SATIRE, in its literary aspect, may be defined as the ex pression in adequate terms of the sense of amusement or disgust excited by the ridiculous or unseemly, provided that humour is a distinctly recognizable element, and that the utterance is invested with literary form. Without humour, satire is invective; without literary form, it is mere clownish jeering. The first exercise of satire no doubt consisted in gibing at personal defects. To dignify satire by rendering it the instrument of morality or the associate of poetry was a development implying considerable advance in the literary art. In the accounts that have come down to us of the writings of Archilochus, the first great master of satire, we seem to trace the elevation of the instrument of private animosity to an element in public life. Simonides of Amorgus and Hipponax were distinguished like Archilochus for the bitterness of their attacks on individuals, with which the former combined a strong ethical feeling and the latter a bright active fancy. The loss of their writings, which would have thrown great light on the politics as well as the manners of Greece, is to be lamented. With Hip ponax the direct line of Greek satire is interrupted; but two new forms of literary composition, capable of being the vehicles of satire, almost simultaneously appear. Although the original in tention of fable does not seem to have been satirical its adap tability to satiric purposes was soon discovered. A far more im portant step was the elevation of the rude fun of rustic merry makings to a literary status by the evolution of the drama from the Bacchic festival. The means had now been found of allying the satiric spirit with exalted poetry, and their union was consummated in the comedies of Aristophanes.
A rude form of satire had existed in Italy from an early date in the shape of the Fescennine verses, the rough and licentious pleasantry of the vintage and harvest. As in Greece, these even tually were developed into a rude drama. Verse, "like to the Fescennine verses in point of style and manner," was added to accompany the mimetic action, and these probably improvised compositions were entitled Saturae, a term denoting miscellany, and derived from the satura lanx, "a charger filled with the first fruits of the year's produce."
The Roman people thus had originated the name of satire, and, in so far as the Fescennine drama consisted of raillery and ridicule, possessed the thing also ; but it had not yet assumed a literary form among them. The real inventor of Roman satire is Gaius Lucilius (148-103 B.c.). The fragments of Lucilius pre served are scanty, but the verdict of Horace, Cicero and Quintilian demonstrates that he was a considerable poet. It is needless to dwell on compositions so universally known as the Satires of Lucilius's successor Horace, in whose hands this class of compo sition received a new development, becoming genial, playful and persuasive. The didactic element preponderates still more in the philosophical satires of Persius. Yet another form of satire, the rhetorical, was carried to the utmost limits' of excellence by Juvenal, the first example of a great tragic satirist. Nearly at the same time Martial, improving on earlier Roman models now lost, gave that satirical turn to the epigram which it only exceptionally possessed in Greece, but has ever since retained. About the same time another variety of satire came into vogue, destined to become the most important of any. The Milesian tale, a form of enter tainment probably of Eastern origin, grew in the hands of Pe tronius and Apuleius into the satirical romance, immensely widen ing the satirist's field and exempting him from the restraints of metre. Petronius's "Supper of Trimalchio" is the revelation of a new vein, never fully worked till our days. As the novel arose upon the ruins of the epic, so dialogue sprang up upon the wreck of comedy. In Lucian comedy appears adapted to suit the exigencies of an age in which a living drama had become impossible. With him antique satire expires as a distinct branch of literature.