The Sixteen Satires by Juvenal

Author:Juvenal [Juvenal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Criticism, Ancient & Classical, Literary Collections, Essays, Classics
ISBN: 9780140447040
Google: uvQTNfOi7M8C
Amazon: 0140447040
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 1999-02-02T06:00:00+00:00

110 things are different: the whole world has its Graeco-Roman culture.

Smart Gaulish professors are training the lawyers of Britain;

even in Iceland there’s talk of hiring rhetoricians.

Yet the tribesmen I spoke of were noble; and those other Spaniards

who suffered yet worse disaster (but matched them in honour

115 and courage), share their excuse.18 But this Egyptian shambles

out-savages Artemis’ altars in the Crimea: the foundress

of that accursed cult (if you credit poetic tradition)

sacrificed strangers, yes – but nothing further, or worse,

was left for the victim to fear than the knife.19 But what affliction

120 drove these men? Where was the famine, the siege severe enough

to force them into embracing so foul an abomination?

What more could they dare to shame their lax gods, had drought

parched up the land of Memphis, had Nile refused to flood?

Not even the fearsome tribesmen of Britain or Germany,

125 or the fighting Poles, or the hulking Transylvanians

ever went so berserk as this useless, unwarlike rabble,

who rig up miniature sails on their earthenware wherries

and row with diminutive oars in painted crockery skiffs.20

You could never devise a fitting punishment for this crime, or

130 a penalty stiff enough for a people in whose minds

hunger and rage are alike. When Nature equipped mankind

with tears, she proclaimed that tenderness was endemic

in the human heart, the best part of our feelings.

So we’re moved to pity a defendant’s shabby top-coat

135 as he pleads his case – or a ward who’s brought his guardian

to court for embezzlement, and whose adolescent kiss-curls

make you doubt if those tear-stained cheeks are a boy’s or a girl’s.

It’s at Nature’s behest that we weep when the funeral cortège

of a ripening virgin goes by, or the earth is heaped over

140 an infant too young for burning.21 What good man, worthy to bear

the mystic’s torch, and such as Ceres’ priest would wish him,22

thinks any human ills outside his concern? It’s this

that sets us apart from dumb brutes, it’s why we alone possess

a brain that’s worthy of homage, have divine potential,

145 are skilled to master and practise all civilized arts,

have acquired a sense, sent down from the citadel of heaven,

that’s kept from creeping beasts, their eyes on the ground.23 To them,

when the world was still new, our common creator granted

the breath of life alone, but on us he further bestowed

150 sovereign reason, the impulse to aid one another,

to gather our scattered groups into peoples, to abandon

the woods and forests where once | our ancestors made their homes;

to build houses in groups, each with the next-door hearth-gods

snug by its own, and sleep safe in the trust and knowledge

155 that a friendly neighbour was there; to protect, by dint of arms,

any comrade fallen, or reeling from fearful wounds;

to obey one common trumpet, seek refuge behind the same

ramparts, and share one gateway, locked with a single key.24

But now snakes agree better than men. Wild maculate

160 beasts spare their own species: when did the stronger lion

ever strike down the weaker? And was there ever a forest

in which some boar was slain by a bigger boar’s tushes?

The savage Indian tigress dwells in unbroken peace with

her fellow-tigresses: bears | agree with their own kind.

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