Chapter 12 - Ennius and Lucilius: Good Companion/Bad Companion

Summary

My paper considers Lucilius’ relationship to Ennius within the evolving culture of literary appreciation and professionalization in Rome at the end of the second century BCE, when generic boundaries between epic and satire are newly forming and the emerging priorities for literary culture do not necessarily align with the canon-forming tendencies of later periods. Instead of letting, for example, Horace’s version of the relationship of satire to epic orient us to expect parody, a Lucilius-first perspective on Ennius creates a productive sort of dislocation with an eye to the multifarious nature of Ennius’ output, including his satires. A capacity to do literary criticism is prominent in Lucilian satire, and it creates differentiation from Ennius along lines not only defined by a generic hierarchy. On this score I discuss the case of what looks like feed-back of interpretation into the Annals in light of post-Ennian developments in satire, namely the assertion that the “good companion” passage is an Ennian self-portrait.