The monologue of Laronia in Juvenal’s Satire 2 Laronia monológja Iuvenalis 2. szatírájában

Abstract

Laronia, the only female interlocutor in Juvenal’s poems to deliver a longer monologue, takes the stage at one point of Satire 2. Just as the satire as a whole, her 26- line speech focuses on the hypocritical homosexual men who cross the boundaries defined by their sex, but also hide their true selves. These men play a similar role in Satire 2 as the Roman women in Satire 6: while presenting a central sin (hypocrisy/infidelity) and a number of other ones (desecration of religious rituals, behaviour unworthy of a highborn Roman, etc.), the narrator focuses on them, but this does not mean that they are the sole perpetrators of these crimes, or the sole responsible for these phenomena.