Besides their dramatic satires, the Greeks had another species of poem called _Silli_, which were patched up like the _Cento Nuptialis_ of Ausonius from the verses of serious writers, and by such means turned to a different sense from what their original author intended. Thus, in the _Silli_ attributed to Timon, a sceptic philosopher and disciple of Pyrrho, who lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the lines are copied from Homer and the tragic poets, but they are satirically applied to certain customs and systems of philosophy, which it was his object to ridicule. Some specimens of the _Silli_ may be found in Diogenes Laertius; but the longest now extant is a passage preserved in Dio Chrysostom, exposing the mad attachment of the inhabitants of Alexandria to chariot races. To these _Silli_ may be added the lyric or iambic satires directed against individuals, like those of Archilochus against Lycambes. The Roman didactic satire had no great resemblance to any of these sorts of Greek satire. It referred, as every one knows, to the daily occurrences of life,—to the ordinary follies and vices of mankind. With the Greek tragic satire it had scarce any analogy whatever; for it was not in dialogue, and contained no allusion to the mythological Satyrs who formed the chorus of the Greek dramas. To the comic satire it had more affinity; and those writers who have maintained the Greek origin of Roman satire have done little justice to their argument by not attending to the distinction between these two sorts of dramatic satire, and treating the whole question as if it depended on the resemblance to the tragic satire. In the comic satire, as we have seen, Satyrs were not always nor necessarily introduced. The subject was taken from ordinary life; and domestic vice or absurdity was stigmatized and ridiculed, as it was in the Roman satire, particularly during its earliest ages. Still, however, there was no incident or plot evolved in a Roman satire; nor was it written in dialogue, except occasionally, for the sake of more lively sarcasm on life and manners. But though the Roman satire took a different direction, it had something of the same origin as the satiric drama of the Greeks. As the Grecian holidays were celebrated with oblations to Bacchus and Ceres, to whose bounty they owed their wine and corn, in like manner the ancient Italians propitiated their agricultural or rustic deities with appropriate offerings, “Tellurem porco—Sylvanum lacte piabant(394);” but as they knew nothing of the Silenus, or Satyrs of the Greeks, a chorus of peasants, fantastically disguised in masks cut out from the barks of trees, danced or sung to a certain kind of verse, which they called Saturnian:— “Nec non Ausonii, Trojâ gens missa, coloni Versibus incomtis ludunt, risuque soluto; Oraque corticibus sumunt horrenda cavatis: Et te, Bacche, vocant per carmina læta, tibique Oscilla ex altâ suspendunt mollia pinu(395).”