SATIRE …. is all ours
Cicero’s humor 1 A man is visiting a friend’s garden. The host points to a tree and explains, “this is the tree from which my wife hanged herself.” — Gee! Could I have sprout to plant it in my orchard? With some luck, my wife may get the same idea.
Martial: Maronilla has a cough Gemellus is eager to marry Maronilla He insists, begs, and offers her gifts. Is she so pretty? No! She really foul. So why is is he after her? It’s the cough.
Martial: While Teeth Thais has black teeth, Laecania has white Why? The first has her own.
Traditional Latin entertainment: Fescennine ritual jokes Satura ‘medley’ Atellane Oscan farce
Fescennine Originated at harvest festivals Improvised at weddings and triumphs;
Versus fescennini 2 “Urbani servate uxores, moechum calvom adducimus” Suet. Iul. 51 “Citizens, hide your wives, We are brining in the bald ******
Caesar’s soldiers were also mocking his meager vegetarian diet while in on campaign in Dyrrahium
Catullus Mr Dick is fooling around. Of course. What else could he do with a name like this. –Maurra
Plan Historical survey of Roman satire Focus on –HORACE –JUVENAL
SATURA Satyrus may be associated with Greek satyr plays Lanx satura = a full dish, an offering at a harvest home including a variety of fruit = pot pourri
Satire linked to Ritual Cursing Shaming Improvised Versus Fescennini Cf. French charivari (mock serenade for the newlyweds)
Satire and ritual Public ritualized blame used to enforce community values and punish transgressions Akin to, but more aggressive, than carnivalesque laughter
Pieter Breughel The Elder Battle of carnival and lent
Greek precedents Mime (sketches depicting scenes from every-day life) Diatribe (ethical sermon preached by a philosopher)
Menippus of Gadara third century BCE a Cynic philosopher wrote diatribes in a mixture of prose and poetry mixture of seriousness and laughter
By Diego Velasquez
The genre Early Roman satura described by Livy dramatic performance involving dance & music
Roman Satire before Horace Quintus Ennius (3rd-2nd BCE) four books in a variety of meters.
Lucilius (2nd BCE) Inventor of the genre Specialized in personal invective –naming the victim “After spending some money in his sleep, Hermon the miser was so mad hanged himself.”
Varro M.T. Varro 1st BCE volumes of satire imitating Menippus –“He who runs away his own, will run for a long time”
Horace Born at Venusia in 65 BCE Son of a freedman, educated in Rome, and Athens. 40 – 30 BCE Epodes and Satires
Roman Satire after Horace and before Juvenal Petronius (d. 66 CE) Satiricon, a novel in Meippean satire.
Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis 1st 2nd CE Writing after the death of DOMITIAN good rhetorical training little interest in philosophy Sixteen satires in hexameter, subdivided into five books.