The times at which the satires were given to the world do not in all cases coincide with those at which they were written and to which they immediately refer. Thus the manners and personages of the age of Domitian often supply the material of satiric representation, and are spoken of as if they belonged to the actual life of the present,[1] while allusions even in the earliest show that, as a finished literary composition, it belongs to the age of Trajan. The most probable explanation of these discrepancies is that in their present form the satires are the work of the last thirty years of the poet's life, while the first nine at least may have preserved with little change passages written during his earlier manhood. The combination of the impressions, and, perhaps of the actual compositions, of different periods also explains a certain want of unity and continuity found in some of them.
There is no reason to doubt that the sixteen satires which we possess were given to the world in the order in which we find them, and that they were divided, as they are referred to in the ancient grammarians, into five books. Book I., embracing the first five satires, was written in the freshest vigour of the author's powers, and is animated with the strongest hatred of Domitian. The publication of this book belongs to the early years of Trajan. The mention of the exile of Marius (49) shows that it was not published before 100. In the second satire, the lines 29 seq.,
"Qualis erat nuper tragico pollutus adulter Concubitu,"