This Green and Yellow, the second one devoted to a portion of Juvenal's corpus, covers the long poem that constitutes Satires Book 2. The authors have previously collaborated on a selection of Martial's Epigrams (2003), with good results from their combined expertise on imperial literature and social history. This approach suits Juvenal's screed against Roman wives. The poem gets appropriate and up-to-date treatment as a satiric performance shaped by social traditions and trends.
The Introduction, a valuable resource, organizes discussion so as to put familiar issues in new light. For example, the section on Juvenal's ‘Life and Work’ dovetails from (flimsy) biographical information to a discussion of the poet's education and literary culture as reflected in his style. Several other sections dealing with the poem itself (‘Juvenal's Anti-Matrona’, ‘Misogyny in Literature’, ‘Persona’) progressively construct a historical and cultural framework for reading the satirist's misogynistic rhetoric. The rhetoric itself is ‘altogether literary and tralaticious’ (35), but the speaker's distress and preoccupations are shaped by the complex realities and attitudes of imperial Roman society. He is an extreme traditionalist, ‘represent[ing] as normative what is in actuality quite exceptional’ (40). Obsessed with those faded norms of female behaviour and with the marital ideal of concordia, he is bound to find endless provocations to discordia in this world where many women are more visible, free and influential than he would like and even his fellow men have evolved. Thus Watson and Watson extend the work of late twentieth-century persona studies, which objectified the satiric speaker but did not explore how that speaker might be engaging with specific historical conditions.
W. and W. illuminate the poem's thematic coherence and purposeful composition, without denying the stream-of-consciousness effect of the presentation. They examine several passages for representative themes and treatments that reflect Juvenal's attention to vignette structure, detail and internal allusion. A separate section (‘Juvenal's Style’) walks through the twenty-one lines on the Bona Dea rites, identifying elements of rhetoric and diction; this will be very useful for students. In other sections, readers are treated to an economical and up-to-date history of satire studies, an account of the questions and hypotheses relating to the ‘Oxford fragment’, and an outline of Juvenal's nearly 700-line text. The actual text that follows varies little from Clausen's OCT (1992); I observed several dozen differences in individual words, punctuation, line-order and spelling. All variant readings and corruptions are discussed in notes.
The commentary provides extensive interpretive context and models nuanced analysis of passages. One good example is the breakdown of lines 161–83, the complaint about the irritatingly perfect wife who resembles Cornelia and Niobe. W. and W. reveal interesting effects from the juxtaposition of Roman aristocratic traditions and mythological hubris. The later passage on the erudite wife (434–56) is shown to be inspired by reality, but creative in the details. Though Roman opinions on female education varied, many upper-class women clearly knew their literature. The satirist adds clever touches: the literary critic defends Dido (she thereby vexingly combines erudition and sympathy for female passion) and the rhetorically proficient wife is portrayed as an extension of an existing stereotype, the chatterbox. The commentary on the O-fragment is as thorough as the rest, though W. and W. are careful not to argue that the passage is authentic. Unpacking language and imagery, they show that the passage is as much about how the ‘normal’ man imagines the life of cinaedi as it is about wives' bad behaviour. Near the end are good notes on Juvenal's digression comparing his work with tragedy (634–8). W. and W. neatly observe that the passage converts a conventional literary boast (‘I am a Roman pioneer in a Greek genre’) into a fuming denial: these tales of wifely misdeeds are not tragic fictions.
In over two hundred pages of notes there are many such treasures, plus more digressive background from historiography, material culture and literature. On the other hand, perhaps because it would be less original a contribution, W. and W. do not do much in the area of Juvenalian intertextuality (for example, tracing common themes of invective or techniques for performing anger). One exception to note is the four-page Appendix on the difficult lines printed as 306–8; attempting to decipher the joke, W. and W. make interesting use of a passage from Satire 10.
My quibbles are very few. In such a commentary I would avoid the wording ‘J is thinking primarily of …’ (5–7n.). The note on lines 45–6 explains the rhetorical function of quid quod, but only with the note on O9 is there a translation of this favourite Juvenalian expression. On the aforementioned ‘perfect wife’ passage, I missed reference to Nepos' letters of Cornelia, which portray this matrona as a communicator of ideology herself and not just an object of admiration (cf. her statue, mentioned at 167–8n.). The name ‘Evans-Grubbs' is misprinted in the bibliography and relevant note. Small flaws of this kind are dwarfed by a sea of valuable scholarship and original analysis. There are plenty of helpful glosses (Juvenal is a challenging stylist and thinker), notes that are not just learned but entertaining, a great deal of up-to-date lexicographical discussion, commentary on matters from metre to topography, and an extensive bibliography reflecting the work's scholarly breadth and rigour. This excellent team of authors shows that fresh consideration and contextualization of Juvenalian satire can still lead to new discoveries, and raises hopes of future volumes in the same vein.
