Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the '' Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life are unclear, although references within his text to known persons of the late first and early second centuries CE fix his earliest date of composition. One recent scholar argues that his first book was published in 100 or 101. A reference to a political figure dates his fifth and final surviving book to sometime after 127. Juvenal wrote at least 16 poems in the verse form dactylic hexameter. These poems cover a range of Roman topics. This follows Lucilius—the originator of the Roman satire genre, and it fits within a poetic tradition that also includes

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

and Persius. The ''Satires'' are a vital source for the study of ancient Rome from a number of perspectives, although their comic mode of expression makes it problematic to accept the content as strictly factual. At first glance the ''Satires'' could be read as a critique of Rome. That critique may have ensured their preservation by the Christian monastic scriptoria although the majority of ancient texts did not survive.

Life

Details of the author's life cannot be reconstructed definitively. The ''Vita Iuvenalis'' (Life of Juvenal), a biography of the author that became associated with his manuscripts no later than the tenth century, is little more than an extrapolation from the ''Satires''. Traditional biographies, including the ''Vita Iuvenalis'', give us the writer's full name and also tell us that he was either the son, or adopted son, of a rich

freedman A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), emancipation (granted freedom a ...

. He is supposed to have been a pupil of

Quintilian Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (; 35 – 100 AD) was a Roman educator and rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quintilia ...

, and to have practised rhetoric until he was middle-aged, both as amusement and for legal purposes. The ''Satires'' do make frequent and accurate references to the operation of the Roman legal system. His career as a satirist is supposed to have begun at a fairly late stage in his life. Biographies agree in giving his birthplace as the Volscian town of Aquinum and also, in allotting to his life a period of exile, which supposedly was due to his insulting an actor who had high levels of court influence. The emperor who banished him was Trajan or Domitian. A preponderance of the biographies place his exile in Egypt, with the exception of one that opts for Scotland.Peter Green: Introduction to Penguin Classics edition of the ''Satires'', 1998 edition: pp. 15 ff Only one of these traditional biographies supplies a date of birth for Juvenal: it gives 55 CE, which most probably is speculation, but accords reasonably well with the rest of the evidence. Other traditions have him surviving for some time past the year of

Hadrian Hadrian (; la, Caesar Trâiānus Hadriānus ; 24 January 76 – 10 July 138) was Roman emperor from 117 to 138. He was born in Italica (close to modern Santiponce in Spain), a Roman ''municipium'' founded by Italic settlers in Hispania B ...

's death (138 CE). Some sources place his death in exile, others have him being recalled to Rome (the latter of which is considered more plausible by contemporary scholars). If he was exiled by Domitian, then it is possible that he was one of the political exiles recalled during the brief reign of

Nerva Nerva (; originally Marcus Cocceius Nerva; 8 November 30 – 27 January 98) was Roman emperor from 96 to 98. Nerva became emperor when aged almost 66, after a lifetime of imperial service under Nero and the succeeding rulers of the Flavian dy ...

. It is impossible to tell how much of the content of these traditional biographies is fiction and how much is fact. Large parts clearly are mere deduction from Juvenal's writings, but some elements appear more substantial. Juvenal never mentions a period of exile in his life, yet it appears in every extant traditional biography. Many scholars think the idea to be a later invention; the ''Satires'' do display some knowledge of Egypt and Britain, and it is thought that this gave rise to the tradition that Juvenal was exiled. Others, however - particularly Gilbert Highet - regard the exile as factual, and these scholars also supply a concrete date for the exile: 93 CE until 96, when Nerva became emperor. They argue that a reference to Juvenal in one of

Martial Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ; March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman poet from Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of ''Epigrams'', published in Rome between AD 86 and ...

's poems, which is dated to 92, is impossible if, at this stage Juvenal was already in exile, or, had served his time in exile, since in that case, Martial would not have wished to antagonise Domitian by mentioning such a ''persona non grata'' as Juvenal. If Juvenal was exiled, he would have lost his

patrimony Patrimony may refer to: Law * Patrimony, or property, the total of all personal and real entitlements, including movable and immovable property, belonging to a real person or a juristic person * Patrimony, or inheritance, a right or estate inh ...

, and this may explain the consistent descriptions of the life of the client he bemoans in the ''Satires''. The only other biographical evidence available is a dedicatory inscription said to have been found at Aquinum in the nineteenth century, which consists of the following text:

: ...]RI·SACRVM : ...]NIVS·IVVENALIS : ...] COH· �DELMATARVM : II·VIR·QVINQ·FLAMEN : DIVI·VESPASIANI : VOVIT·DEDICAV ..E : SVA PEC

: EREI·SACRVM : (ECIMVS) IVIVS·IVVENALIS :

RIB(VNVS) In vertebrate anatomy, ribs ( la, costae) are the long curved bones which form the rib cage, part of the axial skeleton. In most tetrapods, ribs surround the chest, enabling the lungs to expand and thus facilitate breathing by expanding the ches ...

COH(ORTIS)· �DELMATARVM :II·VIR·QVINQ(VENNALIS)·FLAMEN :DIVI·VESPASIANI :VOVIT·DEDICAV TQE :SVA PEC(VNIA)

: To Ceres (this) sacred (thing) : (Decimus Junius?) Juvenalis : military tribune of the first cohort of the Dalmatian (legions) : Duovir, Quinquennalis, Flamen : of the Divine Vespasian : vowed and dedicated : at his own expense : (''Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum'' X.5382)

Scholars usually are of the opinion that this inscription does not relate to the poet: a military career would not fit well with the pronounced anti-militarism of the ''Satires'' and, moreover, the Dalmatian legions do not seem to have existed prior to 166 CE. Therefore, it seems likely that this reference is to a Juvenal who was a later relative of the poet, however, as they both came from Aquinum and were associated with the goddess Ceres (the only deity the ''Satires'' shows much respect for). If the theory that connects these two Juvenals is correct, then the inscription does show that Juvenal's family was reasonably wealthy, and that, if the poet really was the son of a foreign freedman, then his descendants assimilated into the Roman class structure more quickly than typical. Green thinks it more likely that the tradition of the freedman father is false and, that Juvenal's ancestors had been minor nobility of Roman Italy of relatively ancient descent.

The ''Satires'' and their genre

Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five

books A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical ar ...

; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a wide-ranging discussion of society and social mores in dactylic hexameter. In ''Satire I'', concerning the scope and content of his work, Juvenal says: Juvenal claims as his purview, the entire gamut of human experience since the dawn of history. Quintilian—in the context of a discussion of literary genres appropriate for an oratorical education—claimed that, unlike so many literary and artistic forms adopted from Greek models, “satire at least is all ours” (''satura quidem tota nostra est''). At least in the view of Quintillian, earlier Greek satiric verse (e.g. that of

Hipponax Hipponax ( grc, Ἱππῶναξ; ''gen''. Ἱππώνακτος; fl. late 6th century BC), of Ephesus and later Clazomenae, was an Ancient Greek iambic poet who composed verses depicting the vulgar side of life in Ionian society. He was celebrat ...

) or even Latin satiric prose (e.g. that of

Petronius Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Suetonius Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; c. AD 69 – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies ...

against the members of prior imperial dynasties. Themes similar to those of the ''Satires'' are present in authors spanning the period of the late Roman Republic and early empire ranging from Cicero and Catullus to

and Tacitus; similarly, the stylistics of Juvenal's text fall within the range of post-Augustan literature, as represented by Persius, Statius, and

Petronius Gaius Petronius Arbiter"Gaius Petronius Arbiter"
Judaism.

Literary and cultural influence

The ''Satires'' have inspired many authors, including

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

, who modeled his “ London” on ''Satire III'' and “ The Vanity of Human Wishes” on ''Satire X''. Alexander Theroux, whose novels are rife with vicious satire, identified Juvenal as his most important influence. Juvenal also provided a source for the name for a forensically important beetle, Histeridae. Juvenal is the source of many well-known maxims, including: *that the common people—rather than caring about their freedom—are only interested in “bread and circuses” ('' panem et circenses'' 10.81; i.e. food and entertainment), *that—rather than for wealth, power, eloquence, or children—one should pray for a “sound mind in a sound body” ('' mens sana in corpore sano'' 10.356), *that a perfect wife is a “rare bird” ('' rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno'' 6.165; a rare bird in the earth and most similar to a

black swan The black swan (''Cygnus atratus'') is a large waterbird, a species of swan which breeds mainly in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia. Within Australia, the black swan is nomadic, with erratic migration patterns dependent upon c ...

) *that "honesty is praised and left out in the cold" ''Probitas laudatur et alget'' (I, line 74). *and the troubling question of who can be trusted with power—“who will watch the watchers?” or "who will guard the guardians themselves?" ('' quis custodiet ipsos custodes'' 6.347–48). ASICS, the footwear and sports equipment manufacturing company, is named after the acronym of the Latin phrase '' "anima sana in corpore sano"'' (a sound mind in a sound body) from ''Satire'' X by Juvenal (10.356). In his autobiography, the German writer Heinrich Böll notes that in the high school he attended when growing up under Nazi rule, an anti-Nazi teacher paid special attention to Juvenal: "Mr. Bauer realized how topical Juvenal was, how he dealt at length with such phenomena as arbitrary government, tyranny, corruption, the degradation of public morals, the decline of the Republican ideal and the terrorizing acts of the Praetorian Guards. (...) In a second-hand bookshop I found an 1838 translation of Juvenal with an extensive commentary, twice the length of the translated text itself, written at the height of the Romantic period. Though its price was more than I could really afford, I bought it. I read all of it very intensely, as if it was a detective novel. It was one of the few books to which I persistently held on throughout the war ( WWII) and beyond, even when most of my other books were lost or sold on the black market".Heinrich Boll, "What will become of this kid? Or: About Books", Ch, 17

Notes

References

*Anderson, William S. (1982) ''Essays on Roman Satire'', Princeton: Princeton University Press. *Braund, Susanna M. (1988) ''Beyond Anger: A Study of Juvenal’s Third Book of Satires'', Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. *Braund, Susanna (1996) ''Juvenal Satires Book I'', Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge. *Braund, Susanna (1996) ''The Roman Satirists and their Masks'', London: Bristol Classical Press. *Courtney, E. (1980) ''A Commentary of the Satires of Juvenal'', London: Athlone Press. *Edwards, Catherine (1993) ''The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Gleason, Maud W. (1995) ''Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome'', Princeton: Princeton University Press. *Gowers, Emily (1993) ''The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature'', Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Green, Peter (1989)
"Juvenal Revisited"
''Grand Street'', Vol. 9, No. 1 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 175–196. *Green, Peter (trans.) (1998)
''Juvenal. The Sixteen Satires''
London: Penguin Books. (3rd revised edn; first edn published 1967). *Highet, Gilbert (1961) ''Juvenal the Satirist'', New York: Oxford University Press.
Juvenal (1992) ''The Satires''
Trans. Niall Rudd, Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Juvenal (1992) ''Persi et Juvenalis Saturae'', ed. W. V. Clausen. London: Oxford University Press. * Kelk, Christopher (2010), ''The Satires of Juvenal: A Verse Translation'', Edwin Mellen Press. *Macleane, Arthur J. (1867)
''Decii Junii Juvenalis et A. Persii Flacci Satirae. With a commentary''
*''The Oxford Classical Dictionary'' 3rd ed., 1996, New York: Oxford University Press. *Richlin, Amy (1992) ''The Garden of Priapus'', New York : Oxford University Press. * Rudd, Niall (1982) ''Themes in Roman Satire'', Los Angeles: University of California Press. *Rudd, Niall (tr.) (1991)
Juvenal ''Juvenal: The Satires, with an Introduction and Notes by William Barr''
Oxford. *Syme, Ronald (1939) ''The Roman Revolution'', Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Uden, James (2015) ''The Invisible Satirist: Juvenal and Second-Century Rome''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Stramaglia, Antonio; Grazzini, Stefano; Dimatteo, Giuseppe (2015): ''Giovenale tra storia, poesia e ideologia'', Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

External links