Among the poets of the Republic, whose works have reached us only in fragments, Lucilius is only second in importance to Ennius. Roman Satire owes as much in form, substance, and spirit to him as the Roman epic does to the older poet. While Ennius represents the highest mood of Rome, and first gave expression to that imperial idea which ultimately realised itself in history, Lucilius is the exponent of her ordinary moods, manifested in the streets and the forum, and of those internal dissensions and destructive forces by which her political life was agitated and ultimately overthrown. His personal characteristics and literary position can be inferred with nearly as much certainty as those of Ennius. The most important external evidence from which we form our idea of him is that of Horace and Cicero. But the numerous fragments of his writings bear a strong impress of his personality. From the confirmation which they give to other testimonies, we may endeavour to recover some of the lines and colours of that 'votiva tabula' which the contemporaries of Horace found in his books, and to realise the nature of the work performed by him and of the influence which he exercised over his countrymen. The time at which he appeared was one of the most critical epochs in Roman history, the end of one great era,--that of the undisputed ascendency of the Senate,--the beginning of the century of revolution which ended with the Battle of Actium. The mind of the nation began then to turn from the monotonous spectacle of military conquest and to busy itself with the conditions of internal well-being. A spirit of discontent with these, similar to that which called forth the legislation of the Gracchi, opened up a new path for Latin literature. It began then to concern itself, not with the national idea of conquest and empire, but with the actual condition of men. It sought for its material, not in the representation which had been fashioned by Greek dramatic art out of the heroic legends of early Greece or the citizen life of her later days, but out of the every day life of the Roman streets, law-courts, public assemblies, dinner-tables, and literary coteries, and out of the baser details of actual experience by which the magnificent ideal of Roman greatness was largely qualified. Though there is considerable difficulty in accepting the dates usually assigned for the birth and death of Lucilius, there is no reason to doubt that his active literary career began about the time of the tribunates of Tib. Gracchus, and continued till nearly the end of the first century B.C. This period is so important and interesting that such glimpses of light as are afforded by the fragments of the contemporary satirist are highly to be prized.