The internal evidence, supplied by the sustained majesty and dignified flow of language of the tenth (as well as of the fourteenth) Satire, without taking into consideration the philosophical nature of the subject of both, is quite sufficient to prove that they must have been the finished productions of a late period of a thoughtful life. We are therefore quite prepared to admit the conjecture that the allusion in line 136 is to the column of Trajan, erected in the year A.D. 113. The repetition of the line (226) also connects this with the first Satire, which it probably preceded only by a short interval.
The 203d line of the eleventh Satire fixes its date to the later years of Juvenal's life. It breathes, besides, throughout the spirit of a calm and philosophic enjoyment of the blessings of life, that tells of declining age; cheered by a chastened appreciation of the comforts by which it is surrounded, but far removed from all extraneous or meretricious excitement, and utterly abhorrent of all noisy or exuberant hilarity. An additional argument is mentioned in the Chronology for referring it to the date A.D. 124.
The twelfth Satire contains nothing by which we can fix its date with any certainty. If, however, as the commentators suppose, the wife of Fuscus, in the 45th line, be Saufeia, it will be connected with the sixth, ninth, and eleventh Satires, and may probably be considered the work of his advanced age.
The thirteenth Satire is fixed by line 17 to the year A.D. 118, the 60th after the consulship of L. Fonteius Capito. This is the only Satire to which Mr. Clinton has assigned a date.
The argument applied to the tenth Satire will apply with nearly equal force to the fourteenth. We are therefore prepared to admit the plausibility of the conjecture, that l. 196 refers to the progress of Hadrian through Britain, which would fix the date to A.D. 120; a very short time previous to the composition of the following Satire.
The event recorded in the fifteenth Satire occurred shortly after the consulship of Junius, l. 27, "nuper consule Junio gesta." This was, in all probability, Junius Rusticus, who was consul with Hadrian A.D. 119. The 110th line also probably refers to the influx of Greeks and other foreigners into Rome, in the train of Hadrian (to which we have alluded in discussing the date of the third Satire), which took place in the preceding year.
The sixteenth Satire may have either been the draft of a longer poem, commenced in early life (as l. 3 may imply), which the poet never cared to finish; or an outline for a more perfect composition, which he never lived to elaborate. The mention of Fucus may connect it with the twelfth Satire. But though there is quite enough remaining to warrant us in unhesitatingly ascribing the authorship to Juvenal, there is too little left to enable us to form even a probable conjecture as to the date of its composition.
It is hardly necessary to add, that, after a careful examination of the foregoing Chronology, it must be evident to every novice in scholarship, that the whole life of Juvenal, as usually given, is a mere myth, to which one can not even apply, as in many legendary biographies, the epithet of poetical.