Lucilio e la satira della grammatica

Lucilius’ satires contain many fragments concerning questions of orthography, morphology, and syntax. The perspective of the ancient grammarians who transmitted the fragments, and of the modern philologists who discussed them, as if Lucilius were himself a grammarian, risks being misleading. Instead, Lucilius should be recognized as having introduced a fundamental innovation: the literary idea of including grammar within the satirical universe. His originality consists in the aptitude to give humour and lightness to the treatment of an otherwise heavy and difficult subject. In Lucilian satires, grammar is on the one hand an object of satire, in its pedantic and fanatical aspects, and on the other an instrument of satire, to censure bad linguistic and stylistic habits.