Satires (Horace) 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. Although the "Satires" are considered to be inferior to the "Odes", they have been received positively in recent decades. Horace's direct predecessor as writer of satires was Lucilius. Horace inherits from Lucilius the hexameter, the conversational and sometimes even "prosaic" tone of his poetry, and the tradition of personal attack. In
Catholic epistles expanded to all other non-Pauline epistles later on. Beginning with Martin Luther, some Protestants have sought to remove some of these epistles from the canon of the Bible or assign a lower status than the Pauline epistles. Some Protestants have termed these lesser epistles. Three of the seven letters are anonymous. These three have traditionally been attributed to John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee and one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. Consequently, these letters have been labelled the Johannine epistles, despite the fact that none of the epistles mentions any author. Modern scholars strongly doubt the author(s) were