Juvenal’s Reflection

Osman S. Umurhan (New York University)

In Satire 6, Juvenal offers arguments against marriage, aiming indignatio at one of his favorite targets, women.  Midway through the satire, however, an unnamed woman mimics the poet’s satiric voice (6.398-412).  In this paper I argue that this anonymous woman parodies Juvenal’s poetic technique in three distinct ways.  First, her commentary on Rome (urbem, 398) reflects the satirist’s topic.  Second, just like Juvenal, the woman hears firsthand all that transpires at locations within Rome (portas, 409; trivio, 412).  Third, she narrates (narrat, 398) from the city her knowledge of all that takes place in the world (toto…in orbe, 402).  She displays this knowledge by replicating Juvenal’s shifts in satiric perspective, from what happens on the empire’s territorial peripheries – Seres (403), Thraces (403) and Partho (407) – to the intimate details of sexual conduct in the bedroom (405-6).    

Recent scholarship has investigated how self-referential symbols of the satirist – such as the doctor or the orator – and the exercise of writing satire itself situate Juvenal’s place in the satiric tradition (Cucchiarelli 2001, Barchiesi and Cucchiarelli 2005, Keane  2006).  Building on this work, I propose that the unidentified woman advances Juvenal’s didactic program that seeks to identify and eradicate Rome’s vices.  She represents one example of those characters in the Satires who participate in the poet’s exposure of depravity (medicus, 2.11-13; Laronia, 2.36-63).  She, along with other self-referential characters, locates the struggle against vice topographically at and around the street corners of Rome.

Speaking through the anonymous woman, however, subjects Juvenal to the same satiric attack he reserves for other examples of depravity – such as catamites and foreigners.  I conclude by showing that the satirist targets himself and his own poetic program in order to justify his moralizing.  Juvenal’s self-targeting contributes to a tradition that reaches back to Greek philosophical writers such as Philodemus, and to Roman satirists such as Horace, who apply a similar technique of self-mockery (Freudenburg 1993; Sider 2004).  By targeting himself in the same way he does others, Juvenal invites his readership to expose his flaws.  Accordingly, the self-exposure reveals the satirist’s bind – namely that without Rome and its vice the poet can neither write satire nor exercise his indignatio. 

The unidentified woman (6.398-412) articulates a satiric self-consciousness that demonstrates how Rome and its contradictions in the Satires operate as the geographic locus for Juvenal’s place in the Roman satiric tradition.