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SELECTIONS FROM '[he Sixth Satire OF JUVENAL 'Translated by John Paul Heironimus INTRODUCTION DECIMUS JUNIUS JUVENALlS, the last of the great Roman satirists, was the son or foster son of a wealthy freedman, according to a biography which appears in widely varying forms in several manuscripts. Born at Aquinum about A.D. 55, he spent most of his life at Rome, where he fre· quented the schools of rhetoric, more for amusement than for profit, and did not turn to writing until he was middle· aged. Some lines deriding the political influence of an actor who was a favorite of an emperor led to an exile, which took the bizarre form of appointment to a military post in distant Egypt. One suspects that a period of mili· tary service in earlier life has been confused with the exile. There is no agreement about which emperor in· flicted the exile, nor whether the poet survived it. He seems to have lived to A.D. 130 or even later. As Roman literary critics proudly pointed out, satire was one literary form developed independently by Roman talent. Lucilius, a contemporary of the younger Africanus, was regarded as its founder. His works survive only in fragments, but we have in complete form the satires of Horace and Persius, writing under Augustus and Nero respectively. Many would give the palm to Juvena!, who The antiquity of adultery I believe that Chastity lingered on earth in the good old days of Saturn, and that she was long seen while a chilly cavern furnished a tiny home and hearth and household altar, and shel· tered both flock and family in a common shade; while a hill.billy wife made up a sylvan bed of leaves and hay and the hides of beasts that were their neighbors; a wife very different from you, Cynthia,' or you whose bright eyes were dimmed hy the death of the sparrow.2 With closes the series of Roman satirists. Lacking the urbanity and subtlety of Horace and the moral earnestness of Persius, he yet attains to first rank in his chosen field be. cause of his unflagging energy, grim humor, and brilliant rhetoric. His sixteen satires are devoted to various aspects of Roman vice and folly. The sixth, which is translated almost entire, catalogues the shortcomings of Roman women, ranging from harmless peccadilloes such as too much fondness for books or athletics to the grossest im· morality and crime. The nominal occasion was the pro· posed marriage of Ursidius Postumus, who as a reformed rake should know too well the frailties of the opposite sex. It exhibits some of the defects as well as the merits of the author: on the credit side, a real detestation for the morally base, and a graphic power in delineating it; on the other hand, the lack of a sense of proportion which hIinds him to the difference between trifling eccentricities and serious transgressions, and a bigoted form of patriot. ism which makes him sneer at everything foreign. THE TEXT translated here is that of S. G. Owen (Oxford 1902). her breasts bulging with milk for her brawny brats to drink, she was often a grimmer spec· tacle than her husband, belching over his meal of acorns. Yes, men lived far otherwise than we when earth was new and the heavens freshly created; 3 men who had to burst their way forth from oak trees to be born, or were moulded from clay, for they had no parents. Many traces, perhaps, or at least some, remained of Chastity even in Jove's reign-but before Jove grew a beard, before the Greeks were ready to take an oath on somebody else's life; when no 416 C LAS SIC SIN T RAN S L A T ION one feared a thief would steal his cabbages and apples, and everybody lived with garden unfenced_ Gradually then Justice retired to the heavens with Chastity as her companion, and the two sisters fled hand in hand. It is an old and hackneyed business, 0 Postumus, to meddle with somebody else's bed and to flout the deity that watches over the holy couch of matrimony. It was the Iron Age which later gave rise to all other crimes; the Age of Silver saw the first adulterers. Suicide preferable to matrimony Yet, in our time, you are preparing a marriage pact and covenant and a betrothal; already you are groomed by the master barber; perhaps you have placed a ring...

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