Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/53

 Joy, Sorrow, Fear, Love, Hatred, Transport, Rage, Shall form the motley subject of my page. (Gifford's Version of i. 84, 85.)

Precisely similar is the disgust expressed by Martial at the mawkish mythological poetry of his day:—

Qui legis Oedipoden caligantemque Thyesten, Colchidas et Scyllas, quid nisi monstra legis? Quid te vana iuvant miserae ludibria cartae? Hoc lege, quod possit dicere vita, Meum est. Non hic Centauros, non Gorgonas Harpyasque Invenies; hominem pagina nostra sapit. (Epp. x. iv. 1-2, 7-10.)

Juvenal and Martial may thus be said to have developed a school of practical poetry. Just as Socrates is said to have called down the attention of men from the heavens to the earth, so did Juvenal and Martial call men from the barren repetition of mythological tales and fancies, and the no less barren field of rhetorical declamation, to describing the life of men as lived in their own time and city.

Juvenal ends his 1st Satire with the announcement that he is not to follow the example of Lucilius in attacking his contemporaries; his shafts are to be directed, not against the living, but against the dead. This is not to be taken merely as a sign of caution on Juvenal's part, as though he were afraid of rousing resentments like those aroused by Lucilius, but is xlix