Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
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| - | '''''Satire VI''''' is the most famous of the sixteen [[Satires of Juvenal|'''Satires''']] by the [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] author [[Juvenal]] written in the late 1st or early 2nd century A.D . In English translation, this satire is often titled something in the vein of ''Against Women'' due to the most obvious reading of its content. It enjoyed significant social currency from [[late antiquity]] to the [[early modern]] period, being read largely as a proof-text for a wide array of [[misogyny|misogynistic]] beliefs. Its current significance rest in its role as a crucial - although problematic - body of evidence on Roman conceptions of gender and sexuality. The overarching theme of the poem is a dissuasion of the addressee Postumius from [[marriage]]; the narrator uses a series of acidic vignettes on the degraded state of (predominantly female) morality to bolster his argument. At c. 695 lines of [[Latin]] [[hexameter]], this satire is nearly twice the length of the next largest of the author's sixteen known satires; ''Satire VI'' alone composes Book II of Juvenal's five books of satire. In addition, ''Satire VI'' contains the famous phrase, ''[[Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?|"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"]]'' (but who will guard the guards themselves), which is variously translated as "But who guards the guards?", "But who watches the watchmen?", or similar. (This phrase has been used as an [[epigraph (literature)|epigraph]] to numerous works, most notably ''[[Watchmen]]'' and the [[Tower Commission]] Report.[http://www.blather.net/articles/amoore/watchmen3.html]) In context, it refers to the impossibility of enforcing moral behavior when the enforcers (''custodes'') are corruptible: | + | '''''Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?''''' is a [[List of Latin phrases|Latin phrase]] from the Roman poet [[Juvenal]], which literally translates to "Who will guard the guards themselves?", and is variously translated in colloquial English as "Who watches the watchmen?", "Who watches the watchers?", "Who will guard the guardians?", "Who shall watch the watchers?", "Who polices the police?" or other similar translations. |
| + | == See also == | ||
| + | * ''[[Watchmen]]'' | ||
| + | * [[Sousveillance]] | ||
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| + | [[Category:Dicta]] | ||
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, which literally translates to "Who will guard the guards themselves?", and is variously translated in colloquial English as "Who watches the watchmen?", "Who watches the watchers?", "Who will guard the guardians?", "Who shall watch the watchers?", "Who polices the police?" or other similar translations.
See also
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
