Juvenal's Satires translated

This is dedicated to a brother from Weymouth. This translation retains the original metre (dactylic hexameter) and is rendered poetically. Written in the second century, various scholars date Satire one's composition at different times:

100 C.E. (J.W. & A.M. Duff, 1968, p.481)

Around 100 (Hubert Creekmore, 1963, p.vii)

Between 100-110 (Gilbert Highet, 1973, p.561)

circa 110-118 (Susanna Morton Braund, 2002, p.16)

Between 112-116 Friedländer (quoted in Duff, 1968, p.481)

After 115-117 Syme (quoted in Braund, 2002, p.16)

Juvenal was the last of the great Roman satirists. Some of his tags are still prevalent today 'bread and circuses' (10.81), 'but who will guard the guards?' (6.347-348) and 'a healthy mind in a healthy body' (10.356). Yet very little is known about Juvenal's life. Scholars glean what they can from his own work in order to get hints at who the poet really was. By his own admission Decimus Junius Juvenalis came from Aquinum (3.318-321) and all thirteen later biographies accord with this being his provenance (Duff, 1968, p.479). Juvenal could have been born between anywhere from between roughly 60-75 C.E. The only evidence we have is tenuous at best, relying upon passages within his Satires (1.25 & 3.26-28) where he was 'middle' aged (which in Roman terms meant about 50-65) when he wrote his first Satires. He may have composed them around the same time as Tacitus wrote the Annals from the similarity in biting tone (Syme, 1984 quoted in Braund, 2002, p.16).

Juvenal was still writing in 127 (1.3 & 1.5) after which point Satires 13-16 are thought to have probably been written (Braund, 2002, p.16; Duff, 1968, p.481).

We only have one inscription (lost in 1840) which mentions a Juvenal (Creekmore, 1963, p.ix).

Not one of Juvenal's contemporaries mentions him except the poet Martial (7.24, 7.91) written in 92 and another (12.18) between 101-102. Martial (1.20.4) would influence Juvenal (5.147) (Duff, 1968, p.420).

Max Latham (2018)