PREFACE

The appearance of the two volumes of Marx's Lucilius in 1904 and 1905 and of Cichorius' Untersuchungen zu Lucilius in 1908 have given us a new Lucilius. To appreciate the truth of this statement it is only necessary to examine the earlier editions of Lucian Mueller, 1872, and of Lachmann, 1876. Not only do we have a text which is the result of long and discriminating study, but we now have fuller information as to the social, political, and aesthetic environment of the Scipionic epoch than we have of any other period of Roman literary history until we reach the Ciceronian and Augustan age.

These facts are of fundamental importance for all students of Horace's satires, for they at once render necessary a complete revision of judgment in regard to such earlier studies of Lucilian and Horatian relationships as those of M. A. Herwig, Horatius quatenus recte de Lucilio iudicaverit, Halle, 1873; J. J. Iltgen, de Horatio, Lucilii aemulo, Montabauer, 1872; L. Triemel, Ueber Lucilius und seine Verhältniss zu Horatius, Kreusn, 1877 (not accessible to me); V. Zawadzski, quatenus in satiris Horatius videatur imitatus esse Lucilium, Erlangen, 1881; R. Y. Tyrell, Horace and Lucilius, Hermathena 4, 355, and Tyrrel's Johns Hopkins Lecture on Horace published as chapter 6 in his Latin Poetry, pp. 162-215. The student who peruses these studies to-day will still find much of value. Certain parallels he will reject, others he will accept, and above all he will concern himself not with the question of sporadic instances of verbal imitation arranged in the familiar parallel columns or of the reinterpretation of the thought of individual passages by Horace, but with the much more fundamental question of the relation between the themes of Lucilian satires and those of Horace.

Traces of this point of view are not wanting in these earlier studies. Iltgen, for example, deserves great credit for pointing out the relationship between certain fragments now included in Lucilius, book 6, which appear to constitute an earlier treat

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ment of the theme of the encounter with the bore, the subject of Horace's famous satire 1, 9 and of numerous imitations and paraphrases in French, Italian, and English satire since that time. Tyrrel has deserved well of all students of the classics by his discussion of the relationship between Lucilius and Horace, but the unique value of his central thesis has been somewhat obscured by a mistaken emphasis. He has pointed out correctly the important relationship existing between certain Lucilian and Horatian satires but he has misinterpreted this phenomenon by representing it as derogatory to the originality of Horace, and by presenting Horace's satires too exclusively from the point of view of contemporary paraphrases or modernizations of Lucilian satire. Unquestionably there is a measure of truth in this last point of view, but it quite fails to account for the intricate problem of imitation in all its larger relations with the literary ideals of the Augustan age and Horace's own literary theories and practice.

The students of Marx's commentary and of Cichorius' studies have long been aware of the great advance made towards the solution of the problem of Lucilian and Horatian relationships. For example Marx's commentary gives clear indications of his consciousness of important relationships-and differences between the critical theories of Lucilius, as presented in certain satires in books 6 and 30 and Horace's critical satires 1, 4, and 1, 10, though he does not always pursue these evidences so far as to make concrete formulations of his point of view. So also he has seen the relationship between certain lines in Lucilius, book 30 and Horace's satire 1, 6. Cichorius, building on the foundation of the remarkable work of Marx, has succeeded in a considerable number of instances in formulating argumentative sequences of still other themes, notably that of the relation of the unsavory satire in 29, 3 on the sexual question to Horace's satires 1, 2, and the relation of the eloaywyń to Iunius Congus to certain themes treated in the Ars Poetica of Horace.

In the light of these facts, therefore, a new examination of the whole question of Lucilian and Horatian relationships seems desirable, an examination, however, which shall endeavor

to interpret the problem not by the mere citation of parallel passages, but in the light of the theories of literary imitation current in the age of Augustus. With this problem I have been busy in the all too scanty intervals afforded for research by the multifarious duties of an American college teacher during the past seven years.

At this point I seem to hear the voices of many American friends and colleagues in the classical field admonishing me that I am on slippery ground in making any efforts at conjectural reconstructions of fragments, and a fortiori at building up any argumentative sequences based on fragments.

That he is on slippery ground no one knows better than one who has worked with fragments. Such a one realizes only too well that some of his reconstructions will fall to the ground and not permanently meet the approval of critical scholarship. Why then should he pursue the quest? The answer is to be found in the history of the net advance in our knowledge made by successive generations of scholars who have had the courage to persevere in the field of interpreting the fragments both of Greek and Roman literature whether those fragments are scattered in the pages of grammarians or unearthed by the excavations of the Fayum.

Even the most conservative scholar who will examine the successive editions of Gerlach, L. Mueller, and Marx, and the study of Cichorius, will, I think, be forced to acknowledge that a notable advance has been made by each successive student in the field, not only in the interpretation of individual fragments but in the relocation of fragments in more probable contexts, and in the establishment of what measured by the ordinary tests of probability we may fairly call a new theory of the content of certain themes in Lucilius and their relations to Horace. It seems likely that, as the result of archaeological excavations, classical scholars will have more and not fewer problems of this nature to solve in the future. With such material no real progress can be made except through the exercise of the scientific imagination constantly censored by a rigidly scientific criticism on the part of the worker himself and of his professional readers. I will venture to add that where problems of imitation are

involved as is the case in Horace's relation to Lucilius, it is necessary not merely to scrutinize the individual fragments but also all pertinent evidence which will tend to establish longer or shorter sequences of thought or argument which by the ordinary rules of scientific evidence may be regarded as probable or possible. At any rate the results of the pursuit of this method in the successive editions of Lucilius should convince anyone except the perversely sceptical that thus a marked advance has been made in our knowledge of Lucilius, an advance which would have been quite impossible had all editors confined the attention exclusively to the text and the interpretation of the individual fragments. In any case he who works in fragments has the same right to present all the data and methods involved in his search for the final appraisal of scholars and to expect that his case will not be ruled out of court by any dogmatic verdict as to the alleged uselessness of the reconstruction of fragments, but that his results will be weighed with the same careful scrutiny, the same insistence upon the claims of the scientific imagination and the same rigid regard for the laws of evidence and probability that he has honestly endeavored to employ during his search for a nearer approach to the ultimate truth.

And here one question of detail may be mentioned, which may serve to illustrate how complex is this question of weighing evidence in the case of fragments. For a long time it was my intention to differentiate by the use of separate type those fragments of Lucilius which I regarded as almost certainly or probably related to certain Horatian contexts and those whose relationship was only one of possibility. When, however, I came to consider the whole aspect of my problem, I rejected this idea in favor of the plan of simply stating in each case my reasoned opinion for believing that that particular fragment both by itself and in the light of its context showed relationship with such and such lines of Horace or probably found a place in a Lucilian context which showed relationships with such and such a parallel context in Horace. To me and I think other workers familiar with the problems of literary relationships will agree with me-this procedure seems preferable and

for this reason. When a sequence of thought is established on the basis of obvious or probable relationship between a block of Lucilian fragments, and when in addition this sequence is found to pursue a course in general parallel to a sequence of thought or argument in Horace, the student then turns to a consideration of the other fragments from the same book of Lucilius. Here he may be said, roughly speaking, to encounter two sets of phenomena. First he will find certain fragments which he cannot relate without an illegitimate forcing process to the general outlines of his thematic sequence. These he must reject. But he will also find other fragments which are still susceptible of several explanations, but which now, so to speak, are floated on the surface of the context he has established as probable. In such a case he must, of course, state all the possibilities in the way of interpretation, but among these possibilities he is justified in preferring that one which seems to him most natural in the light of the sequence or context previously established. Such a fragment or group of fragments then draws relatively nearer the class of fragments which are probably to be related to a Horatian context, and relatively farther away from those fragments which can only be explained in isolation. Such a class of fragments are examples of a relatively common phenomenon. To attempt to differentiate them mechanically by typographical distinctions would be to obscure entirely one of the most complex problems in literary relationships.

In the controversy as to the proper sequence of all Lucilian fragments quoted by Nonius, I am inclined to hold rather with Lindsay than with Marx. Cf. his Nonius Marcellus' Dictionary of Republican Latin, Oxford, 1901, and reviews of Marx in Class. Rev. 19, 271; 20, 63; Deutsche Litzeit, 25, 3088 ff. But to reconstruct the text of Lucilius along the lines suggested by Lindsay is, of course, beyond the scope of this work. Until a text following Lindsay's principle of sequence is so constituted, all investigations like the present must necessarily follow Marx or present clear reasons for deviation. Indeed the text of Marx, as Lindsay himself acknowledges, is notably sane in the treatment of the individual fragments. In the meantime it is