SCS-56: Roman Satire and Humor

Juvenal’s second Satire is the focus of a diverse and varied scholarship, including the narrator’s tirade about the sexual transgressions of elite, effete Roman men (Stewart: 309-332, Nappa 1998: 90-108 and 2018: 93-166, Walters: 355-67, and Freudenberg: 248-58), intertextual connections with Cicero, Vergil, and Lucan, and persona and identity (Fratantuono: 141-50, Celotto: 25-35, Uden: 65-66, and Ritter 2015: 83-99 and 2019: 250-74). However, there has been little attention given to Juvenal’s use of Republican exempla and imagery.

At Satires 1.2.37-8 Horace parodies two patriotic lines of Ennius to preface a litany of punishments encountered by adulterers when caught. The original Ennian lines, preserved solely by Porphyrio’s commentary on Horace, are (Annales 494-5, Skutsch): audire est operae pretium, procedere recte / qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere voltis.

This paper argues that bilingual puns in Pliny the Younger’s Letters are most effectively interpreted as instances of code-switching, “the alternation of two languages in conversation” (Gardner-Chloros, 11). Code-switching adds levity to the Letters, emphasizes Pliny’s connection to Cicero, and enables him to navigate tricky social situations.

Satirists love big fish. Domitian’s gigantic turbot in Juvenal 4 immediately springs to mind when one mentions satiric fish, but fish were popular as satiric symbols of excess and outlets for cultural uneasiness with Roman imperial maritime activity at least as far back as Lucilius. This paper analyzes one particular satiric fish, the mullet, as it swims from the pages of Horace to those of Seneca. Horace, in S. 2.2, castigates the absurdity of purchasing a three-pound mullet only to cut it up into small pieces anyway (ll. 33-4).

Juvenal’s sixth satire contains a number of textual problems, from minor variations in wording to the questions surrounding the O fragment. There are a number of obvious interpolations, and editors usually signal one or two desirable transpositions. When we come to 6.66-75, scholars commonly bracket line 65 as otiose, but they accept the surrounding passage as transmitted. I suggest here that two lines (71-72 Clausen) have fallen out of order and been reinserted in the right passage but in the wrong place.

Roman comedy uses the slave character to such an extreme extent that the role is indicative of the genre (Fitzgerald, 2000; 2019) and, moreover, the way in which the comedic slave is portrayed is central to their function (Freudenburg, 2001). Often, the comedic slave is either a trickster or a go-between for members of a familia, which entails acting outside the typical social hierarchy, usually with an eye toward mocking, duping, or defying their enslaver (McCarthy, 2004).