Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/55

 depravity the fact that a Roman noble wore clothes of almost transparent texture, and that the Emperor Otho used cosmetics and carried with him a mirror as part of his paraphernalia for war.

The 3rd Satire, from an artistic point of view, is perhaps Juvenal's finest performance. It contains a brilliant picture of the living Rome of his day, of its sights and sounds, its physical dangers and annoyances, its luxury and its meanness, its wearisome social observances, and of the intolerable inequalities which made it impossible for a poor man with any self-respect to continue any longer to live in it.

In lines 18-20 we find a charming indication of the poet's natural good taste when he exclaims how much nearer to us would be the spirit of Egeria " if her fountain were fringed by a margin of green grass, and there were no marble ornament to outrage the native tufa."

The 4th Satire is of a lighter kind; it is in the nature of a skit upon the solemn importance with which an exacting emperor like Domitian might invest the most frivolous act of obsequious flatterers. A mullet of huge size is sent up as a present to the emperor, who at once summons a meeting of his cabinet council to consider how the fish is to be treated.

The 5th Satire, in a tone of bitter irony, gives us li