Umbricius Leaves Rome, and Juvenal's Satire Lets Him Have It Both Ways
In Juvenal's third satire, Juvenal's friend Umbricius plans to leave Rome, where he has lived for many years, for the relatively deserted area of Cumae in South Italy.
Juvenal stays behind, but the poem makes clear that the two are of one mind about the intolerable nature of city life.
The satire's trick is that Umbricius accepts both of its traditional ruses: that the satirist is a serious moralist aiming to persuade, and that he is scurrilous and disingenuous, aiming only to shock and entertain.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
That double role is why I resist treating Umbricius as a straight-talking urban critic: the poem hands him a moralist's microphone and a trickster's wink.
Edward Courtney took the harsher view, arguing that neither Juvenal nor Umbricius was up to making an intelligent criticism of urban life.