Lucilius and Horace: from criticism to identification

Horace’s relationship in his Satires to his literary predecessor Lucilius is not static throughout that work. Horace at first distances himself from Lucilius, describing him in Satires 1.4 as a ‘muddy’ poet; but by Satires 1.10 Horace is presenting Lucilius as a pioneering precursor in the genre. Finally, Lucilius becomes in Satires 2.1 the author of reference for satire. At all points in this process, however, the Horatian Lucilius is not the historical Lucilius. As portrayed by Horace, the inventor of the satirical genre is the invention of his successor, Horace, who selected and recombined features from the figure and poetry of Lucilius in order to create a literary model in his own image and likeness.