The statement that he continued to write satires long before he gave them to the world accords well with the nature of their contents and the elaborate character of their composition, and might almost be inferred from the emphatic but yet guarded statement of Quintilian in his short summary of Roman literature. After speaking of the merits of Lucilius, Horace and Persius as satirists, he adds, "There are, too, in our own day, distinguished writers of satire whose names will be heard of hereafter" (_Inst. Or._ x. 1, 94). There is no Roman writer of satire who could be mentioned along with those others by so judicious a critic, except Juvenal. The motive which a writer of satire must have had for secrecy under Domitian is sufficiently obvious; and the necessity of concealment and self-suppression thus imposed upon the writer may have permanently affected his whole manner of composition. So far the original of these lives follows a not improbable tradition. But when we come to the story of the poet's exile the case is otherwise. The undoubted reference to Juvenal in Sidonius Apollinaris as the victim of the rage of an actor only proves that the original story from which all the varying versions of the lives are derived was generally believed before the middle of the 5th century of our era. If Juvenal was banished at the age of eighty, the author of his banishment could not have been the "enraged actor" in reference to whom the original lines were written, as Paris was put to death in 83, and Juvenal was certainly writing satires long after 100. The satire in which the lines now appear was probably first published soon after the accession of Hadrian, when Juvenal was not an octogenarian but in the maturity of his powers. The cause of the poet's banishment at that advanced age could not therefore have been either the original composition or the first publication of the lines. An expression in xv. 45 is quoted as a proof that Juvenal had visited Egypt. He may have done so as an exile or in a military command; but it seems hardly consistent with the importance which the emperors attached to the security of Egypt, or with the concern which they took in the interests of the army, that these conditions were combined at an age so unfit for military employment. If any conjecture is warrantable on so obscure a subject, it is more likely that this temporary disgrace should have been inflicted on the poet by Domitian. Among the many victims of Juvenal's satire it is only against him and against one of the vilest instruments of his court, the Egyptian Crispinus, that the poet seems to be animated by personal hatred. A sense of wrong suffered at their hands may perhaps have mingled with the detestation which he felt towards them on public grounds. But if he was banished under Domitian, it must have been either before or after 93, at which time, as we learn from an epigram of Martial, Juvenal was in Rome.