Seafaring in Juvenal 12, Horace, Sermones 1.1 and De rerum natura 2

The opening to De rerum natura 2 has the reader join the speaker atop the fortress of philosophy (2.7–8) to look down upon the shipwreck of a life that most people lead (2.1–4):

This trouble at sea is a metaphor for ambition and, more pertinently, the pursuit of wealth. Both context and Roman literary convention regarding seafarers suggest an identification of the Lucretian seafarer as a fortune-seeking merchant uel sim. As the Lucretian speaker makes clear a few lines after the opening of his second proem, the trouble at sea is implicitly connected to the pursuit of money. People, he says, are struggling (like sailors on a rough sea) ‘to surface to the level of the highest riches and to take possession of things’ (ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri, 2.13).Footnote ⁹

It is conventional in Roman poetry, particularly in the late Republican and Augustan periods, to associate sailing with the pursuit of material gain. An emblematic example is found in the first of Horace's Carmina, where a merchant (mercator, 1.1.16) first despairs of his trouble at sea while praising the otium and fields of his village, but soon thereafter repairs his vessels and sets out once more, all because he ‘can't learn to tolerate modest means’ (indocilis pauperiem pati, 18). In other words, one sails because one is greedy, or at least acquisitive. The topos of the dangers of seafaring is almost never about naval battles or heroic voyages but about merchantry and greed. On this point, David Konstan (Reference Konstan2008) 35 identifies the man in trouble at sea in Lucretius’ second proem as an ‘audacious trader whose unnatural greed lures him to incur the perils of the sea’.

A moment at the opening of Horace's own first satire not only provides further evidence for the Roman linkage of seafaring with profit-seeking but also may draw on the scene depicted at De rerum natura 2.1–4 in an intertext not discussed previously in Horatian scholarship.Footnote ¹⁰ As Horace writes, ‘when the southern winds are buffeting his ship, the merchant [says]: “being a soldier is better”’ (Sermones 1.1.6–7: mercator nauim iactantibus Austris: | ‘militia est potior’). The merchant's ship is in trouble, as in Lucretius, and the Horatian iactantibus Austris echoes the Lucretian turbantibus … uentis (2.1). The perspective has, however, been inverted: whereas in De rerum natura the speaker is looking upon and passing judgement on the turbulent life of a sailor, here the point of view shifts to the sailor that the Lucretian speaker was observing.Footnote ¹¹ In Horace, we get to hear the sailor's voice. The merchant wishes he were a soldier instead – but the soldier, as Sermones 1.1.4–5 has already shown, is likewise dissatisfied with his profession, and would prefer to be a merchant.

This mempsimoiria theme satirises the foolish concerns of sailors and soldiers, just as the speaker and reader of De rerum natura 2 look down from on high at the anxious lives of sailors on a stormy sea (2.1–4) and soldiers in the midst of battle (5–6). And in Horace, the sailor is explicitly a merchant (mercator, Sermones 1.1.6); Edward Morris (Reference Morris1968) 25 points out that the terms nauta and mercator can be used interchangeably. The merchant in question is furthermore an unhappy victim of greed. Trouble at sea is a popular and characteristically (albeit not exclusively) Epicurean metaphor for anxiety or moral turbulence, and indeed later in the same Horatian satire stormy waters appear with just this meaning: ‘somebody who wants for just the little amount that's actually needed doesn't drink water perturbed with muck or lose his life on the waves’ (qui tantuli eget quanto est opus, is neque limo | turbatam haurit aquam neque uitam amittat in undis, 1.1.59–60, cf. Aufidus acer, the rough waters of the river Aufidus, 1.1.58).Footnote ¹² If you are not greedy, you will not feel compelled to set out onto the waters for commercial gain. That the text of Lucretius also lends itself to such an identification with mercantile seafaring, combined with the fact that Horace's satire draws on Lucretius’ scene in its own moralising images of marine trade, strengthens the case for an allusion to the Lucretian proem in Juvenal 12. The luxury-trader Catullus is in effect a counterpart of the merchant implied by the storm scene in De rerum natura.

Specific verbal echoes also direct the reader of Juvenal 12 to the opening of Lucretius’ second book. The Juvenalian speaker discusses mortal dangers and freedom from the anxiety they cause (securi … pericula, 12.82), in answer to similar considerations in the Lucretian proem (tua sine parte pericli, 2.5; quantisque periclis | degitur haec aeui, 15–16, cf. 16–19, cited below; uacuum pectus … curaque solutum, 46; curaeque sequaces, 48). Juvenal's stormy shadows (tenebrae, 12.18) pick up on a distinctive term for anxiety and shadowy fear in the opening of Lucretius’ second book (2.15, 54, 56, 58, 59).

Furthermore, the pragmatic life-advice offered by the Juvenal-ego in poem 10, the programme poem for the fourth book of satires – ‘pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body’ (orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano, 356), part of his recommendations for ‘a life free from anxiety’ (tranquilla … uita, 364) – is the same as what the Lucretius-ego claims is all that humans really need to live a good life (2.16–19):

The speaker in poem 12 is of the same mind as the speaker in poem 10. The latter satire's interest in sound mind and sound body appears throughout poem 12 (at e.g. 12.15–18, 33–6, 48–9, 55–9, 70, 81–2), and the basic message of the Catullus sequence in poem 12 is that, as in De rerum natura 2, the dangerous and anxious undertaking of marine merchantry is a foolish risk to life and limb, and a sign of an unsound mind. Taken together, these references show that Juvenal 12 alludes to Lucretius both verbally and thematically, echoing the Lucretian speaker's concern with the curae and pericula that come of seafaring and wealth-seeking.

Democritus, the Lucretian gaze and Juvenal 10, 12 and 14

Juvenal 10 draws a famous portrait of Democritus in a position much like the wise, aloof observers of the proem to De rerum natura 2. This version of Democritus – the originator of the atomist natural philosophy espoused by Epicureanism – finds the troubles of others sweet and pleasurable enough to cause laughter: ‘Democritus used to shake his lungs with unending laughter … he'd laugh at the anxieties and also the joys of the commonfolk, sometimes even their tears’ (perpetuo risu pulmonem agitare solebat | Democritus…, ridebat curas nec non et gaudia uolgi, | interdum et lacrimas, 10.33–4, 51–2). The term cura is a key Epicurean watchword, though not exclusively so, and may look forward to a markedly Lucretian juncture of cura and metu in Juvenal 14 (as I note below).

Democritus here embodies the perspective of the Lucretian speaker in the opening of De rerum natura 2, the perspective of a wise man separated from mundane concerns who takes pleasure from observing the foibles of others.Footnote ¹³ (Observing the foibles of others is a fundamental part of what satire does, and a key technique for both satiric and philosophic teaching.) In this programmatic Juvenalian satire, the description and activity of Democritus primes readers for the aloof, philosophic, Lucretian enjoyment of others’ troubles that is on display in Juvenal 12. And the passage on Democritean laughter in poem 10 is couched within a rejection of greed, just as is the ‘sweet’ telling of Catullus’ woes in poem 12.

In that poem, Catullus’ troubles on the ocean blue (12.17–61) are significantly more protracted and technically detailed than those of his anonymous Lucretian predecessors. Yet the moral message of the first half of the poem is basically the same as that of De rerum natura 2.1–19. The Juvenal-ego even spells it out for us: ‘but who else, who in any part of the cosmos nowadays would really dare to prefer his life over silver and his safety over material goods?’ (sed quis nunc alius, qua mundi parte quis audet | argento praeferre caput rebusque salutem?, 12.48–9).Footnote ¹⁴ Edward Courtney (Reference Courtney1980) ad loc. claims that audet ‘makes the compliment back-handed … it requires an act of resolution for Catullus to abandon wealth in order to retain life’. Rather, I argue that the satirist uses Catullus’ rational response to this situation to highlight just how out of control the rest of the world has become, a world full of debased and greedy people like the legacy-hunters who serve as the subject matter of the second half of this poem. Grasping for wealth is stressful, risky, and even life-endangering. It is folly – and yet Juvenal's Catullus is unique in his willingness to part with his wealth rather than with his life.Footnote ¹⁵

Since this shipwreck scene in Juvenal can be seen as his own Lucretian suaue mari magno moment, the poem's satiric speaker thus takes on the role of the philosophically serene observer, akin to Democritus in poem 10. The role is a comfortable fit because the speaker of poem 12, like the speaker of De rerum natura, fashions a didactic relationship with his reader throughout the entire poem.Footnote ¹⁶ The Juvenalian speaker finds the occasion ‘sweet’ in the very first line (natali, Coruine, die mihi dulcior haec lux, ‘Corvinus, this day is sweeter to me than my birthday’), explicitly because of his friend's survival and homecoming.Footnote ¹⁷ The comparative dulcior matches the Lucretian – and Epicurean – dulcius at De rerum natura 2.7. Similarly, upon their safe entry into harbour, the sailors are described as securi, another Epicurean watchword (Juvenal 12.82, cf. Horace, Sermones 2.4.50).Footnote ¹⁸ But the Juvenal-ego also calls the occasion ‘sweet’ for another reason, I believe: because the speaker himself second-handedly witnesses (in hearing Catullus’ tale) not only some of the ills from which he is safeguarded but also an excellent subject for satiric observation, inquiry, criticism and moralising (in the style of De rerum natura). The added benefit in the Juvenalian passage is that the reader, along with the speaker, can genuinely find the shipwreck scene ‘sweet’ because the frame narrative assures us that Catullus made it out of his seaborne magnus labor unscathed.

Catullus’ character itself plays a part in the dialogue of Juvenal 12 with De rerum natura. Scholars writing on this satire have generally taken a jaundiced view of both Catullus and his response to the sea-storm, on the assumption that Catullus is simply another vitiated, debased target of Juvenal's satire. Consequently they have attributed a similar scepticism to the speaker's perception of Catullus.Footnote ¹⁹ Larmour (Reference Larmour2005) 169 calls for us as readers to impose such cynicism upon the text: ‘[w]e can only assume that Catullus’ spectacular “renunciation” is purely self-serving’. Such an assumption is neither necessary nor recommended by the text itself, and the dismissive reference to ‘self-serving’ actions is not particularly relevant.

Sacrificing material goods to save one's own life is indeed inherently self-serving, but the philosophic recommendation to avoid seafaring in the first place on account of the dangers it presents is also self-serving, since in both instances the course of action endorsed boils down to self-preservation. The course recommended by the speaker of De rerum natura can be seen as self-serving, too.Footnote ²⁰ Thus I would suggest that the ‘self-serving’ aspect of Catullus’ actions should not be taken unambiguously to undercut the philosophic approval of his decisions. The spectacle and heroism of Catullus’ casting his goods overboard can perhaps be attributed more to the satirist's dramatisation than to Catullus’ own motives – since, after all, it is the satiric speaker who is narrating Catullus’ story to the reader, not Catullus himself.

Moreover, I propose another way of looking at Catullus, a way that takes into account the Lucretian intertext and that may better reflect the Juvenalian speaker's own point of view. Catullus responded as he should have, not only given the exigencies of his situation but also considering the Lucretian scenario. In De rerum natura, the seafarer is essentially passive, whereas in Juvenal, Catullus gets both action and speech: ‘“pour overboard what's mine”, Catullus kept saying, “all of it”’ (‘fundite quae mea sunt’ dicebat ‘cuncta’ Catullus, Juvenal 12.37).Footnote ²¹ Overboard go his luxury commodities, his ‘basic goods’ (res utiles, 12.52), and even his ship's mast.Footnote ²² This response is exactly what the Lucretian speaker would want Catullus to do in such a situation. Better not to chase lucre across the waves. But in adverse circumstances, focus on what matters – the minimum needed to sustain your life – and forget the rest.

Compare in De rerum natura the passage shortly after the suaue mari magno opening of book 2, on how illness lingers just as long regardless of the kind of coverings you have, rich or poor (2.34–6):

Again, the point is that luxuries are superfluous. These lines furthermore lead into a passage (2.37–53) that Konstan (Reference Konstan2008) 51 terms Lucretius’ ‘ironic satire on the notion that wealth or power can provide security against death’, and throughout this portion of the book's proem, in the words of Don Fowler (Reference Fowler2002) 99, ‘the useless riches are sneeringly mocked’. The quest for riches overseas is in vain, the Lucretian speaker tells us, because it needlessly endangers you and the riches themselves do you no good when you are in distress. Juvenal 12 enacts this very lesson for the unfortunate Catullus, complete with his own useless fancy-purple cloth (12.38–9). Catullus, in turn, learns his lesson – and puts it into practice.Footnote ²³

Second-readers, those experiencing this Juvenalian poem for the second time after reading the remainder of Juvenal's corpus, can furthermore contrast Juvenal 14.287–304, a shipwreck scene where the response is greedy – the wrong answer.Footnote ²⁴ In this poem, the speaker starts with a critique of bad parenting and moves from there into an attack on greed, of which the storm scenario furnishes a ready example. There are Lucretian echoes in this satire, too. Juvenal's tantis parta malis cura maiore metuque | seruantur (‘things begotten at the expense of such misfortunes/ills are protected by means of greater anxiety and fear’, 14.303–4) alludes to De rerum natura 2.19, where cura … metuque appears in the same position of the line (quoted above). This conjuncture of metus and cura is seen again at De rerum natura 2.48 (metus hominum curaeque sequaces, ‘peoples’ fears and tenacious anxieties’).Footnote ²⁵ The speaker of Juvenal 14 invokes here the anxious concern linked in De rerum natura with the greedy acquisition of wealth. Part of the fear in Juvenal 14.303, furthermore, is the fear of death that Lucretius’ poem identifies as the source of greed, anxiety and other emotions that prevent the attainment of Epicurean ataraxia, which in turn is the proper goal of life expressed at De rerum natura 2.17–19. This alternative, less desirable, scenario for what to do when faced with trouble at sea reinforces the notion that Catullus in poem 12 did in fact do the right thing. And the Lucretian allusions in poem 14 confirm the role of De rerum natura in the background of poem 12.

Sacrifice in Juvenal 12, Lucretius and Epicurean thought

It might be objected that Epicurean opposition to the evils of religion and superstition are an obstacle to my argument for allusion to Lucretius, since Juvenal 12 book-ends the troubles-at-sea scene with descriptions of an animal sacrifice the speaker is offering in thanksgiving for his friend's safe return from sea travel. After all, the classic slogan for opposition to religion in Latin literature comes from De rerum natura itself (tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, ‘so great are the ills that religion has been able to encourage’, 1.101), while the Lucretian narrator tells us that the gods cannot possibly care about us (1.44–55 = 2.646–51, cf. 5.82 = 6.58 = Horace, Sermones 1.5.101: deos securum agere aeuum, ‘the gods live a life free from care’), and a distinctively Epicurean thread connecting poetry by Lucretius, Virgil and Horace expresses discomfort with animal sacrifice.Footnote ²⁶

Yet such an objection misapprehends both Epicurus’ own pragmatic approach to religious ritual and the Epicurean take on sacrifice at the time of Lucretius.Footnote ²⁷ According to the later testimony of the biographer of philosophers Diogenes Laertius, the last will and testament of Epicurus called for funerary offerings to be made to various members of his family, birthday offerings to be made to his brother, and memorial services to be held for him and friends – all of this in a continuation of Epicurus’ own ritual habit.Footnote ²⁸ These kinds of sacrificial offerings, small and in honour of dear ones and kept to reasonable expense (‘in accordance with what is possible’, κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν), are the same degree of modest sacrifices as the satirist figure promises in Juvenal 12, an unprepossessing thanks-offering (12.3–9, 83–90) that stands in stark contrast with the lavish sacrifices of captatores (12.98–120). Both before and after the storm story itself, the speaker says his sacrifices are not an extravagance, whereas captatores would sacrifice hecatombs – preferably of elephants, enslaved persons or their own marriageable maiden daughters – in order to get on good terms with a rich person on the verge of death. The offerings that Juvenal's speaker makes are modest, in line with the sort of modest ritual offerings Epicurus himself seems to have endorsed; the speaker's discussion of them functions as a ring composition around the story of Catullus’ troubles at sea.

Fragmentary passages of Philodemus’ On Piety, a Greek prose text of Epicurean philosophy produced in Italy and roughly contemporary with Lucretius, supply evidence that Epicurean thought during the Roman Republic endorsed a similar view of Epicurus’ teaching and practice on religious ritual. According to Philodemus, ‘Epicurus will appear both to have observed all [religious rituals] and to have encouraged his friends to observe them … and through his deeds themselves he is found to have taken part in all the festivals and sacrifices of his country’.Footnote ²⁹ A later fragment of the same work explains how Epicurus resolved what would seem to be a tension between his recommendations on ritual participation and his doctrine on the nature of the gods as separated from and unconcerned with all human affairs (On Piety 879–89):

For Philodemus’ version of Epicurus, at least, participation in religious rites was a matter of pious and lawful behaviour. The question of conflict between traditional and Epicurean conceptions of the divine is answered by two pivotal Epicurean technical terms, δόξαι and διαταράττοντες. The key to a successful Epicurean life is avoidance of anxiety, ataraxia, and in the circumstance of religious rituals the path to ataraxia involves avoidance of the δόξαι, opinions, of non-Epicureans about the gods. In Epicurean thought, δόξα can be correct or false, in contradistinction to αἴσθησις/sensus, ‘sense-perception’, which is flawless. So for Epicurus and his first-century successor Philodemus, to offer sacrifice was not a problem but a social obligation, just as long as the traditional beliefs that went along with the offering were discarded.

With this philosophical context, the presentation of sacrifice in Juvenal 12 appears authentically and securely Epicurean. The Juvenal-ego makes a modest offering in fulfilment of a social obligation to his friend and rejects both sacrificial largesse and behaviours that prevent ataraxia, such as sea-merchantry, legacy-hunting, false friendship and greed. That the rite is not done privately in the speaker's home but outside in public (sacro, quod praestat, rite peracto | inde domum repetam, ‘with the ritual that stands before me properly performed I'll thereafter return home’, 12.86–7) implies that it will include a sacrificial feast with someone, probably Catullus himself.Footnote ³⁰ A thanksgiving sacrifice in celebration of a friend's safety is not inconsistent with the pose of an Epicurean philosopher – and we should keep in mind that, in this poem as with most things in satire, it is nothing more than a pose.

The Epicurean pose is specifically Lucretian as well, as evidenced most clearly by the Juvenalian speaker's critique of the legacy-hunter's willingness to re-enact the sacrifice of Iphigenia: si qua est nubilis illi | Iphigenia domi, dabit hanc altaribus, etsi | non sperat tragicae furtiua piacula ceruae (‘and if he [a captator] has a marriageable Iphigenia at home, he'll put her on the sacrificial altars, even though he doesn't expect a clandestine substitute-sacrifice of a deer straight out of tragedy’, 12.118–20). Uden (Reference Uden2015) 198–9 rightly argues that these lines call out the famous Iphianassa scene in De rerum natura (1.80–101). In Lucretius, as in the legacy-hunter's sacrificing spree, there is no Euripidean escape-hatch for the death of the officiant's daughter, who is ‘silent out of fear’ in Lucretius (muta metu, 1.92) and voiceless also in Juvenal, and whose marriageability is emphasised by each author (nubilis, Juvenal 12.198; uirginis … uirgineos … Hymenaeo … nubendi tempore, De rerum natura 1.84, 87, 97–8). Both scenes depict a cloak-and-dagger atmosphere: in Lucretius, Agamemnon's ‘assistants are hiding the tool of slaughter’ (ferrum celare ministros, 1.90) and in Juvenal the piacula not to be expected there are characterised as ‘secretive’ (furtiua, 12.120). The Lucretian stinger quoted at the beginning of this section, ‘so great are the ills that religion has been able to encourage’, would be a natural fit after Juvenal 12.120. In each poem the critique is not of sacrifice wholesale – pace Uden (Reference Uden2015) 199, who sees in the Juvenalian speaker ‘the crazed fanatic of the philosophical tradition condemning sacrificial ritual’ – but rather of the extremities of the practice. The critique of overblown sacrifices in Juvenal 12 is therefore totally consistent with Epicurean discourses on and practices of sacrifice, and moreover is directly informed by the Lucretian critique of sacrifice in De rerum natura 1.Footnote ³¹

Juvenal 12 and Persius 6 on friendship, captatio and responding to shipwrecks

So how do the Epicurean storm scene and the question of sacrifice help explain the rant about captatio that headlines Juvenal 12? The seeming disjointedness of its components is provocative, but ultimately traces back to the poem's underlying theme, friendship.Footnote ³² Susanna Braund (Reference Braund2004) 419 writes that ‘friendship is the central theme – true friendship, as shown by Juvenal in his celebration of his friend's survival, and false friendship, as shown by the legacy-hunters’. The distinctions between good and bad sacrifice, between small-scale thanksgiving and greedy ritual largesse, map onto the two main parts of the poem, onto the Juvenal–Catullus relationship versus the generic legacy-hunters, and onto the theme of friendship true and false. Juvenal's narrator spells it out in the contrast between the sacrifice given ‘on account of my friend’s return’ (ob reditum … amici, 12.15–16) and his curse against the captator Pacuvius in the poem's final lines (128–30), that he live forever ‘and have no friend and be befriended by nobody’ (nec amet quemquam nec ametur ab ullo, 130).

Highet (Reference Highet1949) 268 even saw this poem's thematic focus on friendship as evidence for the Juvenalian speaker's late adoption of an Epicurean subject position: ‘Of all the three main sects, it was only Epicureanism which paid so much attention to friendship … only Epicureanism that ranked friendship, as Juvenal does, above the ties of the family.’ My reading of the Juvenalian storm scene as Lucretian underscores this point, that the good paradigm of friendship on display in Juvenal 12 is particularly Epicurean in character. The purpose of friendship in Epicurean philosophy is, as are most good things, to aid in the attainment of ataraxia. Friends accomplish this end for themselves and for each other both by serving as a reliable, reciprocal source of support in the face of adversity and by providing fellowship for the Epicurean lifestyle.Footnote ³³ So in Juvenal 12, the narrator confirms his support for Catullus with the thanksgiving sacrifice, possibly supplying one that Catullus himself cannot now afford – and either way, the narrator undertakes an act of fellowship that will result in the opportunity for a simple, Epicurean picnic akin to the one described at De rerum natura 2.29–33. In doing so, the Juvenal-ego directs his own and his friend's thinking away from anxiety by adopting the suaue mari magno position. The friendship between the Juvenal-ego and Catullus, a friendship marked by ritual offerings that regard not the self but others, is a positive model, in contrast to the utilitarian conception of friendship (reserved for rich men on their death beds) and the self-serving, self-regarding sacrificial profanities exhibited by captatores.

Friendship is the theme of another principal site for Juvenalian troubles-at-sea allusion in poem 12, namely Persius 6.27–37:

In poem 6, the Persius-ego recommends not to worry about what others have or what they think about you, not to worry about wealth, and not to worry about skimping and penny-pinching for the sake of your heirs. The two lines prior to the storm passage endorse a comfortable lifestyle within one's own means (messe tenus propria uiue et granaria (fas est) | emole. quid metuas? occa et seges altera in herba est, ‘Live as far as you can on your own crop and use up your grain stores – it's okay. What do you have to fear? Just harrow, there's another harvest in the grass’, 6.25–6). Persius’ speaker brings in the shipwreck scenario as an objection to this basic advice.Footnote ³⁴ The speaker responds to this objection not by advising frugality in order to have money to give to friends in need, but rather generosity when the moment of need comes. Persius in this passage presents another kind of philosophical tale, another kind of concern about death and friendship.

Juvenal 12 echoes, expands, rearranges and ultimately reverses the features of Persius’ scene. In each, the narrator presents a shipwrecked friend who has lost a fortune at sea (trabe rupta and remque omnem … condidit Ionio, Persius 6.27–9; Juvenal 12.52–62 for the loss of the mast, cf. trunca puppe at 12.79, and 12.37–47 for the pouring overboard of luxury goods). Each poet of course describes a seafaring disaster, but more noteworthy is that both describe traditional ritual responses to such disasters – thanksgiving offerings made by survivors – and even discuss offerings made by heirs (Persius 6.33–6) or would-be heirs (the Juvenalian captatores). Juvenal's words directly refer to Persius’ as well, with each author using inops (Persius 6.28, 32; Juvenal 12.67), heres (Persius 6.3; Juvenal 12.95) and incolumis (Persius 6.37; Juvenal 12.16) to fill out their tales, in addition to the expected vocabulary of ship and sea. Juvenal expands Persius’ eleven lines into a scene that takes up about half of poem 12.

Juvenal's reconfiguration also offers a somewhat more positive story than Persius. In Juvenal, the speaker offers a thanksgiving sacrifice to the gods on his ‘altar-turf’ (caespes, 12.2), instead of needing to share caespes (Persius 6.31) with a friend so unlucky that his gods have been shipwrecked alongside him (29–30).Footnote ³⁵ The destruction of the ship's mast in Persius appears as an ablative absolute without agency (trabe rupta, 6.27), so that the naufrague is a victim of force majeure, while in Juvenal it is the prompt and necessary smart action of Catullus himself that destroys the mast (reccidit ut malum ferro summitteret, ‘it got to the point that he put the mast under the iron’, 12.54). And the survivors of the Juvenalian storm with their shaven heads (12.81–2) rework the mendicant survivor wielding a painted tablet whose fate is to be avoided in Persius (6.32–3, cf. 1.89–90 and Juvenal 12.27–8, 14.301–2): the latter must beg for his livelihood after his disaster, while the former are secure enough to be able to take Lucretian joy in recounting theirs. The ‘chatty dangers they narrate’ (garrula … narrare pericula, 12.82) are not only the Juvenalian replacement of Persius’ caerulea tabula (6.33) but also the substance of this portion of Juvenal's poem itself.

The expansion and reconfiguration of the Persius 6 source text ultimately serves to reverse the earlier satirist's shipwreck scene. Each scene involves friends and heirs as well as victims of troubles at sea, but who exactly has the heirs is different. In Persius, the heir belongs to the friend of the shipwrecked person, while in Juvenal the victim is the one with heirs. The result of the change is a point opposite to the thrust of Persius’ original: there, the victim's friend can anticipate punishment by his heir for selflessly giving some of his wealth to his now-destitute friend, whereas the Juvenalian speaker cites the living heirs of Catullus the victim (tres habet heredes, ‘he has three heirs’, 12.95) as proof of his selfless goodwill in offering sacrifice, which he avers is not out of interest in becoming an heir to Catullus.

Accordingly, the performances of sacrificial ritual described in each poet are diametrically opposed, with Persius’ heres failing to do an honest job of venerating his deceased testator but Juvenal's speaker promising a sacrifice consistent with obligation and ritual propriety (sacro, quod praestat, rite peracto, ‘with the ritual that stands before me properly conducted’, 12.86) on behalf of someone from whom he does not stand to inherit. Again, Juvenal's scenario is markedly less pessimistic than that of Persius, whose zero-sum dichotomy between helping a friend and pleasing an heir is rejected by the Juvenal-ego in a friendship that persists despite there being no expectation of material gain. The heres of Persius matches instead the captatores of Juvenal, greedy third parties who, in contrast to the victim's friend, pervert religious practice for their own gain.Footnote ³⁶

I also suggest that the shipwreck in Persius 6 responds in a couple of places to the shipwreck in the opening of De rerum natura book 2. The basic scenario Persius offers is in part a suaue mari magno situation, with the primary narrator and his interlocutor both observing from a safe distance the troubles at sea of another; the placid, geographically remote spot where the Persius-ego spends the winter and contemplates the storm scenario is described at 6.6–17. The decision the interlocutor faces – whether to help a friend in need even if it reduces the value of his own estate – not only represents a source of anxiety from which the Persius-ego is himself free, but also reflects Epicurean considerations of friendship.Footnote ³⁷ A chief benefit of having and being friends for an Epicurean is the security they provide you in hard times, plus the ataractic effect gained from confirming this future security when you yourself help a friend in turn. This mutual assurance is one reason why Epicurus seems to have rated friendship higher than family, just as the interlocutor in Persius is about to do. The poem's opening address to the speaker's friend Bassus, too, emphasises the Persius persona's ataraxia, marked by securus (6.12, 13).

Moreover, in Persius the vows or votive offerings made by the shipwreck victim (either in his moment of crisis or before his departure on the waves) are marked as ‘deaf’ (surdaque uota, 6.28), i.e. unheard by the gods. The transferred epithet here tells us that at least in this instance the gods were unconcerned with mortal affairs, as the Lucretian narrator asserts is the case generally (De rerum natura 1.44–9, esp. 49, nec bene promeritis capitur, ‘and [the divine] is not affected by propitious good deeds’). Persius’ reuse of the adjective surdus to describe the cinnamon in the annoyed heir's funeral-offering as stale (cinnama surdum, 6.35) prompts the reader to consider a double inefficacy in this sacrifice as well. First, not only is the heir's offering a cheap half-measure, but also – if vows to the gods fall on deaf ears – ritual offerings to them may likewise fall on deaf noses, so to speak, just as they do in De rerum natura. Second, the punchline to the Persius passage is that the heir's ‘revenge’ is one taken posthumously, and the heir's incolumis at 6.37 is forcefully ironic when directed at someone who is already dead.Footnote ³⁸ In this, too, I see some Lucretian influence: why should the friend of Persius’ naufrague care about a faulty offering after he is dead, and conversely why should the heir imagine that such faultiness will affect the deceased? In the Lucretian argument against the fear of death, those close to dying are exhorted not to imagine that they will be affected by anything after the moment they die (De rerum natura 3.870–93), while the deceased's survivors are exhorted not to mourn overmuch for someone whose ability to be moved by mourning or grief has ceased (3.894–911). Compare how the Persius-ego, just after the storm passage, dismisses a hypothetical concern for criticism of a lavish funeral: ‘could you really be afraid of that from beyond the grave?’ (haec cinere ulterior metuas?, 6.41).

The particulars of Juvenal's shipwreck plot in poem 12 show the Lucretian model winning out over Persius’. As I argued in my discussion of sacrifice above, Juvenal's poem embraces an Epicurean conception of sacrifice. This section's explication of the more positive Juvenalian take on friendship has in turn shown that an Epicurean–Lucretian model of friendship overcomes the profit-seeking friendship motives of Persius’ heir and Juvenal's legacy-hunters. Juvenal's speaker rejects the social ‘Sophie's choice’ presented at Persius 6.27–37 between a needy friend and a greedy heir. Persius’ speaker goes on to say that one should not be miserly to please one's heir, but the spectre of the antagonistic inheritor plagues the speaker throughout the rest of the poem. The Juvenal-ego starts from the very position the Persius-ego recommends but cannot quite attain, given the amount of time he spends haranguing his heir: an Epicurean self-separation from society. The Juvenalian speaker concludes his litany of the extravagant sacrifices of legacy-hunters with the sarcastic stinger ‘I praise my citizen’ (laudo meum ciuem, 12.121), akin to English ‘bully for him’ or ‘good on you’. This backhanded compliment and the following, final, lines of the poem serve to distance the speaker from captatores and wealthy testatores alike, giving preference to a placid life of friendship as depicted in the poem's opening and implied by contrast in the poem's conclusion (nec amet … nec ametur, 130, translated above).

Finally, Juvenal 12 responds to and revises the recommendations about posthumous actions found in both Lucretius and Persius. The Lucretius-ego argues that you should not care about what happens after your death, nor should your bereaved be concerned about you once you have died. The main speaker in Persius 6 suggests (at 31–7) that concern for post-mortem ritual care is natural (even if illogical), and that the bereaved will care about your testament – and may treat your corpse or memory as if they can affect you after death. (The uses of surdus and incolumis, however, undercut the speaker's claims, as does his disparagement of the idea of fear from beyond the grave.) Juvenal's passage discards the un-Epicurean concerns expressed by Persius’ speaker about the treatment of the interlocutor's body after death. In Juvenal, as in Lucretius, valuing your life over your material possessions means not thinking about wills or other posthumous affairs in moments of mortal crisis. But, as in Persius, there is sometimes reason to think past death, at least for the would-be prey of captatores, because your estate can outlast you, and in that way some part of you is indeed tangible and vulnerable after death.