The Chronology of the Early Books of Lucilius

Abstract

Friedrich Marx in the Prolegomena to his edition of Lucilius in 1904–5 proposed that the earliest books of Lucilius, viz. Books 26–30, were composed between the years 132 and 129 B.C. Conrad Cichorius, in his distinguished work Untersuchungen zu Lucilius (1908), advanced a lower date of 123 B.C. for the first collection, arguing his case with such skill and supporting it with such a quantity of apparently indisputable historical material that many scholars have for the last seventy years accepted many of his conclusions. The late dating of Books 26–30 is based primarily on three fragments, one in Book 26 (671–2M/650–1W/656–7K), and two in Book 30 (1088M/1017W/1054K and 1089M/1018W/1055K). In the survey of the datable fragments of Books 26–30 which follows the aim will be to demonstrate how the historical work of the last seventy years has affected our conclusions about the date of these fragments, and how these lines, which have been assigned late dates by Cichorius, in fact conform to the generally accepted pattern of early datable references in the first collection of Lucilius' satires.