"Some of my best friends⋯:" Reading prejudice in Juvenal's third satire

Long regarded as the locus classicus for Roman antipathy toward contemporary Greeks, Juvenal's third Satire articulates the views of the narrator's "friend" Umbricius, who wishes to escape the flood of immigrants he sees as transforming Rome into a "Greek city." This article attempts to unpack the relationship between the graccophobia ascribed to Umbricius persona and the realities of ethnic prejudice in imperial Rome. The inconsistency of his argument is approached from various angles, highlighting the difficulty of situating this elusive and intractable text within the social realities that existed beyond its margins.