SOURCE: “Greek Precursors of Roman Satire and Ennius” in Roman Satire: Its Outlook on Social Life, University of California Press, 1936, pp. 23-42.

In the following excerpt, Duff discusses Bion in the context of other Greek writers and satirists.

                                        Vos exemplaria Graeca nocturna versate manu, versate diurna 

Horace A. P. 268-269

Although satura in the Roman sense of the medley did not exist in Greece, yet there can be no difficulty in discovering what we should call satiric elements among Greek writers of all periods. Aristotle in the Poetics (iv. 7-8) points out how primitive a tendency it was among poets for some grave spirits to compose hymns to gods or eulogies on famous men and for other, less grave, spirits to compose invectives … against meaner persons. Such satirical attacks he sagely conjectures were probably plentiful even before Homer, but from Homer onward instances can be cited beginning with...