Juvenal (? - ?)Some inscriptions from Juvenal's hometown indicated that he he served in the army and held a local magistracy. His contemporary, Martial, addressed three epigrams to him. Some sources about Juvenal's life contradict each other. However, these sources agree that there was a period of banishment for Juvenal, who offended Domitian's favorite actor. It is also stated by one of these sources that Juvenal practiced declamation until middle age.
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Basic Info
Full Name:
Decimus Iunius Juvenalis Born: Late First Century | Aquinum Died: Mid Second Century | Unknown Latin: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/juvenal.html |
Works
Juvenal wrote 16 satires, which are divided into 5 books. Summary fom Ketan.
Summary of Juvenal’s Satires:
Summary of Juvenal’s Satires:
- Satire 1: Juvenal’s prefatory satire, in which he rails against fashionable declamations and mythological obscurity. Difficile est saturam non scriber. Speaks of 38 danger of satirizing living, confines self to dead.
- Satire 2: Juvenal rants against homosexuals. Attacks hypocrites who cloak the “foulest vice beneath the appearance of virtue”
- Satire 3: Juvenal’s friend Umbricius is leaving Rome, because the city has become dangerous for honest men. “Unfair competition” of Greeks and Orientals.
- Satire 4: Invokes Calliope; Domitian calls a council to deliberate how to cook a gigantic turbot given to him as a gift.
- Satire 5: The rich Virro gives a dinner and his guests are humiliated.
- Satire 6: Juvenal’s longest satire, a famous tirade against the immorality and vices of women.
- Satire 7: Juvenal remembers fondly the patronage of Augustan age literature, lamenting the decline of study and the wretched condition of contemporary writers.
- Satire 8: Juvenal attacks the false nobility of birth and extols the true nobility that comes from talent and feeling/virtue.
- Satire 9: A dialogue where the homosexual Naevolus protests for being “ill-rewarded for his difficult services”.
- Satire 10: The folly of human desires/leave destiny to gods.
- Satire 11: Juvenal’s friend gives him a modest dinner (readings of Homer and Vergil only entertainment), which he compares with the ostenstatious banquets of rich men.
- Satire 12: Juvenal attacks legacy hunters
- Satire 13: Juvenal attacks cheats and swindlers.
- Satire 14: Juvenal discusses the upbringing of children, arguing that example must accompany teaching.
- Satire 15: Juvenal recounts an episode of cannibalism in Egypt, which he claims to know.
- Satire 16: Incomplete, this satire lists the advantages of military life.