Men of Letters: Masculinity and Money in Juvenal 7

Various aspects of Juvenal’s seventh satire have long been debated, especially the identity of the emperor mentioned in the opening section (Helmbold and O’Neil 1959), the sincerity of the apparent sympathy shown to the unfortunate learned men described (Wiesen 1973, Braund 1988, Tennant 1996), and the unity of the poem (Townend 1973, Braund 1988), which consists of a series of five vignettes, each of which focuses on a type of educated man who needs patronage (poets, historians, <i>causidici, rhetores,</i> and <i>grammatici</i>); the order is probably meant to reverse that of Suetonius’ <i>De uiris illustribus.</i> In this paper, I will look at a very different aspect of the seventh satire: the way it relates education and the use of the voice to questions of masculine identity. Each vignette explains the way that the need for money created by the lack of patronage affects that occupation. The financial benefits of patronage were traditionally disguised by the language of <i>amicitia</i> and <i>gratia,</i> so when patronage is absent, the financial rewards (however paltry) of the five occupations discussed come into focus as wages, undercutting the self-image promoted by the elite: men are self-sufficient and may earn profits but not salaries. The humiliations suffered by the men in the poem hint at a kind of feminization as they become undervalued employees of the rich, significantly linked to several of the professions that carried the stigma of <i>infamia</i>, such as charioteer. Poets fare worse than <i>amicae</i>; <i>rhetores</i> are subject to beatings; lawyers make money only if they are already rich; the educated <i>grammaticus</i> is employed at low wages to do little more than prevent boys from masturbating in class. Crucial to elite male identity is the control of money, so that excess spending by anyone in a man’s household could call into question his virility (Larmour 2005), as satire 6 repeatedly shows. By highlighting the way that lack of financial patronage hinders all but a few of these educated men, Juvenal probes an anxiety latent in Roman culture: education and training in public speaking are critical markers of elite status for men, yet they only function properly within the framework of influence and power transfer afforded by patronage. Once patronage has disappeared for most of these men, they employ their voices and intellects only in the service of others. In this sense they are reminiscent of Naevolus in the ninth satire: he provides physical virility which brings rewards to his patron while doing little for himself. The literati of poem seven, stripped of the title <i>amici,</i> trade their elite educations for virtually servile status. Thus the poem ends with the most basic sort of Roman educator, the <i>grammaticus,</i> since at its heart, elite education has become little more than sexual excess couched in the language of Cicero, Horace, and Vergil. Braund, S. 1988. <i>Beyond Anger: A Study of Juvenal’s Third Book of Satires.</i> Cambridge. Helmbold, W. C. and E. N. O’Neil. 1959.”The Form and Purpose of Juvenal’s Seventh Satire.” <i>CP</i> 54: 100-08. Larmour, D. 2005. “Lightening the Load: Castration, Money, and Masculinity in Juvenal’s Satire 12.” <i>Syllecta Classica</i> 16: 139-72. Tennant, R. J. 1996. “Tongue in Cheek for 243 Lines? The Question of Juvenal’s Sincerity in His Seventh Satire.” <i>Scholia</i> 5: 72-88. Townend, G. B. 1973. “The Literary Substrata to Juvenal’s Satires.” <i>JRS</i> 63: 148-60. Wiesen, D. S. 1973. “Juvenal and the Intellectuals.” <i>Hermes</i> 101: 464-83.