Juvenal

Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) , fl. 1st to 2d cent. AD, Roman satirical poet. His verse established a model for the satire of indignation, in contrast to the less harsh satire of ridicule of Horace. Little is known about his life except that during much of it he was desperately poor. A tradition tells that as a youth he was banished from court for satirizing an imperial favorite; later his work reveals a deep hatred for the Emperor Domitian. He is known chiefly for his 16 satires, which contain a vivid representation of life in Rome under the empire. They were probably written in the years between AD 100 and AD 128. The biting tone of his diatribes has seldom been equaled. From the stern point of view of the older Roman standards he powerfully denounces the lax and luxurious society, the brutal tyranny, the affectations and immorality of women, and the criminal excesses of Romans as he saw them, especially in his earlier years. The rhetorical form of his verse is finished, exact, and epigrammatic, furnishing many sayings that have become familiar through quotation.

Bibliography: See translations by R. Humphries (1958), G. G. Ramsay (rev ed. 1961), and P. Green (1967, repr. 1974); studies by I. G. Scott (1927), G. Highet (1955, repr. 1961); M. Coffey, Roman Satire (1976, 2d ed. 1989).

Juvenal (c.60–c.140), Roman satirist. His sixteen verse satires present a savage attack on the vice and folly of Roman society, chiefly in the reign of the emperor Domitian.

Juvenal ( Decimus Junius Juvenalis) (c. ad 60–c.136), Roman satirist, whose 16 satires are bitter denunciations of greed, stupidity, vulgarity, and immorality. Imitations of his work are found in J. Hall, Jonson, Oldham, and Dr Johnson. Dryden edited and wrote in part a translation of Juvenal's Satires to which he prefixed his long discourse on Satire (1693). The references to ‘the English Juvenal’ in Scott's Waverley and to ‘the British Juvenal’ in The Heart of Midlothian are to Crabbe. The former title has also been applied to Oldham.