The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius / Literally translated into English prose, with notes, chronological tables, arguments, &c.

by Juvenal; Gaius Lucilius; Persius; Sulpicia

SATIRE XV.

After enumerating with great humor the animal and vegetable gods of the Egyptians, the author directs his powerful ridicule at their sottish and ferocious bigotry; of which he gives an atrocious and loathsome example. The conclusion of the Satire, which is a just and beautiful description of the origin of civil society (infinitely superior to any thing that Lucretius or Horace has delivered on the subject), founded not on natural instinct, but on principles of mutual benevolence implanted by God in the breast of man, and of man alone, does honor to the genius, good sense, and enlightened morality of the author.