The claim to an independent origin advanced by Quintilian has been more than once disputed. The name _Satire_ has been alleged as indicative of a Greek original (_Satyrion_). [4] It is true this can no longer be maintained. Still some have thought that the poems of Archilochus or the _Silli_ may have suggested the Roman form of composition. But the former, though full of invective, were iambic or personal, not properly satirical. And the _Silli_, of which examples are found in Diogenes Laertius and Dio Chrysostom, were rather patched together from the verses of serious writers, forming a kind of _Cento_ like the _Carmen Nuptiale_ of Ausonius, than original productions. The Roman Satire differed from these in being essentially _didactic_. Besides ridiculing the vices and absurdities of individuals or of society, it had a serious practical purpose, viz. the improvement of public culture or morals. Thus it followed the old Comedy of Athens in its plain speaking, and the method of Archilochus in its bitter hostility to those who provoked attack. But it differed from the former in its non-political bias, as well as its non-dramatic form: and from the latter in its motive, which is not personal enmity, but public spirit. Thus the assertion of Horace, that Lucilius is indebted to the old comedians, [5] must be taken in a general sense only, and not be held to invalidate the generally received opinion that, in its final and perfected form, Satire was a genuine product of Rome. The metres adopted by Satire was originally indifferent. The _Saturae_ of Ennius were composed in trochaics, hexameters, and iambics; those of Varro (called _Menippean_, from Menippus of Gadara), mingled together prose and verse. [6] But from Lucilius onwards, Satire, accurately so called, was always treated in hexameter verse. [7] Nevertheless, Horace is unquestionably right in saying that it had more real affinity for prose than for poetry of any kind-- "Primum ego me illorum, dederim quibus esse poetis, Excerpam numero: neque enim concludere versum Dixeris esse satis; neque si quis scribat, uti nos, Sermoni propiora, pates hunc esse poetam." [8]