sufficient alteration or variety from former compositions, to give a claim
to invention. Now it certainly cannot be pretended, so far as we know,
that _any_ satiric productions of the Greeks had much resemblance to those
of the Romans. The Greek satires, which are improperly so termed, were
divided into what were called tragic and comic. The former were dramatic
compositions, which had their commencement, like the regular tragedy, in
rustic festivals to the honour of Bacchus; and in which, characters
representing Satyrs, the supposed companions of that god, were introduced,
imitating the coarse songs and fantastic dances of rural deities. In their
rude origin, it is probable that only one actor, equipped as a Satyr,
danced or sung. Soon, however, a chorus appeared, consisting of the
bearded and beardless Satyrs, Silenus, and Pappo Silenus; and Histrions,
representing heroic characters, were afterwards introduced. The satiric
drama began to flourish when the regular tragedy had become too refined to
admit of a chorus, or accompaniment of Satyrs, but while these were still
remembered with a sort of fondness, which rendered it natural to recur to
the most ancient shape of the drama. In this state of the progress of the
Greek stage, the satire was performed separately from the tragedy; and out
of respect to the original form of tragedy, was often exhibited as a
continuation or parody of the tragic _trilogy_, or three serious
plays,—thus completing what was called the _tetralogia_. The scene of
these satires was laid in the country, amid woods, caves, and mountains,
or other such places as Satyrs were supposed to inhabit; and the subjects
chosen were those in which Satyrs might naturally be feigned to have had a
share or interest. High mythological stories and fabulous heroes were
introduced, as appears from the names preserved by Casaubon, who mentions
the _Hercules_ of Astydamas, the _Alcmæon_ and _Vulcan_ of Achæus,—each of
which is denominated σατυρικος. These heroic characters, however, were
generally parodied, and rendered fantastic, by the gross railleries of
Silenus and the Fauns. The _Cyclops_ of Euripides, which turns on the
story of Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus, is the only example entirely
extant of this species of composition. Some fragments, however, remain of
the _Lytiersa_ of Sositheus, an author who flourished about the 130th
Olympiad, which was subsequent to the introduction of the new Greek
comedy. Lytiersa, who gives name to this dramatic satire, lived in
Phrygia. He used to receive many guests, who flocked to his residence from
all quarters. After entertaining them at sumptuous banquets, he compelled
them to go out with him to his fields, to reap his crop or cut his hay;
and when they had performed this labour, he mowed off their heads, with a
scythe. The style of entertainment, it seems, did not prevent his house
from being a place of fashionable resort. Hercules, however, put an end to
this mode of wishing a good afternoon, by strangling the hospitable
landlord, and throwing his body into the Mæander. It is evident, from the
subject of this play, and of the _Cyclops_, that the tragic satires were a
sort of fee-fa-fum performance, like our after-pieces founded on the
stories of _Blue Beard_ and _Jack the Giant Killer_. They were generally
short and simple in their plan: They contained no satire or ridicule
against the fellow-citizens of the author, or any private individuals
whatever; but there was a good deal of jeering by the characters at each
other, and much buffoonery, revelling, and indecency, among the satiric
persons of the chorus.
The Comic Satire began later than the Tragic, subsisted for some time
along with it, and finally survived it. In Greece it was chiefly popular
after the time of Alexander, and it also flourished in the court of the
Egyptian Ptolemies. It was quite different from the Tragic Satire; the
action being laid in cities, or at least not always amid rustic scenes.
Private individuals were often satirized in it, and not unfrequently the
tyrants or rulers of the state. When a mythic story was adopted, the
affairs of domestic life were conjoined with the action, and it never was
of the same enormous or bloody nature as the fables employed in the tragic
satire, but such subjects were usually chosen as that of Amphitryon,
Apollo feeding the flocks of Admetus, &c. Satyrs were not essential
characters, and when they were introduced, private individuals were
generally intended to be ridiculed, under the form of these rustic
divinities. Gluttony, to judge from some fragments preserved by Athenæus,
was one of the chief topics of banter and merriment. Timocles, who lived
about the 114th Olympiad, was the chief author of comic satires.
Lycophron, better known by his _Cassandra_, also wrote one called
_Menedemus_, in which the founder of the Eretric school of philosophy was
exposed to ridicule, under the character of Silenus, and his pupils under
the masks of Satyrs.
Besides their dramatic satires, the Greeks had another species of poem
called _Silli_, which were patched up like the _Cento Nuptialis_ of
Ausonius from the verses of serious writers, and by such means turned to a
different sense from what their original author intended. Thus, in the
_Silli_ attributed to Timon, a sceptic philosopher and disciple of Pyrrho,
who lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the lines are copied from
Homer and the tragic poets, but they are satirically applied to certain
customs and systems of philosophy, which it was his object to ridicule.
Some specimens of the _Silli_ may be found in Diogenes Laertius; but the
longest now extant is a passage preserved in Dio Chrysostom, exposing the
mad attachment of the inhabitants of Alexandria to chariot races. To these
_Silli_ may be added the lyric or iambic satires directed against
individuals, like those of Archilochus against Lycambes.
The Roman didactic satire had no great resemblance to any of these sorts
of Greek satire. It referred, as every one knows, to the daily occurrences
of life,—to the ordinary follies and vices of mankind. With the Greek
tragic satire it had scarce any analogy whatever; for it was not in
dialogue, and contained no allusion to the mythological Satyrs who formed
the chorus of the Greek dramas. To the comic satire it had more affinity;
and those writers who have maintained the Greek origin of Roman satire
have done little justice to their argument by not attending to the
distinction between these two sorts of dramatic satire, and treating the
whole question as if it depended on the resemblance to the tragic satire.
In the comic satire, as we have seen, Satyrs were not always nor
necessarily introduced. The subject was taken from ordinary life; and
domestic vice or absurdity was stigmatized and ridiculed, as it was in the
Roman satire, particularly during its earliest ages. Still, however, there
was no incident or plot evolved in a Roman satire; nor was it written in
dialogue, except occasionally, for the sake of more lively sarcasm on life
and manners.
But though the Roman satire took a different direction, it had something
of the same origin as the satiric drama of the Greeks. As the Grecian
holidays were celebrated with oblations to Bacchus and Ceres, to whose
bounty they owed their wine and corn, in like manner the ancient Italians
propitiated their agricultural or rustic deities with appropriate
offerings,
“Tellurem porco—Sylvanum lacte piabant(394);”
but as they knew nothing of the Silenus, or Satyrs of the Greeks, a chorus
of peasants, fantastically disguised in masks cut out from the barks of
trees, danced or sung to a certain kind of verse, which they called
Saturnian:—
“Nec non Ausonii, Trojâ gens missa, coloni
Versibus incomtis ludunt, risuque soluto;
Oraque corticibus sumunt horrenda cavatis:
Et te, Bacche, vocant per carmina læta, tibique
Oscilla ex altâ suspendunt mollia pinu(395).”
These festivals had usually the double purpose of worship and recreation;
and accordingly the verses often digressed from the praises of Bacchus to
mutual taunts and railleries, like those in Virgil’s third eclogue, on the
various defects and vices of the speakers.
Such rude lines, originally sung or recited in the Tuscan and Latian
villages, at nuptials or religious festivals, were first introduced at
Rome by _Histrions_, who, as already mentioned, were summoned from
Etruria, in order to allay the pestilence which was depopulating the city.
These Histrions being mounted on a stage, like our mountebanks, performed
a sort of _ballet_, by dancing and gesticulating to the sound of musical
instruments. The Roman youth thus learned to imitate their gestures and
music, which they accompanied with railing verses delivered in extemporary
dialogue.
The jeering, however, which had been at first confined to inoffensive
raillery, at length exceeded the bounds of moderation, and the peace of
private families was invaded by the unrestrained license of personal
invective:—
“Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos
Lusit amabiliter, donec jam sævus apertam
In rabiem cœpit verti jocus; et per honestas
Ire domos impune minax; doluere cruento
Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura
Conditione super communi(396).” ——
This exposure of private individuals, which alarmed even those who had
been spared, was restrained by a salutary law of the Decemvirs.—“Si quis
occentassit malum carmen, sive condidisit, quod infamiam faxit flagitiumve
alteri, fuste ferito.”
Ennius, perceiving how much the Romans had been delighted with the rude
satires poured forth in extemporary dialogue, thought it might be worth
his pains to compose satires not to be recited but read. He preserved in
them, however, the groundwork of the ancient pleasantry, and the venom of
the ancient raillery, on individuals, as well as on general vices. His
satires related to various subjects, and were written in different sorts
of verses—hexameters being mingled with iambic and trochaic lines, as
fancy dictated.
The satires of Ennius, which have already been more particularly
mentioned, were imitated by Pacuvius, and from his time the word _satire_
came to be applied at Rome only to poems containing either a playful or
indignant censure on manners. This sort of composition was chiefly
indebted for its improvement to
LUCILIUS,
A Roman knight, who was born in the year 605, at Suessa, a town in the
Auruncian territory. He was descended of a good family, and was the
maternal granduncle of Pompey the Great. In early youth he served at the
siege of Numantia, in the same camp with Marius and Jugurtha, under the
younger Scipio Africanus(397), whose friendship and protection he had the
good fortune to acquire. On his return to Rome from his Spanish campaign,
he dwelt in a house which had been built at the public expense, and had
been inhabited by Seleucus Philopater, Prince of Syria, whilst he resided
in his youth as an hostage at Rome(398). Lucilius continued to live on
terms of the closest intimacy with the brave Scipio and wise Lælius,
“Quin ubi se a vulgo et scenâ in secreta remôrant
Virtus Scipiadæ et mitis sapientia Lælî,
Nugari cum illo et discincti ludere, donec
Decoqueretur olus, soliti(399).” ——
These powerful protectors enabled him to satirize the vicious without
restraint or fear of punishment. In his writings he drew a genuine picture
of himself, acknowledged his faults, made a frank confession of his
inclinations, gave an account of his adventures, and, in short, exhibited
a true and spirited representation of his whole life. Fresh from business
or pleasure, he seized his pen while his fancy was yet warm, and his
passions still awake,—while elated with success or depressed by
disappointment. All these feelings, and the incidents which occasioned
them, he faithfully related, and made his remarks on them with the utmost
freedom:—
“Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
Credebat libris; neque si male gesserat, usquam
Decurrens aliô, neque si bene: quo fit ut omnis
Votivâ pateat veluti descripta tabellâ
Vita senis(400).” ——
Unfortunately, however, the writings of Lucilius are so mutilated, that
few particulars of his life and manners can be gleaned from them. Little
farther is known concerning him, than that he died at Naples, but at what
age has been much disputed. Eusebius and most other writers have fixed it
at 45, which, as he was born in 605, would be in the 651st year of the
city. But M. Dacier and Bayle(401) assert that he must have been much
older, at the time of his death, as he speaks in his satires of the
Licinian law against exorbitant expenditure at entertainments, which was
not promulgated till 657, or 658.
Satire, more than any other species of poetry, is the offspring of the
time in which it has its birth, and which furnishes it with the aliment
whereon it feeds. The period at which Lucilius appeared was favourable to
satiric composition. There was a struggle existing between the old and new
manners, and the freedom of speaking and writing, though restrained, had
not yet been totally checked by law. Lucilius lived amidst a people on
whom luxury and corruption were advancing with fearful rapidity, but among
whom some virtuous citizens were still anxious to stem the tide which
threatened to overwhelm their countrymen. The satires of Lucilius were
adapted to please these staunch “_laudatores temporis acti_,” who stood up
for ancient manners and discipline. The freedom with which he attacked the
vices of his contemporaries, without sparing individuals,—the strength of
colouring with which his pictures were charged,—the weight and asperity of
the reproaches with which he loaded those who had exposed themselves to
his ridicule or indignation,—had nothing revolting in an age when no
consideration compelled to those forbearances necessary under different
forms of society or government(402). By the time, too, in which Lucilius
began to write, the Romans, though yet far from the polish of the Augustan
age, had become familiar with the delicate and cutting irony of the Greek
comedies of which the more ancient Roman satirists had no conception.
Lucilius chiefly applied himself to the imitation of these dramatic
productions, and caught, it is said, much of their fire and spirit:
“Eupolis, atque Cratinus, Aristophanesque, pöetæ,
Atque alii, quorum comœdia prisca virorum est,
Si quis erat dignus describi, quod malus, aut fur,
Quod mœchus foret, aut sicarius, aut alioqui
Famosus, multa cum libertate notabant.
Hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus,
Mutatis tantum pedibus numerisque(403).” ——
The Roman language, likewise, had grown more refined in the age of
Lucilius, and was thus more capable of receiving the Grecian beauties of
style. Nor did Lucilius, like his predecessors, mix iambic with trochaic
verses. Twenty books of his satires, from the commencement, were in
hexameter verse, and the rest, with exception of the thirtieth, in iambics
or trochaics. His object, too, seems to have been bolder and more
extensive than that of his precursors, and was not so much to excite
laughter or ridicule, as to correct and chastise vice. Lucilius thus
bestowed on satiric composition such additional grace and regularity, that
he is declared by Horace to have been the first among the Romans who wrote
satire in verse:—
“Primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem.”
But although Lucilius may have greatly improved this sort of writing, it
does not follow that his satires are to be considered as altogether of a
different species from those of Ennius—a light in which they have been
regarded by Casaubon and Ruperti; “for,” as Dryden has remarked, “it would
thence follow, that the satires of Horace are wholly different from those
of Lucilius, because Horace has no less surpassed Lucilius in the elegance
of his writing, than Lucilius surpassed Ennius in the turn and ornament of
his.”
The satires of Lucilius extended to not fewer than thirty books; but
whether they were so divided by the poet himself, or by some grammarian
who lived shortly after him, seems uncertain: He was a voluminous author,
and has been satirized by Horace for his hurried copiousness and
facility:—
“Nam fuit hoc vitiosus: In horâ sæpe ducentos,
Ut magnum, versus dictabat, stans pede in uno:
Garrulus, atque piger scribendi ferre laborem;
Scribendi recte: nam ut multum, nil moror(404).”
Of the thirty books there are only fragments extant; but these are so
numerous, that though they do not capacitate us to catch the full spirit
of the poet, we perceive something of his manner. His merits, too, have
been so much canvassed by ancient writers, who judged of them while his
works were yet entire, that their discussions in some measure enable us to
appreciate his poetical claims. It would appear that he had great vivacity
and humour, uncommon command of language, intimate knowledge of life and
manners, and considerable acquaintance with the Grecian masters. Virtue
appeared in his draughts in native dignity, and he exhibited his
distinguished friends, Scipio and Lælius, in the most amiable light. At
the same time it was impossible to portray anything more powerful than the
sketches of his vicious characters. His rogue, glutton, and courtezan, are
drawn in strong, not to say coarse colours. He had, however, much of the
old Roman humour, that celebrated but undefined _urbanitas_, which indeed
he possessed in so eminent a degree, that Pliny says it began with
Lucilius in composition(405), while Cicero declares that he carried it to
the highest perfection(406), and that it almost expired with him(407). But
the chief characteristic of Lucilius was his vehement and cutting satire.
Macrobius calls him “Acer et violentus poeta(408);” and the well-known
lines of Juvenal, who relates how he made the guilty tremble by his pen,
as much as if he had pursued them sword in hand, have fixed his character
as a determined and inexorable persecutor of vice. His Latin is admitted
on all hands to have been sufficiently pure(409); but his versification
was rugged and prosaic. Horace, while he allows that he was more polished
that his predecessors, calls his muse “pedestris,” talks repeatedly of the
looseness of his measure, “Incomposito pede currere versus,” and compares
his whole poetry to a muddy and troubled stream:—
“Cum flueret lutulentus erat quod tollere velles.”
Quintilian does not entirely coincide with this opinion of Horace; for,
while blaming those who considered him as the greatest of poets, which
some persons still did in the age of Domitian, he says, “Ego quantum ab
illis, tantum ab Horatio dissentio, qui Lucilium fluere lutulentum, et
esse aliquid quod tollere possis, putat(410).” The author of the books
_Rhetoricorum_, addressed to Herennius, and which were at one time
attributed to Cicero, mentions, as a singular awkwardness in the
construction of his lines, the disjunction of words, which, according to
proper and natural arrangement, ought to have been placed together, as—
“Has res ad te scriptas _Luci_ misimus _Æli_.”
Nay, what is still worse, it would appear from Ausonius, that he had
sometimes barbarously separated the syllables of a word—
“Villa _Lucani_—mox potieris _aco_.
Rescisso discas componere nomine versum;
Lucilî vatis sic imitator eris(411).”
As to the learning of Lucilius, the opinions of antiquity were different;
and even those of the same author appear somewhat contradictory on this
point. Quintilian says, that there is “Eruditio in eo mira.” Cicero, in
his treatise _De Finibus_, calls his learning _mediocris_; though,
afterwards, in the person of Crassus, in his treatise _De Oratore_, he
twice terms him _Doctus_(412). Dacier suspects that Quintilian was led to
consider Lucilius as learned, from the pedantic intermixture of Greek
words in his compositions—a practice which seems to have excited the
applause of his contemporaries, and also of his numerous admirers in the
Augustan age, for which they have been severely ridiculed by Horace, who
always warmly opposed himself to the excessive partiality entertained for
Lucilius during that golden period of literature—
“At magnum fecit, quod verbis Græca Latinis
Miscuit:—O seri studiorum!”
It is not unlikely that there may have been something of political spleen
in the admiration expressed for Lucilius during the age of Augustus, and
something of courtly complaisance in the attempts of Horace to counteract
it. Augustus had extended the law of the 12 tables respecting libels; and
the people, who found themselves thus abridged of the liberty of
satirizing the Great by name, might not improbably seek to avenge
themselves by an overstrained attachment to the works of a poet, who,
living as they would insinuate, in better times, practised, without fear,
what he enjoyed without restraint(413).
Some motive of this sort doubtless weighed with the Romans in the age of
Augustus, since much of the satire of Lucilius must have been
unintelligible, or at least uninteresting to them. Great part of his
compositions appears to have been rather a series of libels than
legitimate satire, being occupied with virulent attacks on contemporary
citizens of Rome—
—— “Secuit Lucilius urbem,
Te Mute, te Lupe, et genuinum fregit in illos(414).”
Douza, who has collected and edited all that remains of the satires of
Lucilius, mentions the names of not fewer than sixteen individuals, who
are attacked by name in the course even of these fragments, among whom are
Quintus Opimius, the conqueror of Liguria, Cæcilius Metellus, whose
victories acquired him the sirname of Macedonianus, and Cornelius Lupus,
at that time _Princeps Senatus_. Lucilius was equally severe on
contemporary and preceding authors; Ennius, Pacuvius, and Attius, having
been alternately satirized by him(415). In all this he indulged with
impunity(416); but he did not escape so well from a player, whom he had
ventured to censure, and who took his revenge by exposing Lucilius on the
stage. The poet prosecuted the actor, and the cause was carried on with
much warmth on both sides before the Prætor, who finally acquitted the
player(417).
The confidence of Lucilius in his powerful patrons, Scipio and Lælius,
inspired this freedom; and it appears, in fact, to have so completely
relieved him from all fear or restraint, that he boldly exclaims—
—— “Cujus non audeo dicere nomen?
Quid refert dictis ignoscat Mutius, an non?”
It is chiefly to such support that the unbridled license of the old Roman
satirists may be ascribed—
—— “Unde illa priorum
Scribendi quodcunque animo flagrante liberet
Simplicitas(418).” ——
The harsh and uncultivated spirit of the ancient Romans also naturally led
to this species of severe and personal castigation; and it was not to be
expected that in that age they should have drawn their pictures with the
delicacy and generality which Horace has given to Offellus.
Lucilius, however, did not confine himself to invectives on vicious
mortals. In the first book of his satires, he appears to have declared war
on the false gods of Olympus, whose plurality he denied, and ridiculed the
simplicity of the people, who bestowed on an infinity of gods the
venerable name of father, which should be reserved for one. Near the
commencement of this book he represents an assembly of the gods
deliberating on human affairs:
“Consilium summis hominum de rebus habebant.”
And, in particular, discussing what punishment ought to be inflicted on
Rutilius Lupus, a considerable man in the Roman state, but noted for his
wickedness and impiety, and so powerful that it is declared—
“Si conjuret, populus vix totus satis est.”
Jupiter expresses his regret that he had not been present at a former
council of the gods, called to deliberate on this topic—
“Vellem concilio vestrûm, quod dicitis, olim,
Cælicolæ; vellem, inquam, adfuissem priore
Concilio.” ——
Jupiter having concluded, the subject is taken up by another of the gods,
who, as Lactantius informs us, was Neptune(419); but being puzzled with
its intricacy, this divinity declares it could not be explained, were
Carneades himself (the most clear and eloquent of philosophers) to be sent
up to them from Orcus:
“Nec si Carneadem ipsum ad nos Orcus remittat.”
The only result of the solemn deliberations of this assembly is a decree,
that each god should receive from mortals the title of father—
“Ut nemo sit nostrûm, quin pater optumus divûm;
Ut Neptunus pater, Liber, Saturnu’ pater, Mars,
Janu’ Quirinu’ pater, nomen dicatur ad unum.”