Latin Quotations From the Satires of Juvenal

Sayings Coined by Ancient Rome's Greatest Satiric Poet

Aug 15, 2009 Luke Arnott

Expressions such as "rare bird," "who watches the watchers?" and "bread and circuses" come from the Satires of Juvenal, the cynical last great poet of ancient Rome.

Very little is known about the Roman poet Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis), who lived in the late first and early second centuries AD. Like his friend Martial, Juvenal wrote satire, a particularly Roman genre of poetry that used sarcasm and irony to express moral outrage.

Juvenal's Satires, a collection of sixteen poems written in dactylic hexameter – the traditional meter of epic poetry used by Homer, Virgil and Ovid – are regarded as among the best examples of the form from antiquity.

The Satires are deeply cynical, but also very witty. For that reason, many lines from Juvenal's masterpiece became maxims, even lasting into modern times. Here are some of the most famous, with explanations of their meaning and context.

Sayings From Juvenal's First Satire

Juvenal's Satire I is short, as he uses it to set out his program: describing all the ways that people have been "running about" (discursus, 86) since the dawn of history, and thereby exposing human folly.

Though Juvenal claims all of human activity as his subject, his motivation is more narrow. With so many bad poets declaiming around him, at the outset of his First Satire Juvenal says, "It's hard not to write satire" (difficile est saturam non scribere, 30) – a biting bit of sarcasm that is the poet's first memorable line.

Later in Satire I another of Juvenal's famous tags comes up. Using the rhetorical device of personification, he points out that "Honesty is praised, and freezes" (Probitas laudatur et alget, 74). In other words, although everyone claims to admire the truth, it is "left out in the cold," to use the English idiom.

Roman Poverty in Juvenal's Third Satire

In Satire III, Juvenal presents a harangue on urban life, delivered by his friend Umbricius, who is leaving the city of Rome. While Juvenal complains about a wide range of perceived problems, from collapsing buildings to unscrupulous Greek immigrants and parvenus, he is most affecting when documenting the ills of urban poverty.

Juvenal shows a sympathetic knowledge of the human condition when he notes that "There's nothing harder about wretched poverty than that it makes men laughable" (Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, quam quod ridiculos homines facit, 152–153). Later in Satire III, he observes just as timelessly that "It is not easy for men to rise when domestic poverty blocks their virtues" (Haut facile emergunt quorum virtutibus opstat res angusta domi, 164–165)

The Sixth Satire's Famous Quotations

Among the most controversial of Juvenal's works is Satire VI, which has the vices of women as its subject. But for all its political incorrectness, Satire VI contains some of Juvenal's most famous sayings. For instance, regarding men who, suspicious of their wives' fidelity, wish to keep them under guard at home, Juvenal asks, "But who watches the watchers?" (Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? 347–348)

Juvenal doesn't think that all women are bad – but he does feel that a virtuous wife (much like a virtuous man, if his oeuvre is taken as a whole) is a "rare bird" indeed (rara avis, 165), another now-common phrase first coined by the poet.

Sayings From Juvenal's Tenth Satire

Satire X presents a litany of all the things – fame, wealth, long life – that people pray for but which, says Juvenal, only lead to misery. As the satire ends, Juvenal says that people are foolish to consider Fortune a goddess worth praying to: all that people should desire is a "sound mind in a sound body" (mens sana in corpore sano, 356)

One of Juvenal's most famous tags, "bread and circuses" (panem et circenses, 81), also comes from Satire X. Juvenal laments in the poem that the people of Rome, once vital to the republic, are now only interested in handouts and entertainment.

The Lasting Influence of Juvenal's Satires

Juvenal's sixteen Satires have always been masterful examples of their poetic genre. But it's also remarkable what lasting effect many sayings from his work have had in modern popular culture, from comic books (such as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' The Watchmen) to television (such as the 1967 Star Trek episode "Bread and Circuses").

Doubtless, part of the continued appeal of Juvenal's sayings is that the vices and failings which he laments were not limited to the ancient Romans, but are in fact a part of human nature.

The copyright of the article Latin Quotations From the Satires of Juvenal in World Literatures is owned by Luke Arnott. Permission to republish Latin Quotations From the Satires of Juvenal in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Author of the Satires	Life in Rome is Bemoaned in Juvenal's Satire III	Umbricius Leaves Rome in Juvenal's Satire III
Who Watches the Watchers? in Juvenal's Satire VI	Bread and Circuses Coined in Juvenal's Satire X