{"id":1802,"date":"2009-04-02T07:45:23","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T15:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=1802"},"modified":"2009-04-02T07:45:23","modified_gmt":"2009-04-02T15:45:23","slug":"piety-and-virtue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/piety-and-virtue\/","title":{"rendered":"Piety and Virtue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Been reading with much enjoyment\u00a0Juvenal’s Tenth Satire<\/a>, possibly the gloomiest major poem ever\u00a0written. George Gilbert Ramsay<\/a>, who translated it for the Loeb Classical\u00a0Library, calls it “a profoundly depressing and pessimistic poem.” Just my cup of tea. There’s a 1693 translation, only patchily good, by\u00a0John Dryden\u00a0on\u00a0Google Books<\/a>. Dr. Johnson used the Tenth Satire as a model for his terrific “Vanity of Human Wishes”<\/a> (1749).<\/p>\n

Here’s what I want to know. After 345 lines of telling us how pointless everything is, Juvenal perks up at the end with an appeal to trust to\u00a0the Gods. In Dryden’s translation:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What then remains? Are we depriv’d of will,
\nMust we not wish, for fear of wishing ill?
\nReceive my counsel, and securely move;
\nIntrust thy fortune to the Powers above.
\nLeave them to manage for thee, and to grant
\nWhat their unerring wisdom sees thee want:
\nIn goodness as in greatness they excel;
\nAh that we lov’d ourselves but half so well!
\nWe, blindly by our headstrong passions led,
\nAre hot for action, and desire to wed;
\nThen wish for heirs:\u00a0 but to the gods alone
\nOur future offspring, and our wives are known;
\nTh’ audacious strumpet, and ungracious son.
\n\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Yet not to rob the priests of pious gain,
\nThat altars be not wholly built in vain;
\nForgive the gods the rest, and stand confin’d
\nTo health of body, and content of mind:
\nA soul, that can securely death defy,
\nAnd count it nature’s privilege, to die;
\nSerene and manly, harden’d to sustain
\nThe load of life, and exercis’d in pain:
\nGuiltless of hate, and proof against desire;
\nThat all things weighs, and nothing can admire:
\nThat dares prefer the toils of Hercules
\nTo dalliance, banquet, and ignoble ease.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The path to peace is virtue:\u00a0 what I show,
\nThyself may freely on thyself bestow:
\nFortune was never worshipp’d by the wise;
\nBut, set aloft by fools, usurps the skies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But would a man of Juvenal’s time and place\u00a0\u2014 he was a Roman, writing around\u00a0a.d.<\/span>\u00a0120\u00a0\u2014 really have believed in the rather cheesy Roman pantheon? (Which at that\u00a0point included three or four dead emperors, whose personal foibles were known to all.) We don’t actually know anything about Juvenal<\/a>, other than\u00a0what he tells us in his poems, but is it likely? Wasn’t official Roman religion strictly for the common folk\u00a0\u2014 and not much regarded even\u00a0by them? That’s been my impression from reading authors like Gibbon and Balsdon. Any classicists out there care to give an opinion?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Been reading with much enjoyment\u00a0Juvenal’s Tenth Satire, possibly the gloomiest major poem ever\u00a0written. George Gilbert Ramsay, who translated it for the Loeb Classical\u00a0Library, calls it “a profoundly depressing and pessimistic poem.” Just my cup of tea. There’s a 1693 translation, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1802"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1804,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1802\/revisions\/1804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}