Table Of ContentCAMBRIDGE CLASSICAL STUDIES
General Editors
M. F. BURNYEAT, M. K. HOPKINS, M. D. REEVE, A. M. SNODGRASS
BEYOND ANGER
A STUDY OF JUVENAL’S THIRD BOOK OF SATIRES
BEYOND ANGER:
A study of Juvenal’s third Book of Satires
S. H. BRAUND
Lecturer in Classics, University of Exeter
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE
NEW YORK NEW ROCHELLE MELBOURNE SYDNEY
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
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© Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge 1988
First published 1988
Printed in Great Britain by the University Press, Cambridge
British Library cataloguing in publication data
Braund, S. H.
Beyond anger: a study of Juvenal’s third
book of Satires .-(Cambridge classical
studies).
1. Poetry in Latin. Juvenal-Critical
studies
I. Title
87T.01
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data
Braund, S. H.
Beyond anger: a study of Juvenal’s third book of satires / S. H.
Braund.
p. cm. - (Cambridge classical studies)
Bibliography.
Includes indexes.
ISBN 0 521 35637 7
1. Juvenal. Satura 3. 2. Satire, Latin-History and criticism.
3. Irony in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PA6446.A63B73 1988
871'.01-dcl9 88-2858 CIP
ISBN 0 521 35637 7
UP
CONTENTS
Preface page vii
1 Juvenal and anger 1
2 Satire 7 : irony, a double-edged sword 24
3 Satire 8: moralist or nihilist? 69
Appendix to Chapter 3 The theme of true
nobility 122
4 Satire 9: ironist and victim 130
5 Book III : beyond anger, irony 178
Notes 199
Bibliography 277
Index 298
PREFACE
Beyond Anger began life as an undergraduate essay, grew into
a Ph.D. dissertation, and continued to develop thereafter into
this monograph. Hence the three central chapters (Chapters
2-4) contain the substance of my Ph.D. work, detailed
analyses of the three poems in Juvenal’s third Book of
Satires.
Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to Juvenal and to Book
III ; here I present my view of the earlier Satires in Books I and
II. In Chapter 5 I consider Book III as a whole, as a single
poetic entity. I also take the opportunity to consider the
development of Juvenal’s satirical technique throughout his
œuvre. I have tried to make Chapters 1 and 5 accessible to the
undergraduate and non-specialist reader: these chapters can
be read together (separately from Chapters 2-4) as an
introduction to Juvenal.
The book was written in Cambridge, Leicester and Exeter,
and I am glad to acknowledge the tremendous help given by
friends and colleagues at all three Universities. Deserving
special mention are Ted Kenney, who has read many versions
of my work with patience and prudent criticism and has given
me the benefit of his rich knowledge of literature, ancient and
modern; John Henderson, who encouraged me to work on
Juvenal initially and has continued to pose shrewd, probing
and productive questions; Duncan Cloud, who has always
been a great tonic to my confidence. My Ph.D. examiners,
Gavin Townend and Jim McKeown, made a number of
valuable comments; Peter Wiseman and, most recently,
Michael Reeve have read the typescript to my great benefit
and saved me from errors and excessive length. To all these
scholars I am most grateful : Beyond Anger owes an enormous
amount to their wisdom. Of the imperfections which remain I
vii
PREFACE
exonerate them entirely. I should also like to thank the staff of
Cambridge University Press for their vigilance and speed. But
above all, I wish to thank my husband Dave, sine quo non.
Exeter University S.H.B.
September 1987
CHAPTER I
JUVENAL AND ANGER
I
Anger is widely regarded as Juvenal’s hallmark, saeua
indignatio was Scaliger’s verdict over 400 years ago and
‘savage indignation’ was Juvenal’s prime contribution to and
influence upon the satire of the English Renaissance. The view
that Juvenal is an ‘angry satirist’ has persisted to the present
day. But this view is valid only for Juvenal’s early Satires. It
is crucial to realise that Juvenal’s angry approach is confined
to the first two of his five Books.1 Consequently, while the
labelling of Juvenal as an ‘angry satirist’ is fully applicable to
Books I and II, another description is needed for the remaining
three Books.
W. S. Anderson was the first scholar of modern times to
progress beyond superficial labels to a more detailed investiga
tion of Juvenal’s anger. His six articles on Juvenal, all of major
importance and now conveniently gathered together in Essays
on Roman Satire, either address themselves to or consider in
passing the question of Juvenal’s indignatio. Most important
is his theoretical treatment of the subject of anger, ‘Anger in
Juvenal and Seneca’, in which he uses two of Seneca’s
dialogues, the De Ira and the De Tranquillitate Animi, to
illuminate Juvenal’s use of indignatio. The article starts with a
useful statement on Juvenal’s use of the persona, or, to put it
another way, the distinction we must draw between Juvenal
the poet and the voice we hear speaking in the Satires, whom
Anderson, following Kernan, calls ‘the satirist’ but whom I
prefer to call ‘the speaker’, in order to underline the dramatic
quality of satire: we should regard Juvenal’s poems as a series
of dramatic monologues delivered in the first person.2
Anderson’s article then gives a full exposition of the ‘tensions’
inherent in this angry creation of Juvenal’s, tensions which
1
JUVENAL AND ANGER
amount to weaknesses in his character - weaknesses which the
Roman audience, familiar with Seneca’s critique of anger in
the De Ira, would have detected readily. Throughout, he
brings out the moral ambiguity of indignatio/ira, which may
be prized as a noble emotion but also criticised as a serious
fault.3 Complementary to this article is Anderson’s considera
tion in ‘Juvenal and Quintilian’ of the importance to Juvenal
of rhetorical theory and his clarification of Juvenal’s angry
satire in "‘Lascivia vs. ira: Martial and Juvenal’ by contrasting
it with the predominance of the witty point in Martial.
Anderson puts theory into practice in his long exposition of
the angry style in the first Book of Satires - ‘ Studies in Book
I of Juvenal’. His article on Book II, ‘Juvenal 6: a problem in
structure’, is not explicitly devoted to analysis of indignatio,
but many of the incidental observations are pertinent. Of pre
eminent interest for the present study is Anderson’s essay on
‘The programs of Juvenal’s later Books’. In this article, after
a succinct summary of the main features of the angry
approach, Anderson maintains that the angry style is limited
to Books I and II and is abandoned after Satire 6 and that
each new Book thereafter presents a new poetic programme.
The importance of the approach outlined by Anderson here
will emerge in the course of this study.
Anderson’s work has been of the highest importance in
promoting an understanding of how anger functions in
Juvenal. Yet it remains possible to expand and to refine his
thesis both in his theoretical definition of anger and in his
application of that theory to produce an analysis of Books I
and II. It is crucial to establish Juvenal’s satiric technique in
the first two Books as a basis for understanding the novelty of
the third Book.4
indignatio may be conveyed by what is said and by how it is
said — the familiar division of content and style, of manner
and matter. The stylistic features of anger are rhetorical
questions and angry exclamations, expressed in short, swift,
insistent sentences, emphasised by repetition, pointed by
anaphora and punctured by apostrophe. Anger uses the
extremes of expression, from lofty hyperbole to vulgar and
2
