JU'VENAL, DECIM US JUNIUS JUVENA LIS. A Roman satirist, born at the Volscian town of Aquinum. The year of his birth is unknown; but it may be taken for granted that lie was a boy in the reign of Nero (A.D. 54-68) ; that lie was come to man's estate, and was practicing declamation in the time of Domitian (A.D. 81-96) ; and that lie lived almost or entirely through the reign of Ha drian (A.D. 117-138). lie seems to have enjoyed a competence. He practiced at Rome as an advocate; and there are some reasons for supposing that lie visited Egypt. Among his friends were Martial and Stating, and perhaps Onintilian. Little is known of his personal history. An inscription has been found at Aquinum, his birthplace, which mentions a Junius Juvenalis as an ex-tribune in the army, and a chief officer of the town: hut it is not certain whether this refers to Juvenal him self or to a near relative. His fame rests on his sixteen satires, still surviving„ which occupy the very first rank in satirical literature. and are of the greatest value as pictures of the Roman life of the Empire. Juvenal and :Horace respectively represent the two schools into which satire has always been divided ; and from one or other of them every classical satirist of modern Europe derives his detcent. As Horace is the satirist of ridicule, so Juvenal is the sat irist of indignation. Juvenal is not a man of the world so much as a reformer, and lie plays in Boman literature a part corresponding to that of the prophets under the Jewish dispensation. Ile uses satire not as a branch of comedy, which it was to 'Horace, but as an engine for attacking the brutalities of tyranny, the corruptions of life and taste, the crimes, the follies. and the frenzies
of a degenerate state of society. He has great humor of a scornful. austere, but singularly pun gent kind, and many noble flashes of a high moral poetry. The old Roman genius—as distinct from the more cosmopolitan kind of talent formed by Greek distinctly diseernihle in Ju venal. He is as national as the English Hogarlh, who perhaps gives a better image of his kind and character of faculty than any other English humorist or moralist. Juvenal has been better translated in English literature than almost any other of the ancients. Dryden translated five of his satires. Dr. Johnson imitated two of the most famous in his London and l'anity of Human WisheA and the version of the whole of them by Gifford is full of power and character. A fine edition of the Satires with an exhaustive com mentary is that of J. E. B. Mayor (2 eels.. Lon don. 1889). For the text alone see the edition of Jahn (Leipzig. Teuhner, 1893). The best working editions with English notes are those of Pearson and Strong (Oxford. 1892). and Duff (Cambrid7e. 1898). For the life of .1uNenal and eritieint of his works, Fee: Dfirr. Dos Lr•ben JuvrnalR Wive. 1RS8): Ribbeek. Der erhte !lad der unec/itc Juvenal (Berlin, 1865) ; Nettleship, Lectures and Essays (2d series, Oxford, 1805) ; :Martha, Les moralisles remains (Paris, 1865) ; Boissier, La Religion rentainc, vol. ii. (Paris, 1884) ; and L'opposition sous les Cesars ( Paris, 1392).