CHAPTER II

THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST

Juvenal and Tacitus compared—Social position and experience of Juvenal—Juvenal and Martial deal with the same features of society—Their motives compared—Character of Martial—The moral standard of Juvenal—His humanity and his old Roman prejudices—He unites the spirit of two different ages—His rhetorical pessimism—His sweeping generalisations—Abnormal specimens become types—Roman luxury at its height—Yet similar extravagance is denounced for five centuries—Such judgments need qualification—The great social changes depicted by Juvenal, some of which he misunderstands—Roman respect for birth—The decay of the aristocracy and its causes—Aristocratic poverty and servility—How the early Emperors lowered senatorial dignity—Aristocratic gladiators and actors—Nero made bohemianism the fashion—“The Legend of Bad Women”—Its untrustworthiness and defects of treatment—High ideals of womanhood among contemporaries of Juvenal—He is influenced by old Roman prejudice—Juvenal hates the “new woman” as much as the vicious woman—The emancipation of women began in the second century B.C.—Higher culture of women and their growing influence on public affairs—Juvenal’s dislike of the oriental worships and their female devotees—This is another old movement—The influence of Judaism at Rome, even in the Imperial household—Women in Juvenal’s day were exposed to serious dangers—The corruptions of the theatre and the circus—Intrigues with actors and slaves—The invasion of Hellenism—Its history—The Hellenism of the Emperors—The lower Hellenism which Juvenal attacks—Social and economic causes of the movement—Greek tutors and professors—The medical profession chiefly recruited from foreigners—The character of the profession in those days—The astrologer and the parasite—The client of the early Empire—His degradation and his hardships—General poverty—The contempt for trade and industry—The growth of captation—The worship of wealth—The cry of the poor

Pages 58-99

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