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Updated: May 26, 2025
Juvenal is the most savage one might almost say the most brutal of all the Roman satirists. Lucilius, when he "scourged the town," did so in the high spirits and voluble diction of a comparatively simple age. Horace soon learned to drop the bitterness which appears in his earlier satires, and to make them the vehicle for his gentle wisdom and urbane humour.
It was already mentioned that about the beginning of this century the Latin epic poets found their -diaskeuastae- and revisers of their text; it was also noticed, that not only did the Scipionic circle generally insist on correctness above everything else, but several also of the most noted poets, such as Accius and Lucilius, busied themselves with the regulation of orthography and of grammar.
Some of the higher classes loved literature and patronized it, but did not make it their pursuit. Lucilius was a Roman knight, as well as a poet. His satires were comprised in thirty books, numerous fragments of which are still extant. He was a man of high moral principle, though stern and stoical; a relentless enemy of vice and profligacy, and a gallant and fearless defender of truth and honesty.
Meanwhile he was content to be known as a writer of satire, one whose wish it was to bring up to an Augustan polish the literary form already carried to a high degree of success by Lucilius. The second book of Satires was published not long after the Epodes. It shows in every way an enormous advance over the first.
While patriotic considerations might set bounds to criticism in reference to the native chronicles, Lucilius at any rate directed very pointed shafts against "the dismal figures from the complicated expositions of Pacuvius"; and similar severe, but not unjust criticisms of Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius all those poets "who appeared to have a licence to talk pompously and to reason illogically" are found in the polished author of the Rhetoric dedicated to Herennius, written at the close of this period.
For he is not engaged in actual conflict; he is not armed for the fray; his speeches are made for display, like foils. Aeschines shall come on like aeserninus, as Lucilius says "No ordinary man, but fearless all, And skill'd his arms to wield his equal match Pacideianus stands, than whom the world Since the first birth of man hath seen no greater."
Lucilius, as we see by his remaining fragments, minded neither his style, nor his numbers, nor his purity of words, nor his run of verse. Horace therefore copes with him in that humble way of satire, writes under his own force, and carries a dead weight, that he may match his competitor in the race.
While patriotic considerations might set bounds to criticism in reference to the native chronicles, Lucilius at any rate directed very pointed shafts against "the dismal figures from the complicated expositions of Pacuvius"; and similar severe, but not unjust criticisms of Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius all those poets "who appeared to have a licence to talk pompously and to reason illogically" are found in the polished author of the Rhetoric dedicated to Herennius, written at the close of this period.
The protest against traditional exclusiveness begun by the great Scipio, and powerfully enforced by Ennius, was continued in a less heroic but not less effective manner by the younger Scipio and his friends Lucilius and Terence. All the plays of Terence are written with a purpose; and the purpose is the same which animated the political leaders of free thought.
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.
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