The Campanian Case of Gaius Lucilius: Downtrodden Satire from Suessa Aurunca

The hometown of the verse satirist Gaius Lucilius was Suessa Aurunca, on the border between Latium and Campania. This chapter investigates the remnants of Campania in this poet’s surviving fragments and reception, mostly in Horace but also in Cicero and Juvenal. Horses, gladiators, pots, theater, and pronunciation are all Campanian aspects of the satirist’s cultural identity, despite his invention of a Roman genre. Contexts of arrogance and militarism, harking back to fighting against Rome in centuries-old wars, mingle in Lucilius with tourism and conspicuous consumption as markers of insider and outsider positioning vis-à-vis Campania, a half-forgotten homeland for the satirist.