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The facts of JUVENAL'S life, including the date of his birth and death, are quite uncertain. All we know of him is that he wrote towards the end of the first century A.D.; was sent against his will to Egypt, and lived for some time at Aquinum in Latium. He was the most powerful of the Roman Satirists, and poured his invective on the social vices of the early Empire. Underlying all his satire is a strong dislike of the imperial system, and a regret for the loss of the manners and constitution of Republican Rome, when Roman citizens formed a proud and narrow corporation with simple tastes and warlike habits. He does not, therefore, appreciate the beneficent aspect of the Roman Empire, but dwells on the evils and abuses introduced by foreign customs and by a state of peace without industrial pursuits. He satirizes the crowd of clever and unscrupulous Greeks who were able and ready to do anything for pay. He describes the monstrous growth of luxury of all kinds, the worship of money and material goods, the degradation of ancient families, and the arrogance and display of wealthy upstarts. He deplores the spread of novel and degrading superstitions, especially among women. Above all, he dwells on the dissolution of old social ties, the change in the character of women, the corruption of the young, the decay of the family. In his later satires Juvenal combines, with his vivid and often personal invective, many passages of great beauty describing the ideal life of virtue and simple manners. Several of the satires have been translated by Dryden, and two of them are imitated by Samuel Johnson in his London and The Vanity of Human Wishes.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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