Frigida Inguina

In a recent post I made brief mention of my father, whose lifelong passion has been sailing, and offshore racing in particular. Like most devoted yachties, he often affects an airy disregard for the vagaries of the weather, believing that even the most doom-laden sky presages nothing worse than a "passing shower". Not surprisingly, I was reminded forcibly of him when reading the following passage, from Juvenal's fourteenth satire.

Like most of Juvenal's satires, the fourteenth has a putative theme, namely the bad example that some parents set for their children. As always, however, he is inclined to ramble; the excerpt below occurs during a long digression on the topic of avarice, and at this point he is imagining a merchant undertaking a risky but potentially hugely profitable sea-journey. A disaster is looming, and Juvenal tells the hypothetical story with grim relish:

occurrunt nubes et fulgura: 'solvite funem!'
frumenti dominus clamat piperisve coempti,
'nil color hic caeli, nil fascia nigra minatur;
aestivum tonat.' infelix hac forsitan ipsa
nocte cadet fractis trabibus fluctuque premetur
obrutus et zonam laeva morsuque tenebit.
sed cuius votis modo non suffecerat aurum
quod Tagus et rutila volvit Pactolus harena,
frigida sufficient velantes inguina panni
exiguusque cibus, mersa rate naufragus assem
dum rogat et picta se tempestate tuetur.

"Clouds and thunder appear: 'Let out the sails!' cries the owner of the corn and pepper acquired. 'This dark sky means nothing, this black covering of cloud isn't threatening anything; it's just a summer storm!'. And perhaps the wretch will fall from his wrecked ship this very night; he'll be buried by the waves and pushed under, and he'll be desperately hanging on to his money-belt with his left hand, or maybe his teeth. But for this fellow, who just now wasn't content with all the gold swirling in the Tagus or the red sand of Pactolus, some rags to cover his freezing balls and some scraps of food will have to do. Meanwhile, he asks for a coin, this drowned rat from a sunken ship, and supports himself with a drawing of a storm."

(Juvenal, Satire XIV, 292-302)

Ah, the perils of the sea...

Line 292: the blithely confident "solvite funem!", placed in the last two feet of the hexameter to make a bucolic diaeresis, makes a mordantly effective beginning to the story, especially given what has come before, with the menacing "u" sounds filling up the first four feet.
294-5: the assertive anaphora of "nil" adds to the already clear depiction of the merchant's swashbuckling confidence: nothing will prevent me from making my fortune! "aestivum", emphatically placed at the beginning of line 295, is a timeless rationalisation of the danger; I can almost hear my father saying "it's OK, it's just a passing shower!" as my brother and I cowered below deck. The word "infelix", coming immediately after the merchant's cries, marks a sudden and effective change of mood, as well as a jump forward in time: the worst has clearly happened.
296-7: the harsh "a" sounds at the beginning of the line give a sense of the panic of the shipwreck, while the end of line 297 gives a nice insight into the merchant's character; he is not concerned for his comrades, he is threatened with imminent death himself, but holds on to his precious money-belt with his one free hand (the other, presumably, grasping a spar), and even tries to bite it ("morsu") to hold on if necessary! The theme of avarice is now at the forefront of the narrative.
298: "aurum" is left until the end of the line for emphasis, and the well-chosen word "votis" refers not only to the merchant's wishes, but perhaps also his dearest prayers for wealth.
300: a very clever line. The initial words "frigida sufficient" might suggest that the eventual sense will be "cold _____ will be enough", with a word referring to food or lodgings filling the syntactical gap. But wait: "frigida" ends up agreeing with the object of the sentence, and it is the unexpectedly intimate "inguina". Here, anyone who has been "dumped" during a day out on the water, especially during the winter, will grin ruefully: one never feels the cold more acutely than in one's, erm, private areas. The "panni", along with the emphatically-placed "exiguus(que)" at the beginning of the next line, demonstrate his swift riches-to-rags conversion nicely.
302: a well-considered ending to the tale. That the merchant has to "tuetur" himself with a drawing ("picta") of the shipwreck suggests that he is in a foreign land, unable to make himself understood except by a crude illustration of his fate. Finally, the repeated "t" sounds at the end of the line suggest that inevitable companion of an archetypal "drowned rat" - perpetually chattering teeth!

Sparsa Miracula, Part II

Phaethon's doomed voyage across the sky continues:

quid faciat? multum caeli post terga relictum,
ante oculos plus est: animo metitur utrumque
et modo, quos illi fatum contingere non est,
prospicit occasus, interdum respicit ortus,
quidque agat ignarus stupet et nec frena remittit
nec retinere valet nec nomina novit equorum.
sparsa quoque in vario passim miracula caelo
vastarumque videt trepidus simulacra ferarum.

"What is he to do? He has left a good deal of the sky behind him, but there is more before his eyes: he measures each portion in his mind, and sometimes he looks forward to the western horizon, which he is fated not to reach, and then again looks back at the east. He gapes, unaware of what to do, and he can neither loosen the reins, nor does he have the strength to tighten them, and can't remember the names of the horses. And then, all around the different regions of the sky, he sees scattered wonders, and in his terror he sees the shapes of giant beasts."

(Ovid, Metamporphoses II, 187-194)

Once again, there is plenty to chew over:

Line 187: the immediate deliberative subjunctive "faciat" shows just how helpless Phaethon is. The rest of the line is a little more hopeful, showing that he has made it part of the way safely. But...
188: carefully placed before the caesura, we have Phaethon's problem, in a nutshell: there is much further to go. Again, we have a mention of his eyes - he is facing the ultimate visible danger - and then a very human aside showing him desperately trying to work out how far he has to go, and perhaps fooling himself into thinking that he has covered more ground than he really has. A sensation familiar to any novice skier, swimmer, or sky-diver; the furtive look back to see how far you've gone, in the vain hope of comfort. This is made particularly poignant in line 190 below:
190: the clear balance of "prospicit...respicit" and "occasus...ortus", with "interdum" in the middle, cleverly depicts not only Phaethon's indecision and desperation, but also his fate to come; "occasus", with its connection with the verb cado, anticipates the spectacular "fall" that Phaethon is to endure very shortly. In other words, Phaethon is not only looking ahead to "the west", but to his doom.
191-192: "quid(que) agat" echoes the sentiment at the beginning of line 187, and the following words, especially "stupet", show that Phaethon has absolutely no answer to the (rhetorical) question. The triple anaphora of "nec" that follows shows that he has been rendered quite numb ("stupet" makes an effective introduction in this respect, of course), and the use of "valet" in line 192 instead of the equally metrically acceptable potest is quite deliberate: he lacks the strength to do anything. Perhaps I am giving way to fancy in supposing that the alliteration of "n" sounds at the end is almost like an echoing "non...non...non..."; Phaethon wailing pathetically at his predicament.
193-194: a truly beautiful couple of lines which perfectly portray an important aspect of human fear. The first line is redolent of open-eyed amazement, and the well-chosen pairing "sparsa...miracula" gives the sense of wonders scattered almost carelessly across the heavens for mortals to admire. The juxtaposition of "vario passim" adds to this impression; Phaethon is surrounded by heavenly delights. Three words into line 194, however, the mood changes. In Phaethon's terror ("trepidus"), all he sees are the "simulacra ferarum"; images of wild beasts ready to tear him apart. An eternal truth masterfully conveyed: when we are in fear of our lives, the wonders of nature suddenly become terrifying.

Sparsa Miracula, Part I

Following on from Rhaebus, another tale involving horses, but of a different kind; this time, it is the steeds of Apollo's sun-chariot who feature in the tragic tale of Phaethon, brilliantly told by Ovid in the second book of the Metamorphoses.

The plot, in condensed form: Phaethon, confused about his heritage, seeks out his putative father Apollo. The sun-god greets the youth warmly, and confirms that yes, he is indeed his father. To prove his parentage (or at least affection), he grants Phaethon any wish of his choice, swearing the most binding of all oaths to commit himself. Phaethon asks to be given the reins of Apollo's sun-chariot, and immediately the god regrets his promise. Trying in vain to dissuade Phaethon, he finally realises that all entreaties will be wasted, and Phaethon sets out on his fatal voyage across the sky. But he has no idea how to steer the chariot or temper the fiery horses, and we pick up the story with Phaethon mid-journey, the horses utterly beyond his control:

ut vero summo despexit ab aethere terras
infelix Phaethon penitus penitusque iacentes,
palluit et subito genua intremuere timore
suntque oculis tenebrae per tantum lumen obortae,
et iam mallet equos numquam tetigisse paternos,
iam cognosse genus piget et valuisse rogando,
iam Meropis dici cupiens ita fertur, ut acta
praecipiti pinus borea, cui victa remisit
frena suus rector, quam dis votisque reliquit.

"And as poor Phaethon looked down from the apex of heaven to the earth, lying deep, deep down below him, he went pale, and his knees shook with sudden terror, and darkness arose in his eyes through all that light. And now he would have preferred never to have touched his father's horses, now he regretted finding out his ancestry and getting an answer to his questions, now he wanted to be called Merops' son. And he was carried along like a pine-wood ship battered by a raging north wind, whose helmsman has let go of the defeated rudder, and left his ship to the gods and his prayers."

(Ovid, Metamorphoses II, 178-186)

A wonderful passage of Latin, in which:

Line 178: the spondaic beginning already gives a sense of Phaethon's wide-eyed horror, and the juxtapositions "summo despexit" (looking down from the very top!) and "aethere terras" depict with grim force the sudden vertigo which is overcoming our young hero.
179: another superbly effective line, with the repetition of "penitus" not only reinforcing the idea of the terrifying drop below Phaethon, but creating a brutal alliteration of the forceful "p" sound in conjunction with "Phaethon" just beforehand...and the nicely enjambed "palluit" in the following line.
181: the first three words, arranged before the caesura, give the basic information; Phaethon, in modern terms, blacked out. But the real force of the line comes with the play on the double meaning of "lumen" (Ovid, as always, proving a master at manipulating the semantic subtleties of Latin); there is the blazing light of the day that Phaethon is flying through, but "lumen" is also, of course, used as a synonym for "oculus", and "tantum lumen" suggests a paradoxical image: although his eyes are wide with fear, all he can see is darkness.
182-4: the anaphora of "iam" to demonstrate Phaethon's regret is reminiscent of Pentheus's similar self-reproach, and the word "valuisse" is particularly ironic here, given that Phaethon has been proved an utter weakling when it comes to dealing with a god's job. Ovid and those double meanings again! Merops, incidentally, was the name of Phaethon's "mortal father".
185-6: the simile of a ship being tossed by the violent winds is appropriate, of course, but several small details make it particularly memorable here. Again, we have the rough "p" alliteration at the beginning of line 185. Incidentally, why "pinus", instead of perhaps puppis, a metrically acceptable and rather more common metonym for "ship"? Because, I think, the idea of the ship being just "a pine" shows that the storm has reduced the complex machinery of the vessel to just its basic components; in the face of nature, it's just a chunk of wood. "victa...frena" is a well-judged adjective-noun pairing; my father, a lifelong sailor, could certainly identify with the idea of a defeated rudder. Finally, the classic zeugma "dis votisque reliquit" provides a nice irony in relation to the main story: Phaethon would love to call on the gods to assist him, but Apollo isn't there.

Diu Viximus

Continuing the theme of human-animal relationships from the last post, I very much enjoyed teaching the tenth book of Virgil's Aeneid to my HSC class this last year, and one of the passages that appealed to both me and the students the most was the battle-speech-cum-farewell of the warrior-king Mezentius, addressed to his faithful steed Rhaebus.

Mezentius is one of the more interesting characters in the Aeneid. In the eighth book he is depicted in a brief aside as a thoroughly evil and sadistic tyrant, and while he shows some of these qualities in the course of his violent aristeia in the tenth book, he is invested with a certain dignity and honour in his death-scene. After his son Lausus has died to protect him, it is almost as if Mezentius is imbued with some of his son's heroism as he prepares to fight Aeneas; certainly, the sentiments he addresses to Rhaebus are very much in the style of a Homeric hero, and his sense of solidarity with Rhaebus is actually quite touching:

haud deiectus equum duci iubet. hoc decus illi,
hoc solamen erat, bellis hoc victor abibat
omnibus. adloquitur maerentem et talibus infit:
'Rhaebe, diu, res si qua diu mortalibus ulla est,
viximus. aut hodie victor spolia illa cruenti
et caput Aeneae referes Lausique dolorum
ultor eris mecum, aut, aperit si nulla viam vis,
occumbes pariter; neque enim, fortissime, credo,
iussa aliena pati et dominos dignabere Teucros.'

"By no means dismayed, he [Mezentius] ordered his horse to be brought. This was his glory, this his solace, on this steed he had departed all his battles in triumph. He addressed it as it grieved and started off with such words as these: "Rhaebus, we have lived a long time, if anything is a long time for we who must die. Today, you will either bring back those spoils and the head from the bloodied body of Aeneas, and you will be the avenger of Lausus' sad fate along with me, or if no force can find a way through, you will fall together with me; after all, my bravest one, I don't believe that you would accept the orders of another and consider the Trojans worthy to be your masters."

(Virgil, Aeneid X, 858-866)

Some observations:

Line 858: the opening phrase, "haud deiectus", immediately suggests Mezentius' heroic qualities; although grieved by the news of his son's death and riven with guilt at his own part in it, the great warrior refuses to sink into lethargy. Bloody but unbowed, as it were. The anaphora of "hoc" in this and the succeeding line give the strongest indication possible of the close relationship between man and horse, and the shared experiences that have created such a bond.
860: the little detail of the horse "maerentem" suggests both human feelings (Virgil's anthropomorphism at work again, just as in the Georgics), and a foreboding of Mezentius' fate at the hands of a greater warrior.
861-2: the ruthless tyrant here becomes a philosopher for a moment, and it is interesting that he implicitly includes Rhaebus in the term "mortalibus", hence my choice of "we who must die" rather than "human beings/mortals" in my translation above. The sentiment is a Homeric one: our lives are short, but our glory lives on. Here, Mezentius faces death with courage and equanimity, and the finality of his situation is emphasised by the enjambment of "viximus". Cicero's laconic "vixerunt" comment on the Catilinarian conspirators comes to mind...
864: "ultor eris mecum" comes before the caesura in enjambment, and as so often in Virgil, that indicates a significant statement. Mezentius's mind is set on vengeance, but Rhaebus is to share in that vengeance...and that achievement. The rare, striking monosyllabic ending to the line, along with the alliteration of the forceful "v" sound, perhaps suggest that Mezentius (and Rhaebus) will exhaust all their "vis" in their attempt. The bond between man and horse is delineated even more strongly in the next line with another enjambed phrase before the caesura, with the key word "pariter" suggesting that both deaths have, so to speak, equal weight.
866: a nice way to finish, hinting that Rhaebus, like his master, is made of noble and uncompromising stuff. The alliteration of "d" sounds is effective, but "dignabere" is the key word: Rhaebus is a "dignus equus", and in Mezentius' eyes, the Trojans are beneath him!

The irony, of course, is that it is Rhaebus who ultimately causes Mezentius' death, falling on top of him after Aeneas has landed a spear on the horse's forehead. Pariter occubuerunt.

Blando Pede

A recent and very touching article by the excellent essayist Dr. Anthony Daniels (a.k.a. Theodore Dalrymple) got me thinking about the relationship between humans and dogs. Like the good doctor, my wife and I have a dog on whom we have doted for over a decade; to our delight, she has taken our young daughter to her heart as well.

The Romans, of course, loved their dogs. Not just their hunting-dogs (for which, by the way, see Xenophon's classic treatise on the subject), but their lap-dogs. One of those immortalised in classical literature was Issa, the darling of a certain Publius who was a friend of the poet Martial. In a hendecasyllabic epigram with definite nods to Catullus' famous sparrow poems, Martial expresses the man-dog relationship in tender terms:

Hanc tu, si queritur, loqui putabis;
sentit tristitiamque gaudiumque.
collo nixa cubat capitque somnos,
ut suspiria nulla sentiantur;
et desiderio coacta ventris
gutta pallia non fefellit ulla,
sed blando pede suscitat toroque
deponi monet et rogat levari.
castae tantus inest pudor catellae,
ignorat Venerem; nec invenimus
dignum tam tenera virum puella.

"If she [Issa] complains, you will think she is speaking; she feels both sadness and joy. She leans on his [Publius'] neck and catches sleep, but so that no breath is heard; and even if she is hard-pressed by the need for relief, she has never stained any blanket with as much as a drop. But she stirs him with a gentle foot, and says she needs to be put down from the bed, and asks him to lift her up. There is so much modesty in this unsullied pup, she is unaware of the delights of Love; and we haven't found a man worthy of such a gentle girl!"

(Martial, I.109, 6-16)

Hardly a classic of Latin literature, but enjoyable nonetheless:

Line 6: with "loqui", we immediately get the sense of what Martial is trying to convey: Issa is, to her owner, very human, and gives that impression to others as well.
7: the polysyndeton of "tristitiamque gaudiumque" is metrically convenient, but stylistically clever as well, suggesting the range of emotions Issa feels.
8: a nicely-chosen end to the line. somnum capere is of course a set expression in Latin for getting some sleep (the English phrase "catching some shut-eye" is worth noting by comparison), but there is perhaps an extra idea here: that of Issa perhaps "catching" her master's sleep as well, with the faithfulness and devotion implied. Certainly, anyone who has had a little dog accompany them for an afternoon snooze knows what perfect companions they are for the Land of Nod, and the thoughtfulness of Issa suggested in line 9 conveys this beautifully.
10: a cleverly-ordered line. As a Roman listener would hear it: "desiderio"...by desire/wish..."coacta"...compelled...what's going on here?..."ventris". Aha! An ending of gentle bathos: the "desire" that the dog feels is for a leak. But it is too faithful (and perhaps sensible) to sully its master's sheets!
11: another nicely chosen word, "fefellit": the dog does not stain the sheets, but also does not deceive its master. None so faithful as Issa.
12: "blando pede" is a phrase which almost encapsulates Issa's gentleness. Even when tortured by a full bladder, she treats her master with kindness and consideration, with just a gentle paw on the hand to make a humble request ("rogat").
14: "catellae" provides a slightly bathetic and humorous ending to the line, since the first four words would make one think of an upright young lady or a grim widow. Instead, it's Issa again, a "lady" of impeccable morals as well as a gentle soul!
16: a delightful ending, with the emphatically-placed "dignum" and the incongruous "virum" investing Issa with a sort of maiden's purity. Note the use of "puella", also emphatically placed...again, Issa is very human to her owner and her owner's friends!

For the record, here is our own little Issa, who goes by the name of Georgie. May she live for a good many years yet.

Turpes Umbras

No-one would read Ovid's Amores for profundity, but the poems flow along so easily and enjoyably that it's easy to forget that they are, essentially, verse set-pieces. Most critics seem to believe that the poems in the Amores are riffs on universal elegiac themes rather than reflections of Ovid's own life experiences (I tend to agree), but this doesn't diminish their appeal. And one of their most endearing qualities is that Ovid is able to give full rein to his wonderful gift for sly humour while purporting to express love, anger, and all the other elegiac emotions. Take the lesser-known twelfth poem of the first book, in which Ovid rants at the writing-tablet that has informed him that today's date with his girlfriend is cancelled.

Anger at inanimate objects is hardly a novelty in classical verse, but there are few more deft examples of it than this. What insults can you throw at a writing-tablet? Well, Ovid was a master at expressing tongue-in-cheek indignation, and here he shoots the messenger in brilliant style:

at tamquam minio penitus medicata rubebas,
ille color vere sanguinolentus erat!
proiectae triviis iaceatis, inutile lignum,
vosque rotae frangat praetereuntis onus!
illum etiam, qui vos ex arbore vertit in usum,
convincam puras non habuisse manus.
praebuit illa arbor misero suspendia collo,
carnifici diras praebuit illa cruces;
illa dedit turpes raucis bubonibus umbras,
vulturis in ramis et strigis ova tulit.

"But even though you were thoroughly tinged with vermilion dye, you were blushing...and that colour was really that of blood! You can be tossed out and lie there on a street corner, you useless wood, and I hope the weight of a passing wheel breaks you! And even that man who got you from the tree and carved you into something useful...I'll show that he was up to no good with those hands! That tree provided stocks for some poor wretch's neck, it provided the dreaded crosses for the executioner; it gave unholy shade to noisy owls, and carried the eggs of a vulture and a screech-owl on its branches!"

(Ovid, Amores I.12, 11-20)

Line 11: "rubebas" carries a pun which Ovid uses to good effect elsewhere (in the penultimate line of the famous "Aurora" poem, to be precise); the tablet is red, but that colour suggests that it is blushing at the bad news it is carrying; naturally, the word is left until the emphatic final position for extra effect.
12: the long-drawn-out word "sanguinolentus", which encompasses most of the back end of the pentameter line, is used instead of the simple sanguineus (which is metrically usable). Why? In my view, partly to stretch out the insult in a humorous way, and partly to practically accuse the tablet of a crime: it smells (olet) of blood!
13: in "iaceatis" we again have the second person jussive subjunctive, which Virgil used to such good effect in Dido's dying curse. The imperate iacete could have been used, but then there wouldn't be the overtones of a wish for the tablet to come to harm. Ovid is (pretending to be) in a vindictive mood...
14: Ovid cleverly leaves "onus" until the end; the wood should not just be crushed by a wheel, but by the full weight of a wheel. It should feel it, dammit!
16: another double meaning in "convincam", which can have a sense of convict as well as convince (both meanings, of course, are reflected in the English derivations). The notion of the tree-lopper or the carpenter (or both) not having "puras...manus" is partly ironic, since Ovid is using the tablet to conduct a presumably illicit affair.
17-18: so now we move to the tree which provided the wood for the tablet. "praebuit illa" is repeated in anaphora to ram home the point: this tree was a source of suffering for others as well as poor me!
19-20: this section of the poem finishes with criticism of the tree for the shelter it provided for certain birds which the Romans did not like, and the jarring adjective-noun pair "turpes...umbras" encapsulates this idea perfectly. umbrae can be pleasant on a sunny day, and perhaps sad or frightening if the word is meant to refer to the shades of the dead, but "turpes"? It is a word which would rarely ever fit as a description of umbrae, and it is all the more effective here for that. The phrase also helps to give the line a memorable sound, with the proliferation of "r" and "b" sounds creating a deliberate ugliness. The final insult, that the tree protected the eggs of two particularly horrible birds (owls were the traditional Roman birds of ill omen, while vultures were despised for obvious reasons), caps the rant off nicely, with "vulturis" placed in the emphatic initial position.

I wonder whether Ovid would have preferred email?

Decolor Aetas

The notion of a "golden age" must be common to virtually all cultures, given the frequency with which the idea crops up in the world's literature. The Romans, of course, liked to imagine an era of pastoral bliss, presided over by their ancient spirit Saturnus, who was subsequently equated with the Greek Cronos.

For Virgil, however, the "golden age" exists in both the past and the future. So much is clear enough from the dreamy predictions of the fourth eclogue, and several passages of the Aeneid hint at the restoration of Rome's traditional virtues under Augustus. All of which makes the following passage, from Book 8 of the Aeneid, fascinating.

Book 8 is, of course, the Aeneid's patriotic parenthesis, taking Aeneas away from the war for a while to be taught about the humble origins of Rome-to-be, its glorious history, and its religious and social values. Evander, the Arcadian king who acts as his guide, introduces Aeneas to the land on which Rome is to stand, and gives voice to the Roman belief in a blessed past:

primus ab aetherio venit Saturnus Olympo
arma Iovis fugiens et regnis exsul ademptis.
is genus indocile ac dispersum montibus altis
composuit legesque dedit, Latiumque vocari
maluit, his quoniam latuisset tutus in oris.
aurea quae perhibent illo sub rege fuere
saecula: sic placida populos in pace regebat,
deterior donec paulatim ac decolor aetas
et belli rabies et amor successit habendi.

"First came Saturn, from heavenly Olympus, fleeing from Jupiter's weapons, an exile from his stolen kingdom. He brought order to people who were uneducated and scattered among the high mountains; he gave them laws, and preferred for the country to be called Latium, since he had hidden (latuisset) safely in these lands. And they say that the era under that ruler was golden; thus he held sway over the people in untroubled peace, until a degenerate and tarnished time gradually took over, along with the frenzy of war and the love of possession."

(Virgil, Aeneid VIII, 319-327)

Plenty of talking points:

Line 319: almost a golden line, spoiled only by the preposition "ab"! Certainly it is a majestic beginning to the story, with the emphatically-placed "primus", along with the later "indocile", suggesting a bringer of knowledge and skills to a primitive people. There are similarities here with Lucretius's depictions of Epicurus, and in fact the whole passage is very reminiscent of Lucretius.
321: "indocile" is an interesting word choice. The more natural indoctum would fit the metre perfectly well, so why the idea of an "unteachable race", rather than an "untaught" one? Did it perhaps need a being of divine qualities to bring order and civilisation to the primitive inhabitants of Latium...and is there a hint at similar qualities in Augustus, the putative renewer of Saturnian utopia?
322: the emphatic placement of "composuit" is surely quite deliberate. The very word suggests the union of disparate elements, and as a metaphor for civilisation it could hardly be bettered. The mention of "leges", too, fits well with Virgil's theme; the rule of law, so fragile during the past century of Roman history, is seen as central to a properly functioning nation. silent leges inter arma? Not any more, if Augustus (or Virgil) has anything to do with it.
323: a cute bit of folk etymology, beloved of the Roman poets.
324: and here is "aurea" at last, emphatically placed (as is "saecula", its complement, later on). And another interesting word choice: why "perhibent", normally an intransitive verb after all, instead of the metrically acceptable dicunt or memorant? Impossible to know for sure, but I would suggest that perhibent has more of a sense of certainty about it (note the per- prefix); they don't just say it was a golden age, they maintain that it was.
325: the obvious alliteration of the "p" sounds, often indicative of power or violence, here seems to suggest the majesty of Saturnus, a just ruler who commands respect merely by the authority of his personality; by coincidence, Livy makes a similar comment about Evander, the narrator of this passage, in the first book of his Roman history.
326: the rhythm slows down as we go from golden age to decadence, perhaps an appropriate word to use in English given the proliferation of "d" sounds in the line, which balances the repetition of "p" in line 325. And here we have the beautifully constructed phrase "decolor...aetas". Of course decolor is used in a moral sense (the generations following have lost their way), but the image of a golden age going off-colour is cleverly expressed.
327: a splendidly enigmatic line to finish. "belli rabies" is obvious enough as a symptom of the lost lustre of Rome's pristine virtues, but "amor"?!? We have to wait until the emphatic final position for the unexpected finish: "habendi". It is love, in a sense, but it is really the desire or lust for gain. For Virgil, the phrase is probably redolent of the period following the "enlightened" age of the Scipios, in which there was no Carthage to keep Rome honest (as it were) and endless possibilities for personal enrichment among the nobility.