Satires by Decimus Junius Juvenalis

First published:Saturae, 100-127 c.e. (English translation, 1693)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

Juvenal is one of the greatest satirists in the literary tradition. An examination of the poet’s influence on writers of generations succeeding his own bears out such an assessment. Often imitated, and even more frequently quoted, Juvenal has been venerated as one of the founding practitioners of satire and one of the most penetrating commentators on the human condition. His stance is that of the “angry” satirist who is driven to expression by a sense of indignation at the corruption he sees around him.

Juvenal’s poems are rich in lurid description and vituperative rhetoric. The angry persona he adopts in his poems has spawned a tradition of satire that has run for nearly two thousand years through European literature. Perhaps more than any other figure, he is the source of inspiration for perhaps the greatest of English satirists, Jonathan Swift.

Writing at the height of the Roman Empire, Juvenal’s principal target is the city of Rome and its inhabitants. Born during the reign of Nero, he lived under nine other emperors, including the tyrannical Domitian, of whom he was especially critical. In addition to the court of the emperors, he turns his critical gaze on the Roman nobility, a host of professions, as well as ordinary citizens, whose lives he sees being wasted in the vain pursuit of pleasure and wealth. As succeeding generations have noted, the failings he exposes are not unique to the Roman Empire: avarice, sycophancy, lewdness, treachery, and self-centeredness exist in every society, and Juvenal’s satires speak to readers of any age who can see the analogies between the satirist’s times and their own.

Juvenal was born in Aquinum, southeast of Rome, and may have worked in minor governmental positions, perhaps abroad in Egypt for a time. Few facts about him have survived outside those provided by his own writings, although a biography written in the fourth century indicates that he was the son of a freedman and had practiced rhetoric until middle age for his own amusement—perhaps until he took up poetry. He was clearly well-versed in both Greek and Latin literature and mythology, to which he constantly alludes. His favorite genre appears to have been epic, as he writes in hexameters and uses many words and phrases from Vergil’s Aeneid. As far as satire is concerned, he tells readers in his opening lines that he models himself on Lucilius, who was renowned for his outspokenness and fearless attacks on powerful men.

Juvenal’s pictures of life in Rome are colorful and brilliantly observed. He is the master of the telling detail and the piquant metaphor, all deployed in the service of skewering those whom he targets. He resents the growing power of the moneyed classes, the traders, and the freedmen and the displacement of traditional Roman centers of power. He disapproves of the softening influences of Greek and Eastern cultures and the vices they introduce into the hardy and self-reliant Roman character that had made the empire great. He despises the Roman aristocracy for its weakness and degeneracy and for its abandonment of the patron-client relationship in favor of naked self-interest. Last but by no means least, he presents himself as revolted by men who do not behave as men should, but have adopted womanly ways and, conversely, women who have abandoned Roman ideals of modesty and chastity and who take on masculine roles, such as that of gladiator in the arena.

Juvenal explains his choice of medium in his first satire. Having no desire to rewrite old plays or endless epics, and having seen a barber become wealthier than a patrician and a social-climbing Egyptian advance himself at the expense of the Romans, he declares that “it is difficult not to write satires.” His writing was little appreciated during his lifetime. Indeed, his satires disappeared for several centuries. Rediscovered, Juvenal was esteemed as an epigrammatist and social historian because of his vivid pictures of Roman life. Sixteen satires, totaling 3,775 lines, make up the total preserved work of Juvenal. The poems vary in length from the little more than sixty lines of the unfinished satire 16, which deals with the prerogatives of a soldier, to the 661 lines of satire 6, directed against women, a poem that is long enough to fill a papyrus roll.

Juvenal’s first book, containing 690 lines, includes his first five satires, of which satire 1, appropriately, explains why he has turned to this form of literary activity. He declares that he is writing to pay back the many poets who have bored him, from crude Cordus, with his interminable epics, to the writers of bad comedies and elegies. Since depravities on every side “rate the midnight oil of Horace,” the writer of satires charges onto the plain like a new Lucilius. Pondering, however, the advice of those who have warned him against the wrath and punishment he may incur from the powerful if he attacks them, he declares his intention to dedicate his attention to the dead, those whose ashes lie along the roads outside Rome.

The third satire, a lengthy tirade against life in Rome, is justly famous for its vivid account of the sordid aspects of urban life; delivered through the mouthpiece of Juvenal’s friend Umbricius, who is leaving for the quiet seaside town of Cumae, it presents Rome as a place in which no “decent Roman” now belongs. Satire 4 is the story of Domitian and a giant fish caught in the Adriatic Sea and sent to the imperial palace for consumption; in this satire, Juvenal captures the fear, hypocrisy, and brutality of tyrannical regimes.

Underlying Juvenal’s satirical ire in these opening poems is a profound anxiety about the violation of traditional boundaries and the permeability of borders. His hostility to Greeks and Egyptians, as well as to foreigners generally, reflects a sense that Rome is losing its “Romanness” and, along with it, the old values upon which society depends. Thus, in satire 2, Juvenal attacks Roman aristocratic males who have adopted the manly guise of Stoic philosophers and walk around grim-faced, while, in the secrecy of their homes, they engage in the most effeminate activities imaginable. Similarly, in satire 5, he describes a dinner-party hosted by a rich patron for his friends and clients that is a nightmare of abuse and humiliation. The poor client without means is served cheap and disgusting dishes and rancid wine, while the wealthy host dines on exotic fare and drinks fine vintage. This encapsulates the perversion of networks of friendship and patronage that has occurred with the influx of new wealth and the rise of nouveaux riches.

The approaching marriage of Postumus gives the poet a motive for a coarse diatribe against the women of Rome in satire 6. This is the longest poem in the collection, taking up the entire second book. In primitive times, Juvenal asserts, the goddess Chastity existed on Earth, but not among the Roman matrons of his time. He then launches into a catalog of examples of women behaving badly, from Eppia who ran off to Egypt with a gladiator; to Maura, who gets drunk and cavorts lewdly around the statue of Chastity at night; to the empress Messalina having sex with multiple men in a brothel. No aspect of Roman womanhood is spared in this extended outburst: clothing, make-up, exercise, chit-chat, shopping, theatre-going, all come under Juvenal’s jaundiced scrutiny. While this poem is a counterpart to the attack of satire 2 on inappropriately behaving men, it is a much more substantial depiction of the atrophying of traditional gender roles. It ends with examples of women who poison step-children and murder husbands, and it has a final message to convey to Postumus and any other Roman man: do not get married, as there is no woman who is chaste.

With the third book, Juvenal’s tone becomes slightly less angry and more resigned and cynical. Some have detected a more philosophical turn in these satires. Juvenal offers in the remaining poems of the collection various versions of the same rather bleak message, namely that one looks in vain for the traditional Roman values as anchors of moral stability. Family lineage is no guarantee of noble character and, hence, no reason for expecting respect, he argues in satire 8. Retraced a few generations, even the noblest blood is mixed with the common. Deeds are more important.

The famous satire 10, adapted in 1749 by Samuel Johnson as The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated, shows that few human beings know what is good or bad for them. Most people wish for health or honor. Students of rhetoric crave eloquence, the ruin of Demosthenes and Cicero. The ambitions of Alexander and Xerxes were their undoing. People desire long life, which brings ills, or beauty, which causes unhappiness. If people were wise, they would let the gods make the decisions. As Johnson writes, “So raise for good the supplicating voice,/ But leave to Heaven the measure and the choice.” If people must pray, they should ask for a healthy mind in a healthy body and a spirit reconciled to trouble or death.

Extravagance is the theme of satire 11, sent to Persicus along with an invitation to dinner. Many in Rome beggar themselves for pleasure, says Juvenal, but at Juvenal’s table, his friend will eat what he can afford, simply served, and without lavish entertainment. Satire 15 is a disturbing parable about the rivalry of two neighboring Egyptian towns and an incidence of cannibalism born of religious fanaticism; but others should guard against feeling superior because, he shows, things every bit as violent and appalling happen in Rome as well.

The final, unfinished, satire 16 appears to be shaping into an attack on the Roman army and the special privileges enjoyed by soldiers; it then breaks off. No more of the collection exists. It is likely that it continued in a similar vein. There is debate as to whether or not Juvenal offers any real corrective to the behavior he observes and condemns; some think he attacks vices to make his readers change their ways, but that is probably too simplistic: Although Juvenal does give glimpses into an alternative way of living—a simple, rustic life without acquisitiveness and ambition—he has a tendency to deflate even that which he apparently admires.

In the end, Juvenal’s satires are most remarkable for their descriptive power, their flashes of bitter humor, and their unsparing portrayal of corruption. Even with the intolerance and prejudice that underpins many of his criticisms, Juvenal holds up a mirror to his own society and to humankind in general.

Bibliography

Coffey, Michael. Roman Satire. London: Methuen, 1976. Groups the major Roman satirists according to various traditions. Examines Juvenal’s Satires with discussion of prevalent themes and such stylistic considerations as imagery and rhetoric. Includes extensive notes.

Freudenburg, Kirk. Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Analyzes Juvenal’s satire and its relationship to other satirical writings by Lucilius, Horace, and Persius. Describes the audience for the work of these ancient Roman satirists.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. “The Poor Man’s Feast: Juvenal” by Victoria Remell provides a lengthy analysis of the Satires, and the other essays in the collection contain references to Juvenal that are listed in the index.

Green, Peter. The Shadow of the Parthenon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. Includes the essay, “Juvenal and His Age,” which discusses the elusiveness of the writer and his obsession with avarice and luxury. Explores the difficulty of finding an overall structure or order for the sixteen Satires.

Highet, Gilbert. Juvenal the Satirist. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1954. Provides a definitive volume on Juvenal’s life and work. The bulk of this scholarly tome analyzes the sixteen Satires and looks at their influence and appraisal through various later ages. Provides useful indexes to persons, places, things, and passages in the works.

Jones, Frederick. Juvenal and the Satiric Genre. London: Duckworth, 2007. Examines how Juvenal manipulated the genre of ancient Roman satire, as well as the epic and other literary forms of his time, to create his works.

Knoche, Ulrich. Roman Satire. Translated by Edwin S. Ramage. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975. In the chapter on Juvenal, Knoche calls him the most serious of the satirists, focusing on social conditions rather than individuals. Included are summaries of the Satires and evaluations of modern editions.