Such a long and complex poem was subject to many influences both major and minor. Some of these are now lost to us, while others are hard to determine exactly. This chapter will handle the major sources that can be discerned (minor ones will be covered in subsequent chapters, as allusion to other authors occurs in the text).

It seems reasonable to assume that Juvenal's own experiences shaped his writing, although we cannot know the extent to which that happened. It also seems feasible that he drew largely on historical narratives which we no longer have (for example, Tacitus's account of the fall of Sejanus). Slightly less nebulous is his very probable debt to rhetoric for various tools in the presentation of his case. He follows the common rhetorical practice of proving a point by means of exempla (historical and mythological examples), and all of the historical exempla in 10 – except for Silius – are found in the declamations, although specific reminiscences have not been established. It is also possible that Satire 10 was structured along the lines of a speech in the genus deliberativum (deliberative oratory), with exordium, narratio, peroratio (introduction, narration of the case, peroration) and so on, as has been claimed. Scholars have suggested that at 56ff. Juvenal may be looking to the locus de fortuna (the topos of the precarious nature of human existence due to fortune). It has also been pointed out that here he employs the rhetorical techniques of praeteritio (drawing attention to something by pretending to pass it by), gradation, antithesis and dilemma; one could add to these the presence in X of rhetorical questions, exclamations, hyperbole, anaphora, epigrammatic sententiae and apostrophe, which were also common in declamation. However, all of those techniques were frequent in poetry as well (as was the use of exempla).

We are on somewhat firmer ground with philosophy. Certainly Juvenal was no philosopher himself and this piece is not a consistent philosophical meditation, but it is clear that philosophy had some influence on the satirist's overall attitude (which is calmer than before, and mocking) and on his analysis of prayer, criticism and recommendations at the end.