the great Sophistic movement was already setting in, as a result of which Greek literature was to revive and the Greek language to supersede the Latin as the chief vehicle of literary expression even at Rome itself. The greater freedom accorded to women had its compensations; in spite of Juvenal, woman does not become worse or less attractive because she is cultured and well educated, and if there was much dissipation and debauchery in the high society of his day, even high society contained many noble women of fine intellect and pure character. The spread of Roman citizenship and the breaking down of the old exclusive tradition were potent factors for good in the history of civilization. It may be urged in Juvenal's defence that satire must necessarily deal with the darker side of life, that his silence as to the better and more hopeful elements in society does not mean that he ignored them, and that it is absurd to attack a satirist because he is not a scientific social historian. All this is true; but it is possible to have plenty of material for the bitterest satire and to indict gross and rampant vice without leaving the impression that the life of the day has no redeeming elements, without generalizing extravagantly from the vices of one section of society, even though that section be large and influential. The weakness of Juvenal is that he is too retrospective, both in his praise and in his blame. He dare not satirize the living, but will attack the dead. But it would be wrong to assume that in the dead he always attacks types of the living. There is always the impression that he is in reality attacking the first century rather than the second, the reigns of Nero and Domitian rather than the society governed by Trajan and Hadrian. He had lived through a night of terror and would not recognize the signs of a new dawn. Directing his attention too exclusively on Rome itself and on the past, he forgets the larger world and the future hope. It is to the impossible Rome of the past that he turns his eyes for inspiration. Hence comes his hatred, often merely racial, for Greek and Asiatic importations,[722] hence his dislike and contempt for the new woman. Moreover, he had lived on the fringe of high society and not in it; he had drunk in the bitterness of the client's life, and had lived in the enveloping atmosphere of scandal that always surrounds society for those who are excluded from it. A man of an acrid and jealous temperament, easily angered and not readily appeased, he yields too lightly and indiscriminately to that indignation, which, he tells us, is the fountain-head of all he writes. Satire should be something more than a wild torrent sweeping away obstacles great and small with one equal violence; it should have its laughing shallows and its placid deeps. But Juvenal's laughter rings harsh and wild, and wounds as deeply as his invective; he drives continually before the