ABSTRACT
After G . G . Ramsay had pronounced, in the introduction to the Loeb translation, that Juvenal is ‘the greatest satirist, and one o f the greatest moralists, o f the world’, it would seem an odd pre tension for an amateur to suppose that any arguments he might put forward for contesting these two claims could serve to clarify serious thinking about Juvenal. At the same time, this remark o f Ramsay’s could not be made with any claim to critical authority by a mere specialist. For these assertions presuppose comparison o f the Latin poet with all other moral satirists before Juvenal and after him down to the time o f writing, and any such comparison could obviously not be made by a committee each member o f which was a competent judge in only one o f the relevant litera tures. And i f we inquire into the status o f Juvenal as a classic, there is a further implication that, whoever proposes the sentence, the jury appealed to is the common sense o f mankind.
