The satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis / translated into English verse by William Gifford.

  • Juvenal
Date:
1802
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis / translated into English verse by William Gifford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    454/574 (page 374)
    And the fierce wolf, at heav’n’s command grown mild, And playful at her dugs each wondrous child. Thus, all the wealth those simple times could boast, Small wealth! their horses and their arms engrost; All else was homely, and their frugal fare, Cook’d without art, and serv’d in earthen ware; Yet justly worth thy envy, were thy breast But with one spark of noble spleen possest; Then, then the Majesty of Temples show’d More glorious, honour’d with a present god Then solemn sounds, heard from the sacred walls At midnight’s solemn hour, told of the Gauls Ver. 175. Thai solemn sounds, ^c.] This alludes to a circumstance recorded by the writers of Roman history. M. Cseditius, as he was passing by one of the temples in the dead of night, heard a loud and alarming voice from the sanctuary, distinctly cry, ^^The Gauls are at handd” commanding him at the same time, to repeat what he had heard to the Senate. Liv. lib. v. 32. Plutarch tells the same story, in the life of Camillus. The elder Pliny has a curious passage on the subject of the following lines. Hie enim turn effigies deum erant laudatissima; nec panitet nos illorum, qui tales coluere. Aurum enim et argentum ne dis quidem conficiehant: durant etiam- num plerisque in locis talia simulacra, * * * * sanctioxa auro, certl innocentiora. Lib. XXXIV. We have seen, (p. 84,) that the statue of Cybele was still more rude and artless than that mentioned in the text; and the true principle, I believe, of the adoration which was anciently paid to those unfinished masses of stone, as well as to the first shapeless blocks which were set up in the temples, was the profound reverence entertained for the gods; which did not suffer the artists to invest them too closely with a determinate form. In pro- cess of time, they grew bolder: and it is an observable thing in the history of sculpture, that the most admired statues of the deities were produce^ in the ,