Echoes of Juvenal: How "The Evils of Prolonged Peace" Describe the Modern West's Slow Unravelling, By Brian Simpson (with a Critical Reply by James Reed)

Brian Simpson: The line from Juvenal's Satire VI hits like a cold slap: "Nunc patimur longae pacis mala; saevior armis luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem." Translated roughly: "Now we suffer the evils of prolonged peace; luxury, more ruthless than the sword, has settled upon us and avenges a conquered world."

Juvenal, writing in the early 2nd century AD under the Roman Empire's Pax Romana, the longest stretch of relative peace and prosperity the ancient world had seen, saw decadence creeping in like rot. No more existential threats like Hannibal at the gates or endless frontier wars to forge discipline. Instead, endless abundance flooded Rome with foreign goods, wealth, and influences from conquered lands (Sybaris, Rhodes, Miletus, Tarentum). This "luxuria" wasn't just fancy villas; it was moral softness, excess, hedonism, and a collapse of traditional virtues like chastity, frugality, and civic duty. The conquered world, in Juvenal's view, got its revenge not through armies, but by exporting corruption that hollowed Rome from within.

Fast-forward two millennia, and swap "Pax Romana" for the post-1945 Western order, the longest era of great-power peace, unprecedented wealth, globalisation, and consumer abundance in history. Juvenal's diagnosis feels eerily prescient for the modern West. Here's how it maps onto our reality in 2026.

Comfort Breeds Complacency

Juvenal argued that hardship and external threats kept Romans sharp, short sleeps, hard labour, constant readiness for war. Peace removed those pressures, allowing "luxuria" to take root. Today, the West has enjoyed seven-plus decades without total war on its soil (barring exceptions like the Balkans in the '90s). No draft, no rationing, no existential siege. Result? A culture of comfort where survival instincts atrophy.

We see it in declining birth rates across Europe, the US, Australia, and beyond, fertility well below replacement in most Western nations. Why have kids when life is easy, careers demanding, and distractions endless? Juvenal lamented the loss of pudicitia (chastity); we see hookup culture, delayed marriage, and skyrocketing singlehood as norms. Peace removes urgency; luxury fills the void with instant gratification.

Luxury as the True Conqueror: Wealth Without Virtue

Juvenal pinpointed "obscena pecunia" (obscene money) from abroad as the source: foreign riches softened Roman morals, importing vices along with spices and silks. In our era, globalisation has done the same on steroids. Cheap goods from Asia, digital entertainment from anywhere, and welfare/consumer states funded by debt have created material abundance without corresponding moral or cultural anchors.

The modern parallel to Juvenal's orgiastic excess? The explosion of consumerism, social media dopamine hits, OnlyFans economies, and a porn-saturated culture that normalises hedonism. Luxury isn't just yachts — it's algorithmic feeds feeding endless desires, credit-fuelled lifestyles, and a therapeutic culture that pathologises discipline while celebrating "self-care" as indulgence. The West's GDP towers, but so do obesity rates, mental health crises, and opioid epidemics, signs of a body and soul gorged on plenty.

Juvenal's "victumque ulciscitur orbem" is brutal poetry: the conquered world avenges itself. Think migration flows, cultural shifts, and demographic changes discussed in blog essays today. The West's openness — born of post-WWII guilt, prosperity, and ideological commitment to universalism — imports influences that challenge or erode the host culture. Non-Western nations (as Spanian noted) guard sovereignty fiercely; the West, flush with peace dividends, opens doors wide, then wonders why cohesion frays.

Moral and Social Decay: From Chastity to Fragmentation

In Satire VI, Juvenal rails against women (and men) corrupted by luxury — adultery, extravagance, neglect of duty. Broader application today: family breakdown, skyrocketing divorce, declining trust in institutions, and a loss of shared values. Prolonged peace erodes the "we" that built the West — replaced by hyper-individualism, identity politics, and grievance cultures.

The elite class, insulated by wealth, mirrors Juvenal's decadent patricians: virtue-signalling while living in gated compounds, outsourcing production, and importing labour that strains social fabric. Meanwhile, working classes face wage stagnation, cultural displacement, and a sense of being conquered in their own lands — echoing the "vengeance" Juvenal described.

Art captured this before: Thomas Couture's 1847 painting The Romans in their Decadence used Juvenal's exact line as caption, depicting orgiastic Romans sprawled amid grand statues — a visual warning of empire's fall through internal rot. Replace marble columns with glass skyscrapers, togas with designer wear, and the scene feels contemporary.

The Warning: Luxury's Revenge Isn't Reversible Without Shock

Juvenal wasn't nostalgic for endless war — he mourned how peace, unmanaged, bred softness that invited collapse. The modern West faces similar risks: debt mountains, entitlement strains, demographic winter, and cultural fragmentation. Without external shocks (which no one sane wants), internal renewal is hard. History shows empires don't fall to barbarians alone; they fall when luxury saps the will to defend what's theirs.

Yet Juvenal's satire wasn't hopeless — it was a call to remember harder virtues. In our time, that might mean rediscovering restraint, family, borders, and purpose beyond consumption. Ignore the warning, and the "evils of prolonged peace" become terminal.

Reply to Brian Simpson's Piece: James Reed

I agree that there is a point to Brian's post, that excess consumerism has an acid effect upon social cohesion, as Juvenal noted long ago. But times have changed. War back then was not the destructive force is today, and a return to a warrior ethos, as the UK under Starmer is moving towards, will not solve the social problems we face, but instead could lead to mega-death, and further social destruction. As well, we have not lived in a time of peace, with numerous wars occurring with death tolls far greater than in most pre-modern wars, and in the Roman era.

The forces of social breakdown and decadence are not primarily excess affluence; while that is an issue, the assault of hostile globalist elites has been a constant force since at least the time of the French Revolution, moving into hyper-acceleration post the 1960s era.

Thus, I think Brian is massively over-simplifying a complex reality to fit the narrative of a thinker, and an age long past. A return to the sort of warrior ethos of Juvenal, would be a social disaster, playing into the globalist hands with even more ready supply of canon fodder.

And as for "affluence," Brian should ask the Aussies who are homeless, displaced and dispossessed by mass immigration what they think about that!