Satire VI

Satire VI is the most famous^{[according to whom?]} of the sixteen Satires by the Roman author Juvenal written in the late 1st or early 2nd century. In English translation, this satire is often titled something in the vein of Against Women due to the most obvious reading of its content. It enjoyed significant social currency from late antiquity to the early modern period, being read as a proof-text for a wide array of misogynistic beliefs.^{[citation needed]} Its current significance rests in its role as a crucial body of evidence on Roman conceptions of gender and sexuality.^{[original research?]}

The overarching theme of the poem is a dissuasion of the addressee Postumus from marriage; the narrator uses a series of acidic vignettes on the degraded state of (predominantly female) morality to bolster his argument. At c. 695 lines of Latin hexameter, this satire is nearly twice the length of the next largest of the author's sixteen known satires; Satire VI alone composes Book II of Juvenal's five books of satire.

Satire VI also contains the famous phrase "Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (but who will guard the guards themselves?), which is variously translated as "But who will guard the guards?", "But who will watch the watchmen?", or similar. In context, it refers to the impossibility of enforcing moral behavior when the enforcers (custodes) are corruptible:

... I am aware

of whatever councils you old friends warn,

i.e. "throw the bolt and lock her in.” But who is going to guard the

guards themselves, who now keep silent the lapses of the loose

girl - paid off in the same coin? The common crime keeps its silence.

A prudent wife looks ahead and starts (her infidelities) with them.

... noui

consilia et ueteres quaecumque monetis amici,

'pone seram, cohibe'. sed quis custodiet ipsos

custodes, qui nunc lasciuae furta puellae

hac mercede silent? crimen commune tacetur.

prospicit hoc prudens et ab illis incipit uxor.

(6.O29-34)

The text of the poem is not quite certain. In particular, E.O. Winstedt in 1899 discovered in the Bodleian Library in Oxford in an eleventh-century or early 12th-century manuscript an additional 36 lines (34 placed after line 366 of the satire, and two more after line 373).^[1] The authenticity of these lines (which contain the famous quis custodiet passage above) has been debated,^[2] although in the opinion of one scholar, they are "fully worthy of Juvenal".^[3] In most modern texts the 34 lines are usually printed after line 345. There is a partial duplication between O30-O34 and 346–348.

^ Winstedt, E. O. (May 1899). "A Bodleian MS. of Juvenal". The Classical Review. 13 (4): 201–205. doi:10.1017/S0009840X00078409. S2CID 161081775.
^ See Wilson (1901), Freeman (1975), Sosin (2000).
^ Ferguson (1979), p. xxv.

[1] Winstedt, E. O. (May 1899). "A Bodleian MS. of Juvenal". The Classical Review. 13 (4): 201–205. doi:10.1017/S0009840X00078409. S2CID 161081775.

[2] See Wilson (1901), Freeman (1975), Sosin (2000).

[3] Ferguson (1979), p. xxv.

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