Abstract

In a common historical context, the Apocalypse of John and the sixth Satire of Juvenal use the symbol of the woman to describe their contemporary society. For the Latin poet, feminine peculiarities, such as motherhood and marriage, are lost values. For John they are images to express a messianic community "in fieri". If in the sixth "Satire" the woman is an icon of all the evils of the city-empire, in Revelation she is an ambivalent paragon: on the one hand prostitute and mother of prostitutes, on the other mother, fiancée and wife. Even the symbol of the city retains the same difference: for Juvenal the matron is an icon of the monstrous immorality of the City; for John, however, on one side there is Babylon, a negative emblem, on the other Jerusalem, the holy city. Finally, the common language of magic is used by Juvenal to ridicule gullible women, while in Revelation it shows the cause of Rome’s success. Even if the two authors use the same images, the assumptions and conclusions are different: regret for a lost world for the satirist; prophetic criticism, with a view of renewal, for the apocalyptic.