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Juvenal
Juvenal
	Frontispiece from John Dryden, The; Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis:; And of Aulus Persius Flaccus
Born	c. 55 AD; Aquinum, Italy, Roman Empire
Died	128 (aged c. 73)
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	Roman
Genre	Satire

Decimus Junius Juvenalis (Latin: [ˈdɛkɪmʊs ˈjuːniʊs jʊwɛˈnaːlɪs]), known in English as Juvenal (/ˈdʒuːvənəl/ JOO-vən-əl; c. 55–128), was a Roman poet. 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 AD fix his earliest date of composition. One recent scholar argues that his first book was published in 100 or 101.^[1] A reference to a political figure dates his fifth and final surviving book to sometime after 127.^[2]

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 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.

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. He is supposed to have been a pupil of Quintilian, 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^[3] and 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.^[4]

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'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.^[4]

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'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, 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:^[5]

...]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]VE

SVA PEC(VNIA)

To Ceres (this) sacred (thing)

(Decimus Junius?) Juvenalis

military tribune of the first cohort of the Dalmatian^[3] (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.^[6]

Notes

^ Uden, J. The Invisible Satirist: Juvenal and Second-Century Rome (Oxford, 2015), pp. 219–226
^ Mayor, John Eyton Bickersteth (1881). Thirteen Satires of Juvenal. Cambridge: Macmillan and Company. p. xviii.
^ ^a ^b Sellar, William; Postgate, John (1911). "Juvenal" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 610–613.
^ ^a ^b Peter Green: Introduction to Penguin Classics edition of the Satires, 1998 edition: pp. 15 ff
^ (From L to R: the inscription as preserved, the restored inscription, and the translation of the restored inscription.)
^ Peter Green: Introduction to Penguin Classics edition of the Satires, 1998 edition: pp. 23–24

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.
Braund, Susanna (2012). "Juvenal". In Hornblower, Simon; et al. (eds.). Oxford Classical Dictionary (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.3522. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5.
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.