# The Sixteen Satires

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/decimus-iunius-iuvenalis/the-sixteen-satires/9780140447040

![The Sixteen Satires](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin-classics/decimus-iunius-iuvenalis/the-sixteen-satires_978-01-4044-704-0.jpg?v=2026-04-23%2005%3A38%3A28)

- Book: [The Sixteen Satires](https://www.bookquiver.com/decimus-iunius-iuvenalis/the-sixteen-satires) ([The Sixteen Satires.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/decimus-iunius-iuvenalis/the-sixteen-satires.md))
- Authors: [Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis](https://www.bookquiver.com/decimus-iunius-iuvenalis)
- Publisher: penguin_classics
- ISBN: 978-01-4044-704-0
- Pages: 320
- Published: 2004-05-27
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

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