Yet trembling, lest the levee should be o'er, And what a meal at last! such ropy wine, And VER. 48. With coarse stone pots] Juvenal never forgets the meanness of the clients' treatment: they do not even fight with the costlier garniture of the table, for this was not within their reach; but with stone jugs and flagons of Surrentine ware! VER. 53. Press'd in the Social War! The Social or Marsian war broke out in Italy nearly two centuries before this Satire was written. Can wines be kept so long? Those of Italy were, indeed, of a roughness and strength that a considerable lapse of time only could subdue:—but such a period! Pliny the Elder, however, mentions a wine of 200 years, i. e. pressed like this of Virro, bellis socialibus; but then it had acquired, he adds, the colour, and, I suppose, the consistency of honey; and was no longer drinkable. It was kept, he says, for the purpose of To-morrow, he will change, and, haply, fill Or Setian; wines, which cannot now be known, flavouring other wines, and sold at the extravagant rate of three guineas and a half an ounce, or nearly at its weight in gold. He adds, that wine cannot be preserved with advantage, beyond the 20th year: nec alia res majus incrementum sentit ad vigesimum annum, majusve ab eo dispendium. Hall has imitated this passage with much humour: "What though he quaff pure amber in his bowl "Or in a shallow cruize; nor must that stay "Within thy reach, for fear of thy craz'd brain, VER. 56. The mellow vintage of the Alban hill,] This wine is frequently alluded to by our author, as of peculiar excellency. Addison tells us, in his Italian travels, that Alba still preserves its credit for wine, "which would probably be as good now as it was anciently, did they preserve it to so great an age." Setian wine was still more excellent; at least, if we may trust to the taste of Augustus, who is said, by Pliny, to have preferred it to all others it grew in Campania. This passage also is well imitated by Hall: "If Virro list revive his heartless graine "With some French grape, or pure Canariane; "Some sowerish Rochelle cuts thy thirsting throat.” VER. 59. VOL. I. such generous bowls, &c.] Dulcissimi N While crown'd with flowers, in sacred pomp, they lay, TO FREEDOM quaff'd, on Brutus' natal day. Before your patron, cups of price are placed, Amber and gold, with rows of beryls graced : versus, as Ruperti truly observes, qui summum libertatis desiderium odiumque tyrannidis spirant. And it may be remarked, that Juvenal is never so full of spirit and pathos, as when the old liberty of his country is the theme. VER. 60. As Thrasea and Helvidius,] Of these two eminent men, the former was put to death, and the latter driven into banishment, by Nero. Tacitus dwells with singular complacency on their virtues; and, indeed, we may gather from the concurring testimonies of historians, that Rome had seldom, if ever, produced two worthier citizens. They fell, in truth, "on evil days," but they seem to have "bated no jot of heart," and in every circumstance to have acted with dignity and spirit. Helvidius was recalled from banishment by Galba; (another motive for our author's partiality to that chief;) he was afterwards prosecuted on a charge of sedition, by Vespasian, but acquitted; and probably ended his days in peace. Thrasea was the son-in-law of that Pætus whose wife Arria is so justly celebrated for her heroick constancy in the wellknown epigram, Casta suo gladium, &c. There are no data to determine the precise time when this Satire was written. The passage before us certainly evinces a noble spirit of daring; but it is probably somewhat posterior to the reign of Domitian. The two men whose memory was particularly hateful to that tyrant, were, undoubtedly, Thrasea and Helvidius, who are here indirectly introduced for the sake of a covert censure on the wretch who insulted their fame. Domitian put one person to death for calling Thrasea a man of sanctity, τον Θρασεαν ἱερον ωνόμαζε; and another for writing the life of Helvidius! Cups, you can only at a distance view, To count the gems, and watch your finger's ends. You'll pardon him; but lo! a jasper there, Of matchless worth, which justifies his care: For Virro, like his brother peers, of late, Has stripp'd his fingers to adorn his plate; And jewels now emblaze the festive board, Which deck'd, with nobler grace, the hero's sword, Whom Dido prized, above the Libyan lord. From such he drinks: to you, the slaves allot The Beneventine cobbler's four-lugg'd pot, A fragment, a mere shard, of little worth, But to be truck'd for matches-and so forth. VER. 69. but lo! a jasper there,] He alludes, as the commentators have observed, to Virgil, who places such a stone in the hilt of Æneas' sword: 66 atque illi stellatus iaspide fulva "Ensis erat." Juvenal has fallen into a little verbiage in what follows ;so, indeed, has his translator. This Beneventine was a VER. 77. The Beneventine, &c.] drunken cobbler called Vatinius. It would have been well if giving his name to an article of coarse pottery, had been his only claim to celebrity; but he had, unfortunately, others of a different nature. He possessed, says Tacitus, "a vein of ribaldry and vulgar humour, which qualified him to succeed as a buffoon; in which character he first recommended himself to notice: but he soon forsook his scurrility for the trade of an informer, and If Virro's veins with indigestion glow, They bring him water cool'd in Scythian snow: Or the coarse paws of some huge, raw-boned Moor, having, by the ruin of the worthiest characters, arrived at eminence in guilt, he rose to wealth and power, the most dangerous miscreant of those dangerous times." Tacitus adds, that when Nero was on his way to Greece, to earn immortal honour by his musical exertions, he stopped at Beneventum, where Vatinius entertained him with a show of gladiators. The "four-lugg'd pot" is mentioned by Martial, who is always to be found at the heels of Juvenal: "Vilia sutoris calicem monumenta Vatini 66 'Accipe; sed nasus longior ille fuit." Lib. XIV. 96. Here the allusion is evidently to the character given of him in the note. The noses or handles of the pot, indeed, were long, but the nose of the inventor was still longer: hinting at his pernicious sagacity in finding out charges against the objects of the Emperour's fear or hate. "Trucking broken pottery for matches" was an approved custom in the system of domestick œconomy at Rome, and is frequently mentioned by Martial : "Quæ sulfurato nolit empta ramento, VER. 87. Lib. x. 3. near the Latian way:] Because there, he might be mistaken for a spectre : the Latian way, as I have |