BITING OFF MORE MAN ONE CAN CHEW: A RECENT TREND IN THE INTERPRETATION OF JUVENAL'S 15TH SATIRE
Journal: Akroterion
Year: 2014

In his discussion of Juvenal's 15th Satire, entitled "Philosophers and Cannibals", Richard McKim (1986:58) observes that the poem "has traditionally been an object of distaste and neglect".1 He describes the tirade against the Egyptians as "a tissue of hysterical racism, stupid morbidity, and smug self-congratulation" and concludes that "on the traditional assumption of identity between the Satire's first-person bigot and its author, it seems merely another unpleasant document in the history of