About the end of the year 39 B. C. Maecenas, having heard from Virgil and Varius that there was a young clerk in a government office at Rome, who, though the son of a freedman, had a turn for poetry, combined with education and breeding above his station, called him to his presence, and encouraged him to persevere in the line he had chosen.

That line was satire: the castigation in verse of the vices and follies of men. No other field of poetry, he says, seemed open to him. Epic poetry was occupied by Varius and Valgius: bucolic poetry by Virgil: Asinius Pollio was trying to revive tragedy: Fundanius was imitating the comedies of Terence; but satire no one attempted, or at least no one succeeded in; for Varro Atacinus, and a few others who had essayed it, had been complete failures. The real reason, however, for his selection of satire was, that it suited his poetical genius and mental disposition. At the time of his introduction to Maecenas, Horace had already written the seventh satire, a slight anecdote in verse; the second, which is the most serious attempt to follow in the footsteps of Lucilius: perhaps the fourth also, but not more.

The origin of the word satire is not cer

tainly determinable. Of the derivations proposed for it by the grammarian Diomedes,* the most probable is that which connects its name with the lanx satura, the plate full of the various first fruits of the earth that was offered to the gods, or with satura, a kind of potted meat or sausage. From this mixture came the meaning of medley or miscellany, a meaning which seems never to have been wholly lost in satura or satira. Before the time of Lucilius satura seems to have had two distinct applications: it denoted a rude sort of

* Diomedes, p. 485, Keil: Satira dicitur carmen apud Romanos nunc quidem maledicum et ad carpenda hominum vitia archaeae comoediae charactere compositum, quale scripserunt Lucilius et Horatius et Persius. Et olim carmen quod ex variis poematibus constabat satira vocabatur, quale scripserunt Pacuvius et Ennius. Satira autem dicta sive a Satyris, quod similiter in hoc carmine ridiculae res pudendaeque dicuntur, quae velut a Satyris proferuntur et fiunt: sive satura a lance quae referta variis multisque primitiis in sacro apud priscos dis inferebatur . . . . sive a quodam genere farciminis, quod multis rebus refertum saturam dicit Varro vocitatum . . . . Alii autem dictam putant a lege satura, quae uno rogatu multa simul comprehendat, quod scilicet et satura carmine multa simul poemata conprehenduntur.' In three of these four derivations Diomedes is seeking a foundation for the meaning of medley, which he seems to have considered of the essence of satire. The derivation assigned by Mommsen, the masque of the full men' (saturi), seems to me grotesque and improbable.

rustic dramatic medley,* and, in a literary sense, it was adopted by Ennius and Pacuvius as a suitable name for their miscellanies. These miscellanies, however, had nothing satirical about them.† Lucilius was the inventor of satire in the sense that he first, while keeping the name saturae, gave to them their direction of censorious criticism. But that Lucilius still recognized the sense of medley in the word satire is clear from the miscellaneous nature of his subjects, as well as from the variety of his metres, which Diomedes informs us was a distinguishing feature of the ancient saturae. Varro's Menippean satires are a medley both in subject and in form, written as they are in both prose and verse. In Horace also, as has been noticed, the fifth Satire of the first Book‡ and the sixth of the second, retain traces of the miscellaneous character of early satire. Even Juvenal, in talking of the hotchpotch § which he is about to serve up to his readers, may have had the

* Livy, 7. 2: impletas modis saturas descripto jam ad tibicinem cantu motuque congruenti peragebant.

+ Sellar's Roman Poets of the Republic, Ed. 2, p. 81. Sellar, p. 222.

§ Juv. 1. 86: nostri farrago libelli': farrago means properly a mixed fodder for cattle.

sense of medley, as belonging to the word satire, in his mind.

From the fact that Quintilian proudly says,* 'Satire is all our own,' it is generally inferred that when Horace says that Lucilius followed the poets of the Old Greek Comedy, he only means that the Old Comedy supplies the nearest parallel to Roman satire. This view is taken by Prof. Sellar,† and I have adopted it in my note on 1. 4. 6. But it is more probable that Lucilius deliberately imitated Aristophanes, Eupolis, and Cratinus. Horace used the same strong words in stating his own obligations to Lucilius, which were certainly those of a close imitator, as he does when stating the obligations of Lucilius to the poets of the Old Comedy.‡ Three times§ he markedly refers to the poets of the Old Comedy. And Diomedes states in so many words that satire was composed in the style of the Old Comedy.' All these testimonies make it very probable that if we

* Quint. x. I. 93: 'satira quidem tota nostra est.'

+ Sellar, p. 219.

1. 4. 6: hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus': cf.

possessed the satires of Lucilius entire, we should there find full and formal statement of his plan of transferring to the vehicle of the Roman satire the spirit which animated Eupolis and Aristophanes in their assaults on Pericles and on Cleon and Quintilian's remark must be understood to refer to the outward form rather than to the inward spirit of Roman satire.

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Another argument to the same purpose is supplied by the Epodes, the composition of which was carried on by Horace concurrently with that of the Satires. Horace took as his chief model for the Epodes the Greek Iambic poet Archilochus. When he says he is taking Archilochus to the country with him, along with the poets of the Old Comedy, he means that the Epodes, as well as the Satires, are to occupy him there. Now, though there is no mention in the fragments of Lucilius of any of the poets of the Old Comedy, there has come down to us one remarkable mention of Archilochus.† It is probable that in some of

* ii. 3. II.

Lucil. frag. 655, Lach.: metuo ut fieri possit ego quo ab Archilocho excido, perhaps referring to Archilochus' xpnμáτwv ἄελπτον οὐδέν ἐστιν οὐδ ̓ ἀπώματον.