Juvenal.

"And so, who is that chap Juvenal?"

"Oh a Roman poet, was he? Busy in a dead language, about all sorts of characters who were also dead, and more boring?"

, the person who wrote the words above was Juvenal If you ever thought that classical literature was just heroic sagas then it is that you met Juvenal. Juvenal was writing the Roman empire was at its peak. Trojan was emperor, and Rome ruled the world from Egypt to Wales. We all know the Rome that Juvenal wrote about the cinema in such classics as Quo Vadis and Ben Hur.

Juvenal was a of the scene. He knew the colosseum, the charioteers, and the Roman legions, and he was also familiar with the respectable part of Rome; its criminals, and prostitutes. He writes about all of them, and his prose is as savage and as fresh as it was 2,000 years .

Juvenal was not a great admirer of the Roman system. He criticises the hypocrisy and the social climbing that he saw all him. Juvenal was also exceptional in his day for believing that slaves had rights, and in his verses he appeals for them to be better.

Let's hear Juvenal again:

"The God of wealth is now the highest of our divinities, although is strange that this God does not have any temple or altar or official statue. Peace has, and faith, victory and virtue (even though their influence on us is much conspicuous)."

Can we really say that we don't recognise what Juvenal is talking ?