in transferring them to canvas. But his hand must be vigorous and his brush free, or he would do no justice to Juvenal. There is one particular form of lust from which modern wickedness shrinks, but which was one of the worst evils of Roman society under the Empire. This vice is exposed in two Satires of great power (ii., ix.). The wickedness of women was never so unsparingly handled as it is in the sixth Satire, a composition of extraordinary power and variety. The general degradation of Roman life and manners is exposed in the first, third, and fourteenth Satires, and in the last of these the chief cause of the universal wickedness is laid open in the indifference of parents to the morals of their young children, and the example which handed down vice as an inheritance from father to son. The degradation of the Senate, once the fountain of honor and authority and the proudest institution of a haughty people, but now obedient to the wantonness of a tyrant who mocked its weakness and played with its servility, is amusingly shown in the fourth Satire. The fifth exposes a different sort of servility, that of parasites, who sell their independence and accept contempt for the sake of a meal grudgingly given; a low practice which was more systematized at Rome, if it was not much more common, than it is in our own country. The neglect of literary men has a Satire to itself (the seventh); aristocratic pride has another (the eighth). The cunning of will-hunters is hit off at the end of the twelfth, which is not among the most interesting of these compositions. It relates chiefly to the arrival of a friend after a ▾ * The three Satires just mentioned are omitted from this edition. dangerous voyage, and is more of the nature of a familiar letter than of a Satire. The dishonesty of the age is described in the thirteenth Satire, which contains some of Juvenal's finest verses, and shows him in the best character. This also is in the form of an epistle to a friend, and so is the eleventh, which contains an invitation to dinner and contrasts the poet's own plainness of living with the luxurious habits of his contemporaries. Thus Juvenal goes through all the great scandals of his day, and treats them unsparingly. The crimes and criminals of former reigns are freely introduced by way of illustration, but this is because the vices of one reign represented those of another, and the names of the dead could be more safely used than of the living. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Otho, Domitian, are all brought up from time to time to point a moral or illustrate some aspect of crime. The most celebrated of Juvenal's poems, the tenth, has more of the declamatory character, which some of his critics attribute to all. It is on the vanity of huma wishes, which is illustrated chiefly by historical exampi and the poem has not much bearing upon the particu character of his times. It is the finest specimen of tl sort of composition that I am acquainted with. T fifteenth Satire is connected with a scene of little gener: interest, an Egyptian squabble, Juvenal's own interest in which can only be accounted for by his having been in the country where it happened. The last Satire, if it had been completed, would have furnished a sketch of military life, - sarcastic but good-humored, from which a good deal of information might have been derived. D. JUNII JUVENALIS SATIRA E. EMPER SEME ego SATIRA I. auditor tantum? nunquamne reponam Vexatus toties rauci Theseide Codri? 5 10 15 20 Quum tener uxorem ducat spado; Maevia Tuscum 25 30 40 Quod superest; quem Massa timet, quem munere palpat 35 Quum populum gregibus comitum premit hic spoliator Haec ego non credam Venusina digna lucerna ? 45 50 Et mare percussum puero fabrumque volantem, Quidquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, 85 |