what vipers you are goaded. Can you endure any Master-ess when there are so many good strong ropes, When high, vertiginous windows are wide open, when the Aemilian bridge offers itself to you – just right next door? Or if from so many options no mode of death strikes your fancy, Surely you think it better that a supple boy sleep with you? A boy, who does not conduct a nocturnal lawsuit at you, who wheedles no little gifts from you as he lies there, and neither complains because you are going easy on him, nor because you don’t gasp as much as he demands. conuentum tamen et pactum et sponsalia nostra tempestate paras iamque a tonsore magistro pecteris et digito pignus fortasse dedisti? certe sanus eras. uxorem, Postume, ducis? dic qua Tisiphone, quibus exagitere colubris. ferre potes dominam saluis tot restibus ullam, cum pateant altae caligantesque fenestrae, cum tibi uicinum se praebeat Aemilius pons? aut si de multis nullus placet exitus, illud nonne putas melius, quod tecum pusio dormit? pusio, qui noctu non litigat, exigit a te nulla iacens illic munuscula, nec queritur quod et lateri parcas nec quantum iussit anheles. (6.25-37) Juvenal was concerned with the morality and actions of the Roman elite; Satire VI can equally be read as an invective against the men who have permitted this pervasive degradation of the Roman world. The author harshly criticizes avaricious husbands who marry not for love but for the dowry and subsequently allow their rich wives to do whatever they wish (6.136-141). Similarly, men who care only for the fleeting beauty of their wives, and then divorce them as it fades, merit condemnation (6.142-48). While women are prone to temptation, Juvenal casts men as agents and enablers of the feminine proclivity toward vice. In the written Roma of the Satires, men will even impersonate eunuchs to get unmonitored access to corrupt a woman (6.O-20-30). The literary trope of luxury imported into Roma along with the spoils of conquest and the goods (and banes) of the world is employed by Juvenal to explain the source of degradation: Even so, do you ask from what spring these prodigies? Humble fortune defended the chaste Latin women then, nor did their labor, short slumbers, hard hands irritated by Tuscan wool, Hannibal close to the city, and husbands standing guard at the Colline tower allow their little shelters to be stained with vices.