The Satires … translated: with explanatory and classical Notes, relating to the Laws and Customs of the Greeks and Romans …

JUVENAL.

Published by London, for J.Nicholson, Cambridge; and sold by S.Crowder and J.and F.Rivington, 1777., 1777

About this Item

8vo, pp.xvi, 416, with a half-title; English and Latin texts printed on facing pages; a very good copy in contemporary mottled calf, rebacked; armorial bookplate of Sir Thomas Hesketh, 3rd baronet (1777 1842), booklabel of Easton Neston Library; with scattered contemporary underlining and marginal annotations throughout.Third edition of this parallel-text translation edited by Thomas Sheridan, first published 1739. Contemporary annotations (one is dated 1779) provide succinct summaries of the subject of each satire. SatireII for example 'scourges the Hypocrisy, Effeminacy, & Bestiality of his Countrymen, as contradistinguished from the vilest & most libidinous Turpitude of Women. He is particularly severe upon that abominable intercourse between the male Sex, which was then highly fashionable.' Several marginal notes point to the annotator having spent time in the West Indies: on p.42 a reference to a beauty treatment of bread and asses' milk has the footnote: 'It is a custom with some of the Ladies at Montserrat … to retire for a fortnight to refresh, as they call it. The discipline is exceedingly severe. They run their faces over with ye oil of ye cushoo [cashew] nut. This lying on for a fortnight brings off all the skin of their faces like a mask'. Elsewhere (p.172) he notes that the hiring of beadles to lash servants 'is still practiced in the West India Colonies'; and (p.174) that a switch of leather 'is used upon the domestic slaves by their Mistresses in the West India Colonies, & is called a Cow-Skin'. Other notes seek contemporary parallels for Juvenal's satire the circle of hangers-on in SatireV is the same as 'prevails now at royal Levees, where Courtiers of Distinction form a Circle in the Drawing Room'; in SatireII a reference to adultery ('Dives erit, magno quae dormit tertia lecto') 'is applicable to his present Majesty the Baby King of Denmark with his late Queen & Count Halk' (i.e.ChristianVII, Queen Caroline Matilda, and Struensee); and the shepherd's cave that opens SatireVI ('A bitter satire upon the Roman Women. Here the poet is all Nerve, & exuberantly eloquent') is likened to the 'social hovel' in which 'some of the Highlanders in Scotland live at this day'. And finally, the annotator glosses the obscene lines 'callidus & christae digitos impressit aliptes', describing an erotic post-exercise massage: 'the Clitoris so called from its resemblance to a Cock's Comb'. ESTC T123506. Language: English.

Seller Inventory # C3567

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Satires … translated: with explanatory and classical Notes, relating to the Laws and Customs of the Greeks and Romans …
• Publisher: London, for J.Nicholson, Cambridge; and sold by S.Crowder and J.and F.Rivington, 1777.
• Publication Date: 1777