Quintilian’s influence on Juvenal’s Satire 1

The question of the relationship between Juvenal and Quintilian is still unanswered: the reconstruction of their possible biographical and literary connections is very uncertain. The Life of Juvenal does not mention Quintilian; its author only states that Juvenal spent a significant part of his life declaiming. Their personal acquaintance is not confirmed by any ancient source, and the views of modern research are not univocal either. In his Institutes Quintilian declares concerning the satire that in his age there are satirists who will be famous in the future. However, research is very careful about the question whether Quintilian referred to Juvenal with these words. On the basis of the biographical data, it cannot even be proven with certainty that Juvenal had known Quintilian, thus we have to find evidence in the texts of the two authors. In this paper, I examine the possible influence of Quintilian on Juvenal’s Satire 1, by highlighting textual and thematic parallels, as well as common motifs, in order to unfold the relation between Satire 1, the Institutes, and the Minor Declamations attributed to Quintilian

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