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its prerogatives and its essence are powerfully interlocked with the perennial
dialectic of ‘Otherness’ with respect to ‘Norm’. And, as norms are culturally
determined, ‘monsters’ too become inevitably culture-specific products. 44
It is interesting that literary sources do not treat theriomorphic or therianthropic gods native to
Italy in the same way as Egyptian gods. As we shall see in Chapter Two, the Romans were quite
at home with representations of serpents in their household shrines and did not label them as
“monstrous.” 45 Latin sources indicate a difference in the degree of acceptance of Roman deities
as opposed to Egyptian deities.
Thus, we may accept the translation of portenta as “monstrous,” but this meaning may
partially obscure the goal of Juvenal’s satire, which is not strictly focused on condemning animal
worship. 46 In order to fully appreciate this text, we must take two things into account: Juvenal’s
genre and the tradition of his exile. 47 Firstly, satire is a genre filled with invective; Juvenal’s
poems are no exception and are often bitter in tone. (Smelik and Hemelrijk ignore this fact.)
Secondly, assuming that Juvenal is not simply adopting a satiric persona for his writing, 48 we
must be mindful that he was exiled to Egypt, a fact that would not likely have inclined him to
paint a favorable picture of the country. Green states the following in relation to Juvenal’s
feelings toward Egypt and its people: “We know, on his own testimony, that he had visited
Egypt, and loathed the Egyptians, with a xenophobic ferocity that eclipses even his distaste for
the Greeks.” 49 Thus we must ask ourselves if we should take any statement he makes at face
value. Something else to consider is that his poems were not well received until several
44 Lada-Richards 1998, 46.
45 Due to this double-standard of dealing with foreign gods, I have chosen to restrict the deities dealt with in this
paper to either native deities and demons found on Italian soil or those that have been officially sanctioned in some
way. Aesculapius serves as the primary example of the latter category. Egyptian deities met with varying degrees
of acceptance in different time periods and form a special case that is beyond the scope of this study.
46 Smelik and Hemelrijk (1984, 1966) believe that Juvenal’s extreme hatred of the Egyptians caused him to lose
sight of what was the original topic of this poem. “In the fifteenth satire Juvenal concentrates so much on
expressing his antipathy to the Egyptians who give themselves over to bestial cruelties beyond all reason and no
longer suitable to the times (at least according to Juvenal’s judgment) that he completely loses sight of his original
subject, animal worship.” Are we to believe that Juvenal’s emotions caused him to be a sloppy author?
47 Green (2004, xiv-v) notes that Juvenal was exiled by either Domitian of Trajan and the location of this exile was
likely Egypt. Some accounts of Juvenal’s life place his exile in Scotland. It is not certain when he wrote his Satires,
but one tradition holds that he edited them while exiled in Egypt. Green expresses his doubts in relation to the late
editing of the Satires.
48 Green 2004, xxvii-xxix.
49 Green 2004, xxii.
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