On the whole no one of the ten or twelve really great writers of ancient Rome leaves on the mind so mixed an impression, both as a writer and as a man, as Juvenal. He has little, if anything at all, of the high imaginative mood--the mood of reverence and noble admiration--which made Ennius, Lucretius and Virgil the truest poetical representatives of the genius of Rome. He has nothing of the wide humanity of Cicero, of the urbanity of Horace, of the ease and grace of Catullus. Yet he represents another mood of ancient Rome, the mood natural to her before she was humanized by the lessons of Greek art and thought. If we could imagine the elder Cato living under Domitian, cut off from all share in public life, and finding no outlet for his combative energy except in literature, we should perhaps understand the motives of Juvenal's satire and the place which is his due as a representative of the genius of his country. As a man he shows many of the strong qualities of the old Roman plebeian--the aggressive boldness, the intolerance of superiority and privilege, which animated the tribunes in their opposition to the senatorian rule. Even where we least like him we find nothing small or mean to alienate our respect from him. Though he loses no opportunity of being coarse, he is not licentious; though he is often truculent, he cannot be called malignant. It is, indeed, impossible to say what motives of personal chagrin, of love of detraction, of the mere literary passion for effective writing, may have contributed to the indignation which inspired his verse. But the prevailing impression we carry away after reading him is that in all his early satires he was animated by a sincere and manly detestation of the tyranny and cruelty, the debauchery and luxury, the levity and effeminacy, the crimes and frauds, which we know from other sources were then rife in Rome, and that a more serene wisdom and a happier frame of mind were attained by him when old age had somewhat allayed the fierce rage which vexed his manhood. AUTHORITIES.--The remarkable statements in a "life" found in a late Italian MS. (Barberini, viii. 18), "Iunius Iuvenalis Aquinas Iunio Iuvenale patre matre vero Septumuleia ex Aquinati municipio Claudio Nerone et L. Antistio consulibus (55) natus est, sororem habuit Septumuleiam quae Fuscino (_Sat._ xiv. 1) nupsit," though not necessarily false, cannot be accepted without confirmation.