Gatech satire and ironic assignment It should be 3-4 pages long (double- spaced). Concentrate on creating a real argument, not just listing observations a

Gatech satire and ironic assignment It should be 3-4 pages long (double-

spaced). Concentrate on creating a real argument, not just listing observations about the works (I

should be able to disagree with your paper, while still thinking it’s good work).

Many of the works we have chosen, as the focus of satire, one of the two following topics:

1. CLASS

2. PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Choose ONE of these two topics, and show how it functions in at least two works from our reading

list. For this class, I would like you to end your introductory paragraph with a question, and then

answer that question in your concluding paragraph.

Some ideas to consider, as you’re thinking of how to structure your argument:

Which works do you think satirize class/physical appearance most effectively or

convincingly as part of a larger social argument? Least effectively or convincingly?

Which works do you think satirize class/physical appearance most effectively or

convincingly in terms of a personal attack? Least effectively or convincingly? How so?

Given that readers/listeners could be sensitive about class/physical appearance, what

techniques/strategies do authors come up with to be able to satirize class/physical

appearance without alienating an audience? Which works do this most effectively/least

effectively?

To answer the question, you will need to set out what you think are the goals of your chosen works

and then show how one work engages with your chosen topic to meet those goals.

As an example: under the category of “class” you might compare and contrast Swift’s and Twain’s

use of class in their larger satires of colonialism/imperialism: both men essentially argue that

colonial/imperial subjects exist outside (and below) the normal class system, making them

essentially disposable. Swift satirizes this tendency in a more ironic manner; Twain in an angrier

and more explicit manner. Which do you think is more effective and why? Horace, from “Satire 2.6”
This is what I prayed for ! — a piece of land not so very large, where there would be a
garden, and near the house a spring of ever-flowing water, and up above these a bit of
woodland. More and better than this have the gods done for me. I am content. Nothing more
do I ask, O son of Maia, save that thou make these blessings last my life long. If I have
neither made my substance larger by evil ways, nor mean to make it smaller by excesses or
neglect; if I offer up no such foolish prayers as these: “O if there could be added that near
corner, which now spoils the shape of my little farm! O that some lucky strike would disclose
to me a pot of money, like the man who, having found a treasure-trove, bought and
ploughed the self-same ground he used to work on hire, enriched by favour of Hercules!” -if what I have gives me comfort and content, then thus I pray to thee: make fat the flocks I
own, and all else save my wit, and, as thou art wont, still be my chief guardian!
So, now that from the city I have taken myself off to my castle in the hills, to what
should I sooner give renown in the Satires of my prosaic Muse? Here no wretched placehunting worries me to death, nor the leaden scirocco, nor sickly autumn, that brings gain to
hateful Libitina.
Father of the dawn, or Janus, if so thou hearest rather, from whom men take the
beginnings of the work and toil of life — such is Heaven’s will — be thou the prelude of my
song! At Rome thou hurriest me off to be surety: “Come! bestir yourself, lest someone
answer duty’s call before you.” Whether the North-wind sweeps the earth, or winter
drags on the snowy day in narrower circle, go I must. Later, when I have said in clear and
certain tones what may work me harm, I must battle in the crowd and do damage to the slow
of pace.” What do you mean, madman? What are you driving at?” So some ruffian assails
me with angry curses: “You would jostle everything in your way, should you be posting
back to Maecenas, thinking only of him.”
That gives pleasure and is like honey, I’ll not deny. But as soon as come to the
gloomy Esquiline, a hundred concerns of others dance through my head and all about me:
“Roscius begs you to meet him to-morrow at Libo’s Wall, before seven o’clock.” “The clerks
beg you, Quintus, to be sure to return to-day on some fresh and important business of
common interest.” “Have Maecenas put his seal to these papers.” If you say, “I’ll try,” “You
can, if you will,” he adds insistently.
The seventh year — nay, nearer the eighth – will soon have sped, since Maecenas began
to count me among his friends — merely thus far, as one he would like to take in his carriage
when on a journey, and confide to his ears trifles like this: “What’s the time?” “Is the
Thracian Chicken a match for Syrus?” “The morning frosts are nipping now, if people are
careless,” and such chat as is safely dropped into a leaky ear. For all these years, every day
and hour, our friend has been more and more the butt of envy. Has he viewed the games,
or played ball in the Campus with Maecenas? “Fortune’s favourite!” all cry. Does a chilly
rumour run from the Rostra through the streets? Whoever comes my way asks my opinion:
“My good sir, you must know — you come so much closer to the gods: you haven’t heard
any news about the Dacians, have you?” “None whatever.” “How you will always mock at
us!” But heaven confound me, if I have heard a word! “Well, is it in the three-cornered
isle, or on Italian soil, that Caesar means to give the soldiers their promised lands?” When I
swear I know nothing, they marvel at me as, forsooth, the man of all men remarkably and
profoundly reticent.
Amid such trifling, alas! I waste my day, praying the while: O rural home: when shall I
behold you! When shall I be able, now with books of the ancients, now with sleep and idle
hours, to quaff sweet forgetfulness of life’s cares! O when shall beans, brethren of Pythagoras,
be served me, and with them greens well larded with fat bacon ! O nights and feasts divine!
When before my own Lar we dine, my friends and I, and feed the saucy slaves from the
barely tasted dishes. Each guest, as is his fancy, drains cups big or small, not bound by
crazy laws, whether one can stand strong bumpers in gallant style, or with mild cups mellows
more to his liking. And so begins a chat, not about other men’s homes and estates, nor whether
Lepos dances well or ill; but we discuss matters which concern us more, and of which it is
harmful to be in ignorance — whether wealth or virtue makes men happy, whether selfinterest or uprightness leads us to friendship, what is the nature of the good and what is its
highest form.
Now and then our neighbour Cervius rattles off old wives’ tales that fit the case. Thus,
if anyone, blind to its anxieties, praises the wealth of Arellius, he thus begins: “Once on a
time — such is the tale — a country mouse welcomed a city mouse in his poor hole, host and
guest old friends both. Roughly he fared, frugal of his store, yet could pen his thrifty soul
in acts of hospitality. In short, he grudged not his hoard of vetch or long oats, but bringing in
his mouth a dried raisin and nibbled bits of bacon he served them, being eager by varying
the fare to overcome the daintiness of a guest, who, with squeamish tooth, would
barely touch each morsel. Meanwhile, outstretched on fresh straw, the master of the house
himself ate spelt and darner, leaving the titbits to his friend. At last the city mouse cries to
him: “What pleasure can you have, my friend, in living so hard a life on the ridge of a steep
wood? Wouldn’t you put people and the city above these wild woods? Take my advice: set out
with me. Inasmuch as all creatures that live on earth have mortal souls, and for neither great
nor small is there escape from death, therefore, good sir, while you may, live happy amid
joys; live mindful ever of how brief your time is!” These words struck home with the rustic,
who lightly leaped forth from his house. Then both pursue the journey as planned, eager to
creep under the city walls by night.
And now night was holding the mid space of heaven, when the two set foot in a wealthy
palace, where covers dyed in scarlet glittered on ivory couches, and many courses
remained over from a great dinner of the evening before, in baskets piled up hard by. So
when the town mouse has the rustic stretched out on purple covers, he himself bustles about
in waiter-style, serving course after course, and doing all the duties of the home-bred slave,
first tasting everything he serves. The other, lying at ease, enjoys his changed lot,
and amid the good cheer is playing the happy guest, when of a sudden a terrible banging
of the doors tumbled them both from their couches. In panic they run the length of the hall,
and still more terror-stricken were they, as the lofty palace rang with the barking of Molossian
hounds. Then says the rustic: “No use have I for such a life, and so farewell: my wood and
hole, secure from alarms, will solace me with homely charm.”
Juvenal, from “Satire III”
Here spoke Umbricius:- “Since there is no room,” quoth he, “for honest callings in this city,
no reward for labour; since my means are less to-day than they were yesterday, and tomorrow will rub off something from the little that is left, I purpose to go to the place where
Daedalus put off his weary wings while my white hairs are recent, while my old age is erect
and fresh, while Lachesis has something left to spin, and I can support myself on my own feet
without slipping a staff beneath my hand. Farewell my country! Let Artorius live there, and
Catulus; let those remain who turn black into white, to whom it comes easy to take contracts
for temples, rivers or harbours, for draining floods, or carrying corpses to the pyre, or to put
up slaves for sale under the authority of the spear. These men once were horn-blowers, who
went the round of every provincial show, and whose puffed-out cheeks were known in every
village; to-day they hold shows of their own, and win applause by slaying whomsoever the
mob with a turn of the thumb bids them slay; from that they go back to contract for cesspools,
and why not for any kind of thing, seeing that they are of the kind that Fortune raises from the
gutter to the mighty places of earth whenever she wishes to enjoy a laugh?
“What can I do at Rome? I cannot lie; if a book is bad, I cannot praise it, and beg for a copy; I
am ignorant of the movements of the stars; I cannot, and will not, promise to a man his
father’s death; I have never examined the entrails of a frog; I must leave it to others to carry to
a bride the presents and messages of a paramour. No man will get my help in robbery, and
therefore no governor will take me on his staff: I am treated as a maimed and useless trunk
that has lost the power of its hands. What man wins favour nowadays unless he be an
accomplice-one whose soul seethes and burns with secrets that must never be disclosed? No
one who has imparted to you an innocent secret thinks he owes you anything, or will ever
bestow on you a favour; the man whom Verres loves is the man who can impeach Verres at
any moment that he chooses. Ah! Let not all the sands of the shaded Tagus, and the gold
which it rolls into the sea, be so precious in your eyes that you should lose your sleep, and
accept gifts, to your sorrow, which you must one day lay down, and be for ever a terror to
your mighty friend!
“And now let me speak at once of the race which is most dear to our rich men, and which I
avoid above all others; no shyness shall stand in my way. I cannot abide, Quirites, a Rome of
Greeks; and yet what fraction of our dregs comes from Greece? The Syrian Orontes has long
since poured into the Tiber, bringing with it its lingo and its manners, its flutes and its slanting
harp-strings; bringing too the timbrels of the breed, and the trulls who are bidden ply their
trade at the Circus. Out upon you, all ye that delight in foreign strumpets with painted
headdresses! Your country clown, Quirinus, now trips to dinner in Greek-fangled slippers,
and wears niceterian ornaments upon a ceromatic neck! One comes from lofty Sicyon,
another from Amydon or Andros, others from Samos, Tralles or Alabanda; all making for the
Esquiline, or for the hill that takes its name from osier-beds; all ready to worm their way into
the houses of the great and become their masters. Quick of wit and of unbounded impudence,
they are as ready of speech as Isaeus, and more torrential. Say, what do you think that fellow
there to be? He has brought with him any character you please; grammarian, orator,
geometrician; painter, trainer, or rope-dancer; augur, doctor or astrologer:’All sciences a fasting monsieur knows,
And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes! ‘
In fine, the man who took to himself wings was not a Moor, nor a Sarmatian, nor a Thracian,
but one born in the very heart of Athens!
“Must I not make my escape from purple-clad gentry like these? Is a man to sign his name
before me, and recline upon a couch better than mine, who has been wafted to Rome by the
wind which brings us our damsons and our figs? Is it to go so utterly for nothing that as a
babe I drank in the air of the Aventine, and was nurtured on the Sabine berry?
“What of this again, that these people are experts in flattery, and will commend the talk of an
illiterate, or the beauty of a deformed, friend, and compare the scraggy neck of some weakling
to the brawny throat of Hercules when holding up Antaeus high above the earth; or go into
ecstasies over a squeaky voice not more melodious than that of a cock when he pecks his
spouse the hen? We, no doubt, can praise the same things that they do; but what they say is
believed. Could any actor do better when he plays the part of Thais, or of a matron, or of a
Greek slave-girl without her pallium? You would never think that it was a masked actor that
was speaking, but a very woman, complete in all her parts. Yet, in their own country, neither
Antiochus nor Stratocles, neither Demetrius nor the delicate Haemus, will be applauded: they
are a nation of play-actors. If you smile, your Greek will split his sides with laughter; if he
sees his friend drop a tear, he weeps, though without grieving; if you call for a bit of fire in
winter-time, he puts on his cloak; if you say ‘I am hot,’ he breaks into a sweat. Thus we are not
upon a level, he and I; he has always the best of it, being ready at any moment, by night or by
day, to take his expression from another man’s face, to throw up his hands and applaud if his
friend gives a good belch or piddles straight, or if his golden basin make a gurgle when turned
upside down.
“Besides all this, there is nothing sacred to his lusts: not the matron of the family, nor the
maiden daughter, not the as yet unbearded son-in-law to be, not even the as yet unpolluted
son; if none of these be there, he will debauch his friend’s grandmother. These men want to
discover the secrets of the family, and so make themselves feared. And now that I am
speaking of the Greeks, pass over the schools, and hear of a crime of a larger philosophical
cloak; the old Stoic who informed against and slew his own friend and disciple Barea was
born on that river bank where the Gorgon’s winged steed fell to earth. No: there is no room for
any Roman here, where some Protogenes, or Diphilus, or Hermarchus rules the roast–one
who by a defect of his race never shares a friend, but keeps him all to himself. For when once
he has dropped into a facile ear one particle of his own and his country’s poison, I am thrust
from the door, and all my long years of servitude go for nothing. Nowhere is it so easy as at
Rome to throw an old client overboard.
“And besides, not to flatter ourselves, what value is there in a poor man’s serving here in
Rome, even if he be at pains to hurry along in his toga before daylight, seeing that the praetor
is bidding the lictor to go full speed lest his colleague should be the first to salute the childless
ladies Albina and Modia, who have long ago been awake? Here in Rome the son of free-born
parents has to give the wall to some rich man’s slave; for that other will give as much as the
whole pay of a legionary tribune to enjoy the chance favours of a Calvina or a Catiena, while
you, when the face of some gay-decked harlot takes your fancy, scarce venture to hand
Chione down from her lofty chair. At Rome you may produce a witness as unimpeachable as
the host of the Idaean Goddess.–Numa himself might present himself, or he who rescued the
trembling Minerva from the blazing shrine–the first question asked will be as to his wealth,
the last about his character: ‘how many slaves does he keep?’ ‘how many acres does he own?’
‘how big and how many are his dessert dishes?’ A man’s word is believed in exact proportion
to the amount of cash which he keeps in his strong-box. Though he swear by all the altars of
Samothrace or of Rome, the poor man is believed to care naught for Gods and thunderbolts,
the Gods themselves forgiving him.
‘And what of this, that the poor man gives food and occasion for jest if his cloak be torn and
dirty; if his toga be a little soiled; if one of his shoes gapes where the leather is split, or if
some fresh stitches of coarse thread reveal where not one, but many a rent has been patched?
Of all the woes of luckless poverty none is harder to endure than this, that it exposes men to
ridicule. ‘Out you go! for very shame,’ says the marshal; ‘out of the Knights’ stalls, all of you
whose means do not satisfy the law.’ Here let the sons of panders, born in any brothel, take
their seats; here let the spruce son of an auctioneer clap his hands, with the smart sons of a
gladiator on one side of him and the young gentlemen of a trainer on the other: such was the
will of the numskull Otho who assigned to each of us his place. Who ever was approved as a
son-in-law if he was short of cash, and no match for the money-bags of the young lady? What
poor man ever gets a legacy, or is appointed assessor to an aedile? Romans without money
should have marched out in a body long ago!
“It is no easy matter, anywhere, for a man to rise when poverty stands in the way of his
merits: but nowhere is the effort harder than in Rome, where you must pay a big rent for a
wretched lodging, a big sum to fill the bellies of your slaves, and buy a frugal dinner for
yourself. You are ashamed to dine off delf; but you would see no shame in it if transported
suddenly to a Marsian or Sabine table, where you would be pleased enough to wear a cape of
coarse Venetian blue.
“There are many parts of Italy, to tell the truth, in which no man puts on a toga until he is
dead. Even on days of festival, when a brave show is made in a theatre of turf, and when the
well-known afterpiece steps once more upon the boards; when the rustic babe on its mother’s
breast shrinks back affrighted at the gaping of the pallid masks, you will see stalls and
populace all dressed alike, and the worshipful aediles content with white tunics as vesture for
their high office. In Rome, every one dresses smartly, above his means, and sometimes
something more than what is enough is taken out of another man’s pocket. This failing is
universal here: we all live in a state of pretentious poverty. To put it shortly, nothing can be
had in Rome for nothing. How much does it cost you to be able now and then to make your
bow to Cossus? Or to be vouchsafed one glance, with lip firmly closed, from Veiento? One of
these great men is cutting off his beard; another is dedicating the locks of a favourite; the
house is full of cakes–which you will have to pay for. Take your cake, and let this thought
rankle in your heart: we clients are compelled to pay tribute and add to a sleek menial’s
perquisites.
“Who at cool Praeneste, or at Volsinii amid its leafy hills, was ever afraid of his house
tumbling down? Who in modest Gabii, or on the sloping heights of Tivoli? But here we
inhabit a city supported for the most part by slender props: for that is how the bailiff holds up
the tottering house, patches up gaping cracks in the old wall, bidding the inmates sleep at ease
under a roof ready to tumble about their ears. No, no, I must live where there are no fires, no
nightly alarms. Ucalegon below is already shouting for water and shifting his chattels; smoke
is pouring out of your third-floor attic, but you know nothing of it; for if the alarm begins in
the ground-floor, the last man to burn will be he who has nothing to shelter him from the rain
but the tiles, where the gentle doves lay their eggs. Codrus possessed a bed too small for the
dwarf Procula, a sideboard adorned by six pipkins, with a small drinking cup, and a
recumbent Chiron below, and an old chest containing Greek books whose divine lays were
being gnawed by unlettered mice. Poor Codrus had nothing, it is true: but he lost that nothing,
which was his all; and the last straw in his heap of misery is this, that though he is destitute
and begging for a bite, no one will help him with a meal, no one offer him lodging or shelter.
“But if the grand house of Asturicus be destroyed, the matrons go dishevelled, your great men
put on mourning, the praetor adjourns his court: then indeed do we deplore the calamities of
the city, and bewail its fires! Before the house has ceased to burn, up comes one with a gift of
marble or of building materials, another offers nude and glistening statues, a third some
notable work of Euphranor or Polyclitus, or bronzes that had been the glory of old Asian
shrines. Others will offer books and bookcases, or a bust of Minerva, or a hundredweight of
silver-plate. Thus does Persicus, that most sumptuous of childless men, replace what he has
lost with more and better things, and with good reason incurs the suspicion of having set his
own house on fire.
“If you can tear yourself away …
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