But the grace and humour of the Menippean satires above all, which seem to have been in number and importance far superior to Varro’s graver works, captivated his contemporaries as well as those in after times who had any relish for originality and national spirit; and even we, who are no longer permitted to read them, may still from the fragments preserved discern in some measure that the writer “knew how to laugh and how to jest in moderation.”  And as the last breath of the good spirit of the old burgess-times ere it departed, as the latest fresh growth which the national Latin poetry put forth, the Satires of Varro deserved that the poet in his poetical testament should commend these his Menippean children to every one “who had at heart the prosperity of Rome and of Latium”; and they accordingly retain an honourable place in the literature as in the history of the Italian people.(27)

Historical Composition
Sisenna

The critical writing of history, after the manner in which the Attic authors wrote the national history in their classic period and in which Polybius wrote the history of the world, was never properly developed in Rome.  Even in the field most adapted for it—­ the representation of contemporary and of recently past events—­ there was nothing, on the whole, but more or less inadequate attempts; in the epoch especially from Sulla to Caesar the not very important contributions, which the previous epoch had to show in this field—­ the labours of Antipater and Asellius—­were barely even equalled.  The only work of note belonging to this field, which arose in the present epoch, was the history of the Social and Civil Wars by Lucius Cornelius Sisenna (praetor in 676).  Those who had read it testify that it far excelled in liveliness and readableness the old dry chronicles, but was written withal in a style thoroughly impure and even degenerating into puerility; as indeed the few remaining fragments exhibit a paltry painting of horrible details,(28) and a number of words newly coined or derived from the language of conversation.  When it is added that the author’s model and, so to speak, the only Greek historian familiar to him was Clitarchus, the author of a biography of Alexander the Great oscillating between history and fiction in the manner of the semi-romance which bears the name of Curtius, we shall not hesitate to recognize in Sisenna’s celebrated historical work, not a product of genuine historical criticism and art, but the first Roman essay in that hybrid mixture of history and romance so much a favourite with the Greeks, which desires to make the groundwork of facts life-like and interesting by means of fictitious details and thereby makes it insipid and untrue; and it will no longer excite surprise that we meet with the same Sisenna also as translator of Greek fashionable romances.(29)

Annals of the City