Studies in Classical Satire and Related Literary Theory

Abstract

DURING THE FIRST twenty-five years of this century, many scholars, stimulated by the controversial articles of Leo and the younger American pair, Hendrickson and Ullman, concerned themselves to establish a definition ofsatura and to place Roman satire in an acceptable literary and historical scheme. Much was undoubtedly achieved, but often at the cost of such polemic that for the time being the solid achievements were ignored, even denied. Now that time has passed and all the original combatants have disappeared, this book, written with cool and almost impersonal clarity, can serve a most useful purpose. Van Rooy has intended this as a history of ancient literary theory on the subject of satura. In eight chapters, he works his way ably from the old problem of etymology through the literary usage of the word satura first to define a variegated collection of poems, then to denote a particular kind of poetry, and proceeds to the various theories of Horace's generation and the first century, ending up with the curious adulterations of those theories that developed in the years after the last great Roman satirist, Juvenal, had died. Thus, in his final chapter, he analyses the garbled material assembled on the subject of satura by Evanthius in the fourth century, Johannes Lydus in the sixth, and by Isidore of Seville in the seventh; and he untangles the various knotted threads with considerable skill. For most classicists, however, the earlier chapters will prove more valuable. I shall discuss only the first three in any detail. Van Rooy does not merely arbitrate the controversies of older scholars; he has new and controversial ideas of his own to advance. For example, grappling with the hotly debated issue of the etymology of satura in his opening chapter, he immediately takes the offensive by treating the famous passage of Diomedes as, with slight modifications, the work of Varro. And he includes as Varronian the portion which derives satura from satyrs. Varro, according to Van Rooy, collected four familiar etymologies for what had become a literary genre by his time. Although we may discard the one based on satyrs as patently wrong, the three remaining must be tested for accuracy and primacy. By a clever, though not entirely persuasive combination of evidence, Van Rooy argues that the adjective satura became an independent substantive because of its early and characteristic attachment to the ritual lanx, which was filled with first fruits and presented to the rural gods of Rome; only later did the noun satura gain currency to describe first a kind of stuffing and secondly an omnibus law.