Iuvenal’s satires are like cool water on a hot summer day: relaxing and reinvigorating at the same time.

In a lively and scathing style, Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, born in AD 45, shows a striking picture of imperial Rome, similar to our time. Born in a family with a comfortable lifestyle, Iuvenalis illustrates this "plebs togata" that exists in a slow decline.

He lives alone, does not drink, runs reluctantly in the morning to receive his sportula and pleads various cases in the forums. Then he spends his free time at the theater, composing verses or watching the lives of the people in the streets.

He distrusts women, philosophy and homosexuals. He fails to understand the Greeks and all the oriental peoples conquered by Rome. This stoïc, who denounces the imported religions and the freed slaves enriched by the Empire, is exiled due to his disfavor with men close to the Emperor Hadrian and dies in Egypt around AD 129.

Satires shows us the overcrowded wretched population of Rome, the rich ofRome, the muddy Rome and the Rome of whores and promiscuity. In a city where everything is for sale, where slaves are brought in huge numbers from the east and specialized trades and crafts are brought from all over the world, we still see everyone struggling for life and their place in the world.

« Aude aliquid brevibus Gyaris et carcere dignum, si vis esse aliquid. Probitas laudatur et alget. Criminibus debent hortos... » nous conseille Juvénal [Dare some dirty trick, worthy of Gyaros Islands and of jail. Honesty gets cold under the bravos. But crime brings you lands and gardens...]. (sat. I, v. 73-75)

Eloquency, well known to the Romans of old, now fails to inspire the people: « Cicero nemo ducentos nunc dederit nummos, nisi fulserit anulus ingens » [Today, no one would give 200 sesterces to Cicero if he did not have a huge ring on his finger.](sat. VII, v. 139-140).

The excellent translator (in French) Olivier Sers comments in a magestic introduction: "Iuvenal’s violence is yet in his subjects, and the shade in his language."

A right word enthusiast, Iuvenal scores the bull in a poetic language that he masters with an elegant relaxation. At the same time, he is a briliant polemicist and a 1st century Cartier-Bresson. Iuvenal is an eagle, and a truely honest man.

In French: Juvénal, Satires - Les Belles Lettres - collection bilingue Classiques en poche - 2e éd. 2005 - prix éditeur
9 euros.