The Satires

Written in the early second century AD, Juvenal's sixteen satires turn a bitter, ironic eye on the Rome of his day, from socially rising foreigners and infidelity to the excesses of the aristocracy. In one, a friend explains why an honest man can no longer survive in the city; in another, a council summoned by the emperor Domitian debates how to cook a giant turbot. The tenth satire is the source of the phrase bread and circuses. Grouped in five books and dense with historical and mythological allusion, the poems later influenced English satirists, notably Samuel Johnson. This edition is Niall Rudd's verse translation, with an introduction and notes on the background and contemporary references.

Ryan Holiday describes them as bitter, sarcastic attacks on Rome and says they partly inspired his book Trust Me, I'm Lying.