Like commercials, it works with soundbites. Satire works with distortion, character assassination, invective, innuendo, smear. It provides instruction pro bono publico, as did Socrates, to those who want it least. It provides exempla, making its targets a byword, a name to point a moral or adorn a tale. Where it finds celebrity, it erects a Temple of Fame, or Parliament of Fowls, or a Bedlam.
Satire is the great leveler.
King or commoner, you do not need a degree in Classics to know that you have been called a piece of shit. Surely, on the road to plutocracy, oligarchy, and tyranny, in our role as courtier, in our ascension to a presumed elite, we can learn much from the hacks and flaks who have been there before us. On the subject of poetry and power we have much to learn from Martial s dog.