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 term, satura, encodes a key aspect of it: meaning “stuffed full” and variously derived (see Diomedes, Ars

2302 words

Citation: Ferriss-Hill, Jennifer. "Satires". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 September 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13379, accessed 13 December 2024.]

13379 Satires 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.