Juvenal
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- This article is about the Roman poet, who is the most famous person by this name. For the Christian saint, see Saint Juvenal.
Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, Anglicized as Juvenal, was a Roman satiric poet of the late 1st century and early 2nd century. He is known for coining the phrase "panem et circenses" ("bread and circuses") to describe the primary pursuits of the Roman populace. The rhetorical question "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", "Who shall guard the guardians?" comes from his satire On Women, and arises in a discussion concerning the usefulness of having eunuchs guard your women.
Concerning his life almost nothing is known with any certainty. There is a somewhat ambiguous inscription which, if it does in fact refer to Juvenal's family, would place his hometown at Aquinum in Italy. Ronald Syme points out that there were many people with Juvenal's same last name in Spain, and many modern scholars believe that he was the son of a Spanish freedman. He described himself as middle-aged at the time of publication of his first satire, which was sometime in the 100s. The latest known date for his activity is 127. The biographical material in ancient biographies of Juvenal, of which thirteen survive, appears to be extrapolated from the satires themselves. Some modern scholars, most notably Gilbert Highet, have also attempted to glean biographical material about Juvenal the man from his satires. They believe that for a time he was very poor and was dependent on the rich people in Rome, and that he was (for some time) exiled in Egypt and possibly in Britain. These ideas concerning the life of Juvenal have largely fallen into disfavor among scholars over the last fifty years. The only known contemporary reference to him is in a poem addressed to him by his friend, the poet Martial.
His surviving work consists of sixteen satires in hexameter. Through his satires, Juvenal portrays an anger and contempt towards his fellow contemporaries, which gives us an insight into Roman values and morality, rather than real life. His satire is frequently lewd although, in the tradition of Roman satire, he prefers euphemism to outright obscenity.
Trivia
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau's motto, vitam impendere vero "to devote life to truth" is taken from Juvenal's satire 4, verse 91.
- "Who watches the watchers?", the popular translation of "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", was used by Alan Moore as the inspiration for the title of his acclaimed comic book series Watchmen, in which the phrase is translated "Who watches the watchmen?"
External links
- [Juvenal's 16 "Satires" in Latin], at The Latin Library
- [Juvenal's Satires 1, 2, and 3] in Latin and English (translation G. G. Ramsay) at the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook
- [Juvenal's Satire 3] in Latin and English, at Vroma
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