Juvenal Quotes

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who will watch the watchers?

Never does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another.

Many commit the same crime with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime; another a crown.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?)

The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses!

No man becomes bad all at once.

Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing, and it becomes chronic in their sick minds.

Sit mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body)

All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Which roughly translates as Who will Guard the Guardians, or Who watches the watchers.

Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt.” – Juvenal, a poet in Ancient Rome.

Honesty is admired, and starves.

Dedicate one's life to truth

Where talent is lacking, anger writes poetry.

When Alexander The Great was alive the world was not big enough to contain his ambition but while Alexander chafed at the confines of the world in life, in death, “a coffin was enough.

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed is as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he has hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.

Writing in the incurable itch that possesses many.

Panem et circenses.

It is a poor thing to lean upon the fame of others, lest the pillars give way and the house fall down in ruin.

Is it a simple form of madness to lose a hundred thousand sesterces, and not have a shirt to give to a shivering slave?

orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.

..but who will guard the guardians?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

It is to be prayed that the mind be sound in a sound body. Ask for a brave soul that lacks the fear of death, which places the length of life last among nature’s blessings, which is able to bear whatever kind of sufferings, does not know anger, lusts for nothing and believes the hardships and savage labors of Hercules better than the satisfactions, feasts, and feather bed of an Eastern king. I will reveal what you are able to give yourself; For certain, the one footpath of a tranquil life lies through virtue.

No one rejoices more in revenge than women, wrote Juvenal. Women do most delight in revenge, wrote Sir Thomas Browne. Sweet is revenge, especially to women, wrote Lord Byron. And I say, I wonder why, boys. I wonder why.

while your mother in law still lives, domestic harmony / is out of the question.

rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno” Juvenal___Satires Black Swan

Besides what endless brawls by wives are bred, The curtain lecture makes a mournful bed.

Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa Fortuna." ["Generally common sense is rare in that (higher) rank."]

So Nature ordains; no evil example corrupts us so soon and so rapidly as one that has been set at home, since it comes into the mind on high authority.

Ask for a valiant heart which has banished the fear of death, which looks upon the length of days as one of the least of nature's gifts; which is able to suffer every kind of hardship, is proof against anger, craves for nothing, and reckons the trials and gruelling labours of Hercules as more desirable blessings than the amorous ease and the banquets and cushions of Sardanapallus. The things that I recommend you can grant to yourself.

Benign Philosophy, by degrees, strips from us most of our vices, and all our mistakes; it is she that first teaches us the right.

A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.

Yeah, ESP,” Juvenal said. “You know how you do it? You listen to the other person instead of thinking of what you’re gonna say next. That’s all, and you learn things.

Few things are worse enemies of civilisation than a corrupt official, but an honest official of corrupt laws is definitely one of them. Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes, by Juvenal

For no deity is held in such reverence amongst us as Wealth; though as yet, O baneful money, thou hast no temple of thine own; not yet have we reared altars to Money in like manner as we worship Peace and Honour, Victory and Virtue

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before.

That is how they were: they spent their lives proclaiming their proud origins, the historic merits of the city, the value of its relics, its heroism, its beauty, but they were blind to the decay of its years. Dr Juvenal Urbino, on the other hand, loved it enough to see it with the eyes of truth.

occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros Rehashed cabbage is the death of wretched teachers. Juvenal Satires 7.154, criticizing the repetitive dullness of the highly conservative and unimaginative school curriculum

The truth is that Dr. Juvenal Urbino's suit had never been undertaken in the name of love, and it was curious, to say the least, that a militant Catholic like him would offer her only worldly goods: security, order, happiness, contiguous numbers that, once they were added together, might resemble love, almost be love. But they were not love, and these doubts increased her confusion, because she was also not convinced that love was really what she most needed to live.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen themselves?

The world was not big enough for Alexander the Great, but a coffin was.

Many a man has met death from the rushing flood of his own eloquence; others from the strength and wondrous thews in which they have trusted.

Difficile est satiram non scribere [It is hard not to write a satire]

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.

Had we but wisdom, thou wouldst have no Divinity, O Fortune: it is we that make thee into a Goddess!

Art has no immediate future because all art is collective and there is no more collective life(there are only dead collections of people), and also because of this breaking of the true pact between the body and the soul. Greek art coincided with the beginning of geometry and with athleticism, the art of the Middle Ages with the craftsmen's guilds, the art of the Renaissance with the beginning of mechanics, etc....Since 1914 there has been a complete cut. Even comedy is almost impossible. There is only room for satire (when was it easier to understand Juvenal?). Art will never be reborn except from amidst a general anarchy - it will be epic no doubt, because affliction will have simplified a great many things...It is therefore quite useless for you to envy Leonardo or Bach. Greatness in our times must take a different course. Moreover it can only be solitary, obscure and without an echo...(but without an echo, no art).

Juvenal is not the only one to write off the priorities of the Roman people as ‘bread and circuses’. Fronto, the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, makes exactly the same point when he writes of the emperor Trajan that ‘he understood that the Roman people are kept in line by two things beyond all else: the corn dole and entertainments’.

Must this with farce and folly rack my head unpunish'd ? that with sing-song, Whine me dead?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard the guards?

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

show me the apartment 235 that lets you sleep! In this city sleep costs millions, and that’s the root of the trouble.

Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets and takes its own punishment in silence.” ELIZABETH MERIWETHER GILMER

He thought of the Roman satirist, Juvenal, who had said that if you gave the people bread and circuses, they’d be happy and not cause any trouble.

Under the Caesars there was no insurrection, but there was Juvenal.

Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.” —Juvenal

There is nothing like fury for stimulating the pen. Ask Dante. Ask Juvenal.

What else was wrong with Rome, in Juvenal’s eyes? The same things that town-dwellers complain about today: noise, overcrowding and crime.

the Roman satirist, Juvenal, who had said that if you gave the people bread and circuses, they’d be happy and not cause any trouble.

Duas tantum res anxius optat, Panem et circenses, by the Roman satirist Juvenal.

Would you not like to fill up a whole note-book at the street crossings when you see a forger borne along upon the necks of six porters, and exposed to view on this side and on that in his almost naked litter, and reminding you of the lounging Maecenas: one who by help of a scrap of paper and a moistened seal has converted himself into a fine and wealthy gentleman?

What of honour? What of courage? What of all the things that bind the legions together?’ He gave a shrug and a nod together, and a faint grin that was all the old Juvens; wild, erratic, carefree. His tilted palm said, ‘What of them? Life is too precious.

Let it be said in passing, success is a fairly hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, talent’s seeming double, has a dupe: history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone decry it.

Poor Juvenal: he and his friend even lack what it takes to be truly popular authors. He could at least have tried the technique Nancy Mitford employed, when asked what she thought of a terrible novel. She would invariably give the double-edged reply ‘Good is not the word!

It is the humor of many heads to extol the days of their forefathers, and declaim against the wickedness of times present. Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do, without the borrowed help and satire of times past; condemning the vices of their own times, by the expressions of vices in times which they commend, which cannot but argue the community of vice in both. Horace, therefore, Juvenal, and Persius, were no prophets, although their lines did seem to indigitate and point at our times. — SIR THOMAS BROWNE: Pseudodoxia Epidemica.   That

Juvenal is in no doubt: ‘mens sana in corpore sano’ – ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’. He goes on: ‘Ask for a brave mind, with no fear of death, which puts a long life last among Nature’s gifts, which can bear any hardship, which doesn’t know anger, and which lusts after nothing.’ Rich or poor, it isn’t bad advice.

For there is a spot the size of a shilling at the back of the head which one can never see for oneself. It is one of the good offices that sex can discharge for sex--to describe that spot the size of a shilling at the back of the head. Think how much women have profited by the comments of Juvenal; by the criticism of Strindberg. Think with what humanity and brilliancy men, from the earliest ages, have pointed out to women that dark place at the back of the head! And if Mary were very brave and very honest, she would go behind the other sex and tell us what she found there. A true picture of man as a whole can never be painted until a woman has described that spot the size of a shilling.

incipe, Calliope. licet et considere: non est cantandum, res uera agitur. narrate, puellae 35 Pierides, prosit mihi uos dixisse puellas.

Seek not thyself without thyself to find.

there is nothing that divine Majesty will not believe concerning itself when lauded to the skies!

count it the greatest of all sins to prefer life to honour, and to lose, for the sake of living, all that makes life worth having.

No man ever became extremely wicked all at once.

Who will watch the watchers?

odi hanc ego quae repetit uoluitque Palaemonis artem seruata semper lege et ratione loquendi ignotosque mihi tenet antiquaria uersus nec curanda uiris.

La sección más importante de mi casa es la biblioteca, donde guardo verdaderos tesoros.

Mens Sana In Corpore Sano

If nature's inspiration fails, indignation will beget the poem

What can I say, What in the least; I am what I am, be it man or beast No morsel of food Or largest of feast Can keep me away, for Self to stray For Self to cease.

Rome’s migration problem as Juvenal perceived it, therefore, was very similar to what we see in our time. The arguments haven’t really changed: migrants are deemed to take more than their fair share of scant resources, to cheat their way to the best jobs and perks, to bow and scrape in the presence of a superior, but to stick the knife in the second you turn your

The anger that Juvenal expresses is so pungent it seems impossible to believe it’s manufactured simply for the poem. His fury at a social order that emphasises relative poverty and wealth, and allows the rich to treat the poor like scum, is surely heartfelt. Isn’t it really Juvenal who has been passed over at dinner, ignored by uppity slaves and made to feel every bit the hanger-on?

The young doctor was disappointed: he had never had th eopportunity to study the effects of gold cyanide on a cadaver. Dr. Juvenal Urbino had been surprised that he had not seen him at the Medical School, but he understood in an instant from the young man's blush and Andean accent that he was probably a recent arrival to the city. He said: "There is bound to be someone driven mad by love who will give you the chance one of these days." And only after he said it did he realize that among the countless suicides he could remeber, this was the first with cyanide that had not been caused by the sufferings of love. Then something changed in the tone of his voice. "And when you do find one, observe with care," he said to the intern: "they almost always have crystals in their heart.

It was ludicrous, but Luke supposed it also made a crazy kind of sense. He thought of the Roman satirist, Juvenal, who had said that if you gave the people bread and circuses, they’d be happy and not cause any trouble. He guessed the same might be true of booze and cigarettes, especially if you offered them to scared and unhappy kids who were locked up. “That stuff doesn’t interfere with their tests?

If now a friend denies not what was given him in trust, If he restores an ancient purse with all its coins and rust, This prodigy of honesty deserves to be enrolled In Tuscan books, and with a sacrificial lamb extolled.

CAPISTRUM MARITALE (The Matrimonial Halter) - Juvenal I Ripples in your watery skin, unseen beneath the volume of groans. I hover above the marital bed, the cat-gut seams of our mattress split. (3 courses, not 8, should suffice, mea delicia.) II Legs straight, you like me tight, it is your size (and shame), you tore me unformed, drew blood before eggs ripened. If I had a little girl... I would call her... Claudia. III I have known only this, a shiver, a million dreams expelled: 'Was I good?' Magnifico! I gasp, floating down, swim to the wash bowl, your dead sons trickling down my legs.

He [Dr. Juvenal Urbino] arose at the crack of dawn, when he began to take his secret medicines: potassium bromide to raise his spirits, salicylates for the ache in his bones when it rained, ergosterol drops for vertigo, belladonna for sound sleep. He took something every hour, always in secret, because in his long life as a doctor and teacher he had always opposed prescribing palliatives for old age: it was easier for him to bear other people's pains than his own. In his pocket he always carried a little pad of camphor that he inhaled deeply when no one was watching to calm his fear of so many medicines mixed together.

The dignity and energy of the Roman character, conspicuous in war and in politics, were not easily tamed and adjusted to the arts of industry and literature. The degenerate and pliant Greeks, on the contrary, excelled in the handicraft and polite professions. We learn from the vigorous invective of Juvenal that they were the most useful and capable of servants, whether as pimps or professors of rhetoric. Obsequious, dextrous and ready, the versatile Greeks monopolized the business of teaching, publishing and manufacturing in the Roman Empire, allowing their masters ample leisure for the service of the State, in the Senate or on the field.

What? Am I to be a listener only all my days? Am I never to get my word in—I that have been so often bored by the Theseid of the ranting Cordus? Shall this one have spouted to me his comedies, and that one his love ditties, and I be unavenged? Shall I have no revenge on one who has taken up the whole day with an interminable Telephus or with an Orestes which, after filling the margin at the top of the roll and the back as well, hasn't even yet come to an end? No one knows his own house so well as I know the groves of Mars, and the cave of Vulcan near the cliffs of Aeolus. What the winds are brewing; whose souls Aeacus has on the rack; from what country another worthy is carrying off that stolen golden fleece; how big are the ash trees which Monychus hurls as missiles: these are the themes with which Fronto's plane trees and marble halls are for ever ringing until the pillars quiver and quake under the continual recitations; such is the kind of stuff you may look for from every poet, greatest or least. Well, I too have slipped my hand from under the cane; I too have counselled Sulla to retire from public life and take a deep sleep; it is a foolish clemency when you jostle against poets at every corner, to spare paper that will be wasted anyhow. But if you can give me time, and will listen quietly to reason, I will tell you why I prefer to run in the same course over which Lucilius, the great nursling of Aurunca drove his horses.

quid Romae faciam? mentiri nescio; librum, si malus est, nequeo laudare et poscere; motus astrorum ignoro; funus promittere patris nec uolo nec possum; ranarum uiscera numquam inspexi; ferre ad nuptam quae mittit adulter, quae mandat, norunt alii; me nemo ministro fur erit, atque ideo nulli comes exeo tamquam mancus et extinctae corpus non utile dextrae.

He wondered again at the easy, graceful manner in which the Roman lyricists accepted the fact of death, as if the nothingness they faced were a tribute to the richness of the years they had enjoyed; and he marveled at the bitterness, the terror, the barely concealed hatred he found in some of the later Christian poets of the Latin tradition when they looked to that death which promised, however vaguely, a rich and ecstatic eternity of life, as if that death and promise were a mockery that soured the days of their living. When he thought of Masters, he thought of him as a Catullus or a more gentle and lyrical Juvenal, an exile in his own country, and thought of his death as another exile, more strange and lasting than he had known before.

Like Dick Whittington, who set off with his possessions in a handkerchief and a surprisingly well-trained cat at his side, young ambitious people flock to cities to live a different life from the one they grew up with. They want the construct, just as much as those who dream of a bucolic ideal want theirs. City-dwellers have museums, restaurants, cinemas, theatres: they get everything when it’s new and they can decide whether they like it before anyone else does. They can see artists, hear musicians, buy groceries in the middle of the night and books on their way home from the pub. The city, for all its failings, so carefully enumerated by Juvenal, is still wonderful. So those of us who live in one should enjoy it for what is is, and always has been: a glorious, grubby, industrial, gastronomical, cultural, social mess.

is, of course, in Juvenal’s nature to mock everything. Ordinary people might hate the city and love the country, or they might feel the opposite way. It takes the spleen of Juvenal to loathe the city over several hundred lines of verse, and then mock the only alternative he offers. It is a very urban cynicism, and perhaps that is what the city really offers. A sense of having seen and done it all. Sophistication or jadedness, depending on one’s perspective. If the construct of the countryside is a charming, small-scale, olde-worlde innocence that it doesn’t really possess, then the city is also as much myth as it is reality. The construct of cities is that they are the only places where dangerous, important, society-changing things can happen. Governments sit, law courts judge, traders sell, thugs maraud, all of humanity eventually jostles each other in a city.

It is, of course, in Juvenal’s nature to mock everything. Ordinary people might hate the city and love the country, or they might feel the opposite way. It takes the spleen of Juvenal to loathe the city over several hundred lines of verse, and then mock the only alternative he offers. It is a very urban cynicism, and perhaps that is what the city really offers. A sense of having seen and done it all. Sophistication or jadedness, depending on one’s perspective. If the construct of the countryside is a charming, small-scale, olde-worlde innocence that it doesn’t really possess, then the city is also as much myth as it is reality. The construct of cities is that they are the only places where dangerous, important, society-changing things can happen. Governments sit, law courts judge, traders sell, thugs maraud, all of humanity eventually jostles each other in a city.

En una de las mofas más citadas del mundo romano, el satírico Juvenal, que escribía a finales del siglo I d. C., canalizó su desprecio por la «chusma de Remo», que, según afirmaba, solo quería dos cosas: «pan y circos» (panem et circenses). Fue una brillante forma de menospreciar los limitados horizontes del populacho urbano, como bien muestra la vigencia de esta expresión incluso hoy en día, presentado aquí como si fueran los descendientes del gemelo asesinado: a la chusma no le importaba nada excepto las carreras de cuadrigas y las donaciones de comida con las que los emperadores la habían sobornado y, por supuesto, despolitizado. Fue también una cínica y errónea interpretación de la tradición romana de proporcionar alimentos básicos al pueblo a expensas del Estado, que se originó con el hermano pequeño de Tiberio, Cayo Sempronio Graco, tribuno de la plebe durante dos años consecutivos, en 123 y 122 a. C.

It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit. To the crowd, success ears almost the features of true mastery, and the greatest dupe of this counterfeit talent is History. Juvenal and Tacitus alone mistrust it. In these days an almost official philosophy has come to dwell in the house of Success, wear its livery, receive callers in its ante-chamber. Success in principle and for its own sake. Prosperity presupposes ability. Win a lottery-prize and you are a clever man. Winners are adulated. To be born with a caul is everything; luck is what matters. Be fortunate and you will be thought great. With a handful of tremendous exceptions which constitute the glory of a century, the popular esteem is singularly short-sighted. Gilt is as good as gold. No harm in being a chance arrival provided you arrive. The populace is an aged Narcissus which worships itself and applauds the commonplace. The tremendous qualities of Moses, an Aeschylus, a Dante, a Michelangelo or a Napoleon are readily ascribed by the multitude to any man, in any sphere, who has got what he set out to get - the notary who becomes a deputy, the hack playwright who produces a mock-Corneille, the eunuch who acquires a harem, the journeyman-general who by accident wins the decisive battle of an epoch. The profiteer who supplies the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse with boot-soles of cardboard and earns himself an income of four hundred thousand a year; the huckster who espouses usury and brings her to bed of seven or eight millions; the preacher who becomes bishop by loudly braying; the bailiff of a great estate who so enriches himself that on retirement he is made Minister of Finance - all this is what men call genius, just as they call a painted face beauty and a richly attired figure majesty. The confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.

Vivimos en una sociedad sombría. Lograr el éxito, ésta es la enseñanza que, gota a gota, cae de la corrupción a plomo sobre nosotros. Digamos, sin embargo, que eso que se llama éxito es algo bastante feo. Su falso parecido con el mérito engaña a los hombres. Para la muchedumbre, el triunfo tiene casi el mismo aspecto que la supremacía. El éxito, este artificio del talento, tiene una víctima a quien engañar: la historia. Juvenal y Tácito son los únicos que protestan. En nuestros días, ha entrado como sirviente en casa del éxito una filosofía casi oficial, que lleva la librea de su amo y le rinde homenaje en la antecámara. Hay que tener éxito: ésa es la teoría. La prosperidad supone capacidad. Ganen la lotería y ya serán capaces. El que triunfa es objeto de veneración. Todo consiste en nacer de pie. Tengan suerte, lo demás ya llegará; sean felices, y los considerarán grandes. Fuera de cinco o seis excepciones importantes, que constituyen la luz de un siglo, la admiración contemporánea no es más que miopía. Lo dorado es considerado oro. No importa ser un cualquiera, si se llega el primero. El vulgo es un viejo Narciso que se adora a sí mismo y que celebra todo lo vulgar. Esa facultad enorme, por la cual el hombre se convierte en Moisés, Esquilo, Dante, Migue Ángel o Napoleón, la multitud la concede por unanimidad y por aclamación a quien logra su objetivo, sea quien fuere. Que un notario se transforme en diputado; que un falso Corneille haga el Tiridate; que un eunuco llegue a poseer un harén; que un militar adocenado gane por casualidad la batalla decisiva de una época; que un boticario invente las suelas de cartón para el ejército del Sambre-et-Meuse y obtenga, con aquel cartón vendido como cuero, una renta de cuatrocientos mil francos; que un buhonero contraiga matrimonio con la usura, y tenga de ella por hijos siete y ocho millones, de los cuales él es el padre y ella, la madre; que un predicador llegue a obispo por la gracia de ser gangoso; que un intendente de buena casa, al dejar el servicio, sea tan rico que lo nombren ministro de Hacienda; no importa: los hombres llaman a eso Genio, tal como Belleza a la figura de Mousqueton, y Majestad al talante de Claudio, confundiendo así con las constelaciones del abismo las huellas estrelladas que dejan en el lodo blando las patas de los gansos.

Semper ego auditor tantum? numquamne reponam vexatus totiens rauci Theseide Cordi? inpune ergo mihi recitaverit ille togatas, hic elegos? inpune diem consumpserit ingens Telephus aut summi plena iam margine libri scriptus et in tergo necdum finitus Orestes? nota magis nulli domus est sua quam mihi lucus Martis et Aeoliis vicinum rupibus antrum Vulcani. Quid agant venti, quas torqueat umbras Aeacus, unde alius furtivae devehat aurum pelliculae, quantas iaculetur Monychus ornos, Frontonis platani convulsaque marmora clamant semper et adsiduo ruptae lectore columnae: expectes eadem a summo minimoque poeta. et nos ergo manum ferulae subduximus, et nos consilium dedimus Sullae, privatus ut altum dormiret; stulta est clementia, cum tot ubique vatibus occurras, periturae parcere chartae. cur tamen hoc potius libeat decurrere campo per quem magnus equos Auruncae flexit alumnus, si vacat ac placidi rationem admittitis, edam.

When we are sold perfume, we are accustomed to also being sold the idea of a life we will never have. Coty's Chypre enabled Guerlain to create Mitsouko; Coty's Emeraude of 1921 was the bedrock on which Shalimar was built and Coty's L'Origan become the godmother of L'heure bleue, also by Guerlain. Some people dedicate themselves to making life beautiful. With instinctual good taste, magpie tendencies and a flair for color, they weave painfully exquisite tableaux, defining the look of an era. Paul Poiret was one such person. After his success, he went bust in 1929 and had to sell his leftover clothing stock as rags. Swept out of the picture by a new generation of designers, his style too ornate and Aladdinesque, Poiret ended his days as a street painter and died in poverty. It was Poiret who saw that symbolic nomenclature could turn us into frenzied followers, transforming our desire to own a perfume into desperation. The beauty industry has always been brilliant at turning insecurities into commercial opportunities. Readers could buy the cologne to relax during times of anxiety or revive themselves from strain. Particularly in the 1930s, releases came thick and fast, intended to give the impression of bounty, the provision of beauty to all women in the nation. Giving perfumes as a gift even came under the Soviet definition of kulturnost or "cultured behavior", including to aunts and teachers on International Women's Day. Mitsouko is a heartening scent to war when alone or rather, when not wanting to feel lonely. Using fragrance as part of a considered daily ritual, the territorial marking of our possessions and because it offers us a retrospective sense of naughtiness. You can never tell who is going to be a Nr. 5 wearer. No. 5 has the precision of well-cut clothes and that special appeal which comes from a clean, bare room free of the knick-knacks that would otherwise give away its age. Its versatility may well be connected to its abstraction. Gardenia perfumes are not usually the more esoteric or intellectual on the shelves but exist for those times when we demand simply to smell gorgeous. You can depend on the perfume industry to make light of the world's woes. No matter how bad things get, few obstacles can block the shimmer and glitz of a new fragrance. Perfume became so fashionable as a means of reinvention and recovery that the neurology department at Columbia University experimented with the administration of jasmine and tuberose perfumes, in conjunction with symphony music, to treat anxiety, hysteria and nightmares. Scent enthusiasts cared less for the nuances of a composition and more for the impact a scent would have in society. In Ancient Rome, the Stoics were concerned about the use of fragrance by women as a mask for seducing men or as a vehicle of deception. The Roman satirist Juvenal talked of women buying scent with adultery in mind and such fears were still around in the 1940s and they are here with us today. Similarly, in crime fiction, fragrance is often the thing that gives the perpetrator away. Specifically in film noir, scent gets associated with misdemeanors. With Opium, the drugs tag was simply the bait. What YSL was really marketing, with some genius, was perfume as me time: a daily opportunity to get languid and to care sod-all about anything or anyone else.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who supervises the supervisors themselves?

Juvenal,

The truth is that Juvenal Urbino's suite had never been undertaken in the name of love, and it was curious, to say the least, that A militant Catholic like him would offer her only worldly goods: security, order, happiness, contiguous numbers that, once they were added together might resemble love, almost be love. But they were not love, and these doubts increased her confusion, because she was not convinced that love was what she really needed to live.