Juvenal Context

Context

like most Roman authors, we know nothing about him with certainty
Full name suspected to be "decimus juvenis juvenalis"
- he said in Satire III (lines 319-320) he said that his hometown is Aquinum, and in Aquinum a stone inscription was found with "decimus juvenis juvenalis"
Historical Context
- a million people in Rome; first city ever to reach a million people?
- Horace lived when Augustus was still kinda Octavian and the empireness wasn't well established
- Juvenal lived when the empire was already established for 100 years
  - Born during reign of Nero (who suppressed free speech etc)
  - Grew to adulthood during reign of Domitian
    - Domitian was less suppressive than Nero
    - Juvenal hated Domitian (according to his satires)
A lot of biographers try to mine his Satires for biographical information
- problem is that they are mixing up juvenal, the real person, and Juvenal's persona that appears in satires
  - the persona in the satires hates Domitian; does actual Juvenal hate Domitian?

indignatio
- anger
  - linguistic signs of anger
    - rhetorical questions
    - exclamations
    - rapid changes of addressee
    - repetition
    - anaphora
    - apostrophe
    - diminutives
    - bathos
      - descent from the sublime to the ridiculous
    - hyperbole
    - rare/obscure vocabulary
      - in dictionaries for words only attested once or twice sometimes they will say "from Juvenal xyz"
His ultimate thesis is "there's no place in Rome for honest Romans anymore" (hence the racism). Like how some people in Australia are against immigrants because Australia is losing its culture or something.

Horace vs Juvenal
- Horace satires tend to be more individual, "I was walking down the street one day...."
- Juvenal is more like "THE WORLD SUCKS"
Juvenal is an edgelord
- An edgelord is someone, typically on the Internet, who tries to impress or shock by posting exaggerated opinions such as nihilism or extremist views.
Targets
- Horace
  - social climbers, targets all social climbers through targeting a "stereotype"
- Juvenal
  - targets society in general - targets the concept of social climbing

Loeb
- published in 20th century to make classics more accessible
- red is Latin, green is Greek
- tend to be more literal than Penguin translations
- since published in 19th century, tend to be misogynist and homophobic etc.
Poetry In Translation
- modern and "better" -- according to Brophy
- Brophy chooses unseens by looking through the Poetry In Translation text and seeing which bits are interesting
since Juvenal mentions genitalia etc. sometimes, commentaries/texts might cut that bit out entirely, or translate it very vaguely
this one edition that included every satire except for bits from the women one and all the homosexuality ones (even though they were criticising homosexuality)

Is juvenal:

genuine
- e.g. juvenal is genuinely a bigot
genuine & knows he can get away with it (???)
not genuine, pretending to be genuine to make fun of bigots
- satire in the modern sense
- using the language of bigots to make fun of the bigots
  - like that guy who pretends to be a trump supporter at trump rallies and leads them into logical flaws by agreeing with them
  - and the jewish guy touring USA and showing how people in pubs sing "throw the jews down the well"