implies that Lucilius used his satire as a natural vehicle for expressing everything that interested him, in his own life and in the circumstances of his time. In regard to the miscellaneous nature of the topics treated by him, and the frankness of his personal revelations, his truest modern parallel is Montaigne,—the father of the prose essay, which has performed the function of the older Roman satire more completely than even the poetical satire of modern times.
Among the poets of the Republic, whose works have reached us only in fragments, Lucilius is only second in importance to Ennius. Roman Satire owes as much in form, substance, and spirit to him as the Roman epic does to the older poet. While Ennius represents the highest mood of Rome, and first gave expression to that imperial idea which ultimately realised itself in history, Lucilius is the exponent of her ordinary moods, manifested in the streets and the forum, and of those internal dissensions and destructive forces by which her political life was agitated and ultimately overthrown. His personal characteristics and literary position can be inferred with nearly as much certainty as those of Ennius. The most important external evidence from which we form our idea of him is that of Horace and Cicero. But the numerous fragments of his writings bear a strong impress of his personality. From the confirmation which they give to other testimonies, we may endeavour to recover some of the lines and colours of that 'votiva tabula' which the contemporaries of Horace found in his books, and to realise the nature of the work performed by him and of the influence which he exercised over his countrymen.
The time at which he appeared was one of the most critical epochs in Roman history, the end of one great era,—that of the undisputed ascendency of the Senate,—the beginning of the century of revolution which ended with the Battle of Actium. The mind of the nation began then to turn from the monotonous spectacle of military conquest and to busy itself with the conditions of internal well-being. A spirit of discontent with these, similar to that which called forth the legislation of the Gracchi, opened up a new path for Latin literature. It began then to concern itself, not with the national idea of conquest and empire, but with the actual condition of men. It sought for its material, not in the representation which had been fashioned by Greek dramatic art out of the heroic legends of early Greece or the citizen life of her later days, but out of the every day life of the Roman streets, law-courts, public assemblies, dinner-tables, and literary coteries, and out of the baser details of actual experience by which the magnificent ideal of Roman greatness was largely qualified. Though there is considerable difficulty in accepting the dates usually assigned for the birth and death of Lucilius, there is no reason to doubt that his active literary career began about the time of the tribunates of Tib. Gracchus, and continued till nearly the end of the first century b.c. This period is so important and interesting that such glimpses of light as are afforded by the fragments of the contemporary satirist are highly to be prized.
The dates of his birth and death, according to Jerome, were 148 b.c. and 102 b.c. We are told, on the same authority, that he died at Naples and received the honour of a public funeral. The chief difficulty in accepting these dates arises from the statement of Velleius that Lucilius served as an 'eques' under Scipio in the Numantine War[3], and from the fact, attested by Horace and other authorities, of his great intimacy with both Scipio and Laelius[4]. Horace also mentions that he celebrated in his writings the justice and valour of Scipio,—
Attamen et iustum poteras et scribere fortem
Scipiadem ut sapiens Lucilius—;
and the parallel there suggested between the relation of Lucilius to the great soldier and statesman of his age, and of Horace to Augustus, would be inappropriate unless the praises there spoken of had been bestowed on Scipio in his lifetime. Fragments from one book of the Satires appear to be parts of a letter written by Lucilius to congratulate his friend on the capture of Numantia[5]. One line of Book xxvi,—
Percrepa pugnam Popilli, facta Corneli cane,
contrasts the defeat of M. Popillius Laenas in 138 b.c. with the subsequent successes of Scipio. In another fragment Lucilius charges Scipio with affectation for pronouncing the word 'pertaesum' as if it were 'pertisum[6].' He is also mentioned as one of those whose criticism Lucilius dreaded[7]. These and other passages must have been written in the lifetime of Scipio—i.e. before 129 b.c. Thus, if the date assigned for the birth of Lucilius is correct, he must have served in the Numantine War at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he must have been admitted into the most intimate familiarity with the greatest man of the age, and must have composed some books of his Satires, and thus introduced a new form of literature, before the age of nineteen. L. Müller in his edition of the Fragments adduces other considerations for rejecting the dates given by Jerome, such as the allusions to the career of Lupus (whom he supposes to be the same as the Censor of 147 b.c.) and to the war with Viriathus. He holds also that the words of Horace—