Praise of good old times 313 



legend, shewing good old Romans, men of distinction, working on the 

 land themselves and rearing well-fed families (slaves included) on the 

 produce of meagre little plots of two iugera. An ex-consul 1 breaks off 

 his labours on a hillside, shoulders his mattock, and joins a rustic feast 

 at the house of a relative. The hill-folk of the Abruzzi are patterns of 

 thrifty contentment, ready to earn their bread 2 with the plough. But 

 the civic duties are not forgotten. The citizen has a double function. 

 He serves the state in arms and receives a patch of land 3 as his reward 

 for wounds suffered. He has to attend the Assembly before his wounds 4 

 are fully healed. In short, he is a peasant soldier who does a public 

 duty in both peace and war. The vital need of the present day 5 is 

 that parents should rear sons of this type. Here we have the moral 

 which these scenes, and the frequent references to ancient heroes, are 

 meant to impress on contemporaries. A striking instance 6 from his- 

 torical times is that of Marius, who is represented as having risen from 

 the position of a wage-earning farm-labourer to be the saviour of 

 Rome from the barbarians of the North. But the men of the olden 

 time led simple lives, free from the extravagance and luxury of these 

 days and therefore from the temptations and ailments that now 

 abound. The only wholesome surroundings 7 now are to be found in 

 out-of-the way country corners or the homes of such frugal citizens as 

 Juvenal himself. But these are mere islets in a sea of wantonness 

 bred in security : luxury is deadlier 8 than the sword, and the con- 

 quered world is being avenged in the ruin of its conqueror. Perhaps 

 no symptom on which he enlarges is more significant and sinister 

 from his own point of view than that betrayed in a passing reference 

 by the verbal contrast 9 between paganus and miles. The peasant is no 

 longer soldier: and in this fact the weightiest movements of some 250 

 years of Roman history are virtually implied. 



So much for an appeal to the Roman past. But Juvenal, like 

 Vergil before him, was not content with this. He looks back to the 

 primitive age 10 of man's appearance on earth and idealizes the state 

 of things in this picture also. Mankind, rude healthy and chaste, had 

 not yet reached the notion of private property: therefore theft was 

 unknown. The moral is not pressed in the passage where this de- 

 scription occurs ; but it is worth noting because the greed of men in 

 imperial Rome, and particularly in the form of land-grabbing and 



1 XI 86-9. 2 XIV 179-81. 3 XIV 159-63. 4 II 73-4. 5 XIV 70-2. 



8 vili 245 foil. For the error in this tradition see Madvig, kleine philologische Schriften 

 No 10. 



7 in 223-9. 8 vi 287-95, cf xi 77-131. 



9 xvi 32-4. See Hardy on Plin epist x 86 B, Shuckburgh on Sueton Aug 27, Tac hist 

 in 24 vos, nisi vincitis, pagani. This use is common in the Digest. 



10 vi 1-18, xv 147-58. 



