With these data it is possible to approach the question of the dates of Juvenal's birth and death. The main facts to guide us are the statements of the best of the biographies that he did not begin to write satire till on the confines of middle age, that even then he delayed to publish, and that he died at the age of eighty.[686] The inference is that he was born between 50 and 60 A. D., and died between 130 and 140 A. D.[687] As to the facts of his life we are on little firmer ground. But concerning his name and birthplace there is practical certainty. Decimus Junius Juvenalis[688] was born at Aquinum,[689] a town of Latium, and is said to have been the son or adopted son of a rich freedman. His education was of the usual character, literary and rhetorical, and was presumably carried out at Rome.[690] He acquired thus early in youth a taste for rhetoric that never left him. For he is said to have practised declamation up till middle age, not with a view to obtaining a position as professor of rhetoric or as advocate, but from sheer love of the art.[691] It is probable that he combined his passion for rhetoric with service as an officer in the army. Not only does he show considerable intimacy in his satires with a soldier's life,[692] but interesting external evidence is afforded by an inscription discovered near Aquinum. It runs: C_ERE_RI. SACRVM D. _IV_NIVS. IVVENALIS _TRIB_. COH. _I_. DELMATARVM II. _VIR_. QVINQ. FLAMEN DIVI. VESPASIANI VOVIT. DEDICAV_ITQ_VE SVA PEC.[693]