Introduction

A brief description of satire as a genre and its history in Latin before Juvenal: then an account of what little we know about the poet himself and the problems of using text and history to assist each other in interpretation of the poetry. The style of Juvenal’s poetry is then discussed with examples from the text in this volume, followed by a discussion of the degree to which the text might be in any sense serious rather than simply a bravura performance of a satirical persona. A short guide to Juvenal’s use of the hexameter metre is followed by a history of the textual transmission and a full bibliography of all titles cited in the course of the book.