Juvenal

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This article is a biography of the Roman poet, who is the most famous person by this name. For the Christian saints, see Saint Juvenal, and for his main work see Satires of Juvenal.

Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, Anglicized as Juvenal, was a Roman satiric poet of the late 1st century and early 2nd century, author of the Satires.

Few details of Juvenal's life are known with any certainty. Gilbert Highet in Poets in a Landscape presents a somewhat ambiguous inscription which, if it does in fact refer to Juvenal's family, would place his hometown at Aquinum in Italy. Ronald Syme points out that Juvenal's cognomen was common in Hispania, and many modern scholars believe that he was the son of a Hispanic freedman. He described himself as middle-aged at the time of publication of his first satire, which was sometime in the 100s. The latest known date for his activity is 127. Information in ancient biographies of Juvenal (the scholia), of which thirteen survive, appears to be extrapolated from the satires themselves. Some modern scholars, most notably Gilbert Highet, have also attempted to glean biographical material about Juvenal the man from his satires. They postulate that for a time he was very poor and dependent on rich sponsors in Rome, and at some point he was temporarily exiled to Egypt and possibly to Britain. These theories about the life of Juvenal have largely fallen into disfavor among scholars over the last fifty years. The only known contemporary reference to him is in a poem addressed to him by his friend, the poet Martial.

While Juvenalian satire is virtually always described as "angry", scholars such as W.S. Anderson and S.M. Braund have suggested that this anger is merely a rhetorical persona, and that the satires themselves are so exaggerated that the rage and bitterness in them cannot be taken at face value: they are instead a commentary on anger itself. However, the vices and causes of indignation within Juvenal's Satires did exist, with proof from contemporaries such as Persius, Horace and Martial. Moreover, the mask of indignatio of the early satires falls away after the 6th, and the later satires are dominated by subtler forms of irony.

[edit] The Satires

The satires are not titled, but various translators (such as Niall Rudd) have added titles for the convenience of readers. Rudd's are included here.

1. Why Write Satire?
2. Hypocritical Perverts
   With the 9th Satire, often expunged from pre-20th century editions.
3. The Evils of the Big City
4. The Emperor's Fish
5. A Tyrannical Host
6. Roman Wives
   Often titled Against Women, famously misogynist. The phrase "Who watches the watchers?" originates here.
7. The Plight of Intellectuals
8. True Nobility
9. The Woes of a Gigolo
10. The Futility of Aspirations
    The famous phrase mens sana in corpore sano ('a sound mind in a sound body') is found here, as is bread and circuses.
11. A Simple Lifestyle
12. Welcome to a Survivor
13. A Consolation
14. The Influence of Vicious Parents
15. A Case of Cannibalism
16. The Advantages of Army Life
    Unfinished.