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Juvenal Satires Book III

Juvenal is the last and in many ways the greatest of the four major Roman verse satirists, and this book aims to offer more evidence of Juvenal’s status as one of the finest satirists the world has seen and one of the best wielders of Latin to have survived from the ancient world. Juvenal’s third book of Satires consists of three complete poems (Satires 7,8 and 9). Satire 7 takes a jaundiced look at intellectual life in Rome, bemoaning the financial poverty which is the lot of the writer, the lawyer and the teacher in an age where patrons may shower them with praise but rarely with cash. Satire 8 is an excoriating account of the old ‘noble’ families and how their current representatives are anything but noble in their behaviour both at home and in the provinces. The scandalous Satire 9 returns to the theme of patronage in a superbly acid dialogue with a certain Naevolus who has served his patron sexually and who now complains of the poor returns for his extensive and energetic labours. All three poems purport to describe and to critique Roman society, but they do so with an irony which draws attention to the medium as well as the message and which makes the speaker of the poetry often the target of his own abuse. The text is accompanied by a literal English translation and the commentary seeks to explain both the factual background to the poems and also the literary qualities which make this poetry exciting and moving to a modern audience.