The Satires () are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written between 100–127 A.D.

The Satires address perceived threats to society, such as socially ascendant foreigners, infidelity, and the extreme excesses of the Roman aristocracy. Juvenal's audience was highly educated, and his dense poems are laced with historical and mythological allusions.

History and composition

Date

The first book of Satires probably dates to 100 AD. The fifth book likely dates to a point after 127, because of a reference to the Roman consul Lucius Aemilius Juncus in Satire 15. Between these two books, Juvenal wrote seven additional satires that are organized in three books. Satire 6 was written shortly after the first book and serves as a companion piece.

Genre

thumb|Frontispiece of [[Aldus Manutius|Aldo Manuzio's 1501 printing of Juvenal's Satires.]]

The Roman satire genre featured a wide-ranging discussion of social mores in dactylic hexameter. Quintilian noted how many genres Rome borrowed from Greece but concluded, "Satire, on the other hand, is all our own". The other great satirist of Rome was Horace. John Dryden summed up the difference in their approach, "Horace meant to make his reader laugh...Juvenal always intends to move your indignation."

In Satire 1, concerning the scope and content of his work, Juvenal says:

::"From the day when the rain-clouds lifted up the waters, and Deucalion climbed that mountain in his ship to seek an oracle—that day when stones grew soft and warm with life, and Pyrrha showed maidens in nature's garb to men—all the doings of mankind, their vows, their fears, their angers and their pleasures, their joys and goings to and fro, shall form the motley subject of my page." - (1.81–86)

Juvenal's Satires range from 130 to 695 lines. Satire 16 is incomplete. Translators like Niall Rudd sometimes provided pithy titles like "9. The Woes of a Gigolo" and "15. The Case of Cannibalism".

Satire 4: The fourth satire is a mock-heroic epic, describing a council convened by Domitian. Starting off with an invocation to the muse of epic poetry, Calliope, it mocks the absurdity of the situation with a fake sense of importance. Within it, Juvenal is summoned to the council to determine how to cook the gigantic turbot (rhombus) given to Domitian as a gift. It also discusses various other events, such as Crispinus buying a singular mullet at the outrageous price of 6,000 sesterces.

Satire 5: The fifth satire describes the shame experienced by a client when his patron, Virro, finally decided to extend to him an invitation to his dinner party. It criticizes the client, stating that "a poor man's stomach is easy to please, yet you suffer insults at a dinner party just for a free meal". It also states that, though they are at the same table, they are being treated completely differently, with the client being given much worse food while Virro eats delicacies. Overall, this satire is a brutal commentary on the social inequality of ancient Rome, where the wealthy give their dependents the bare minimum in exchange for their loyalty.

Book II

Satire 6: The sixth satire is Juvenal's longest, at 661 lines, and his most famous. Addressing a man whom Juvenal calls delusional enough to think about getting married, he expounds the immorality and "vices" of women. In it, he claims that women are unfaithful, and that they relentlessly seek abortions, murder their stepchildren, and use potions to drive their husbands insane. Thus he proposes suicide as a "painless alternative" to marriage. Two noteworthy phrases from this satire are "rara avis" (lit. "rare bird"), which refers to good women as a black swan, or hard to come by, and another is the line "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" (lit. "who will guard the guards themselves").

Book III

Satire 7: The seventh satire laments the decline of intellectual pursuits and the miserable circumstances of contemporary authors, pining for the patronage enjoyed by Augustan writers. It opens with a prayer for better treatment of scholars under a new emperor, possibly Hadrian.]]The chief manuscript for Juvenal's Satires is a codex edited by Pierre Pithou in 1575. It made its way to Montpellier. The manuscript is known as the Codex Pithoeanus Montepessulanus. A. E. Housman developed a critical apparatus for the Satires in 1905.

Lacunae in manuscripts created problems that editors and translators solved in a variety of ways. In addition to lacunae, it was common to expurgate Juvenal's explicit passages until recently.

John Dryden wrote a massive introduction for his translation of Satires in 1692.

Juvenal's persona in the first two books is indignant, persistently asking outraged questions about the state of Rome. In the later books, he is more restrained and ironic. He borrowed heavily from writers like Martial and Virgil.

Juvenal's Satires are a valuable source about early Judaism, given their accounts of Jewish life in first-century Rome.

Literary and cultural influence

Several maxims originate in Juvenal's Satires:

  • Bread and circuses (X.81): Commoners can be placated with Panem et circenses (bread and circuses).
  • Healthy mind in a healthy body (X.356): One should pray for a mens sana in corpore sano (healthy mind in a healthy body) rather than for wealth, power, eloquence, or children.
  • Rare bird (VI.165): A perfect wife is a rara avis (rare bird). Juvenal refers to a "black swan" as a specific example of a rare bird.
  • Honesty is praised and freezes (I.74): Fame and fortune is rewarded to criminals while probitas laudatur et alget (honesty is praised and freezes).
  • Who watches the watchmen? (VI.347–8): Juvenal mocked the very notion of security by asking Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (who watches the watchmen).

The footwear and sports equipment manufacturing company Asics is named after a Latin acronym for "anima sana in corpore sano" (a sound mind in a sound body), a variant on the maxim in Juvenal's Satire X.

Samuel Johnson used Juvenal as a model for two of his works: London: A Poem in Imitation of The Third Satire of Juvenal (1738) and The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated (1748). In Suspiria de Profundis (1845), Thomas De Quincey rhapsodized that no one wrote better indignant verses than Juvenal.

German writer Heinrich Böll was exposed to Juvenal's Satires by an anti-Nazi teacher in high school; "Mr. Bauer realized how topical Juvenal was, how he dealt at length with such phenomena as arbitrary government, tyranny, corruption, the degradation of public morals, the decline of the Republican ideal and the terrorizing acts of the Praetorian Guards...I found an 1838 translation of Juvenal with an extensive commentary, twice the length of the translated text itself, written at the height of the Romantic period...I read all of it very intensely, as if it was a detective novel. It was one of the few books to which I persistently held on throughout the war..."

Alexander Theroux identified Juvenal as his most important influence.

Notes

Further reading

  • Anderson, William S.. 1982. Essays on Roman Satire. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Adams, J. N.. 1982. The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • 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.
  • Edwards, Catherine. 1993. The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Edwards, Catherine. 1996. Writing Rome: Textual Approached to the City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Freudenburg, Kirk. 1993. The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire. Princeton: Princeton 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.
  • Hutchinson, G. O.. 1993. Latin Literature from Seneca to Juvenal. Oxford: 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.
  • The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 1996. 3rd ed. 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.
  • Walters, Jonathan. 1997. Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought. in J. Hallet and M. Skinner, eds., Roman Sexualities, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Juvenal. 1998. The Sixteen Satires. Trans. Peter Green. London: Penguin Books.

;Books

  • Juvenal. The Satires. Translated by John Dryden. Jacob Tonson, 1693.
  • Juvenal. The Satires. Translated by William Gifford. W. Bulmer & Co., 1802.
  • Juvenal. Juvenal. Translated by Charles Badham. Harper & Brothers, 1855.
  • Juvenal, et al. The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius. Translated by Rev. Lewis Evans. Henry G. Bohn, 1860.
  • Juvenal. The Satires of Juvenal. Translated by Arthur Frederic Cole. J.M. Dent & Company, 1906.

;Websites

  • Juvenal, Satires 1, 2, and 3 translated by G. G. Ramsay at the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook
  • Juvenal, Satires 1, 10, and 16 translated by Lamberto Bozzi.
  • Juvenal, Satires at The Latin Library.