INTRODUCTION
ally given to a rough musical performance of a semidramatic kind, being developed it would seem from the rude banterings in extempore verse or otherwise of the Italian youth, who were famed for the antiqua et vernacula festivitas with which they used to pelt each other in times of village festivals and rejoicings.[1]
Of the Satires of Pacuvius we know nothing, except from the above-quoted passage from Diomedes; but of those of Ennius (B.C. 239-169) we know enough to give us a good idea of what they were. Porphyrion speaks of the fourth book of his Satires, Donatus of a sixth, each Satire forming a book in itself; and some few fragments of them remain. One deals with astrologers and interpreters of dreams, another with female license; and Quintilian tells us that one of his Satires took a dramatic form;—ut Voluptatem et Virtutem Prodicus, ut Mortem et Vitam quas contendentes in satura tractat Ennius (Inst. Orat. ix. ii. 36). Thus Ennian Satire seems to have consisted of a variety of poetical pieces, composed in various metres, on various topics
- ↑ For these extempore rustic effusions, full of coarse and pungent wit, see Virg. Geo. ii. 385-395, and Hor. Epp. i. 147-167. Having regard to the evidence afforded by these passages, and by the passage from Livy quoted above, it is not possible to accept the statement of Prof. H. Nettleship that "Lucilius was the first writer who impressed upon the Satura that character of invective which it to a great extent preserved in the hands of Horace, Persius and Juvenal" (Lectures and Essays, second series, 1895). On the contrary, it would seem that personal abuse formed the essence of the first beginnings of Satura.
