Quintilian, indeed, claims it altogether for his countrymen in the
words, _Satira tota nostra est_; while Horace styles it _Græcis
intactum carmen_. But this claim must be accepted with many
reservations. It does not imply that we do not discover the existence
of satire, together with favourable examples of it, long anterior to
the oldest extant works in either Grecian or Latin literature. The use
of what are called "personalities" in everyday speech was the probable
origin of satire. Conversely, also, satire, in the majority of those
earlier types current at various periods in the history of literature,
has shown an inclination to be personal in its character. De Quincey,
accordingly, has argued that the more personal it became in its
allusions, the more it fulfilled its specific function. But such a view
is based on the supposition that satire has no other mission than to
lash the vices of our neighbours, without recalling the fact that the
satirist has a reformative as well as a punitive duty to discharge. The
further we revert into the "deep backward and abysm of time" towards
the early history of the world, the more pronounced and overt is this
indulgence in broad personal invective and sarcastic strictures.

The earliest cultivators of the art were probably the men with a
grievance, or, as Dr. Garnett says, "the carpers and fault-finders of
the clan". Their first attempts were, as has been conjectured, merely
personal lampoons against those they disliked or differed from, and
were perhaps of a type cognate with the Homeric _Margites_. Homer's
character of Thersites is mayhap a lifelike portrait of some
contemporary satirist who made himself dreaded by his personalities.
But even in Thersites we see the germs of transition from merely
personal invective to satire directed against a class; and Greek
satire, though on the whole more personal than Roman, achieved
brilliant results. It is enough to name Archilochus, whom Mahaffy terms