The three satiric poets give us both directly and indirectly a great deal of matter; in fact, they may almost be said to provide the illustrative commentary to their contemporary and friend[314] Quintilian’s precepts. It is possible that [Sidenote: _The satirists._] the example of Horace may have had something to do with this; but such an example need not have been required. As we know, not merely from themselves, the first century at Rome, if not one of the very greatest times of literary production, was one of very great and very widespread literary interest. As Persius tells us— “Ecce inter pocula quærunt Romulidæ saturi, quid dia poemata narrent;” while Seneca’s remarks, take them with what grains of salt we will, are sound corroborative evidence. Further, it appears on all hands, not merely that there was a distinct fashion of literature, but that this fashion had its own distinct characteristics, that it was one of the times of ornate as opposed to plain style in verse and prose alike, a time of “preciousness,” of “raising the language to a higher power,” a time when men openly called Cicero a commonplace and obvious writer, and, if they did not fail to pay a kind of conventional reverence to Virgil, wrote in a way as far as possible from being Virgilian. This always gives plenty of handles to the poetical satirist, and, as we shall see, all the three availed themselves of these handles to the full. Footnote 314: In two cases at least. And Quintilian might have known Persius, as he was in Rome before 59 A.D., while Persius did not die till 62.