But another branch of comic literature had sprung out of the satire of the religious festivities. A year after Livius Andronicus produced the first drama at Rome, in the year 239 B.C., the poet Ennius was born at Rudiæ, in Magna Græcia. The satirical verse, whether Saturnine or Fescennine, had been gradually improving in its form, although still very rude, but Ennius is said to have given at least a new polish, and perhaps a new metrical shape, to it. The verse was still irregular, but it appears to have been no longer intended for recitation, accompanied by the flute. The Romans looked upon Ennius not only as their earliest epic poet, but as the father of satire, a class of literary composition which appears to have originated with them, and which they claimed as their own.[12] Ennius had an imitator in M. Terentius Varro. The satires of these first writers are said to have been very irregular compositions, mixing prose with verse, and sometimes even Greek with Latin; and to have been rather general in their aim than personal. But soon after this period, and rather more than a century before Christ, came Caius Lucilius, who raised Roman satirical literature to its perfection. Lucilius, we are told, was the first who wrote satires in heroic verse, or hexameters, mixing with them now and then, though rarely, an iambic or trochaic line. He was more refined, more pointed, and more personal, than his predecessors, and he had rescued satire from the street performer to make it a class of literature which was to be read by the educated, and not merely listened to by the vulgar. Lucilius is said to have written thirty books of satires, of which, unfortunately, only some scattered lines remain. [12] Quintilian says, "_Satira quidem tota nostra est_." De Instit. Orator., lib. x. c. 1. Lucilius had imitators, the very names of most of whom are now forgotten, but about forty years after his death, and sixty-five years before the birth of Christ, was born Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the oldest of the satirists whose works we now possess, and the most polished of Roman poets. In the time of Horace, the satire of the Romans had reached its highest degree of perfection. Of the two other great satirists whose works are preserved, Juvenal was born about the year 40 of the Christian era, and Persius in 43. During the period through which these writers flourished, Rome saw a considerable number of other satirists of the same class, whose works have perished.