author
Juvenal
With a fierce eye for hypocrisy, luxury, corruption, and social ambition, Juvenal turned everyday Roman life into some of antiquity’s sharpest satire. His poems remain famous for their vivid indignation and uncompromising wit.
1 Audiobook
The Satires of Juvenal, Persius, Sulpicia, and Lucilius Literally translated into English prose, with notes, chronological tables, arguments, &c.
by Juvenal, Gaius Lucilius, Persius, Sulpicia
About the author
Decimus Junius Juvenalis, known as Juvenal, was a Roman satirist active in the late first and early second centuries CE. Very little about his personal life is known with certainty, though he is traditionally associated with Aquinum in Italy and appears to have lived into the reign of Hadrian.
His surviving work consists of fifteen complete satires and part of a sixteenth, arranged in five books. Written in dactylic hexameter, the poems explore wealth, politics, patronage, urban life, morality, gender, and the pressures of Roman society. The early satires are especially known for their angry, forceful voice, while later poems adopt a more detached and philosophical tone. Juvenal’s name later gave rise to the term “Juvenalian,” describing satire that is biting, morally charged, and openly contemptuous.