Juvenal

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Juvenal (died c. 127), or Decimus Junius Juvenalis, was the greatest of the Roman satirists. His bitter and rhetorical denunciations of Roman society, presented in a series of vivid pictures of Roman life, inspired all later satirists.

The life of Juvenal coincided with one of the most eventful periods of Roman history, one in which the weaknesses and failures of the government and the corruption and decadence of society were especially grave and evident. In reaction to this, Juvenal molded a new kind of satire, and he was able to impose it by his example on posterity.

An Undocumented Life

Juvenal was apparently almost completely unread between his own lifetime and the 4th century, when an attempt seems to have been made to compile his biography. This work, of which we have traces in over a dozen medieval biographies, seems to have been derived mainly from (occasionally misunderstood) passages in his works. As a result, the facts of his life are almost singularly lacking in certainty.

Juvenal was apparently born at Aquinum, a town in Latium. He spoke of himself as middle-aged in his first satire (the satires seem to be arranged in at least roughly chronological order), written shortly after 100; and in Satire XIII, the first satire of his last book, he refers to Juncus (consul in 127) as the recent consul. According to the medieval biographies, he lived to be over 80; if he was born about 50, this would fit the facts well enough, but it is only a guess.

We know nothing certain about Juvenal's life and activities before he started writing his satires. An inscription found at Aquinum tells of a dedication to Ceres by a - - nius Juvenalis who was a military tribune, held high public office in Aquinum, and was a priest of the deified Vespasian. But the inscription may refer not to the poet but to some other member of the family, and the date is uncertain.

Martial knew Juvenal and calls him "eloquent" in the 90s, suggesting, as do the general tone of his poems and the vividness of his bleak picture of the teacher's life, that Juvenal may have been a rhetorician, although it might refer to his having been an advocate. He was certainly poor and knew the miseries of a client intimately; if Satire XI was written from personal experience, late in life he acquired a modest farm at Tibur (Tivoli) and a small house in Rome. Juvenal's references to the great figures of the day do not seem to imply familiarity.

According to the tradition of some very late ancient writers, Juvenal was banished because of the anger of an actor, the Emperor's favorite (supposedly at some lines in Satire VII). The time and place of exile are uncertain because of the conflicting evidence handed down to us.

His Satires

Juvenal's 16 satires were apparently issued in 5 separate books. The first book, written sometime after 100, consists of Satires I-V and contains savage attacks on the city of Rome and the physical dangers and discomforts of life there, which were accompanied by social corruption and sexual degeneration. Book I is characterized by a greater scope and generality of attack and less use of specific virtues and vices to serve as the focus of the exposition than are any of the later books.

The first satire is programmatic. In Rome, he declares, "it is difficult not to write satire … even if nature does not allow you to write verse, your indignation will write it for you." A brilliant series of pictures of disgusting parvenus, forgers, poisoners, informers, and fortune hunters is adduced as demonstration, and Juvenal angrily declares that money, obtained by whatever shameful or evil means might come to hand, is alone honored and "honesty is praised and freezes." Never have selfish luxury and cringing, dependent poverty been so prevalent or been accompanied by so much vice. But it is no longer safe to make personal attacks on great sinners, as it was in the time of Lucilius, and so, to avoid a horrible death, one must limit oneself to attacking the dead.

This Juvenal proceeds to do: when he is not using traditional type names, his attacks are on figures of the age of Domitian and Nero. For this he has often been accused of cowardice and irrelevance, but Juvenal clearly intended an oblique attack against the rich and powerful of his own time, whose practices and morals could hardly have changed very greatly from what they were under Nero and Domitian.

The other charge often made against him, that his indignation is as frequently spent with as much force against relatively harmless breaches of current standards of behavior as against the gravest crimes and grossest immoralities, can be answered as well. First, the outrage of the average man (which Juvenal always purports to be) is often as much exercised against, for example, harmless eccentricities of dress and personal appearance as against the darkest crimes and corruptions of the day. Second, the Stoic doctrine that the good man was totally good, and the evil completely evil, with no intermediate position being possible, had a great influence on Juvenal's thought. These attacks on minor breaches usually occur at the climax of one particular line of invective, where they can serve as wry, half-humorous anti-climaxes, thus pointing up the weaknesses and hypocrisies of conventional morality (like Mark Twain's young man who, after thefts and murders, gradually "sank" to lying, swearing, and breaking the Sabbath).

The second satire is a violent and explicit attack on the hypocrisy of those who pretend to be pillars of morality, yet are deep in vice and are thus worse than open offenders. Satire III was paraphrased by Samuel Johnson in his "London": it is an attack on the city of Rome, where wealth is everything and "poverty makes a man ridiculous" and subjects him to many annoyances, troubles, and dangers.

The fourth satire is a satirical account of the calling of a council of state by the tyrant Domitian - to discuss how to cook a giant turbot with which he had been presented. Its picture of the gathering of the councilors, frightened by the sudden, unexplained summons, each either compromised or sinister and evil in his own way, is unforgettable. Satire V is an indignant account of a client dining with his patron and being subjected to indignities by the servants and eating cheap food while his host dines luxuriously, all so that the patron can amuse himself at the discomfiture of his guest.

Satire VI, a separate book in itself, written after 115, is by far the longest satire and is often considered Juvenal's masterpiece. It scathingly attacks women, their vanities and affectations.

Satire VII is an account of the miseries which the writer and teacher of literature must endure. It opens with the anticipation of brighter prospects under the patronage of a new emperor who was interested in literature and so is probably to be dated shortly after the accession of Hadrian in 117. The eighth satire is on the subject of the superiority of virtue to noble birth and contains interesting pictures of the evil and degenerate aristocracy. Satire IX, one of the most amusing of the satires, is generally neglected because of the obscenity of its subject matter.

With the fourth book, critics have generally felt that a weakening of the satirical force becomes evident. Thereafter, the subjects and illustrations seem chosen less from life than from literature. No decline in excellence, however, can be noted in the tenth satire, paraphrased in Dr. Johnson's "Vanity of Human Wishes." Its subject is the foolishness of human desires, illustrated by brilliant vignettes, derived from history and mythology, on the evil ends to which great political power, eloquence, military glory, long life, and beauty have led their possessors. At the end he answers the question "What, then, should men pray for?" with the famous phrase "mens sana in corpore sano" - "a sound mind in a sound body."

The eleventh satire is a contrast between the extravagant follies of contemporary gourmandise and ancient austerities at the table and is couched in the form of an invitation to dinner at the satirist's humble farm at Tibur, where rustic simplicity will mark the fare. The twelfth satire consists of congratulations to a friend on his escape from a shipwreck, with observations on the distinction between true and false friendship.

The incomplete, final, fifth book consists of Satire XIII, written shortly after 127, which attempts to console a friend who has been cheated of some money by telling him that the true punishment for crime is a guilty conscience; XIV, on the influence of parental example in teaching their children to sin, which is linked to a long sermon on avarice; XV, a horrified account of a murder and cannibalism as the result of a feud between two Egyptian towns; and XVI, a fragment apparently originally intended to be part of a long satire on the military life.

General Characteristics and Influence

Juvenal was little read until a revival of interest in the 4th century, probably first in the circle of Servius, to whom Juvenal's allusiveness and occasional obscurity gave ample field for the exercise of their learning and who appreciated the rhetorical style of his invective and the mastery of his Virgilian hexameters. The pagan poet Claudian and the Christian poets Ausonius and Prudentius imitated him.

After the revival of learning under Charlemagne, Juvenal became popular, and he was one of the most widely read Latin authors during the Middle Ages. To the medieval reader, he was primarily an ethical writer: his memorable phrases (some of which are still familiar, for instance, "rara avis," "bread and circuses," "Who will guard the guards themselves?") were prized, and his moral indignation was respected and admired. He is referred to by Geoffrey Chaucer, among others.

Juvenal's influence continued during and after the Renaissance, when he began to be read more for his style and his pictures of Roman life than as a moral handbook. Shakespeare refers to a passage by him in Hamlet, and Nicholas Boileau uses him as a model. In the 18th century John Dryden (who translated him) and Alexander Pope are permeated by the Juvenalian spirit, and Byron refers to him and clearly knew his work well.

Further Reading

The introductions to various (partial) editions of Juvenal's works in English are valuable, especially those of James D. Duff, Saturae XIV: Fourteen Satires of Juvenal (3d ed. by Michael Coffey, 1971, omitting Satires II and IX), and John E. B. Mayor, Thirteen Satires of Juvenal (5th ed., 2 vols., 1900-1901; repr. 1966, omitting Satires II, VI, and IX). Translations of Juvenal's works are The Satires of Juvenal, translated by Rolfe Humphries (1958), the most vivid, racy, and poetic rendering available in English; Juvenal: Satires, translated by Jerome Mazzaro (1965), with an introduction and explanatory notes; and Juvenal: The Sixteen Satires, translated with an introduction and notes by Peter Green (1967), which is faithful to the original Latin.

The standard work on Juvenal in English is Gilbert Highet, Juvenal the Satirist (1954), although the objection is usually made that Highet places too much reliance on the satires as a source for Juvenal's life. Good older appreciations of Juvenal are in H. E. Butler, Post-Augustan Poetry from Seneca to Juvenal (1909), and the two works of J. Wight Duff, A Literary History of Rome in the Silver Age: From Tiberius to Hadrian (1927; 3d ed., edited by A. M. Duff, 1964) and Roman Satire: Its Outlook on Social Life (1936). See also Inez Gertrude Scott, The Grand Style in the Satires of Juvenal (1927).

Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenālis, flourished early second century AD), the greatest of Roman satirical poets. He was a native of Aquinum (on the Via Latina in Latium) but beyond that fact very little is known of his life. Two inscriptions from that town were found (but are now lost), which may possibly have referred to him, and if so may indicate that he served in the army (as the first step on an official career) and held a local magistracy. The poet Martial, his elder contemporary, addressed three epigrams to him. The various ancient Lives of Juvenal which survive are of late date, somewhat contradictory, and probably not reliable. They mostly agree in referring to a period of banishment, in consequence of an offence to a favourite (the actor Paris) of the emperor Domitian; it is also stated by one that he practised declamation until middle age (Martial calls him facundus, ‘eloquent’). Acceptance of what Juvenal says in his Satires as literally true would require one to believe that he was at one time poor, but later acquired a farm at Tibur (Tivoli), that he could offer hospitality in his house at Rome, and that he had visited Egypt. His sixteen satires, of which the last breaks off short, are arranged in five books (for a résumé of each see SATIRES). Internal evidence suggests they were published between c.110 and shortly after 127, in the peaceful reigns of Trajan and Hadrian which followed Domitian's death in 96.

The Satires are notable for their bitter, ironical humour, power of invective, grim epigrams, sympathy with the poor, and a narrow pessimism. Juvenal claims Lucilius and Horace as his masters, but he has none of the latter's mellow humour or gentle irony. The extravagance of his wholesale hatreds and condemnations is effective as rhetoric, but taken as the expression of personal feelings it indicates a man deeply embittered. His gift is for the vivid evocation of scenes of Roman life with a few economical phrases.

Juvenal found many admirers among English satirists, beginning with Chaucer. John Dryden had a high regard for him, translated the Satires, and prefaced them with an essay on the Roman satirists. The satire of Jonathan Swift, with its own saeva indignatio (‘savage resentment’), is perhaps closest to the spirit of Juvenal.

For other persons named Juvenal, see Juvenal (disambiguation).

Juvenal (Iuvenalis)
Frontispiece from John Dryden, The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis: And of Aulus Persius Flaccus
Born	1st century Aquinum?
Died	2nd century
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	Roman
Genres	Roman Satire

Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, known in English as Juvenal, was a Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd century AD, author of the Satires. The details of the author's life are unclear, although references within his text to known persons of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD fix his terminus post quem (earliest date of composition).Juvenal was a very talented man

In accord with the vitriolic manner of Lucilius – the originator of the genre of Roman satire – and within a poetic tradition that also included Horace and Persius, Juvenal wrote at least 16 poems in dactylic hexameter covering an encyclopedic range of topics across the Roman world. While the Satires are a vital source for the study of ancient Rome from a vast number of perspectives, their hyperbolic, comedic mode of expression makes the use of statements found within them as simple fact problematic, to say the least. At first glance the Satires could be read as a brutal critique of (Pagan) Rome, perhaps ensuring their survival in Christian monastic scriptoria, a bottleneck in preservation when the large majority of ancient texts were lost.

Contents 1 Life 2 The Satires and their genre 3 Modern criticism and historical context of the Satires 4 Literary and cultural influence 5 References 6 Notes 7 External links

Life

The precise details of the author's life cannot be securely reconstructed based on presently available evidence. The Vita Iuvenalis (Life of Juvenal), a biography of the author that became associated with his manuscripts no later than the 10th century, is little or nothing more than extrapolation from the Satires themselves.

The traditional biographies^{[clarification needed]}, 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 (sometimes specified as a Spanish freedman). He is supposed to have been a pupil of Quintillian, and to have practised rhetoric until he was middle-aged, both as amusement and for legal purposes (the Satires make both 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. The biographies agree in giving his birthplace as Aquinum, and also agree in allotting to his life a period of exile due to insulting an actor with high levels of court influence: the emperor who banished him is given as either Trajan or Domitian, and all the biographies place his exile in Egypt, with the exception of one that opts for Scotland. ^[1]

Only one of these traditional biographies supplies a date of birth for Juvenal: it gives 55 AD, which is most probably guesswork but accords reasonably well with the rest of the evidence. Other traditions have him surviving for some time past the year of Hadrian's death (138 AD). Some sources place this death in exile, others have him being recalled to Rome (the latter of which is considered more plausible by contemporary scholarship). If he was exiled by Domitian, it is then possible that he was one of the political exiles recalled during the brief reign of Nerva.^[2]

It is impossible to tell how much of the content of these traditional biographies is fiction and how much is fact. Large parts are clearly 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 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 AD until 96, when Nerva became Emperor. They argue that a reference to Juvenal in one of Martial'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 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, and this may explain the consistent descriptions of the life of the client he bemoans in the Satires.

The only other available piece of biographical evidence is the following 19th-century dedicatory inscription, said to have been found at Aquinum with the text:^[3]

...]RI·SACRVM ...]NIVS·IVVENALIS ...] COH·[.]·DELMATARVM II·VIR·QVINQ·FLAMEN DIVI·VESPASIANI VOVIT·DEDICAV[...]UE SVA PEC

CERE]RI·SACRVM D(ECIMVS) IV]NIVS·IVVENALIS TRIB(VNVS)] COH(ORTIS)·[I]·DELMATARVM II·VIR·QVINQ(VENNALIS)·FLAMEN DIVI·VESPASIANI VOVIT·DEDICAV[ITQ]UE SVA PEC(VNIA)

To Ceres (this) sacred (thing) (Decimus Junius?) Juvenalis military tribune of the 1st 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 are usually of the opinion that this inscription does not relate to the poet himself: 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 AD. Therefore, however, it seems likely that this Juvenal was a later relative of the poet, as they both came from Aquinum and were associated with the goddess Ceres (the only deity the Satires shows much respect for). But if the theory that connects the two Juvenals is right, 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 themselves into the Roman class structure quickly. Green thinks it more likely that the tradition of the freedman father is false, and that Juvenal's ancestors were minor nobility of Roman Italy of relatively ancient descent.^[4]

The Satires and their genre

Main article: Satires of Juvenal

Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided between five books; 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.^[5] In Satire I, concerning the scope and content of his work, Juvenal says:

Back from when Deucalion climbed a mountain in a boat as the clouds lifted the waters, and then asked for an oracle, and then little by little spirit warmed the soft stones and Pyrrha showed naked girls to their husbands, whatever men do – prayer, fear, rage, pleasure joy, running about – is the grist of my little book.

ex quo Deucalion nimbis tollentibus aequor nauigio montem ascendit sortesque poposcit paulatimque anima caluerunt mollia saxa et maribus nudas ostendit Pyrrha puellas, quidquid agunt homines, uotum, timor, ira, uoluptas, gaudia, discursus, nostri farrago libelli est. (1.81-86)

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). ^[6] At least in the view of Quintillian, earlier Greek satiric verse (e.g. that of Hipponax) or even Latin satiric prose (e.g. that of Petronius) did not constitute satura per se. Roman Satura was a formal literary genre rather than being simply clever, humorous critique in no particular format.

• Book I: Satires 1-5
• Book II: Satire 6
• Book III: Satires 7-9
• Book IV: Satires 10-12
• Book V: Satires 13-16 (Satire 16 is incompletely preserved)

The individual Satires (excluding Satire 16) range in length from 130 (Satire 12) to c. 695 (Satire 6) lines. The poems are not individually titled, but translators have often added titles for the convenience of readers.

Modern criticism and historical context of the Satires

Although Juvenal has enjoyed a wide readership across the centuries, the Roman world view found in the content and tone of the Satires is criticized today in some quarters for its incompatibility with present-day liberal social-political ideology — that of feminism, anti-xenophobia, and class equality.

While Juvenal's mode of satire has been noted from antiquity for its wrathful scorn towards all representatives of social deviance, some politically-progressive scholars such as W.S. Anderson and later S.M. Braund have attempted to defend his work as actually a rhetorical persona (mask) taken up by the author to critique the very attitudes he appears to be exhibiting in his works.^[7]

In any case it would be an error to read the Satires as a literal account of normal Roman life and thought in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD, just as it would be an error to give credence to every slander recorded in Tacitus or Suetonius 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 Martial and Tacitus; similarly, the stylistics of Juvenal’s text fall within the range of post-Augustan literature as represented by Persius, Statius, and Petronius.^[8] Certainly the Satires represent only the world view of a portion of the Roman population, not speaking of the concerns of women, immigrants, slaves, children, or men not of the elite, educated audience addressed by the author.

With these caveats, it is nonetheless possible to approach the Satires as a helpful source for studying the culture of early Imperial Rome. In addition to a wealth of incidental information on everything from diet to décor, the Juvenal's work reveals what is most essential to a civilization: the issues at the core of the identity of a society such as Rome.

Literary and cultural influence

The Satires have inspired many authors, including Samuel Johnson, who modeled his “London” on Satire III and his “Vanity of Human Wishes” on Satire X. Juvenal also helped come up with 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, or children—men 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)
• 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).

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.
• Highet, Gilbert (1961) Juvenal the Satirist, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Juvenal (1982) The Sixteen Satires, Trans. Peter Green, London: Penguin Books.
• 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.
• 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.
• Syme, Ronald (1939) The Roman Revolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Notes

1. ^ Peter Green: Introduction to Penguin Classics edition of the Satires, 1998 edition: p.15 ff
2. ^ Peter Green: Introduction to Penguin Classics edition of the Satires, 1998 edition: p.15 ff
3. ^ (From L to R: the inscription as preserved, the restored inscription, and the translation of the restored inscription.)
4. ^ Peter Green: Introduction to Penguin Classics edition of the Satires, 1998 edition: pp.23-24
5. ^ Lucilius experimented with other meters before settling on dactylic hexameter.
6. ^ Institutiones Oratoriae 10.1.95
7. ^ According to Braund (1988 p. 25), Satire 7 – the opening poem of Book III - represents a “break” with satires one through six – Books I and II – where Juvenal relinquishes the indignatio of the “angry persona” in favor of the irony of a “much more rational and intelligent” persona.
8. ^ Amy Richlin identifies oratorical invective as a source for both satire and epigram. 1992 p. 127.

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Juvenal

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Juvenal

• Latin text of The Satires of Juvenal at the The Latin Library
• English translations of all 16 satires at the Tertullian Project. Together with a survey of the manuscript transmission.
• English translations of Satires 1, 2, 3, 6, 8 and 9
• Juvenal's first 3 "Satires" in English
• SORGLL: Juvenal, Satire I.1-30, read by Mark Miner

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