In some ways, it can be seen as less satire and a more general lament on the state of Rome. Whilst it was pretty much recognised that the old constitutional form of the Republic would never be returned to by Juvenal's day (which was the turn of the 1st-2nd century), emperors still had to sort of pretend to act as an addition to the Republican framework, with the Senate still very much in operation (leading to tensions with Claudius' use of freedmen as administrators), for example. Domitian in particular, whose Rome was the subject of Juvenal's Satires, had a flair for 'updating' the old Republican models, such as reducing the length of chariot races to fit more into a day and adding extra teams. However, the Roman plebs lost much of its formal political power, the Plebeian Council being effectively dismantled as a meaningful body by the permanent tribune status granted to the Emperors (thereby providing them with unilateral veto power). The lamentation over panem et circenses actually comes in a far broader context:

iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli

uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim

imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se

continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat,

panem et circenses.

.

"Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,

the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once

handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything

now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:

bread and circuses."