Juvenal, who wrote under Domitian, a little later than Persius, equalled him in severity—­due either to his natural disposition or to the spectacle presented by the ever increasing demoralization of Rome.  Like Persius, he makes use of much metaphor and involution in his works—­showing the literary taste and intellectual acumen of a settled state of society, but an early age is impressed upon his pages in the indelicacy with which he is frequently chargeable.  His depiction of guilt was appreciated at that day, but under the Christian dispensation vice is thought too sinful, and in a highly civilised state too injurious to be laughable.  The views then held were different, and Tacitus considered it a mark of great superiority in the Germans that they did not laugh at crimes.  Juvenal tells us that the Romans jeered at poverty.  There was much in the character of this satirist to raise him in the estimation of right-minded men.  His tastes were simple, he loved the country and its homely fare, and although devoid of ambition, was highly cultivated.  No doubt he was rather austere than genial:  his aim was to instruct and warn rather than amuse; and where he approaches humour it is merely from complexity of style, in coining words and barbarisms, or in comparisons mostly dependent upon exaggeration.  The following is one of his best specimens, though over-weighted with severity.  It gives an idea of the state of Rome at the time.  A drunken magnate and his retinue stop a citizen in the street, and insolently demand—­

“With whose vinegar and beans are you blown out?  What cobbler has been eating leeks and sheepshead with you?  Answer, or be kicked.”  “This,” says Juvenal “is a poor man’s liberty.  When pummelled, he begs that he may be allowed to escape with a few of his teeth remaining.”

Juvenal longs for the sword of Lucilius, and the lamp of Horace, that he may attack the vices of Rome, but he himself is more severe than either.  Forgers, gamblers and profligates are assailed, and names are frequently given, though we often cannot now decide whether they belonged to real persons.  Laughing at those who desire length of years without remembering the concomitant infirmities of age, he says: 

“All kinds of disease dance around the aged in a troop, of which if you were to ask the names I could sooner tell you how many lovers Hippia had, how many patients Themison killed in one autumn, or how many allies Basilus and Hirrus defrauded.”  He condemns the increased desire for luxury.  “Do not,” he warns, “long for a mullet, when you have only a gudgeon in your purse.”  The rule of the day was to purchase sensual indulgence at any cost, “Greediness is so great that they will not even invite a parasite.”  Excessive selfishness leads to every kind of dishonesty.  “A man of probity is as rare as a mule’s foal, or as a shower of stones from a cloud.”  “What day is so sacred that it fails to produce thieving, perfidy, fraud, gain sought through every crime, and money acquired by bowl and dagger.  The good are so scarce that their number is barely as great as that of the gates of Thebes, or the mouths of the fertilizing Nile.”