Juvenal, Satires X, and XI [?120 C.E.]

Satire X--

1)  After J's famous attack on the power of fear and desire  (Satire X), he offers another view of Destiny: "What you ask for,  you get."  How might that proposition explain Sophocles' Oedipus?

2)  Praising the safety of poverty, J asserts "Garrets are very  seldom / The object of military raids" (205).  What has changed  about the world in our era which makes this assertion false, and  is it really a change?

3)  Following (he thinks) the example of Heraclitus and  Democritus (see note p. 218), J urges the reader to cry and to  laugh at the everyday details of "civilized" life (206).  What's so funny about this stuff‑‑what's so sad?  What might we point  out for similar treatment today?

4)  What is J's message for world‑conquering Rome based on the  lives of Cicero, Demosthenes, Hannibal, and Alexander?  (See also  ll. 290‑93, bottom of 137, Satire VI.)

5)  Moving back a step from "Death alone reveals the puny  dimensions / Of our human frame" (211), J next lists the ills of  old age.  What value does he ascribe (212‑14) to dying soon  enough?

6)  J's last shots at human hopes for happiness come at the  expense of well‑born, attractive youths.  He seems to have  distorted a narrative known to the historian, Tacitus, in order  to sum up his point (see note, p. 225).  What is J's logic here?   How is being born wealthy and handsome like being singled out for  Messalina's lustful attentions?

Satire XI--

1)  Satire XI attacks wealthy gourmets and connoisseurs.  What  kinds of values are destroyed by their pursuit of rarities (227)?

2)  Claiming, like Socrates, that self‑knowledge will protect  one from some types of disaster, J urges a modest country life on  his readers (Cf. Horace, II.2, "Ofellus").  In what ways does he  claim a taste for artistic decoration has ruined Roman life?

3)  How does J's routine racism (231 and elsewhere) fit his  overall project of moral criticism?  How might the values that  enable these satires also make them racist?  (Also see 232‑33,  Satire VI, for similarly sexist presumptions about women's  character.)

4)  J winds up XI with an aphorism which Green translates  "restraint gives an edge to all our pleasures."  How might this  assertion explain what is wrong with the targets of J's satire?   How might Horace have put the same idea?