Saint Juvenal A.K.A Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, Anglicized as Juvenal, was a Roman satiric poet of the late 1st century and early 2nd century. He is known for coining the phrase "panem et circenses" ("bread and circuses") to describe the primary pursuits of the Roman populace. The rhetorical question "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", "Who shall guard the guards themselves?" comes from his satire On Women, and arises in a discussion concerning the usefulness of having eunuchs guard your women.

Concerning his life almost nothing is known with any certainty. There is a somewhat ambiguous inscription which, if it does in fact refer to Juvenal's family, would place his hometown at Aquinum in Italy. Ronald Syme points out that there were many people with Juvenal's same last name in Spain, and many modern scholars believe that he was the son of a Spanish freedman. He described himself as middle-aged at the time of publication of his first satire, which was sometime in the 100s. The latest known date for his activity is 127. The biographical material in ancient biographies of Juvenal, of which thirteen survive, appears to be extrapolated from the satires themselves. Some modern scholars, most notably Gilbert Highet, have also attempted to glean biographical material about Juvenal the man from his satires. They believe that for a time he was very poor and was dependent on the rich people in Rome, and that he was (for some time) exiled in Egypt and possibly in Britain. These ideas concerning the life of Juvenal have largely fallen into disfavor among scholars over the last fifty years. The only known contemporary reference to him is in a poem addressed to him by his friend, the poet Martial.
Frontispiece depicting Juvenal and Persius, from a volume translated by John Dryden in 1711.
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Frontispiece depicting Juvenal and Persius, from a volume translated by John Dryden in 1711.

His surviving work consists of sixteen satires in hexameter. Through his satires, Juvenal portrays an anger and contempt towards his fellow contemporaries, which gives us an insight into Roman values and morality, rather than real life. His satire is frequently lewd, although in the tradition of Roman satire, he prefers euphemism to outright obscenity.

                       

Courtesy of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juvenal