The Satires of Juvenal

THE LIFE OF JUVENAL.

BY WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ.

Decimus Junius Juvenalis, the author of the following Satires, was born at Aquinum, an insignificant town of the Volsci, around the year 38 AD. He was either the son or the foster-son of a wealthy freedman, who provided him with a liberal education. From his birth until he reached the age of forty, nothing more is known of him than that he continued to perfect himself in the study of eloquence by declaiming, according to the practice of those days—though this was done more for his own amusement than from any intention to prepare himself for the schools or the courts of law.

Around this time, he seems to have discovered his true calling and turned to poetry. Domitian was now at the head of the government and showed signs of reviving that system of favoritism which had nearly ruined the empire under Claudius, through his boundless partiality for a young pantomime dancer named Paris. Against this minion, Juvenal seems to have directed the first shafts of that satire which was destined to make the most powerful vices tremble and shake the masters of the world on their thrones. He composed a few lines on the influence of Paris with considerable success, which encouraged him to cultivate this kind of poetry. He had the prudence, however, not to trust himself to an audience in a reign that swarmed with