Juvenalia

Peter Green, Richard Quick

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783196777
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

And now for something completely different - Simon Callow, theatrical treasure extraordinaire, reprises a success from early in his career. The writer, Juvenal born circa 55AD, wrote sixteen satires that attacked the decadence of Rome in its heyday. Here adapted by Richard Quick we are given a view into the moral decline that is as relevant now as it was back then.

SEQUENCE II

To POSTUMUS:

Postumus, are you really

Taking a wife?

You used to be sane enough – what

Fury’s got into you, what snake has stung you up?

Why endure such bitch-tyranny when rope’s available

By the fathom, when all those dizzying top-floor windows

Are open for you, when there are bridges handy

To jump from? Supposing none of these exits catches

Your fancy, isn’t it better to sleep with a pretty boy?

Boys don’t quarrel all night, or nag you for little presents

While they’re on the job, or complain that you don’t come

Up to their expectations, or demand more gasping passion.

Look around the arcades, try to pick out a woman

Who’s worthy of your devotion. Check every tier of seats

At all the theatres in town: will they yield one single

Candidate you could love without a qualm? When pansy

Bathyllus dances Leda, all fouettés and entrechats,

Just watch the women. One can’t control her bladder,

Another suddenly moans in drawn-out ecstasy

As though she were coming.

These are the women

Who’ll pay out fancy prices for the chance to defibulate

A counter-tenor, to ruin a concert performer’s voice.

One has a kink for ham actors. Are you surprised? What else

Do you expect them to do? Go ape on a good book?

‘Not one woman, out of so many, who meets your requirements?’

Assume one with beauty and charm, fertile, wealthy, her hall

A museum of old ancestral portraits, grant her

Virginity more stunning than all those dishevelled Sabine

Maidens who stopped the fighting could raise between them,

Make her a rara avis, a black swan or the like – still

Who could stomach such wifely perfection?

Censennia’s husband swears she’s the perfect wife: why so?

Because she brought him three million. In exchange he calls her chaste.

‘Then why does Sertorius burn with passion for Bibula?’

When you get to the root of it, what he loves isn’t his wife

But merely her face.

So, man, if you’re not going to love

Your lawfully wedded spouse, why marry at all? Why waste

Good money on a reception, or those cakes handed out at the end

To your well-gorged guests, when the party’s breaking up?

The bed that contains a wife is always hot with quarrels

And mutual bickering: sleep’s the last thing you get there.

This is her battle-ground, her station for husband-baiting:

In bed she’s worse than a tigress robbed of its young,

Bitching away, to stifle her own bad conscience,

About his boy-friends, or weeping over some way-out

Fictitious mistress. She keeps a copious flow

Of tears at the ready, awaiting her command,

For any situation: and you, poor worm, are agog,

Thinking this means she loves you, and kiss her tears away –

But if you raided her desk-drawers, the compromising letters,

The assignations you’d find that your green-eyed whorish

Wife has amassed! Suppose, though, you catch her in bed with

A slave, or some businessman?

For sheer effrontery, nothing

Can beat a woman caught in the act; her very

Guilt adds fresh fire to her fury and indignation.

I know the advice my old friends would give – ‘Lock her up

And bar the doors.’ But who is to keep guard

Over the guards themselves?

What was it (you well may ask) that bred such monsters, how

Do they come about? In the old days poverty

Kept Latin women chaste: hard work, too little sleep,

These were the things that saved their humble homes from corruption –

Hands horny from carding fleeces, Hannibal at the gates,

Their menfolk standing to arms. Now we are suffering

The evils of too-long peace. Luxury, deadlier

Than any armed invader, lies like an incubus

Upon us still, avenging the world he brought to heel.

Since Roman poverty perished, no visitation

Of crime or lust has been spared us.

There’s nothing a woman

Baulks at, no action that gives her a twinge of conscience

Once she’s put on her emerald-choker, weighted down her ear-lobes

With vast pearl pendants. What’s more insufferable

Than your well-heeled female? But earlier in the process

She presents a sight as funny as it’s appalling,

Her features lost under a damp bread face-pack,

Or greasy with vanishing-cream that clings to her husband’s

Lips when the poor man kisses her – though it’s all

Wiped off for her lover. She takes no trouble about

The way she looks at home: those imported Indian

Scents and lotions she buys with her lover in mind.

First one layer, then the next: at last the contours emerge

Till she’s almost recognizable. Now she freshens

Her complexion with asses’ milk. (If her husband’s posted

To the godforsaken North, a herd of she-asses

Will travel with them.) But all these medicaments

And various treatments – not least the damp bread-poultice –

Make you wonder what’s underneath, a face or an ulcer.

It’s revealing to study the details of such a woman’s

Daily routine, to see how she occupies her time.

If her husband, the night before, has slept with his back to her, then

The wool-maid’s had it, cosmeticians are stripped and flogged,

The litter-bearer’s accused of coming late. One victim

Has ...