“Ut nemo sit nostrûm, quin pater optumus divûm;
Ut Neptunus pater, Liber, Saturnu’ pater, Mars,
Janu’ Quirinu’ pater, nomen dicatur ad unum.”
The third book contains an account of the inconveniences and amusements of a journey, performed by Lucilius, along the rich coast of Campania, to Capua and Naples, and thence all the way to Rhegium and the Straits of Messina. He appears particularly to have described a combat of gladiators, and the manifold distresses he experienced from the badness of the roads—
“Præterea omne iter hoc est labosum atque lutosum.”
Horace, in the fifth satire of his first book, has, in imitation of Lucilius, comically described a journey from Rome to Brundusium, and like him has introduced a gladiatorial combat. The fourth satire of Lucilius stigmatizes the luxury and vices of the rich, and has been imitated by Persius in his third book. Aulus Gellius informs us, that in part of his fifth satire he exposed, with great wit and power of ridicule, those literary affectations of using such words in one sentence as terminate with a similar jingle, or consist of an equal number of syllables. He has shown how childish such affectations are, in that passage wherein he complains to a friend that he had neglected to visit him while sick. In the ninth satire he ridicules the blunders in orthography, committed by the transcribers of MSS., and gives rules for greater accuracy. Of the tenth book little remains; but it is said to have been the perusal of it which first inflamed Persius with the rage of writing satires. The eleventh seems to have consisted chiefly of personal invectives against Quintus Opimius, Lucius Cotta, and others of his contemporaries, whose vices, or rivalship with his patron Scipio, exposed them to his enmity and vengeance. The sixteenth was entitled Collyra, having been chiefly devoted to the celebration of the praises of Collyra, the poet’s mistress[420]. Of many of the other books, as the 12th, 13th, 18th, 21st, and four following, so small fragments remain, that it is impossible to conjecture the subject; for although we may see the scope of insulated lines, their matter may have been some incidental illustration, and not the principal subject of the satire. Even in those books, of which there are a greater number of fragments extant, they are so disjoined that it is as difficult to put them legibly together as the scattered leaves of the Sibyl; and the labour of Douza, who has been the most successful in arranging the broken lines, so as to make a connected sense, is by many considered as but a conjectural and philological sport. Those few passages, however, which are in any degree entire, show great force of satire; as for example, the following account of the life led by the Romans:—
“Nunc vero a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto,
Totus item pariterque dies, populusque patresque
Jactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam,
Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti;