There has been a long dispute among the modern critics whether the
Romans derived their satire from the Grecians or first invented it
themselves. Julius Scaliger and Heinsius are of the first opinion;
Casaubon, Rigaltius, Dacier, and the publisher of Dauphin's Juvenal
maintain the latter. If we take satire in the general signification
of the word, as it is used in all modern languages, for an
invective, it is certain that it is almost as old as verse; and
though hymns, which are praises of God, may be allowed to have been
before it, yet the defamation of others was not long after it.
After God had cursed Adam and Eve in Paradise, the husband and wife
excused themselves by laying the blame on one another, and gave a
beginning to those conjugal dialogues in prose which the poets have
perfected in verse. The third chapter of Job is one of the first
instances of this poem in Holy Scripture, unless we will take it
higher, from the latter end of the second, where his wife advises
him to curse his Maker.
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