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III. Lucilius
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2016
Extract
Gaius Lucilius died at Naples in 102/1 B.C. as an old man. He was born probably in 180 B.C., or possibly 168/7 B.C., into an eminent, rich family of the Latin aristocracy in Campania. Lucilius was almost certainly educated at Rome and owned large estates in southern Italy and Sicily and an important house in Rome. He was an eques (cavalryman: the second highest social class), a friend of the great general and politician Scipio Aemilianus, a patron of the arts around whom gathered a group of intellectuals, including poets and philosophers. From about 130 B.C. onwards Lucilius wrote his Satires, in a total of thirty books of which only 1300 fragments survive. Most of these are very brief and can hardly be considered a representative sample, since the vast majority were preserved by later grammarians as examples of oddities of Latin linguistic usage.
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References
Notes
1. The most important editions of the text of Lucilius are those of Marx (1904-5) and Warmington (1979); the latter, in the Loeb Classical Library (Remains of Old Latin Vol. 3) provides English transla tion, brief notes, and concordances of cross-references to the edition of Marx.
The general books on Roman Satire provide excellent surveys of Lucilius: Ramage, Sigsbee & Fredericks (1974), pp. 27-52; Knoche (1975), pp. 31-52; Coffey (1989), pp. 35-62 with notes and pp. 282-3; for further bibliography Christes (1972). For a brief but pithy overview of Lucilius see Gratwick (1982); also Rudd (1986), pp. 2-11,40-51, 82-9,126-32,162-70 with lively translations of the lines cited. General studies include Fiske (1920) on Lucilius’ influence on Horace; Puelma-Piwonka (1949) on the characteristics of Lucilius’ sermo and the relationship with Callimachus’ Iambs; and Martyn (1966) on Lucilius’ imagery.
2. See van Rooy (1965), pp. 51-5.
3. On the arrangement, dating, and metres of Lucilius’ books see Gratwick (1982), pp. 168-70 and, on the early books, Raschke (1979).
4. Griffith (1970), esp. pp. 65-72.
5. See Gratwick (1982), p. 163 for a list of the important men attacked by Lucilius and 164 for some of the faults satirized.
6. Thus his successors in the genre portray him as raging against or even physically attacking his victims: Horace Satires 1.10.3-4: [Lucilius] ‘is praised ... for scouring the city with caustic wit’; Satires II.1.62—70 e.g. ‘a shower of abusive verse’; Persius 1.114-15: ‘Lucilius crunched the city - Lupus and Mucius and all - and smashed his molar’; Juvenal 1.19-20 and 165-6: ‘Whenever, as though with sword in hand, the hot Lucilius roars in wrath ...’.
7. On feasts in Lucilius and other authors of Roman Satire see Shero (1923); for Lucilius’ influence upon Horace in the description of cenae see Fiske (1920), pp. 408-15.
8. Raschke (1990) rightly observes that uirtus here represents an aristocratic ideal rather than a philosophical concept.
9. For possible identifications of Albinus see Gratwick (1982), p. 163, Raschke (1990), pp. 365-9.
10. For example, the phrase ‘Socratic pamphlets’ (Socratici charti 789 W = 710 M), if it refers to his own poetry, suggests the use of dialogue and a self-ironic stance; the phrase is repeated by Horace at Ars poetica 310 (Socraticae. . . chartae).
11. Cited by Gellius N.A. 6.14.6, cf. Fronto p.113 N.
12. For new appraisals of Lucilius on women see Richlin (1983), pp. 164-74, Henderson (1989a), pp. 99-102 and, in more detail, (1989b), pp. 54-7.
13. E.g. 1039 W (= 1039 M), 1085 W (= 1015 M), 1086 W (= 1016 M).
14. Fronto p.62 N.
15. See 30-2 W (= 33-5 M), 19-22 W (= 26-9 M), 35 W (= 31 M), 10 W (= 10 M), 15 W (= 15 M), discussed briefly by Gratwick (1982), pp. 169-70.
16. Raschke (1987), p. 318 is right to describe Lucilius’ poetry as ‘highly partisan satirical verse’.