THE FIRST SATIRE OF

JUNIUS JUVENAL OF AQUINUM.

Must I always be a listener
only? Shall I never respond,
harassed so often by the Theseid an epic poem about Theseus of
hoarse Codrus?
Shall he have recited his
togas dramas featuring Roman characters to me with impunity?
Shall this one have consumed the day with his elegies with impunity, the massive
Telephus? Or Orestes, already written on the full margin of the book
So that it is written on the back as well, and not yet finished?
No one’s house is more familiar to anyone than the grove of
Mars to me, and the cave near the Aeolian cliffs
Of Vulcan. What the winds are doing, what shades Aeacus
Torques, from where another man carries off the gold of the stolen
Fleece, how many wild ash trees Monychus throws,
Fronto’s plane trees and the shattered marble shout
Always, and the columns broken by the relentless reciter.
You may expect the same things from the greatest and the least of poets.
And so, we too have withdrawn our hand from the cane, and we too
Have given advice to Sulla, that he should sleep soundly as a private citizen.
It is foolish mercy, when you run into poets everywhere,
To spare paper that is destined to perish.
Yet, if you have leisure, and if you admit the reasoning of a calm mind,
I will explain why it pleases me to run through this field
In which the great foster-son of Aurunca a reference to the satirist Lucilius turned his horses.
When a delicate eunuch marries a wife, when Mevia
Spears a Tuscan boar, and holds hunting spears with a bare breast,
When one man challenges all the patricians with his wealth,