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.

    524/574 (page 444)
    Centronius plann’d and built, and built and plann’d; And now along Cajeta’s winding strand, And now amid Prseneste’s hills, and now On lofty Tibur’s solitary brow, He rear’d prodigious piles, with marble brought From distant realms, and exquisitely wrought: Prodigious piles! that tower’d o’er Fortune’s shrine, As gelt Posides towers, O Jove I o’er thine. While thus Centronius crowded seat on seat. He spent his cash, and mortgag’d his estate; Yet left enough his family to content: Which his mad son to the last farthing spent. While, building on, he strove, with fond desire. To top the stately structures of his sire. Sprung from a father who the sabbath fears. There is, who nought but clouds and skies reveres; Ver. 133. Ut spado PosidcsJ] By the spado,” Mr. Gibbon says, “ the Romans very forcibly expressed their abhorrence” (rather, their con- tempt) of that mutilated condition : the Greek appellation of eunuch, which insensibly prevailed, had a milder sound, and a more ambiguous sense.” With respect to Posides, he was one of the freedmen of Claudius, who pros- tituted some of the most honourable rewards of military merit in his favour: thus Suet. ILihtrtorum pracipul suspexit Posidem spadonem,{JmensLVs words,) quern etiam Britannico triumpho inter militares viros hasta pura donavit. Claud. 28. Posides, like most of this emperor’s favourites, amassed vast wealth, which he lavished in building. Ver. 141. who nought but clouds and sides reveres; This popular error, with regard to the Jews, arose from their having no visible re- presentation of the deity. When Pompey using, says Tacitus, the license of