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This chapter enquires into the objects of attack in Juvenal's second satire — traditionally called ‘philosophers’, ‘moralists’, or ‘hypocrites’ — and identifies them as élite Romans who prosecuted in the law courts, especially the adultery court recently revived by Domitian. Juvenal's attack is seen within the tradition of hostility to prosecutors (delatores) in Graeco-Roman culture, in general, and in other literature of the period (Martial, Pliny the Younger, and, especially, Tacitus). The text of the second satire is examined in detail and numerous references to history, law, and rhetoric are eludicated. The interpretation aims to restore greater internal coherence to the satire and place it more securely than hitherto in its social and historical context. The truth or otherwise of its allegations (and thus its status as evidence for Roman sexual practices) emerges as less important. Improved interpretations are also proposed for four other passages of Juvenal that mention prosecutors (1.33-5, 3.116-20, 4.46-56, 10.69-72).

The imitation of Juvenal's Eighth Satire composed by William Wordsworth and Francis Wrangham in the 1790s was suppressed and went unpublished in anything like complete form until as recently as 1997. Its shadowy status in the Wordsworth corpus raises key questions about the reception of both Wordsworth and Juvenal: about how Wordsworth has been positioned in relation to the classics, and about the place of Roman satire in the writing of the Romantic age. The sudden assimilation of the imitation to currently dominant interpretive models in the 1997 scholarly edition provides a consciousness-raising moment for all those ambitious of interpreting formal verse satire whether ancient or modern: Wordsworth's imitation can for us be a way of reading Juvenal, but first we need to ask what interpretive framework is to be applied.

This chapter examines the two satires of Juvenal, 9 and 5 (in that order), and argues that they should be read as deeply programmatic. What they reveal is a self-consciousness about virtually all the elements of satire and mockery that the book has treated. Topics addressed are Juvenal's hallmark indignatio, the problem of “autobiography” and didactic posturing, and problems with “persona-theory”. The chapter argues specifically that with Naevolus in Sat. 9 Juvenal has created a particularly disreputable character to function as an alter-ego, and in so doing calls into question the stability of his self-righteous mockery of him. In the end, the satirist becomes as abject and risible as his targets, even as he maintains the sympathies of his audience — strategies that were found to be at work in other poets in earlier chapters.

This chapter on ‘non-aligned’ humour (so called because it is not tied to either object or subject) excludes the Stoic satires of Persius, but argues that for Horace and Juvenal, non-aligned humour is an important characteristic of their work, adding a dimension of merry openness. Through non-aligned humour, Horace’s and Juvenal’s satires again tease, and occasionally cheat the reader, as the ‘irrelevant’ jokes and irony sometimes try to win the reader’s sympathy, but sometimes turn against him; warmly delight in an alternative lifestyle, and then suddenly ridicule it; make cynically nihilistic statements alongside dully traditional ones, and generally destabilize the seriousness of the normative message on the surface. In Horace, the analysis focuses on his masterly balance of extremes. For Juvenal, the discussion centres on the monsters of his world, present even in the Golden Age.

This chapter argues that Dryden uses the occasion of writing a history of satire, designed to introduce translations of Juvenal and Persius, to produce his longest dedication and critical essay, The Discourse of Satire (1692), with a potentially unflattering portrait of his old patron, the earl of Dorset, and William III's court carefully lodged at the center in the oddly prolonged trial of critical judgment between Horace and Juvenal. The length and difficult progress of this essay signal yet conceal the personal story behind the history. To Horace, Dryden assigns qualities of effeminate sycophancy and compromised accommodation to a usurping monarch, Augustus Caesar, qualities the poet must distance from himself, once the Stuarts' hired pen, but may attach subtly to Dorset — like Horace the courtier of a usurper. Dryden awards first prize in satire to the exile Juvenal whose masculine freedom of rage and digression the poet claims as his own.

This chapter analyzes Rousseau's evolving relationship with his public by examining the distinctions he draws between good and bad anger, between righteous indignation and self-centered resentment. The different ways anger is discussed and displayed in the two Discours, in the Lettre à d'Alembert, in Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, and in Émile, serve to legitimize the low-born author's critique of social conventions and to provoke his readers to action. Yet, they also illustrate Rousseau's belief that a Senecan transcendence of emotion is a key both to social harmony and to the inner equilibrium of the self, and equanimity no less than a Juvenalian capacity for anger is set up as evidence of the author's claim to cultural authority. The tension between these two attitudes is shown to be a primary source of dynamism in Rousseau's work.

This concluding chapter provides a final overview of the Roman Hannibal and his portrayal in SiliusItalicus’ Punica. As well as providing a conclusive discussion on how Silius’ Hannibal is a man who undergoes a process of decline after Cannae whilst his status as a super-uir continues to evolve, this chapter returns to the final appearance of Hannibal above the plains of Zama. It is noted that in referring to his legacy, Hannibal does not say that his nomen(name)will survive, but his nomina (‘names’). It is argued that with this use of the plural form, there is a subtle nod to the multiple ‘Hannibals’ that exist in Silius’ Punica as well to the different ways in which he is remembered and perceived in Rome's literature.

This chapter examines the effect that the English Augustan aesthetic — embodied in the example of the Roman Augustan Virgil — had on the translation those silver Latin poets who reacted against the artistic ideals of the Roman Augustans. All the various translations examined — Dryden's Persius and Juvenal, Rowe's Lucan and Pope's Statius, all Latin poets of the silver age — are shown to embody the hard won Augustan virtues of clearness, purity, and ease that are the hallmarks of the Augustan achievement of Dryden's language and style. The strength and limitations of Rowe's Lucan, hailed by Dr Johnson as one of the greatest productions of English poetry, are brought out in a comparison with Marlowe's earlier version. Pope's vigorous version of Statius, it is argued, proved to be a promising apprenticeship for the translation of Homer.

This chapter provides a close reading of Badius’s commentary methods in an early work, the Silvae morales (1492). This is a compilation of twelve books of poetry excerpts grouped around various moral themes and accompanied by a substantial commentary. Badius’s focus was primarily on the Latin classics (the moral epigrams of pseudo­Virgil, the Odes and Epistles of Horace, the Annales of Ennius, and the satires of Juvenal and Persius); but the later books also contain works by fifteenth­century humanist authors (Mantuan’s Contra poetas, Sulpizio’s Carmen iuvenile) and some of the mainstays of the medieval grammar curriculum (Cato’s distichs and the Parabolae of Alain de Lille). The chapter focuses in particular on the literary techniques Badius used to situate his text within certain traditions, and on his manipulation of ‘silva’ symbolism throughout the work to guide the reader’s encounter with the text.

This chapter traces the evolution of Badius’s commentary practice by studying the grammatical commentaries he composed on the classical authors central to his pedagogical programme: Terence, Virgil, Horace, Persius and Juvenal. Placing these in the wider context of humanist education, the chapter considers aspects of presentation and mise-en-page, and analyses Badius’s changing commentary methods and the audiences for which he was writing. It pays particular attention to the methods used to orient and guide the reader through the text: introductory sections, rules, illustrations, etc.

This chapter discusses the work of Juvenal, which contains almost no autobiographical material—in marked contrast to the satires of his predecessors Horace and Persius—and notes that of his contemporaries, only the epigrammatist Martial ever refers to him. It has been argued that Juvenal was a pupil of Quintilian, and that the Institutio Oratoria alludes to him among ‘contemporaries of promise’, but this is pure speculation. The chapter notes that after his death—it is unlikely that he survived for long after the accession of Antonius Pius in ad 138—the Satires dropped out of sight absolutely for about a century.

This chapter explores literary and cinematic epic from the perspective of its audiences. It considers how epic narratives in different ancient and modern contexts might have similar social functions, and similar perceived effects on audiences — especially when we focus on epic as something to be publicly performed, rather than privately consumed. Commentary from ancient authors such as Juvenal offers useful insight into epic's socio-political role, suggesting interesting overlaps with contemporary views of cinema and its effects. The chapter ends by proposing ancient arena spectacles as an alternative, though complementary, comparative model for cinematic epic and its reception, particularly in terms of their fascination with violent entertainment.