no more than a suspicion of virtue. Whether they were father and son or not, the young man had imitated the well-known trick of the elder Brutus, in feigning fatuity. When Domitian celebrated his annual games at Alba, in honour of Minerva, this youth fought naked with wild beasts in the amphitheatre: but Domitian was not to be deceived by such affectation of insanity; and sent him to execution with circumstances of extreme cruelty, and under various methods of torture. But Juvenal's allusions are so slight, that sometimes we cannot trace the facts in what remains of history; and, at other times, the innuendo seems to admit of more than one application. At the Quinquatria, Domitian was in the habit of exhibiting pairs of noblemen in combat with wild beasts on the stage. If they conquered, it was imputed as a crime. Dio relates either this, or a similar story. The impiety charged on so many appears to have been a propensity to what he calls Judaism, which the Romans continually confounded with Christianity: · ὑφ ̓ ἧς καὶ ἄλλοι ἐς τὰ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἤθη ἐξοκέλλοντες πολλοὶ κατεδικάσθησαν . . . τὸν δὲ δὴ Γλαβρίωτα τὸν μετὰ τοῦ Τραϊανοῦ ἄρξαντα, κατηγορήθεντα τά τε ἄλλα, καὶ οἷα οἱ πολλοὶ, καὶ ὅτι καὶ θηρίοις ἐμάχετο, ἀπέκτεινεν. Thus did Domitian sport with the lives of his subjects. But the practice of cutting off the nobility, from jealousy, fear, or hatred, had prevailed from the days of Nero: so that the poet professes, he would prefer being a Terræ filius and a squab brother of the giants, to a descent from the most illustrious families. The fabulous sons of Titan and Tellus rebelled and fought against Jupiter; but even that hazard is not equal to standing up against the overwhelming power of Domitian. Neither was he to be cajoled by the stratagem of playing the fool, like Tarquin the Proud. Domitius had miscarried in the policy, which had saved Lucius Junius Brutus, when his brother and many of the nobility had been destroyed. David had recourse to a similar device at the court of Achish, king of Gath. Juvenal professes a wish to leave Rome, and banish himself to the most inhospitable regions, rather than hear hypocrites preach morality Ultra Sauromatas fugere hinc libet, et glacialem Sat. ii. The Sauromata were the people of Asiatic and European Sarmatia, the Asiatic Sauromatæ being the inhabitants of modern Tartary, the European those of modern Russia. In the following very spirited passage of Lucan, the Northern Ocean, which was perpetually frozen, is called the Scythian Sea, as washing the shores of Scythia: Quis furor, o cives? quæ tanta licentia ferri, Adstringit Scythicum glaciali frigore pontum. The popular characters of Heraclitus, and Democritus, as the weeping and laughing philosophers, though a vulgar error, were particularly well suited to the purposes of moral satire, and are admirably handled by Juvenal : were Jamne igitur laudas, quod de sapientibus alter The Thracian Abdera, and Boeotia in general, laboured considerably under the stigma of stupidity, although Boeotia was in some measure redeemed from the general censure by the individual greatness of Pindar. Still however, Abdera was called the country of sheep, and Boeotia that of hogs. We also indulge occasionally in academical nicknames to particular colleges. The satire on the various official ensigns, the fopperies of augural appendages, the patrician and consular robes, and the pompous display of the prætor as presiding at the Circensian Games fürnishes as fine a specimen of the serious and severe style of invective, as any to be found in the works of this indignant poet. my The following irony on the superstitions of thology, and particularly on the fable of Prometheus, and the sarcastic indignation expressed against the cruelties and unnatural practices occasioned by bigotry, are among the very striking passages of the author : Hinc gaudere libet, quod non violaverit ignem, Sustinuit, nihil unquam hac carne libentius edit: Sat. 15. The contrast in the case of the Vascons, who sustained a siege from Cn. Pompey and Metellus, and were driven by the pressure of famine to eat human flesh, is well introduced, to show that the rage of the satirist is not so indiscriminate, as to confound the cravings of nature with the wantonness of barbarous and unnatural appetite. But among all the superstitions of Rome, none had more completely taken possession of the popular mind, than the belief in astrology. It has indeed been the most universal and enduring of all credulous follies, and more or less occupies the vulgar even in these enlightened times. Women have always been peculiarly prone to a belief in the influence of the stars. Juvenal therefore takes up the subject in satire vi. which is devoted to the reprehension of female vices and weaknesses: Præcipuus tamen est horum, qui sæpius exul, Ante tamen de te, Tanaquil tua; quando sororem Post ipsam quid enim majus dare numina possunt? In cujus manibus, ceu pinguia succina, tritas |