SOURCE: “Diatribe” in The Anatomy of Satire, Princeton University Press, 1962, pp. 24-66.

In the following excerpt, Highet profiles Bion– whom he calls a philosophical missionary—and his imaginative teaching style.

1. the Satirist's Monologue

Satire as a distinct type of literature with a generic name and a continuous tradition of its own, is usually believed to have started in Rome. The earliest satirist whose work has survived intact for us to read is Horace (65-8 b.c.). He has left us two volumes of verse satire, with ten poems in the first and eight in the second, together with some poetic letters which are not far removed from satire as he conceived it.

Horace says, however, that in Latin one important satirist came before him.¹ This predecessor's poems have perished, except for a collection of shattered and isolated fragments; but from these fragments, and from the comments of Horace...