Juvenal

Writing in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries CE, Juvenal is remembered as one of Rome’s great satirists. His surviving work, the Satires, uses vivid scenes, dark humor, and fierce criticism to attack greed, vanity, moral decay, and abuses of power.

Very little about his life can be confirmed with certainty, and much of what is said about him comes from later tradition rather than firm evidence. He is usually identified as Decimus Junius Juvenalis and is often dated to around 55 to 128 CE.

What has lasted beyond the uncertainties of biography is the force of his writing. Juvenal’s poems shaped the tradition of satire for centuries, and several of his phrases and ideas continued to echo through European literature long after the Roman Empire itself had passed.