Si nondum implevi gremium, si panditur ultra, Nec Croesi fortuna unquam, nec Persica regna Indulsit Caesar cui Claudius omnia, cujus 330 Paruit imperiis, uxorem occidere jussus. If yet, in spite of this prodigious store, Of that proud slave, whose mandate Rome controll'd, ARGUMENT OF THE FIFTEENTH SATIRE AFTER a contemptuous reference to Egypt and to the gods there worshipped, Juvenal describes a fight between two neighbouring Egyptian townships; a fight caused by religious intolerance and hatred, which ended in a detestable scene of cannibalism; he deplores the savage cruelty of the whole affair, and laments the decay of that sympathy and affection which nature gives to man and to man alone, and which is the foundation of all society. The satire seems to be directed against superstition and bigotry, no less than against the savage actions which they engender. Quis nescit, Volusi Bithynice, qualia demens In mare nemo Hunc abicit, saeva dignum veraque Charbydi, Fingentem immanes Laestrygonas atque Cyclopas? |