Poetical satire, as a branch of cultivated literature, arose out of the social and political circumstances, and the moral and literary conditions of Roman life in the last half of the second century B.C. The tone by which that form of poetry has been characterised, in ancient and modern times, is derived from the genius and temper of a remarkable man, belonging to that era, and from the spirit in which he regarded the world. C. Lucilius invented satire, by first imparting a definite purpose to an inartistic kind of metrical composition, in which miscellaneous topics had been treated in accordance with the occasional mood or interests of the writer. Although the satire of Lucilius was rude and unfinished, and evidently retained much of the vague general character belonging to the satura of Ennius, yet he was undoubtedly the first Roman writer who used his materials with the aim and in the manner which poetical satire has permanently assumed. The indigenous satura existing at Rome before the rise of regular literature had been merged partly in the Latin comedy of Naevius, Plautus, Caecilius, etc., partly in the metrical miscellanies of Ennius and Pacuvius, which, though not written for the stage, retained the name of the old scenic medley. The new satire differed from Latin comedy in form and style, and in the personal and national aims which it set before itself. The satire of Lucilius, and even that of Horace, retained many features in common with the desultory medley which Ennius had formed out of the older satura. But the latter was the parent of no permanent form of literary art. The miscellanies of Varro, the most famous work produced on this model, were composed partly in prose and partly in verse, and were never ranked by the Romans among their poetical works. The former, on the other hand, was the parent of the satire of Horace, of Persius, and of Juvenal, and, through that, of the poetical satire of modern times. The spirit of censorious criticism, in which Lucilius treated the politics and morals, the social manners and the literary taste of his age, has become the essential characteristic of that form of literature which derived its name from the old Italian satura.