in which the defeat of M. Popillius Laenas, in 138, is contrasted with
the subsequent success of Scipio, bears the stamp of having been written
while the news of the capture of Numantia was still fresh. It is in the
highest degree improbable that Lucilius served in the army at the age of
fourteen; it is still more unlikely that he could have been admitted
into the familiar intimacy of Scipio and Laelius at that age. It seems a
moral impossibility that between the age of fifteen and nineteen--i.e.
between 133 and 129, the year of Scipio's death--he could have come
before the world as the author of an entirely new kind of composition,
and one which, to be at all successful, demands especially maturity of
judgment and experience. It may further be said that the well-known
words of Horace (_Satires_, ii. 1, 33), in which he characterizes the
vivid portraiture of his life, character and thoughts, which Lucilius
bequeathed to the world,
quo fit ut omnis
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
Vita senis,[1]
lose much of their force unless _senis_ is to be taken in its ordinary
sense--which it cannot be if Lucilius died at the age of forty-six. He
spent the greater part of his life at Rome, and died, according to
Jerome, at Naples. Lucilius belonged to the equestrian order, a fact
indicated by Horace's notice of himself as "infra Lucili censum." Though
not himself belonging to any of the great senatorial families, he was in
a position to associate with them on equal terms. This circumstance
contributed to the boldness, originality and thoroughly national
character of his literary work. Had he been a "semi-Graecus," like
Ennius and Pacuvius, or of humble origin, like Plautus, Terence or
Accius, he would scarcely have ventured, at a time when the senatorial
power was strongly in the ascendant, to revive the rôle which had proved
disastrous to Naevius; nor would he have had the intimate knowledge of
the political and social life of his day which fitted him to be its
painter. Another circumstance determining the bent of his mind was the
character of the time. The origin of Roman political and social satire
is to be traced to the same disturbing and disorganizing forces which
led to the revolutionary projects and legislation of the Gracchi.
The reputation which Lucilius enjoyed in the best ages of Roman
literature is proved by the terms in which Cicero and Horace speak of
him. Persius, Juvenal and Quintilian vouch for the admiration with which
he was regarded in the first century of the empire. The popularity which
he enjoyed in his own time is attested by the fact that at his death,
although he had filled none of the offices of state, he received the
honour of a public funeral. His chief claim to distinction is his
literary originality. He may be called the inventor of poetical satire,
as he was the first to impress upon the rude inartistic medley, known to
the Romans by the name of _satura_, that character of aggressive and
censorious criticism of persons, morals, manners, politics, literature,
&c. which the word satire has ever since denoted. In point of form the
satire of Lucilius owed nothing to the Greeks. It was a legitimate
development of an indigenous dramatic entertainment, popular among the
Romans before the first introduction of the forms of Greek art among
them; and it seems largely also to have employed the form of the
familiar epistle. But the style, substance and spirit of his writings
were apparently as original as the form. He seems to have commenced his
poetical career by ridiculing and parodying the conventional language of
epic and tragic poetry, and to have used the language commonly employed
in the social intercourse of educated men. Even his frequent use of
Greek words, phrases and quotations, reprehended by Horace, was probably
taken from the actual practice of men, who found their own speech as yet
inadequate to give free expression to the new ideas and impressions
which they derived from their first contact with Greek philosophy,
rhetoric and poetry. Further, he not only created a style of his own,
but, instead of taking the substance of his writings from Greek poetry,
or from a remote past, he treated of the familiar matters of daily life,
of the politics, the wars, the administration of justice, the eating and
drinking, the money-making and money-spending, the scandals and vices,
which made up the public and private life of Rome in the last quarter of
the 2nd century B.C. This he did in a singularly frank, independent and
courageous spirit, with no private ambition to serve, or party cause to
advance, but with an honest desire to expose the iniquity or
incompetence of the governing body, the sordid aims of the middle class,
and the corruption and venality of the city mob. There was nothing of
stoical austerity or of rhetorical indignation in the tone in which he
treated the vices and follies of his time. His character and tastes were
much more akin to those of Horace than of either Persius or Juvenal. But
he was what Horace was not, a thoroughly good hater; and he lived at a
time when the utmost freedom of speech and the most unrestrained
indulgence of public and private animosity were the characteristics of
men who took a prominent part in affairs. Although Lucilius took no
active part in the public life of his time, he regarded it in the spirit
of a man of the world and of society, as well as a man of letters. His
ideal of public virtue and private worth had been formed by intimate
association with the greatest and best of the soldiers and statesmen of
an older generation.
The remains of Lucilius extend to about eleven hundred, mostly
unconnected lines, most of them preserved by late grammarians, as
illustrative of peculiar verbal usages. He was, for his time, a
voluminous as well as a very discursive writer. He left behind him
thirty books of satires, and there is reason to believe that each
book, like the books of Horace and Juvenal, was composed of different
pieces. The order in which they were known to the grammarians was not
that in which they were written. The earliest in order of composition
were probably those numbered from xxvi. to xxix., which were written
in the trochaic and iambic metres that had been employed by Ennius and
Pacuvius in their _Saturae_. In these he made those criticisms on the
older tragic and epic poets of which Horace and other ancient writers
speak. In them too he speaks of the Numantine War as recently
finished, and of Scipio as still living. Book i., on the other hand,
in which the philosopher Carneades, who died in 128, is spoken of as
dead, must have been written after the death of Scipio. Most of the
satires of Lucilius were written in hexameters, but, so far as an
opinion can be formed from a number of unconnected fragments, he seems
to have written the trochaic tetrameter with a smoothness, clearness
and simplicity which he never attained in handling the hexameter. The
longer fragments produce the impression of great discursiveness and
carelessness, but at the same time of considerable force. He appears,
in the composition of his various pieces, to have treated everything
that occurred to him in the most desultory fashion, sometimes adopting
the form of dialogue, sometimes that of an epistle or an imaginary
discourse, and often to have spoken in his own name, giving an account
of his travels and adventures, or of amusing scenes that he had
witnessed, or expressing the results of his private meditations and
experiences. Like Horace he largely illustrated his own observations
by personal anecdotes and fables. The fragments clearly show how often
Horace has imitated him, not only in expression, but in the form of
his satires (see for instance i. 5 and ii. 2), in the topics which he
treats of, and the class of social vices and the types of character
which he satirizes. For students of Latin literature, the chief
interest of studying the fragments of Lucilius consists in the light
which they throw on the aims and methods of Horace in the composition
of his satires, and, though not to the same extent, of his epistles.
They are important also as materials for linguistic study; and they
have considerable historical value.
Editions by F. D. Gerlach (1846), L. Müller (1872), C. Lachmann (1876,
posthumous), F. Marx (1905); see also L. Müller, _Leben und Werke des
Lucilius_ (1876); "Luciliana," by H. A. J. Munro, in the _Journal of
Philology_, vii. (1877); Mommsen, _Hist. of Rome_, bk. iv. ch. 13;
"Luciliana," by A. E. Housman, in _Classical Quarterly_ (April, 1907);
C. Cichorius, _Untersuchungen zu Lucilius_ (Berlin, 1908).
(W. Y. S.; X.)