FromMiddle Frenchsatire, fromOld French, fromLatinsatira, from earliersatura, fromlanx satura(“full dish”), from feminine ofsatur. Altered in Latin by influence of Ancient Greekσάτυρος(sáturos,“satyr”), on the mistaken notion that the form is related to the Greekσατυρικὸν δράμα(saturikòn dráma,“satyr drama”).
2003,Roy Porter,Flesh in the Age of Reason, Ch.9, at p.148:
Satire deflates and debases. It is an art which topples greatness, undermines pretension and punishes pride by revealing the low in the pretendedly high, the filth in the pure, the folly in reason. This belittling trick deploys telescopic lenses which picture the human as lesser and lower, or as a machine or beast, driven by depraved desires. Satire reduces what purports to be subtly superior to a repertoire of stigmatizing symbols and cardboard cut-outs, turning character into caricature, signalled by exaggerated physiognomical distortions - the huge nose, gaping mouth and bloated belly, or comparable animalistic traits. In this humbling of the complex into the simplistic, satire finally reduces the mind, soul or spirit to that flesh which always bespeaks inferiority on the Chain of Being.
CAESAR. No, by the gods! would that it had been! Vengeance at least is human. No, I say: those severed right hands, and the brave Vercingetorix basely strangled in a vault beneath the Capitol, were (with shudderingsatire) a wise severity, a necessary protection to the commonwealth, a duty of statesmanship—follies and fictions ten times bloodier than honest vengeance!
satire on the Danish Wikipedia.Wikipediada