Sexism
Looking for sexism in the writings of the ancients is like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. You really can’t avoid it. There is a reason why it took almost literally exactly two-thousand years from the time Juvenal wrote to the time when women across the world demanded their right to vote: most of the history has been the age of profoundly ingrained, ruthlessly anti-intellectual misogyny:
“Men, on the other hand, do sometimes have an eye to utility; the ant has at last taught some of them to dread cold and hunger. But your extravagant woman is never sensible of her dwindling means; and just as though money were forever sprouting up afresh from her exhausted coffers, and she had always a full heap to draw from, she never gives a thought to what her pleasures cost her.”
Make Rome Great Again
One of the satires is particularly relevant in 21st century America. It is a complaint—atypically in that almost the entire text is by a character instead of the narrator—by a fellow named Umbricius. His complaint is that there is no more room in Rome for honest people like himself. He blames most of the problems on immigration by the Greeks, but some of the most resonant imagery is directed toward those whom he feels has taken his place by rising above their own station. Sentiments which may ring eerily—and distressingly—familiar and modern to some:
“These men once were horn-blowers, who went the round of every provincial show, and whose puffed-out cheeks were known in every village; today they hold shows of their own, and win applause by slaying with a turn of the thumb whomsoever the mob bids them slay; from that they go back to contract for cesspools, and why not for any kind of thing, seeing that they are of the kind that Fortune raises from the gutter to the mighty places of earth whenever she wishes to enjoy a laugh?”
The Shipwreck
Satire XII: How Catullus Escaped the Shipwreck offers the opportunity for Juvenal to engage in some straight-up typical use of imagery. The title says it all, of course: this is an adventure story. And when it comes to genre, adventure stories are ideal opportunities for writers to put their skills at creating imagery to the test. And then some:
“Go trust yourself to a hewn plank which parts you from death by four finger-breadths, or seven if it be extra thick! Only remember in future, besides your bread and your bread-basket and your pot-bellied flagon, to take with you axes also for use in time of storm. But soon the sea fell flat, and our mariners came on better times. Destiny proved stronger than wind and wave; the glad Fates, with kindly hand, spun a yarn of white wool, there sprang up what was no stronger than a gentle breeze, under which the poor ship sped on by the sorry help of outstretched garments, and the single sail now left to her on her prow.”
Alexander the Great
A really beautiful work of imagery is wrought by the author in a philosophical meditation that treads more than a little lightly into the realm of Buddha. The source of all suffering, says the Buddha, is desire. Juvenal does not go this far, but rather expresses the offshoot philosophical assertion that the source of suffering in the world is misplaced yearning in which it is the desire itself which becomes the thing desired. The reference here is to Alexander the Great who is said to have bemoaned himself because there was no more worlds to conquer…because he had already attained his desire to conquer all he saw. Even Alexander winds up no better than the beggar who mere desires warmth and bread: a coffin. This lengthy description is purposely done in order to reveal the full power of poetic imagery to say the same thing much better:
“One globe is all too little for the youth of Pella; he chafes uneasily within the narrow limits of the world, as though he were cooped up within the rocks of Gyara or the diminutive Seriphos; but yet when once he shall have entered the city fortified by the potter's art, a sarcophagus will suffice him!”
