Gaius Lucilius was, if not the inventor of Roman satire, certainly its founder as an important literary genre. Later satirical writers, Horace, most significantly, looked back specifically to Lucilius as an inspiration and as an object of emulation. All subsequent poets, moreover, were influenced by Lucilius's success in composing ostensibly autobiographical poetry and in his capacity for developing a literary personality that could serve as the locus for an examination, sometimes serious and sometimes playful, of aesthetic, literary, intellectual, and social issues.

Lucilius descended from a rich Italian family whose seat was at Suessa Aurunca, which lay on the edge of Campania. He was probably born in 180 B.C., though 169/168 B.C. remains a possibility. His brother, Manius Lucilius, was a Roman senator, and his father may also have held senatorial rank. The family prospered well enough to retain its station: a niece of Lucilius was married to...