2. Works.
Saturae, sixteen, grouped in five Books.
Books I-III (Satires 1-9) are sharply divided both in form and substance from Books IV-V (Satires 10-16), which are not satires at all, but moral essays, in the form of letters. The first nine satires present a wonderfully vivid picture of the seamy side of life at Rome at the end of the first century. We must, however, read side by side with them the contemporary Letters of Pliny, in which we find ourselves in a different world from that scourged by the satirist.
‘His chief literary qualities are his power of painting lifelike scenes, and his command of brilliant epigrammatic phrase.’—Duff. Nothing, for instance, could surpass his picture of the fall of Sejanus (Sat. x. 56-97). His power of coining phrases is seen in these sententiae: nemo repente fuit turpissimus—expende Hannibalem: quot libras in duce summo | invenies: maxima debetur puero reverentia: mens sana in corpora sano—which are familiar proverbs among educated men.
Juvenal tells us that he takes all life, all the world, for his text:
Quidquid agunt homines, Votum, Timor, Ira, Voluptas,
Gaudia, Discursus, nostri est farrago libelli
(the motley subject of my page).—Sat. i. 85-6.