injurious to be laughable. The views then held were different, and
Tacitus considered it a mark of great superiority in the Germans that
they did not laugh at crimes. Juvenal tells us that the Romans jeered at
poverty. There was much in the character of this satirist to raise him
in the estimation of right-minded men. His tastes were simple, he loved
the country and its homely fare, and although devoid of ambition, was
highly cultivated. No doubt he was rather austere than genial: his aim
was to instruct and warn rather than amuse; and where he approaches
humour it is merely from complexity of style, in coining words and
barbarisms, or in comparisons mostly dependent upon exaggeration. The
following is one of his best specimens, though over-weighted with
severity. It gives an idea of the state of Rome at the time. A drunken
magnate and his retinue stop a citizen in the street, and insolently
demand--

"With whose vinegar and beans are you blown out? What cobbler has been
eating leeks and sheepshead with you? Answer, or be kicked." "This,"
says Juvenal "is a poor man's liberty. When pummelled, he begs that he
may be allowed to escape with a few of his teeth remaining."

Juvenal longs for the sword of Lucilius, and the lamp of Horace, that
he may attack the vices of Rome, but he himself is more severe than
either. Forgers, gamblers and profligates are assailed, and names are
frequently given, though we often cannot now decide whether they
belonged to real persons. Laughing at those who desire length of years
without remembering the concomitant infirmities of age, he says:

"All kinds of disease dance around the aged in a troop, of which if you
were to ask the names I could sooner tell you how many lovers Hippia
had, how many patients Themison killed in one autumn, or how many allies