Sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur
Antiopa, aerummis cor luctificabile fulta.
The antagonism displayed by Lucilius to the more ambitious style of the tragic and epic poets was perhaps as much due to his own deficiency in poetical imagination, as to his keen critical discernment, the 'stili nasus' or 'emunctae nares' attributed to him by Pliny and Horace.
The criticism of Lucilius was not only aggressive, but also directly didactic. In the ninth book he discussed, at considerable length, disputed questions of orthography; and a passage is quoted from the same book, in which a distinction is drawn out between 'poëma' and 'poësis.' Under the first he ranks—
Epigrammation, vel
Distichum, epistula item quaevis non magna;
under the second, whole poems, such as the Iliad, or the Annals of Ennius. The only interest attaching to these fragments is that, like the didactic works of Accius, they testify to the crude critical effort that accompanied the creative activity of the earlier Roman poets.
As specimens of his continuous style the two following passages may be given. The first exemplifies the serious moral spirit with which ancient satire was animated; the second vividly represents and rebukes one of the most prevalent pursuits of the age—
Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum,