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  • Published: 2 December 1998
  • ISBN: 9780140447040
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $37.00

The Sixteen Satires




An insight into the splendour, squalor and energy of everday Roman life

Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. AD 55-138) captures the splendour, the squalor and the sheer energy of everyday Roman life. In The Sixteen Satires he evokes a fascinating world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, ageing flirts and downtrodden teachers. A member of the traditional land-owning class that was rapidly seeing power slip into the hands of outsiders, Juvenal also creates savage portraits of decadent aristocrats - male and female - seeking excitement among the lower orders of actors and gladiators, and of the jumped-up sons of newly-rich former slaves. Constantly comparing the corruption of his own generation with its stern and upright forebears, Juvenal's powers of irony and invective make his work a stunningly satirical and bitter denunciation of the degeneracy of Roman society

  • Published: 2 December 1998
  • ISBN: 9780140447040
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $37.00

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