Juvenal

Juvenal wrote sixteen satires attacking Rome and gave several phrases to every European language. Very little about his life is documented; he was born around AD 55 or 60, probably at Aquinum, may have been the son or freedman of a wealthy man, and appears to have served as a military officer and held a minor magistracy. A tradition holds that he was exiled to Egypt for a line mocking an actor favoured at court, and it may be invented. He wrote under Trajan and Hadrian, and set almost all of the satires under Domitian, whose reign had ended — attacking the dead being safer. His subject is the city as he presents it: patrons humiliating clients over dinner, forged wills, poisoners, collapsing tenements, informers, Greek immigrants displacing Romans, women who study grammar or wrestle, and the aristocracy performing on stage. The tone is indignation. He writes that it is difficult not to write satire, and that the whole human race is his material. Three phrases from him are permanent. From the tenth satire: that the people who once conferred commands and every office now anxiously desire only two things, bread and circuses; and that one should pray for a sound mind in a sound body. From the sixth, a long attack on Roman wives: who will guard the guards themselves. He is also the source of the rare bird and of the description of a lucky escape as a whiff of the lamp. His accuracy is limited and his prejudices are ugly. He died after AD 127.

• Lived: 55 CE – 140 CE
• Nationality: Roman
• Roles: poet, satirist