the Swift of Greek Literature, Simonides of Amorgos (circ. 660 B.C.),
the author of the famous _Satire on Women_, and Hipponax of Ephesus,
reputed the inventor of the Scazon or halting iambic.

But the lasting significance of Greek satire is mainly derived from
its surpassing distinction in two domains--in the comico-satiric drama
of Aristophanes, and in the _Beast Fables_ of 'Æsop'. In later Greek
literature it lost its robustness and became trivial and effeminate
through expending itself on unworthy objects.

It is amongst the Romans, with their deeper ethical convictions and
more powerful social sense, that we must look for the true home of
ancient satire. The germ of Roman satire is undoubtedly to be found in
the rude Fescennine verses, the rough and licentious jests and
buffoonery of the harvest-home and the vintage thrown into
quasi-lyrical form. These songs gradually developed a concomitant form
of dialogue styled saturæ, a term denoting "miscellany", and derived
perhaps from the _Satura lanx_, a charger filled with the first-fruits
of the year's produce, which was offered to Bacchus and Ceres.[3] In
Ennius, the "father of Roman satire", and Varro, the word still
retained this old Roman sense.

Lucilius was the first Roman writer who made "censorious criticism" the
prevailing tone of satire, and his work, the parent of the satire of
Horace, of Persius, of Juvenal, and through that of the poetical satire
of modern times, was the principal agent in fixing its present
polemical and urban associations upon a term originally steeped in the
savour of rustic revelry. In the hands of Horace, Roman satire was to
be moulded into a new type that was not only to be a thing of beauty,
but, as far as one can yet see, to remain a joy for ever. The great