which they called “silli,” which were more of kin to the Roman satire.
Those “silli” were indeed invective poems, but of a different species
from the Roman poems of Ennius, Pacuvius, Lucilius, Horace, and the rest
of their successors. “They were so called,” says Casaubon in one place,
“from Silenus, the foster-father of Bacchus;” but in another place,
bethinking himself better, he derives their name ὰπὸ τοῦ σιλλαίνειν, from
their scoffing and petulancy. From some fragments of the “silli” written
by Timon we may find that they were satiric poems, full of parodies; that
is, of verses patched up from great poets, and turned into another sense
than their author intended them. Such amongst the Romans is the famous
Cento of Ausonius, where the words are Virgil’s, but by applying them to
another sense they are made a relation of a wedding-night, and the act of
consummation fulsomely described in the very words of the most modest
amongst all poets. Of the same manner are our songs which are turned
into burlesque, and the serious words of the author perverted into a
ridiculous meaning. Thus in Timon’s “silli” the words are generally
those of Homer and the tragic poets, but he applies them satirically to
some customs and kinds of philosophy which he arraigns. But the Romans
not using any of these parodies in their satires—sometimes indeed
repeating verses of other men, as Persius cites some of Nero’s, but not
turning them into another meaning—the “silli” cannot be supposed to be
the original of Roman satire. To these “silli,” consisting of parodies,
we may properly add the satires which were written against particular
persons, such as were the iambics of Archilochus against Lycambes, which
Horace undoubtedly imitated in some of his odes and epodes, whose titles
bear sufficient witness of it: I might also name the invective of Ovid
against Ibis, and many others. But these are the underwood of satire
rather than the timber-trees; they are not of general extension, as
reaching only to some individual person. And Horace seems to have purged
himself from those splenetic reflections in those odes and epodes before
he undertook the noble work of satires, which were properly so called.
Thus, my lord, I have at length disengaged myself from those antiquities
of Greece, and have proved, I hope, from the best critics, that the Roman
satire was not borrowed from thence, but of their own manufacture. I am
now almost gotten into my depth; at least, by the help of Dacier, I am
swimming towards it. Not that I will promise always to follow him, any
more than he follows Casaubon; but to keep him in my eye as my best and
truest guide; and where I think he may possibly mislead me, there to have
recourse to my own lights, as I expect that others should do by me.
Quintilian says in plain words, _Satira quidem tota nostra est_; and
Horace had said the same thing before him, speaking of his predecessor in
that sort of poetry, _et Græcis intacti carminis auctor_. Nothing can be
clearer than the opinion of the poet and the orator (both the best
critics of the two best ages of the Roman empire), that satire was wholly
of Latin growth, and not transplanted to Rome from Athens. Yet, as I
have said, Scaliger the father, according to his custom (that is,
insolently enough), contradicts them both, and gives no better reason
than the derivation of _satyrus_ from σάθυ, _salacitas_; and so, from the
lechery of those fauns, thinks he has sufficiently proved that satire is
derived from them: as if wantonness and lubricity were essential to that
sort of poem, which ought to be avoided in it. His other allegation,
which I have already mentioned, is as pitiful—that the Satyrs carried
platters and canisters full of fruit in their hands. If they had entered
empty-handed, had they been ever the less Satyrs? Or were the fruits and
flowers which they offered anything of kin to satire? or any argument
that this poem was originally Grecian? Casaubon judged better, and his
opinion is grounded on sure authority: that satire was derived from
_satura_, a Roman word which signifies full and abundant, and full also
of variety, in which nothing is wanting to its due perfection. It is
thus, says Denier, that we say a full colour, when the wool has taken the
whole tincture and drunk in as much of the dye as it can receive.
According to this derivation, from _setur_ comes _satura_ or _satira_,
according to the new spelling, as _optumus_ and _maxumus_ are now spelled
_optimus_ and _maximus_. _Satura_, as I have formerly noted, is an
adjective, and relates to the word _lanx_, which is understood; and this
_lanx_ (in English a “charger” or “large platter”) was yearly filled with
all sorts of fruits, which were offered to the gods at their festivals as
the _premices_ or first gatherings. These offerings of several sorts
thus mingled, it is true, were not unknown to the Grecians, who called
them πανκαρπιὸν θυσίαν, a sacrifice of all sorts of fruits; and
πανπερμίαν, when they offered all kinds of grain. Virgil has mentioned
these sacrifices in his “Georgics”:—
“_Lancibus et pandis fumantia reddimus exta_;”
and in another place, _lancesque et liba feremus_—that is, “We offer the
smoking entrails in great platters; and we will offer the chargers and
the cakes.”
This word _satura_ has been afterward applied to many other sorts of
mixtures; as Festus calls it, a kind of _olla_ or hotch-potch made of
several sorts of meats. Laws were also called _leges saturæ_ when they
were of several heads and titles, like our tacked Bills of Parliament;
and _per saturam legem ferre_ in the Roman senate was to carry a law
without telling the senators, or counting voices, when they were in
haste. Sallust uses the word, _per saturam sententias exquirere_, when
the majority was visibly on one side. From hence it might probably be
conjectured that the Discourses or Satires of Ennius, Lucilius, and
Horace, as we now call them, took their name, because they are full of
various matters, and are also written on various subjects—as Porphyrius
says. But Dacier affirms that it is not immediately from thence that
these satires are so called, for that name had been used formerly for
other things which bore a nearer resemblance to those discourses of
Horace; in explaining of which, continues Dacier, a method is to be
pursued of which Casaubon himself has never thought, and which will put
all things into so clear a light that no further room will be left for
the least dispute.
During the space of almost four hundred years since the building of their
city the Romans had never known any entertainments of the stage. Chance
and jollity first found out those verses which they called Saturnian and
Fescennine; or rather human nature, which is inclined to poetry, first
produced them rude and barbarous and unpolished, as all other operations
of the soul are in their beginnings before they are cultivated with art
and study. However, in occasions of merriment, they were first
practised; and this rough-cast, unhewn poetry was instead of stage-plays
for the space of a hundred and twenty years together. They were made
_extempore_, and were, as the French call them, _impromptus_; for which
the Tarsians of old were much renowned, and we see the daily examples of
them in the Italian farces of Harlequin and Scaramucha. Such was the
poetry of that savage people before it was tuned into numbers and the
harmony of verse. Little of the Saturnian verses is now remaining; we
only know from authors that they were nearer prose than poetry, without
feet or measure. They were ἔυρυθμοι, but not ἔμμετροι. Perhaps they
might be used in the solemn part of their ceremonies; and the Fescennine,
which were invented after them, in their afternoons’ debauchery, because
they were scoffing and obscene.
The Fescennine and Saturnian were the same; for as they were called
Saturnian from their ancientness, when Saturn reigned in Italy, they were
also called Fescennine, from Fescennia, a town in the same country where
they were first practised. The actors, with a gross and rustic kind of
raillery, reproached each other with their failings, and at the same time
were nothing sparing of it to their audience. Somewhat of this custom
was afterwards retained in their Saturnalia, or Feasts of Saturn,
celebrated in December; at least, all kind of freedom in speech was then
allowed to slaves, even against their masters; and we are not without
some imitation of it in our Christmas gambols. Soldiers also used those
Fescennine verses, after measure and numbers had been added to them, at
the triumph of their generals; of which we have an example in the triumph
of Julius Cæsar over Gaul in these expressions: _Cæsar Gallias subegit_,
_Nicomedes Cæsarem_. _Ecce Cæsar nunc triumphat_, _qui subegit Gallias_;
_Nicomedes non triumphat_, _qui subegit Cæsarem_. The vapours of wine
made those first satirical poets amongst the Romans, which, says Dacier,
we cannot better represent than by imagining a company of clowns on a
holiday dancing lubberly and upbraiding one another in _extempore_
doggerel with their defects and vices, and the stories that were told of
them in bake-houses and barbers’ shops.
When they began to be somewhat better bred, and were entering, as I may
say, into the first rudiments of civil conversation, they left these
hedge-notes for another sort of poem, somewhat polished, which was also
full of pleasant raillery, but without any mixture of obscenity. This
sort of poetry appeared under the name of “satire” because of its
variety; and this satire was adorned with compositions of music, and with
dances; but lascivious postures were banished from it. In the Tuscan
language, says Livy, the word _hister_ signifies a player; and therefore
those actors which were first brought from Etruria to Rome on occasion of
a pestilence, when the Romans were admonished to avert the anger of the
gods by plays (in the year _ab urbe conditâ_ CCCXC.)—those actors, I say,
were therefore called _histriones_: and that name has since remained, not
only to actors Roman born, but to all others of every nation. They
played, not the former _extempore_ stuff of Fescennine verses or clownish
jests, but what they acted was a kind of civil cleanly farce, with music
and dances, and motions that were proper to the subject.
In this condition Livius Andronicus found the stage when he attempted
first, instead of farces, to supply it with a nobler entertainment of
tragedies and comedies. This man was a Grecian born, and being made a
slave by Livius Salinator, and brought to Rome, had the education of his
patron’s children committed to him, which trust he discharged so much to
the satisfaction of his master that he gave him his liberty.
Andronicus, thus become a freeman of Rome, added to his own name that of
Livius, his master; and, as I observed, was the first author of a regular
play in that commonwealth. Being already instructed in his native
country in the manners and decencies of the Athenian theatre, and
conversant in the _archæa comædia_ or old comedy of Aristophanes and the
rest of the Grecian poets, he took from that model his own designing of
plays for the Roman stage, the first of which was represented in the year
CCCCCXIV. since the building of Rome, as Tully, from the Commentaries of
Atticus, has assured us; it was after the end of the first Punic War, the
year before Atticus was born. Dacier has not carried the matter
altogether thus far; he only says that one Livius Andronicus was the
first stage-poet at Rome. But I will adventure on this hint to advance
another proposition, which I hope the learned will approve; and though we
have not anything of Andronicus remaining to justify my conjecture, yet
it is exceeding probable that, having read the works of those Grecian
wits, his countrymen, he imitated not only the groundwork, but also the
manner of their writing; and how grave soever his tragedies might be, yet
in his comedies he expressed the way of Aristophanes, Eupolis, and the
rest, which was to call some persons by their own names, and to expose
their defects to the laughter of the people (the examples of which we
have in the fore-mentioned Aristophanes, who turned the wise Socrates
into ridicule, and is also very free with the management of Cleon,
Alcibiades, and other ministers of the Athenian government). Now if this
be granted, we may easily suppose that the first hint of satirical plays
on the Roman stage was given by the Greeks—not from the _satirica_, for
that has been reasonably exploded in the former part of this
discourse—but from their old comedy, which was imitated first by Livius
Andronicus. And then Quintilian and Horace must be cautiously
interpreted, where they affirm that satire is wholly Roman, and a sort of
verse which was not touched on by the Grecians. The reconcilement of my
opinion to the standard of their judgment is not, however, very
difficult, since they spoke of satire, not as in its first elements, but
as it was formed into a separate work—begun by Ennius, pursued by
Lucilius, and completed afterwards by Horace. The proof depends only on
this _postalatum_—that the comedies of Andronicus, which were imitations
of the Greek, were also imitations of their railleries and reflections on
particular persons. For if this be granted me, which is a most probable
supposition, it is easy to infer that the first light which was given to
the Roman theatrical satire was from the plays of Livius Andronicus,
which will be more manifestly discovered when I come to speak of Ennius.
In the meantime I will return to Dacier.
The people, says he, ran in crowds to these new entertainments of
Andronicus, as to pieces which were more noble in their kind, and more
perfect than their former satires, which for some time they neglected and
abandoned; but not long after they took them up again, and then they
joined them to their comedies, playing them at the end of every drama, as
the French continue at this day to act their farces, in the nature of a
separate entertainment from their tragedies. But more particularly they
were joined to the “Atellane” fables, says Casaubon; which were plays
invented by the Osci. Those fables, says Valerius Maximus, out of Livy,
were tempered with the Italian severity, and free from any note of infamy
or obsceneness; and, as an old commentator on Juvenal affirms, the
_Exodiarii_, which were singers and dancers, entered to entertain the
people with light songs and mimical gestures, that they might not go away
oppressed with melancholy from those serious pieces of the theatre. So
that the ancient satire of the Romans was in _extempore_ reproaches; the
next was farce, which was brought from Tuscany; to that succeeded the
plays of Andronicus, from the old comedy of the Grecians; and out of all
these sprang two several branches of new Roman satire, like different
scions from the same root, which I shall prove with as much brevity as
the subject will allow.
A year after Andronicus had opened the Roman stage with his new dramas,
Ennius was born; who, when he was grown to man’s estate, having seriously
considered the genius of the people, and how eagerly they followed the
first satires, thought it would be worth his pains to refine upon the
project, and to write satires, not to be acted on the theatre, but read.
He preserved the groundwork of their pleasantry, their venom, and their
raillery on particular persons and general vices; and by this means,
avoiding the danger of any ill success in a public representation, he
hoped to be as well received in the cabinet as Andronicus had been upon
the stage. The event was answerable to his expectation. He made
discourses in several sorts of verse, varied often in the same paper,
retaining still in the title their original name of satire. Both in
relation to the subjects, and the variety of matters contained in them,
the satires of Horace are entirely like them; only Ennius, as I said,
confines not himself to one sort of verse, as Horace does, but taking
example from the Greeks, and even from Homer himself in his “Margites”
(which is a kind of satire, as Scaliger observes), gives himself the
licence, when one sort of numbers comes not easily, to run into another,
as his fancy dictates; for he makes no difficulty to mingle hexameters
with iambic trimeters or with trochaic tetrameters, as appears by those
fragments which are yet remaining of him. Horace has thought him worthy
to be copied, inserting many things of his into his own satires, as
Virgil has done into his “Æneids.”
Here we have Dacier making out that Ennius was the first satirist in that
way of writing, which was of his invention—that is, satire abstracted
from the stage and new modelled into papers of verses on several
subjects. But he will have Ennius take the groundwork of satire from the
first farces of the Romans rather than from the formed plays of Livius
Andronicus, which were copied from the Grecian comedies. It may possibly
be so; but Dacier knows no more of it than I do. And it seems to me the
more probable opinion that he rather imitated the fine railleries of the
Greeks, which he saw in the pieces of Andronicus, than the coarseness of
his own countrymen in their clownish extemporary way of jeering.
But besides this, it is universally granted that Ennius, though an
Italian, was excellently learned in the Greek language. His verses were
stuffed with fragments of it, even to a fault; and he himself believed,
according to the Pythagorean opinion, that the soul of Homer was
transfused into him, which Persius observes in his sixth satire—_postquam
destertuit esse Mæonides_. But this being only the private opinion of so
inconsiderable a man as I am, I leave it to the further disquisition of
the critics, if they think it worth their notice. Most evident it is
that, whether he imitated the Roman farce or the Greek comedies, he is to
be acknowledged for the first author of Roman satire, as it is properly
so called, and distinguished from any sort of stage-play.
Of Pacuvius, who succeeded him, there is little to be said, because there
is so little remaining of him; only that he is taken to be the nephew of
Ennius, his sister’s son; that in probability he was instructed by his
uncle in his way of satire, which we are told he has copied; but what
advances he made, we know not.
Lucilius came into the world when Pacuvius flourished most. He also made
satires after the manner of Ennius; but he gave them a more graceful
turn, and endeavoured to imitate more closely the _vetus comædia_ of the
Greeks, of the which the old original Roman satire had no idea till the
time of Livius Andronicus. And though Horace seems to have made Lucilius
the first author of satire in verse amongst the Romans in these words—
“_Quid_? _cum est Lucilius auses_
_Primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem_”—
he is only thus to be understood—that Lucilius had given a more graceful
turn to the satire of Ennius and Pacuvius, not that he invented a new
satire of his own; and Quintilian seems to explain this passage of Horace
in these words: _Satira quidem tota nostra est_; _in quâ primus insignem
laudem adeptus est Luciluis_.
Thus both Horace and Quintilian give a kind of primacy of honour to
Lucilius amongst the Latin satirists; for as the Roman language grew more
refined, so much more capable it was of receiving the Grecian beauties,
in his time. Horace and Quintilian could mean no more than that Lucilius
writ better than Ennius and Pacuvius, and on the same account we prefer
Horace to Lucilius. Both of them imitated the old Greek comedy; and so
did Ennius and Pacuvius before them. The polishing of the Latin tongue,
in the succession of times, made the only difference; and Horace himself
in two of his satires, written purposely on this subject, thinks the
Romans of his age were too partial in their commendations of Lucilius,
who writ not only loosely and muddily, with little art and much less
care, but also in a time when the Latin tongue was not yet sufficiently
purged from the dregs of barbarism; and many significant and sounding
words which the Romans wanted were not admitted even in the times of
Lucretius and Cicero, of which both complain.
But to proceed: Dacier justly taxes Casaubon for saying that the satires
of Lucilius were wholly different in species from those of Ennius and
Pacuvius, Casaubon was led into that mistake by Diomedes the grammarian,
who in effect says this:—“Satire amongst the Romans but not amongst the
Greeks, was a biting invective poem, made after the model of the ancient
comedy, for the reprehension of vices; such as were the poems of
Lucilius, of Horace, and of Persius. But in former times the name of
satire was given to poems which were composed of several sorts of verses,
such as were made by Ennius and Pacuvius”—more fully expressing the
etymology of the word satire from _satura_, which we have observed. Here
it is manifest that Diomedes makes a specifical distinction betwixt the
satires of Ennius and those of Lucilius. But this, as we say in English,
is only a distinction without a difference; for the reason of it is
ridiculous and absolutely false. This was that which cozened honest
Casaubon, who, relying on Diomedes, had not sufficiently examined the
origin and nature of those two satires, which were entirely the same both
in the matter and the form; for all that Lucilius performed beyond his
predecessors, Ennius and Pacuvius, was only the adding of more politeness
and more salt, without any change in the substance of the poem. And
though Lucilius put not together in the same satire several sorts of
verses, as Ennius did, yet he composed several satires of several sorts
of verses, and mingled them with Greek verses: one poem consisted only of
hexameters, and another was entirely of iambics; a third of trochaics; as
is visible by the fragments yet remaining of his works. In short, if the
satires of Lucilius are therefore said to be wholly different from those
of Ennius because he added much more of beauty and polishing to his own
poems than are to be found in those before him, it will follow from hence
that the satires of Horace are wholly different from those of Lucilius,
because Horace has not less surpassed Lucilius in the elegancy of his
writing than Lucilius surpassed Ennius in the turn and ornament of his.
This passage of Diomedes has also drawn Dousa the son into the same error
of Casaubon, which I say, not to expose the little failings of those
judicious men, but only to make it appear with how much diffidence and
caution we are to read their works when they treat a subject of so much
obscurity and so very ancient as is this of satire.
Having thus brought down the history of satire from its original to the
times of Horace, and shown the several changes of it, I should here
discover some of those graces which Horace added to it, but that I think
it will be more proper to defer that undertaking till I make the
comparison betwixt him and Juvenal. In the meanwhile, following the
order of time, it will be necessary to say somewhat of another kind of
satire which also was descended from the ancient; it is that which we
call the Varronian satire (but which Varro himself calls the Menippean)
because Varro, the most learned of the Romans, was the first author of
it, who imitated in his works the manners of Menippus the Gadarenian, who
professed the philosophy of the Cynics.
This sort of satire was not only composed of several sorts of verse, like
those of Ennius, but was also mixed with prose, and Greek was sprinkled
amongst the Latin. Quintilian, after he had spoken of the satire of
Lucilius, adds what follows:—“There is another and former kind of satire,
composed by Terentius Varro, the most learned of the Romans, in which he
was not satisfied alone with mingling in it several sorts of verse.” The
only difficulty of this passage is that Quintilian tells us that this
satire of Varro was of a former kind; for how can we possibly imagine
this to be, since Varro, who was contemporary to Cicero, must
consequently be after Lucilius? But Quintilian meant not that the satire
of Varro was in order of time before Lucilius; he would only give us to
understand that the Varronian satire, with mixture of several sorts of
verses, was more after the manner of Ennius and Pacuvius than that of
Lucilius, who was more severe and more correct, and gave himself less
liberty in the mixture of his verses in the same poem.