Satire is about blame and about masks. Performance, ritual or other, is not far away. Already the (one-sided) dialogue which the persona in Roman satire develops, from Lucilius onwards, invites staging, most urgently perhaps in Persius' sophisticated satirical mimes. This has called for evolutionary models long before Tylor and Frazer made evolutionism a tool of cultural analysis, and it was always performance that commanded most of the scholarly attention. When situating his satirical poetry in the tradition of free speech, Horace derived satire - however playfully - from Athenian ancient comedy, naming Eupolis atque Cratinus Aristophanesque poetae among his poetical ancestors. The historian Livy, on the other hand, stuck to Italy and thought rather of dramas performed by indigenous actors (vernaculi artifices) who, following an Etruscan model, “performed satires in many varying metres, singing to the tune of a flute-player and moving in a fitting rhythm.”