This is his first punishment, that by the verdict of his own heart no guilty man is acquitted.

The details of the author's life are unclear although.

While the Satires are a vital source for the study of ancient Rome from a vast number of perspectives their hyperbolic comedic mode of expression makes the use of statements found within them as simple fact problematic. In accord with the manner of Lucilius—the originator of the genre of Roman satire—and within a poetic tradition that also included Horace and Persius Juvenal wrote at least 16 poems in dactylic hexameter covering an encyclopedic range of topics across the Roman world.