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Satire

Mon., September 18, 2006

There’s a great Roman innovation that doesn’t get as much play as the aqueducts and sewer systems: satire.

A fine article (“My Satirical Self”) in yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Magazine by Wyatt Mason, a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, notes that satire began with Gaius Lucilius in the second century B.C., who lampooned all things Greek, a culture he felt his fellow citizens were imitating too closely.

“A cultivated wit,” wrote Horace, a later Roman satirist, “one that badgers less, can persuade all the more. Artful ridicule can address contentious issues more competently and vigorously than can severity alone.”

Juvenal, another Roman, writes, “It is harder not to write satire. For who could endure this monstrous city, however callous at heart, and swallow his wrath?. . . Today, every vice has reached its ruinous zenith. So, satirist, hoist your sails.”

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