwise inadequate.

When a writer sets out to create an angry character for a drama, he relies on the complex response which people have to anger. We are never at ease with our own or others' anger, and yet anger is a basic passion. Formal drama regularly works with angry types or characters who express wrath on a particular occasion. It may be rash to risk the statement, but I would hazard the generalization that no good dramatist, no good drama, presents anger as an unqualified virtue. King Lear is one of the most magnificently angry characters in all tragedy, an angry father seething at the ingratitude of his daughters. Yet Shakespeare does not minimize the fact that Lear's fury springs from his own unwisdom and its consequences; the first outrage against innocent Cordelia betrays that. On the other hand, the anger of fathers in comedy, based as it is also on a foolish view of the behavior of children, is regularly represented as hilariously funny. Shakespeare could make tragedy or comedy out of the irate husband who feels he has been deceived.⁵² The misanthrope can be presented for laughs or sober reflection. From the monumental wrath of Achilles, so magnificently staged for our sympathetic condemnation by Homer, to the various soldier types of Menander, Plautus, and Terence, the steps were not difficult for the dramatist. Anger lies at the disposal of the creative writer, ready to serve a comic or tragic view, and consequently any sophisticated audience would be prepared instinctively to respond intelligently, not with an identically sympathetic passion, to anger in drama or dramatic satire.

It is not necessary to dispute the facts alleged by Umbricius or the angry satirist. No doubt there was a case or two of arson committed by a man like Persicus; no doubt some Greeks were uncommonly successful in getting ahead in Rome; and Tacitus himself tells us that Nero was "married" to a male. What counts, however, is not the sporadic facts of moral degradation but the way an Umbricius reacts to them. When Juvenal recited Satire 3 to his first audience in Rome, it knew Umbricius' facts, but his indignation did not correspond to the attitude of sophisticated Romans to isolated episodes of vice. I imagine that, as Juvenal concluded, he smiled and bowed, was roundly applauded, and that, as the audience filed out to get a drink, conversation developed enthusiastically over this new literary sensation in Rome, not so much about the moral charges of Umbricius as about the interesting way Juvenal achieved so convincing a presentation of a moral extremist. How could comfortable men of distinction, politicians accustomed to inspect angry words closely, literary connoisseurs who were steeped in the dramatic traditions of anger, citizens of Rome in the relatively comfortable, uncontroversial reign of Trajan, how could they muster much sympathy or credulity for the extremist conclusions of Umbricius? Could anyone possibly imagine them deciding to abandon their wonderfully cosmopolitan and active Rome?

To fix even more clearly the Roman audience's reaction to Satire 3 by invoking our own reactions, let me attempt to modernize Satire 3 for the reader.⁵³ We are not dealing with an ancient analogue for our common flight to the suburbs, nor would we be able to reduplicate Umbricius with ease. Umbricius and his decision, after all, are extremist.⁵⁴ He is a man of the lower middle class who clings to the moribund Roman system of patronage and refuses to adapt to the new methods of earning a living. Yet he is well educated and cultured, and he voices the conservative creed of what today would be a family with a tradition (and usually affluent). Today we have no genuine counterpart to the talented Greeks and Orientals who replace this incompetent Roman. First, then, we must put together a modern Umbricius who is a composite of some contemporary disaffected types. From our Conservative Backlash, we might select a belligerent white worker who angrily resists expansion of the union shops to include Blacks who might take his job; a scion of an old Eastern or Southern family which is losing its money because of inability to adjust to the times; and an inhabitant of an arch-conservative suburb who proudly proclaims the ideals of the John Birch Society. Now we have our modern Umbricius. The modernized scene should be the waterfront of San Diego, California, or some place comparable. Our "friend" is about to leave the United States forever. After he has denounced America with his raging half-truths, hyperbole, and blind prejudice, he will climb aboard a 50-foot sail-boat, in which he has stowed his belongings, raise sail and set out heroically for an uninhabited island in the South Pacific! I hardly need to define our reactions to such extravagant behavior.

To conclude, wit is a vital element of Juvenalian satire, but it stands in a different relation to Juvenal's purposes than wit does to Martial's goals. In Martial, wit and lascivia operate in full agreement with each other; the verbal manipulation and the manner that Martial repeatedly professes have identical effects. The audience performs no complicated process when it hears or reads the Epigrams, for Martial does quite brilliantly exactly what he says he does.⁵⁵ Mason assumes that the wit of Juvenalian satire constantly undermines the announced mood of the speaker, who is quite apparently laughing at himself and literary seriousness; that would mean that individual passages in the Satires would operate generally in the manner of separate epigrams of Martial, the sudden final surprise dispelling an initially affected seriousness. His argument, however, as I have attempted to show, over-simplifies and hence falsifies the art of Juvenal. It tends to imply that wit is supreme in the Satires, that indignation is secondary, in fact, meretricious. If we read carefully the early Satires, the only ones which in fact proclaim indignatio or ira as their mood, and if we study the wit in context for its thematic and dramatic relevance, we discover that wit and anger operate, at the primary level, in full agreement with each other. That is, they produce a dramatically credible impression of a violently angry man who cannot distinguish between facts and his own extravagant reactions to them. However, this same angry wit functions at a second level with the audience, which can and must draw the distinctions that are not made in the Satires. Whereas Martial inclines us to like his witty picture of Rome, Juvenal inclines us by his extravagance to reject the distorted interpretation of what he claims is the real Rome. We enjoy the angry Satires, accordingly, by opposition to their wild anger; we treat Umbricius and the satirist who rage in the early Satires as dramatic characters whose indignation is part of the drama, not a requisite part of our response to the facts.

The contrast between the wit of Martial and Juvenal can be epitomized in their treatments of Rome's moralistic tradition. In the introduction to Book I of the Epigrams, Martial assumes an attitude that he maintains throughout Book XII. His poems are ioci, written with lascivia verborum, designed for an audience that enjoys the lusty humor of the Floralia. Therefore, he forbids Cato to enter his "theatre" in his conventional moral r6le; he may enter only as a "spectator," that is, prepared to enjoy himself. The short poem that concludes this Preface repeats the same ideas: where licentia is the mood, Cato severus has no place. Book XI announces a similar program in two poems. It rejects the severe brow of Cato and proclaims the wild deeds of the Saturnalian mood (11.2); it also dismisses Cato's wife from its audience, because it intends to be naughtier than all other books (nequior omnibus libellis 11.15.4). Book X has another variation: stiff Cato will be allowed to read the epigrams only if he has drunk well (10.19.21). For the poems of Martial, then, morality is ostensibly irrelevant. By contrast, Juvenal's indignation insists that morality is crucially relevant. The satirist repeatedly appeals to the venerable moralistic tradition of Rome, laments that it has fallen into disuse, and himself voices the anger of one who is out of touch with his own times. But whereas he takes himself seriously and denounces Roman vice with honest passion, the audience judges him to be a largely comic figure, full of irrelevancy. He is, in a sense, a Cato born 250 years too late. Thinking that his wit expresses the extreme extent of vice, he in fact rather exposes his own ridiculous extremism.⁵⁶ Nevertheless, correcting or laughing at moral extremism is not totally negating morality. Whereas Martial allows us to reject Cato and relax in witty amorality, laughing with him, Juvenal obliges us to achieve our amusement by adjusting to our moral awareness the extravagance of his Catonian speaker. The more complex operation of Juvenal's wit demands a more complex, less passive response from us in the audience.

Notes

¹ Legally speaking, arson was a capital crime. In Juvenal's time, it was punishable by deportation; under the Severans it merited execution. See Dig. 48.8.3.5.

² The standard biography of Martial still rests upon the researches of L. Friedlaender in his edition (Leipzig 1886). See R. Helm's article in RE, M. Valerius Martialis.

³ What we now possess as Books X and XI constitutes a revised edition of poems many of which were written between 94 and 96; this second edition adds poems that refer flatteringly to Nerva and the first years of Trajan.

⁴ For the fullest recent treatment of Juvenal's biography, Gilbert Highet's Juvenal the Satirist (Oxford 1954) is very valuable if used with discretion. See especially his chapters I through V. Two recent articles challenge the reliability of the evidence on which the biography conventionally depends. G. Brugnoli, "Vita luvenalis," Studi urbinati 37 (1963) 5-14, dates the transmitted Vita no earlier than the fourth century and argues that its standardized categories of information make the detail suspect. E. Flores, "Origini e ceto di Giovenale e loro riflessi nella problematica sociale delle satire," Annali fac. Lett. & filos. Napoli 10 (1962-1963) 51-80, sees reasons to assign the now-lost inscription of Aquinum to another, earlier Juvenal and to argue that the satirist did not own property in that area.

⁵ See the chapters in R. Syme, Tacitus (Oxford 1958) 59ff on the early careers of Pliny and Tacitus under Domitian.

⁶ The fact that Juvenal, Pliny, and Tacitus all agree in denigrating Domitian after the emperor's death can hardly be used as special evidence for Juvenal's sufferings from Domitian. Otherwise, we would be obliged to infer that Pliny and Tacitus had themselves suffered to a similar extent; and we know that to be untrue.

⁷ See the prudent comments of Highet, pp. 11-12. For a less likely view, see the ingenious article of A. Michel, "La date des Satires: Juvénal, Héliodore et le tribun d'Arménie," REL 41 (1963) 315-327. He dates Book I after the accession of Hadrian in 118.

⁸ In Satire 1, many of the vignettes of adulterers and adulteresses, gigolos, women who poison their husbands, women gladiators, etc., can be paralleled in Martial. Satire 2 deals with the crypto-homosexual who poses as a severe moralist and with his secret orgies. Parallels in Martial are common; see infra, pp. 24ff. I use Satire 3 throughout this article because of the many points it shares with Martial. Satire 5 scornfully portrays the cliens who, for a humiliating meal, allows himself to be "enslaved" and lose his libertas to an insulting patronus. Cf. Martial 4.40, 5.22, 5.44, 6.88, 9.100, 10.56.

⁹ Cf. Martial 3.45.5 and especially 13.81.

¹⁰ See the series of articles, based on his dissertation, by R. E. Colton in CB 39 (1963) 49-52 [on Satire 7 and Martial], 40 (1963) 1-4 [Sat. 4 and Martial], 41 (1964) 26-27 [Sat. 14], 41 (1965) 39, 41-45 [Sat. 11], CJ 61 (1965) 68-71 [Sat. 2], and Traditio 22 (1966) 403-419 [Sat. 3].

¹¹ "The Life and Poems of Juvenal," JP 16 (1888) 41-66, reprinted in his Lectures and Essays (Oxford 1895) 117-144.

¹² Duff. D. Iunii Iuvenalis Saturae XIV, p. xxii.

¹³ Wilson, AJP 19 (1898) 193-209. Of less significance is the almost contemporary article of G. Boissier, "Relations de Juvenal et de Martial," Rev. Cours et Conferences 7 (1899) 2.443-451. Boissier commented rather generally on similarities and differences between the two poets.

¹⁴ Wilson, p. 193.

¹⁵ C. W. Mendell, "Martial and the Satiric Epigram," CP 17 (1922) 1-20 points out that, between the time of Catullus and Martial, the epigram came under the influence of satire and so can in certain cases be called "satiric." J. W. Duff, Roman Satire (Berkeley 1936) 126ff devotes an entire chapter to Martial. See now also H. Szelest, "Martials satirische Epigramme und Horaz," Das Altertum 9 (1963) 27-37.

¹⁶ Boissier (supra n. 13) commented on this in 1899. For more recent observations, see R. Marache, "Le revendication sociale chez Martial et Juvenal," RCCM 3 (1961) 30-67, and N. I. Barbu, "Les esclaves chez Martial et Juvenal," Acta antiqua philippopolitana (Sofia 1963) 67-74.

¹⁷ Highet, p. 173.

¹⁸ Mason, Arion 1:1 (1962) 8-44; 2 (1962) 39-79. This article is reprinted in Essays on Roman Literature: Satire, edited by Sullivan (London 1963) 93-176. Since that volume is more accessible and its numbering is easier to use, I shall consistently refer to its pagination.

¹⁹ P. 96.

²⁰ p. 165. It is of course an exaggeration to claim that Juvenal treated all Martial's butts or to imply that only Martial's butts appear in the Satires. Where in Juvenal are the mocking portraits of writers who are jealous of or plagiarize him? Where are jokes on physical deformities and malfunctions as common as in Martial? It is equally strained to liken Juvenal's use of obscenity to Martial's. How frequently does one hear of pederasty in the Satires? Consider some of Martial's all too common terms like cunnilingus, fellator, tribas, ficosus, masturbare: one would have trouble locating more than a single Juvenalian reference to each of these five sexual interests. As I shall try to show, Juvenal was not dependent upon obscenity to the same extent as Martial and did not use it as Martial had done.

²¹ See p. 107.

²²Ibid.

²³ The name occurs only here and in 12.88.

²⁴ There is disagreement as to whether we are dealing with one person or two here. Some scholars believe that Persicus owned domus Asturici, Asturicus either being a previous owner, perhaps builder of the house, or an ancestor. Others believe that Juvenal refers to two unrelated cases of arson, the hypothetical one involving Asturicus' house and a second one from which Persicus profited. See the next note.

²⁵ J. E. B. Mayor, Thirteen Satires of Juvenal (London 1889)⁴, in his note on 3.212, says of Asturicus and Persicus: "names of conquering families." The two relevant entries in RE illustrate the disagreement mentioned in n. 24: on Asturicus, P. von Rohden wrote: "Beiname eines vornehmen Romers, Iuv. 3,212. Wohl willkurlich gewahlt." On the other hand, Groag, after an extensive discussion of P. Fabius Persicus [Fabius # 120], consul A.D. 34, used this passage of Juvenal to justify a hypothetical Fabius Persicus Asturicus [Fabius # 121]. We know for sure of no Asturicus, but Persicus is well attested. Juvenal addresses a Persicus, presumably a quite different man and a friend, in 11.57.

²⁶ Umbricius is a rare name, too, but attested in Tacitus Hist. 1.27 and Pliny N.H. 10.19 as a noted haruspex in A.D. 69. See also RE s.v. Recently, Motto and Clark, TAP A 96 (1965) 275, have argued that "Umbricius is no historical figure contemporary to Juvenal," but that the name is chosen to refer to umbra: he therefore represents the shade of the deceased Rome.

²⁷ Cf. Horace C. 2.16.6 and 3.1.21, also S. 1.1.9-10.

²⁸ Juvenal's metrical unit iam frivola transfert / Ucalegon parodies Aeneid 2.311: iam proximus. ardet / Ucalegon.

²⁹ Mason comments on this passage, p. 130.

³⁰ See Martial 2.46.9, 2.75.7, and 11.7.7.

³¹ Juvenal alludes to the same point in 6.87, 10.81, and 11.53 and 197.

³² See Cicero Ad fam. 7.1 and Pliny Epist. 9.6.

³³ Martial 2.14.12.

³⁴ Cf. Horace S. 2.6.63 and Ovid Met. 15.75ff.

³⁵ The formula would be something like this: a noun or verb expressing ownership would be combined with an objective genitive or accusative object, which would define the thing owned in a phrase consisting of unus and a noun in the diminutive or itself denoting something tiny and insignificant (e.g., unius lacertae).

³⁶ Note the way vilicus in 228 acquires entirely different connotations from those in 195.

³⁷ Aside from Mason, few scholars have appreciated Juvenal's wit and humor openly. But R. Marache, "Rhetorique et humour chez Juvenal," Hommages à Jean Bayet (Brussels 1964) 474-478, without knowing Mason's work, makes some sensible comments on such devices as hyperbole.

³⁸ P. 176.

³⁹ I have analyzed Satire 3 in terms of this theme in "Studies in Book I of Juvenal," YCS 15 (1957) 55-68. See now Motto and Clark, "The Mythos of Juvenal 3," TAPA 96 (1965) 267-276.

⁴⁰ p. 128.

⁴¹ See my article, "The Programs of Juvenal's Later Books," CP 57 (1962) 145-160.

⁴² For similarly competent cinaedi / adulteri, see in Martial 10.40 and the jokes in 6.33, 11.45, 86, and 88 on the paedico who turns fututor.

⁴³ On Satire 6, see Mason pp. 135ff and my article "Juvenal 6: a Problem in Structure," CP 51 (1956) 73-94.

⁴⁴ By contrast, Naevolus, about whom he expresses tolerant amusement in Satire 9, is, like Martial's characters, no member of the aristocratic governing class. Juvenal calls him vernam equitam at 9.10.

⁴⁵ Beards were worn in Martial's time only as a protest and indicated adherence to a Cynic-Stoic form of life. Only with Hadrian did ordinary men begin to allow their beards to grow.

⁴⁶ See 12.35. In that poem, Martial assigns no beard to Callistratus because his joke aims at a different point. A man of the same name appears also in 5.13, 9.95, and 12.80. Martial also makes frequent use of the name of Afer: see 4.37 and 78, 6.77, 9.7 and 25, 10.84.

⁴⁷ J: Colin, "Juvénal et le mariage mystique de Gracchus," Atti Tor 90, (1955-1956) 114-216, claims that this marriage was a solemn act of ritual and that Juvenal, misunderstanding it, twisted it into an obscene orgy. However, the common evidence of Juvenal, Martial and Tacitus on such "marriages" gives no support to his hypothesis.

⁴⁸ On Satire 5, see n. 8, supra. Martial jokes about a poor man's loss of liberty as he cadges a meal; Juvenal uses the same situation to wax furious because of the Roman relevance.

⁴⁹ P. 135.

⁵⁰ I am here outlining a theory which I have developed at length in relation to conventional Roman views on anger in my monograph "Anger in Juvenal and Seneca," Calif Publ. Class Phil. 19 (1964) 127-196.

⁵¹ Modern drama, especially on television, is beginning to develop angry types in the campus rebel, the Southern reactionary, and the nouveau-riche resident of the suburbs.

⁵² Such dramas as the opera I Pagliacci and the ballet Petrouschka show further subtlety in their treatment of the angry lover. They deal with a clown who plays a cuckold in his stage role; but when this clown finds himself deceived in his real love, he becomes murderously furious.

⁵³ I am assuming my reader here is someone who has considerable experience of literature, and hence has the ability to back away and criticize what he reads or hears. I set no limits as to political or social sympathies.

⁵⁴ Cf. Molière's Oronte, whose misanthropy and final decision to abandon Paris for rustic solitude undoubtedly seemed more extremist and were easier for Moliere, who took the part, to play for laughs in the late seventeenth century than they are today in modern revivals.

⁵⁵ I do not mean that Martial himself was so limited a character in his real life. But his Epigrams are fully consistent with their claim of lascivia.

⁵⁶ Laronia mockingly sneers at a hypocrite moralist in 2.40: tertius e caelo cecidit Cato. That alliterative irony could well be applied to the honest but extravagant moralist, too: he is something incredible, "out of this world."