The noun formam (‘beauty’) at the start of line 289 immediately makes clear the topic of this final section of prayers. Arrestingly, J. goes in for extensive antithesis, taking us from disfigurement to beauty, from corpses to live people, from men to children and a mother, from famous names to unnamed minor characters, and from dramatic public events to the mundane private sphere. At the same time, this is just another prayer, and verbal echoes reinforce that link – opto (‘pray’) in lines 289 and 284, votum (‘petition’) in 291 and 284.

This is another passage that relates directly to modern western society, with its obsession with attractiveness and whole industries based on it, and again the satirist raises some very relevant questions for us (for instance: is beauty so desirable, is it worth going to great lengths to secure it, does it necessarily make you happy and does the exterior appearance matter all that much in any case?) But there are several significant differences from the previous section, and as he approaches the end of his satire, J. is clearly trying to avoid being predictable and monotonous. This is a shorter passage with only one developed (and flawed) exemplum (at 329ff.). That example picks up and takes further the lines on Messalina in Satire 6 (see the appendix), and so amounts to a reprise, which is a novelty in this poem. Females figure more prominently here than they have so far in X, and in noticeable positions, at the start and end. This time the satirist sets up an interchange with the petitioner, and stresses and mocks her (very convenient) stupidity, intimating that anybody who makes such a prayer is foolish; and by way of a change, he makes her appeal not for herself but for her children, thereby bringing various troubles on her own flesh and blood as well as on herself, so that there is a double impact in this prayer. Finally, in his lines on old age, J.'s basic point was sound, but here we are back to blatant and major exaggeration and cynicism, as he closes the central part of the poem with strong satire on pessimism by means of his persona.