Satires (Horace) say that Lucilius' verses hobble along"), functions as an epilogue to the book. Here Horace clarifies his criticism of his predecessor Lucilius, jokingly explains his choice of the genre ("nothing else was available") in a way that groups him and his "Satires" among the foremost poets of Rome, and lists Maecenas and his circle as his desired audience. Both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, Horace was much better known for his "Satires" and the thematically-related "Epistles" than for his lyric poetry. In the century after his death, he finds immediate successors in Persius and Juvenal, and even Dante
Satires (Juvenal) 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. Scholarly estimates for the dating of the