classes of Rome and Italy. It is the aspirations and discontents of these classes that Lucilius feels and expresses. He does not write up to the taste of the select few1, or down to that of the rabble, but aims at hitting the mean of cultivated good sense. If in the hands of Ennius the satura had worn the first stiffness of the artificial drama, here at length was a poet who could clothe the dry bones with life, and make the national literature speak with a new voice. Lucilius is the child of his time, who yet calls on his countrymen to return to the traditions of a better age; in this sense as well as in his freedom of speech a sort of parallel to Aristophanes. There is something in his remains, despite their crudity and want of form, of the ring of Gaius Gracchus. Thus it happened that in his lifetime he outstripped his predecessors in popularity 3, and remained for long after the favourite of readers who preferred free utterance and genuine republican feeling to ideality and classical form. Those who preferred Lucilius to Horace are mentioned by Tacitus in the same breath with those who preferred Lucretius to Vergil.

The great reputation of Lucilius has made it necessary to examine his claims to it at greater length than the limits of the subject would strictly justify. Fortune has probably been unjust to him, nor is it easy to find in his fragments that refinement of form (if this be the meaning of gracilitas, Gellius

1

1 26. 1: Persium non curo legere, Iulium Congum volo. See Cic. Fin. 1, §7: Nec vero, ut noster Lucilius, recusabo quominus omnes mea legant. Utinam esset ille Persius! Scipio vero et Rutilius multo etiam magis; quorum ille iudicium reformidans, Tarentinis ait se et Consentinis et Siculis scribere. Facete is quidem, sicut alias; sed neque tam docti tunc erant, ad quorum iudicium elaboraret, et sunt illius scripta leviora, ut urbanitas summa appareat, doctrina mediocris.

2 [In the Dictionary of Antiquities Mr. Nettleship writes: The remains of Lucilius' saturae attest beyond doubt an extraordinary vigour which breathes in almost every surviving line.]

3

30. 3, 4: Et sua perciperet retro rellicta iacere

Et sola in multis nunc nostra poemata ferri.

* Dialogus 23: Versantur ante oculos isti qui Lucilium pro Horatio et Lucretium pro Vergilio legunt.

1

did much to make If we read between

7. 14) which the ancients praised. But whatever may have been his real excellencies, it is clear that in altering the character and compass of the satura he also narrowed it. Not only did he confine his metre for the most part to the hexameter, thereby limiting the freedom of form which was a main. characteristic of the old satura, but he invective an integral part of its contents. the lines of Horace's criticism of Lucilius2 we shall see, I think, that Horace takes exception quite as strongly to his limitation of the field of the satura as to the slovenly character of his versification. Taking very much the tone of Aristotle, when, in his remarks on the origin of comedy, he says that in the Margites Homer indicated the lines on which comedy should be composed, οὐ ψόγον, ἀλλὰ τὸ γελοῖον δραματοποιήσεις, Horace complains that Lucilius is entirely the child of the old comedy; hinc omnis pendet: his inspiration is drawn from that of Eupolis and Cratinus and Aristophanes, the metre alone is changed. But if Hermogenes and the singers of Catullus had read these comedians, they would have seen that the strength of the old comedy lay in its mastery of wit and ridicule, not in vehemence, still less in slovenliness and uniformity. The satirist's true virtue is not to be monotonous or cumbrous, but versatile, now grave, now gay, now appearing as the orator or the poet, now as the man of the world, with all his strength in reserve. A true picture of the satura as it should have been; for Horace was too fastidious to think that any one (certainly not Lucilius) had attained to this ideal. It is as if Horace had said 'Lucilius depends entirely on the old comedy, and yet all of it that he has really seized is the force of its invective. has not caught the ring of its laughter, its wit, its play of feature and emotion: only if the Roman satura can do this will it be worthy of being named by the side of its model.'

1 [Compare Fronto quoted on p. 91.]

He

2 S. I. 4, I. IO. [This point is omitted in the article contributed to the Dictionary of Antiquities.]

3 Poet. 4.9.

In what sense the attempts of Varro of Atax1, and the other writers whom Horace leaves unnamed, served to form a transition from Lucilius to Horace we cannot say. It is somewhat strange that, deeply as Horace evidently felt the shortcomings of Lucilius, he never disputes with him on the subject of metre, but apparently accepts the hexameter as the normal measure of the satura. Perhaps from this prejudice, perhaps from the absence in it of all pretensions to poetry, he never mentions the Menippean satires of Terentius Varro ; which, had they survived, would probably (to judge by the remaining fragments) have been a more precious relic than the long invectives of Lucilius. It is unnecessary to enter here into the details of Varro's charming pictures of contemporary life in Rome, or of the various points of social, moral, religious, philosophical, or literary interest 2 on which they touched; all that need here be pointed out is the satura of Varro was, as Quintilian remarks, the old and genuine satura. It was a medley, not of different metres only, but of prose and verse. Its spirit is also that of the true satura. The speaker does not preach at or abuse, but describes and reflects upon, the life of his contemporaries, and that with a mellow and genial wisdom. Like the fool in the tragedy, he stands at the centre of things, professing to see through imposture, to read things as they are,

1 Hor. S. 1. 10. 46 foll.:

Hoc erat, experto frustra Varrone Atacino

Atque quibusdam aliis melius quod scribere possem,
Inventore minor.

3 Aborigines (περὶ ἀνθρώπων φύσεως), ̓́Αμμον μετρεῖς περὶ φιλαργυρίας), ̓Ανθρωπόπολις (περὶ γενεθλιακῆς), Bimarcus (a dialogue between Varro, his second self, and Manius), Caprinum Proelium (ñepì †dovîs), Cycnus (ñepì ταφῆς), Devicti (περὶ φιλονεικίας), Εκατόμβη (περὶ θυσιῶν), Endymiones (on dreaming), Eumenides (a philosophical dinner), "Exw σe (ñeρì τúxns), Gloria (περὶ φθύνου), &c.

3 10. I. 95: Alterum illud etiam prius saturae genus, sed non sola carminum varietate mixtum condidit Terentius Varro.... Plurimos hic libros et doctissimos composuit. The text of this passage has been much discussed, but the general sense is pretty plain. It seems possible that prius may be a mere gloss explaining illud.

to expose the vanity of human wishes and the weakness or hypocrisy of human pretensions: above all things he is a plain speaker who will tell the world the truth to its face. In this spirit the Roman satirist and the Cynic philosopher are very much at one. Varro is made by Cicero to say that he did not translate but imitated Menippus; which probably means that he adopted the form of the satura as the best embodiment of the ideas of Menippus1.

Varro's was essentially a quiet genius, and it is partly, perhaps, due to this fact that in spite of the genuinely Roman flavour which they shared with all that he wrote, the Menippean satires never won their way into general popularity, or enabled the old-fashioned medley of metres, or of prose and verse, to reassert itself as the recognised form of the satura. Again, if we may trust Cicero' and the fragments of the Menippean satires themselves, it is evident that Varro adopted a graver, more cultured, more philosophical, and less personal tone than Lucilius. He cares more for the sketch than for his own signature at the foot of it, and appeals to a public that can read between the lines. Possibly also the cumbrousness which is never absent from the graver works of Varro may have haunted him here also, and prevented his satires from being read outside of a small circle of students.

The satire of Horace was evidently, both in matter and in form, intended as a protest against that of Lucilius. Horace indeed retains the hexameter; but in spite of its apparent freedom, his versification is always, within the limits which he has laid down for himself, finished and perfect; it is not the writing of a man who dashes off his two hundred verses in the hour. It is more important to observe that the satire of Horace lacks, to a great extent, the element of invective. It is true that there is much talk about himself and his detractors, but

1 Cic. Acad. Post. 1, § 8: Menippum imitati, non interpretati. It is interesting to compare the tone of the Roman satura with that of the echoes of Menippus preserved by Lucian.

2 Cic. 1. c. Multa admixta ex intima philosophia, multa dicta dialectice.

this is always, professedly at least, in self-defence: hic stilus haud petet ultro Quemquam animantem1. He follows Lucilius, he says, but with this exception. And it appears on examination that, putting aside the uniformity of its metre, the satura or sermo of Horace is very much the old-fashioned medley. He addresses the public on its own life, sometimes directly, sometimes in the form of a scene or a dialogue. It may be observed that the form of dialogue is preserved chiefly in his second book, where we find it in the second, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh satires. In the first book the fifth, seventh, eighth, and ninth are true saturae; the first, second, and third are ethical discourses; the fourth, sixth, and tenth pieces of selfjustification, personal or literary. In the second book Horace appears to have worked himself more thoroughly than in the first into the form and manner of the satura; there is nothing there which is not either a scene or a conversation; there is no mere direct moral address to the people, but each piece, like a philosophical dialogue, has a setting of its own.

It seems at first sight strange that Horace, whose genius was so admirably adapted for the kind of writing which the satura best represented, should so soon have given up the form of the satura for that of the epistle. I would suggest, that having deliberately abandoned the old-fashioned medley of prose and verse as an anachronism, and having elected to follow Lucilius in uniformity of metre and in the choice of the hexameter, he found that the dialogue, an essential element in the true satura, could not be carried on with success in this measure. The form of the epistle, supposed to be addressed to one person, and not necessarily involving dialogue or dramatization, was better fitted for the kind of discourse which Horace loves to pour out than that of the satura, which was supposed to be addressed to the general public and involved more or less of dramatic form. That Horace was a true prophet is clearly shown by the failure of Persius, who in his devotion to Horace has chosen to imitate the dialogue of the second book of the

1 S. 2. I. 39.