The Incurable Wound of Telephus: Noise, Speech and Silence in Juvenal’s Satire 1

Abstract

Intertexts, Vol. 8, No. 1,2003 The Incurable Wound of Telephus: Noise, Speech and Silence in Juvenal’s Satire 1 David H. J. Larmour T E X A S T E C H U N I V E R S I T Y We are surrounded by noise. And this noise is inextinguishable. It is out¬ side—it is the world itself—and it is inside, produced by our living body. ... In the beginning is the noise, the noise never stops. It is our appercep¬ tion of chaos, our apprehension of disorder, our only link to the scattered distribution of things. Hearing is our heroic opening to trouble and difiEiision . Michel Serres, The Parasite 126 1 . I n t r o d u c t i o n The genre of Roman verse satire, inaugurated by the outspoken Republican poet Lucilius, then developed by Horace into amore mellow and cautious form in the era of Augustus, and given adensely allusive character by the Stoic Persius under the rule of Nero, reaches its culmination—at least in terms of picturesque rhetorical power—in the poems of Juvenal.Although they were composed during the relatively benign reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, many of Juvenal’s Satires, especially those which constitute the first book (1-5), look back to the far more dangerous times of the emperor Domitian. Given the parrhesiastic character of satire in general, and the foundation of Roman satire in Lucilius’s much-vaunted libertas (roughly, “free speech” or “free outspokenness”), it is not surprising that aprimary tension in Juvenal’s poetry is the relationship between speech and silence, especiallywithregardtothespeakerorthepersonawhoaddressestheread¬ er. Roman satire—the only Latin literary form without an obvious Greek model*—is agenre whose main preoccupation is subjectivity, and especially howtheRomanmalecitizensubjectspeaksandwhatrestrictionsareplaced uponhisspeaking.PaulAllenMillerhasrecentlyencapsulatedthesignifi¬ cance of libertas ior Roman satire as follows: Satire, then, is the most Roman of genres because it is the form whose sub¬ ject is libertas. ...The subject of satire is both the form’s subject matter and the speaking subject who is empowered to forge this hash of humorous observations, personal reproof, and grotesque degradation. As the history of aristocratic self-formation becomes more problematic in relation to changing political and historical circumstances, satire becomes amore inward and ironic genre. Satura is wholly Roman, then, because its evolu¬ tion is inseparable from the intertwined political, aesthetic, and legal issues 5 6 I N T E R T E X T S that define what it means to be civis Romanus [a Roman citizen]. (Intro¬ duction, section 33) Again, it is Juvenal, writing furthest into the imperial era, who gives the ten¬ sion between speaking and not speaking its most extended treatment. My purpose here is to examine how this issue is presented in the programmatic Satire J, vrith particular reference to the opening (1-21) and closing 0~^7-7\) lines of the poem. Together, these two sections of the poem con¬ stitute adiptych loaded with directions for interpreting and understanding the fifteen diverse and unpredictable satires which follow in the rest of the c o r p u s . The opening of any poetic collection demands special attention, and this is especially true for agenre in which how the satirist positions himself, in relationtobothhispredecessorsandhiscontemporariesintheliteraryland¬ scape, is always aprominent issue.^ In addition, it is precisely in those lines standingoutsidethe“rhetoricofexemplarity”whichdominatesJuvenal’s Sarimthatweshouldlookforpointsofentryintoatextpock-markedwith challengestoconventionalmodesofinterpretation.Insofaraswecanspeak ofastandardpatternfortheJuvenaliansatire,itconsistsofanintroduction followedbyaseriesofexempla,whichillustrateor,rather,ramhomethe point the satirist wishes to make, not only through their linguistic artistry Mdobservationalacuity,butalsobysheerweightofnumbers.InSatire1, or example, as soon as the introduction ends, the speaker launches into a catalogue of t^es and individuals he finds offensive (22-35): the eunuch who takes awife, Mevia who goes hunting like an Amazon, the barber who as become amillionaire, the dissolute Egyptian Crispinus who was one of Domitian’shenchmen,Mathotheshysterlawyer{causidicus),informers {delatores)likeMassaandCams,andsoon.Whiletheseexemplatellusmuch about ^e targets and techniques of this kind of satire, it is also helpful to scmtimzethosepartsofapoemwhichpreface,link,orinsomeotherway standapartfiromthelistsofexamples—suchasextendednarrativeordescrip¬ tions, direct speech or dialogue, references to the author or the reader, webs ofallusionthatstretchacrosspoemsorbooks,theintroductions,andthe suddenendingsthatbringtoahalt(eveniftheydonotnecessarily close’)mostoftheSatires.Tospeakofa“standardpattern”inconnection withagenreasfi-ee-wheelingandfluidassatire,letaloneacollectionasvar¬ iegatedasJuvenal’s,mayseemriskilyreductive,butthetermisheresimplya device to characterize arecurring discursive strategy in...