And though Lucilius put not together in the
same satire several sorts of verses, as Ennius did, yet he composed
several satires of several sorts of verses, and mingled them with
Greek verses: one poem consisted only of hexameters, and another
was entirely of iambics; a third of trochaics; as is visible by the
fragments yet remaining of his works. In short, if the satires of
Lucilius are therefore said to be wholly different from those of
Ennius because he added much more of beauty and polishing to his own
poems than are to be found in those before him, it will follow from
hence that the satires of Horace are wholly different from those of
Lucilius, because Horace has not less surpassed Lucilius in the
elegancy of his writing than Lucilius surpassed Ennius in the turn
and ornament of his. This passage of Diomedes has also drawn Dousa
the son into the same error of Casaubon, which I say, not to expose
the little failings of those judicious men, but only to make it
appear with how much diffidence and caution we are to read their
works when they treat a subject of so much obscurity and so very
ancient as is this of satire.
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