“Some of my Best Friends…:” Reading Prejudice in Juvenal's Third Satire

Abstract

The editing of a text sometimes raises important questions about an author's social milieu and the nature of his art. In the passage below, the speaker is Umbricius, the "friend" whose departure from Rome so vexes the narrator of Juvenal's third Satire. 1 Among the litany of excuses offered for this leave-taking, Umbricius cites the hazards of urban life and the indifference of the city's wealthy classes to the plight of the less fortunate. These issues coalesce in the striking exemplum of a man who loses all his possessions in an apartment fire (3.203-11). The text of Willis' Teubner edition reads: 2 lectus erat Codro Procula minor, urceoli sex ornamentum abaci, necnon et parvulus infra cantharus et recubans rupto de marmore Chiron, 205 iamque vetus Graecos servabat cista libellos, et divina opici rodebant carmina mures. nil habuit Codrus-quis enim negat?-et tamen illud perdidit infelix totum nihil. ultimus autem aerumnae est cumulus, quod nudum et frustra rogantem 210 * Published in The Classical Journal 111.3 (2016). Thanks especially to Chris Nappa and the anonymous readers whose expert feedback on recent drafts greatly improved the present version. 1 3.1: quamvis digressu veteris confusus amici ("although unsettled by the departure of an old friend..."). On the use of the term amicus, see LaFleur (1975), (1976) 394-9; for confusus, Staley (2000) 85-6. Here and throughout, translations are my own. 2 Willis (1997) 31. nemo cibo, nemo hospitio tectoque iuvabit. The bed of Codrus was too small for Procula, six potikins formed the fixtures of his sideboard, together with, underneath, a little wine cup and a reclining Chiron hewn from marble, while an already old basket preserved Greek booklets and barbaric mice gnawed at the divine poems. Codrus had nothing, who would deny it? And yet this miserable man lost all that nothing. But the final dose of suffering is that, though naked and begging in vain, no one will offer him food or grant a welcoming shelter. I leave it to others to judge the novel solution offered in line 205, an emendation scrupulously attributed to Nisbet. 3 It is Willis' other departure from the status quo of recent editions that is relevant for the present discussion: the spelling of the poor man's name in lines 203 and 208. In Clausen's Oxford text, for example, he is not Codrus, but Cordus, a spelling that can be traced back to Knoche's edition. 4 Which version is correct, and how should we decide? Although broadly disseminated in editions of the Satires published in the second half of the twentieth century, Cordus is only supported by one manuscript, U. The others-including P, the most reliable-read Codro ... Codrus where intelligible. 5 This is what Housman printed in his 3 Nisbet (1989) 292. The MSS, which many editors follow, give recubans sub eodem marmore