That the poems are not dedicated to any patron may suggest that his social status was relatively high.
Several other sources are in various degrees unproductive. The name Decimus Junius luvenalis perhaps suggests an African origin. An inscription found near Aquinum (CIL 10.5382), first recorded in 1772 but lost by 1846, attests a dedication to Ceres (cf. Sat. 3.320) by a leading municipal official who had been tribune of a military cohort and whose name is restored as Junius Juvenalis. This man may have been a relative of the poet, or the inscription may have been a fabrication produced by local opportunism. A group of several more sources suggests nothing further: the comments of the scholiast who produced a commentary on the poems in the second half of the fourth century (on 1, 4.37, 7.92, and 15.27), an allusion in Sidonius Apollinaris (Cam. 271) in the second half of the fifth century, a biography that may be later still (attributed by Valla in his 1486 edition of Juvenal to "Probus"), and the chronicle of John Malalas in Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae (1831).
This is a free page. This page contains 176 words. This
biography contains 5,798 words (approx. 19 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Juvenal Access Pass.