Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis & Aulus Persius Flaccus

Ivvenalis. Persivs. – Venetiis in ædibus Aldi. Mense Augusto. M. DI. In-8°.

78 feuillets. Il y a deux éditions sous la même date; l’une, sans l’ancre Aldine, sans chiffres, et avec la souscription ci-dessus, en lettres italiques. L’autre est incontestablement postérieure de plusieurs années, parce qu’elle est chiffrée, qu’elle porte l’ancre sur le titre, et a cette souscription en capitales: venetiis in aedibvs aldi, et andreae soceri. Mense avgvsto M. D. I. Comme la première, elle a 78 feuillets, cotés seulement jusqu’à 76, les 73^e et 74^e y étant deux fois.

Cette mention du beau-père et du gendre réunis, ne peut être citée comme prouvant que dès 1501 ils étoient associés, puisque cette date de 1501 est prouvée fausse, et que si leur association, dont on ne voit point de traces avant 1508, eût existé dès 1501, elle eût été, dans ce long intervalle de sept années, décélée par quelque autre indice.

Dans la Bibliothèque du roi d’Angleterre (British Museum) est un exemplaire sur vélin, très orné, et venant de Smith, de la première de ces deux éditions. On en voit aussi un chez lord Spencer, avec lettres peintes, ornements sur le titre, et une grande miniature; un autre, à la reliure de Grolier, dans la Bibliothèque impériale, à Vienne. Un exemplaire sur papier, de la seconde édition, aussi à la reliure de Grolier, est conservé dans notre Bibliothèque. Il y en avoit un sur vélin chez le comte d’Elci, et un chez le duc de Cassano. Il m’est impossible de dire exactement si dans ces exemplaires il y en a ou non de la seconde édition.

Dans l’Index editionum, qui est en tête des deux éditions de Juvénal, données à Leipsic, 1801 et 1819, 2 vol. in-8°, par M. G. A. Ruperti, avec d’amples notes, les éditions Aldines sont indiquées d’une manière inexacte; ce qu’il est d’autant plus indispensable de relever, que, d’ailleurs, cette notice est bien rédigée. M. Ruperti cite trois éditions Aldines, non pas les deux de 1501, et celle de 1535, ce qui seroit exact, mais 1° une sans date, Aldina l^e; 2° une de 1501; 3° une de 1535. On voit qu’il n’a connu qu’une des deux éditions datées de 1501, et qu’il croit Aldine l’édition sans date qui est la première des contrefacteurs lyonnois, et qui reproduit très inexactement la première de 1501. Cette édition sans date, lui paroit être la premiere de toutes, celle que l’on a copiée, parce que les mots grecs de l’Aldine y sont restés en blanc; mais cette lacune a pour cause le manque de caractères grecs dans l’imprimerie des Lyonnois, qui au reste ne tarderent pas à s’en procurer d’assez mauvais.
— Antoine Auguste Renouard: Annales de l’imprimerie des Alde, histoire des trois Manuce et de leurs éditions. Troisième édition. Paris: Jules Renouard, 1834. pp. 29-30.

We have printed, and are now printing, the Satires of Juvenal and Persius in a very small format, so that they may more conveniently be held in the hand and learned by heart (not to speak of being read) by everyone.”[1]

Es handelt sich um den vierten der kleinen Oktavdrucke[2] in der für dieses Format neu geschaffenen Kursiv,[3] nach den aldinischen Vergil-, Horaz- und Petrarca-Ausgaben desselben Jahres.

Schweiger: „Erste, ächte Aldine, welche e. neue Recens. des Textes enthält aus Hdschr. u. ältern Ausgg. - Sie hat den Anker des A. nicht, die Schlussschr. ist mit Cursiv gedr.“[4]

Diese Aldus-Ausgabe hat nicht allein der Schönheit ihres Satzes wegen — dies hat sie mit anderen gemein — besondere Aufmerksamkeit verdient, sondern auch weil ein weiterer Druck mit der Jahresangabe 1501 im Kolophon existiert, der jedoch mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit vierzehn Jahre später die Pressen verließ,[5] und mindestens zwei Lyoner Contrefaçons aus den Jahren 1502 und 1503 versuchten, ihr den Rang strittig zu machen.

Die Aldine enthält die Satiren Juvenals und Persius’: Juvenal: [131], [1 weiße] Seiten; Persius: [23], [1 weiße] Seiten; Lagenkollation: Juvenal: A-G⁸, H¹⁰; Persius: a⁸, b⁴. Die maximale Blattgröße dürfte Fletcher zufolge 166 × 103 mm betragen;[6] es versteht sich, daß der geneigte heutige Sammler sich notgedrungen mit etwas weniger zufrieden geben wird. Zwei Kolophone befinden sich im Buch, der erste auf fol. H₁₀r: „VENETIIS APVD ALDVM.“ sowie ein weiterer, ebenfalls einzeilig gesetzter auf fol. b₄r „Venetiis in ædibus Aldi. Mense Augusto. M. DI.“.

Die Kolophone der anderen Aldus-Ausgabe des Jahres 1501 (= 1515) sind dagegen zwei- bzw. dreizeilig in Antiquamajuskeln gesetzt: „VENETIIS IN AEDIBUS ALDI, | ET ANDREAE SOCERI.“ sowie „VENETIIS IN AEDIBUS ALDI, ET | ANDREAE SOCERI. MENSE | AVGVSTO M.D.I.“

Beide Ausgaben kollationieren identisch, jedoch weist die zweite das aldinische Holzschnittsignet auf dem Titel, sowie Blattzählung auf, und die Lagensignaturen sind nicht wie in der ersten mit römischen Ziffern, sondern indisch-arabischen versehen. Auch textlich sind zahlreiche Unterschiede festzustellen, deren auffälligster die häufige Ersetzung von „et“ durch „&“ sein dürfte. Es handelt sich also um einen Neusatz.[7]

Ein weiteres Kriterium, wichtig vor allem bei Mischexemplaren, sind die Wasserzeichen. Zur ersten Ausgabe wurden zwei Sorten Papier verwandt: solches mit drei stilisierten Bergen sowie Kreuz darüber dazu der Gegenmarke: „AB“ und ein weiteres nur mit der Gegenmarke „A“. In der zweiten ist das Wasserzeichen durchgängig ein Kardinalshut ohne Gegenmarke.[8]

An vier Stellen im Text der Aldus-Ausgabe des Jahres 1501 ist griechischer Satz zu finden: Im Juvenal auf fol. E₇r und fol. F₇v, beides die dritte aldinische griechische Type[9], im Persius auf fol. a₁r sowie auf fol. b₄r unter dem Kolophon, dies beides die vierte aldinische griechische Type, was nahelegt, daß diese zwischen der Satzlegung beider Teile fertiggestellt wurde.

Es existieren zwei, wohl Lyoner Contrefaçons des folgenden und des Jahres 1503, die sich vom aldinischen Original durch Zeilenlängen und Satz, das fehlende Griechisch — „... cette lacune a pour cause le manque de charactères grecs dans l’imprimerie des Lyonnois“ (Renouard, p. 30 — sowie die Fortlassung des Kolophons auf fol. b₄r unterscheiden.[10]

Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) (c. 60–140), Roman poet and satirist, was born at Aquinum. Brief accounts of his life, varying considerably in details, are prefixed to different MSS. of the works. But their common original cannot be traced to any competent authority, and some of their statements are intrinsically improbable. According to the version which appears to be the earliest:—

“Juvenal was the son or ward of a wealthy freedman; he practised declamation till middle age, not as a professional teacher, but as an amateur, and made his first essay in satire by writing the lines on Paris, the actor and favourite of Domitian, now found in the seventh satire (lines 90 seq.). Encouraged by their success, he devoted himself diligently to this kind of composition, but refrained for a long time from either publicly reciting or publishing his verses. When at last he did come before the public, his recitations were attended by great crowds and received with the utmost favour. But the lines originally written on Paris, having been inserted in one of his new satires, excited the jealous anger of an actor of the time, who was a favourite of the emperor, and procured the poet’s banishment under the form of a military appointment to the extremity of Egypt. Being then eighty years of age, he died shortly afterwards of grief and vexation.”

Some of these statements are so much in consonance with the indirect evidence afforded by the satires that they may be a series of conjectures based upon them. The rare passages in which the poet speaks of his own position, as in satires xi. and xiii., indicate that he was in comfortable but moderate circumstances. We should infer also that he was not dependent on any professional occupation, and that he was separated in social station, and probably too by tastes and manners, from the higher class to which Tacitus and Pliny belonged, as he was by character from the new men who rose to wealth by servility under the empire. Juvenal is no organ of the pride and dignity, still less of the urbanity, of the cultivated representatives of the great families of the republic. He is the champion of the more sober virtues and ideas, and perhaps the organ of the rancours and detraction, of an educated but depressed and embittered middle class. He lets us know that he has no leanings to philosophy (xiii. 121) and pours contempt on the serious epic writing of the day (i. 162). The statement that he was a trained and practised declaimer is confirmed both by his own words (i. 16) and by the rhetorical mould in which his thoughts and illustrations are cast. The allusions which fix the dates when his satires first appeared, and the large experience of life which they imply, agree with the statement that he did not come before the world as a professed satirist till after middle age.

The statement that he continued to write satires long before he gave them to the world accords well with the nature of their contents and the elaborate character of their composition, and might almost be inferred from the emphatic but yet guarded statement of Quintilian in his short summary of Roman literature. After speaking of the merits of Lucilius, Horace and Persius as satirists, he adds, “There are, too, in our own day, distinguished writers of satire whose names will be heard of hereafter” (Inst. Or. x. 1, 94). There is no Roman writer of satire who could be mentioned along with those others by so judicious a critic, except Juvenal. The motive which a writer of satire must have had for secrecy under Domitian is sufficiently obvious; and the necessity of concealment and self-suppression thus imposed upon the writer may have permanently affected his whole manner of composition.

(...)

On the whole no one of the ten or twelve really great writers of ancient Rome leaves on the mind so mixed an impression, both as a writer and as a man, as Juvenal. He has little, if anything at all, of the high imaginative mood — the mood of reverence and noble admiration — which made Ennius, Lucretius and Virgil the truest poetical representatives of the genius of Rome. He has nothing of the wide humanity of Cicero, of the urbanity of Horace, of the ease and grace of Catullus. Yet he ​represents another mood of ancient Rome, the mood natural to her before she was humanized by the lessons of Greek art and thought. If we could imagine the elder Cato living under Domitian, cut off from all share in public life, and finding no outlet for his combative energy except in literature, we should perhaps understand the motives of Juvenal’s satire and the place which is his due as a representative of the genius of his country. As a man he shows many of the strong qualities of the old Roman plebeian — the aggressive boldness, the intolerance of superiority and privilege, which animated the tribunes in their opposition to the senatorian rule. Even where we least like him we find nothing small or mean to alienate our respect from him. Though he loses no opportunity of being coarse, he is not licentious; though he is often truculent, he cannot be called malignant. It is, indeed, impossible to say what motives of personal chagrin, of love of detraction, of the mere literary passion for effective writing, may have contributed to the indignation which inspired his verse. But the prevailing impression we carry away after reading him is that in all his early satires he was animated by a sincere and manly detestation of the tyranny and cruelty, the debauchery and luxury, the levity and effeminacy, the crimes and frauds, which we know from other sources were then rife in Rome, and that a more serene wisdom and a happier frame of mind were attained by him when old age had somewhat allayed the fierce rage which vexed his manhood.
— Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Cambridge: University Press, 1911. Vol. XV, pp. 610 & 612-613.

Endromidas Tyrias et femineum ceroma
quis nescit, uel quis non uidit uulnera pali,
quem cauat adsiduis rudibus scutoque lacessit
atque omnis implet numeros dignissima prorsus
Florali matrona tuba, nisi si quid in illo
pectore plus agitat ueraeque paratur harenae?
quem praestare potest mulier galeata pudorem,
quae fugit a sexu? uires amat. haec tamen ipsa
uir nollet fieri; nam quantula nostra uoluptas!
quale decus, rerum si coniugis auctio fiat,
balteus et manicae et cristae crurisque sinistri
dimidium tegimen! uel si diuersa mouebit
proelia, tu felix ocreas uendente puella.
hae sunt quae tenui sudant in cyclade, quarum
delicias et panniculus bombycinus urit.
aspice quo fremitu monstratos perferat ictus
et quanto galeae curuetur pondere, quanta
poplitibus sedeat quam denso fascia libro,
et ride positis scaphium cum sumitur armis.
dicite uos, neptes Lepidi caeciue Metelli
Gurgitis aut Fabii, quae ludia sumpserit umquam
hos habitus? quando ad palum gemat uxor Asyli?

The Tyrian Endromides and the Ceroma for women who is ignorant of? Or who has not seen the wounds of the Plastron,which she dints with unwearied foil, and attacks with her shield, and goes with precision through her exercise? A matron most pre-eminently worthy of the trumpet of the Floralia. Unless indeed in that breast of hers she is plotting something deeper, and training in real earnest for the amphitheatre. What modesty can a woman show that wears a helmet, and eschews her sex, and delights in feats of strength? And yet, in spite of all, this virago would not wish to become a man. For how small is our pleasure compared to theirs! Yet what a goodly array would there be, if there were an auction of your wife's goods: belt and gauntlets and crest, and the half-armor for the left leg! Or if she shall engage in a different way of fighting, you will be lucky indeed when your young wife sells her greaves. Yet these very same women perspire even in their muslin; whose delicate frames even a slip of sarcenet oppresses. See! with what a noise she makes the home-thrusts taught her by the trainer, and what a weight of helmet bows her down, how firmly she plants herself on her haunches, in what a thick mass is the roll of clothes. Then smile when, laying aside her arms, she takes her oblong vessel. Tell me, ye granddaughters of Lepidus or blind Metellus, or Fabius Gurges, what actress ever wore a dress like this? When would Asylus' wife cry Hah! at the Plastron?
— Translated by Lewis Evans, New York: Harper, 1881.