JUVENAL, SATIRE VI
like to thee, O Cynthia,[1] nor to thee, Lesbia,[2] whose bright eyes were clouded by a sparrow's death, but one whose breasts gave suck to lusty babes, often more unkempt herself than her acorn-belching spouse. For in those days, when the world was young, and the skies were new, men born of the riven oak,[3] or formed of dust, lived differently from now, and had no parents of their own. 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[4] 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,[5] is now an ancient and long-established practice. All other sins came later, the products of the age of Iron; but it was the silver age that saw the first adulterers. Nevertheless, in these days of ours, you are preparing for a covenant, a marriage-contract and a betrothal; you are by now getting your hair cut by a master barber; you have also perhaps given a pledge to her finger. What! Postumus, are you, you who once had your wits, taking to yourself a wife? Tell me what Tisiphone, what snakes are driving you mad? Can you submit to a she-tyrant when there is so much rope to be had, so many dizzy heights of windows standing open, and when
- ↑ The Cynthia of Propertius.
- ↑ The Lesbia of Catullus.
- ↑ There was a legend that men had been born from oak-trees.
- ↑ Astraea, daughter of Zeus and Themis, was the last mortal to leave the earth when the Golden Age came to an end; she was placed among the stars as Virgo.
- ↑ The fulcrum was the head of the couch, often ornamented with the figure of the Genius in bronze.
