Almost nothing is known about J.'s life. Whereas his main predecessors in satire, Lucilius, Horace and, to a lesser degree, Persius, had incorporated personal information and confidences in their poems, as one element in the fashioning of the intimate, confessional and conversational tone which characterised their works, J. – particularly in his first two books (Sat. 1–6) – adopts a hectoring, declamatory voice which precludes the vouchsafing of intimacies and is, it is generally agreed, a rhetorical creation having limited connection with the historical Juvenal. Furthermore, even the best of the various biographies attached to the MSS of J. seemingly represents no more than a tissue of extrapolations from the poems themselves. Nor can a now lost inscription from Aquinum (CIL x 5382), which speaks of a Iuuenalis as tribune of a cohort of Dalmatians and flamen of the deified Vespasian, be reliably associated with our Juvenal, for all that the latter had a demonstrable association with the place (Sat. 3.319 tuo…Aquino). Arguably the most concrete and salient information about J. comes from his older contemporary Martial, who, addressing him as a friend in three epigrams, describes him traipsing round the city to attend on wealthy patrons (12.18.1–6: cf. Sat. 1.99–101), and as facundus, possessing oratorical skill (7.91.1). Interestingly, there is no mention of poetic activities on J.'s part in even the last of the epigrams, which dates to the very beginning of the second century ad, but facundus connects with the satirist's remark that he received the conventional rhetorical education of any well-to-do Roman (Sat. 1.15–17) and with the pervasive influence of rhetoric in his Satires, discussed below.

Irrespective of whether Satire 6 is a satire against women or against marriage, it is, beyond question, profoundly coloured by a Graeco-Roman tradition of misogyny which built up a litany of stock complaints against the female sex. J.'s debt to such misogynistic themes has been extensively exemplified in the commentary. But the corpus of writings from which these are drawn deserves analysis in its own right, partly because of the differing emphases adopted by each and subsequently reflected in J., partly because certain topics are omitted by J. in a way that helps clarify the primary focus of his attack, lastly because he introduces a number of misogynistic themes which are specific to the cultural landscape of Rome.

At the fountainhead of the ‘remarkably homogeneous’ Greek discourse about women stand Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days. In two accounts of the first woman, Theog. 507–616 and Works 42–105, Hesiod depicts females as irresistibly alluring to men but also ruinous (Theog. 585, 589, Days 78), shameless (cf. Juv. 284–5) and intrinsically deceitful (Works 67, 78, also 373–5), in sum an ‘evil’ (Theog. 570 etc.), but a necessary one (Theog. 602–12). In addition, women are lustful, making unwanted sexual demands (Works 586–7), a theme which finds many later echoes. Notoriously too, Hesiod spoke of the ‘race of women’ (Theog. 590–1), making them a separate species from men, and characterised them as a poverty-inducing, unproductive burden on the household (Theog. 590–602): ideas perhaps reflected in Juv. 6.359–62 tamen utile quid sit | prospiciunt aliquando uiri, frigusque famemque | formica tandem quidam expauere magistra: | prodiga non sentit pereuntem femina censum.

It may be true that Chastity lingered upon the earth in the early, rural phase of human existence, when wives were coarse and unsophisticated, unlike the libertine ladies of latter days. Perhaps too traces of her remained at the very beginning of the Silver Age. But afterwards she gradually migrated to heaven. Adultery, Postumus, started in the Silver era: other crimes began much later, in the Iron Age.

J.'s arguments against marriage in the first half of the Satire centre on the impossibility of finding a wife who will be sexually faithful (pudica). Accordingly, he begins with a prologue which demonstrates that adultery is so long-established that pudicitia is to be sought only in the most remote past. It assumes the form of a playful, characteristically Juvenalian take on the Myth of the Ages, first found in Hesiod's Works and Days, whereby the goddess Pudicitia is substituted for Hesiod's Aidos or the Maiden Justice of later versions (see moratam 1, 19–20nn.), the primordial colour of the passage being reinforced syntactically by the opening ten-line period, ‘itself an archaic feature’ (Kenney 2012: 127). J. is also influenced by Propertius’ association of pudicitia with the Golden Age (2.32.49–56).

In keeping with the Satire's main theme – Roman matronae – the section on the Golden Age (1–13) focuses not on primitive humans in general, as in other versions of the myth, but on a woman who is the paradigm of the ideal matrona: homemaker (domos, laremque 3), sharer of her husband's bed (5n.) and mother to his children (9). But J. superimposes onto the Hesiodic material the ‘hard primitivism’ of Lucretius, with the result that the ideal woman and her lifestyle are made to seem far from attractive. The Lucretian coloration is reinforced in lines 9–10, which recall the Roman ideal whereby a pristine rustic simplicity is allied to moral innocence, especially of women (e.g. Hor. Epod. 2, Virg. G. 2.523–35, Tib. 1.5.21–34) – but, importantly, the lines are infused with an irony which recalls a similarly debunking treatment by writers such as Ovid: see 10n.

Excellent general accounts of J.'s text are available and do not need repeating here, other than to state the central fact that the manuscript tradition is divided into two classes, the first represented by the ninth-century P and its congeners, the latter by an inferior, interpolated strain designated Φ by Clausen. Satire 6 has its share of problematical lines, the majority of which are most probably to be deleted as interpolations (see nn. on 65, 126, 138, 188, 209–11, 460, 558–9, 561, 614A–C), while the status of others is more controversial (cf. 133–5, 588nn.). On occasion, difficulties with meaning or train of thought have been explained by positing a lacuna (38n., 461n., 585–6n.) or else by assuming that lines have been misplaced, a solution being found either in simply reversing the order of a pair of lines (nn. on 43–4, 307–8, 347–8) or in more radical transpositions (e.g. Braund, following Ruperti, transposes 464–6 to follow 470).

By far the most distinctive feature of the sixth Satire from the textual viewpoint is the presence in a single manuscript of lines not elsewhere attested in the MS tradition: the so-called ‘Oxford fragment’. This consists of two passages, one of 34 lines (O1–34), the other of two, occurring after 365 and 373 respectively in a manuscript (Canon. Class. Lat. 41) probably written at Monte Cassino round 1100 and now held in the Bodleian library in Oxford. They were first recorded by an undergraduate, E. O. Winstedt, who had been working on textual problems in the manuscript (Winstedt 1899: 201–2).

The discovery provoked considerable scholarly debate, especially with regard to the longer passage, O1–34, which is replete with problems, both textual and interpretational, giving rise to widespread concerns about its authenticity. Three major hypotheses have been advanced: (1) the lines are the work of a forger; (2) they belong to an earlier draft by J. which the poet later rejected; (3) they are genuine, but at some stage were lost.

That the matronae of Satire 6 exhibit masculine characteristics and encroach on traditionally male spheres of activity has often been noted. Less attention has been paid to an important corollary of this, the comprehensive overturning by J.'s wicked wives of key conjugal and female virtues. First among the former is pudicitia, which for present purposes may be broadly defined as the restriction of female sexual activity to an exclusively marital context. As the elder Seneca put it (Contr. 2.7.9), feminae quidem unum pudicitia decus est: itaque ei curandum est esse et uideri pudicam. Numerous epitaphs for Roman wives praise their exemplary chastity; there were shrines to Pudicitia Patricia and Pudicitia Plebeia; Augustus criminalised wifely impudicitia as part of his long-lived marriage legislation of 18 bc and ad 9; and marital chastity and fidelity are touted as ideals on imperial coinage. But J.'s matronae affront pudicitia in every conceivable way: not merely by straightforward adultery (Sat. 6 passim), but by more exotic variations, which include prostitution in a low brothel (114–32), incest (133–4, 403–4), octogenarian sex (191–9), lesbian couplings before the Altar of Chastity (306–13), contests of erotic dancing (320–6), bestiality (333–4) and sex with specially primed eunuchs (366–78). Their behaviour is summed up in two passages of the Satire: iamque eadem summis pariter minimisque libido (349) and the pseudo-Sallustian claptrap of 294–5 nullum crimen abest facinusque libidinis ex quo | paupertas Romana perit: indeed Braund has persuasively argued that the sexual immorality of wives is the thematic glue which holds Satire 6 together.

These lines have been the subject of much discussion. As they stand, two senses are possible, depending on punctuation: (1) [inserting a comma after Maura] ‘…with what derisive gesture Tullia sniffs the air, what Maura, fellow nursling of the well-known Maura, says when she passes the ancient altar of Pudicitia’; (2) [with the comma after Maurae] ‘…with what derisive gesture Tullia sniffs the air, what the fellow nursling of the well-known Maura says when Maura passes the ancient altar of Pudicitia’. The difficulty with (1) is how to explain the phrase notae collactea Maurae. The second reading is more problematical. Does collactea Maurae refer to Tullia, or to a third person? More importantly, given that Tullia's contemptuous sniff must be directed towards the goddess Pudicitia, it makes best sense if dicat is also a mark of derision, in which case it should be spoken by the person who is passing the altar (i.e. Maura), not another party.

In some MSS the order of 307 and 308 is reversed (‘…with what derisive gesture Maura sniffs the air when she passes the ancient altar of Pudicitia, what Tullia, the fellow nursling of the well-known Maura, says’). But the verb dicat is now left hanging in the air and it is odd that Maura is not given her epithet nota till her second mention (Courtney). It is possible that Maura in the first line alludes to Tullia's companion, in the second, to her notorious namesake, nota being added to distinguish the two. This, however, invites the question: what is the point of giving Tullia's friend the same name as Tullia's collactea, thus necessitating the rather clumsy explanatory nota and the repetition of the word Maura?

The present work has been ten years in the making (we do not belong to the ranks of ‘more expeditious colleagues’ lauded by a previous contributor to the series). The reasons are many, but one will be wearisomely familiar (in a commentary on Juvenal some libertas dicendi is permissible): the endless proliferation of administrative tasks which make a mockery of the principle that 20 per cent of one's working hours should be expended on this; in addition, an intellectual environment hostile to commentaries as methodologically antiquated, with consequent diversions into extremely time-consuming and unproductive byways. Gratitude is accordingly due to Sydney University for grants of study leave which permitted temporary alleviation of these and other burdens.

Different sections of the work were drafted by LW and PW, but the work of one was subjected to rigorous scrutiny by the other, with occasional bruising of feelings, but no serious domestic disputes (nothing at least approaching the matrimonial battlefield depicted in Satire 6). The volume was researched mainly in Oxford's Sackler Library, an ideal venue for those whose interests straddle classical literature and social history.

Heartfelt thanks are due to those who have commented on part or the whole of previous drafts: Anne Rogerson, for constructive criticism of an early account of the Oxford Fragment, Peta Fowler, for suggestions which were fed into several of the notes, and Maxine Lewis, who used a partial draft of the commentary in her undergraduate teaching and on that basis indicated what might profitably be added. An especial debt is owed to two scholars: Kathleen Coleman, who, with her incomparable knowledge of ancient gladiators, made various suggestions which improved our commentary on the two substantial passages of Satire 6 which deal with the arena, and James Uden, who read the whole of the penultimate draft and produced with astonishing quickness a host of perspicacious criticisms and suggestions, on virtually all of which we have acted with gratitude.

Over the years, the sixth Satire has produced a wide diversity of readings. But almost every interpretation is tied to a central issue: how seriously is J.'s poem to be taken?

It is now half a century since Mason proclaimed J. a classic of wit, rather than satire. There have, however, been many before and since who have viewed Satire 6 as written with serious intent. Highet, one of the last to embrace the now outmoded view of J. as a moralist, held that he was writing out of a deeply cherished sense of affront at the corruption of Roman society as manifested in its upper-class women, and even postulated that his hostility to these stemmed from a failed marriage to one such. Along the same lines, Bond saw J. as protesting vainly against what was already a fait accompli, the abandonment of traditional wifely rôles by contemporary matronae, the prime agents, in J.'s opinion, of Rome's moral decline. According to Courtney, ‘J. is spurred by genuine personal misogyny’; for Johnson, the poem is about a crisis of male identity and sexual angst in the face of female self-assertion and overturning of the old certainties in the performance of gender rôles. And although adopting a more nuanced, psychoanalytical perspective, Richlin likewise regards Satire 6 as driven by personal conviction when she contends that it represents the sum of a patriarchally minded male's fears about inadequacy and a terror of gynaecocracy in the shape of dominating females. So too Gold, who, albeit doing justice to the various elements of humour in the poem, concludes that Satire 6 is a mouthpiece for unremittingly misogynistic attitudes in which the implied reader is expected to collude.