7.2.1 Satire 10

Description

This text was written by Juvenal, a Roman poet who lived from about 55 to 138 CE. His poems were satires that made fun of Roman society. There is only one piece of evidence to answer the investigative question in this text source. In the first line, Juvenal used the expression “from Gades [in the west] to the Ganges [in the east],” which tells us what the limits of the world known were to the Romans. The second line means that the common people of Rome didn’t care what the government did as long as the emperors gave them cheap food (“bread”) and games and public entertainment (“circuses”).