Persius in verse, by Gifford 488 THE LIFE OF JUVENAL, BY WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ. Decimus Junius Juvenalis,[1] the author of the following Satires, was born at Aquinum, an inconsiderable town of the Volsci, about the year of Christ 38.[2] He was either the son, or the foster-son, of a wealthy freedman, who gave him a liberal education. From the period of his birth, till he had attained the age of forty, nothing more is known of him than that he continued to perfect himself in the study of eloquence, by declaiming, according to the practice of those days; yet more for his own amusement, than from any intention to prepare himself either for the schools or the courts of law. About this time he seems to have discovered his true bent, and betaken himself to poetry. Domitian was now at the head of the government, and showed symptoms of reviving that system of favoritism which had nearly ruined the empire under Claudius, by his unbounded partiality for a young pantomime dancer of the name of Paris. Against this minion, Juvenal seems to have directed the first shafts of that satire which was destined to make the most powerful vices tremble, and shake the masters of the world on their thrones. He composed a few lines[3] on the influence of Paris, with considerable success, which encouraged him to cultivate this kind of poetry: he had the prudence, however, not to trust himself to an auditory, in a reign which swarmed with informers; and his compositions were, therefore, secretly handed about among his friends.[4] By degrees he grew bolder; and, having made many large additions to his first sketch, or perhaps re-cast it, produced what is now called his Seventh Satire, which he recited to a numerous assemblage. The consequences were such as he had probably anticipated: Paris, informed of the part which he bore in it, was seriously offended, and complained to the emperor, who, as the old account has it,[5] sent the author, by an easy kind of punishment, into Egypt with a military command. To remove such a man from his court must undoubtedly have been desirable to Domitian; and, as he was spoken of with kindness in the same Satire, which is entirely free from political allusions, the "facetiousness" of the punishment (though Domitian's was not a facetious reign) renders the fact not altogether improbable. Yet, when we consider that these reflections on Paris could scarcely have been published before LXXXIV., and that the favorite was disgraced and put to death almost immediately after, we shall be inclined to doubt whether his banishment actually took place; or, if it did, whether it was of any long duration. That Juvenal was in Egypt is certain; but he might have gone there from motives of personal safety, or, as Salmasius has it, of curiosity. However this may be, it does not appear that he was ever long absent from Rome, where a thousand internal marks clearly show that all his Satires were written.