**Decimus Junius Juvenalis** (Aquinum, between 50 and 60 A.D. \u2013 Rome, after 127 A.D.) was a Roman poet and\nrhetorician. He wrote until the reign of Emperor Hadrian, and the exact date of his death is unknown, though\nit certainly occurred after 127 A.D., the latest chronological reference that can be derived from his works.
\nInformation about his life is scarce and uncertain, inferred from the rare autobiographical references found in\nhis sixteen Satires.
\nThe Satires constitute the only literary production of the poet that has come down to us: they consist of sixteen\ncompositions published in five books.
\nThey represent the last great expression of a genre that Quintilian defined as uniquely Roman, a definition that\nsuits Juvenal well, given his aversion to the Graeculi and to their literature and philosophy.
\nJuvenal states from the very beginning that what drives him to write is indignation at the degradation of the\nsociety in which he lives. The targets of his satire are numerous and belong to every social class: the entire Roman\nsociety of his time is condemned in fiery terms. Satire XV is a moralistic composition in which he attacks religious\nfanaticism and the barbarity of Egypt, describing a horrifying episode of cannibalism arising from local\nfeuds between Ombi and Tentyra in the Nile Delta. Through a dark and indignant style, the poet uses Egyptian\nbrutality to denounce human degeneration. It is in this context that he employs a hyperbole connected to Scylla\nand to what her figure represented in the imagination of the classical world, establishing a point of comparison:\nwhat appears monstrous and unbelievable in myth is, in reality, less shocking than what truly happens\namong men.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom fleecy animals every table there
\nMust abstain; and a grievous crime it would be
\nTo slaughter the tender offspring of a goat
\nStill newly weaned from its mother.
\nYet there exists no law there
\nThat forbids the eating of human flesh.
\nA crime that left Alcinous astonished
\nWhen Ulysses revealed it to him at supper.
\nHe drew laughter from many, and perhaps anger from others,
\nBeing thought a lying braggart:
\nDoes no one cast into the sea this man,
\nWorthy of a truer Charybdis?
\nThis man who dares hope that one may believe
\nIn the savage Cyclops and the ravenous Laestrygonian?
\nAnd Scylla, and the Cyanean rocks rather
\nWould I believe to meet and exchange places.
\nI would sooner trust, they said, the fierce winds
\nShut within Aeolus\u2019 bags,
\nOr Elpenor turned into a swine, and sailors
\nReduced to grunting, deprived of human speech.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Satire XV of Juvenal denounces with extreme severity the loss of humanity in mankind, taking as its starting\npoint an episode of cannibalism in Egypt to demonstrate that human beings, when they abandon reason and\npietas, can become more cruel than beasts themselves.
\nIn the proposed passage this idea emerges through a powerful reversal of values: in that place it is considered\na crime to kill animals regarded as sacred, such as goats, yet there is no law prohibiting the consumption of\nhuman flesh.
\nJuvenal thus highlights a morally inverted world, where what ought to be most sacred\u2014human beings\u2014is instead\nwhat is violated.
\nTo strengthen his denunciation, the poet introduces a reference to the Odyssey: when Ulysses recounts his adventures\nat the court of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, he is considered a liar because his stories of monsters\nand wonders seem unbelievable.
\nJuvenal takes this disbelief and amplifies it, citing a series of increasingly extreme mythical figures, culminating\nin Scylla and Charybdis.
\nHere the figure of Scylla assumes particular significance not only as a monstrous creature but also as a real and\nwell-known geographical location in the ancient world.
\nScylla is not merely a monster of imagination: she is linked to a specific place, the strait between Italy and Sicily,\nwhere ancient sailors located the danger of Scylla on one side and Charybdis on the other.
\nThus Scylla stands midway between myth and reality: she is a fantastic creature, yet rooted in a concrete experience\nof navigation and in a genuinely existing place.
\nWhen Juvenal states that he would more readily believe in Scylla and her rocks, he is not invoking just any\nmonster, but something that for his readers possessed a geographical and almost tangible reality. For this very\nreason the reference is even more effective: Scylla represents one of the strongest symbols of monstrosity in\nancient culture\u2014a hybrid, ferocious, inescapable creature embodying an almost inconceivable danger, the ultimate\nlimit of peril, yet a limit situated on the border of reality rather than in a wholly invented world.
\nThe result is a powerful reversal: what appears monstrous and unbelievable, poised between reality and myth,\nsuch as Scylla in the Strait, nevertheless seems less shocking than the historical reality denounced by Juvenal.
\nHuman beings, through their behavior, surpass even that limit.
\nIt is no longer the monsters of the sea that devour men, but men themselves.
\nIn this way, the mention of Scylla becomes central to the passage.v\nIt serves to establish a comparison between myth and reality and, above all, to overturn it: myth, with all its\nterrifying creatures, proves less disturbing than contemporary historical reality.
\nThus Scylla becomes the term of comparison that allows Juvenal to emphasize the fundamental idea of the\nsatire, namely that true monstrosity belongs neither to myth nor to the extreme places of the world, but manifests\nitself in the everyday reality of humankind, capable of actions that render even legendary creatures less\nterrible.<\/p>\n<\/div>
Giuseppe Ribuffo<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/i>Next page: 97. Arthur John Strutt, A Pedestrian Tour in Calabria and Sicily, 1842<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1408","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nGiovenale - Discover Scilla<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverscilla.com\/en\/giovenale-le-satire\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Giovenale - Discover Scilla\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.discoverscilla.com\/en\/giovenale-le-satire\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Discover Scilla\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-08-19T08:41:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.discoverscilla.com\\\/giovenale-le-satire\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.discoverscilla.com\\\/giovenale-le-satire\\\/\",\"name\":\"Giovenale - 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