Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/50

 the stated sacrifices to Ceres or Bacchus, or other rural deities, to offer to each god a collection of the various first-fruits of the earth, piled up upon a large platter. The Greeks designated offerings of this mixed kind by the name TrayKap-rria. or 7ray/cap7ros Ovaia; while the Latins called a platter thus piled up a Lanx Satura, or simply Satura, that word being the feminine of the adjective satur (from root sat), signifying repletion. The same word was used of other things possessing the same quality; a Lex passed per saturam was a law containing enactments on various subjects which were all passed together as a whole. Thus the term came to be used of any miscellaneous collection, any medley or hotch-potch consisting of many mixed ingredients.

(1) The first kind of entertainment to which the word was applied was that described by Livy vii. 2, consisting of rough dialogue set to music, {impletas mod is saturas), with singing and dancing. The whole might appropriately be called a Dramatic Miscellany or Medley.

(2) Ennius and Pacuvius removed Satura from the stage, and gave the name to a number of pieces composed on a variety of subjects and in a variety of metres. The whole, viewed as a collection, might be called a Poetical Miscellany.

(3) Varro, taking as his model the dialogues of Menippus, wrote a vast number of pieces on a multitude of different subjects, some purely comic, xlvi