314 Juvenal's pessimism 



villa-building, is a favourite topic in the satires. All this side of con- 

 temporary life, viewed as the fruit of artificial appetites and unneces- 

 sary passions, is evidence of a degeneracy that has been going on ever 

 since the beginnings of society. And the worst of it is that those who 

 thrive on present conditions are the corrupt the servile and the mean, 

 from whom no improvement can be hoped for. Juvenal's picture of 

 present facts as he sees them is quite enough to justify his pessimism. 

 As a means of arresting degeneration he is only able to suggest a 

 change 1 of mind, in fact to urge people to be other than they are. 

 But he cannot shew where the initiative is to be found. Certainly not 

 in the mongrel free populace of Rome, a rabble of parasites and 

 beggars. Nor in the ranks of the wealthy freedmen into whose hands 

 the chief opportunities of enrichment have passed, thanks to the im- 

 perial jealousy of genuine Romans and preference of supple aliens. 

 These freedmen are the typical capitalists: they buy up everything, 

 land included; and Romans who despise these upstarts have neverthe- 

 less to fawn on them. Nor again are leaders to be found in the sur- 

 viving remnant of old families. It is a sad pity, but pride of birth, 

 while indisposing them to useful industry, does not prevent them from 

 debauchery or from degrading themselves in public. Financial ruin 

 and charges of high treason are destroying them : even were this not 

 so, who would look to such persons for a wholesome example? Neither 

 religion with its formalities and excitements, nor philosophy with its 

 professors belying their moral preaching, could furnish the means of 

 effecting the change of heart needed for vital reform. 



No, it was not from the imperial capital, the reeking hotbed of 

 wickedness, that any good could come. And when Juvenal turns to 

 the country it is remarkable how little comfort he seems to find in the 

 rural conditions of Italy. Like other writers, he refers to the immense 

 estates 2 that extended over a great part of the country, both arable 

 and grazing lands (saltus), the latter in particular being of monstrous 

 size. We cannot get from him any hint that the land-monopoly, the 

 canker of the later Republic, had been effectually checked. Nor indeed 

 had it. One of the ways in which rich patrons 3 rewarded clients for 

 services, honourable or (as he suggests) often dishonourable, was to 

 give the dependant a small landed estate. The practice was not new. 

 Maecenas had given Horace his Sabine farm. But the man who gave 

 away acres must have had plenty of acres to give. True, some of the 

 great landlords had earned 4 their estates by success in an honourable 

 profession : but the satirist is naturally more impressed by the cases of 

 those, generally freedmen, whose possessions are the fruit of corrupt 



1 x 356-66. z vii 188-9, IX 54-5. etc - 8 IX 



4 vn 188-9, case of Quintilian. 



