The Satires of Horace consistently stake out their place as the second effort in Roman verse Satire since its “discovery” (Sat. 1.10.48) by Lucilius (?180-102/1 BCE), who established the dactylic hexameter as its metrical form. Although Ennius (239-169 BCE) and Varro (116-27 BCE) also wrote poems they called saturae (Varro’s satires, in a combination of prose and verse, are termed Menippean), these, along with any works of verse Satire no longer extant, were overlooked, and Roman Satire quickly came to be defined as what Lucilius, Horace (Dec. 8th 65-Nov. 27th 8 BCE), Persius (34-62 CE), and Juvenal (active early 2nd C) wrote.
The genre’s preferred self-referential …
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Citation: Ferriss-Hill, Jennifer. "Satires". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 September 2012 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13379, accessed 07 November 2024.]