Monday, July 24, 2017

 

Sufficit Una Domus

Juvenal 13.157-161 (tr. Susanna Morton Braund, with her note):
This is only a tiny proportion of the crimes that Gallicus,27 guardian of Rome, hears continuously from the morning star until the sun sets! If you want to understand the behaviour of humankind, a single courthouse is enough. Spend a few days there and then dare to call yourself unlucky, after you've come away.

27 Gaius Rutilius Gallicus, City Prefect under Domitian.

haec quota pars scelerum, quae custos Gallicus Vrbis
usque a lucifero donec lux occidat audit?
humani generis mores tibi nosse volenti
sufficit una domus; paucos consume dies et        160
dicere te miserum, postquam illinc veneris, aude.
Cambridge University Examination Papers. Michaelmas Term, 1871 to Easter Term, 1872 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1873), p. 9:
Una domus: what place is here meant?
Ludwig Friedlaender, ed., D. Junii Juvenalis Saturarum Libri V. Mit erklärenden Anmerkungen (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1895), Vol. II, p. 537:
jedes beliebige einzelne Haus.
Lowell Edmunds, "Juvenal's Thirteenth Satire," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 115.1 (1972) 59-73 (at 69):
...any one house...
F.W. Farrar, Ephphatha or The Amelioration of the World: Sermons (London: Macmillan and Co., 1880), p. 19:
Look, for instance, at the world of disease and pain. You need not go far to look. One house will suffice you to see the wretchedness of the human race.2

"Humani generis mores tibi nosse volenti,
Sufficit una domus; paucos consume dies et
Dicere te miserum, postquam illinc veneris aude."
                                              —Juv. Sat. xiii.159.
George Santayana, "My Father," Selected Critical Writings, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 279-286 (at 282):
He had a great respect for authority in science or letters, and would quote Quintilian in support of his own preference for limited views: Ad cognoscendum genus humanum sufficit una domus:* 'For exploring human nature one household is large enough.'

* Probably a confused memory, mine or my father's, of Juvenal, Satire XIII, 159-160...
J.D. Duff, ed., Fourteen Satires of Juvenal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), p. 408:
either the office or private house, used as an office, of Gallicus: not (as Friedl.), any private house taken at random.
Thomas J. B. Brady, "Notulae," Hermathena 2 (1876) 193-197 (at 196-197):
Surely, here 'domus' is not, as it is usually explained, the private house of Ponticus [sic]; it is the police court where he sits from morning till night...
Edward Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (1980; rpt. Berkeley: Department of Classics, University of California, 2013), pp. 488-489:
Not his [Gallicus'] house, but his office, by the temple of Tellus (RE 22.2519, Lanciani Bull. del Commissione Archeol. di Roma 20, 1892, 19); cf. Demosth. 21.85 τὸ τῶν ἀρχόντων οἴκημα.
The reference is to Rodolfo Lanciani, "Gli edificii della prefettura urbana fra la Tellure e le terme di Tito e di Traiano," Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 20 (1892) 19-37.



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