A Companion to Persius and Juvenal by Susanna Braund and Josiah Osgood

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 407 Chapter Four, “Virtus and Voluptas,” explores the opposition between virtue and pleasure posited by Roman critics of Epicureanism. Its main theme is that virtus does not mean merely generic “virtue.” Instead, virtus is linked, both etymologically and conceptually , to manliness. Gordon cites many passages in Cicero that associate virtus with the endurance of pain for the sake of a man’s country and his people, and, for Cicero, identifying pain as the greatest evil is not merely vicious but “emasculating and effeminate” (111). Cicero’s and Seneca’s attacks on Epicureanism deploy the virtus/voluptas dichotomy, which Gordon labels “an irresistible alliteration,” and she catalogs the ways (usually gendered) that they describe their opposition. Gordon suggests that Cicero’s insistence that voluptas is an exact translation of =don} is fundamentally motivated by Cicero’s polemical agenda. She writes, “For Cicero, the Epicurean insistence that ‘the pleasures of degenerate’ are not the Epicurean pleasures is simply a refusal to acknowledge the definition of voluptas” (127). I find this unconvincing. Gordon herself admits that Lucretius uses the term voluptas unproblematically as the opposite of dolor (110), and that Cicero himself uses the term voluptas when describing the pleasure he takes in receiving a letter or in his integrity as consul (136–137). So Cicero’s construction of the virtus/voluptas dichotomy in works like On Ends may be tendentious, but not his translation of =don} by voluptas. The fifth chapter, “The Material Epicurean,” focuses on an Epicurean’s physical appearance , considering statues of Epicurus and other early Epicureans which fit Athenian ideals of masculinity while later hostile sources described Epicurus as sickly and connected this to his dissipation. Gordon also examines Cicero’s vehement attacks on Piso the Epicurean, in which Piso’s outward virile appearance is contrasted with his inner, well-camouflaged effeminacy. Gordon claims that Cicero’s speeches display what “an Epicurean” looks like for him (176), but I am not sure. Cicero reviled Piso in particular as a political rival and insisted that Piso’s vicious devotion to degenerate pleasure fell short of even the Epicurean ideal. The concluding chapter considers additional examples of anti-Epicurean invective. Gordon convincingly asserts that while they may initially appear as generic insults, with her preceding study in mind we see that they belong to a tradition of specifically anti-Epicurean gendered insults. But this raises the following question: “I have presented many stereotypes of Epicureans . . . . Can a real Epicurean be discovered among these texts?” (188). Gordon would like to see the Epicureans deliberately repudiate “manly” values, but she admits that whether they did so is unclear. I share her caution about how much this study teaches us about historical Epicureans. But Gordon’s book greatly helps us understand how the prototypical Epicurean was fashioned in the ancient world. Georgia State University Tim O'Keefe A Companion to Persius and Juvenal. Edited by Susanna Braund and Josiah Osgood. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 2012. Pp. xv, 612. Braund and Osgood's A Companion to Persius and Juvenal is an excellent book. Specialists , non-specialists, and students alike will find in this volume a comprehensive and 408 PHOENIX spacious approach to these challenging poets. Twenty-six other volumes have been published in Blackwell’s series of Companions to the Ancient World under the “Literature and Culture” heading; most of these claim as their territory a much broader body of material than the six poems of Persius and the sixteen poems of Juvenal. Limiting the enterprise to Persius and Juvenal avoids overlap with Blackwell’s Horace volume, minimizes overlap with volumes from other presses that discuss the whole Roman satiric tradition, and allows the specific qualities of these two poets to be explored in concentrated and productive ways. Osgood’s introduction, “Persius and Juvenal as Satiric Successors” (1–16), establishes a framework for reading Persius and Juvenal with a strong emphasis on their place as successors to a Roman satiric tradition established by Lucilius and consolidated and refined by Horace. Working from Philip Hardie’s analysis of how epic poets who write after Virgil intermingle themes of literary and political succession in their works,1 Osgood makes a strong...