III. Lucilius

Abstract

Gaius Lucilius died at Naples in 102/1 B.C. as an old man. He was born probably in 180 B.C., or possibly 168/7 B.C., into an eminent, rich family of the Latin aristocracy in Campania. Lucilius was almost certainly educated at Rome and owned large estates in southern Italy and Sicily and an important house in Rome. He was an eques (cavalryman: the second highest social class), a friend of the great general and politician Scipio Aemilianus, a patron of the arts around whom gathered a group of intellectuals, including poets and philosophers. From about 130 B.C. onwards Lucilius wrote his Satires, in a total of thirty books of which only 1300 fragments survive. Most of these are very brief and can hardly be considered a representative sample, since the vast majority were preserved by later grammarians as examples of oddities of Latin linguistic usage.