Juvenal
| Juvenal (Iuvenalis) | |
|---|---|
|
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| Born | 1st century AD Aquinum (modern Aquino) |
| Died | 2nd century AD |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Nationality | Roman |
| Genre | Roman Satire |
Decimus Iūnius Iuvenālis [ˈdɛkɪmʊs ˈjuː.ni.ʊs ˈjʊ.wɛ.naː.lɪs], known in English as Juvenal /ˈdʒuːvənəl/, was a Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd century AD, author of the Satires. The details of the author's life are unclear, although references within his text to known persons of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD fix his terminus post quem (earliest date of composition).
In accord with the manner of Lucilius—the originator of the genre of Roman satire—and within a poetic tradition that also included Horace and Persius, Juvenal wrote at least 16 poems in dactylic hexameter covering an encyclopedic range of topics across the Roman world. While the Satires are a vital source for the study of ancient Rome from a vast number of perspectives, their hyperbolic, comic mode of expression makes the use of statements found within them as simple fact problematic. At first glance the Satires could be read as a critique of pagan Rome, perhaps ensuring their survival in Christian monastic scriptoria, a bottleneck in preservation when the large majority of ancient texts were lost.
The precise details of the author's life cannot be definitively reconstructed based on presently available evidence. The Vita Iuvenalis (Life of Juvenal), a biography of the author that became associated with his manuscripts no later than the 10th century, is little or nothing more than extrapolation from the Satires themselves.
The 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 make both 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.
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