Fourteen Satires of Juvenal Fourteen Satires of Juvenal

Less is known about the life of Juvenal (D. Iunius Iuuenalis) than was once believed - a key source, an inscription naming one Iunius Iuuenalis, refers to a later descendant, not the satirist - and such evidence as there is remains sadly inadequate. Much of it comes from Juvenal's own work. We know that the family was from Aquinum in Latium near modern Monte Cassino. One ancient Life offers a plausible birth date of AD 55. Another states that till middle-age Juvenal practised rhetoric, not for professional reasons but as an amusement, which implies a private income. Book I of the Satires was not published till c. 110-12, when the poet was in his fifties, and is clearly the work of an impoverished and embittered man who has come down in the world - a hanger-on of wealthy patrons with a chip on his shoulder - but the precise circumstances of Juvenal's fall from grace are unclear.