What is "satires"

n. (plural of satire English)

The Satires are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD.

Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a wide-ranging discussion of society and social mores in dactylic hexameter. The poems are not individually titled, but translators have often added titles for the convenience of readers.

• Book I: Satires 1–5
• Book II: Satire 6
• Book III: Satires 7–9
• Book IV: Satires 10–12
• Book V: Satires 13–16 (Satire 16 is incompletely preserved)

Roman Satura was a formal literary genre rather than being simply clever, humorous critique in no particular format. Juvenal wrote in this tradition, which originated with Lucilius and included the Sermones of Horace and the Satires of Persius. In a tone and manner ranging from irony to apparent rage, Juvenal criticizes the actions and beliefs of many of his contemporaries, providing insight more into value systems and questions of morality and less into the realities of Roman life. The author employs outright obscenity less frequently than Martial or Catullus, but the scenes painted in his text are no less vivid or lurid for that discretion.

The author makes constant allusion to history and myth as a source of object lessons or exemplars of particular vices and virtues. Coupled with his dense and elliptical Latin, these tangential references indicate that the intended reader of the Satires was highly educated. The Satires are concerned with perceived threats to the social continuity of the Roman citizens: social-climbing foreigners, unfaithfulness, and other more extreme excesses of their own class. The intended audience of the Satires constituted a subset of the Roman elite, primarily adult males of a more conservative social stance.

The Satires ( or Sermones) are a collection of satirical poems written by the Roman poet Horace. Composed in dactylic hexameters, the Satires explore the secrets of human happiness and literary perfection. Published probably in 35 BCE and at the latest by 33 BCE, the first book of Satires represents Horace's first published work, and it established him as one of the great poetic talents of the Augustan Age. The second book was published in 30 BCE as a sequel.

In his Sermones (Latin for "conversations") or Satires (Latin for "miscellaneous poems"), Horace combines Epicurean, that is, originally Greek philosophy with Roman good sense to convince his readers of the futility and silliness of their ambitions and desires. As an alternative, he proposes a life that is based on the Greek philosophical ideals of autarkeia (Greek for "inner self-sufficiency") and metriotes (Greek for "moderation" or sticking to the Just Mean). In S. 1.6.110–131, Horace illustrates what he means by describing a typical day in his own simple, but contented life.

The second book also addresses the fundamental question of Greek Hellenistic philosophy, the search for a happy and contented life. In contrast to Satires I, however, many of this book's poems are dialogues in which the poet allows a series of pseudo-philosophers, such as the bankrupt art-dealer turned Stoic philosopher Damasippus, the peasant Ofellus, the mythical seer Teiresias, and the poet's own slave Dama, to espouse their philosophy of life, in satiric contrast to that of the narrator.

Satires are cultural texts in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule.

Satires may also refer to:

• Satires (Horace), a collection of satirical poems
• Satires (Juvenal), a collection of satirical poems