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  • 7 - The satires of Ennius and Lucilius

  • from PART II - EARLY REPUBLIC
  • Edited by E. J. Kenney, W. V. Clausen
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Classical Literature
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    18 March 1982, pp 156-172

  • Summary

    Ennius was not only a major dramatist and the author of the most ambitious Roman epic. He also extended the range of Latin poetry in a series of compositions in the genus hundle, the low key, some based on Greek models, and others original. This chapter focuses on the nature and origin of Latin satire. Ennius' minor works as a whole remind one of many features of lowkey, unpretentious Alexandrian poetry and moralizing literature. A judicious modern account of fourth- and third-century Greek literature as it relates in style, intent, and variety to all of Ennius' minor works remains a desideratum. The language and form of those earliest works were those of drama, as was only natural, since Ennius had established the iambo-trochaic metres and diction of the form as the ordinary medium for any poetry of less than heroic pretensions; including in Lucilius' time even epitaphs.