The Satires (Juvenal)
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Satires (Juvenal)
| Full title | The Satires of Juvenal |
|---|---|
| Author | Juvenal |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Sixteen verse satires on imperial Rome from the early second century AD — clients grovelling for dinners, fortunes made by informers, and a populace he says has traded its political inheritance for free grain and public games. Two of its lines are now common English, “who will guard the guardians” and “bread and circuses,” and both are political arguments. |
The Satires (Juvenal)
Where I heard about it
- Dissident Teacher — on A Library to Build Great Americans, a 468-title curriculum published in December 2025, in the Ages 13-99+ band under Fiction (it is verse satire), Lexile 1160.
About this edition
Written c. AD 100-130 by a poet about whom almost nothing is reliably known, so there is no single publication date. The tone is indignation rather than amusement, which is the distinction between Juvenal and Horace. Read with the caveat that Satire 6 is a sustained attack on women and that several of the poems are venomous about foreigners in Rome; the invective is part of the historical document and part of what scholars argue about. The list’s blurb describes Niall Rudd’s Oxford World’s Classics translation.
Connections
- A Library to Build Great Americans — the curriculum this came from; a 468-title reading list published in December 2025 by the Substack writer Dissident Teacher, of which Kyle is carding only the Ages 13-99+ band.
- Juvenal — the author.
- Literature
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.