The satires of Juvenal / translated into English verse; by Charles Badham.

  • Juvenal.
Date:
1818
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The satires of Juvenal / translated into English verse; by Charles Badham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    47/450 (page 9)
    When he, by whom my earliest beard was mown. Could challenge senates with his wealth alone ; 40 From Nile,—aye from Canopus—when a slave, Crispinus, comes the sneers of Rome to brave, Recovering as he goes, with awkward air. The purple robe he knows not how to wear, V. 43. Recovering as he goes. I believe I have given this affair of the robe correctly, although the' phrase ‘ humero revocantc Lacernas ’ has perplexed the commentators. I con- ceive that the Egyptian merely wore his robe awkwardly and suffered it to slip from his shoulders, (this perhaps on account of the heat which made him loosen the latchet or cord that confined it) and hence that he was obliged ‘ revo- care' to recover it as he walked along.—In what manner he cooled his hand or his rings, none, I suppose, will venture to decide, but the traits are so personal, that on the first pub- lication of this satire, the individual meant would be known in an instant—the same verb ventilo recurs in another sense in Satire iii. ‘ Cursu ventilat ignem ’ blow s up the fuel (in the chaffing dish) by running. The refrigeration of the hand of Crispinus was, I am inclined to think, performed by his own lungs, and can fancy l see him engaged by turns in the double operations described above—both of them fit subjects for caricature. I subjoin the substance of a note of Dusaulx’s. The Romans had three sorts of rings. 1. Those which distin- guished the rank of the wearer ; 2. Marriage rings, and, 3. Chirographi or seals. From wearing one on each hand, they came to wear one on each finger, and then one on every joint. Their establishment of rings was so large that (says Lam- pridius) Heliogabalus would as soon have thought of wear- ing a shoe twice as the same] ring. For more concerning