“Eupolis, atque Cratinus, Aristophanesque, pöetæ, Atque alii, quorum comœdia prisca virorum est, Si quis erat dignus describi, quod malus, aut fur, Quod mœchus foret, aut sicarius, aut alioqui Famosus, multa cum libertate notabant. Hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus, Mutatis tantum pedibus numerisque(403).” ——
The Roman language, likewise, had grown more refined in the age of Lucilius, and was thus more capable of receiving the Grecian beauties of style. Nor did Lucilius, like his predecessors, mix iambic with trochaic verses. Twenty books of his satires, from the commencement, were in hexameter verse, and the rest, with exception of the thirtieth, in iambics or trochaics. His object, too, seems to have been bolder and more extensive than that of his precursors, and was not so much to excite laughter or ridicule, as to correct and chastise vice. Lucilius thus bestowed on satiric composition such additional grace and regularity, that he is declared by Horace to have been the first among the Romans who wrote satire in verse:—
“Primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem.”
But although Lucilius may have greatly improved this sort of writing, it does not follow that his satires are to be considered as altogether of a different species from those of Ennius—a light in which they have been regarded by Casaubon and Ruperti; “for,” as Dryden has remarked, “it would thence follow, that the satires of Horace are wholly different from those of Lucilius, because Horace has no less surpassed Lucilius in the elegance of his writing, than Lucilius surpassed Ennius in the turn and ornament of his.”
The satires of Lucilius extended to not fewer than thirty books; but whether they were so divided by the poet himself, or by some grammarian who lived shortly after him, seems uncertain: He was a voluminous author, and has been satirized by Horace for his hurried copiousness and facility:—
“Nam fuit hoc vitiosus: In horâ sæpe ducentos, Ut magnum, versus dictabat, stans pede in uno: Garrulus, atque piger scribendi ferre laborem; Scribendi recte: nam ut multum, nil moror(404).”
Of the thirty books there are only fragments extant; but these are so numerous, that though they do not capacitate us to catch the full spirit of the poet, we perceive something of his manner. His merits, too, have been so much canvassed by ancient writers, who judged of them while his works were yet entire, that their discussions in some measure enable us to appreciate his poetical claims. It would appear that he had great vivacity and humour, uncommon command of language, intimate knowledge of life and manners, and considerable acquaintance with the Grecian masters. Virtue appeared in his draughts in native dignity, and he exhibited his distinguished friends, Scipio and Lælius, in the most amiable light. At the same time it was impossible to portray anything more powerful than the sketches of his vicious characters. His rogue, glutton, and courtezan, are drawn in strong, not to say coarse colours. He had, however, much of the old Roman humour, that celebrated but undefined _urbanitas_, which indeed he possessed in so eminent a degree, that Pliny says it began with Lucilius in composition(405), while Cicero declares that he carried it to the highest perfection(406), and that it almost expired with him(407). But the chief characteristic of Lucilius was his vehement and cutting satire. Macrobius calls him “Acer et violentus poeta(408);” and the well-known lines of Juvenal, who relates how he made the guilty tremble by his pen, as much as if he had pursued them sword in hand, have fixed his character as a determined and inexorable persecutor of vice. His Latin is admitted on all hands to have been sufficiently pure(409); but his versification was rugged and prosaic. Horace, while he allows that he was more polished that his predecessors, calls his muse “pedestris,” talks repeatedly of the looseness of his measure, “Incomposito pede currere versus,” and compares his whole poetry to a muddy and troubled stream:—