A Note on the Speaker in Juvenal's "Satires"

Abstract

The paper sets the thesis that Juvenal, aware that aggressive satire in Lucilian style sounded false and void when unrelated to its times, tried to avoid this danger and to pump up some drama into his poems, so the figure of a Speaker blinded by anger was introduced to the Satires. The torrents of enraged words were used in order to cover the fact that the objects of contempt were o f little importance to the listening public.