Figuring Out Roman Nobility

Juvenal is a central author on courses in Classical Studies and has an important place on courses in comparative literature, both in the UK and USA. This new book by John Henderson shows how the eighth Satire, a brilliant piece of writing, makes fun of traditional Roman family values, and in the process displays the core of ideas and practices with which aristocratic culture at Rome enshrined itself - the display of geneologies, ancestral busts, proliferating names, the cult of exemplary legends - in all seriousness. Virgil and Horace are Juvenal's prize scalps in his spoof of the Roman fame-machine.

 

The book is aimed at undergraduate students of Roman Satire and advanced school students of Classical Civilisation, but the notes and Appendices also address scholars and advanced readers of Latin poetry and Roman cultural politics, supporting a new close-reading and engaging with literary theory. All Latin is translated.