Juvenal

“ For is any dignity in a wife, any beauty, worth the cost, if she is for ever reckoning up her merits against you? These high and transcendent qualities lose all their charm when spoilt by a pride that savours more of aloes than of honey. And who was ever so enamoured as not to shrink from the woman whom he praises to the skies, and to hate her for seven hours out of every twelve? ”

“ Yet these are the women who find the thinnest of thin robes too hot for them; whose delicate flesh is chafed by the finest of silk tissue. See how she pants as she goes through her prescribed exercises; how she bends under the weight of her helmet; how big and coarse are the bandages which enclose her haunches; and then laugh when she lays down her arms and shows herself to be a woman! Tell us, ye grand-daughters of Lepidus, or of the blind Metellus, or of Fabius Gurges, what gladiator's wife ever assumed accoutrements like these? ”

“ What can be more offensive than this, that no woman believes in her own beauty unless she has converted herself from a Tuscan into a Greekling, or from a maid of Sulmo [26] into a maid of Athens? They talk nothing but Greek, though it is a greater shame for our people to be ignorant of Latin. Their fears and their wrath, their joys and their troubles—all the secrets of their souls—are poured forth in Greek; their very loves are carried on in Greek fashion. ”

“ Many of these women are poor, but none of them pay any regard to their poverty, or measure themselves by the standard which that prescribes and lays down for them. 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 for ever 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. ”

“ Unless, indeed, she is nursing some further ambition in her bosom, and is practising for the real arena. What modesty can you expect in a woman who wears a helmet, abjures her own sex, and delights in feats of strength? Yet she would not choose to be a man, knowing the superior joys of womanhood. What a fine thing for a husband, at an auction of his wife's effects, to see her belt and armlets and plumes put up for sale, with a gaiter that covers half the left leg ”

“ It is she that teaches her daughter to revel in stripping and despoiling her husband; it is she that teaches her to reply to a seducer's love-letters in no plain and honest fashion; she eludes or bribes your guards; it is she that calls in Archigenes [29] when your daughter has nothing the matter with her, and tosses off the heavy blankets; the lover meanwhile is in secret and silent hiding, trembling with impatience and expectation. Do you really expect the mother to teach her daughter honest ways—ways different from her own? ”

“ If you find her in the arms of a slave or of a knight, "Speak, speak, Quintilian, [35] give me one of your colours, [36] " she will say. But Quintilian has none to give: "find it yourself," says he. "We agreed long ago," says the lady, "that you were to go your way, and I mine. You may confound sea and sky with your bellowing, I am a human being after all." There's no effrontery like that of a woman caught in the act; her very guilt inspires her with wrath and insolence. ”

“ It is there that they set down their litters at night, and befoul the image of the Goddess, playing their filthy pranks for the morn to witness. Thence home they go; while you, when daylight comes, and you are on your way to salute your mighty friends, will tread upon the traces of your wife's abominations. ”

“ And now impatient nature can wait no longer; woman shows herself as she is, and the cry comes from every corner of the den, "Let in the men!" If one favoured youth is asleep, another is bidden to put on his cowl and hurry along; if better cannot be got, a run is made upon the slaves ”

“ But beware! that teacher is not always what he seems: true, he darkens his eyes and dresses like a woman, but adultery is his design. Mistrust him the more for his show of effeminacy; he is a valiant mattress-knight ”

“ What if nature has made her so short of stature that, if unaided by high heels, she looks no bigger than a pigmy, and has to rise nimbly on tip-toe for a kiss! Meantime she pays no attention to her husband; she never speaks of what she costs him. She lives with him as if she were only his neighbour ”

“ If you shake out the truth, it is the face that he loves, not the woman. Let three wrinkles make their appearance; let her skin become dry and flabby; let her teeth turn black, and her eyes lose their lustre: then will his freedman give her the order, "Pack up your traps and be off! you've become a nuisance; you are for ever blowing your nose ”

“ Luxury, more deadly than any foe, has laid her hand upon us, and avenges a conquered world. Since the day when Roman poverty perished, no deed of crime or lust has been wanting to us; from that moment Sybaris and Rhodes and Miletus have poured in upon our hills, with the begarlanded and drunken and unabashed Tarentum. [38] Filthy lucre first brought in amongst us foreign ways; wealth enervated and corrupted the ages with foul indulgences. What decency does Venus observe when she is drunken? ”

“ That dowry bought liberty for her; she may make what signals, and write what love letters she pleases, before her husband's face; the rich woman who marries a money-loving husband is as good as unmarried. ”

“ She is a formidable woman to encounter; she is terrible to look at. She frequents the baths by night; not till night does she order her oil-jars and her quarters to be shifted thither; she loves all the bustle of the hot bath ”

“ So even the lanista's establishment is better ordered than yours, for he separates the vile from the decent, and sequesters even from their fellow-retiarii the wearers of the ill-famed tunic; in the training-school, and even in gaol, such creatures herd apart; but your wife condemns you to drink out of the same cup as these gentry, with whom the poorest trull would refuse to sip the choicest wine. Them do women consult about marriage and divorce, with their society do they relieve boredom or business, from them do they learn lascivious motions and whatever else the teacher knows. ”

“ If you are honestly uxorious, and devoted to one woman, then bow your head and submit your neck to the yoke. Never will you find a woman who spares the man who loves her; for though she be herself aflame, she delights to torment and plunder him. So the better the man, the more desirable he be as a husband, the less good will he get out of his wife. No present will you ever make if your wife forbids; nothing will you ever sell if she objects ”

“ Whenever a cinaedus is kept he taints the household. Folks let these fellows eat and drink with them, and merely have the vessels washed, not shivered to atoms as they should be when such lips have touched them. ”

“ But I warn you wards—you that have a good estate—keep watch over your lives; trust not a single dish; those hot cakes are black with poison of a mother's baking. Whatever is offered you by the mother, let someone taste it first ”

“ Under Jove, perchance, some few traces of ancient modesty may have survived; but that was before he had grown his beard, before the Greeks had learned to swear by someone else's head, when men feared not thieves for their cabbages or apples, and lived with unwalled gardens. After that Astraea [5] withdrew by degrees to heaven, with Chastity as her comrade, the two sisters taking flight together.
21To set your neighbour's bed a-shaking, Postumus, and to flout the Genius of the sacred couch, [6] is now an ancient and long-established practice. ”

“ There's another wife coming who will not sniffle." But till that day comes, the lady rules the roast, asking her husband for shepherds and Canusian sheep, and elms for her Falernian vines. But that's a mere nothing; she asks for all his slave-boys, in town and country; everything that her neighbour possesses, and that she does not possess, must be bought. ”

“ If she has an appointment and wishes to be turned out more nicely than usual, and is in a hurry to meet some one waiting for her in the gardens, or more likely near the chapel of the wanton Isis, the unhappy maid that does her hair will have her own hair torn, and the clothes stripped off her shoulders and her breasts. ”

“ He it is that obtains pardon for wives who break the law of purity on days that should be kept holy, and exacts huge penalties when the coverlet has been profaned, or when the silver serpent has been seen to nod his head. ”

“ Duff explains this of a scene in the theatre in Tarentum when the people, garlanded in honour of Dionysus, insulted the Roman ambassador (Dio. Cass, fragm. 145) . ↑ The ancient Temple of Pudicitia was in the Forum Boarium. ↑ Alluding to the profanation of the mysteries of the Bona Dea by Clodius, in B.C. 62, by appearing in the disguise of a female lutist. ↑ He now addresses the cinaedus himself. ↑ i.e. professionals who sing for hire on public occasions. ↑ i.e. of a noble family. ↑ A prize of oak-leaves was given at the agon Capitolinus, instituted by Domitian. ”