show that the memory of one of the foulest scandals of the reign of Domitian was still fresh in the minds of men. The third satire, imitated by Samuel Johnson in his _London_, presents such a picture as Rome may have offered to the satirist at any time in the 1st century of our era; but it was under the worst emperors, Nero and Domitian, that the arts of flatterers and foreign adventurers were most successful, and that such scenes of violence as that described at 277 seq. were most likely to occur;[2] while the mention of Veiento (185) as still enjoying influence is a distinct reference to the court of Domitian. The fourth, which alone has any political significance, and reflects on the emperor as a frivolous trifler rather than as a monster of lust and cruelty, is the reproduction of a real or imaginary scene from the reign of Domitian, and is animated by the profoundest scorn and loathing both of the tyrant himself and of the worst instruments of his tyranny. The fifth is a social picture of the degradation to which poor guests were exposed at the banquets of the rich, but many of the epigrams of Martial and the more sober evidence of one of Pliny's letters show that the picture painted by Juvenal, though perhaps exaggerated in colouring, was drawn from a state of society prevalent during and immediately subsequent to the times of Domitian.[3] Book II. consists of the most elaborate of the satires, by many critics regarded as the poet's masterpiece, the famous sixth satire, directed against the whole female sex, which shares with Domitian and his creatures the most cherished place in the poet's antipathies. It shows certainly no diminution of vigour either in its representation or its invective. The time at which this satire was composed cannot be fixed with certainty, but some allusions render it highly probable that it was given to the world in the later years of Trajan, and before the accession of Hadrian. The date of the publication of Book III., containing the seventh, eighth and ninth satires, seems to be fixed by its opening line to the first years after the accession of Hadrian. In the eighth satire another reference is made (120) to the misgovernment of Marius in Africa as a recent event, and at line 51 there may be an allusion to the Eastern wars that occupied the last years of Trajan's reign. The ninth has no allusion to determine its date, but it is written with the same outspoken freedom as the second and the sixth, and belongs to the period when the poet's power was most vigorous, and his exposure of vice most uncompromising. In Book IV., comprising the famous tenth, the eleventh and the twelfth satires, the author appears more as a moralist than as a pure satirist. In the tenth, the theme of the "vanity of human wishes" is illustrated by great historic instances, rather than by pictures of the men and manners of the age; and, though the declamatory vigour and power of expression in