Latin Verse Satire

by Miller, Paul Allen

  The testimonia of other Latin grammarians such as Isidore and Festus derive from either Diomedes or his source; with one exception none offers any independent evidence.7 The piece of additional information given by a scholiast on Horace that the lanx satura was offered in the temple of Ceres is probably no more than a plausible inference.8 Diomedes refers to Varro and to no other authority, and the usual attribution of the main lines of Diomedes to Varro may be accepted with confidence. The etymologies are characteristic of Varro, and it is more than likely that the learned literary historian, himself a satirist, assembled theories of the origins of satire that became standard doctrine.9 There is nothing of substance in Diomedes’ account that need be later than Varro. Only the quotations from Virgil and Sallust are almost certainly later additions; any grammarian from Verrius Flaccus to Diomedes himself could have inserted them. It is likely that Diomedes’ testimony all derives from a single work of Varro. One piece of evidence we are told was found in the Plautinae Quaestiones; the rest probably came from the same work. If Varro discussed satura elsewhere, the likeliest places are the de Compositione Saturarum and the de Poetis, which may have included a section on satire in its discussion of Ennius.10

  As Diomedes’ source offers four explanations of the derivation and origin of satura, it is clear that by the end of the republic much was already speculation and guesswork. None the less in one or other of these theories there may be some approximation to the truth. The first explanation does not deserve credence, Diomedes offers the ribaldry and obscenity of the satyrs, presumably satyr drama, as parallel to the derision and bawdry of satire, which he concludes took its name from these tipsy and frolicsome creatures of Greek myth and drama.11 On this view the earliest Roman satirist used a Greek loan word as title. But there are weighty objections. First, such a background of unbridled jocularity and boisterous lechery is unsuited to the quiet satires of Ennius as preserved, which, as will be seen, are influenced mainly by non-dramatic Hellenistic poetry. This theory presupposes the vituperative satire of Lucilius and his republican successors.12 Secondly there is a linguistic difficulty. The Greek adjective meaning connected with satyrs’ is this becomes satyricus in Latin, as in the phrase satyrica fabula used by Diomedes.13 The Greek for satyr play is either some expression with such as or (plural); the latter form appears in Latin in Horace’s phrase satyrorum scriptor.14 Ennius could not have derived satura (singular) or saturae (plural) from these words. Had he wished to base his title on satyrs and plays about them we would expect him to have made some use of the adjective satyricus, which occurs with sophisticated ambiguity in Petronius’ Satyricon libri.

  In Diomedes’ second and third explanations satura takes its name from a cult offering to the gods or from a cook’s recipe. For the first of these Diomedes specifies the exact point of the figurative language: a copia et saturitate rei; the words variis multisque suggest that the metaphor included variety as well as abundance, and it may be assumed that the culinary metaphor carried similar associations.

  In deriving satura from lanx satura, Diomedes quotes no evidence for this phrase; other late grammarians who used the same authorities mention lanx satura but no citation can be adduced from any source. Diomedes may have intended to mean not a lanx satura but a type of lanx called a satura (i.e. a noun); he cites two passages of Virgil that illustrate the use of lanx without satura as the dish on which sacrificial offerings were placed,15 but he does not say which gods received such offerings. His second citation from Virgil refers to an Italian sacrifice to Bacchus; the first quotation comes from a general description of sacrifices at which wine was offered to the gods. Ceres must be excluded from their number, because in her cult no sacrifice of wine was made.16 Here there is an implicit discrepancy between Diomedes and the Pseudacron Scholia to Horace, where it is said the lanx satura was offered in the temple of Ceres. But it is unlikely that the Horace scholiast preserves the words of the religious antiquarian Varro, while Diomedes is vague and incorporates quotations which are incompatible with the original authority. Whether the filled lanx belonged to any particular cult we cannot tell. Ceres is associated with sacrifice of first fruits, and the offering of a lanx to Bacchus does not preclude its use in a Ceres cult.17 But there were many other recipients of first fruits and produce, such as Pales and the Lares, not to mention Carna, whose ritual was obsolete by the end of the republic. It is thus impossible to add the overtones of a particular ritual to a metaphorical title derived from lanx satura.18

  Diomedes’ third suggestion is that satura takes its name from a kind of stuffing. The word farcimen can be used either of the stuffing, the filling of the sausage, or the thing that is stuffed, the sausage itself; perhaps this was true of satura also.19 That satura does not occur in Varro’s description of fat, short and long sausages does not prove that it was not a species of sausage, for the list need not be regarded as including every kind of a food that must in its nature indeed have had many varieties.20 Diomedes gives a recipe for a dish that seems to be some kind of stuffing and not the thing stuffed, though this is a distinction that should not be pressed. Assuming satura here to be an adjective, it is uncertain what noun is to be supplied. Lanx is a possible supplement here too, for it is the ordinary word for a serving dish. Other suggestions include patina (pan) and olla (pot).21 As applied to a form of literature the point of the metaphor is once again fullness and variety. It is difficult to plot the full associations of the metaphor with precision. The recipe does not correspond closely to anything in Apicius’ collection for gourmets of imperial times. This includes a recipe for sausage stuffing which contains the nuts of edible pines and spelt-grits (alica) instead of pearl barley. Many other dishes in Apicius contain some of Varro’s ingredients,22 but what sets Varro’s recipe apart from these elaborate contrivances is the inclusion of pearl barley. Barley (hordeum) is a rare ingredient in Apicius; polenta seems not to occur there at all. Barley is the traditional food of gladiators and barley meal was used to feed farm animals.23 It seems likely that Varro’s recipe is a form of a dish eaten in republican times by country folk. Such a culinary metaphor would be suited to the vigour of satire as well as its variety.

  This explanation of the word satura seems to be alluded to by one of the satirists. Juvenal describes the variety of subject matter of satire as nostri farrago libelli (1,86), ‘the mash of my book’. Farrago is always used of mixed fodder for cattle, never of food for men.24 It is not quite certain how the whole phrase is to be construed. Though it is generally assumed that the meaning is ‘the mixed meal of which my book consists’, it is possible to take the genitive as objective: ‘the mixed meal that goes to feed my book’; the book is thus conceived of as an animal to be fed.25 Juvenal with a jaunty and debunking metaphor thus alludes disrespectfully to what must have been by his time a standard textbook theory of origins.

  The theory of satura as by origin a food rather than an offering to the gods has found most favour in modern times.26 In our present state of knowledge one or other of these theories is the likeliest explanation of the metaphorical use of satura. It is difficult to choose between the two and perhaps they are not mutually exclusive. Whichever of the two views is accepted, it is probable that lanx is the noun to be supplied. The analogy of patina suggests that lanx too could refer to the contents of the dish as well as the dish itself.27 That a Roman word for dish was used proverbially of a miscellany is clear from a poem of Meleager which after listing a series of scabrous and variegated paederastic achievements concludes:

  (Anth. Pal. 12,95,9–10 = GP 4406–7)

  (If heaven were to provide you with such delights, lucky man, what a Roman dish of boys you will be preparing.)

  Λοπάς is an ordinary word for serving dish and is almost certainly a translation of lanx. The Roman metaphor was so widely known that it could be used at about the beginning of the first century B.C. as the climax to a Greek epigrammatic poem.28

  It was such a proverbial usage that Ennius took over in devisi
ng the title Saturae, ‘the miscellaneous dish’, for his collection or collections of miscellaneous poems. In so doing he had at hand in the Hellenistic tradition ∑ωóς ‘the heap’ (of winnowed grain), the title that Posidippus gave to a collection of assorted poems composed by himself exclusively or in conjunction with other poets.29 It seems probable that Posidippus’ title or some title like it led Ennius to choose a similar word that had no previous literary associations. The existence of Greek collections entitled (miscellanies) may have influenced Ennius’ desire to compile a collection of poems, but it was a title such as that led him to choose for his title a concrete metaphor rather than an abstract description.30 The establishment of a relationship on the one side between Demeter and the ∑ωóς and on the other between lanx satura and Ceres would favour a metaphor from a religious offering. But both these connections are highly problematical.31 It may perhaps be preferable to regard the title satura as derived from the language of kitchen and dining-room, a heaped and filling country dish of diverse ingredients to describe and illustrate a rich and variegated but unpretentious literary form.32

  Thus one or even two of the theories preserved by Diomedes show how satura came to be used as a literary term; Ennius seems to have been the first to use it in this way. It is true that satura is unique among the major Roman literary forms in having a title that is genuinely Italian and not a Greek loan word, but it was the example of picturesque and fanciful titles in Hellenistic poetry that led Ennius to choose a concrete Latin word. The analogy of ∑ωóς suggests that Ennius referred to a collection of miscellaneous poems or a book as satura (sing.) and to the whole corpus of his satires as saturae (plural). The use of satura to denote a single poem, as in Quintilian’s reference to Ennius’ dialogue between Life and Death as taking place in satura (9,2,36), is probably a later development when technical terminology had hardened. But Ennius may not have been consistent in his use of singular and plural, and so it is unwise to insist on a fine distinction in terminology particularly at an early stage in the history of the genre.33

  Diomedes’ fourth suggestion, that the use of satura as a literary title derived from legal terminology, may be dismissed quickly. There is no evidence for the phrase lex satura except in the statements of grammarians; lex per saturam with the meaning of a law with compendious or mixed provisions is attested in the second half of the second century B.C.,34 but it may be argued that the phrase lex per saturam does not exist and is only found in contexts where the phrase per saturam is adverbial (‘in a disorderly manner’) with some such verb as ferre.

  By this time per saturam was a catch-phrase used of a tacked law, a piece of legal engineering that was formally forbidden in 98 B.C.35 The phrase per (or in) saturam thus implied an agglomeration of disparate items. The linguistic and social background to the development of this phrase is uncertain, but lex (per saturam) clearly had nothing to do with the origins of satire.36

  Some scholars, suspicious of the multiplicity of explanations offered by Diomedes, have looked elsewhere for an etymology and connected satura with an Etruscan word satir or satre that is said to mean ‘speak’ or ‘declare’.37 This theory is attractive, as the title would describe the conversation and discourse of book satire. But there are difficulties. The meaning of the Etruscan word is not entirely certain, and attempts to postulate an Etruscan substrate to a Latin word are usually not without hazard.38 It is also unlikely that Ennius would have chosen an Etruscan rather than, as was customary, a Greek loan word for the title of a genre that contained so much Greek material in its subject matter and presentation.

  2 Livy and the so-called ‘dramatic satura’

  The foregoing discussion rests on the assumption that there was no literary satura in Rome or Italy before Ennius. An important piece of ancient evidence, however, suggests the contrary and must now be examined in detail. Livy narrates that after various attempts to rid Rome of the plague had failed, stage shows were introduced for the first time in 364 B.C. as a means of averting divine anger:

  Sine carmine ullo, sine imitandorum carminum actu ludiones ex Etruria acciti ad tibicinis modos saltantes haud indecoros motus more Tusco dabant. Imitari deinde eos iuventus, simul inconditis inter se iocularia fundentes versibus, coepere; nec absoni a voce motus erant. Accepta itaque res saepiusque usurpando excitata. Vernaculis artificibus, quia ister Tusco verbo ludio vocabatur, nomen histrionibus inditum; qui non, sicut ante, Fescennino versu similem incompositum temere ac rudem alternis iaciebant sed impletas modis saturas descripto iam ad tibicinem cantu motuque congruenti peragebant. Livius post aliquot annis, qui ab saturis ausus est primus argumento fabulam serere, idem scilicet – id quod omnes tum erant – suorum carminum actor, dicitur, cum saepius revocatus vocem obtudisset, venia petita puerum ad canendum ante tibicinem cum statuisset, canticum egisse aliquanto magis vigente motu quia nihil vocis usus impediebat. Inde ad manum cantari histrionibus coeptum diverbiaque tantum ipsorum voci relicta.

  (Livy 7,2,4–10)

  (Players were called in from Etruria who danced to the music of the pipes without any verses or miming that corresponded to verses and produced graceful movements in the Etruscan manner. Later Romans began to imitate them, at the same time exchanging jests in improvised verse, suiting the gestures to the words, and so the practice became a custom and developed through regular use. The name histrio was given to Roman professional performers, for in Etruscan a player was called ister.39 These did, nor, as had been the former practice, engage in an exchange of disorganized and uncouth verse like Fescennines, but enacted fully musical ‘revues’ with what was by now a set vocal line with pipe accompaniment and appropriate miming.40 The story goes that after some years Livius, who was the first to depart from the ‘revues’ and compose a dramatic plot, and, according to the general custom of the times, was the actor of his own pieces, cracked his voice as a result of too many encores and gained permission to place a slave in front of the piper to sing, while he enacted the lyrics with a greater vigour of movement as he was not hindered by having to use his voice. As a result the practice was instituted for the actors to have the lyrics sung near to them as accompaniment of their gestures and to reserve the dialogue alone for their own voices.)41

  In the next and final stage of Livy’s account the performance of plays was left to professional actors, while amateurs continued the old practice of banter in verse and were responsible for playing the so-called ‘after-pieces’, which are usually identified with Atellan comedy, a vulgar farce of Italian origins.42

  Livy here offers an account of the development of drama in Rome in five chronological stages, of which a satura that is enacted dramatically is the third, preceded first by imported wordless dances with music and then by imitation of the dances accompanied by crude rustic verses in dialogue; it is succeeded by a drama with a proper plot, dialogue and cantica, that is finally developed by professionals into an art form while the amateurs developed the rough exchanges of dialogue into formal after-pieces.43 The dramatic satura that was part of this development was described as a musical stage show without an organized plot but with lyrics written out in full and probably dancing, all being accompanied by the music of the pipes, and its organization and professionalism were to be contrasted with the earlier improvised work of the amateurs.

  There is no other evidence for such a dramatic satura except a passage of Valerius Maximus which is modelled on Livy or his immediate source and is even more patriotic than Livy in that it makes the first stage a Roman activity before actors were imported from Etruria.44

  Some modern scholars believe that there was some such stage show in the early history of Roman drama but that it was not called satura, whilst others hold that satura was its original name.45 There is, however, much in Livy’s account that invites disbelief. It is possible that there was a plague in 365–4 B.C., for such information may have been taken from the Pontifical Annals.46 It is also possible that players were imported from Etruria, though the practice during the Punic War
s of sending to Etruria on occasions of crisis is not necessarily confirmation of procedure in the earlier part of the fourth century B.C. But there seems to have been no source that could have provided Livy or his authority with an authentic tradition about dramatic practices in Rome in the fourth century. Verses of the Fescennine kind were a very ancient form of folk poetry, for they were associated to some extent with religious ritual. To seek their development in an imitation of an exotic dance form is not even plausible.47 Livy’s fourth stage likewise is demonstrably erroneous. A reliable ancient tradition held that Livius Andronicus produced his first play in Rome in 240 B.C., and this date has been generally accepted by modern scholars.48 Livy’s unspecific post aliquot annis neither confirms nor contradicts this, but his vagueness and the length of the chronological stages of his account raise grave suspicions. It is sometimes urged against Livy’s veracity that Livius Andronicus was a schoolmaster and not an actor, but there is strong independent evidence that in addition to grammatical and literary activities he was a performer who took part in his own plays.49 But one of the fundamental facts of Latin literary history is that Livius Andronicus introduced translations of Greek plays; and that it was from these that Roman drama originated. The omission of this fact makes Livy’s account of Livius Andronicus incredible, and the absence of any mention of Greek influence discredits the rest of the story.50

  An explanation may be suggested for part of Livy’s procedure. He sketches the development of both the diverbia (dialogue) and cantica (lyrics) of comedy. Just as his dubious second stage was necessary to explain the diverbia of comedy without referring to Greek plays, so also a Roman dramatic lyric without plot was a necessary hypothesis to explain the cantica of Roman plays. It thus seems very likely that Livy’s chronological sequence is groundless speculation.51