Sixteen Satires by Juvenal
Author:Juvenal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-25T00:00:00+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 thereâs 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 Artemisâ altars in the Crimea: the foundress
of that accursed cult (if you credit poetic tradition)
sacrificed strangers, yes â 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 weâre moved to pity a defendantâs shabby top-coat
135 as he pleads his case â or a ward whoâs brought his guardian
to court for embezzlement, and whose adolescent kiss-curls
make you doubt if those tear-stained cheeks are a boyâs or a girlâs.
Itâs at Natureâs 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 mysticâs torch, and such as Ceresâ priest would wish him,22
thinks any human ills outside his concern? Itâs this
that sets us apart from dumb brutes, itâs why we alone possess
a brain thatâs 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,
thatâs 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 boarâs tushes?
The savage Indian tigress dwells in unbroken peace with
her fellow-tigresses: bears | agree with their own kind.
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